Book of the Diplomad: "Dangerous Diplomacy" by Joel Mowbray
We've put it off long enough. We're looking like chickens. We must provide our review of National Review columnist Joel Mowbray's best-selling look at the State Department, Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Threatens America's Security. Before we do, however, we must provide (drum roll, please) FULL DISCLOSURE: The name of one of The Diplomads appears briefly in the book in a less-than-glorious fashion.
OK, off we go. First, this is a book worth buying and reading; we urge our readers to do so. Second, Mowbray has written a good book that could have been a great one with just a bit more research, i.e., more willingness to seek out State Department employees and talk to them. As we hope we've shown in The Diplomad, we're not all a bunch of New York Times, Dan-Rather-loving, DNC-Stepford-sycophants.
The book's impact is lessened at the outset by Mowbray's hyper-dramatic telling of a silly story of how State Department security officers tried to detain him after a press conference when it became apparent that he had gotten access to a classified message. That's their job; that's what the taxpayers pay them to do. By implying that this was some sort of quasi Gestapo action, Mowbray makes the mistake that so many liberal-lefties make when writing about important subjects: the story becomes about the author rather than the important issue at hand.
The book does a very good job of cataloguing some real stupidity in the Department; he is particularly damning in his (perhaps too long and minutiae-filled) critique of past State Department efforts to make nice with Saddam, including giving his regime access to millions of dollars of agricultural credits. It was a classic example of what we see all too often in the State Department, to wit, the desire to get along with foreign regimes for the sake of getting along. Chapter five, "Understanding State," is the best in the book and should be required reading for anybody interested in knowing how State operates on a day-to-day basis and how policy is actually made and implemented. Mowbray gets it right: the obsession with consensus think(nobody wants to be the "odd man out"); the excessive concern for stability and good relations; the stultifying clearance process which tends to squeeze out any originality or creativity; the excessive bureaucracy. That all rings very true. He missed a few things: the Department bureaucracy is dominated by those who generally avoid going overseas and make a career of bouncing about from being staff assistants to executive assistants to any number of other Washington-based jobs that deal with process, moving paper, coordinating meetings and phone calls, i.e., not dealing with the substance of policy. Those people tend to rise to the top and ironically get rewarded with the key policy jobs.
Oddly enough, Mowbray pulls his punches when it comes to dealing with the Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA). While 9/11 seemed to prompt him to write his critique, he spends remarkably little time on the disastrous visa policies of former Assistant Secretary for CA, Mary Ryan. He does blast her obsession with the "courtesy culture" and properly ridicules the "Visa Express" program which allowed a number of bad guys to enter the USA. But the damage Ryan did to American interests went well beyond that, and it's surprising to see Mowbray gloss over it. She ran a virtual reign of terror for eight years in CA, one in which fine officers were run out of the bureau for defying her (note: this Diplomad personally knows two senior officers forced out of the Foreign Service by Ryan, and a third who barely avoided that fate.) She actively resisted efforts to have the Department take a more aggressive stance on widespread visa fraud and alien smuggling, and instead pressured officers to issue more visas, faster. Many of us were stunned when the Bush Administration kept her on. It was only months after 9/11 that Powell decided he had had enough of Ryan and eased her out.
Instead Mowbray spends a great deal of time on the issue of "child abductions." This is an emotional issue, but it is not one in which a great deal of blame can be assigned the State Department. The vast majority of these "abductions" are by a foreign spouse of an American either taking the children back to his or her home country or not letting them depart. Americans -- let's be blunt, mostly American women -- often make some very bad choices when selecting a foreign spouse. This Diplomad has had personal experience dealing with distraught American mothers who find that their husband has returned to Lower Slobistan with the kids, invoked their Slobistanian nationality, and gotten a local judge to award him custody. There is just not a whole lot the State Department can do about it; we can run around with a court order from a judge in Fresno granting the wife sole custody, but it just doesn't usually impress the authorities of Slobistan. These are complicated emotional, legal and political matters; they often do not end well, despite the efforts of well-meaning and energetic consular officers. Mowbray spends too much ammo shooting at CA on this issue. 'Nuff said.
Anyhow, as we said at the opening, despite its flaws the book is worth reading. A little more effort could have provided a truly devastating critique of the Department and perhaps some reform proposals. Maybe he'll write part two.
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