The Art of Diplomacy

Review by Melissa Reed

Howard B. Schaffer. Ellsworth Bunker: Global Troubleshooter, Vietnam Hawk. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003, 380 pp. $34.95

In the realm of diplomatic history, typically only those who have walked the uppermost corridors of power garner public attention. Consequently, most historians and biographers focus their efforts on documenting the lives of these secretaries of state and national security advisors. However, as Howard Schaffer's book Ellsworth Bunker: Global Troubleshooter, Vietnam Hawk proves, the fact that one may not immediately recognize the name of the subject does not mean that he should not qualify for a biography. Bunker, a sugar industry businessman and lobbyist turned diplomat, became a mainstay of the United States Foreign Service as one of their most dependable negotiators. Over a career spanning approximately forty years, the State Department called upon him to diffuse some of the most delicate circumstances facing this country during the height of the Cold War. Equal parts biography, diplomatic history, and commentary on the practice of diplomacy, Schaffer's book provides an insightful look at the Foreign Service over the past half-century. Schaffer, a retired career diplomat now with Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, narrates Bunker's career in a style strikingly similar to Bunker's negotiation approach: measured, meticulous, nonjudgmental, and forthright, with equal parts formality and warmth. While first and foremost a tribute to one of the most committed and called-upon American diplomats of the twentieth century, Ellsworth Bunker: Global Troubleshooter, Vietnam Hawk provides a nuanced commentary on the practice of diplomacy from someone

Melissa A. Reed is the Director of the Pennsylvania Governor's School for International Studies, hosted by the University Center for International Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.