Quote of the Day (John Kenneth Galbraith, on an Ironclad Rule of Diplomacy)

“There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy, but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished.”—Canadian-American economist and diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006), “The American Ambassador,” Foreign Service Journal (June 1969)

In December 1960, President-elect John F. Kennedy sounded out John Kenneth Galbraith on chairing the Council of Economic Advisors in the new administration. The Harvard professor rejected that offer ("I didn't wish to come every day to the same discussion of the same questions around the same table mostly with the same people, not all of whom I wish to see").

But another position intrigued him: US Ambassador to India, where he could see firsthand how the principles of international development he had taught for the past decade might work in an emerging nation. And so, 65 years ago today, the economist was appointed to the post.

I was all set to include a quote from Galbraith’s 1969 book Ambassador’s Journal about the embassy staff in India, as well as the Nehru government’s suspicions of the U.S. assistance program.

In addition to the diary entries and letters to JFK published in that volume, he was still passing on what he learned in his two years on the subcontinent in The Nature of Mass Poverty (1979), which cautioned that the international economy could inadvertently maintain large populations in conditions of want.

But as soon as I saw the above quote, it resonated with me, as I think it might with so many other Americans today.

Over the last month, the public has grown accustomed to the White House offering assessments of the Iranian War that—how shall I say this?—may be prematurely optimistic, including President Trump’s claim that “very good and productive” talks have been held with Tehran over at least ending the regime’s stoppage at the Strait of Hormuz, and maybe even bringing the conflict as a whole to a close.

More and more people are experiencing nightmares of long, inconclusive conflicts that drain American money and lives—the kind associated with Iraq, the kind that candidate Trump vowed never to begin.

Ambassador Galbraith was a caustic critic of such adventurism. Within a month of his appointment, he was explaining to JFK how the Bay of Pigs fiasco appeared to his Indian hosts (not good), and before long he was warning, in no uncertain terms, that conditions in Vietnam were "far more complex, far less controllable, far more varied in the factors involved, far more susceptible to misunderstanding" than his military advisers were saying.

It’s nice to think of a time when a President had the patience to read an adviser’s memos on matters like improving the US Information Service rather than emasculating it; why it would be a good idea to avoid military involvement in a land that posed no security threat to America; and how an administration would be more inclined to cajole and persuade other countries to our positions rather than bullying them, springing from what the Declaration of Independence called “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.”