Discover the art of diplomacy and leadership with former US Ambassador to Qatar, Patrick Theros, as he unlocks the secrets of navigating the complex world of US foreign policy. Tune in to learn about the challenges and triumphs he faced during a pivotal time in Qatar and the Gulf region. Gain insights into the delicate balance required when dealing with corporate giants like Mobil and Enron and how these negotiations shaped the landscape of gas diplomacy.
Our conversation unfolds into the shifting dynamics within the Gulf economy and the strategic interplay between major global powers. Ambassador Theros sheds light on the growing influence of China in the region, the evolving US-Qatar relations, and the impact of educational initiatives in a rapidly changing geopolitical environment. Listen as we explore how the US can recognize mutual interests with nations like China while understanding the nuanced role of diplomacy and international business.
In a captivating journey through history, Ambassador Theros reflects on his harrowing experiences in Nicaragua during the Somoza regime, demonstrating the power of quick, decisive action in the face of chaos. We wrap up our discussion by examining the profound influence of American culture abroad, revealing how cultural exports can often achieve more than traditional political maneuvers. This episode uncovers the importance of empathy and cultural understanding in shaping effective foreign policy for a globally connected world.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome to the IdeaGen Global Catalyze Impact
podcast series.
Today, I am thrilled to havewith us former US Ambassador to
Qatar, Patrick Theros.
Patrick, thank you for joiningus today.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
It's a pleasure.
I always enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Absolutely.
I'm excited for thisconversation as well.
I know we've had you on severaltimes, but it's always a
pleasure to hear from you andyour extensive experience in
diplomacy and leadership and alltypes of things.
So with that I want to rollright into the interview here
all types of things.
So with that I want to rollright into the interview here.
As I said, you know you have anextensive experience in foreign
(00:51):
policy and diplomacy.
What kind of inspired you tojoin the US Foreign Service in,
I believe, 1963, was it?
Speaker 2 (00:59):
And what kind of kept you engaged for your I can
answer the last question first,which is it was the most fun job
I could ever imagine, uh, andyou walk away with a feeling at
the end of your career thatyou've actually made the world a
little bit better perhaps justa smidgen, but that you've
(01:20):
contributed to making the worlda little bit better and that
you've contributed to what yourcountry wants, what your country
needs relationships.
We live in a world that's nolonger.
We're no longer protected byoceans after they developed this
thing called an ICBM.
And so the isolationism, thedistance that the US kept from
(01:47):
the world, the lack of foreignentanglements those were fine
before the 20th century.
At some time in the middle ofthe 20th century it turned out
that we were no longer able tocheck out.
The world had come to us, we'dgone to the world, and what
seemed like a 15-day trip acrossthe atlantic a long time ago is
(02:12):
now down to six hours gettinginto london.
So you contribute at the endthat's.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
that's incredible to hear and it kind of just leads
into my next question about youknow you and your role as a US
ambassador in a prettytransformative period in Qatar
and the Middle East.
Could you kind of describemaybe some of the biggest
challenges and the opportunitiesthat came, you know, with
strengthening that US-Cutterrelationship?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Perhaps the biggest challenge happens before you
leave.
It's fully understanding whatyour government, what the US
government, wants from therelationship.
I mean there are certaingeneral rules.
We want people like us, we wantpeople to vote with us in
various forums like the UN andso forth.
(03:06):
We want to have a good traderelationship.
But also there are first of allthere's competing demands
within the United States as towhat we would like out of this
relationship and you have tosort them out and get the
Department of State toprioritize and occasionally
(03:30):
decide which agency of the USgovernment or which constituency
is going to get preferentialtreatment is first up in the
priorities of the US government,stop in the priorities of the
US government.
So the preparation to go outthere is quite difficult and in
(03:59):
my case it was sort of truncatedbecause before you are
confirmed by the Senate you'renot allowed to speak to anybody
because the Senate takes this assort of a threat to its own
prerogatives.
You are not an ambassador,confirmed ambassador, until they
actually vote for you, and thenyou've got a perhaps limited
period of time between theconfirmation vote and when you
(04:20):
leave to get all these thingstogether.
In my case I was very luckybecause I knew the region quite
well, because I pretty much knewwhat the host country wanted, I
had a pretty good idea of whattheir priorities were, though, I
(04:40):
must admit, in the end I wassurprised by some things.
Priorities were, though, I mustadmit, in the end I was
surprised by some things, butthe largest part.
