A venerated diplomat whose career spanned five decades and twice as many presidencies, John Negroponte cast an unusually long shadow over the Washington foreign policy establishment that he came to embody. The Last American Diplomat by George Liebmann examines the service of Negroponte as a five-time ambassador, Director of National Intelligence, and Deputy Secretary of State that made him a unique figure in American diplomacy at the outset of the 21st Century.
The book begins with Negroponte’s first overseas tours as a Foreign Service Officer in Hong Kong and South Vietnam, where, according to the author, his skills and talents distinguished him early in his career. Richard Holbrooke, who worked and lived with Negroponte in Saigon, later recollected that his one-time roommate “could sing in Vietnamese. He could tell jokes in Vietnamese.” After speaking at a press conference in Hanoi over 30 years later as deputy secretary of state, a local reporter was to comment that Negroponte still spoke with a “Saigon accent.”
Liebmann effectively captures Negroponte’s years in Vietnam as a formative stage in his career where he launched his rapid ascent through the ranks of the Foreign Service while witnessing the ill-fated application of U.S. military power in that country firsthand. “Negroponte recalled leaving a briefing conducted by General William Westmoreland explaining the frontline role assigned to American forces with the feeling that it meant perpetual war,” leading a colleague, Robert Oakley, to conclude that “the front would be manned entirely by American troops...by the time Westmoreland was replaced, there were no effective Vietnamese fighting forces left.”
Vietnam resurfaces later in the book as an influence that was to shape Negroponte’s approach to the War on Terror. While serving as U.S. Ambassador to the UN, in 2002 he reflected that “looking back on my own Vietnam experience and remembering the problems we had, having started our Vietnamization program much too late, I would advocate trying to do as much as we can to improve the security capabilities of the Afghans themselves and minimize the role of international security forces.” After becoming U.S. Ambassador to Iraq in 2005, he reiterated similar concerns that “we may have made the same mistake (in Iraq) that we did in Vietnam, where we didn’t start Vietnamization until it was too late.”
A summary on the inside of the book’s cover claims that Negroponte “swam against the tide” of the Bush administration on Iraq and that he warned of the war as a possible “new Vietnam.” Liebmann offers scant evidence, however, to instantiate such unequivocally stated and politically loaded assertions. The only firm example he cites is a response given by Negroponte to a journalist in January 2003, as a heated debate over the impending war with Iraq was under way, in which he described his approach as “one of caution.” Whether he truly did view the administration’s plans to invade Iraq as a potentially grave mistake, as it would eventually come to be widely regarded, or if he was more forthright in pressing such views behind closed doors within the Bush White House, remains unverified by Liebmann.
Liebmann’s emphasis on what he portrays as Negroponte’s precise and prescient counsel in the 2000s contrasts with the pointed criticism leveled at him by others over allegations of his support for government-sanctioned human rights abuses while serving as U.S. Ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s. He does give attention to this controversial period in Negroponte’s professional life, but also balances it by highlighting less tainted achievements that readers are unlikely to know about, such as his role in the negotiation of NAFTA. Originally appointed Ambassador to Mexico by President George H.W. Bush, Negroponte continued to serve after Bush was replaced by Bill Clinton, providing energy and ensuring continuity that helped to ensure that the landmark free trade agreement was successfully enacted. In the process, he demonstrated his ability to advance high-level U.S. policy under both Republican and Democratic administrations, leading Mexican President Carlos Salinas to reportedly take the unusual step of personally asking President Clinton to re-appoint him.
Liebmann also covers less sanguine moments in Negroponte’s career, such as in 1973 when he was relegated to the diplomatic backwater of Ecuador after a falling out with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. Few of his shortcomings or weaknesses are ever mentioned or elaborated on in the book, however, and then only in passing. One such brief example involves relatively minor details of an incident involving theft of embassy property during Negroponte’s time in Mexico that suggest a lack of awareness of staff behavior and detachment from the embassy’s internal affairs as ambassador.The book’s final chapters are devoted to Negroponte’s time in the cabinet and sub-cabinet of George W. Bush. Having spent 37 years in the Foreign Service, Negroponte brought more cumulative government experience to the newly-created position of Director of National Intelligence than any other Bush cabinet member, but Liebmann sheds little light on how this background guided his approach to leading the intelligence community during a time of institutional reformation.
