Ambassador Chas. W. Freeman Jr. Veteran Diplomat Recalls Challenges Of China, Saudi Arabia, Africa by John Shaw Chas. W. Freeman Jr. likes to joke that his 30-year career as an American diplomat almost ended shortly after it began. Freeman was a junior diplomat in 1972 working as an interpreter for President Richard Nixon during his historic visit to China. The White House had excluded the State Department from the sensitive preparations for the China summit and department officials were kept in the dark throughout most of the trip. Of particular relevance to Freeman was the difficulty he had in securing an advance copy of Nixon’s toast to Chairman Mao Zedong that he was assigned to interpret. Aware of the importance of Nixon’s remarks and determined to faithfully convey the president’s comments, Freeman insisted that he review the text before the event. When a White House aide said this would not be possible, Freeman declared that he would then be unable to interpret that evening. After heated discussions among White House officials and Nixon’s direct intervention in the matter, a text of the president’s remarks was handed to Freeman, which he reviewed before the important toast. Freeman smiles as recalls the incident. "The China trip was memorable in many, many respects, most particularly because my first act as interpreter was to refuse to interpret," he said. "Here I was 28, and my first act as an interpreter had been to refuse to carry out the orders of the president of the United States." But the trip to China went well and Freeman’s career was marked by a succession of important and challenging assignments that placed him near the center of crucial events. These experiences in turn have prompted Freeman to think deeply and write extensively about diplomacy—a profession he calls a "subtle calling" and a "way of life." Freeman grew up in the Bahamas in a family with a strong interest in languages and international affairs. "It was a very cosmopolitan environment. In a sense I had almost to choose to become an American. I made a very deliberate choice that I wanted to identify myself with the United States," he said. Freeman studied at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico and then earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and a law degree from Harvard Law School. He entered the U.S. Foreign Service in 1965 and spent three years as a consular official in India. Then he began his long involvement with China, serving initially as a State Department commercial officer to China and the principal American interpreter during Nixon’s visit to that nation in 1972. He was director of Chinese affairs at the State Department from 1979 to 1981 and then worked for nearly four years as charge and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Freeman expanded his Asian experience with a stint as charge and deputy chief of mission in Bangkok from 1984 to 1986. He then returned to Washington as the principal deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs. Freeman was appointed U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, serving there from 1989 to 1993. He worked as the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs during the first two years of the Clinton administration and was responsible for managing defense relations with all regions of the world except the former Soviet Union. Looking back over his career, Freeman speaks most vividly about his experiences in China and Saudi Arabia and his foray into African diplomacy. Long fascinated with China, Freeman said he was certain three decades ago that it was going to be a crucial actor on the global stage and a nation the United States needed to better understand. "Early in my diplomatic career I thought there would be exciting developments in the U.S.-China relationship," he said, adding that America’s decades-long decision to effectively ignore China was untenable and unsustainable. His visits to China as a young diplomat were memorable in part because they included glimpses of such important historic figures as Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Freeman recalled several conversations with Zhou about Chinese history and even mentioned to him his difficulty in finding a certain book on Chinese history. Zhou tracked down two original copies of the 18th-century book and donated them to the United States. On another occasion, Freeman was involved in a drinking session with several Chinese army officers who began to criticize Mao and declare their primary loyalty was to Zhou. Uncomfortable that these officers were confiding such controversial ideas to an American diplomat, Zhou quietly escorted Freeman away from the conversation and chatted with him about other topics as the military men were quieted by other officials. Freeman was deeply impressed with Zhou. "One of the measures of his greatness as a statesman was the attention he paid to junior people. A very modest investment of attention by a chief of state on a junior diplomat can pay long-term dividends for decades in terms of goodwill toward the country," he said. Freeman said he is proud of involvement in China, adding that he participated in drafting all three of the U.S.-China communiqués that are the foundation of the bilateral relationship. "I was a participant in every formative event in the relationship," he said. He was also involved in the high-profile diplomacy in the mid-1980s regarding Africa. "It was a tumultuous period of U.S. policy toward Africa, and I was incredibly lucky. I effectively commuted between Pretoria and Havana helping [then-Assistant Secretary of State] Chet Crocker remove the Cuban presence from Angola and get South Africa out of Namibia, while also trying to catalyze change in South Africa," he said. "And much to everyone’s astonishment and with no help from Congress, we actually succeeded. We managed to get the Cubans to withdraw from Africa, we managed to get South Africa out of Namibia and help effect Namibia’s independence under a U.N. resolution and we managed to catalyze change in South Africa," he said. Freeman also vividly recalls his ambassadorship in Saudi Arabia. Less than a year after his arrival, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, triggering a dramatic buildup of American military forces in the region from August 1990 to January 1991, culminating in the Persian Gulf War. "It was amazingly stressful. It put me nominally in charge of the largest mission in history," he said, noting that Saudi Arabia requested that all 550,000 American troops be considered part of the embassy staff. He worked closely with the American military leader, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf. "We had a remarkably cooperative relationship with each other and