From 1981 to 1996, you’ve had tours of duty as United States ambassador in Honduras, Mexico, and the Philippines. I’m wondering what led you to join the Foreign Service in the first place?
What prompted me to join the Foreign Service was a strong interest in international affairs and diplomacy. That was always my main academic interest ever since I was at Yale, and I was fortunate enough to pass the Foreign Service exam, which I took in my senior year and immediately after graduation. So by October of 1960, I was already in the Foreign Service.
I have a few questions about the positions you’ve held throughout your career. Let’s start with your time spent in Central America. While you were stationed there, what were the United States’ economic and political goals for the region?
The region was in turmoil. The Sandinistas were planning a revolution in Nicaragua, and the government supported by Nostra and Havana was in office there….President Carter helped the Sandinistas get to power but towards the very end of his term, he himself realized that things weren’t turning out the way he had hoped. Then right before he ended his term, they intercepted a huge shipment of arms that was going from Nicaragua to the rebels in El Salvador. And that’s when President Carter decided to suspend the coup and his suspension of military assistance to the Salvador government – because all of a sudden we realized that the revolution wasn’t something just affecting Nicaragua, it was affecting the whole region. So what had happened was an effort to spread Soviet Cuban-backed Revolution that was taking place throughout Central America. That was the situation I found when I reached Honduras; Honduras itself was surrounded by trouble, but it was probably one of the most stable countries there. El Salvador had a civil war going on; so did Nicaragua, and Guatemala had military activity. So there were refugees from all those three neighboring countries in Honduras. People weren’t fleeing from Honduras to go to these other countries – it was the other way around.
In light of these experiences you’ve had during your time as ambassador for so many different countries, what would you say has been the hardest moment or decision that you’ve faced in your diplomatic career?
Usually people will ask me what my favorite assignment was, but my most frustrating and difficult assignment in terms of the decisions I’ve had to make, I think I’d say my service in Iraq. We just confronted a terribly difficult situation there. I think the challenges there were extremely interesting – establishing security, restoring order. I was sent as the first ambassador after we had occupied it. There were myriad challenges to helping the country get back on its feet. So I found that both extremely interesting and extremely challenging.
You became known for establishing the “Negroponte Doctrine” during your time as Ambassador to the United Nations. Would you modify this Doctrine today?
People ascribe that name to the approach I took [during my time as Ambassador]. I was never so presumptuous as to say, “Here I am, I’m a Doctrine.” But let me tell you what inspired this approach. That Doctrine, as you call it, basically referred to the idea that trying to treat Israel fairly and working to ensure Israel is treated accordingly in the United Nations is a very lopsided approach. In the General Assembly about issues concerning Israel, quite often the vote was something like 188-3. The three countries voting “No” would be the United States, Israel, and maybe some South Pacific country. It just wasn’t fair. It was like what Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan had to do to defeat the “Zionism is racism” resolution. I was trying to help correct that, and one of the ways I sought to correct it was to make the suggestion that we adopt an approach in the Security Council where if there was a resolution that wanted to criticize Israel for some act of violence that had taken place in the West Bank or elsewhere, I was going to introduce balance to that resolution by also calling attention to be similar Palestinian filing that was the basic idea – to level the playing field at the very least between Israel and Palestine.
Were you still Ambassador today, how would you apply this Doctrine to the United States’ current relationship with Israel?
It really wasn’t a prescription for our relationship with Israel; it was a prescription for how we approached the issue of Israel in the UN. So I don’t think I would change anything in the United Nations about that approach. Now that we’ve got this violence occurring in Israel, which seems to have been increasingly dramatically, sort of like an Intifada again, I’m sure that our group is going to have to prevent some kind of Pro-Palestinian resolution, and whoever is Ambassador to the UN and whoever deals with that issue is going to have to veto it, which we’ve done frequently as you know. We’ve vetoed anti-Israel resolutions before. Or we’ll have to make a strenuous effort to introduce some balance into whatever the taste of that resolution is. As far as our overall policy is in Israel, I think the important thing is to lend them our strong allied military and political support. Also, when we do have differences with them, we should try to deal them through quiet diplomacy rather than public disagreements. I think it’s been very negative for the US-Israel relationship for President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu to have public differences. That just has the effect of eroding confidence in the relationship.
What that in mind, what are your thoughts on the nuclear deal with Iran and the inspection mechanisms in place for that deal?
I was one of the skeptics. I feel a lot of concessions were made in that deal, including things I would’ve thought twice about. For example, the notion that after eight years, the ban on the sale of certain types of conventional arms would be lifted. First of all, rockets and conventional arms weren’t even a part of these negotiations, so I don’t know how the heck it got in there. It’s almost as if some kind of “sweetener” were added, as if our negotiators just thought it would be nice to give that to the Iranians. And it’s probably something they asked for at the last minute, and they felt that we were under a psychological pressure to come to a deal, so that’s an example of something I felt skeptical about. The other example, of course, is that the deal came out a lot different than where we started. In the beginning, we didn’t want Iran to have any enrichment capability whatsoever, so we’ll just have to see how well the inspections are carried out and whether the Iranians really cooperate with the IAEA inspectors. We need to watch them carefully, and we need people to get smart about the Iranians’ nuclear capabilities. People can monitor and watch intelligently as this thing is carried out.
On this issue of inspections, you’ve mentioned in previous interviews that you had hoped to give the nuclear inspection process more time before the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq. Would doing that have changed the outcome?
