His new book is called outpost life on the frontlines of american diplomacy, a fascinating look at treaties, sanctions peace conferences and the microbe door the dilemma of whether to shaker leaders hand, how negotiating bigger shaye government and our negotiating room is decorated. Lets welcome them. [applause] your father was a diplomat and certainly an inspiration to you. Hes hes been your childhood in places like belgrades yugoslavia where home was attacked and portauprince, haiti where you had to be evacuated. I think it is fair to say in the event event occurred on march 11961. You were a. It would come to shape your life dramatically. Lets listen to this. I think you are talking we have some audio. Zero, my gosh. [laughter] i today signed an executive order regarding the establishment of the peace corps on a temporary pilot basis. Trained men and women sent overseas by the United States government to help Foreign Countries meet the urgent needs of skilled manpower. It will not be easy. None of the of the men and women will be paid a salary. They will live at the same level as the citizens of the country which they are sent to doing the same work eating the same food speaking the same language. That is pres. President kennedy on the day he signed the executive order creating the peace corps which at them at that time was just a pilot program. You served in the peace corps traveling to tiny villages on a motorcycle with a handcranked adding machine helping local Credit Unions keep the books to make reputable loans. That experience was formative. Absolutely. My 1st motorcycle. [laughter] you know coming out of college the opportunity to work be on your own command to work with all these people whose life savings they were relying on you to make sure their savings were intact. I had about 48 Credit Unions, somewhere in these tiny villages, others implantations and basically i went around checking their books. And where you are. This is in a country called cameroon just east of nigeria. Southeast province in a place called Bago Division and i lived in town called week. I had a little house there. Every morning i slept off to a credit union to see how the books were doing. And how different was that experience what you experienced before . It was totally different because you are totally on your own. That little that little clip from president kennedy, you were not paid a salary. One thing i learned notwithstanding my wife julie who is a nutritionist you can live on the same meal every single day for two years. Manage it quite nicely. I lived was on rice and beans for two years occasionally eating something else, but rice and beans. It was a good lesson good lesson that you dont always have to have something different. Kind of a yam paste. Yes. You eat it with your hand but you have to kind of needed independent assaults too much sense. Yeah. I been on a foo foo free diet for quite a while now. I love the detail in the book that kids in cameroon will rub your skin to see if the white pigment would come off. Yeah. Well, your in a village. In my case i was on a mountain which i i have to say in colorado was only 13,000 feet high. For west africa it was up there. You go to these villages where their would be a coffee cooperative and people would save there money off the coffee receives but otherwise wouldve never left the village. They just they just thought that i was suffering from some kind of skin disease. How often in your career with the Foreign Service did you think back to cameroon . Well, quite a lot. First of all of all i was in college until june. By july i was in the peace corps. I entered the peace corps command by end of august i was off living by my own. And i had to kind of get around. And i learned responsibility in a way that i had never quite understood before when people come up to you and say is everything okay, is my money theyre command you realize youre it. You are taking care of there money and making sure that their lifes ambitions, whether it was to send the kid to school needed credit union money, needed savings for that are buying one of those foot pumps on machines or putting corrugated roofing other house was huge for them. So the sense of responsibility and then for me for people who knew about americans, i kind of realized that know one is indifferent. Everyone has an opinion about our country. That was a lesson that lesson that i took to heart. But the biggest lesson, i had a credit union and a number of Credit Unions, the board of directors basically kind of made off with most of they had most of the loan money. 5 of the members of 50 of loans. So i raise this with the general membership. A big meeting. It was a big meeting. It was actually a tea plantation. The members were probably two thirds women. And so spread out over this meadow, and people standing up to thank me for bringing to light the fact that this board of directors had kind of miss behaved. They were then turned to the board of directors checking their finger, you can do this. So i was very pleased that i have pulled this off, know one was panicked. The money wasnt money was missing is just that these people had too many loans. So finally i said, and now i i want to present a reform board and proceed with elections. Very polite. I got my reform board. The way they did it was not by show of hands but they fall in behind me. You cant heads. And within a couple of seconds i realize the old board one like 90 percent of the vote. A couple of relative standing next to their hapless relatives who were my reform board. Very nice people, by the way. Some of them actually spoke english. I had put together a great reform board. Absolutely no one they get know support. Very nice about it. It. I felt totally humiliated. Dont worry, its fine. I took that to mean i didnt have a clue as to who, you know, why people get elected to board a credit union in rural cameroon and who was i to presume that i understood it . Who was i to presume that i understood i understood it and could come in with another government. They were very grateful for my