The Ambassadors: America's Diplomats on the Front Lines by Paul Richter

Author:Paul Richter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 21st Century, Diplomacy, History, History & Theory, International Relations, Political Science, United States
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2019-11-12T03:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11 Flowers, and Stones, for the Ambassador

In late January 2011, Robert Ford went to see Syrian president Bashar al-Assad at his sleek marble palace on a plateau overlooking Damascus. As the new U.S. ambassador to Syria, Ford had a lot to talk about with Assad. Egyptian demonstrators were demanding the resignation of longtime president Hosni Mubarak, Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali had been driven from office, and it appeared that other Arab leaders might soon fall to the violent updrafts of the regional uprising that came to be known as the Arab Spring.

Tall and slightly stooped, Assad greeted him cordially as they settled into pastel-blue armchairs in a palace reception hall. His English was adequate, his manner courteous, and Ford’s first impression was that the heir to the Assad dynasty would make a congenial dinner companion. But on some subjects he was touchy.

“It looks like kind of a difficult time for authoritarian regimes,” Ford ventured. “How do you intend to get ahead of the problem?”

“It’ll never happen here,” Assad said, closing discussion of the topic before it had begun.

Ford had arrived in Damascus as the first U.S. ambassador in Syria in five years. The Bush administration had withdrawn his predecessor in 2006 to protest suspected Syrian involvement in the car-bomb assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister of neighboring Lebanon. A handful of Republican senators were trying to block Ford’s confirmation, convinced that dispatching an ambassador would signal American acceptance of Damascus’s bad behavior. But Barack Obama wanted to engage adversary regimes like those in Syria and Iran in hopes of solving long-standing disputes. So Washington had sent Ford, who, with five years in Iraq and fluent Arabic, was one of the department’s most accomplished Mideast hands. The State Department hoped Ford would give them a clearer view of the region and might, in time, find a way to break off Assad’s troubling alliance with Iran.

Ford had some misgivings about the job. He told his bosses he was worried that it could become a never-ending argument with the Syrians over their human rights abuses. But after five wearying years in Iraq, he was ready for an assignment in a new Arab country. He accepted the job and promised the Senate in a hearing that “unfiltered straight talk will be my mission priority.” The staff at the embassy, which had felt leaderless and rudderless, was glad to have him.

Ford made a memorable entrance. Many ambassadors are formal and some even require their staffs to stand when they enter the room. The new boss the embassy team welcomed that day was a skinny, friendly man in an open-collared shirt with a book bag slung over his shoulder. He wanted to keep it informal. “Hi, I’m Robert,” Ford told them. “Don’t call me ‘Ambassador.’ ” Ford said he was still at heart the long-haired Peace Corps volunteer he had been in his twenties.

Many ordinary Syrians were also cheered by Ford’s arrival, hoping that it meant better ties with the United States and perhaps economic improvement.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.