Word: diplomatized
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...traditional standards of diplomacy, the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran represented a particularly abhorrent violation of these two moorings of diplomatic practice. But it was not unique. When mobs sacked the U.S. embassy in Tripoli last year, Washington strongly accused Libyan authorities of allowing it. "Civilized countries have no possibility of retaliation, because to arrest the envoy of an offending power in return is alien to our concepts," Italian Diplomat Ducci complains. "Why do we then continue to offer hostages to imams and to fortune?" Enrico Jacchia, a noted Italian political scientist, is somewhat more philosophical: "We assumed...
...deny that summitry and shuttle diplomacy have pretty much ended the traditional role of the ambassador as a decision maker and formulator of policy. "Not such a long time ago, instructions came by couriers on horseback or by ship," says a West German diplomat. "Now," says a Bonn Chancellery colleague, "if Schmidt wants to talk to Giscard, he picks up the phone...
...Many diplomats complain of lost "elbow room" and of having been transformed into an "executive manager" at best, and, to quote one former French ambassador, a combination "messenger boy, travel agent and innkeeper." Reduced responsibility has also meant falling prestige. No French diplomat reacted kindly when President Georges Pompidou imperiously commented that an ambassador's role consisted of balancing "a cup of tea and a slice of cake." Nonetheless, after each election in the U.S., hope still springs eternal among political beneficiaries that they might be rewarded with choice ambassadorial appointments...
...problem that bothers American career diplomats is what they call "back channeling"?that is, top officials circumventing ambassadors in ways that undercut their relationship with the capitals to which they have been appointed. A classic case in point: key negotiations with the U.S.S.R. in the Nixon, Ford and Carter Administrations have usually been carried out by Secretaries of State directly with longtime Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin. Former Ambassador to Moscow Malcolm Toon, a career diplomat for 33 years, thinks this exclusive use of the "Washington channel" is all wrong. Says Toon: "As I told Vance a couple of times...
...inflation, insufficient opportunities for working wives (or in a few cases husbands) and a sense that in an age of instantaneous communication the scene of the real action in American diplomacy has shifted from the embassies to Washington. "We used to avoid home assignments like the plague," says a diplomat at the U.S. embassy in Paris. "It was expensive, and the jobs were less interesting. Now it's the other way around." An officer based in Belgrade agrees: "Ten years ago, the problem was: How do you get 'em back to Washington? Now it's reversed...