How do American citizens become ambassadors, and how do they serve as U.S. representatives overseas during such troubled times? What is embassy life really like? How do ambassadors deal with host governments and with officials back in Washington and conduct operations during emergencies and serious crises? Seventy-four senior diplomats give us personal and insider accounts of important experiences. Their comments provide useful insights into the business of diplomacy and will interest students, teachers, practitioners in international affairs, not to mention the general public. Following a brief historical introduction, the interviewees describe their reasons for becoming ambassadors, the appointment process, their training, the management of an embassy, problems in dealing with heads of state and officials at home. They discuss troubles in Korea and Laos, the Six-Day War in 1967, the Jonestown Affair, hostilities in Cyprus, the Fall of Saigon, civil strife in Nicaragua, along with terrorism, coups, and other demonstrations of violence in the 1970s and 1980s. They point to the future role of ambassadors.

If you ever wondered who becomes an American ambassador and why, this is the book for you. It describes how Foreign Service officers become ambassadors by rising up through the ranks, and why they typically make up about 70 percent of the total number of ambassadors. It also covers where the other 30 percent come from—the political appointees who get the job because they helped elect the president by supporting him as a campaign contributor, a political ally, or a personal friend. It explains why, despite being illegal and a threat to national security, selling the title of ambassador remains a common practice that is also unique to the United States. It considers why some suggestions for reform are misguided, what might be done, and why who the president is matters so much in determining how well the United States will be represented abroad. This updated and revised edition of Jett's classic book not only provides a timely overview of American ambassadorship for Foreign Service Officers, aspiring diplomats, and interested citizens, but also calls for much-needed reform, describing the dire implications of failing to change our ambassadorial appointments process for the future of American diplomatic practice and foreign policy.

Some of those named as American ambassadors are the product of both a time-honored tradition and a thinly veiled form of corruption. 'American Ambassadors' explains how a person becomes an ambassador, where they go, what they do and why, in today's ever more globalized world, they are more important than ever.

This magisterial work on American diplomacy by a veteran journalist and historian is the first complete history of the U.S. Foreign Service American Statecraft is a fascinating and comprehensive look at the unsung men and women of the U.S. Foreign Service whose dedication and sacrifices have been a crucial part of our history for over two centuries. Fifteen years in the making, veteran journalist and historian Moskin has traveled the globe conducting hundreds of interviews both in and out of the State Department to look behind the scenes at America's "militiamen of diplomacy." As the nation's eyes and ears, our envoys pledge a substantial part of their lives in foreign lands working for the benefit of their nation. Endeavoring to use dialogue and negotiation as their instruments of change, our diplomats tirelessly work to find markets for American business, rescue its citizens in trouble abroad, and act in general as "America's first line of defense" in policy negotiations, keeping America out of war. But it took generations to polish these skills, and Moskin traces America's full diplomatic history, back to its amateur years coming up against seasoned Europeans during the days of Ben Franklin, now considered the father of the U.S. Foreign Service, and up to the recent Benghazi attack. Along the way, its members included many devoted and courageous public servants, and also some political spoilsmen and outright rogues. An important contribution to the political canon, American Statecraft recounts the history of the United States through the lens of foreign diplomacy.

Xiaohong Liu brings twelve years of personal experience in the Chinese foreign service to this pathbreaking study. Drawing on her own direct observations, interviews, and newly available Chinese sources, she examines four generations of Chinese ambassadors, who served from 1949 to 1994. She charts the evolution of the Chinese diplomatic corps from its early military orientation to the emergence of career professionals and assesses the impact of various ambassadors on Chinese foreign policy.

What do the men and women of America's diplomatic corps do? William D. Morgan and Charles Stuart Kennedy, themselves career diplomats, culled over 1400 oral interviews with their Foreign Service peers to present forty excerpts covering events from the 1920s to the 1990s. Insiders recount what happens when a consul spies on Nazi Germany, Mao Tse-Tung drops by for a chat, the Cold War begins with the Berlin blockade, the Marshall Plan rescues Europe, Sukarno moves Indonesia into the communist camp, Khrushchev calls President Kennedy an SOB, and our ambassador is murdered in Kabul. "You are there" accounts deepen readers' understanding, as diplomatic and consular officers talk about the beginnings of Kremlinology, predicting a coup in Ecuador, Hemingway and the embassy in Havana, the secret formulation of the NATO treaty, Jerusalem after the British and the US recognition of Israel, fighting in the Congo over Katangan secession, dealing with an alcoholic foreign president, human rights work in Paraguay, the U.S. Embassy takeover in Tehran, the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, helping families of the Pan Am 103 victims, Greece and Turkey at odds over a tiny island, embassy roles in Riyadh and Tel Aviv during Desert Storm, and many more.

This work is a complete history of the partnership between the Department of State and the United States Marine Corps. From its formation in 1775, the Corps developed a close working relationship with the diplomatic service of the Continental Congress and later, in 1798, with the newly created United States Department of State. The Marines accompanied U.S. diplomats to France in 1778 and worked closely with the State Department during the Barbary Wars and the opening of China. In 1905, an executive order by Theodore Roosevelt established a Marine Legation Guard, and the Corps played an increasingly important role in embassies across the globe. Today, the war on terrorism highlights this important relationship as Marines guard some of the most dangerous embassies in the world.

What is the long-term nature of American foreign policy? This new book refutes the claim that it has varied considerably across time and space, arguing that key policies have been remarkably stable over the last hundred years, not in terms of ends but of means. Closely examining US foreign policy, past and present, David Sylvan and Stephen Majeski draw on a wealth of historical and contemporary cases to show how the US has had a 'client state' empire for at least a century. They clearly illustrate how much of American policy revolves around acquiring clients, maintaining clients and engaging in hostile policies against enemies deemed to threaten them, representing a peculiarly American form of imperialism. They also reveal how clientilism informs apparently disparate activities in different geographical regions and operates via a specific range of policy instruments, showing predictable variation in the use of these instruments. With a broad range of cases from US policy in the Caribbean and Central America after the Spanish-American War, to the origins of the Marshall Plan and NATO, to economic bailouts and covert operations, and to military interventions in South Vietnam, Kosovo and Iraq, this important book will be of great interest to students and researchers of US foreign policy, security studies, history and international relations. This book has a dedicated website at: www.us-foreign-policy-prespective.org featuring additional case studies and data sets.