bout de papier, Vol. 14, No. 2 (1997) — Summer 1997 // Été 1997, pp. 42–44
MANDARIN: The Diaries of an Ambassador,
1969-1982 by Nicholas Henderson;
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1994. 517
p. $29.95
THE LAST AMERICAN ARISTOCRAT: The
Biography of Ambassador David K. Bruce
by Nelson Lankford; Little, Brown &
Company, Toronto 1996. 484 p. $39.95
Reviewed by James Trottier
’Mandarin” and “The Last American Aristocrat” record life at the glittering heights of diplomacy rather than at the coalface where most of us labour. “Mandarin” contains the diaries of Sir. Nicholas Henderson, an eminent British ambassador; “The Last American Aristocrat” by Nelson Lankford is a biography of David Bruce, an equally distinguished American envoy. Henderson and Bruce were respectively the quintessential British and American diplomats of their generations. Both served as ambassadors in each other’s capitals as well as in Bonn and Paris. Both books have much to say about the craft of diplomacy as practiced by two grandmasters.
As a career diplomat, it is unlikely that Sir Nicholas would have reached the eminence he achieved if he had served in the American Foreign Service where foreign service officers are overshadowed by political appointees. By the same token, it is almost certain that David Bruce would not have achieved the same success if he had been in the British Foreign Service; Bruce entered diplomatic life in middle age from the private sector and took on his most prominent ambassadorial assignments well after the British Foreign Office (FCO) retirement age of sixty.
Sir Nicholas’s career was that of the classic Foreign Office fast tracker. After graduating from Oxford, he mixed service in the Private Office of several Foreign Secretaries (an almost mandatory stop in the FCO for the ambitious) with foreign postings.
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“Mandarin” covers the period from 1969 to 1982 during his terms as ambassador to Warsaw, Bonn, Paris and Washington, DC.
In contrast, David Bruce was not a career official though he became that rare creature — a political appointee respected by foreign policy professionals. Born into the Virginia gentry in 1898 and educated at Princeton, at twenty-three he married Ailsa Mellon, the heiress to the third largest fortune in the United States. Though ultimately ending in divorce, the marriage allowed him to lead a gilded lifestyle. “No one loved the good life more than David Bruce. Stylish, sophisticate, avid world traveler and lotus eater extraordinaire, he passed his fortieth birthday in gilded satiety.” The one thing missing in his early years was a fulfilling occupation. In fact he was well on his way to becoming a Fitzgeraldian dilettante; an early background check from the defiantly puritanical FBI described Bruce as somewhat lazy since he had never had “a strong incentive to direct and continue his efforts in productive work.”
Bruce became that rare creature – a political appointee respected by foreign policy professionals.
Bruce was rescued by World War II. He had a “good war”, as one of the founding members of the legendary OSS — forerunner of the CIA. After the war, he parlayed his OSS experience and mystique into an unprecedented string of major overseas appointments — under 6 presidents — beginning at the age of fifty-one as the Marshall Plan representative in Paris. He followed this up with assignments as ambassador to Paris, Bonn and London as well as US senior delegate to the 1968 Paris peace negotiations with the Vietnamese and as the first American emissary to the People’s ments ended in 1976 upon his retirement as US Ambassador to NATO at the age of seventy-seven, only three years before Sir Nicholas’ first retirement at the much younger age of sixty.
Henderson’s “Mandarin” is a continuation of the behind-the-scenes glimpse of the machinery of power provided by his earlier book “The Private Office” describing the inner workings of the Foreign Secretary’s Private Office. Both “Mandarin” and “The Last American Aristocrat” provide an intimate view of ambassadorial life and work in several capitals.
The books describe the appeal of diplomatic work at an exalted level. This passage about Bruce could equally be applied to Henderson: “But the narcotic of being the personal representative of the president, of executing the foreign policy of the republic, in fact, of helping fashion that policy … these were the real reasons he tolerated the sacrifices to private life.”
These two books describe issues handled and the wide range of individuals — famous and obscure — encountered in an ambassador’s day. Serious policy issues such as European integration, German rearmament and the Falklands crisis jostled for the envoys’ attention with social responsibilities. Glittering dinner parties in Paris set the stage for complex negotiations on British participation in the European Airbus project. Both accounts demonstrate the crucial role of the diplomat on the spot in guiding itinerant delegations around diplomatic shoals.
Much ambassadorial time, energy and care was devoted to visiting dignitaries, often unappreciated by the recipients. Henderson describes the 1973 visit of Prime Minister Ted Heath to Bonn with all the attendant planning and advance work. Two years later, there is a very different visit by Ted Heath, now just a Tory member of Parliament, having lost not only the election but the leadership of his party. Instead of state dinners, he ate solitary meals. He invited Henderson to a restaurant where he proved uncharacteristically loquacious, helped along by ouzo.
