Word: ambassadored
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Lewis Bollard’s piece on “America’s Shaky Ambassadors” (op-ed, Apr. 26) rightly identifies the problem of underqualified U.S. representatives. But Robert Tuttle—America’s ambassador to the United Kingdom—is wrongly included among them...
Finally, a high-profile political appointee can send a strong signal to a nervous ally (or potential ally). A good example is Boris Yeltsin, who was delighted when Bill Clinton told him in 1993 that former Vice President Walter Mondale would come as the new ambassador. When Mondale changed his mind, Clinton sent Thomas Pickering, then the country’s most senior career minister, in his place. Yeltsin was furious, feeling he had been saddled with an apparatchik. He reportedly never trusted Clinton again...
America’s predilection for lousy ambassadors also has serious practical consequences. The Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, like any other ambassador, is charged with managing America’s trade relationships, maintaining strong ties with the government, and coordinating responses to terrorist threats. And contrary to popular myth, these are not duties that can, or should, be undertaken by lower level, if more experienced, bureaucrats in the embassy. When prime ministers, journalists and police chiefs communicate with an American embassy they want to speak to the person in charge because they know that only one person is directly accountable...
John F. Kennedy ’40, in the fourth 1960 Presidential debate, pledged to “throughout the world appoint the best people we can get, ambassadors who can speak the language, not merely people who made a political contribution.” Today, in an age of globalization and terrorism, the need is greater than ever. That means having an ambassador to Saudi Arabia who can speak Arabic and explain America’s actions in a hostile region. It means having an ambassador to the United Kingdom who will engage a cynical British public in open...
...ambassador to Japan emphasized yesterday the strong role that America will play in Asia in the coming century. Relations between the two nations “have never been stronger,” U.S. Ambassador to Japan J. Thomas Schieffer said yesterday. In his first university visit since his appointment, Schieffer addressed a full audience in the Tsai Auditorium in CGIS South. Schieffer discussed the major political, economic, and diplomatic changes taking place in Japan and the role America has played in them. “We are a Pacific nation,” he said, citing the enduring interest...