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

greatest value.
A lot of very able people went to Fletcher. My friend Tom Pickering and a whole host of
people who were there, were they any better for going there? Maybe. But is it absolutely
necessary as a step? No.
Q: No, but it does open the mind up. In a way, there's a certain self-selection process,
isn't there?
MILLER: Yes.
Q: You look at this, you look at Tom Pickering and you look at, say, Winston Lord and
others, these are people who moved on. Steve Lowe I think was there.
MILLER: Yes, he was. Yes.
Q: So there's a selection process that people don't really know is happening, but it is
happening.
MILLER: Well, it's the selection process and who is selected that's the subject I want to
focus on. That's good, and it's a deepening of the mind in subjects that they might not
have otherwise had. But I would say, for Americans, isolated as we are on our continent,
we need to go to other places, other cultures. I was very blessed to have gone to England
at the end of the empire and Europe at the end of the terrible world war, and to be allowed
to see those places at a very impressionable age, and to meet my contemporaries who had
that experience. Of course, Fletcher is a way of doing some of that without leaving the
country.
Q: Many of our people found it a broadening experience and a good experience, slightly
different, who attended the war colleges.
MILLER: Absolutely.
Q: Particularly now that so many of our people who come in have not had military
experience, and who both pass on their knowledge but also understand the military is of
great value.
MILLER: Yes, I would subscribe to that. I have given many talks at the war colleges, and
I can see that interaction. I think it's very important to the military to have the exposure to
our diplomats and people who are doing non-military things. But our exposure to the
military is throughout the career. I mean, my first post, I had the military at a MAAG
mission in Iran.
Q: I mean, most of us have lived with the military. Looking at it, again, going back to
your time at Fletcher, did you have any contact with schools of diplomacy elsewhere? I
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