For example, at the time theDepartment of State was trying
to mediate between Exxon and acompany called between Mobil Oil
I'm sorry, it was before ExxonMobil, just Mobil and a company
called Enron that you're, ifyou're old enough to remember,
(05:01):
went belly up about 30, about 25, 30 years ago, enough to
remember went belly up about 25,30 years ago and they were
engaged in a fight to the deathover who gets up front in what
the US government wants in termsof American companies
exploiting the newly developedcutter gas field, the newly
(05:21):
developed Qatar gas field.
We also had this question atthe time of the US strategic
posture in the region was notclearly worked out very well.
And also the other issue in theUnited States again was where
(05:45):
did the US stand on the disputesbetween the countries of the
Gulf?
We knew that the big dispute,which was Iran versus the
countries that we wereassociated with closely, which
were the Arab states of the Gulfon the other side, that one was
pretty clear what we wanted todo.
(06:05):
But there were other discussions, other disputes between the
countries in the region and onehad to try and figure out where
the US came down, because thiswould in effect determine how
you dealt with the host countrygovernment, in effect determine
(06:25):
how you dealt with the hostcountry government.
In this case, the US reallydidn't have or hadn't thought
through the disputes of the Gulfand you pretty much get out
there and then in the end, ifthe US doesn't have a position,
you have the ambassadors in eachcountry sort of taking the
position of each country againstthe neighboring one.
(06:47):
I mean, that's natural enoughanyway, because you're living in
the country, this is whereyou're getting your information
and the motivations from.
But trying to sort all this outcan become quite time-consuming
.
I frankly didn't have the time.
(07:11):
I was at less than 10 daysbetween my confirmation and
getting on the airplane to go toDoha.
When you get there, the firstthing you discover pretty
quickly is if you've been absentfrom the region for a few years
, things have changed and yourassumptions may not always be
accurate the case of Qatar.
(07:31):
The emir had displaced hisfather early.
His father had abdicated.
The father had particularpolicies that the United States
was not, in, which the interestsof the US were not pretty high
up.
And I arrived to discover thatthe new government was a
(07:52):
government that was determinedto be as close as possible to
the United States, which wasgreat for me.
When the Emir met me the firsttime after I presented
credentials, the custom wasyou'd sit and have tea or coffee
with him for a few minutes.
Ours turned into an hoursession which was pretty much
(08:16):
centered around his opening line, as I intend to become
America's best friend of theGulf, and I realized that nobody
in the United States governmentever considered this as a
possibility.
So these are the sort of theinitial problems, the initial
issues that develop when you.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
They're not necessarily problems when you
arrive in the first few days ofbeing ambassador the
understanding that whatWashington expects of you is
unrealistic and what the hostgovernment expects of the United
States may be equallyunrealistic sometimes, or
(08:58):
sometimes realistic, anyway, Ihope that's no, yeah, that's
that's, you know, veryinteresting and and your
perspective you know personallyis is key there and you kind of
touched on, you know, thepriority shifts that cutter had
(09:18):
um, but what about the priorityshifts and the diplomatic
strategies that change for the?
U within that region of youknow?
Rapid political and economicchange?
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah, specific to Qatar, the most important
developments were that theUnited States was extremely
interested in the exploitationof the North Dome gas field.
This was the single, thelargest single deposit of
natural gas in the world, givingQatar the third position for
(09:51):
the natural gas reserves.
The potential was huge.
When I got there, a newtechnology was being introduced
for the first time.
Technology had existed but noone had figured out how to make
it work on a commercial basis,which was the LNG technology.
(10:11):
Mobile oil was taking a bigrisk.
It was the American companythat was the first one to come
in because to see, first of all,to get the gas out of the
ground and then to figure outhow to make LNG work.
The transportation of naturalgas by sea and a little bit of
(10:34):
technical background.
Until then, the primary way ofmoving natural gas was by
pipeline.
Pipelines are high upfrontcosts, easy to manage, cheap to
send gas afterwards, but theproblem is that they've got to
run through somebody else'sterritory or they have to be
(10:56):
under the sea, where you haveother problems.
They can be interfered with.
They can have natural breaks,spilling of gas.
You don't know how to fix it orwhere it's fixed.
So there were lots ofdifficulties involved with
(11:17):
pipelines, but at the time itwas the principal technology for
moving gas from where it wascoming out of the ground, to the
customers.
Liquefied natural gas was atechnology that, even though the
basic science behind it wasknown for a long time how do you
actually commercialize it wasdifficult.
