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The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal

by William J. Burns
Random. Mar. 2019. 512p. illus. notes. bibliog. index. ISBN 9780525508861. $32; ebk. ISBN 9780525508878. BIOG
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Career diplomat Burns, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, offers a nuanced assessment of post-Cold War overseas ventures based on recently declassified memos and cables. His account compares with Madeleine Albright's Madam Secretary and Condoleezza Rice's No Higher Honor as well as George Packer's Our Man. Burns summarizes his time as a foreign service office beginning in 1982 and subsequently ambassador to Jordan, 1998-2001; assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, 2001-05; ambassador to Russia, 2005-08; under secretary of state for political affairs, 2008-11; and deputy secretary of state, 2011-14. Burns maintains that the United States needs to return to being a pivotal, not dominant, world power. Told in conversational prose, and providing insights into noteworthy world players including Yasser Arafat, James Baker, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Vladimir Putin, this memoir offers much to both policy scholars and general readers.
VERDICT A discerning, judicious accounting of negotiations from the perspective of Burns, surprisingly one of the lesser-known significant diplomatic figures of the last several decades. [See Prepub Alert, 11/5/18.]
Reviewed by Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Lib. of Congress, Washington, DC , Apr 01, 2019
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