Critics of the Bush administration and the Bush Doctrine have long argued that the experiences in both Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate that military force is simply too blunt an instrument to achieve complex U.S. national security objectives. Indeed, many scholars have found that the Bush administration's reliance on military power alienated American allies and exacerbated anti-Americanism around the globe. To correct this problem, Barack Obama, as president-elect, announced that his administration will revitalize America's image in the world through a renewed focus on diplomacy.

The assumption here is that contemporary diplomatic institutions and practices provide a refined set of instruments capable of meeting the complex global challenges. But is this really the case? Will shifting the focus from military to diplomatic instruments of statecraft revitalize America's standing in the world and enable the United States to address the current challenges more effectively?

In his new book, Carne Ross, a former British diplomat, issues a warning about the current state of U.S., British, and United Nations diplomatic institutions and practices. Of central concern to Ross is the detachment of American and British leaders and diplomats from the concerns and experiences of the rest of the world. This detachment is the product of multiple and reinforcing tendencies. First, it is the product of detached elites who make snap judgments about particular events or crises filtered through the lenses of particular worldviews in Washington or London. The result is that complex events are reduced to simple caricatures. These caricatures are then spread around the globe by an army of diplomats who often know little or nothing about the events they are representing. For example, in the early 1990s, American and British leaders quickly concluded that the conflict in the Balkans was not vital to their respective interests. Ross recounts that because his government was unwilling to intervene, British diplomats around the world presented “the murderous killings as inevitable and unpreventable.” He writes: “I did not understand the Balkans. But this did not prevent me or anyone else in the embassy from repeating the analysis…. I believed those lines-to-take…. I did not stop believing them until I actually went to Bosnia many years later” (p. 31).

Similarly, in 2002, President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair quickly determined the need to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Ross concludes that the two men, their advisors, and much of their respective diplomatic corps reduced their choices to a simplified dichotomy: war or another terrorist attack: “When contrasted with the complexity and uncertainty of the alternatives, war may have seemed simpler. In the strange way that governments are swept along by events without properly stopping to think, war came to be seen as the only viable course” (p. 78).

The detachment is also reinforced by structural and procedural problems within diplomatic institutions that reduce large amounts of information into simple narratives. Ross argues that what may be really “essential” is often missed. In part, this is because information collection is often distorted. For example, despite extensive training, diplomats often have limited language skills, historical knowledge, and cultural understandings of the countries to which they are posted. All of these combine to influence biases in information collection and reporting.

To illustrate this point, Ross tells of his own experiences after September 11, 2001. He writes that his personal ambition to be at the center of things led him to become the political councilor at the British embassy in Kabul. He acknowledged that his experience with Afghanistan was “scant.” He was largely dependent on English-speaking Afghanis to collect information or occasionally on the embassy's sole interpreter. Nonetheless, he was able to discern that the official narrative of British policy about the successes of the post-Taliban transition to democracy was at odds with reality. Much of the activity in the run-up to the Loya Jirga in 2002 consisted of backroom bargaining, side payments, bribes, and intimidation taking place among tribal leaders posturing for government positions and resources. In the end, Ross says, he tried to tell London that he “didn't really know what was going on … but I was paid to produce a product and produce it I did” (p. 41). The policy was to support democratization under the Loya Jirga process. Because that was the policy, all reports were “directed to this end” (p. 43).

A second factor responsible for the detachment of American and British leaders is the antidemocratic nature of global diplomatic institutions. American and British diplomats operate within a structure that gives them enormous power. Even well-intentioned diplomats exploit these advantages and often dismiss the considerations of smaller countries and UN staff. For example, Ross recounts that during the debates on Iraqi sanctions in the late 1990s, the focus among British and American diplomats was more about “fixing blame” than it was about finding ways to ameliorate the suffering of the Iraqi people. He later concludes that his representations of the facts were wrong, but that he and his colleagues were “confident” in their “wrongness.” He writes: “There were many others telling us we were wrong, but we ignored them…. They were suspect, politicized, motivated by sentiment or politics, whereas our motives rested on the elevated plan of diplomacy…. [W]e had ‘our’ security, the region's security, even the world's security at heart” (p. 69).

His experiences led Ross to be highly critical of the current state of diplomacy. He concludes with an extensive list of suggestions for opening up American and British decision makers and diplomats to new and diverse ideas from a wider range of people around the globe. If these are global problems, he maintains, they will require ideas and solutions coming from places far from Washington, London, or New York.

Independent Diplomat does not break any new theoretical ground. Scholars of diplomacy will be familiar with most of its themes regarding the limits of diplomacy. Nonetheless, it develops these themes through astute and intriguing reflections on personal experience that make it an interesting and informative read for students, scholars, and policymakers.