(11:40):
Mobile oil was the first majorcompany in the world to get into
it big time because the Qatarisdid not want to ship gas from
Qatar by pipeline because itwould have put them at the mercy
of their neighbors and this isa small country in a rough
(12:01):
neighborhood surrounded byneighbors who have certain
predatory views towards theQatari's wealth.
And at the same time we had aproblem with Enron coming in
wanting to do the same thing,because Enron wanted to ship gas
(12:23):
to India.
And they got into the USgovernment and they said we will
also be able to ship gas fromQatar to Israel.
At that time most of the Arabworld had maintained a boycott
against Israel and, trying tobalance out, the Qataris were
prepared to lift the boycott forshipping natural gas to Israel,
(12:46):
but they had the contract withMobil.
My job was to, on the ground,keep the Qataris on board, to
modify the contract.
The State Department had topersuade Mobil in the United
States to agree to modify thecontract, united States to agree
(13:06):
to modify the contract, and itwas a fairly ugly fight between
the two companies, in which youhad to keep your eye on the
future, never mind what peopleare saying to each other at this
time.
The other problem was, as Isaid, the hostilities between
the various countries in theGulf, between the various
countries in the Gulf, and theseare in most cases they're not
recent hostilities and they arepretty much like, say, the
(13:35):
attitude that Armenians havetowards Turks.
These are things that happeneda long time ago, but people are
still feeding the resentmentsand in the Gulf these
resentments were in the form ofbattles that had taken place 100
years before, in which piecesof territory had been lost, or
(14:06):
the Saudis believing that theyshould be the paramount country
in the Gulf, trying tomonopolize American the
relationship with the UnitedStates and trying to get the
United States to execute itspolicies with the small
countries through Saudi Arabia,rather indirectly and as a
consequence, it was a fairlycomplex series of relationships
in the Gulf.
Complex series of relationshipsin the Gulf and again, the worry
(14:27):
about Iran, the largest countryin the Gulf, the most powerful
one and the one with which theUS had, and still has, obviously
, a rather toxic relationship.
That, for the United States,goes back to the taking of
hostages in the American embassyin Tehran, and for the Iranians
(14:48):
it goes back to the USoverthrowing the first and only
democratic elected government inIranian history in 1953.
So there was an awful lot to do, complicated by the fact that I
had a tiny embassy includingthe communicator and the admin
(15:08):
officer and the consular officer.
I had five American diplomatsat the post, so you had a very
small group of people with whichto carry out, to work on these
things.
And so we were off to a sort ofa fun start trying to sort all
(15:31):
these things out, figuring outhow to make things work in Qatar
and how to make things work inthe United States.
And I have to tell you ageneral rule of diplomacy it is
usually more difficult dealingwith your own country's
government the people sent youout than it is dealing with the
country of the government you'reaccredited to.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Wow, just you know the amount of angles here that
you described.
I mean you have the domesticand the private sector and then
you have, of course, thesurrounding countries involved.
I mean no short, no small job,obviously for your team, but you
guys did incredibly well.
That's really cool to hear andit leads me into our next
(16:15):
question.
You know, throughout yourcareer you've worked under
different administrations with,you know, varying foreign policy
priorities.
How do you adapt maybe yourleadership style or your you
know working style to navigatethose changes?
Speaker 2 (16:32):
As I said, the most difficult part of the job is
dealing with your country, withthe United States.
The style in dealing with thehost country doesn't change very
much from country to country.
There are some idiosyncrasiesbetween monarchies and
dictatorships and republics asto how you deal with these
(16:56):
governments, but those thingsare sort of set.
You know that you try to get afeel for how stable the
government is.
You try to get a feel for howwilling the government is to
listen to its own public opinion.
You try and meet as many of theopinion makers, influencers of
(17:19):
government and so forth as youcan in the country.
But that's you know in writlarge.
That's a fairly standard way ofdealing.
The differences in dealing withWashington are more pronounced
as you go from administration toadministration.
Not so much the administrativedifficulties of how do you do
(17:45):
the post, how do you set it up,how do you organize, how do you
budget and so forth, but thedifficulties of getting how can
I say of getting the informationyou need from Washington and
who to go to in Washington toinfluence American policy in a
way that you see beneficialtowards the relationship with
(18:08):
the host country.
Some administrations, forexample, kept a tight hold on
communications.
Everything went through thedesk officer of the Department
of State.
Other administrations were veryloose.
You'd get phone calls in themiddle of the night from
somebody who wanted you to dosomething and you had to balance
(18:30):
off the fact that the personmay be very high-ranking with
the possibility that he may nothave even told the Department of
State that he's going to callme.
