54 DECEMBER 2024 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL COURTESY OF JOHN MARKS Macedonia’s “Lafayette” In 1992, Robert “Bob” Frowick had been about to retire from the U.S. Foreign Service when Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger personally asked him to take on an unorthodox position as the U.S. government’s unofficial envoy to Macedonia, which had just become a separate country and was not yet officially recognized. Seconded to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and sent to Skopje, Frowick lacked the amenities that a U.S. ambassador normally receives. Still, he was the highest-ranked foreign official in Macedonia, and he became, in effect, the Western proconsul who worked closely with President Kiro Gligorov. (Later, I described him as “Macedonia’s Lafayette”—that is to say, the foreigner who had the greatest impact in securing a new country’s independence.) After six months, Frowick went home to what he thought would be a peaceful retirement. A few months later, I offered him the job as Search’s country director in Skopje, and, somewhat to my surprise, he accepted. His goal was “to keep Macedonia from exploding” due to ethnic and religious conflict. Search gave him a platform from which he could strengthen the country’s immune system. He brought his stature as a senior diplomat, and he projected impeccability. In the steamy Macedonian summer, he usually wore white linen suits, which might have been designed by Halston, the famous fashionista who happened to be his brother. As Search’s man in Skopje, he remade the connections he had formed earlier in his days with CSCE, including his close relationship with President Gligorov, who became a strong supporter of Search. In those days, we were still a tiny organization, and having the backing of the president certainly helped us. Search was a critical player in what was a three-legged effort to prevent violence. The components were a small United Nations military peacekeeping force, governmental foreign aid programs, and NGO activities like ours. Our role under Frowick and his successors was to carry out projects to promote tolerance and mutual understanding, and we did this by working closely with the press, by producing extensive TV programming, and by revamping early childhood education. As significant as our work was, ultimately the most important reason the country did not explode probably was that Macedonians were fully aware of the appalling violence in nearby Bosnia, and most people—no matter what their ethnicity—did not want their country to suffer the same fate. Initiative on Iran Search’s role in the decade-long lead-up to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (U.S., U.K., France, Russia, China, and Germany) on the Iranian nuclear program, also points to the value of career diplomats in Track II work. William G. “Bill” Miller, who joined the Foreign Service in 1959 and resigned in 1967 over policy differences, spent five years in Iran as a young FSO. After Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power in 1979, President Jimmy Carter asked Miller to be ambassador to Iran. Before he could be confirmed, militant students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Miller never took up the post, and he was very involved in negotiations to free the hostages. After 444 days, the hostages were finally released, but diplomatic relations never resumed. After the agreement with Iran on its nuclear program, the JCPOA, was signed in 2015, from left: Marvin Miller, nuclear scientist; Olli Heinonen, former deputy director, International Atomic Energy Association; Frank von Hippel, Princeton University physicist; Ali Akhar Salehi, former head of Iranian Atomic Energy Organization; Rush Holt, former U.S. Congressman and a physicist; and Ambassador (ret.) Bill Miller, members of Search’s nuclear group.
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