is it fair to say the reputation has taken a beating? >> guest: i certainly think discovering the new world is deeply offensive to the indigenous population. the beginning of the 18th 18th century the knew virtually nothing about the pacific. there was a hint there was a

large land mass in the southern pacific. but it was australia incognito, this land nobody was sure -- nobody had found it. and then in the 18th century, nations became -- got into the curiosity business, and the french and the english sponsored two great explorers, one is captain cook. actually his first name is james, but we think his first name is captain. and they then systemly explore lands of tahiti and when he gets back he publishes his travels and creates this image of a heatty of being this -- a heatty tahiti as lucious and free love

and writing in this roman -- romantic era. and cook was much sterner than that. he has four great explorations of the pacific, where he goes all the way from the northwest, where he is very interested in seeing if there is a northwest passage in the arctic region, and then he does circumnavigate new zealand and explores the eastern side, but he also discovers the hawaiian islands and a series of islands where the polynesian people live. he charts, a great mapmaker, car of guardrailer, -- after cook it's well known what was in the

pacific. >> host: what did you learn. >> guest: one thing i think is fascinating, since we are talking about the pacific. louis xvi read cook's. the english rushed his travels out. and he is just fascinated. and here his kingdom is falling apart, the very beginning of the french revolution, and he decides to send out an exploration of five ships, see if they can find the australia's incognito, and there's a young -- and this five voyage -- five-ship voyage is destroyed in the shrooms between new zealand and nobody is heard from them.

just wiped out 30. years later they find some remains-but there's a young corsican named napoleon who wanted to be on the crew but doesn't make the cut. wow, how different would have been different if he had again on this disastrous voyage. i offend all those things interesting. >> host: now that you don't have to be a scholar anymore, huh writing another book? >> guest: no. i'm reading other people's books. >> host: not even working on one? not even thinking about one? >> guest: well, there's always that thought. has to be a subject that really interests me, and curiosity is very strange. it's fickle. we wouldn't call it emotion. it's a fickle call the. >> host: or an obsession?

or an obsession, right. i'm halving a grand time, reading what other people are doing, waiting for spring and gardening to begin. >> host: new world discoveries in the scientific imagination is the subtitle of joyce apple by's most recent book, "shores of knowledge." booktv is on location at ucla. >> booktv is on twitter. twitter.com/booktv. >> you're watching booktv. george liebmann is next, and he talks about john negro honest at the. this is an here and ten minutes.

>> -- an historian in diplomatic history. his publications include diplomacy between the wars, five diplomats and the shaping of the modern world. tonight he is here to talk about his new book, u.s. ambassador, job negroponte. welcome, george. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. the book is called "the last american diplomat" not because job negroponte was in any literal sense the last american diplomat, but because in some respects he is the last diplomat of a type and of a generation. he entered the foreign service immediately on graduation from yale. his education was essentially in the humanities, not

international relations. he thought the most valuable course he took in college was a course in economic geography. he was required as a yale student to take a court in dealing with the english civil service. no one pays any attention anymore to english constitutional history. and when he entered the foreign service, his first assignment was in hong kong, in 1960. and hong kong in 1960, it's hard to remember this -- was a place that existed in almost total isolation from china. there were millions of refugees

in hong kong but no americans could go to china, and it was no trade. it was a listening post but not a very informative one. but the experience that he had there used to be typical of the experience that foreign service officers had. he was assigned to interview visa applicants. he learned at least rudimentary mandarin chinese, and it was undoubtedly a broadening experience for a graduate of ex-iter and yale so suddenly find themself interrogating imponchished and desperate people. and it is an experience which the dennisons of washington think tanks these days have not had and it produces less certitude and more humanity than

we see on the part of those who think that they are entitled to make foreign poll? i washington. -- foreign policy in washington. i what nose close to john negroponte during that period. we grew up in the same apartment building. we were close until the age of ten. we went off in completely different directions and i didn't see him for 50 years. and i then saw him when my mother saw his mother's obituary in a newspaper, when she was in her 80s. and she said, well, he was always a nice boy. and i have found that, at my age, i wouldn't have any friends if i hadn't tried to renew old acquaintances, because they have a tendency to die off when you get into your 70s and 80s. so i looked him up. he was then outside of government at mcgraw hill, and one thing led to another, and there came a time when we were

