American Ambassadors.

• Author: Carlson, Brian E.
• Position: Book review

American Ambassadors: The Past Present and Future of America's Diplomats by Dennis C. Jett, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, ISBN-13: 978-1137395665, 300 pp. including appendices, $34.29 (Hardcover)

When it comes to ambassadors, there are dueling narratives in America.

A persistent one is that the best ambassador is a close friend of the President, a deep-pocketed contributor who succeeded in the corporate world, or perhaps as an "up by his bootstraps" entrepreneur. This view holds that only a loyalist who shares the President's philosophy can possibly represent the United States abroad at the highest levels. Foreign affairs, especially in the hallways and drawing rooms of our most significant European allies, are too important to be left in the hands of bureaucracy-loving careerists and unimaginative timeservers, most of whom are out of touch with the real America back home.

The competing view is that our country is best served by a professional diplomat--a person schooled, trained, and experienced through a career steeped in foreign policy. Such an ambassador comes to the job with essential and nuanced understanding of U.S. interests, strategies, and past tactics, as well as a finely honed ability to assess, comprehend, and negotiate with foreigners. He or she will generally be fluent in the relevant language as well as versed in the smorgasbord of issues that land on a superpower's doorstep every day. Moreover, it is said, the career diplomat arrives with a hard-won appreciation for Washington's real and imagined needs, as well as the confidence to "call an audible" on his/her own initiative when necessary.

This debate follows a well worn path, one trod every spring--at least in the Washington press--when the sitting President nominates some former college roommate, a check-writing supporter, and or a fawning syncophant to a senior government position. If Dennis Jett, himself a former Ambassador and now a Penn State professor, explored only the arguments for and against the sale of ambassadorships to wealthy donors, this book would be a useful contribution. But American Ambassadors does more.

The first chapter presents something I have not seen before: a concise, practical history of American diplomatic practice. Jett proves his scholarly mettle as he traces American diplomacy's evolution in keeping with a growing and maturing nation's needs. He does it with an immensely readable mixture of anecdotes, statistics and fact-based arguments.

In the...