“Mandarin” also deals with the interaction between ministers and officials. Henderson describes a meeting between British and German delegations: “The ministers sit opposite each other. They are flanked by officials … The officials rarely intervene. Occasionally if the minister is getting something entirely wrong one of his oificials will lean forward over the table and say something like: ’Secretary of State, if I may say so, I think that is entirely right. But I would also suggest that you have in mind as well another aspect of the problem, namely…”” A Yes, Minister moment.
Like Sir Nicholas, Bruce had to deal with fellow citizens seeking to treat his embassy like a hotel. “Thousands of our compatriots really seem to think that an American Ambassador is stationed abroad to run a non-stop entertainment (almost entirely at his or her expense) for visiting transients.” A group of lawyers arrived in London demanding to meet the Queen. “When Bruce failed them, their leader denounced him as a model of the Ugly American diplomat.”
Observing Bruce and Mary, his wife, stand in one receiving line for five hours, a journalist concluded that requirements for diplomatic life included “hands of steel, no bladder and an infinite capacity for saying, ’Yes, indeed’ when what he means is I never heard such nonsense in my life.””
Despite the distractions, both envoys always maintained a focus. “Indeed, his [Bruce’s] ability to surf without effort across a punishing schedule of frivolous sociability while … focused on the crucial issues of American policy awed his subordinates and gratified his superiors … he worked hard during office hours, played long nearly every evening, and often stayed up late to compose his distinctive cables. If he did not arrive at the embassy at dawn … his nighttime labors more than compensated.”
As a career official, Henderson retained his position from one administration to another but he still had to adapt. He and other officials were warned to be on their guard after Labour came to power in 1974. “We representatives from abroad, received an unpleasant warning about our reporting … we must temper our reporting on how London’s new policy looked from the European capitals so as to avoid giving offence to our present political masters. We must not give the impression of being too pro-European. It was for ministers to decide policy. I bridled at what seemed to me to be a form of suppression upon which I was given a personal reprimand about being too outspoken in what I said to ministers, and too pro-European.”
During the Falklands crisis, Henderson was exposed to the formidable Margaret Thatcher’s distrust of the FCO: “the PM veered the whole time towards being uncompromising, so that the rest of us, and in particular the FCO participants, constantly found themselves under attack from her for being wet, ready to sell out, unsupportive of British interests … Did the Foreign Office have no principles? …. Were the ECO prepared to hand over people who believed in democracy to a dictatorship?”
Bruce also had to deal with changes of administration. Although he served presidents of both parties, he was closer to the Democrats; a Republican Administration was something to be endured, not welcomed Bruce did not fit into the Washington, DC of the 1950s. He later said of those years: “I found the atmosphere there depressing, mostly due to McCarthy’s inquisitorial and terroristic witch-hunting activities that constitute a national disgrace and have markedly lowered our prestige as a nation at home and abroad.” Nevertheless, Bruce’s eminence was such that he received appointments from Republican administrations, in part to provide a bipartisan cast to foreign policy.
Henderson noted the importance of public advocacy in Washington, DC and the nervousness of his staff about his involvement in it. “When I asked for advice … on what I should say if I got a question on this or that subject, the answer was invariably on the lines: ’Well, I should be extremely cautious; better say nothing if you can; if you have to say something I should stick to generalities.’ …The next line of retreat of the officials is to suggest that I refer the audience to some statement that was made in the House of Commons some time ago: “That will show that you are saying nothing new, they say triumphantly.” In the end, Henderson’s skill in media relations turned out to be crucial in winning American support during the Falklands war.
Bruce’s relations with his staff were correct, protective and loyal though somewhat detached; considered to be a shrewd manager of his own time, he dealt directly with only a few key staff members. Although unabashedly elitist, he chose his subordinates on merit; staff were delegated much authority.
Bruce cultivated a calm, deliberate manner; like the celebrated Talleyrand, “he had long learned to cultivate a kind of studied languor that irritated the second-rate.” And like Talleyrand, he favoured “civility over spontaneity, reflection rather than impulse, diplomacy rather than aggression, negotiation behind closed doors rather than orations to public meetings.” He undoubtedly shared the sentiment of Winston Churchill who remarked on the diplomatic language employed to declare war on Japan: “When you have to kill it costs nothing to be polite.”
One of his former officers said that the best ambassadors “shared with David Bruce the quality of equableness. There were never ’catastrophes’ in their professional lives — there were difficulties, and … they set about quietly to overcome them. Above all, they reserved their time and attention for essentials; and they knew how to use their staffs.” What Bruce considered essential was maintaining close contacts with the great and powerful. Bruce was particularly close to Jean Monnet, godfather of today’s European Union; he was the key American supporter of Monnet’s plans for European integration.
The experiences of Henderson and Bruce diverged as a result of the difference in international standing of their two countries. In Bonn in the 1970s, Henderson dealt with an economic power on behalf of a weaker state in economic difficulty. In contrast, the title of the chapter dealing with Bruce’s tenure in Bonn (“’Proconsul on the Rhine”) reflects American predominance in the 1950s.
