Quotations on Diplomacy and the Foreign Service - from J. Robert Moskin, American Statecraft

From: J. Robert Moskin, American Statecraft: The Story of the U.S. Foreign Service (2013)

p. 3: "The American system of separation of powers was not designed for the the conduct of foreign affairs. It was designed for the conduct of non-foreign affairs, really." -- Ambassador Charles E. Bohlen

p. 19: "a sort of militia" -- Words referring to the early diplomatic envoys of the embryonic United States, used first probably by Founding Father John Adams

p. 21: "From our very beginnings, we have known a meaner side of a countryman's trip abroad -- an arrest, a death, destitution or illness. We are ready to be at an American's side for all those things and others not foreseen. It almost seems, sometimes, like a marriage!" -- Maury Harty, a twenty-first-century assistant secretary of state for Consular Affairs.

p. 49: "He cannot dance, drink, game, flatter, promise, dress, swear with gentlemen, and small talk and flirt with ladies, in short, he has none of the essential arts or ornaments which make a courtier, there are thousands who with a tenth part of his understanding, and without a spark of his honesty, would distance him infinitely in any court in Europe." -- Jonathan Sewall, a longtime loyalist friend of John Adams in London, noting that Adams lacked the talents for diplomacy

p. 55: "Secretary of State Jefferson ... who [according to legend] said that he had not heard from a certain envoy for a couple of years, and if he did not hear from him for another year, he would write to him."

p. 73: "It accords with our principles to acknowledge any government to be rightful which is formed by the will of the nation substantially declared." -- Thomas Jefferson, stating a rule that became a guide to American diplomatic practice

p. 99: "the workshop in which all the wars of Europe are manufactured" -- diplomacy, according to Jefferson

p. 121: "If the mission is useful, it ought to be supported at the public, not at private expense." -- Secretary of State Edward Livingston (during the Andrew Jackson administration), asserting that no minister the United States had sent abroad was able to live on his salary; Congress ignored him

pp. 122-123: "For a man, with a natural tendency to middle in other people's business, there could not possibly be a more congenial sphere than the Liverpool Consulate." -- American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, running the busiest U.S. consulate in Europe from 1853 to l857; Hawthorne enjoyed telling how he was visited at the consulate by an American clergyman who said he had spent an entire week in an English brothel and was broke

p. 154: "I am thankful we shall have no more American funerals." -- Queen Victoria, reacting to the fact that Charles Francis Adams, the American minister to London at the time of the U.S. Civil War, unlike his predecessors did not appear in court in plain black suits, but carefully dressed in silk stockings and gold lace.

p. 160: "If most of them talk abroad as they do at home, the fewer languages at their command the better." -- Nineteenth-century Consul General John Bigelow, regarding the diplomatic and consular corps

p. 163: "the character of the United States Foreign Service has been declining ever since the days of John Quincy Adams." -- George Perkins Marsh, the U.S. minister to Italy [1860s?]

p. 175: U.S. consuls in in Germany recommended [late 19th century?] that U.S. businessmen market mouse and rat traps.

p. 175: "a minister of the United States of America [was] found drunk in the streets of Berlin by the police and ... a chargé d'affaires ... in an outbreak at Constantinople, hoisted the flag over a brothel he frequented. Our representation abroad was a disgrace to America." -- William J. Stillman, who served as consul in Rome and Crete [late 19th century?]

p. 180: "The United States, knowing no distinction of her citizens on account of religion or nativity, naturally believes in a civilization the world over which will secure the same universal laws." -- President Ulysses S. Grant

p. 182: "Almost every consulate had some defect in its history, owing to the incompetency, low habits or vulgarity of some of its officers, during the endless round of evils incident to official rotation." -- De Benneville Randolph Keim, assigned by the Treasury Department to examine the accounts of the entire consular service (1870)

p. 184: "a tribute to the dominion of style" -- Novelist Henry James, praising the James Russell Lowell, who served as minster of London in the 1880s

p. 184: "Go and enjoy yourself, my dear boy." -- What President Chester A. Arthur supposedly said to William Waldorf Astor, whom he appointed minister to Italy

p. 184: "America is not a fit place for a gentleman to live." -- Attributed to William Waldorf Astor 

p. 187: "On the whole, I am satisfied that America has no future in the Pacific." -- Secretary of State Walter Q. Gresham, writing to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge

pp. 188-187: "I am no more responsible for the number of Chinese going to the United states than you are for the number of San Francisco whores continually going to Hong Kong." -- John S. Mosby, appointed consul at Hong Kong in 1876, writing to the U.S. collector of customs in San Francisco

