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In this discerning book, Monteagle Stearns, a former career diplomat and ambassador, argues that U.S. foreign policymakers do not need a new doctrine, as some commentators have suggested, but rather a new attitude toward international affairs and, most especially, new ways of learning from the Foreign Service. True, the word strangers in his title refers to foreigners. However, it also refers to American foreign policymakers and American diplomats, whose failure to "speak each other's language" deprives American foreign policy of realism and coherence. In a world where regions have become more important than blocs, and ethnic and transnational problems more important than superpower rivalries, American foreign policy must be better informed if it is to be more effective. The insights required will come not from summit meetings or television specials but from the firsthand observations of trained Foreign Service officers. Stearns has not written an apologia for the American Foreign Service, however. Indeed, his criticism of many of its weaknesses is biting.Ranging from a description of Benjamin Franklin's mission to France to an analysis of the Gulf War and its aftermath, he offers a balanced critique of how American diplomacy developed in reaction to European models and how it needs to be changed to satisfy the demands of the twenty-first century. Full of examples drawn from Stearns's extensive experience, Talking to Strangers addresses the problems that arise not only from an overly politicized foreign policy process but also from excessive bureaucratization and lack of leadership in the Foreign Service itself. Anyone interested in our nation's future will benefit from reading Stearns's pull-no-punches analysis of why improving American diplomacy should be a matter of urgent concern to us all.
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Gifted Greek is a reflection on twentieth-century Greek history and politics, as well as a character study of its first socialist prime minister, Andreas Papandreou. Monteagle Stearns witnessed the transformation of Papandreou from an affable American economist to a stormy, anti-American Greek, over Stearns’s three diplomatic assignments to Athens, the last as a U.S. ambassador.The unresolved dispute over how and by whom Greece should be governed parallels the equally unresolved issues between Papandreou and his estranged father, George. Andreas, who left Greece in 1940, became a naturalized American citizen and a twenty-year resident of the United States. In contrast, George was thoroughly Greek: a flamboyant, republican-leaning politician, a one-time prime minister, and a perennial leader of Greece’s Liberal Party.Stearns arrived in Athens as a diplomat in early 1958, in the thick of Greece’s political turmoil. Over the next five years, he came to know first George Papandreou and then his son, Andreas. As neighbors in suburban Athens, as fellow Americans, and as like-minded critics of the problems still afflicting postwar Greece, Stearns and Andreas quickly established a warm friendship. Over the decades, however, that friendship was tested and frayed. Gifted Greek is a reflection on the Cold War era, on its impact on Greece, and on Andreas himself-whose dual nature had long fascinated the author and led to this account of their curiously entwined professional and personal lives.