Instead, Negroponte’s time as DNI comes across as a temporary hiatus away from Foggy Bottom, where he would later return upon being appointed Deputy Secretary of State. Near the end of the chapter devoted to this final assignment in his government career, Liebmann belatedly highlights the fact that this achievement made Negroponte only the third sitting or former Foreign Service officer in the history of the State Department to ever hold that position.
While the book glosses over some areas, it confuses some of the details of others. Both Paul Wolfowitz and George Ball are separately listed incorrectly as having held the title of Deputy Secretary of State (Wolfowitz never held the number two job at State, while Ball’s official title was Under Secretary of State, six years before the position name was changed to Deputy Secretary during the Nixon administration). Clinton White House press secretary George Stephanopoulos is mistakenly referred to as a “senior political advisor” in 2005, almost a decade after he left government to become a TV journalist of considerable fame. Bush White House press secretary Scott McClellan is referred to as Steve McClellan.
Liebmann also misses certain pieces of background information surrounding other well-established people and events. For example, he cites Negroponte’s opinion of Coalition Provisional Authority head L. Paul Bremer as having been colored by a “lack of experience in the developing world,” without making mention of the fact that Bremer, a much-maligned figure over his role in Iraq, started his career in the Foreign Service serving in Afghanistan and Malawi. The shooting down of Iran Air flight 655 in 1988 is listed as having inflicted “over a hundred casualties,” when the precise number of lives lost was actually 290.
In the end, the book is weakened by its lack of objective analysis and editorial rigor. Still, while these flaws diminish its quality, they do not obfuscate its central premise, captured succinctly by Bob Woodward in his description of John Negroponte in the years leading up to his retirement as “from the old school of the Foreign Service” and his observation that “there was almost no-one like him anymore.”
Negroponte was not the last American diplomat, despite what the book’s title suggests, but its pages reveal he was indeed the last of his kind. Chronicling the life and career of one of the most enduring figures of the last half-century of U.S. foreign policy, The Last American Diplomat underscores the end of an era and leaves its readers to consider the implications for the future of American diplomacy.
Rennie A. Silva is a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of State. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of State or the U.S. government.
This article was originally published in the Diplomatic Courier's November/December 2012 print edition.
Photo: D Services (cc).
a global affairs media network
The Last American Diplomat: John D. Negroponte and the Changing Face of U.S. Diplomacy
November 16, 2012
A venerated diplomat whose career spanned five decades and twice as many presidencies, John Negroponte cast an unusually long shadow over the Washington foreign policy establishment that he came to embody. The Last American Diplomat by George Liebmann examines the service of Negroponte as a five-time ambassador, Director of National Intelligence, and Deputy Secretary of State that made him a unique figure in American diplomacy at the outset of the 21st Century.
The book begins with Negroponte’s first overseas tours as a Foreign Service Officer in Hong Kong and South Vietnam, where, according to the author, his skills and talents distinguished him early in his career. Richard Holbrooke, who worked and lived with Negroponte in Saigon, later recollected that his one-time roommate “could sing in Vietnamese. He could tell jokes in Vietnamese.” After speaking at a press conference in Hanoi over 30 years later as deputy secretary of state, a local reporter was to comment that Negroponte still spoke with a “Saigon accent.”
Liebmann effectively captures Negroponte’s years in Vietnam as a formative stage in his career where he launched his rapid ascent through the ranks of the Foreign Service while witnessing the ill-fated application of U.S. military power in that country firsthand. “Negroponte recalled leaving a briefing conducted by General William Westmoreland explaining the frontline role assigned to American forces with the feeling that it meant perpetual war,” leading a colleague, Robert Oakley, to conclude that “the front would be manned entirely by American troops...by the time Westmoreland was replaced, there were no effective Vietnamese fighting forces left.”
Vietnam resurfaces later in the book as an influence that was to shape Negroponte’s approach to the War on Terror. While serving as U.S. Ambassador to the UN, in 2002 he reflected that “looking back on my own Vietnam experience and remembering the problems we had, having started our Vietnamization program much too late, I would advocate trying to do as much as we can to improve the security capabilities of the Afghans themselves and minimize the role of international security forces.” After becoming U.S. Ambassador to Iraq in 2005, he reiterated similar concerns that “we may have made the same mistake (in Iraq) that we did in Vietnam, where we didn’t start Vietnamization until it was too late.”