with our Saudi hosts," he said, adding that generals and diplomats don’t always view circumstances in the same way. Freeman also worked aggressively to shape how the press viewed the crisis in the region. He conducted hundreds of background briefings to explain the momentous developments in the Gulf. "I wanted to be completely anonymous because that allowed me to get things done at the Saudi end. And I didn’t want anyone in Washington to think I was trying to aggrandize myself. So I was pretty invisible and proud of it," he said. Although the Gulf War was a military victory, it was far less successful as a political effort, Freeman pointed out. Saddam Hussein is still in power, U.S. troops remain in the region, and tensions over Iraqi sanctions continue to divide the U.N. Security Council. "I think it’s tragic we didn’t address the political problems of the war more closely, that we didn’t come up with a long-term political strategy," he added. He said the failure to set clear political objectives was due in part to the unwieldy international coalition that President Bush tried to hold together. "The question of a war is always: Did it produce a better peace? In the case of the Gulf War it is demonstrably not the case that there is a better peace. The war did not produce a better peace. In fact, the war never ended. We did not obtain Saddam’s acquiescence that he had been defeated," he added. Freeman said the lasting legacy of the war from a personal point of view was the close friendships he developed in Saudi Arabia and the more nuanced and favorable view of the Arab world he took from the experience. Since retiring from the Foreign Service in 1994, Freeman has shifted some of his energy into business. He is chairman of Projects International, an international consulting firm that helps clients design and implement business strategies so they can operate overseas. Freeman said that Projects International helps firms identify business partners and relationships and negotiates arrangements for equity investments, joint ventures, operating licenses, franchises, agencies and sales. It also secures necessary government approvals and long-term political support and finds capital in the form of debt or equity. Freeman also remains deeply involved in international affairs. He is the president of the Middle East Policy Council, co-chairman of the U.S.-China Policy Foundation and vice chairman of the Atlantic Council of the United States. He said the posts allow him to study developments in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Since retiring from the Foreign Service, he has thought deeply about his former profession. He spent a year at the U.S. Institute of Peace as a research fellow and wrote two books on diplomacy. "The Arts of Power" began as a 1,500-page treatise but was edited down into a 140-page essay on diplomacy and statecraft. The book considers the role of intelligence, political affairs, cultural influences, economic power and military strategy. It also explores diplomatic strategy and tactics, negotiation, and the various tasks and skills necessary for successful diplomacy. If "Arts of Power" is a tightly argued mediation on diplomacy, Freeman’s second book, "The Diplomat’s Dictionary" is a fun, breezy compendium of diplomatic lore. Freeman said he had always been surprised that there wasn’t a modern book that compiled the lore of diplomacy and statecraft. "The Diplomat’s Dictionary" contains hundreds of observations about diplomacy, which are arranged alphabetically from A (abruptness) to Z (zeal). It is packed with ruminations on diplomacy from such notables as Abba Eban, Napoleon Bonaparte, Harold Nicholson, Sophocles, Tacictus, Lord Palmerston, Henry Kissinger, Prince Metternich, Charles De Gaulle, Will Rogers and George Kennan. The dictionary also includes a number of Freeman’s observations that he jotted down over the years. For example: * "Beware of men who can speak a dozen languages and are able to think in none." • "Peace negotiations are the war after the war." • "The usual response of international organizations to crises passes through predictable phases: they ignore the problem; they issue a statement of concern about it; they wring their hands while sitting on them; they declare that they remain seized of the matter; they adjourn." • "If you want someone to deliver your mail to a foreign government get a postal clerk. If you want to communicate effectively, appoint an ambassador in whose professionalism and discretion you trust." • "Like war, diplomacy is too important a subject to be left to blundering amateurism.... Diplomacy is too portentous to be entrusted to the politicians, but it is too political to be left to the generals. Those who may be fatally affected by diplomacy’s failures have every reason to demand that only its most skilled, professional practitioners represent their interests." • "A diplomat is someone who never unintentionally insults another person... Enemies should be made on purpose and not by inadvertence." • "A camel is a horse designed by a committee. A platypus is a bird put together by bureaucrats. An elephant is a mouse built to military specifications. A shrimp is a fish conceived in the legislative process." • "A diplomatic reception is like a mousetrap baited with big cheeses, cigars and canapés. When you are outside you want to get it, and when you are inside the mere sight of other mice makes you want to get out. Still the purpose is to trap mice, and it works." • "Sanctions usually come too late to deter the misbehavior of the nations on which they are targeted but just in time to save the domestic reputations of the governments that impose them." • "What is wrong with summits is insufficient preparation, lack of clear purpose, inflated expectations and too much ballyhoo. In short, summits are magnificent entertainment, but are they diplomacy?" Freeman said he is concerned that diplomacy is going through a difficult transition period especially in the United States where it is often devalued. "The American style is to inappropriately sleight politics and diplomacy as a way of dealing with national security issues and to overemphasize military and coercive measures," he said. Freeman noted that American diplomacy has changed because the United States is no longer in a Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union. "There is no clear set of principles that is at stake, no set of interests that are challenged. Things are less fun, and part of it is because what’s at stake is less great. And among the foreign service there has been a loss of a sense of believing it is an elite unit—a sense that only the Marine Corps possesses now," he said. John Shaw is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.