having lunch and he said something that suggested to me that he might not be adverse to having someone write about his career, although he had not kept a diary and hadn't undertaken to write anything himself. i thought, having written an earlier book about diplomats of the '20s in and '30s, his life would be a good way of telling the story of american foreign policy during the last 50 years, which is what i've tried to do in this book. his sojourn in hong kong was uneventful. the leading foreign policy issue in hong kong at that time concerned textile imports. the kennedy administration was not happy at the volume of hong kong textile imports, and

kennedy complained to prime minister mcmillan about it. mcmillan's abc was a very good one. he said, we used to have the same problem. we sold all this textile machinery to india, and india promptly took away our markets. and we decided the only thing to do about it was to try to educate our population so they could produce and sell other things, which in britain's case was and is invisible exports. banking, insurance, law, accounting, academia, publishing, and so on, where the british still probably lead the world and almost certainly lead us. but with respect -- this hong kong period was nearly an interlude and negroponte, like

most american foreign service officers during the johnson administration, was then assigned to serve for a period in vietnam. and he went to language school for nine months, and became, by most accounts, the second best vietnamese speaker in the foreign service, which gives you some idea of how inadequate lang training is in the foreign service. he had a gift for languages. he had grownup a household where french, greek, and english were spoken more or less interchangeably, but nonetheless, he was sent -- his assignment for the first two years in vietnam was to work with a group presided over by a famous diplomat named phillip

lab bieb, and there was a group of eight or ten americans, the best known of which was richard holebrook, whose job was to go out 0 into the vietnamese provinces and make assessments of the political situation in each province. and this were the only objective assessments made that time. the defense department people were bound to proclimb what they were doing was great success and prosperity was just around the corner. the people from the agency for international development, who devoted themselves to giving away rice, tin roofs and cinderblocks, similarly, were proud of the way they were winning the hearts and minds of the people. the state department people didn't really have a dog in that fight. they were not delivering programs. they were uobserving. and what they observed -- they

were all pretty much in agreement about this -- was that there were dramatic differences between the provinces in south vietnam, the most pronounced differences depended upon the religious composition of the population, and how many of the people there had been refugees from the north. when the french not out of north vietnam there was a massacre of about 50,000 catholics, and this was followed by a flight to the south of more than a million catholics. and the united states played a considerable part in helping evacuate them to the south, which led senator george akin, who was best known for his later recommendation that the united states should declare a victory and go home -- to observe that

no good deed goes unpunished. because the effect of having this very large northern population consisting most've of catholics in the south, was to create a condition in which the government of the south was almost entirely in the hands of northern catholics. and the provinces with a large catholic population were pro-government. the provinces that didn't have a large northern catholic population were at best neutralists, and you will recall the demonstrations by the buddhists, the people immolating themselves and so forth. so, the recommendations of the negroponte was a pessimist and a dove for the early part of his stay in vietnam. he then was assigned to observe the vietnamese constituent assembly, and he thought the

trouble with the constituent assembly was that the constitution that it recommended essentially gave all power to the president. and this was -- this tendency was aggravate build the policy of the american embassy, through our involvement in vietnam. the chief objective of american policy as far as domestic, vietnamese politics were concerned, was to avoid a situation in which there was division in the south vietnamese military. there were two elections that took place in south vietnam. in the first of these, the logical rivals were few, who was a catholic, albeit a southern catholic, and marshal ki, who was at least a nominal buddhist. marshall ki, who you may remember, was rather colorful

character who was known to the population as mr. mustache. the embassy, rather obviously, favored thu, and the result was there was an election in which there was a ticket and ki accepted the vice-presidency. so it wasn't much of an election. it was a forgone conclusion. the second vietnamese election, the same thing took place. there was a possible candidacy of general mein. otherwise nope as big mean -- otherwise known as big mean, and the embassy discouraged it, and ultimately there was an eflex which the army candidate, thu, opposed some rather underfinance vietnamese civilians with the result that might be expected. after this first part of his tenure in vietnam, which lasted for four years, negroponte was

then assigned to work at the paris peace conference, and he did not like this assignment much. because his view and that of anthony lake and various other people on the american side, was that as long as the united states was withdrawing troops, which it then was committed to do beginning in the last year of the johnson administration -- the vietnamese -- north vietnamese had no innocent tonight negotiate a serious agreement, and negroponte had the job of being an interpreter during the day and writing long dispatches to washington at night. which he found rather exhausting, after a couple of years of this, he was given a sabbatical and spent nine months at the hoover institution in stanford as the diplomat in

