In Service to America
After reading Marie Yovanovitch’s memoir my respect
for America’s foreign service officers has only grown. Most of the officers do
not serve in glamourous capitals like London and Paris, but in out-of-the-way
places where many are both corrupt and dangerous. Yovanovitch was no exception
where aside from serving in London where she attended a ball at Buckingham
Palace, she served in Somalia and as ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and, of
course, Ukraine. I also learned that most officers are not engaged in high
policy, but rather are engaged in making sure the American embassy works on a
day-to-day basis. In Mogadishu, for example, Yovanovitch made sure there was
sufficient gasoline for the embassy’s vehicles, no easy task.
Yovanovitch is most famous for being fired by Donald
Trump as our ambassador to Ukraine in April 2019 where she was a pawn in Rudy
Giuliani’s intrigues to get dirt on Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. Giuliani was
working hand-in-glove with the corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor Yuri Lutsenko.
Several of the Ukrainian oligarchs wanted to get rid of Yovanovitch because she
was supporting the anti-corruption forces in Ukraine. One of her duties as
ambassador was to support anti-corruption and pro-democracy efforts in Ukraine.
As a result, corrupt politician in America and Ukraine had a common interest in
removing her.
Her removal made her a star witness in Trump’s first
impeachment trial. It was here where America got to know her. Needless to say,
her testimony was a showstopper. What the public did not know at the time was
that her 90-year-old mother died, and she cracked a tooth leading to root canal
surgery.
From her memoir we learn about her family who fled
both Nazi and Communist tyranny and ended up in rural Connecticut via Canada
where her father taught at a boarding school. We also learned that her then 88-year-old
mother was with her in Ukraine while she was ambassador. She never married and
the only hint of a romantic attachment she gives out was when she dated a marine
guard in Mogadishu.
She did very well for a self-proclaimed introvert who
had to attend numerous public functions and deal with various heads of state
and foreign ministers. She also had to balance American interests with American
values. In her view short-term interests many times prevailed over our values.
Simply put it is very difficult to trust corrupt dictators who would betray us
to the next higher bidder.
Mari Yovanovitch has written an important book
describing her life as a foreign service officer and an ambassador and the
lessons she learned from being on the edge and part of history. We need more
people like her.
For the full Amazon URL see: In Service to America (amazon.com)
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