Splashes from Beyond the Ocean: A Matter of Diplomacy

Shortly after Zhan Videnov was elected prime minister in 1994, I got into some diplomatic trouble. Because I was responsible for the news about the Council of Ministers and, on top of that, knew English, a colleague of mine asked me to translate a series of questions to be sent to the then United States ambassador to Bulgaria, William Montgomery; she was working on an analytical article and needed the answers.

I translated and sent the questions. Two questions asked, directly, what the consequences would be for his diplomatic career, as a result of the party of former communists winning the election, and what kind of assessment of the elections he had sent to the U.S. Department of State. The ambassador, of course, didn’t answer. His spokesperson, however, took the first chance he had to complain to my then editor and now fellow columnist, Valeri Naidenov, who immediately asked me for an explanation. First, he reminded me that you cannot talk to diplomats this way — even when you are a representative of the most widely-read written media in the country. Second, he made the point that Montgomery was probably already under fire from Washington because of Videnov; but we could not expect him to admit it. Third, he said, there was no ambassador fired, only days after the party his country supported had lost the elections, especially when they had been conducted in a totally democratic way. Such an ambassador was either given a second chance or called back to his country, but after a period of time.

From that moment on, I knew I needed to be more tactful when it came to dealing with diplomats. But in spite of that, I have always been curious about what ambassadors and spokespersons write to their respective capital cities after each cocktail party, meeting, or event.

In the latest major “leak” published by WikiLeaks, there is a directive by Hilary Clinton concerning Bulgaria (about which you have already read in this newspaper). I hope there will be more messages from and to the embassy in Sofia. Nevertheless, I don’t know why anyone is surprised at the fact that diplomats gather biographical, locational and all other sorts of information about key figures in a country. This is exactly what their job is all about — along with giving their genuine assessment of the qualities and shortcomings of national leaders, taking note of all expressed opinions and, altogether, transmitting all sorts of information that have the potential of being used by the country that sends them. The comparatively furious reaction of the U.S. Department of State, the White House, and even that of the Bulgarian Ministry of External Affairs, to the leaked documents indicates they are worth reading. I don’t know when I’ll have the time to, though. No matter how selective you are in your reading of the files, 250,000 of them are still quite a lot.

Most of the leaked appraisals of political figures that were popularized in the media, however, sound like genuine and pragmatic opinions. Undoubtedly, it would be most interesting to know what sorts of decisions were based on them, for even the best diplomats are just wasting their time and effort if their analyses are not read with the required attention or by people at an appropriate level of competency. In 1996, I met one of the Bulgarian references in the U.S. Department of State. She was so incompetent — the girl had just acquired her Master’s degree — that talking to her made me really angry. She didn’t know simple facts about Bulgaria’s history and politics, and overall, didn’t strike me as particularly intelligent. That was strange, because, as a whole, I find the American system for preparation of diplomatic officials very effective, especially in terms of language. As a result, I simply decided then that, having not been interested enough in Bulgaria, Americans just hadn’t put too much effort in choosing the best diplomats.

Montgomery, himself, spent a few more years in Sofia, until 1997, when things had gotten significantly direr for Videnov and his party. Obviously, his work was assessed highly, for he then was transferred to Belgrade. There he welcomed — and maybe even assisted in — Miloshevich’s downfall, after which the former American ambassador to Bulgaria retired — because of an extramarital affair, some claim.

If we want to learn all of the details, we’ll apparently have to wait for WikiLeaks to publish them. No one else tells you, even if you ask.