The back channel A memoir of American diplomacy and the case for its renewal

Review by Booklist Review

Burns had a State Department career in which he ascended to deputy secretary, almost the department's top post, just shy of Secretary of State. In these recollections of his jobs in Washington and abroad, Burns vividly describes the diplomatic profession. Like all new diplomats, he specialized in a region and a foreign language (the Near East and Arabic, in his case); he began his career at the American embassy in Jordan. Though he is self-deprecating about his performance in consular work, it must have impressed his seniors, for Burns vaulted into ever-higher places in the State department, including stints as ambassador to Jordan and Russia. In the course of these assignments, Burns interacted with all the presidents and secretaries of state from the late 1980s until his retirement in 2014. In his accounts of each assignment and of his foreign policy priorities, Burns provides a bounty of anecdotes that he sets within the context of contemporaneous world events. The end of the Cold War, the resurgence of Russia, Iraq Wars I and II, and Arab popular revolts Burns was involved in them all, meeting foreign leaders such as Vladimir Putin as part of the diplomatic process. Burns illuminates the vocation of diplomat and advocates for diplomacy's crucial role in international relations.--Gilbert Taylor Copyright 2019 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

---

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this highly relevant work, Burns, who retired in 2014 as the deputy secretary of state, takes a fascinating look at his career and outlines ways in which American diplomacy can be strengthened. Since 1983 he has served in the Middle East, Russia, and Washington, D.C. Despite being a highly decorated member of the Foreign Service, Burns comes across as humble but forthcoming about American diplomacy's successes and failures, including his own regrets, such as failing to implement "delayering" of decision-making bureaucracy within the department. His sketches of his colleagues and counterparts are often generous with praise, but also incisive; readers may be particularly interested in his take on Vladimir Putin ("the extreme embodiment of" the "Russian combination of qualities": "cocky, cranky, aggrieved, and insecure," but also "sober, ruthlessly competent, hardworking, and hard-faced"). He is particularly forthright in his condemnation of Donald Trump, describing his "erratic leadership" as leaving "America and its diplomats dangerously adrift." The final section is a blueprint for a "post-Trump reinvention of diplomacy" that emphasizes tradecraft, negotiation, and "updating American priorities." Burns's work showcases an impressive combination of dedication, passion, and diligence, and persuasively demonstrates the "quiet power" that diplomacy can have in world affairs. This is not to be missed. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

---

Review by Library Journal Review

Career diplomat Burns, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, offers a nuanced assessment of post-Cold War overseas ventures based on recently declassified memos and cables. His account compares with Madeleine Albright's Madam Secretary and Condoleezza Rice's No Higher Honor as well as George Packer's Our Man. Burns summarizes his time as a foreign service office beginning in 1982 and subsequently ambassador to Jordan, 1998-2001; assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, 2001-05; ambassador to Russia, 2005-08; under secretary of state for political affairs, 2008-11; and deputy secretary of state, 2011-14. Burns maintains that the United States needs to return to being a pivotal, not dominant, world power. Told in conversational prose, and providing insights into noteworthy world players including -Yasser Arafat, James Baker, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Vladimir Putin, this memoir offers much to both policy scholars and general readers. VERDICT A discerning, judicious accounting of negotiations from the perspective of Burns, surprisingly one of the lesser-known significant diplomatic figures of the last several decades. [See Prepub Alert, 11/5/18.]-Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Lib. of Congress, Washington, DC © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

---

Review by Kirkus Book Review

A former U.S. ambassador to Russia and career Foreign Service officer delivers a resounding defense of American diplomacy and the need for negotiation in a non-zero-sum world.Diplomacy involves considerable skills that seem little in evidence in the current White House, requiring of its practitioners "smart policy judgment, language skills, and a sure feel for the foreign landscapes in which they serve and the domestic priorities they represent." There is also the matter of what Burns, now the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, calls "strategic adaptation," the ability to read the winds and adjust course to accommodate the tack one's interlocutor is taking. Consider Vladimir Putin, a man who leaves Burns unimpressed. By the author's account, Putin was none too happy when the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed, and part of his program seems to be to get both up and running again. At the same time, for all his wiles, Putin is capable of misreading situations, as he certainly did after 9/11, when the Bush administration proved "indifferent to Putin's calculus, and generally disinclined to concede or pay much attention to a power in strategic decline." Some of the most newsworthy elements of this book, in fact, involve how the State Department crafted a response to 9/11, if one that largely went ignored. One might understand how Putin might feel inclined to angle for an American leader who would serve his interests. Enter Donald Trump. If Burns is evenhanded and careful, glad to praise Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Hillary Clinton alike for their successes in service, he clearly reckons Trump to be a disaster for American foreign policy. Still, he persists: Burns believes that "diplomacy is one of our nation's biggest assets and best-kept secrets. However battered and belittled in the age of Trump, it has never been a more necessary tool of first resort for a new century."Excellent reading for students of contemporary geopolitics and recent American history. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