A summary on the inside of the book’s cover claims that Negroponte “swam against the tide” of the Bush administration on Iraq and that he warned of the war as a possible “new Vietnam.” Liebmann offers scant evidence, however, to instantiate such unequivocally stated and politically loaded assertions. The only firm example he cites is a response given by Negroponte to a journalist in January 2003, as a heated debate over the impending war with Iraq was under way, in which he described his approach as “one of caution.” Whether he truly did view the administration’s plans to invade Iraq as a potentially grave mistake, as it would eventually come to be widely regarded, or if he was more forthright in pressing such views behind closed doors within the Bush White House, remains unverified by Liebmann.
Liebmann’s emphasis on what he portrays as Negroponte’s precise and prescient counsel in the 2000s contrasts with the pointed criticism leveled at him by others over allegations of his support for government-sanctioned human rights abuses while serving as U.S. Ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s. He does give attention to this controversial period in Negroponte’s professional life, but also balances it by highlighting less tainted achievements that readers are unlikely to know about, such as his role in the negotiation of NAFTA. Originally appointed Ambassador to Mexico by President George H.W. Bush, Negroponte continued to serve after Bush was replaced by Bill Clinton, providing energy and ensuring continuity that helped to ensure that the landmark free trade agreement was successfully enacted. In the process, he demonstrated his ability to advance high-level U.S. policy under both Republican and Democratic administrations, leading Mexican President Carlos Salinas to reportedly take the unusual step of personally asking President Clinton to re-appoint him.
Liebmann also covers less sanguine moments in Negroponte’s career, such as in 1973 when he was relegated to the diplomatic backwater of Ecuador after a falling out with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. Few of his shortcomings or weaknesses are ever mentioned or elaborated on in the book, however, and then only in passing. One such brief example involves relatively minor details of an incident involving theft of embassy property during Negroponte’s time in Mexico that suggest a lack of awareness of staff behavior and detachment from the embassy’s internal affairs as ambassador.The book’s final chapters are devoted to Negroponte’s time in the cabinet and sub-cabinet of George W. Bush. Having spent 37 years in the Foreign Service, Negroponte brought more cumulative government experience to the newly-created position of Director of National Intelligence than any other Bush cabinet member, but Liebmann sheds little light on how this background guided his approach to leading the intelligence community during a time of institutional reformation.
Instead, Negroponte’s time as DNI comes across as a temporary hiatus away from Foggy Bottom, where he would later return upon being appointed Deputy Secretary of State. Near the end of the chapter devoted to this final assignment in his government career, Liebmann belatedly highlights the fact that this achievement made Negroponte only the third sitting or former Foreign Service officer in the history of the State Department to ever hold that position.
While the book glosses over some areas, it confuses some of the details of others. Both Paul Wolfowitz and George Ball are separately listed incorrectly as having held the title of Deputy Secretary of State (Wolfowitz never held the number two job at State, while Ball’s official title was Under Secretary of State, six years before the position name was changed to Deputy Secretary during the Nixon administration). Clinton White House press secretary George Stephanopoulos is mistakenly referred to as a “senior political advisor” in 2005, almost a decade after he left government to become a TV journalist of considerable fame. Bush White House press secretary Scott McClellan is referred to as Steve McClellan.
Liebmann also misses certain pieces of background information surrounding other well-established people and events. For example, he cites Negroponte’s opinion of Coalition Provisional Authority head L. Paul Bremer as having been colored by a “lack of experience in the developing world,” without making mention of the fact that Bremer, a much-maligned figure over his role in Iraq, started his career in the Foreign Service serving in Afghanistan and Malawi. The shooting down of Iran Air flight 655 in 1988 is listed as having inflicted “over a hundred casualties,” when the precise number of lives lost was actually 290.
In the end, the book is weakened by its lack of objective analysis and editorial rigor. Still, while these flaws diminish its quality, they do not obfuscate its central premise, captured succinctly by Bob Woodward in his description of John Negroponte in the years leading up to his retirement as “from the old school of the Foreign Service” and his observation that “there was almost no-one like him anymore.”
Negroponte was not the last American diplomat, despite what the book’s title suggests, but its pages reveal he was indeed the last of his kind. Chronicling the life and career of one of the most enduring figures of the last half-century of U.S. foreign policy, The Last American Diplomat underscores the end of an era and leaves its readers to consider the implications for the future of American diplomacy.
Rennie A. Silva is a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of State. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of State or the U.S. government.
This article was originally published in the Diplomatic Courier's November/December 2012 print edition.
Photo: D Services (cc).