bringing this up but i learned that just because they are grateful for bringing this up and for telling these did not mean that they wanted to collect other people. It was a different dynamic. We had this view in the us you throw the rascals out. They did not necessarily have that. You bet i took that to heart. I got very grouchy with americans who think, we dont like that government. We government. We should get rid of it. Not that easy. Lets fast forward a bit. Among her many diplomatic assignments was albania in 1991. Not long obviously after the fall of the berlin wall and the us was opening new embassies. This embassy was in a Hotel Ballroom 215 and the five, and the ambassadorial residence was room to 16. Thats right. And one week into your service there was only one telephone so you had to gone the other romance the phone. So a week into your service you meet an ethnic albanian, Mother Teresa. Tell us about the encounter. Well, i was in room 215. We had a couple i tried a couple of albanian assistance and one of them was on the phone and said, its Mother Teresa. I said Mother Teresa, and i learned not to be surprised. What you have to know about albania was, this was the sort of north korea of europe. They have been under a guy named enver holger who had basically isolated the country for the rest of europe and had been hermetically sealed. I mean, they had had banned religion, bend Automobiles Club and everything that wasnt compulsory. So it was a kind of strange place to be, but we were opening our embassy for the 1st time since 1946. Service assistant says its Mother Teresa. Teresa. Well, what a coincidence. Its fine to have the same name. So i got on the phone and introduced myself and then recognize the voice, i had heard it on tv. She asked if i would come over and discuss whether the embassy could help restore some of the medicines for her health clinics. She had an orphanage. So i go over to her little clinic. There she is. It is the Mother Teresa. I sort of study. Everything is kind of round. Round. She is tiny. And then she asked me if i would do that. Im not going to be the 1st person in the world the same no the Mother Teresa. This this is one where i just have to trust in the old aphorism that it is better to beg forgiveness in washington that asked permission they would have some meeting, can we get this private nongovernmental organization, what about others . Screw that. I said yes. And then her assistant said, zero, could you kind of widen the gate in the back so that we can get our truck in. Well talk about that later what i did we are sitting talking and i kind of made this up on the spot because i knew the next day we had an american plane coming in with some mrnas. Meals ready to eat. Meals readytoeat. I have been eating them myself. Myself. You can go to the Hotel Restaurant at your peril. I preferred meals readytoeat. And so i told her we had some food and some for one of the cold rations. Larger cans of things like peaches and such. And i said, we have some stuff and i want to present it to your orphanage or give it your orphanage. And if you would not mind coming out of the airport i would appreciate it if you would receive the 1st if you would receive the 1st parcel. I go out to the c141, military Airlift Command. They had run for the us base in signal italy about a threehour run. This is this is basically extra food from the gulf war. It was a little shorter than the military planned for. And so this group were based out of mcguire airbase and all have hispanic names like martinez and rodriguez. I told them to expect a a vip because i was not 100 percent sure she would show up. And i told him to expect a vip. I thought i was bringing a Health Minister or something a little jeep comes out and its her assistant behind the wheel and Mother Teresa riding shotgun. She gets out and these guys for mcguire boys drop to there knees, just drop to their knees at the side of her. She walked around giving them is little madonna figurines. Pendants. Things you would put on a chain she says to the pilot, this is too big to fly. The c141 pilot said, no, its not. We managed a flight here. We are fine. She says, all the same, same, i better do a prayer. She gets up in the plane that characteristic prayer she did a prayer a prayer on the plane was able to take off. There is a picture of you at our website with Mother Teresa and cpr news. I was one of those deals where i didnt feel like i should turn her into a touristy thing. I didnt want to take any pictures. For example no pictures of the guys dropping to their knees and her going around giving the virgin mary medallions. I kind of regret that today, but theres a. At which you really ought to show a little past sometimes and not without we do now iphones of the time, but i felt it was the right thing to do. When she was up in the hatchway of the plane the picture for the book is me standing next to her with the pilot but there is another picture which was not of good a good enough quality which has are silhouetted with military Airlift Command insignia next era should praise. There are a couple of pictures as we said you spent time as a kid in the former yugoslavia. Your 1st assignment with the state department was belgrade. You served in albania and macedonia. Suffice it to say, you become an asset in the balkans as that region was torn apart by war. I am i am particularly interested in your meetings with melissa fitch. He would later be tried for torture and genocide for his role in bosnia and kosovo though he died before the trial ended. Is it hard to negotiate with someone you find is repulsive the right word . Repulsive works. There are some other words as well. You know you looked at him, he didnt believe in anything. He was in the serb nationalist, communist, he disbelieved in power. You know when you go back in history the serbs and not always an easy time. The reasons why they feel oppressed. They felt that they were the ones who bore the brunt of the ottoman turkish empire. They felt that they were the germans made sure they had directly and roots the