Paul-André Ramseyer: une vie d'Ambassadeur

Paul-André Ramseyer, Etre et paraître : Une vie d'ambassadeur, Editions Slatkine, Paris, 2017, pp. 328, 29.00 CHF

"Il dit avoir trouvé son chemin de Damas en embrassant la diplomatie. Tant mieux pour lui et aussi pour nous qui pouvons nous régaler de ce livre.
Finesse, souplesse, capable d’humer la politique et d’observer les petits riens qui la font et la défont, le diplomate doit être un homme orchestre. Et notre Genevois Paul-André Ramseyer sait jouer de tous les instruments.
On sent, derrière le sang-froid de l’homme cultivé et affable, les sentiments qui brûlent, ses amis sont innombrables. Quant aux célébrités qu’il a rencontrées, elles rempliraient un annuaire. S’y côtoient des personnages aussi dissemblables que le Dalaï-Lama à l’éternel sourire, le trouble et cruel dictateur syrien Hafez el-Assad, le Prix Nobel mexicain Octavio Paz, poète aux styles inclassables, notre philosophe nationale au chignon serré Jeanne Hersch… tant d’autres encore.
L’Allemagne, l’Inde, l’Angleterre, le Mexique ; le Liban en 1984, sa première nomination au poste d’Ambassadeur ; le Liban des jours noirs au cours desquels il fut menacé de mort par le Hezbollah. Vinrent ensuite la Turquie, la Suède et la Pologne, son dernier poste, de 1999 à 2002.
L’Ambassadeur Paul-André Ramseyer est un homme qui aime le monde et surtout, qui aime son pays. C’est un citoyen au-dessus de tout soupçon. Délicieusement pistachées d’humour, ses Mémoires sont un vrai roman. (by Laurence Deonna)"

Ambassador Kishan Rana tells the story of Indian diplomacy

Indian Ambassador Kishan Rana has published a new book titled "Diplomacy at the cutting edge" (Manas Publications, 2016) with a complete personal narrative of his 35 years of Indian Foreign service. But the book goes beyond diplomatic memoirs: it also gives an original insight on the practice of diplomacy.

As Prof. Geoffrey Berridge writes in his presentation: "Kishan Rana is not only a prominent scholar-diplomat but also a dedicated and successful teacher of diplomatic practice, this memoir .... uses the different stages of a long and varied career chiefly to ponder at length and then draw lessons form them. It is written in his usual crisp and fluent style and I recommend it most warmly".

Many of Kishan Rana’s books, such as Diplomacy of the 21st Century (2011) and The Contemporary Embassy (2013), are already used as textbooks at several universities. “Diplomacy at the cutting edge” will probably be another one of them.

Kishan S. Rana graduated in Economics (BA Hons and MA) from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi and served in the Indian Foreign Service from 1965 to 1995. He was India's Ambassador/High Commissioner to Algeria, Czechoslovakia, Kenya, Mauritius, and Germany, and was on staff of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1981-82. He currently holds positions as Professor Emeritus of DiploFoundation, Malta and Geneva and is an Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi. He is also an archives by-fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, and Public Policy Scholar at Woodrow Wilson Centre, Washington DC. He serves currently as guest faculty at the Diplomatic Academy, Vienna, and was a Commonwealth Adviser to the Namibia Foreign Ministry in 2000-01.

An Ambassador seen by W. Goethe

In his famous book "The Sorrows of Young Werther"  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe writes an interesting description of an old Ambassador seen by his Secretary Werther:


DECEMBER 24.
As I anticipated, the ambassador occasions me infinite annoyance. He is the most punctilious blockhead under heaven. He does everything step by step, with the trifling minuteness of an old woman; and he is a man whom it is impossible to please, because he is never pleased with himself. I like to do business regularly and cheerfully, and, when it is finished, to leave it.
But he constantly returns my papers to me, saying, "They will do," but recommending me to look over them again, as "one may always improve by using a better word or a more appropriate particle." I then lose all patience, and wish myself at the devil's. Not a conjunction, not an adverb, must be omitted: he has a deadly antipathy to all those transpositions of which I am so fond; and, if the music of our periods is not tuned to the established, official key, he cannot comprehend our meaning. It is deplorable to be connected with such a fellow.

