The Foreign Service Journal, December 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2015 97 Lessons Learned— Or Well-Taught, at Least Foreign Policy Breakthroughs: Cases in Successful Diplomacy Robert Hutchings and Jeremi Suri, editors, Oxford University Press, 2015, $29.95/ paperback, $12.99/Kindle, 304 pages. Reviewed By Barbara K. Bodine In the popular mind, shaped by the media and reflected in Congress, diplomacy is what a state does to bide its time between wars—a view not that far off from the definition of an ice-hockey game. It is the absence of sufficient power or will to bend the world to your chosen vision, a synonym for duplicity in the guise of good manners…and it generally fails. Not only is this the conventional wis- dom, but too often it informs the teaching of diplomacy (or international relations or whatever one chooses to call it). The Department of State, home tomost of America’s diplomats, worries that insuf- ficient attention is paid, in the training and education of our own diplomats, to “les- sons learned”—generally understood to be the anatomy of failures—a skill assumed to be an art formwithin the military. Robert Hutchings, former dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and a former chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council, and his colleague at the LBJ School, Jeremi Suri, have com- bined their backgrounds as scholars and practitioners to edit a volume that pushes back against this diplomatic defeatism. Their book, Foreign Policy Breakthroughs , has the unambiguous subtitle “Cases in Successful Diplomacy.” These nine case studies are not all American successes or conventional geopolitical victories, and only one—on development and humanitarianism in Taliban-era Afghanistan—covers events in this century. Arranged chronologically, they begin in the immediate aftermath of WorldWar II, working through the rise of diplomacy in the developing world, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, normalization of American relations with China and the Camp David Accords before ending with the emergence of the European Union andMexico’s role in crafting the North American Free Trade Agreement. One hopes that the next edition will capture two latter-day cases: the Iranian nuclear agreement and normalization of relations with Cuba. Hutchings and Suri are not cheer- leaders for diplomacy, but scholars who recognized a gap in the literature on how diplomacy is conducted and to what end— beyond what they refer to as “synthetic treatments” of the varied aspects of diplo- macy and statecraft. They note that the rich body of memoirs rarely provides deep analysis of specific events or issues, while those works focused on theory and logical exposition lack the drama, disorder and confusion of diplomacy as it is practiced in the real world. I would add that, approached through the prismof public policy scholarship, “diplomacy” is too often reduced to mechanics and tactics subject to quantita- tive analysis, stripping out the fundamen- tal variable: the human factor. Curiously, Hutchings and Suri critique previous multi-author volumes as too broad and potentially uneven. They dis- tinguish their own example of the genre as part of the lost art of case studies. But more importantly, they choose to explore the lessons of what worked, to discern patterns and practices that can be applied going forward—rather than the forensics of what failed, which tend to be idiosyncratic. With its wise selection of both cases and authors, Foreign Policy Breakthroughs makes a strong argu- ment for the value of the case study method in diplomacy and provides the tools any scholar or practitioner-turned- academic would need to craft a course on the art and the science of diplomacy. (Full disclosure: I head the institute that inherited the Pew Case Studies program and have focused on the very need for replenishment and update that Hutchings and Suri call for.) As a bonus, the authors’ introduction and conclusions can stand alone as a primer for any student, new diplomat or concerned citizen who wishes to under- stand what makes diplomacy unique: the convergence of vision with detail, of patience and perseverance, of leadership and delegation, and of the value of realism. Each of the case studies in this superb book illuminates each of these lessons. Whether they are of equal quality and value may dependmore on the perspec- tive and pedagogical needs of the reader than inherent scholarship. Taken together, they do demonstrate that diplomacy properly understood and practiced can continue tomake the break- throughs we all aspire to and the world needs so badly. Foreign Policy Breakthroughs is already onmy syllabus. n Barbara K. Bodine, a retired Senior Foreign Service officer, served as ambassador to Yemen from 1997 through 2001, among many other assignments. Ambassador Bodine is currently Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy and director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. BOOKS