p. 191: "As civilization advances, nations seek higher methods of adjusting their differences than those usually adopted by ants and beetles. Friendly arbitration takes the place of war, and the services of the professional soldier are discounted by those of the trained and skillful diplomat.... When (a consul) is is thus equipped for his work, and proves himself honest and faithful, it is extremely detrimental to the service, and to our interests abroad, to dismiss him for some half-educated vulgar politician who claims the office as a reward for work at the primaries." -- William L. Scruggs, former minister to Colombia and Venezuela

p. 197: "If there is any service that is of questionable value to our country it is our diplomatic service." -- Ten-term congressman from Macon, Georgia, who chaired the House Foreign Relations Committee, informing the Congress in 1878

p. 204: "As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Musselman; and as the said States have never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries." -- Section of the treaty between the United States and Tripoli negotiated by Joel Barlow in 1796

p. 207: "Going into diplomacy is like experiencing a shipwreck or going into battle, a very good thing when it is safely over." --  John Bigelow

p. 215: "There is a moral law which prevents the Government doing certain things to any man whatever. We haven't always stuck to it." -- Secretary of State Elihu Root

p. 222: "We have killed ten for one at least; we have looted and destroyed many millions of property. The story is enough to sicken a Zulu." -- Secretary of State John Hay, regarding the Boxers (Boxer rebellion in China)

p. 228: "twisting the rope of sand which is American diplomacy" -- Hay (1905), no longer having the stamina to continue as secretary of state

p. 233: "In view of the character of the examination, a rejection would practically be an imputation of idiocy." -- Elihu Root, regarding the consular examination system

p. 265: "There is only one way to reform the State Department. That is to raze the whole building, with its archives and papers, to the ground, and begin all over again." -- Ambassador Walter Hines Page, active during the Woodrow Wilson administration

p. 279: "One can attribute this choice only to that unfamiliarity with the requirements and possibilities of diplomatic representation which has so often characterized even the best of American statesmanship." -- Ambassador George Kennan about U.S. Ambassador to Russia David R. Francis, who arrived there in 1916.

p. 296: "Diplomats were invented simply to waste time." -- Lloyd George, British PM

pp. 306-307: "The annals of American diplomacy are studded with mistakes and lost opportunities, some major, some minor, over the memory of which might well be placed the epitaph: 'The Ambassador doesn't need to know.'" -- George Kennan

p. 326: "Our ambassadors and ministers and consuls have aided to push our way into new markets in the utmost corners of the world." -- John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil

p. 342: "Don't send in too much stuff." -- The "only constructive criticism," Ambassador Joseph C. Grew wrote, that he received from the State Department on a trip home

p. 347: "I have seen some of these young secretaries, who have had exceptional social opportunities and advantages in the capitals abroad, become the most abject followers of the social regime in the foreign capital. One of the things I hope is going to follow from this bill is to send some of these de-Americanized secretaries to Singapore as vice consul, or to force them out of the service." -- Congressman John Jacob Rogers, a young Republican from Massachusetts, after whom a 1922 Act reforming the Foreign Service was named

p. 365: "congeniality" -- What Foreign Service examiners after the passage the Rogers Act during the interwar years were looking for in a candidate during a half-hour oral examination designed to bring out the candidate's personal qualities

p. 394: "Diplomatic agents nowadays rarely endeavor to negotiate secret agreements....Today the world has become so small, with the development of communications, and there is such a constant interchange of peoples, and such close commercial and financial relations between states, that the relations of any one nation with with another is of deep concern to all nations." -- Ambassador to Japan Joseph C. Grew, writing in The Japan Times in the 1930s

p. 410: "We in the Embassy were curiously out of touch with the course of events in the north. The department was not keeping me sufficiently informed of day-to-day operations. Although this was rather typical of its then prevailing attitude toward the Foreign Service, failure to keep the Embassy in Rome in those critical days was inexcusable, particularly as we had few reliable outside sources of information -- Ambassador William Phillips, recalling the outset of WWII, when he was posted in Rome

p. 416: "It seems to me that the business of the American Foreign Service is to make a great contribution to the eventual democratization of all diplomacy. Our mission everywhere is to convince people of the benefits of our own democracy, to make our connections when we go abroad, not merely with the sovereign, the Government and the privileged society, but with the democratic elements wherever we may find them." -- Ambassador Averell Harriman

p. 457: "Down in the government are a bunch of sons of bitches.... We've checked and found that 96 percent of the bureaucracy are against us; they're bastards who are here to screw us." -- Richard Nixon

p. 458: "[N]ine-tenths of the people who are in the Home Service don't want to go abroad. They are people who live in Washington and have gotten acquainted with the jungle of this town and know their way around." -- Charles E. Bohlen

p. 459. "I learned to say 'Amazing!' rather than 'Holy shit.'" -- Ambassador Tom Korologos, regarding the chief of mission course at the State Department

