World: The Natural Americans

(See Cover) Ambassadors have no battleships at their disposal, or heavy infantry, or fortresses. Their weapons are words and opportunities.

—Demosthenes, 343 B.C.

Modern ambassadors administer vast arsenals of peaceful weapons: food, loans, technical assistance—and in crisis, their advice to the government back home can even fetch battleships and airplanes. But words and opportunities remain the basic armament of diplomacy. In an age when heads of state can conveniently meet face to face, when foreign ministers crisscross the globe like soldier ants, when lies as well as truth travel with the speed of thought, it is still the ambassadors...

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