But power is not static. Bruce experienced firsthand the relative decline in American stature during his subsequent assignment to London. He was appointed by President Kennedy as ambassador to the UK after being on the short list for Secretary of State. He went on to serve for longer than any other American envoy in Britain. On the surface the appointment seemed a perfect match for Bruce, a committed Anglophile. But while his tenure was generally successful, he found himself increasingly embroiled in the controversy engendered by the Vietnam War and the resulting serious challenge to American authority. He continued to defend American policy in Vietnam despite his own growing doubts about the war.
As ambassador to the USA, Henderson dealt with the American colossus as the Carter Administration coped with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and was overwhelmed by the Iran hostage crisis. He encountered the new Reagan team in their first flush of power. He describes trying to win the support of a senior State Department official during the Falklands crisis. “He seemed immensely detached. I suppose that’s the impression British diplomats gave a century ago when we were a great power and some lesser country sought our support.”
Henderson learned about the peculiar habits of the denizens of Washington including an incredible self-absorption and an inclination to immediately interrupt meetings with lengthy phone conversations. No sooner had Henry Owen, Carter’s Summit Sherpa, said how much he was looking forward to meeting with Henderson than Owen took a call from his German counterpart, Horst. Owen proceeded to talk non-stop on the telephone for the next 30 minutes. “Indeed he went on and on, and Horst seemed to have no chance of getting a word in. It was all very polite, even charming, but I began to wonder whether Owen was not a bit unbalanced, at any rate on this subject … So [after 30 minutes] there was nothing for it but to get up and leave. Owen was still speaking on the phone, his eyes closed, as if he was talking in his sleep, so I do not think he saw me go.” Henderson concluded that in some cases it was better to telephone than to visit in person.
Sir Nicholas actually retired twice. The first time was after his Paris posting, having reached the mandatory FCO retirement age of sixty in 1979. Like Winston Churchill upon leaving office, he “felt like a diver too quickly hoisted. Not that for me there was any surprise. The date had been fixed for the ending of my career.” Not for the British, the Canadian way of unofficially pushing senior officials into retirement by a progressive withdrawal of responsibilities.
Then, unexpectedly and very unusually in the British Foreign Service, he was called out of retirement, by the new Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, and sent to Washington from 1979 to 1982. Henderson was informed that other retired ambassadors would be furious. This is denied by others: bout de papier Vol.
“On the contrary he, and everyone with whom he had discussed it, were delighted. It would help towards breaking down the rigidity of the sixty-year-old retirement rule.”
In contrast, Bruce obtained his major appointments in his sixties and seventies. Periodically, between posts, he withdrew to his Georgetown townhouse or his country estate. Over seventy when he left London, a few months later he accepted another assignment as chief US delegate to the Paris Peace Conference. However, it became evident — even to Bruce – that in his last appointments, particularly at NATO, he was no longer well enough to undertake the arduous responsibilities of the positions.
Bruce was held in high esteem by his peers. “The combination of immense personal appeal, stamina, style, and probity, of being steadfast no matter how unpalatable his assignments, made Bruce the indispensable diplomat … the model for a generation of foreign service officers, the essential man. Not surprisingly, many career diplomats, schooled in contempt for presidential appointees, have said simply, “He was one of us.” A particular strength was that he was a “consummate listener”; Bruce believed this to be an essential quality in a diplomat.
Henderson’s diaries do not deal with his inner life; in his introduction, he says this is by design. Similarly, by background, generation and inclination, David Bruce was not one to reveal his state of mind or soul to the world. While his privileges and wealth did not protect him from personal tragedies including the apparent and unsolved murder of his daughter, his biographer is left to speculate on the effect such events had on him.
In a recent review of the Bruce biography in the British journal the Spectator, Sir Nicholas Henderson provided a suitable description of both Bruce’s and his own legacy. He said that in describing the qualities which had allowed Bruce to make a difference to events, Lankford “answers by implication the question frequently raised, whether, in the modern world … a diplomat can still play a crucial role in the conduct of international affairs.” Both these books leave no doubt that this is the case. Their subjects would have agreed with another former British diplomat, Michael Shea, who recently observed in his own book — with the tongue in cheek title “To Lie Abroad”
– that a country with global interests “should be represented globally” In the end, the best epitaph for both men and the fulfilment, excitement and pleasure they found in their careers and the passing pageant — “the obligations, responsibilities and hazards that are incurred as well as the much publicized glitter” in the words of Sir Nicholas — is that cited by David Bruce himself in leaving his last post at NATO, namely Et haec olim meminisse juvabit (“Someday perhaps we’ll look back on this and laugh”).
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 14, No. 2 (1997) — Summer 1997 // Été 1997, pp. 42–44. Read the rest of this issue →