resident. while at the hoover institution he wrote four or five papers that really are the most important and in some respects the only expressions of his personal point of view as to these matters. and his essential view about the vietnam war was that the united states could not possibly succeed because it was fighting a limited war which presented no existential threat to the north vietnamese government, and were working to take over the south. what was going on was of course exacerbated by the rather extraordinary analysis of the situation on the part of the american commander, general

westmoreland, who thought that the united states, because it was a much bigger country, could win a war of attrition, and his view was the united states could kill two or three vietnamese for each lost american, and there would come a time, if it did this for long enough, when the vietnamese would have to give up. of course it worked in reverse. there came a time when the united states had to give up, but the turning point in many ways in vietnam, but a very misunderstood turning point, was the tet offensive of the north vietnamese in 1968 when they managed to penetrate the walls of the american embassy and the reaction in this country was, this whole thing is no good and we have to get out and it's hopeless. what happened in vietnam was rather different because the vietnamese guerrillas in the south came out of hiding and were more or less massacred by

the americans in south vietnamese. there was no significant guerrilla presence in the south after the tet offensive. the north vietnamese when they hound the city of huey, massacred several thousand buddhist leaders which did not endear them to the buddhist population, and they then began to support the south vietnamese government, and then finally the other major change that took place at the time of the tet offensive, was that westmoreland was replaced by general crayton abrams. west moreland's philosophy was that the american troops should be on the front lines and the south vietnamese army, which the french had trained, wasn't good for anything and were just used in the rear echelon so no

serious effort was made during west moreland's tenure to train the south seemas, abrams undertook vietnamizeation, and trained the south vietnamese army, and did so quite discussfully. -- successfully. the only fly is while the enlisted men were well-trained, the officer corps was appointed in saigon and not very wisely appointed. later when negroponte was ambassador to iraq, he worked rather hard at getting training for the iraqi generals, and this was in part a reflection of his experience in vietnam. but in any event, what then transpired was the most -- probably the most dramatic episode in negroponte's career. when the new administration came to power, kissinger proposed a

bombing campaign which, unlike previous bombing campaigns, would seriously attack the hanoi railyards and would include a blockade of the port of hiphong, and much to martin luther kissie , supported this strategic bombing on the theory that it for the first time the united states was presenting an existential threat to the north vietnamese government. the war at that point had ceased to be a guerrilla war. it had become a conventional war. the north vietnamese needed supplies from china and the soviet union, and what was being done interdicted those supplies.

the -- this came to a peak at the time of the so-called christmas bombing in '73, but the christmas bombing had been preceded by nixon's opening to china and his visits, first with mao and en -- la and i then with brezhnev in the soviet union, and negroponte was present for vest visits and was rather shocked when kissinger put on the table what was called the leopard skin plan, which would provide for a peace agreement which would allow the north vietnamese to retain troops in the south. negroponte thought that was absolutely fatal to any chance of survival of the south

vietnamese government, because instead of having a relatively short frontier of a hundred miles or so to defend they would be presented with a frontier that was really a thousand or more miles long. this was a view shared by the british commander in malaya and who was an adviser to the nixon administration. but the terms on which the war was settled allowed the north vietnamese to retain troops in the south, and the terms were quite different from those which had been secured by the french at the end of the french war, which resulted in the withdrawal of north vietnamese troops from the south, and there were also quite different from the terms that were secured by rhi at the at the time of the settlement of the korean war in 1953 when the

chinese were required to withdraw from the country as part of the peace agreement. so, negroponte was quite disillusioned by the paris agreement, and made clear to kissinger he did not agree with it. he attended the initialing of it but refused to go to hanoi for the signing. and there were stories that appeared in american newspapers, notably the "washington post," which disclosed his point of view, which was also the point of view of alexander haig, who was kissinger's deputy. kissinger didn't blame negroponte for these disclosures because they obviously came from haig, but later on, a year later, negro groh honest at the gave an -- negroponte gave an interview to "the new york times," which wasn't published until a year after that, until

roughly 1974, and that interview was sort of the last straw in the relationship between kissinger and negroponte. negroponte didn't want to work for kissinger any longer, and he asked for re-assignment, and he was re-assigned. he was just told to take pot luck in the foreign service pool, and he went from being the head of the vietnam desk at the state department at the age of 34, dealing with most serious of foreign policy problems, and instead found himself the number three man in ecuador, where the most serious problems involved conflicts over tuna fishing. well, he made a success of his tenure in ecuador because he

