FOREIGN POLICY : The Value of Personality in the Art of Diplomacy

The deaths of three U.S. diplomats in Bosnia last week marked another downturn in a crisis that has been threatening the stability of southeastern Europe for five years. No one with the slightest knowledge of the Serb-Croatian-Muslim conflict had much confidence that the U.S. negotiators were about to find a magical solution to the centuries-old problem of ethnic and religious hatreds in the Balkans. But if chances for a settlement were slim before Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Robert C. Frasure, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Joseph J. Kruzel and National Security Council aide Col. Samuel Nelson Drew died, they are now far slimmer.

A new team of diplomats has already been named. Roberts Owen, the U.S. representative on the five-nation Contact Group on Bosnia, Brig. Gen. Donald L. Kerrick of the National Security Council, James Pardew, director of the Pentagon’s Balkan Task Force, and Christopher Hill, the State Department’s head of the office of South Central European Affairs, are undoubtedly as experienced, knowledgeable and devoted to their duties as their three fallen colleagues. But they come up short in one unalterable respect--they do not have the connections to the bewildering array of major figures in the Bosnian fighting that Frasure had established through a year-long effort at winning their confidence in repeated face-to-face meetings.

If diplomatic history teaches us anything, it is that personal contacts are an essential ingredient of successful negotiations. Benjamin Franklin was the first and possibly greatest of American diplomats who wielded influence through the power of their person. In December, 1776, Franklin arrived in Paris in pursuit of French support for America’s war of independence against Britain. A master psychologist and showman, Franklin took advantage of his reputation as a man of letters and science to sell the American cause to the French.

His dress, manner and agreeable eccentricities captivated the sophisticated Parisians, who saw him as the embodiment of Enlightenment ideals. A “coiffure a la Franklin” became the rage among society ladies. His popularity translated into French receptivity to a U.S. alliance, which, helped along by self-serving calculations, became a reality in 1778 and powerfully advanced the cause of American freedom from British rule.

More than 125 years later, British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey turned the tables on the Americans by exploiting U.S. Ambassador Walter Hines Page’s pro-British sentiments to help draw the United States into World War I. Page, who thanked “Heaven I’m of their race and blood,” and spoke with contempt of State Department “library lawyers,” who were protesting British violations of U.S. neutrality rights, succumbed to Grey’s assertions that Britain was fighting America’s war. Compelled to present U.S. complaints to Grey, Page muted them by saying he disagreed with his superiors in Washington and by helping Grey draft replies.

Personal diplomacy is, of course, no guarantee of success in international dealings. Who would consider British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s meeting with Adolf Hitler at Munich anything but a failure? Nor is there much to be said for President Woodrow Wilson’s presence in Paris in 1919, where he was forced to give ground on all his Fourteen Points.

Gen. George C. Marshall is another case in point. Desperate to avert a Chinese civil war that threatened a communist takeover in a country with both strategic and symbolic importance to the United States, Harry S. Truman sent Marshall to negotiate a settlement of the Kuomintang-Communist conflict. If anyone seemed suited to the job, it was Marshall. He had an impeccable reputation for integrity and fairness. Even Franklin D. Roosevelt, for all his charm, could not jolly Marshall into supporting anything he considered unwise. Truman believed the Chinese would find it difficult to resist Marshall’s reasoned pleas for an accommodation. But however much respect Marshall commanded, he could not alter decades of Chinese history and head off the civil war of 1945-49.

Yet for every case of failed personal diplomacy there are examples of successful negotiations demonstrating that personal chemistry is an essential ingredient of productive international talks. Every President since Herbert Hoover, for example, understood that a key to dealing with the Soviet Union and now Russia has been creating strong rapport with their Soviet-Russian counterparts.

In 1941, after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Roosevelt sent Harry Hopkins on an arduous journey to Moscow to meet with Joseph Stalin and bolster the Russian war effort. Though Hopkins had been suffering from stomach cancer, he went without complaint, flying on planes that afforded few comforts. An unconventional, tough-minded character who frequented race tracks, Hopkins understood how to make things happen. As one description of him put it, “He knew how to give advice in the form of flattery and flattery in the form of advice; he sensed when to press his boss and when to desist, when to talk and when to listen, when to submit and when to argue. Above all, he had a marked ability to plunge directly into the heart of a muddle or a mix-up, and then to act. ‘Lord Root of the Matter,’ Winston Churchill dubbed him.”

In 1943, W. Averill Harriman became Hopkins’ successor as Roosevelt’s personal envoy to Stalin. Harriman was also a independent-minded character who had grave doubts about Stalin and the Soviets, but put aside his personal convictions for the sake of the war. Nonetheless, he was an irrepressible character with a large ego and the confidence to speak his mind. Years later, when his hearing went bad and he was forced to wear a hearing aid, he would turn it on and off, according to who was speaking. He only turns it on when he’s talking, said one uncharitable critic. But in the midst of the titanic Nazi-Soviet struggle, Harriman saw Stalin as a compelling voice. As a consequence, he and Hopkins managed to create a measure of trust with the Soviet dictator, becoming effective conduits between Stalin and Roosevelt in the service of defeating Nazism.

All of Roosevelt’s appointees were not as diplomatic. Gen. Joseph W. (Vinegar Joe) Stilwell, commander of U.S. forces in the China-Burma-India theater, had responsibility for dealings with Chiang Kai-shek. He despised Chiang, who he accurately saw as a ruthless dictator using Chinese and U.S. resources for his personal gain. Stilwell wanted the President to force Chiang into more aggressive fighting against the Japanese. But Roosevelt, who was reluctant to push Chiang into something that might destroy his rule and bring greater disarray to China, rejected Stilwell’s advice until early 1944, when he could no longer stomach Chiang’s foot dragging. Once Roosevelt decided that, Stilwell was the perfect representative to deliver his message to the Chinese leader--who Stilwell had treated with open disdain and privately referred to as “the Peanut.”

The presence in Bosnia of the newly appointed negotiating team is unlikely to yield quick results. It will take time for the four diplomats to establish the kinds of ties that can advance discussions toward peace. And even then, there seems little chance that this new group of representatives will have the wherewithal to reshape affairs in a place so burdened with the antagonisms of centuries.

In time, however, when the adversaries exhaust themselves and seek face-saving ways out of their bloodletting, the presence of familiar diplomats eager to end the strife will become the vehicle by which the warring parties will agree to peace. It may be a long time to wait at a cost no civilized government can comfortably accept. But when that moment arrives, a patient U.S. diplomat with personal ties to the adversaries will become an ideal intermediary to fashion a settlement acceptable to all sides.