Why Don't We Talk Anymore?

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America's determination to invade Iraq hit the Greek headlines in September 2002. My duty over the next six months would be to convince the Greeks that their moral and practical instincts were irrelevant. I was armed with the 'Axis of Evil,' a fatuous slogan conveying racist ignorance of the Middle East, but not with evidence of Iraqi threats that would pass muster with Greek experts.

Even if our weasel words about Saddam and his arsenal stood up for a few months, U.S. diplomats would no longer be able to use their superior knowledge of the world as an argument for others to follow America's lead. Meanwhile, Greeks had become angry enough to lose their customary politeness to foreigners.

Professional self-esteem and personal comfort are a trivial sacrifice on the altar of freedom. I knew from my experiences in Armenia, however, that the government I represented had no secret formula for remaking even the friendliest of tribal kleptocracies in its own image. Twenty years of talking to foreigners made me certain that Iraq would be a disaster for U.S. national interests. Such knowledge creates an ugly moral dilemma.

Diplomacy, I concluded, had ceased to be an honorable or even a useful profession. Washington was not prepared to hear the sober warnings it is a diplomat's duty to send home. Anger roused me from months of depression. Disappointed idealism made me resolute. On February 25, 2003, I sent in my letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Effective diplomacy is based on the grim, humble understanding of the role Americans play in foreigners' internal political competition. Anyone can make an appointment with an official in the Armenian Foreign Ministry and read with appropriate solemnity a set of talking points drafted by a political appointee in Washington. A reasonable number of FSOs can set aside their nationalist blinders to predict how such points might resonate within Armenian local politics. Only the rare diplomats, however, know how to persuade the right Armenian to tell us honestly how much our policy will cost if we insist on it. (No foreign diplomat dared tell President Bush the true costs and benefits to the United States from invading Iraq, after all.)

The bloody horrors of World War II produced a generation of tough-minded realists. They recognized that hundreds of morbid nationalisms like Iraq's could be kept in check only through expanding the reach of international law and enforcing it with the power of the United States and its allies under the U.N. flag. As a global economic power, the United States stood to be the chief beneficiary of such a system. But only by binding itself to international law would it earn the right to demand that others do so as well.

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