The Foreign Service Journal, December 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2018 117 nal politics behind various initiatives (e.g., administration sponsored? put forward by one party?) and not much effort to analyze the effectiveness of any of these laws, pro- grams and policies over time. Beyond the threat of the so-called Islamic State and lone wolf terrorists, one wonders what other terrorism issues might emerge in the future. What should the United States be doing to prepare? The book discusses the threat of cyber- terrorism and makes brief reference to the new role of the internet as a meeting place for terrorists, but the authors give little attention to “enhanced interrogation,” for instance, other than noting President Obama’s opposition (whether it’s cur- rent policy or not, this is of the historical record). Likewise, there are only a few descrip- tive paragraphs about drones. What has been or should be our policy regarding this latest weapon of choice against individual terrorists? The elephant in the room is the ques- tion of U.S. military involvement. Before 9/11 the war against terrorism focused on international cooperation, police actions and the judicial system, and only occa- sionally on operations by specially trained military units. Since 9/11, the role of the U.S. military has expanded to the point that it seems the first reaction to any terrorist incident is likely to be a military response—and almost every military action overseas is labeled as part of the war against terrorism. The authors describe this growing involve- ment, but seem to accept it without analyz- ing its effectiveness or its impact, either on the terrorist threat or in augmenting the ranks of new generations of anti-American terrorists. The book’s final chapter, “The Policy Challenge for the Trump Administration,” sets forth again the choice on counterter- rorismpolicy between Bush’s existential threat and Obama’s serious threat. But rather than recommending an option, the authors state: “It has become clear that it [terrorism] cannot be separated fromother foreign policy concerns.” In its early months the Trump admin- istration already added border security, immigration and refugees into its mix of terrorism concerns. In the final paragraph, the authors—without referring to these new sources of terrorism—note that the most significant change of the Trump administration to date has been the activ- ismof the military. In the book’s penulti- mate sentence, the authors conclude by saying “eventually a coherent strategy will emerge.” We are each left to judge for ourselves whether this might happen. Ambassador (ret.) Parker W. Borg served as deputy director of the State Department’s counterterrorism office from 1984 to 1986. A retired career FSO, he worked on national security issues at the Center for International Policy from 2002 to 2003 and taught interna- tional relations at universities in Rome and Paris from 2005 to 2009. Finding Her Place in the Middle East Veils in the Vanguard: Insights of an American Ambassador’s Wife in Kuwait Catherine Raia Silliman, CreateSpace, 2018, $9.99/paperback, $5.99/Kindle, 218 pages. Reviewed By Donna Scaramastra Gorman As the wife of a former U.S. ambassador to Kuwait, Catherine Raia Silliman certainly has a unique perspective on the Middle East. But if that were all she had to offer, her story of the two years she spent in Kuwait as his wife might have quickly grown stale. Fortunately, Mrs. Silliman is a talented writer and a Middle East expert in her own right. She first traveled to Izmir, Turkey, in 1976 as a 16-year-old exchange student. She was in Cairo during her junior year at Tufts University in 1979 when Iranian stu- dents stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran. And she later earned a master’s degree in Middle Eastern studies from the University of Chicago. Silliman was a State Department Foreign Service officer for nearly 15 years before marrying FSODoug Silliman and moving with him to an assignment in Islamabad. Shortly afterward, she resigned from the department and accompanied himon assignments to Tunisia, Jordan and Turkey while raising two sons. In 2014, her husband became the U.S. ambassador to Kuwait, and Silli- man decided to write a book “as a way of helping to narrow the huge void in our cultural understanding, to share with oth- ers the complexities of this region and, in particular, shed light on the important role women play.” Foreign Service readers will be riveted by the inside story of how the family waited through an interminable ambassadorial nomination process. Mr. Silliman was informed in April 2013, while he was fin- ishing up two years on an unaccompanied assignment in Baghdad, that he was being considered for the position of ambassador to Kuwait. In December of that year he was formally nominated but, because of politi- cal infighting in Congress, the confirma- tion process slowed to a trickle. The family waited for word of their future, stuck in limbo in Northern Virginia, trying tomake schooling decisions for their teenage sons. Amb. Silliman was finally confirmed in July 2014, and the family arrived in Kuwait just one month later.