The best books about diplomacy

From Sadat to Saddam is both a memoir and a reflection on the politicization of the U.S. diplomatic corps and the militarization of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. This book begins with the 1981 assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, continues through two Gulf wars, and ends with the U.S. withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq in 2011. It addresses the basic questions of how and why we find ourselves today in endless military conflict and how we allowed our soft power to atrophy well before the election of Donald Trump. It chronicles three decades of dealing with foreign policy challenges, opportunities, and frustrations and recommends that the time has come to invest in a truly professional diplomatic service.

From Sadat to Saddam is both a memoir and a reflection on the politicization of the U.S. diplomatic corps and the militarization of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. This book begins with the 1981 assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, continues through two Gulf wars, and ends with the U.S. withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq in 2011. It addresses the basic questions of how and why we find ourselves today in endless military conflict and how we allowed our soft power to atrophy well before the election of Donald Trump. It chronicles three decades of dealing with foreign policy challenges, opportunities, and frustrations and recommends that the time has come to invest in a truly professional diplomatic service.

Agent Jack tells the incredible true story of Eric Roberts, a seemingly inconsequential bank clerk who, in the guise of "Jack King", helped uncover and neutralize the invisible threat of fascism on British shores. Gifted with an extraordinary ability to make people trust him, Eric Roberts penetrated the Communist Party and the British Union of Fascists before playing his greatest role for MI5: Hitler's man in London. Pretending to be an agent of the Gestapo, Roberts single-handedly built a network of hundreds of British Nazi sympathizers--factory workers, office clerks, shopkeepers --who shared their secrets with him. It was work so secret and so sensitive that it was kept out of the reports MI5 sent to Winston Churchill.

I wrote my monograph Fighting Terror After Napoleon as an attempt to reconstruct that unique and strange experiment that the countries of the Seventh Coalition undertook to ‘bring back the world to more peaceful habits’.  In 1815, as the allied leaders and generals had it. They did not ‘bring the boys back home’, but remain put as an Allied Army of Occupation in France. Lots of books have been written on the Congress of Vienna and the Balance of Power. But how did they – the men and women on the spot – rolled out this experiment of collective security on the ground, in detail and practice?

I surmised that they – the ministers, generals, ambassadors, and other officers – worked together in Paris via some sort of ‘deliberative platform’ – because, organizing reparation payments, return of looted artwork, running a 1.2 million army of occupation, building a string of fortresses around France, etc., does require some hands-on management. I reconstructed and narrated this story as the imperialist, repressive, and authoritarian undertaking it mostly was. But I also highlighted the fact that it truly was an attempt to repair the trauma of the terror years, and bring back ‘balance’ and ‘moderation’ to the continent and beyond. In my book, you can read whether I thought this nascent European security culture to be a success - or not.

Malcolm Roberts, a young man in 1920s London, finds himself struggling with the sudden and immense changes that resulted from the Great War. With his once affluent family now in tatters, this adolescent is searching for purpose and finds life exciting and vibrant in the nearby Dickensian-still East End. But when he stumbles upon the mysterious plot of a group of vigilantes bent on attacking the Chinese vicinage of Limehouse, he and an unlikely collection of friends must shoulder the burden.

And shoulder it they must after grappling with a corrupt constabulary. Malcolm’s fledgling emotions with a first-love experience complicates matters, as does happening upon a murder. Will he and his friends succeed? Only the reader will find out.

Twilight of Impunity is based on the 300-plus dispatches I wrote while monitoring the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic, the first such trial since Nazis faced justice at Nuremberg. The book brings to life the stories of survivors, makes complex legal theories understandable, and argues that the trial created a framework for other international war crimes trials and the permanent International Criminal Court. I show how Milosevic attempted to highjack the trial and use it as a vehicle for his propaganda about the Balkan wars and his role in them. For all its flaws, the trial provided a step forward in the quest for international justice as a replacement for impunity and the eternal cycle of hatred and violence. 

Few outsiders know South Sudan as well as Nick Coghlan, who first saw this troubled land from the rear door of a relief aircraft in 2001 as civil war raged, and then went on to serve as Canada’s first Ambassador to the new country. He witnesses the hope and euphoria of the post-independence years, then the violent implosion of the capital, Juba. He travels to every corner of South Sudan, meeting with dignitaries, aid workers, and ordinary people. He hears of unimaginable atrocities and despairs of the inefficiencies of aid efforts, finding some consolation in the stoicism and endurance of the women he meets in grim camps for the displaced. If you think the life of a diplomat is all small talk and servants, this book might put you right.

As Adolf Hitler’s Nazi armies seized European nations, Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt shocked America by announcing in June 1940 that two prominent Republicans would join his cabinet. Henry Stimson, former President Herbert Hoover’s secretary of state, became secretary of war, and Frank Knox, the Republican vice-presidential candidate in 1936, became secretary of the navy.

Building a bipartisan alliance amid a global war against fascism was a risky move that could have backfired disastrously. But FDR’s Republican allies, including 1940 Republican presidential nominee Wendell Willkie, went on to play critical roles in uniting the country and leading the war effort. This fascinating and deeply researched book is a must-read for anyone who believes America must once again unite to defend democracy at home and abroad.

American Arabists examines America's Middle East area specialists and their experience over three critical decades of foreign policy, aiming to understand how they were trained, what they learned, and their foreign policy perspective, as well as to evaluate their influence. The book examines the worldview of these modern “Arabists” or Middle East hands over three decades after the Second World War, and their interactions with the peoples of the Middle East and American presidents during the Cold War. Using a series of case studies that span the Eisenhower through the Ford administrations to shed light on Washington’s perceptions of Israel and the Arab world, as well as how American leaders came to regard (and often disregard) the advice of their own experts.

World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia--and he was certainly dead before it ended. His armies did not fight in multiple theaters, his empire did not span the Eurasian continent, and he did not inherit any of the spoils of war. That central role belonged to Joseph Stalin. The Second World War was not Hitler's war; it was Stalin's war.

Drawing on ambitious new research in Soviet, European, and US archives, Stalin's War revolutionizes our understanding of this global conflict by moving its epicenter to the east. Hitler's genocidal ambition may have helped unleash Armageddon, but as McMeekin shows, the war which emerged in Europe in September 1939 was the one Stalin wanted, not Hitler. So, too, did the Pacific war of 1941-1945 fulfill Stalin's goal of unleashing a devastating war of attrition between Japan and the "Anglo-Saxon" capitalist powers he viewed as his ultimate adversary.