rather rapidly decided that the south american countries that wanted wider fishing limits, wider powers of regulation over coastal fisheries, were basically right. what had happened until that time was that the soviet and japanese fishing trawlers came up to the three-mile limit and essentially sucked up enormous quantities of fish, which had a rather bad effect front a conservation viewpoint, and when the countries were allowed to regulate fishing up to 200 miles, which was the ultimate arrange independent the law of the sea treaty, the problems presented be the trawler fleets were greatly diminished. after ecuador, however there was another rather curious episode that revealed the extent of his

differences with kissinger. he had arranged that his next assignment would be as deputy to kenneth rush, who was a very prominent republican diplomatic appointee in france and negroponte was to be his special assistant. he learned that kissinger was on his tie washington, and he wrote kissinger kings and said, haven't seen you in several year skis want to talk to you about this terrible defamation that the cia is being subjected to in latin america. and all kind0s accusations made about his nefarious activity biz people who had written books, and this was a rather naive thing to say because at that point kissinger, according to many later accounts, was up to

his ears in the chilean coup d'etat. so, far from seeing negroponte, kissinger sent word to his then-deputy, lawrence eagleberger, who later became secretary of state, i don't want negroponte assigned anywhere where i might meet him. and eagleberger said, well, mr. secretary, there's an agreement with the foreign service association that once someone has been assigned, the only way of changing the assignment is to abolish his position. and to which kissinger's rejoinder was, well, abolish it, then. which is what happened. and negroponte was again relegated to the foreign service pool, offered the job of consul general in turkey. the then ambassador to turkey, william macomber, quite understandably, took the view that assigning someone of greek

extraction to the scene of the smyrna massacre in 1922 might not be well-received by the turks. so, negroponte instead was assigned at consul general in -- not stimulating for someone with roots in the greek shipping industry. after his tenure there, where he got married, he then received another rather minor assignment during the kissinger era as assistant secretary of state for fisheries. the fishing industry is not a big factor in the american economy. it amounts to about $6 billion a year in an $18 trillion economy. but he negotiated some fishing treaties, and he wrote a paper which provided the basis of american policy and all the

subsequent law of the sea negotiations, and the law of the sea treaty has been ratified by virtually everyone except the united states. and he recommended the united states side but was -- others thought our power was so overwhelming and and there was no need for the treaty. and when one looks at the british naval superiority when it was nullified by the new capacities of bombers, the wisdom of this appears questionable. but in any event, negroponte had this fisheries and law of the sea assignment, and then with the end of the nixon and ford administrations, he got out of

purgatory because his friend, richard holbrooke, who had left the government, came back as assistant secretary for far eastern affairs, and negroponte that point became his deputy. and what then transpired is something that is still rather unappreciated in this country, and that is the role of some people who had been second and third level foreign service officers, in providing for the relief of indo chinese refugees. there were approximately two million indo chinese refugees who were able to emigrate in the '70s and '80s, and the foreign service officers who had served in vietnam and promoted

this emigration, was successful in arranging for the seth up of three reception camps, all in countries which did not receive vietnamese refugees. one in the philippines, one in ma slaylay should, and one in thailand. these reception camps were financed by another country that didn't receive refugees, namely, japan. >> and the two million refugees who passed through them in ten or 12 years, were received approximately half by the united states and half in roughly equal shares by australia, canada, and france, which made a -- which involved a radical change in the immigration policies of both australia and canada, which previously had been limited to the receipt of white immigrants. but the reception of a million vietnamese refugees by the

united states was almost a political miracle, because at that time, this country was very hard, even on its veterans of vietnam, let alone refugees from vietnam. most public opinion polls showed that something like 70% of the population didn't favor the reception of refugees in large numbers -- and it was accomplished politically, largely because the then-chairman of the relevant house subcommittee, congressman solares of brooklyn, was strongly in favor of the program. there was no vociferous opponent of it in the senate, and both the ford and carter administrations particularly julia taft, the assistant secretary for refugees in the ford administration, and later in the reagan administration, were very supportive of this development. if one diplomat has to be given

