Book Description

Not Exactly a Company Man is both an oral history memoir and a dissection of U.S. policy during the wars that engulfed the former Yugoslavia in the early-mid-1990s. Divided roughly by tours of duty, the first parts describe the professional coming of age of a young, newly-minted Foreign Service Officer as he adapted to the myriad challenges of diplomatic life at home and abroad. The middle parts provide sketches of Tito’s Yugoslavia, Thatcher’s Britain, resolution of the long intractable Czechoslovak Claims/Gold problem, and assorted scuffles in both the bureaucratic trenches and the upper reaches of government. An extended portion of the book deals with three critical years in which Administrations of both parties largely stood aside during the Bosnian genocide and how they sought, ingloriously, to justify their timidity. It describes in particular how Washington became so intent on avoiding a larger role in the Balkans that it greenlighted a major Iranian move into Europe, an act with potentially dire consequences for broader U.S. interests and for the immediate security of U.S. personnel on the ground. Finally, it explains how, in his time as chief of mission in front-line Croatia and later, before several Congressional Committees, this officer dealt with, as his interviewer puts it, the “real honest to god dragons” of conscience that would effectively end his Foreign Service career.