---

1 Apprenticeship: The Education of a Diplomat My first diplomatic mission was an utter failure. The most junior officer in our embassy in Jordan in 1983, I eagerly volunteered for what at the time seemed like a straightforward assignment: to drive a supply truck from Amman to Baghdad. It all seemed to me like an excellent adventure, a chance to see the thinly populated, rock-strewn desert of eastern Jordan, and visit Iraq, then in the midst of a brutal war with Iran. The senior administrative officer at Embassy Amman was a grizzled veteran renowned for his ability to get things done, if not for his willingness to explain exactly how he accomplished them. He assured me the skids had been greased at the Iraqi border: Getting across would be no problem. The seven-hour drive to the border went uneventfully. Then, at the little Iraqi town of Rutba, adventure met Saddam Hussein-era reality. The skids, it turned out, had not been greased. An unamused security official rejected my paperwork and ordered me to remain in the truck while he consulted with his superiors in Baghdad. I spent a cold, sleepless night in the cab of the truck, incapable (in that pre-cellphone age) of communicating my predicament to my colleagues in Amman or Baghdad, and increasingly worried that my diplomatic career would not survive its first year. At first light, an Iraqi officer informed me that I'd be proceeding to Baghdad under police escort. He allowed me one brief phone call from the local post office to the on-duty Marine security guard at Embassy Amman. I explained what had happened, and he was able to convey to my colleagues in Baghdad the circumstances of my delay. With a dour policeman who introduced himself as Abu Ahmed beside me, I began the long drive through many of the dusty towns of Anbar Province that America's Iraq wars would make all too well known--Ramadi, Fallujah, Abu Ghraib. My travel partner had an unnerving habit of idly spinning the chamber on his revolver as we drove along the rutted highway. At one point he pulled out a popular regional tabloid with the cast of Charlie's Angels on the cover. "Do all American women look like this?" he asked. As the late afternoon sun was beginning to fade, we stopped for gas and tea at a ramshackle rest stop run by two of his brothers, just outside Fallujah, his hometown. As we sipped our tea, sitting on wobbly plastic chairs, Abu Ahmed's nieces and nephews appeared to see the exotic American. I've always wondered what happened to them over the tumultuous decades that followed. Abu Ahmed and I, weary and running out of things to talk about, finally arrived at a large police compound on the northwestern outskirts of Baghdad in early evening. I was relieved to see an American colleague waiting for me; I was less relieved to learn that the Iraqis refused to accept our customs documents and insisted on confiscating the truck and its cargo. There was nothing particularly sensitive in the truck, but losing a dozen computers, portable phones, and other office and communication equipment was an expensive proposition for a State Department always strapped for resources. We protested, but got nowhere. My colleague made clear that he'd take this up with the Foreign Ministry, which elicited barely a shrug from the police. Now separated from the truck and released by the police, I went back to our modest diplomatic facility and told my story over a few beers. The next day, I flew back to Amman. As far as I know, neither our truck nor our equipment was ever returned. *** A life in diplomacy seems more natural in retrospect than it did when I was stumbling along from Amman to Baghdad all those years ago, learning my first lesson in professional humility. But public service was already in my blood. I grew up as an Army brat, the product of an itinerant military childhood that took my family from one end of the United States to the other, with a dozen moves and three high schools by the time I was seventeen. My father and namesake, William F. Burns, fought in Vietnam in the 1960s and eventually became a two-star general and the director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He was an exemplary leader, thoughtful and exacting, someone whose high standards and model of public service I always wanted to approach. "Nothing can make you prouder," he once wrote to me, "than serving your country with honor." His was a generation accustomed to taking American leadership in the world seriously; he knew firsthand the dangers of ill-considered military conflicts, and what diplomacy could achieve in high-stakes negotiations. My mother, Peggy, was the devoted heart of our family. Her love and selflessness made all those cross-country moves manageable, and held us all together. Like my dad, she grew up in Philadelphia. They met in the chaste confines of a Catholic high school dance--with nuns wielding rulers to enforce "six inches for the Holy Spirit" between them--and built a happy life shaped by faith, family, and hard work. Making our close-knit Irish Catholic family whole were my three brothers: Jack, Bob, and Mark. As in many Army families, constantly bouncing from post to post, we became our own best friends. We shared a love of sports across seasons and places, and looked out for one another on all those first days in new schools. My upbringing bore little resemblance to the caricature of the cosmopolitan, blue-blooded foreign service officer. Through the years, however, a few useful diplomatic qualities began to emerge in faint outline. Because we moved so often, I became adaptable, constantly (and sometimes painfully) adjusting to new environments. I grew curious about new places and people, increasingly accustomed to trying to put myself in their shoes and understand their perspectives and predispositions. I developed a detachment about people and events, an ability to stand back and observe and empathize, but also a reluctance--born of many departures--to get too close or too invested. I also came to know my own country well, with a feel for its physical expanse and beauty, as well as its diversity and bustling possibility. I grew up with not only an abiding respect for the American military and the rhythms of Army life, but a vaguely formed interest of my own in public service. In 1973, I went to La Salle College on an academic scholarship, my dreams of a basketball scholarship long since surrendered to the hard realities of limited talent. A small liberal arts school run by the Christian Brothers in a rough neighborhood in North Philadelphia, La Salle offered a valuable education inside and outside the classroom. It was then a school with lots of first-generation college students, mostly commuters, who worked hard to earn their tuition, took nothing for granted, and prided themselves on puncturing pretension. La Salle, like Philadelphia in the 1970s, was not for the faint of heart. Excerpted from The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal by William J. Burns All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

---