credit for it, that diplomat would probably be holbrooke, but negroponte played an important role in giving congressional testimony, and negroponte's deputy -- actually, the assistant secretary for refugees, later served as the deputy chief of mission under negroponte in honduras. with the end of the carter administration, negroponte served for a relatively short i'm as colin powell's deputy at the national security council, which meant that powell, as well as haig, became one of his patrons in his later career, and then with the start of the reagan administration, he embarked on the most controversial portion of his career as ambassador to honduras. and there's been a good deal of

misunderstanding about honduras. the honduran government had, as the chief of staff of the army at the time -- i'm sorry -- the head of intelligence of the army at the time, negroponte arrived, a colonel alvarez, who became a favorite of the americans because, unlike most of the honduran military, who fundamentally couldn't have cared less about communism or anticommunism, general alvarez had religion on this subject. he had been trained by the argentine junta. he had the ideology of the argentine junta, and he also was not a catholic. he was an evangelical.

a disciple of the rev -- reverend sun moon and anticommunist. the last several months of the carter administration it was a rather dramatic shift in american foreign policy all over the world, because it began to appear that the soviet union was taking a much more aggressive approach to developments in the third world. there had been the, of course, invasion of afghanistan. there was the assistance to cuban forces in hack go -- angelo la. -- angola, and russia troops in the horn of africa. involvement in the congo, and the carter administration in its last days, began to push back against this.

the -- general alvarez in honduras was responsible for the disappearance of several opposition leaders, and this took place not during the reagan administration, after negroponte's arrival, but actually prior to it. there were two cases that went to the interamerican human rights court that arose during the carter administration, and where it was quite clear that the honduran government was not paying too much regard to the civil liberties of its opponents. immediately after negroponte's arrival as ambassador, the honduran rebels had been successful in blowing up the power plant that served half the country. plunging half the country into darkness for a period of about two weeks. people dying in hospitals.

enormous traffic jams. housewives losing refrigerated meat and so forth. and negroponte made himself fairly popular at the outset by arranging for the flying in of substitute power plants and so forth. but the reaction of the honduran government to this development was about what might have been expected. you may recall that when a bomb went off in the capitol during the later part of the reagan administration, the response of the government was to seek legislation making the unlicensed possession of explosives a federal offense. well, when this bomb went off in hon dura, the handle only the small criminal code. and he urged them to adopt a stronger one.

the reaction of the government was simply to round up everybody it suspected and throw away the key, and the number of people who were detained, many, if not most of whom were ultimately killed, was not enormous but it was several hundred people. and this cast a cloud over negroponte's tenure in the eyes of many of his critics in the united states. what is rather peculiar about what happened to his reputation was that what was going on in el salvador at this time totally dwarfed anything that took place in honduras. the american ambassador to el salvador was a man named dean hinton who is totally forgotten by history. the united states assisted the government of el salvador, which was headed by jose napoleon

dr. day, due duarte, and in the ensuing civil war there war something like 100,000 dead elf dorians almost all of them on the rebel side. at one point the army did a sweep through the countryside there was a massacre in el salvador at a village -- i forget the name of the village, but in any event, the ambassador to el salvador was asked to commonality on it and he didn't think anything untoward happened. negroponte was asked to comment on it and said in fact, it was an unusual flight of refugees across the borders so something must have happened. elliott abrahams, then the assistant secretary in washington said, no, nothing happened. finally, dean hinton, himself got fed up, and about several

months later publicly declare that 30 pound people in salvador had been murdered by the government or by forces allied to the government. and his speech was cleaned up a bit at the state department after he delivered it, but the effect was that vice president george bush, the elder george bush, was sent to el salvador to read the riot act to the salvadoran military, with some effect. but the bad press that negroponte got for what was going on in honduras, really had two sources. when he was sent to honduras, there was great controversy within the american government about the wisdom of resistance to the nicaraguan government in

central america. and there were basically three points of view concerning it. the point of view of people like the outgoing ambassador to nicaragua, and a number other people, was that this was essentially a civil war, it was being stoked by both sides, it was going to go on, and didn't pose a threat to the united states, and it wouldn't come to an end until there was some overarching agreement between the united states and the soviet union. and that is ultimately how the civil wars ended in roughly 1989. when baker met and it was agreed both sides would stop aiding competing factions in central america. there was a section faction that negroponte can be said to have

belonged to that basically favored the contrawar as a way of pushing back at expansionist effort biz the nicaraguan government, not with a view to overthrowing it but with a view to containing it. and negroponte, as ambassador, opposed the idea of american military basses in honduras, and opposed giving the hondurans offensive weapons. but he did favor aid to the contras, who were anything rag wouldan girl guerrillas. there was a faction in washington, jean kirkpatrick, who wanted something very close to direct american military involvement. gates at one point proposed giving the number rag wants

