The Diplomatic Presidency sets out to explain and chronicle how “the [US] presidency, as an institution, resorted to diplomacy at the highest level” (2); that is, How did personal diplomacy, through face-to-face meetings, correspondence, and telephone calls, come to dominate both the role of the US presidency and the conduct of the country’s postwar foreign relations? It does this through a variety of historical case studies from the administration of FDR to that of George H. W. Bush and the end of the Cold War. The result is a meticulously researched history of diverse aspects of the personal diplomacy of individual US presidents, an analysis of why personal diplomacy developed, and its consequences for the presidency and US foreign policy.

To explain the growth of what he calls “presidential diplomacy,” Chavez cites the fear of nuclear Armageddon, domestic politics, an eagerness for personal contacts among foreign leaders, and a desire for control. The huge amount of time spent in such meetings led to the American president becoming a counselor to a whole variety of world leaders who all craved, to some extent, the prestige of contact with him and the opportunity to direct American attention to specific policy concerns.

Given the book’s historical sweep, it is not possible to detail all the personal diplomatic engagements of all presidents. Instead, Chavez discusses aspects of the meetings and contacts that each administration undertook. The chapter on FDR overlooks Roosevelt’s contacts with Stalin and Churchill while examining his relationships, through correspondence and meetings, with leaders from the United Kingdom, Canada, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Americas. Although the details of these meetings illustrate how the demand for personal contact increased with the growth of America’s global role, readers are left wondering whether the omission of the great power “conferences” missed a main driver of the source of presidential diplomacy. Thus, the chapter had the flavor of a meal without a main course. Similarly, the chapter on Carter is very good at outlining his efforts to bring about Middle East peace through the Camp David process with Sadat and Begin but neglects his failed efforts to save détente with the Soviet Union at his summit in Vienna in 1979. The choice of focus, one begins to suspect, is driven by a desire to show the positive achievements of personal contact and not always to point out its pitfalls and blind alleys.

The chapter on Truman’s and Eisenhower’s approaches offers a more balanced account of these administrations. It also details the reluctance of these presidents to meet all the demands for presidential diplomacy. It is here where Chavez’s archival work offers insightful gems, such as Eisenhower’s letter to Dulles lamenting the “agony of the state dinner” (56); Eisenhower also quoted Khrushchev that Berlin was the “testicles of the west” and that whenever he wanted a reaction, he would “give them a yank” (59). The Kennedy chapter includes JFK’s admission that Khrushchev “beat the hell out of me” in their first meeting and that he viewed Adenauer as “a bitter old man” (69). In this chapter, Chavez also illustrates the advantages of using ceremonies and meetings as a form of flattery. For example, the US ambassador to Iran, Julius Holmes, explained, “The Shah should be treated not as an anachronism—which he is—but as a chief of an allied state whom we respect.… By such a flattering approach we can help encourage the Shah to be the kind of monarch that he says he is, and he wants to be and that we want and need him to be” (80).

The book’s chronological approach illustrates the gradual growth of personal presidential leadership despite the opposition of the State Department and large segments of the American press who remained skeptical of its value, given the need to focus on domestic issues. It also offers the opportunity to see different presidential styles in operation. For the most part, the book details how these techniques were used to smooth relations and to flatter and persuade. However, President Johnson is shown as sometimes taking a different approach. Annoyed at Canadian premier Lester Pearson’s criticism of the US war in Vietnam while in the United States, Johnson is reported as having “strode up to him and seized him by the lapel of his coat, at the same time raising his other hand to the heavens” and remonstrating, ‘“You don’t come here and piss on my rug”’ (85).

The chapter on the Nixon administration demonstrates very well the lengths to which this White House embraced the technology of the jet age and modern television to harness presidential diplomacy for the benefit of domestic politics. It also challenges the boundaries of the focus of presidential diplomacy as a concept. Although the chapter concludes by acknowledging the “outsized role” of Henry Kissinger, it underplays his serving as the principal architect and arguably as the main interlocutor of the Nixon administration’s détente policy and opening up to China. Indeed, a general criticism of this book is that while chronicling the growth of presidential diplomacy it neglects the role of other individuals and actors in shaping the evolution of these practices. In focusing only on the United States, it also privileges the American experience and fails to acknowledge the universal growth of leadership diplomacy among other leading states at the same time and for the same reasons (see my Diplomacy at the Highest Level: The Evolution of International Summitry, 1996).

The presidential diplomacy of Reagan and Bush has been well documented by other scholars. Reagan’s personal role in seeking better relations with his Soviet and Russian counterparts is also well documented here, as is opposition to it from hardliners from within his own administration. Just as Reagan seemed obsessed with superpower presidential diplomacy, so Chavez can be accused of a singular focus at the expense of the bigger picture. Judging this administration only on its personal presidential diplomacy ignores the damage that Reagan’s approach did to wider alliance relations and management of a coherent foreign policy. In celebrating the undoubted achievements of presidential personal diplomacy, here and elsewhere, there is a tendency to accentuate the positive. There is, for example, no exploration of the role of Nancy Reagan’s astrologer in fixing the date and details for the 1987 Washington summit; the controversy about what Gorbachev was promised as the terms of Germany’s membership in NATO during the Bush administration; or the role of Thatcher at the Aspen summit in August 1990.

This book is an immensely readable account of the growth of presidential diplomatic leadership and why all presidents have spent huge amounts of their time and political capital engaged in this practice. Its strength lies in the blend of candid details from an impressive range of sources to spell out the evolution and map the growth of this “personal” political practice. Using a wealth of quotations and illustrative anecdotes, the book impressively stitches together a plausible explanation for the growth and practice of presidential personal diplomacy in the United States. A subsequent edition of the book would be enriched by more critical reflections on Trump and his versions of personal diplomacy.