germans were extremely rough so they have this tremendous sense of victimhood. Like all victims, there there is truth to the narrative. The problem was, we were in a situation were essentially it was the carve up of the Ottoman Empire the hundred years delayed. It was basically 1890s 1890s balkan wars interrupted by a century of International Conflict struggle, the two world wars the cold war. There was this car going on. The other peoples in yugoslavia, croats, slovenes, bosnians, macedonians all felt that yugoslavia was a giant conspiracy to somehow enshrine serb domination. After all they have the capital, basically the basically the army, the secret police. They kind of ran the place. They all had some justification that they were kind of behind everything and wanted to get out. Meanwhile, they had a view that yugoslavia was a giant contraption to keep down there aspirations. After all, the france have friends, the germans, the germans of germany. We have won eight of this little thing. The net of all of this, especially in bosnia miserable, hideous wars where they essentially control the army, was a bit cynically succumbed did people from the Yugoslav Army to something called the bosnian serb army. Army. We are talking about velcro insignia on the shoulders where suddenly people would emerge as generals in the bosnian serb army. And so the dynamic of that war and most of its new fully well that was going on. If on. If you want to kick some muslims out of an area in that terrible expression ethnic cleansing, the way it worked i dont mean to ramble on, but it is important to understand the bosnian serb army, Yugoslav Army, a big kind big kind of circle around the village and then these various paramilitaries gangsters really would go in their and murder people. The people had know escape. Most of its new this, but by the time we were engaged in dealing with him he basically understood the gig was up. I mean, serbia was a pariah state. He had made his. Trying to hold on the bosnia in keeping with the serbs. It it just wasnt working. Think of an old mafia guy trying to go straight. And that was the context of dealing with veloso bridge. He wanted the war ended. Ironically, the most hideous person in this whole drama became a kind of de facto ally as we try to come up with governing structures to make bosnia okay. A country with international borders, divided into two entities, but entities, but those entities would be united by an overall parliament. So we worked on these governing structures. Can i just add, know one has done a thing a thing to do this in syria. They have never taken a lesson a bosnia, to try to come up with some kind of governing structure. But to make it work we had to get the president of croatia i got an impeachment, and hes not a guy a guy you necessarily want on your christmas list either. And so he embolus of its and then the people from bosnia themselves tried to cook a deal and succeeded. And the take away from that is you cant say there is good and bad and we will negotiate with bad. Well, theyre is but often but often there is bad and worse. You have to negotiate because what are you going to do . But the alternative . You cant kill them all. And that is not a particularly a particularly appealing approach. And in the notion of unconditional surrender. These wars are not about unconditional surrender. They all end up at the negotiating table. You have to kind of do that. As a diplomat in order to do that you have got to sort of be willing to not look behind as much as personally you may want to the rather look forward to see how you can divide structures that allow people to live together. If you spend all your time looking back you will never get to the. When youre looking forward to look at new structures for how they might live together again. Well, serving in the balkans several of your colleagues died when their jeep went over the edge of the road. One of them was bob fraser. You wind up visiting his widow. She asks you about serving in war zones. How can you do this to your family . And elsewhere in the book you read that your daughters, im proud of you but you ruined my life. That was one of the nicer things. [laughter] you know, you know, and i and i want to answer this without sounding to model, but i want to answer truthfully. When you start into these situations we are doing it for our country. You really and i think anyone in the military feels this way. I can speak from a Foreign Service colleagues. You feel very proud. You want to get it done and know that know one is indifferent. When you get involved you want people to know playtime is over. Were going to nail this thing. This is over. We are sick of it, and if you think were being patronizing tough. You just killed 200,000 of your own countrymen and we are going a step in we are going to step in and kind of stick this governing structure on you. If you dont, we we will call you a rejectionist and come after you the rest of your life. This is the kind of thing you have to do. I felt it was absolutely the right thing to do but you making sacrifices. You know, you call home and have been on the road for weeks because these trips would go on and on. You go up. Issued on down. We have to go to moscow. My boss mentor, tormentor. Before you no it youve been on the road for three and a half weeks. I would call. My daughter would answer the phone. Shes got a sense of humor. Daddy who. So it was tough. It was tough. What i saw bob frasers widow and she asked me that question, that was a tough one, really a tough one and it came to mind later on in my career in baghdad. At the same time bob was really one of the best Foreign Service officers i ever met. You know he was maybe 51 years old. So bob you know bob i think would have gone on to use things and then died. So im not going to just drop it. I will finish the job. Was during parts of your book. The kosovo conflict spills over. An angry mob attacks the embassy with you and your staff inside. Just read from that portion. You know know, we had one of these small embassies and i remember they s