"WHEN OUR FRIENDS ARE AFRAID OF US RATHER THAN FOR US, IT IS TIME TO WORRY
An interesting article appeared in the The New York Review of Books recently. It was a letter from a career diplomat to Secretary of State Colin Powell detailing the reasons he had chosen to resign.

Some notable excerpts of his letter:

"The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security."

"The sacrifice of global interests to domestic politics and to bureaucratic self-interest is nothing new, and it is certainly not a uniquely American problem. Still, we have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic manipulation of American opinion, since the war in Vietnam. The September 11 tragedy left us stronger than before, rallying around us a vast international coalition to cooperate for the first time in a systematic way against the threat of terrorism. But rather than take credit for those successes and build on them, this administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated al-Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally."

"We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. We have over the past two years done too much to assert to our world partners that narrow and mercenary US interests override the cherished values of our partners. Even where our aims are not in question, our consistency is at issue."

"But our closest allies are persuaded less that war is justified than that it would be perilous to allow the US to drift into complete solipsism. Loyalty should be reciprocal. Why does our president condone the swaggering and contemptuous approach to our friends and allies this administration is fostering, including among its most senior officials?"

"I urge you to listen to America's friends around the world. Even here in Greece, purported hotbed of European anti-Americanism, we have more and closer friends than the American newspaper reader can possibly imagine. Even when they complain about American arrogance, Greeks know that the world is a difficult and dangerous place, and they want a strong international system with the US and the EU in close partnership. When our friends are afraid of us rather than for us, it is time to worry. And now they are afraid. Who will tell them convincingly that the United States is as it was, a beacon of liberty, security, and justice for the planet? "

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After my Peace Corps service ended, I'd seriously considered joining the foreign service. Living in other countries and learning about other cultures seemed like the kind of thing I could enjoy. But I could never reconcile my deeply held skepticism of many aspects of American foreign policy with the role of a diplomat who's job is to defend those policies. I realized that I would never agree with ALL aspects of American foreign policy; that was unrealistic. But there had to be a substantial acceptance of the goals and conduct on my part in order for me to, in good conscience, be a representative of the American government. Under the Clinton administration (who was in power when I was considering this), I thought the stated goals of their foreign policy were reasonable but their conduct bore little resemblance to those stated goals. Under the present administration, I am in substantial disagreement even with their (imperial) goals.

It is sad that we Americans consider ourselves to be beacons of freedom and liberty but, for most of the last 100 years, have engaged in a policies that were directly antithetical to those beacons. That which we profess to be here in America bears no resemblence to our government's actions abroad. This chasm did not begin with the current administration, but the gap has expanded to an unprecedented width.

The scary part is that as talented, committed multilateralists diplomats like this leave the foreign service because they feel so alienated, because they feel they can't represent our government in good conscience, who will they be replaced by? Who will be the new face of America abroad? Will they counter the messianic cavalierness of the administration or amplify it?

The full text of this illuminating letter can be read by clicking here.