p. 472: "The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor am I." -- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter (January 13, 1807) replying to the suggestion of Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin that he consider women for public service

p. 475: "Who is Willis?" -- The reaction of Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson to a cable, sent in 1933 from Stockholm ("The minister left last night. I have assumed charge. Willis.") by Frances Elizabeth Willis, the third woman to join the Foreign Service (in 1927)

p. 481: "The class action suit has been very damaging for women in the Foreign Service. The court-ordered corrective action has, in effect, allowed every woman who was part of the class action suit to virtually name her job." -- Avis T. Bohlen, daughter of Ambassador Charles Bohlen, regarding the action that led the United State District Court for the District of Columbia to find, in 1983, that the State Department had been engaged in sex discrimination

p. 483: "The white male Foreign Service was already on its way out, and I intended to hasten the transformation." -- Cyrus Vance, on becoming Secretary of State in 1977

p. 489: "a virtual plantation" -- Carl Rowan, African American ambassador to Finland in the 1960s, regarding the State Department

p. 541: "For us there are two sorts of people in the world. There are those who are Christians and support free enterprise, and there are the others." -- Secretary of State during the Eisenhower administration John Foster Dulles

p. 548: At a remote air base near Newbury, England, Ambassador David K. E. Bruce met Secretary of State Dean Acheson with a bottle of scotch in one raincoat pocket and a revolver in the other. Acheson asked why he brought the revolver. Bruce said: "I don't know. I was told by the Department to carry this when I met you." Acheson asked, "There was nothing said about shooting me, was there?" Bruce replied, "No. Would you think it's a good idea?"

p. 549: "We're eyeball-to-eyeball, and I think the other fellow blinked." -- Secretary of State Dean Rusk, regarding negotiating with the Soviets during the Cuban missile crisis.

p. 577: "Statesmanship is in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem." -- Harlan Cleveland, U.S. assistant secretary for international organizations affairs.

p. 588: "Terrorism is theater." -- Antiterrorist specialist Brian Jenkins of the Rand Corporation

p. 592: "berms, bollards, and barricades" -- What rose at three hundred embassy locations during a major State Department effort to improve embassy security

p. 616: "Time is the crucial element at this stage of our involvement in Vietnam. Can the tortoise of progress in Vietnam stay ahead of the rabbit of dissent at home?" -- A review sent to President Johnson drafted by Richard Holbrooke

p. 618: Brezhnev reportedly joked to to Kissinger, "If you get rid of the State Department we will get rid of the Foreign Office." And Kissinger replied with unintended candor, "With all respect, Mr. General-Secretary, we have made more progress in abolishing the State Department than you have in abolishing the Foreign Office."

p. 621: "You have a nation here [South Vietnam] that we encouraged to resist, gave assurances to, not in treaty form, but quite precisely.... For all sorts of specious reasons we have reneged on every one of these agreements. My only regret is that I did not speak out more openly, to the distaste of the State Department." -- U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam A. Graham Martin, speaking to Time correspondents

p. 644: "However secure your embassies and homes may be against terrorist attack, against any type of security intrusion, if you don't have assurance from the government to which you are accredited that they will come to your protection with force when the crunch comes, then all that security is useless." -- Ambassador to Iran L. Bruce Laingen during the hostage crisis

p. 649: "My cook says a war is on. What does the embassy say? ... My cook says that the Israeli Air Force has destroyed the Egyptian Air Force on the ground." -- Ambassador to Tel Aviv Walworth Barbour (June 5, 1967)

p. 651: "Don't ever tell me that I must do do something because the White House says so. If the President says so, that's a different thing. When the White House says something, we won't pay any attention to that." -- Secretary of State Dean Acheson

p. 653: "In my view, the Secretary of State, should not, as a general rule, go abroad on a serious negotiation unless the odds are heavily in his favor....A Secretary of State who undertakes too many journeys that lead nowhere depreciates his coin." -- Secretary of State Henry Kissinger

p. 655: "Evidently the Deity would not tolerate the presumption that all can be manipulated." -- Henry Kissinger, thinking to himself after President Nixon, during the Watergate scandal, asked him to kneel and pray with him

p. 664: "a peace process of the imagination" -- What one historian called the U.S. policy of a two-state solution to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem

p. 666: "The object of United States foreign policy is the big issue we face.... We have no clear-cut ideological enemy ... we are now part of the system." -- Henry Kissinger, pointing to today's fundamental concern

p. 668: "White men who didn't make it blame women and minorities." -- Ambassador D. Kathleen Stephens

p. 675: "You can do a lot of terrible things ... but you can't dissent." -- Ambassador Robert E. White, who fought for human rights in El Salvador during Carter's presidency