When I answer that question, my point is to say, “Look we spent a couple of months – me and Secretary of State [Colin] Powell – working very hard to get that resolution, and it finally went through the Security Council in late November [2002], and the idea that any treaty must err in preparing for war, in a time on the verge of going to war with Iraq. It seemed to be a bit rash. The inspections process takes time to set up and carry out. Would the outcome have been different had we waited longer? I can’t say.
Moving forward to today, there has been a recent, vicious resurgence of sectarian violence in Iraq. What is your long-term prognosis for the Islamic State and how should the United States respond?
I see predictions all over the place. To me, that’s just a symptom of tremendous uncertainty out there. People have a hard time visualizing what things are going to be like. I was just reading an article by Ambassador Bolton, also a former Ambassador to the UN, predicting that the map was going to change and then Iraq and Syria were going to be broken up in different ways. I think this is all highly speculative. My view is that we need to help Iraq. The situation there is not hopeless by any means. We’ve captured some of the territory they lost to ISIL, and they’re going to move to eventually restore control over Mosul, which is the second or third largest city in the country. I would put priority on defeating ISIL in Iraq first, since we know Iraq better, we have some people on the ground there, and not withstanding commentary to the contrary, I personally don’t see Iraq falling apart into different pieces. Over time, we have a reasonable chance to succeed in putting these pieces back together.
You were named in 2005 as the first ever Director of National Intelligence. How did this new position reflect the President’s intelligence priorities at the time?
President Bush’s father had been head of the CIA. So I don’t think he had a great appetite for reforming the setup. I think he would’ve preferred the CIA remain the lead agency for intelligence. But he was confronted with this pressure for reform. And that pressure became particularly acute when we had this WMD fiasco with respect to Iraq. Then during his campaign [in 2004], Secretary Kerry said he was in favor of the reform, so President Bush also decided to stick with the reform. I think that what he wanted to see out of the reform was, obviously, like everybody else, that we take steps to help avoid repetition of things like 9/11 and the WMD fiasco. He wanted to improve our analytic capabilities, improve the integration and coordination between agencies, and generally improve our guiding plans of intelligence. He cared a lot about intelligence. President Bush was a very big customer for analytics, and he knew a lot about intelligence.
Foreign policy has been an important topic of debate as we approach the 2016 presidential election. What role should the United States play in foreign armed conflicts?
Getting involved in another foreign venture involves thousands of United States troops. I think it would be very hard to get public support for sending citizens on dangerous expeditions halfway around the world. That kind of large scale enterprise is something future Presidents will avoid as much as they can. You never can say never, because there might be some future situation that might require it. So I think our approach is going to be a little more targeted, and a little bit more selective. I think there will be more use of intelligence and special forces and special operations. I think we’re going to retain our interest in what’s happening in various parts around the world, and we’re going to want to help other countries deal with these situations. But I think there’s going to be a greater emphasis on smaller-scale activity in the military and also improving local government capabilities to deal with these situations themselves.
You’ve cited the Vietnam War before as a defining factor in your career. What lessons, if any, from that time best apply to U.S. foreign policy today?
Many different lessons apply, but one has to do with having clear-cut objectives from the outset. You’ve got to know what you want to accomplish when you decide to deploy so many troops to a particular situation. When I got to Saigon, to the embassy in 1964, we only had 20,000 advisors in Vietnam. 20,000 military advisors. Nobody played a combat role. By the time I left the embassy in Saigon in January 1969, four years later, there were 520,000 combat troops in Vietnam. And Vietnam was literally halfway around the world, so I think you have to have a clear-cut vision of what you want to accomplish. I believe that another important lesson from Vietnam is this: if the situation is so important to you, then I think you have to really make a major investment in improving local capabilities. We started a weaponization program much too late; we didn’t start it until after the Tet offensive in 1968. We already had been involved there for a number of years. Thirdly, to the extent you can, try to do these interventions with the legitimacy and imprimatur of the United Nations, ideally operating under a Security Council resolution. If you can’t get that, at least go in with allies, major allies with a lot of influence on their own: NATO, Japan, Korea, and so forth. And I think unilateralism and doing these things completely alone should really be only a last resort.
As we begin to conclude this interview, I wanted to ask some questions that we’re having all of our Jackson Institute Fellows answer. What about your time at Yale have you most enjoyed?
I’ve been here now for six years, and I just signed on for another three years as a teacher. I came directly out of government – I came just after the Bush Administration ended and President Obama took office. To me, first of all, Yale is my alma mater, so that in of itself is a real pleasure. I was an undergraduate in Davenport College; I’m a fellow at Davenport College, and I carry out some activities over there. Probably the most satisfying thing for me is keeping relationships with the students, and especially those who are interested in public service and the fields of diplomacy and international security. I’ve actually done quite a bit of career counseling in those fields and watched with satisfaction a number of them graduate and then go on to jobs in Washington, whether it’s in the State Department or the intelligence community or in Congress.
What advice do you have for current Yale undergraduates, especially those looking for a career in public service?
Go for it! It’s fairly straightforward. There are internship opportunities with government agencies, think tanks – there are a lot more think tanks than when I went to college, and they have summer internships if you endear yourself to that Washington atmosphere. In the case of the Foreign Service, there’s an examination process that’s very transparent so I encourage those interested in diplomacy to look at the State Department website. Finally, there are a lot of analytical jobs for those studying specific regions or East Asian Studies or Global Affairs. There are lots of jobs for analysts, whether it’s for the CIA or Defense Department or other parts of the government. There are a lot of jobs for people who have an interest in analyzing international security situations. The last thing I’ll say is especially if you’re interested in being a diplomat, language and area skills are important. For those interested in being a diplomat, the knowledge of at least one – or possibly more – foreign languages is a very important skill set to have.