1 The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign ...

9/11, wouldn't the response have been different?" He could have defined it as requiring a
police action to deal with a small group of deranged lunatic fanatics rather than
suggesting a world conspiracy, and I think that's still at issue. In 1981 what was driving
me to go to Fletcher was fatigue, more than anything else.
Q: Well, you were at Fletcher from when to when?
MILLER: From 1981 until 1986, when I responded to George Kennan's judgment about
Gorbachev and took over the American Committee on U.S.-Soviet Relations, and then
later the International Foundation. But my time at Fletcher was wonderful. My friend,
Ted Eliot, was the dean. Ted Eliot was a colleague of mine in Iran. He was economic
officer at what was one of my first posts, and we were very good friends. Our families
were close. He was later ambassador in Afghanistan, and a very fine person. He asked me
to come to Fletcher as one of his associate deans and as Adjunct Professor of
International Politics. I was happy to do that to recharge, really.
Q: Well, I think the training of diplomats, across the board, is very important. If
somebody says, "I want to be a diplomat," I'm talking about almost of any country,
particularly of America, what did Fletcher do and didn't do, do you feel, to prepare them
to be a diplomat?
MILLER: Well, I think you're asking a radical on this. I think the best Foreign Service
officers should come from the best universities, places where their minds can be stretched
the most. The study of diplomacy is less important than the study of any subject to its
maximum, to develop the mind, the analytic capacity to understand new situations, new
ideas, new concepts.
The British Foreign Service, for example, looked for people who were from the best
universities and did well in the Classics. Greek and Latin was more desirable than
modern history, on the arrogant assumption, perhaps, that if you were educated you knew
modern history anyway. You went to university to study things that you couldn't pick up
in the normal course of things. Of course, that's a fiction, too.
I think that the best preparation is deep study in any subject, certainly as an
undergraduate. Fletcher's great value, and at other places like Fletcher, of which there are
six, perhaps, in our country, like SAIS (School of Advanced International Studies),
Maxwell, Chicago, a handful, MA programs, is the mix with students from other
countries. In the case of Fletcher, they trained diplomats from a number of newly
emerging countries, Pakistan being one, and so on and so forth, and those long-term
contacts are very important, I think. China, from 1980 on, sent their young diplomats
there. I had in one of my classes several Chinese, and they became very good friends. One
of my students, who wrote an excellent paper on Taiwan, which I still have, is
ambassador in Egypt now, and he was prior DCM (Deputy Chief of Mission) here in
Washington.
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