p. 686: "In the hands of a determined Secretary, the Foreign Service can be a splendid instrument, staffed by knowledgeable, discreet, and energetic individuals. They do require constant vigilance lest the convictions that led them into a penurious career tempt them to preempt decision-making." -- Henry Kissinger

p. 686: "You see, the Foreign Service of the United States has grown so unbelievably in the last twenty years, and the requirements for admission are so high, and yet an awful lot of the work, I'd say fully 50-percent of the work in the Foreign Service abroad, is really routine work. All this is something that no one has licked.... You get a certain amount of discontent. It's bad for morale." -- Charles E. Bohlen

p. 687: "For the private sector, the status quo is the enemy. For government, status quo is better." -- Investment banker Felix Rohatyn, after he left the ambassadorship to France

p. 688: "Diplomacy by fax simply doesn't work." -- Richard N. Gardner, ambassador to Rome and Madrid

p. 705: "We send a lot of time negotiating with ourselves." -- A Rome embassy diplomat

p. 707: "I think every day how I would kill Americans." -- Rome Deputy Chief of Mission Emil M. Skodon, concerned about security

p. 716: "You have to move people around or they forget who they are working for." -- Rome embassy's management counselor, William J. Haugh

p. 718: "It's not your job to agree with policy. It's your job to represent it. It's like being a lawyer." -- Rome Embassy FSO Kelly Degnan

p. 724: "[T]he crisis in the Foreign Service does not arise mainly from such administrative issues such as the number of classes of Foreign Service officers, the categories of its personnel, or even the promotion and selection out procedures it employs. It arises instead from confusions as to the proper role of the traditional Foreign Service in foreign policy." -- Senator Jesse Helms, commenting on a 1980 bill to reform the Foreign Service (Public Law 96-465)

p. 726: "When I came in there there were many alcoholic middle-aged white guys in the Foreign Service. Now it is more of a meritocracy." -- Eric S. Rubin, former executive assistant to the under secretary for political affairs

p. 738: "We should be prepared to talk to the devil himself, if he controls enough of the world to make worth our while." - George Kennan

p. 742: "We have no constituency really. Americans think diplomats are either sinister or baboons." -- Glyn T. Davies, a second-generation ambassador

p. 759: "The United States is now, to my knowledge, the only significant country, and it may well be on the way to being the only country, that continues to value amateurism over professionalism in diplomacy.... I consider it absolutely shocking that.... the United States still follows a 19th century practice with regard to appointments to the most senior diplomatic positions." -- Charles W. Freeman, Jr., former ambassador to Saudi Arabia

p. 760: "Anybody who wants to be an ambassador, wants to pay at least $250,000." -- Richard Nixon

p. 760: "war in lace" -- How a British diplomat who began his career a century ago characterized diplomacy

p. 761: "I think it's almost insulting to a man that you select as the President's personal representative to a country, who steeped in that country, lives it day by day, and then at the slightest crisis nobody pays any attention to him; they send either the Secretary, or the Under Secretary, or Deputy Secretary over there to take care of it. This has been growing more and more in recent years, in the jet age." -- Ambassador William Attwood

p. 762: "One of the basic points about policy and the execution of policy in what you call the trenches that impressed me enormously when I became chargé and chief of mission was the power of the ambassador in the field. It's really enormous....I think any ambassador worth his salt has no excuse for not being able to run a cohesive, tight operation." -- John Hugh Crimmins, who was ambassador to the Dominican Republic and Brazil

p. 765: "You tell the minister that if he doesn't stop telling lies about me, I'm going to start telling the truth about him." -- Smith Hempstone, appointed in 1989 ambassador to Kenya, where he developed good relations to the press, reacting to the accusation by a Kenyan minister that he was interfering in that country's affairs.

p. 767: When Ambassador Melvin F. Sembler, a political appointee, first arrived in Rome, a reporter asked him whether he spoke Italian. "No!" Sembler countered baldly. "I don't speak Italian. I speak Bush."

p. 768: "If a group of businesspeople visit the mission, does the taxpayer pay for the luncheon the ambassador gives for them? What is the ambassador's responsibility for the health care of located hired embassy employees? Can an ambassador brief American correspondents and omit the local press? Can a spouse use an official car to do shopping? During a crisis, when do you evacuate Americans from the mission? What are your responsibilities to the American community living in country? When does an ambassador ask guidance from Washington? Are there times when an ambassador should not carry out instructions from Washington?" -- Questions dealt with at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute at an ambassadorial seminar (lightly called "charm school") to prepare appointees, both career and noncareer

p. 772: "Few were permitted to think large thoughts. It took a certain amount of arrogance on my part." -- George Kennan

p. 775: "a politician and not fully American." -- George Kennan on Henry Kissinger

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