Word: diplomat
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When Mao Zedong's Communist revolution completed its sweep of the mainland in 1949, the oft-asked question in Washington was who had "lost" China. Former American spy, diplomat and straight shooter James Lilley argues in his sweeping memoir China Hands that this historical puzzler is a red herring: America never had China, and the very idea is counterproductive. To influence China, America first has to respect that the vast land has its own interests and ways. Lilley knows. He was born in Qingdao, the son of an American oil executive, and China has been the center of his life...
...Lilley is a self-described pragmatist?no surprise coming from someone who was Washington's top diplomat in both Beijing and Taipei?and he says the U.S. influences China best not through military might but through a combination of economic muscle and human interaction. "Our effort should be to bend China, not break it or change it fundamentally," Lilley says, quoting the report he filed at the end of an explosive two-year ambassadorial term in Beijing that began with the Tiananmen massacre. "Deng Xiaoping's new China was tainted because the blood of Chinese workers and students had been...
Kerry's trouble is that he is so determined to become President that he will say anything, which leaves him unable to defend his multiple positions. But people who have a core set of values have no difficulty communicating them. That Kerry is the son of a diplomat and was partly educated in European schools does not prove he overintellectualizes. It suggests that he believes he is entitled to govern the country, never mind that he has neither the skills nor the values needed for that task. DUANE E. LAMERS Troy, Mich...
...Iraq's history. Had they done their homework on the country, they might have understood why they have come to be so resented there. Any occupation is traumatic. Perhaps the most poignant observation on Iraq in the past year was made by another U.N. representative in Baghdad, the Brazilian diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello, shortly before he was killed in a bombing last August. "Who would like to see their country occupied?" Vieira de Mello said to an interviewer. "I would not like to see foreign tanks in Copacabana." Time after time, the humiliation of occupation outweighs any good intentions...
Medals are so last month. Secretary of State COLIN POWELL just got a new badge of honor. Scottish heraldic authorities have granted Powell, whose mother had Scottish ancestors, his very own coat of arms. On his crest, our top diplomat will have an eagle to denote the U.S., a lion because he's a military man and four stars for the rank he attained as general. Maybe now he can broker truces between raging British soccer fans...