Image source: Wikimedia

Ebook by Alessandro Minuto Rizzo titled “The Road to Kabul”

Alessandro Minuto Rizzo, a former Italian diplomat, has just published a new ebook titled  “The Road to Kabul. The International Community and the Crises in Central Asia” (Il Mulino, 2015)

The book was originally published in Italian in 2009 ("La strada per Kabul. La comunità internazionale e le crisi in Asia Centrale, Il Mulino). The new English version has been updated with the last political development.

Here is a brief description by the publisher:
“At the same time in a geo-political critical area, surrounded by problematic countries of different colors. On the one side Pakistan with the atomic bomb and a porous border. On the other Iran.
The United Nations Security Council authorized an international military intervention and in 2003 the Atlantic Alliance took the unprecedented step to change its own history and to accept the challenge of an operation 6000 km away. History will judge if it was a wise decision. The operation, however, came to a close at the end of 2014 in an orderly way. The country is still assisted today but in a lighter manner.  The author was the Deputy Secretary General of NATO and a witness of all those events since the beginning, as he was in Kabul on the first day of the operation, in August 2003. He has seen its start, the complicated decision making on the strategy, its up and downs, the difficult relationship with Pakistan. At the beginning nobody had really an idea about the country and different judgments can be given about the wisdom of the various steps that were taken. One thing is certain, that the task was the most difficult that one could imagine. An unprecedented effort of the international community to reconstruct a failed country of this size. He is therefore a privileged observer at the unfolding of the events and he can give us an overall scenario of the crisis, which is uncommon. Trying to put together the pieces of the puzzle. Knowing well the main actors and the personalities involved. The author takes us on a long journey to the Hindu-Kush, Islamabad, New Delhi, Central Asia. He wants to give us a picture that is not only political and military with the description of people, flowers and the long horizons of the Bamyan valley.”

Alessandro Minuto Rizzo, The Road to Kabul. The International Community and the Crises in Central Asia,  Il Mulino, 2015, pp.192, € 10,99

For more information on the book and for the table of contents click here

Alessandro Minuto-Rizzo – a distinguished ambassador and Italian diplomat - has much experience in a number of areas, not just international relations. In particular, he has held terms of office in Washington, Prague, Paris, and Brussels, and has experience in European structural funds, European policies, the European Space Agency. He has travelled extensively in Asia and has visited Afghanistan and Pakistan on a number of occasions, chairing the Atlantic Council on several official missions. He has published a number of articles and essays in specialist journals on Europe, the Atlantic Alliance, Foreign and Defence Policy. Alessandro Minuto-Rizzo is a teacher of European Security and Defence Policy at LUISS University in Rome.

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For additional information on books published by Italian Diplomats consult: http://baldi.diplomacy.edu/diplo

Final words of departing UK Ambassadors

Matthew Parris (and Andrew Bryson) is the author of an interesting and original book titled "Parting shots. The undiplomatic final words of our departing ambassadors" (Penguin, 2010).
The book is a based on a BBC 4 radio series (broadcasted in 2006)  concerning final telegrams UK Diplomats wrote when leaving their country of assignment. They could say whatever they wished in their final telegram home, and they could be very frank about the cultures and countries in which they served. Some of these files were released to the BBC by the Foreign Office under the Freedom of Information Act. The older despatches - those written more than thirty years ago - are from the National Archives in Kew. Some of the text of the dispatches are available online (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n85t5)

Here is a short description of the book provided by the publisher:
"When leaving a foreign posting, Britain's ambassadors were encouraged to write a valedictory despatch until the practice was abolished in 2006. Unlike the usual style of the diplomatic bag, these last reports from foreign posts were unbuttoned, indiscreet and often very funny. There was much settling of scores, some poking fun of foreigners, a degree of moaning about the privations of Embassy life - and sometimes a bit of serious analysis too. Based on a very successful BBC radio series, Matthew Parris, who once worked for the Foreign Office and had the task of distributing the despatches, and Andrew Bryson have compiled an always entertaining and frequently hilarious volume of the best of them."

The book is available in many online libraries. 
Amazon.com provides the opportunity to read the initial pages http://www.amazon.com/Parting-Shots-Parris/dp/0670919284/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315748856&sr=8-1