Overview

In this wise and eloquent book, one of the world's preeminent senior statesmen presents his views on the challenges of diplomacy in the post-Cold War era. Abba Eban, who has been Israel's ambassador to the United Nations and to the United States as well as the foreign minister in several Israeli governments, draws on his years of experience and knowledge to offer an overview of diplomacy as practiced in today's world. Interweaving historical data with personal reminiscences, Eban reviews the Cold War period and its end in 1989, praising the diplomatic restraint in the years that have followed; discusses the ethical confrontation between power and conscience in a wide range of international decisions and actions; and points out the difficulty of reconciling the promotion of universal human rights with respect for national sovereignty. Eban goes on to deplore the lack of privacy in international negotiations that is the result of an increasingly intrusive media, shows that nuclear warfare is not a restraint against frequent military intervention, and warns against inflated views of what can be expected from the United Nations. He concludes with thoughts about the quest for peace in the Middle East. Instructive, erudite, and witty, Eban's tour through diplomatic history vividly demonstrates that the wisdom of the past can be immensely valuable as we seek to negotiate and maintain peace in the future.

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Reviews

Eban obviously enjoyed himself during the Castle Lectures at Yale (collected here), as he ranged like a well-trained bull through a china shop of political correctness. Eban, for many years foreign minister of Israel and the author of many books (including Personal Witness, 1992), may not have much to say about the problems of the next century, but he has a sharp eye for the follies of the last, including summitry ( no situation is so bad that a badly conceived summit meeting cannot make it worse ); the UN (the myth of a powerful international organization, he notes, is the second most spectacular fallacy of the post-WW II era); the revisionist view that the Soviet threat during the Cold War was never a real one; Ostpolitik, which he thinks was a Soviet victory, equivalent to the recognition of its military victories; and the US's reluctance to accord diplomatic recognition to countries of which it disapproves (on which he quotes Churchill that the reason for having diplomatic relations is not to confer a compliment, but to secure a convenience ). He is also tough on Israel, and in particular on the draconian punishments inflicted on the entire populations of the West Bank and Gaza in retaliation for the 1996 Jerusalem bombing. In all, or at least most, of these views he reflects the attitudes of professional diplomats, a group dominated by a sense of limitation proceeding from a somber view of human nature and pursuing relatively modest goals, but even here he has some sharp observations on the extraordinary record of strategic surprise in the last 60 years, a pattern of failure which may proceed from their training, which tends to discount the original, unpredictable, innovative factors in international conduct. As sharp, shrewd, and candid an assessment of at least the current state of international relations as we are likely to get. (Kirkus Reviews)

Part statecraft, part diplomatic history, part autobiography, these reflections on the challenge to diplomacy of the post-Cold War world by former ambassador and Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban deserve a wide audience, representing as they do the pragmatic voice of reason in an increasingly dangerous world of nuclear proliferation, religious fundamentalism and genocidal nationalism. (Kirkus UK)

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