annulet -- nicaraguans an ultimatum and if they didn't comply, bombing their air force, just obliterating their air force, and blockading their ports. gates was thought today as a moderate person but neither in vietnam or nicaragua was he terribly moderate other. people in the administration in washington who had this very highly charged idea about the importance of central america, which is what ultimately gave rise to the iran contra affair. negroponte left before the eye ran contra affair blew up, and his next assignment -- but while in honduras he had been subjected to criticism in the american press, really for two bad reasons, and one good one. the two bad reasons were the

faction in the state department that wanted to discredit any effort by -- to support the contras. essentially leaked against him and there was a front-pain story in "news week" magazine that pore they'red him as a villain of darkest hue, and this stuck to him for quite a while. and the anything rag would government accused if. virtually every sin under the son, accused hmm of supporting the greek colonels, even though he didn't arrive there until they're had been overthrown. they accused him of fomenting

coup in ecuador until the coup didn't place until well after he left. accuses him of sponsoring the phoenix program in vietnam, even though he was political reporting officer who had nothing do with the military, and so on. but a good deal of all this stuck, and then there was the famous episode of the human rights report. human rights reports were rather new innovation at that time. congress, at the wake of the helsinki requirement, required reports on the human rights effort, mainly as a way of pressuring governments, not as a means of informing congress. and the report that negroponte wrote for nicaragua, after his first year there, was a relatively benign report,

largely because he did not want to imperil aid to he honduran government. these reports were rather new at that time. and they were rather strange to most diplomats. because the normal function of a diplomat is to get along with the government to which he is accredited, not to write annual published critiques of it. and in other parts of the world there were more dramatic problems involving human rights reports there was a battle royal between richard holbrooke as the assistant secretary for the far east, and the assistant secretary for human rights during the carter administration about what the human rights report for china should say and holbrooke took the view we were attempting to improve our relations with china after a long lapse, i think would be most undiplomatic to write

anything terribly offensive about him. and the same issues arose in connection with the reports on saudi arabia and russia, the soviet union, and now russia. ultimately it came to be accepted, even by foreign governments, that these reports were a peculiar american eccentricity that had to be put up with without taking too much offense. at that time that was a good deal less evident. after honduras, negroponte became the assistant secretary for the environment, which had been a backwater in the government, but which he made a considerable success out of. i won't go into details on that. but his three major accomplishments were the montreal protocol on ozone that was in the first major international environmental treaty. the two treaties that were

signed in the wake of the cher children chernobyl nuclear answer, one related to international cooperation in dealing with nuclear accidents and another relating to reporting of them. and finally, the first serious concern shown during the reagan administration about the aids crisis there was a joint memorandum written by chaz freeman and negroponte at a time when the reagan administration was pretty much in denial about the severity of the aids crisis, which pointed out that absence of fairly drastic action, the nations of central africa would be essentially denuded of middle aged people within a period of about ten years. if there wasn't some medical retardation of the epidemic. following his assignment as the assistant secretary for

environment, again, at the beginning of the first bush administration,ing,ing the grow honest -- negroponte became ambassador to mexico and as ambassador to mexico, he was essentially the promoter and saviour of the nafta agreement. the nafta agreement was not an american initiative. it was an initiative of the salineas government in mexico. mexico's economic problem was that it had a relatively small market for consumer goods because it had a relatively small middle class. and, therefore, unless it could export on a large scale, its industries would not achieve the economies of scale necessary to be competitive on an international market. so, mexico went looking for markets, some it first went to the common market to the eu, and

salinas was told by the president that if the western europeans were going to make trade concessions to anyone at that point in the late 80s, those concessions would be made to the new nations of eastern europe and to russia, which is what happened. and that the europeans had other fish to fry and were not going worry much about latin america so salinas, who was an economist and whose cabinet cop taped probably -- contained probably more american trained economist than any cabinet in the history of the world, including any american cabinet, then went -- then approached the united states and approached negroponte, and negroponte supported the idea of a north american free trade agreement, supported it at a time when the u.s. trade representative's office was opposed to it. the u.s. trade representatives office was opposed because it was trying to promote another

