"The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age".

• Author: Whitehead, Robert
• Position: Book review

"The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age"

By Elizabeth Shackelford

In the increasingly polarized politics of 21st Century America, bipartisan cooperation on diplomatic initiatives has become araraavis. The successful establishment of an independent South Sudan was a notable exception. The administration of George W. Bush helped broker a cease fire between the government in Khartoum and the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in 2003 that led to the signature of the Naivaisha Accord in 2005. This agreement ended a half-century of armed conflict between the North and South and established a road map containing the formula for the future independence of the South. The Obama administration engaged in turn, and in July, 2011 the southern capital Juba celebrated the independence of the Republic of South Sudan, the world's newest nation. Two years later South Sudan collapsed into a spiral of renewed conflict, this time between factions in the South.

Elizabeth Shackleford, who was posted in Juba at the time at the American Embassy as the the consular and human rights officer, chronicles in her book the disintegration of the elected government of South Sudan and the violence and ethnic cleansing that followed. Shackleford writes well, and her narrative offers a vivid first-person history of what transpired. Vignettes of her interactions with embassy colleagues, officials in the South Sudanese government and the diplomatic community resident in Juba are on target. Anyone with past experience in Juba will recognize at once this cast of characters. Some individuals nearly leap from the page. Occasional factual mistakes crop up--for instance, Vice President RiekMachar earned a PH.D. in mechanical engineering, not philosophy--but these do not detract seriously from the narrative. Shackleford emerges from behind her words as a smart, scrappy and compassionate individual.

Shackleford clearly intends this book to be more than a historical record of events. Her underlying theme is the moral imperative to make human rights the foundation of America's foreign policy. She introduces this concept early on in a chapter, set in the macrocosm, that lists the successive failures of recent American presidents in the domain of human rights, starting with Richard Nixon and concluding with Donald Trump. She details the shortfalls of each administration: Nixon and the "Machiavellian" Kissinger in Chile, Argentina and Viet Nam; Ronald Reagan in...