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Many diplomats complain of lost "elbow room" and of having been transformed into an "executive manager" at best, and, to quote one former French ambassador, a combination "messenger boy, travel agent and innkeeper." Reduced responsibility has also meant falling prestige. No French diplomat reacted kindly when President Georges Pompidou imperiously commented that an ambassador's role consisted of balancing "a cup of tea and a slice of cake." Nonetheless, after each election in the U.S., hope still springs eternal among political beneficiaries that they might be rewarded with choice ambassadorial appointments.
Henry Kissinger believes an ambassador's role has been diminished in certain very precise ways. Says he: "On day-to-day negotiations, professional ambassadors are less necessary than they were in the last century, when distances were greater and instructions could not be issued in each instance. Today there is a trend to instruct them in minute detail in even insignificant tactical decisions." On the other hand, he also pays diplomats the haughty compliment of arguing that it is up to them to take up some of the cerebral slack left by politicians. "Before World War I," he says, "world leaders were of the same intellectual milieu. Today the qualities necessary to become a national leader are not necessarily the same as those needed to be a national leader. So diplomats are unusually important."
U.S. Ambassador to London Kingman Brewster believes that envoys in this era could actually be more rather than less useful, mostly because they can pro vide "real perspective" and "not just the flash-flash, bang-bang, instant short focus on every dramatic event." Although Brewster favors selective summitry, he argues that only diplomats on the scene can provide the "accurate perceptions" and "nuance and detail" that are essential to the summit participants.
One problem that bothers American career diplomats is what they call "back channeling"—that is, top officials circumventing ambassadors in ways that undercut their relationship with the capitals to which they have been appointed. A classic case in point: key negotiations with the U.S.S.R. in the Nixon, Ford and Carter Administrations have usually been carried out by Secretaries of State directly with longtime Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin. Former Ambassador to Moscow Malcolm Toon, a career diplomat for 33 years, thinks this exclusive use of the "Washington channel" is all wrong. Says Toon: "As I told Vance a couple of times, if Washington continues to behave the way it did in terms of using the American embassy in Moscow, they could just as well get along without an ambassador." Joe Sisco, who was twice offered the Moscow post by Richard Nixon, concurs. He says, "I turned that embassy down for the following reason: as long as Nixon and Kissinger were around, they were going to be the Soviet desk officers. And if I decided to go to Moscow, Nixon would have a personnel problem within six weeks."