set of multilateral agreements like the kennedy and -- these agreements had not come about largely because of resistance of agricultural countries to them. salinas promoted free-trade agreement, and the free-trade agreement, in spite of its name, is not a free trade agreement in the 19th century case, sense, because the essence of the reverend shall free trade agreement is that the nations that are not parties to it can front an external tariff. so, these agreements these, bilateral agreements may or may not promote the ultimate inefficiency. one effect of the nafta agreement was to thus put obstacles in the way of chinese imports that otherwise wouldn't have existed. but the principle effect of the

nafta agreement was to promote american agricultural experts to mexico, and to promote mexican manufacturing of things like automobile parts that were exported to the united states. the effect of the nafta agreement were much more dramatic than they otherwise would have been because of the doctrineaire nature or the salinas government. the agreement gave mexico ten or 15 years to dismantle its tariffs on american corn and soybeans, but the salinas government on its own dismantled them essentially at one stroke, which drove hundreds of thousand at least of mexicans off the land, some into large cities in the south of mexico, where they went into industry, to everyone's benefit, but many of them fled northward.

the women tended to stop at the border and go to work in plants making textiles. the men kept on going and took jobs as illegal immigrants in the american construction,ing a agriculture and restaurant industries, and a good many of them in the drug trade. while this was going on, it was the fight in congress over ratification of the agreement, and everything else was subordinated to the task of getting the agreement ratified. so, it was essentially american policy at that time to play down the severity of the growing drug problem. probably to our subsequent sorrow. but the agreement was ultimately ratified. it has been an important agreement for mexico. it has certainly drawn the two countries much closer together, and the political influence has

not all been one way because there isn't much doubt that the protests of the latin american presidents against american drug policy embodied in the report of the latin american commission on drugs and democracy, has probably had more than a little to do with the movement in this country toward deregulation of marijuana. the nafta agreement, for better or worse, is negroponte's signature achievement because the decision to go ahead with was made in a very small meeting involving bush, baker, negroponte and not more than one or two other people, and it was fought through over the ensuing period of two or three years, and it was then followed by a series of bilateral agreements with other countries, including central american countries, south korea, that have been

quite important. passing from mexico, negroponte then went to -- was assigned to the philippines in the clinton administration. and then to panama. neither of these assignments were easy ones because he was being asked to do the impossible, namely, secure the agreements of the two governments to the maintenance of american military bases at a time when the two governments were glad to be rid of the vestages of colonialism, but after his assignment in the philippines he left the state department, went to work for mcgraw hill because the only assignment that the clinton administration then offered him was ambassador to greece, which he did not want. and he came back into government, of course, with the

coming of the second bush administration, where he was made ambassador to the u.n. he was essentially alone among the higher officials of the bush administration in voicing opposition to our involvement in the iraq war before the final decision had been made. powell's opposition to the war had been widely leaked but he didn't say anything publicly. negroponte did. he gave an interview to a reporter for the "washington post," in which he said if it were up to him, nation-building would be no part of our united nations program, and that his experience in vietnam suggested it wasn't very easy. but of course, that viewpoint was disregarded. negroponte was successful and it was a considerable diplomatic achievement in getting a unanimous resolution of the united nations, authorizing --

ordering the iraqis to permit inspections. and he would have favored giving the iraqis more time but the folks in washington planned an invasion and didn't want the troops sitting round in kuwait, in the summer, rather poor excuse. we all know what happened. ...

>> which was the first endorsementy the u.n. of a two-state solution in palestine. the, negroponte then volunteered, in effect, to be ambassador to iraq and inherited a disastrous situation where we had disbanded the iraqi military, and there was a state of essential anarchy. and he presided over iraqi elections which were unfortunate in many ways because they had been organized by ambassador bremer to use proportional representation rather than single-member constituencies which is a virtually guaranteed way of producing parliamentarians who are

extremists. but in any event, he made the best of the elections on the theory that once an iraqi political class had been created, there were at least personalities who would be in a position to negotiate the competing interests. he also abandoned any notion that we would be able to produce a swift economic recovery in iraq. his first priority were dealing with iraq's security problems. and in training an iraqi army which was trained. and i find it hard to believe that it was in the state of total collapse that it's represented as being in. it seems to me that the shiites are likely to be able to successfully resist the sunnis at some point. but in any event, his vision of the future of iraq was that it wasn't going to be easy. indeed, he told the bush administration something that it didn't want to hear in roughly

