Outpost
A Diplomat at Work
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- 79,99 zł
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- 79,99 zł
Publisher Description
A “candid, behind-the-scenes” (The Dallas Morning News) memoir from one of our most distinguished ambassadors who—in his career of service to the country—was sent to some of the most dangerous outposts of American diplomacy.
Christopher Hill was on the front lines in the Balkans at the breakup of Yugoslavia. He participated in one-on-one meetings with the dictator Milosevic and traveled to Bosnia and Kosovo, and to the Dayton conference, where a truce was arrived at. He was the first American Ambassador to Macedonia; Ambassador to Poland, in the cold war; chief disarmament negotiator in North Korea; and Hillary Clinton’s hand-picked Ambassador to Iraq.
Outpost is Hill’s “lively, entertaining…introduction to the difficult game of diplomacy” (The Washington Post)—an adventure story of danger, loss of comrades, high stakes negotiations, and imperfect options. There are fascinating portraits of war criminals (Mladic, Karadzic), of presidents (Bush, Clinton, and Obama), of vice presidents including Dick Cheney, of Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and of Ambassadors Richard Holbrooke and Lawrence Eagleburger, among others. Hill writes bluntly about the bureaucratic warfare in DC and expresses strong criticism of America’s aggressive interventions and wars of choice.
From the wars in the Balkans to the brutality of North Korea to the endless war in Iraq, Outpost “is a personal story, filled with the intricacies of living abroad, coping with the bureaucracy of the huge US foreign-policy establishment, and trying to persuade some very difficult people that America really does want to help them” (Providence Journal).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A diplomatic career spent under fire sometimes literally is recounted with energy and humor in this lively memoir. Hill recaps 33 years of State Department service in global hot spots: Bosnia and Kosovo, where his SUV was shot while he was at work on a peace settlements; North Korea, where he conducted high-wire nuclear disarmament negotiations; and Iraq, where his motorcade weathered an IED explosion during his as ambassador. Just as riveting are his intimate accounts of combat in the conference room; diplomats cajole and pressure one another toward compromises that depend on subtle shifts in mood and language. (He rescued one joint communiqu by replacing the phrase "peaceful coexistence" with "exist peacefully together.") Ever attuned to personal relationships, Hill pens vivid portraits of everyone from Serbian war criminals to Mother Teresa. He includes acidulous sketches of Dick Cheney and other neo-conservatives in the George W. Bush administration, which he blames for an excessively militarized foreign policy, and a colorful appreciation of ber-envoy Richard Holbrooke, a charming and manipulative "force of nature." Written in graceful, witty prose and studded with insights into many international crises, Hill's narrative critiques American diplomacy even as he defends its importance.