Word: asia
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Above all, Lederer is fascinated by the means of foreign policy-making. He does not simply disagree with the conduct of U.S. policy in Asia; he prefers to point out where the system has gone wrong -- in its collection of facts. He calls himself "perceptive about systems...
Lederer is caustically critical of 20 years of State Department decision-making on Southeast Asia. He traces mistakes to inadequate information, charging that analysts in State have naively accepted reports from the heads of local governments rather than sending qualified people into the countryside to check for themselves. In countries that are populated predominantly by rural peasants, says Lederer, "our government almost invariably doesn't know enough about what is going...
...reporter in Asia since 1958, Lederer has made it his job to get what he calls "the real facts" about the conditions in Asian countries. A copious note-taker, he follows one uncompromising principle: the truth can only be found by talking to the rank-and-file people of a country...
...fact that Reischauer was an in-and-outer does not necessarily validate Lederer's basic criticism of the State Department -- that it regularly has inadequate information about Southeast Asia. Vietnam, where the U.S. has become intensely involved since 1954, is a better test...
Even if the U.S. is becoming more aware of the rural peoples in Asia -- and that is debatable -- Lederer takes little credit for it. "I want to get the nation murmuring," he says. When pressed, he modestly concedes that some of his books spurred the creation of the Peace Corps and the Army Language School...