The Dissent Papers.

• Author: Brown, John H.
• Position: Book review

The Dissent Papers: The Voices of Diplomats in the Cold War and Beyond. By Hannah Gurman, New York: Columbia University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-231-15872-5, Cloth, 280 pp., $30.00 "I am as insignificant here as you can imagine."--John Adams, who served as Minister to England for three years; cited in the above volume, p. 4

On November 29, 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, commenting on "alleged to be stolen State Department cables" via Wikileaks, stated that "I want to make clear that our official foreign policy is not set through these messages, but here in Washington. Our policy is a matter of public record, as reflected in our statements and our actions around the world."1

The first line of this statement, referred to, three times, in the book under review (the second line, however, is not cited) is used by its author, Hannah Gurman, a clinical assistant professor at New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, to set the stage for her volume devoted to "the place and evolution of diplomatic dissent writing in the larger of the 'American Century.'"

The key point of this scholar's monograph, well-researched and spared of academic jargon, is that the "voices" of dissenting U.S. diplomats, expressed by the written word, have been all too often ignored or dismissed by formulators of foreign policy in the nation's capital, to the detriment of America's national interests. This thesis is not particularly original, but it does warrant repeating, for the sake of our country and the world, especially by persons with the intelligence and sensitivity of Professor Gurman.

The title of Gurman's volume is based in part on the study by Albert Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970), which, she explains, "used the term 'voice' to describe the actions of the few bureaucrats who decide to express their opinions rather than resign or resign themselves to the status quo." The Pentagon Papers also provided Gurman with inspiration; but, unlike these voluminous, top-secret reports leaked to The New York Times in 1971, her book is based on "papers," not currently classified, written by "in-house authors of dissent" who "critiqued the reigning logic" of U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War II.

Gurman tells the story of these in-house dissenting diplomats in four well-organized chapters: "George Kennan and the Politics of Authorship"; "The China Hands and the Communist-ification of Diplomatic Reporting"; "The Rhetorical...