2004; namely that the united states would have to stay for at least another five years for the situation to stabilize. and that is, in effect, what happened. and how successful what he did was remains to be seen. but to the extent there is any chance of a positive outcome, it's due to the fact that there is an iraqi parliament, that there are somewhat trained security forces. following iraq, he was given another almost impossible job, and i'm drawing to a close now, as director of national intelligence. and there are manager paradoxical about -- something paradoxical about that appointment because he did not think, he didn't think the creation of the direct rate of national intelligence was a

terribly good idea. he thought the same thing could have been done through informal coordination among the three or four leading agencies. and the creation of the dni and the creation of the department of homeland security was the work not of the bush administration, but of the democrats who didn't want to be seen as being soft on terrorism. and we still live with the consequences of that, those particular decisions. as the director of dni, he was heavily involved in intelligence estimate of rapp which fore -- of iran which forecast, quite accurately, that iran was not going to develop nuclear capability before the end of the first bush -- or the second bush administration. and this was very unpopular with a number of people in washington, including vice president cheney. but it proved to be entirely accurate. he left as director of national intelligence under circumstances

that haven't been fully explained, but his main interest as director of national intelligence was in advising the president who he felt, i think, needed advice at that point. he and gates and condoleezza rice supplanted the influence of people like donald rumsfeld and paul wolfowitz during the last two years of the second bush administration. but one consequence of his devoting himself to the giving of advice was that he had less time to give to management, and he was criticized for this. and whether his replacement was due to the advice that he gave or the need for more management is up clear. but in any event, he accepted the job of deputy is secretary of state -- deputy secretary of state where his achievements were essentially two. first, he pressed hard for elections in pakistan which

ultimately were won by the civilian parties which had the effect of delegitimizing the more extreme islamists. and even though they were immediately followed by the assassination of benazir bhutto. and his second achievement was the deepening of relations with china. there were several dozen working groups established that hadn't previously existed that had joint meetings of all kinds of american and chinese officials that were, essentially, his accomplishment and that of secretary of the treasury paulson who was very interested, also, in deepening the relationships with china. and at the close of the, old his tenure, the close of the second bush administration, he almost certainly would have been secretary of state had condoleezza rice -- condoleezza rice, apparently, according to her memoirs, offered to resign in his favor and was told by the

white house that the bush administration wouldn't do it. so she remained until the end of the administration. so he has retired. he does consulting work for mclarty and associates, and he teaches one day a week at yale. i don't think his career is over, it's hard to say. but it does exemplify the influence a relatively clear-sighted diplomat can have on a variety of events. and the book, which is as was said earlier is called "the last american diplomat," can be ordered from all sorts of sources, and the paperback edition costs $24 if anyone wants to order it. i'll now, i'm now glad to take any questions. i've gone on for too long, but 50 years is a long career, and abelieveuating it into 50 -- abbreviating it into 50 minutes isn't too easy. >> thank you. if you have a question to ask, we have about five minutes

remaining. if you could come up to the microphone. thank you. >> first of all, good evening. very good presentation. i had a question, if ambassador negroponte, what advice would he give to future students that are involved in studying international relationships? it's such a huge experience of 50 years. what would he say? he could say anything, but what would be his best advice? >> i don't want to put words into his mouth, and i've tried to be careful about that because our views don't correspond on all questions. i think he would advise them to take courses on economic geography and in history rather than international relations theory. that's the sense i would have. i think he also doesn't hold to

the view that we are the hyperpower. he has a sense of history and of the rise and fall of nations and of the limitations on american power. and when he was ambassador to the u.n., he at least in my view, came closer than anyone else who has been there to realizing the original design of the u.n. as seen by roosevelt; namely -- and churchill and stalin also -- as the concert of the great powers, not as a parliament of the world. but as a means whereby the five permanent members could adjust conflicts, at least conflicts not involving themselves x. that's -- and that's a vision that really hasn't prevailed. he was on very good terms with

the british and french ambassadors and the chinese and russian ones also. and if it had been left to the, to greenstock and negroponte, there would not have been an iraq war. i'm quite sure of that. >> okay, thank you. >> any other questions? >> [inaudible] >> yes. >> [inaudible] >> this one? how -- two questions. how old is he now? that's the first or question. >> he's almost exactly my age. he's 75 or 76. >> it sounds like an italian name, is that italian? >> no, he's greek. well, his family has an interesting background. they were natives of the island of chios which was the scene of a masser of greeks by the