The Back Channel

October 1, 2018

Currently president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Burns retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2014 after a three-plus-decade diplomatic career that saw him serve not only as ambassador to Jordan and Russia but eventually deputy secretary of state. More than a memoir revealing diplomacy in action, this book remains a plea for the importance of diplomacy in our brave new world.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2019
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.

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Starred review from February 25, 2019
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.