U.S. diplomats: A vanishing species?

By Kenneth Weisbrode
Politico.com
December 22, 2010

The news has recently focused on a rare sight: diplomats — in particular, those in the U.S. Foreign Service. With the death of Richard Holbrooke and the continuing WikiLeaks affair, the American people have heard more about this discreet tribe than they have in many years.

But do diplomats matter?

The career of another recently deceased diplomat, arms control negotiator Maynard Glitman, suggests several reasons why they do.

Glitman’s greatest achievement was negotiating the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which, along with the START negotiations developed from President Ronald Reagan’s dramatic summits with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985-86, were important milestones in the end of the Cold War.

Moscow and Washington halted their military rivalry with the INF treaty. The two superpowers began the long process of withdrawing their nuclear weapons from the heart of Europe — the Cold War’s main prize.

(More here.)