U.S. Diplomatic Lore
MARSHALL, CHARLES BURTON
U.S. Diplomatic Lore Diplomat. By Charles W. Thayer. Harper. 299 pp. $4.50. Reviewed by Charles Burton Marshall Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research CHARLES THAYER'S book begins with...
...The reader is left to puzzle how the author came by such intimate history...
...Only recently I heard a former Secretary of State pondering the difficulties of finding sufficient senior Foreign Service officers substantially qualified to be chiefs of mission...
...Without identifying him by name, the account presents the American Ambassador to Lebanon as the hero of the affair, the one whose perspicacity and initiative avoided the worst consequences and retrieved something from the mess...
...Unfortunately, no sources are given...
...It involves also smartening up the practices within the Foreign Service for selecting and developing its people...
...This, however, should not detract from a conclusion that Thayer's book is urbane, witty and loaded with fresh information and interesting ideas about an old subject...
...The important aim of developing better representation abroad certainly involves avoiding outrageous political appointments...
...On this last requirement Thayer gives little light other than inveighing against the methods in vogue during recent years...
...Thayer thinks well and writes most engagingly, and it is surely a pleasure to read the work of a man at once erudite, experienced, and witty...
...Sir Harold Nicolson helps the book with a wise foreword, warning against confusion among the meanings of diplomacy, foreign policy and negotiation, reasserting the value of probity in international dealings, and criticizing the current flair for conference diplomacy—all good thoughts typical of Nicolson, an established exponent of the value of the tried-and-true ways of diplomacy as a way out of the world's muddle...
...It may indeed call for especially critical scrutiny of the selection of military figures for diplomatic posts—a special target of Thayer's disapproval...
...Its trouble is that it begs a question...
...With a noticeable shift in narrative style, Diplomat proceeds in 20 more chapters to unfold the lore of the diplomatic profession—much about communication codes, protocol, what consuls do, why chancery receptionists tend to be so snooty, and so on...
...Recently also I asked a wise retired diplomat who he thought was the ablest chief of mission under whom he had served...
...This exceptionalness has a bearing in the evaluation of one of his ideas, the desirability of vesting the Foreign Service with the acknowledged importance its members covet...
...He writes wisely on such matters as the folly of regarding propaganda as an independent force rather than an instrument of policy, the difficulty of relations with opposition forces and other outsiders in countries having unaccountable regimes, what he calls "the virus of decision by committees" as it affects Washington and our missions abroad, and a number of other encumbrances to sound policy...
...He is a considerable cut above the usual...
...Like many of his former calling, Thayer is preoccupied with its traditions and makes of them something more recondite and precious than they probably deserve to be...
...Thereupon the man replied, "Judge, if we could do that last, then we could do the other things you mentioned...
...It is not mere chitchat...
...for as an old-timer he is merely content to reaffirm the elitist attitude so characteristic of the Foreign Service, without questioning whether it was ever really good enough to justify that measure of itself, Foreign Service officers tend to argue their case as if their corps were replete with the equivalents of, say, Charles Bohlen, Loy Henderson and Livingston Merchant—which would be very fine if it were only so...
...My intention here is not to dispute Thayer head-on, but to say that the case against military men as diplomats is not as simple as he makes it...
...Such is not the case...
...Reviewed by Charles Burton Marshall Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research CHARLES THAYER'S book begins with three chapters on the American intervention in Lebanon in 1958...
...The line of argument points to the desirability of giving the professionals a monopoly on appointments as chiefs of mission...
...Thayer brings much light to many important, but generally obscure, facets of international affairs...
...The narrative is replete with inside details...
...Thayer reflects the same view—at once correct and not convincing...
...If you two would cut the quarreling and treat each other decently," the judge said, "you could settle down to a happy marriage...
...He is not...
...I recall years ago hearing a police court judge reprove a couple for a particularly outrageous and violent exercise in domestic infelicity...
...By implication all professionals achieving that level are top-rate, whereas all or nearly all non-professionals are something significantly less...
...A reader, taking note of those qualities and of Thayer's former career as a diplomat, may be misled into taking him as typical of diplomats in acumen and style...
...Members of all professions incline to that sort of thing...
...I fear that bears some analogy to the prescription of traditional diplomacy as an answer to the woes of contemporary international conduct...
...Our ambassadors—both kinds—are a mixed lot, as anyone with inside familiarity with their work must surely recognize...
...He named Admiral Raymond Spruance, our Ambassador to the Philippines in 1952–55, and supported the choice persuasively...
Vol. 42 • December 1959 • No. 46