And they say this varies fromadministration to administration
.
How much does the presidentcare about your part of the
(18:53):
country?
I have served in countrieswhere the president cared a
great deal about what was goingon, in Jordan, for example, and
I have to say that my initialtime in the UAE and in Qatar
later, the US government didn'treally care about the region
very much and you were lefttrying to figure out what you
(19:16):
could do to improve thingswithout getting anybody mad at
you, back in Washington on yourown, without much instruction.
So dealing with Washington isthe most difficult.
How do you deal with a company,for example, like Exxon, which
would call you and say I'mcoming, the president of Exxon
(19:37):
is coming to Qatar and I want tosee the Emir of Qatar at 10
o'clock on Sunday morning?
Exxon may think Exxon may beable to play that game in
Washington, but you havefeelings on the other side.
The Qataris were deeplyoffended that the president of
(19:58):
Exxon was going to set theemir's schedule.
So I tried to do Washington andWashington apparently was sort
of afraid to have somebody callExxon and say look, you've got
to be more flexible.
We worked through it, but it wasa good example of how that
relationship could have beentanked rather badly.
(20:21):
Exxon could have sufferedtremendous reputational harm and
the hostility of the governmentif they had persisted in this.
Exxon did this because theyfigured they're the biggest
company at that time, thebiggest oil company in the world
, and the Qataris were a tinycountry.
So this is, you know, issueslike this, issues like the
(20:43):
Qataris wanted to buy certainkinds of military equipment.
Other countries that were onbad terms with Qatar would then
be lobbying in Washington sayingdon't sell them this, don't
sell them that.
Then other countries theQataris were sort of new to the
game.
They did not have a largediplomatic establishment and the
(21:07):
Saudis, who had been dealingwith the United States for a
long time and knew the US welland had a very large and
efficient diplomaticestablishment in the United
States, would frequently get into bend somebody's ear when the
Qatari diplomats couldn't do it.
We had sort of early on in myposting there it was 6th of
(21:34):
February 1996, the Qatarisdiscovered an attempted coup
d'etat.
They rolled it up sort of a fewhours before it was to happen
and things began to get reallyugly as we realized that the
coup d'etat had been organizedby all three of Qatar's
(21:55):
neighbors Bahrain, saudi Arabiaand the UAE plus Egypt, and
things had gotten really tense.
If you 2017, we got a repeat ofthat in a different sort of way
, but there was real worry of anarmed clash, of these Saudis
(22:17):
rolling into Qatar, and therethe job was to get the
department to tell everybody tocalm down and sort of stand the
troops down without breakingother relationships.
Again, this took a fair amountof being up all night talking to
Washington, sending cables backand persuading Washington what
(22:43):
was, at least what I believe tobe, in the best interest of the
United States, and I did notbelieve that a Saudi attack on
Qatar was in the best interest,and the Saudis are sort of
dropping hints in the otherdirection.
So I don't know.
I may be wandering a little bitoff the subject right now, but
(23:06):
anyway, how does that sound foran answer?
Speaker 1 (23:10):
That's.
I mean, I just keep going backto the angles and like the way
that you have to communicatewith the variety of stakeholders
, and each are very important,but you know, maybe think
they're the most important aswell, and it's a challenge, I'm
sure.
And so, yeah, you discussed theprivate sector and your work
(23:30):
with business, so you're alsopresident of the US Qatar
Business Council.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I was.
That's my second retirement now.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Well, could you talk about?
Maybe you know the challengesand what went into strengthening
the trade and investmentbetween the two countries
through your work with the USQatar Business Council.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Two or three important roles.
First of all, the, I'd say, thespecific case of Qatar.
This is an extremely richcountry that most people in the
United States didn't knowanything about.
So you had a long list ofcompanies coming to the business
council saying this is what I'dlike to sell, this is what I'd
(24:13):
like to invest, and so forth,and it was separating the wheat
from the chaff.
You had to tell companies,including some pretty big ones,
that you know you may want tosell this product in Qatar, but
the Qataris don't want to buy it.
And I'm going to save you$20,000 in airfares and hotels
going to Qatar only to find outthat there's no market for what
(24:39):
you want you want.
Secondly, you had to help thesecompanies shape their approach
to the cutlery customer.
The different countries havegot different how can I say?
Environments for doing business, certain views, the cutleries
(25:01):
again, a small country, a verysmall number of people in the
total population and a verysmall number of people among
major decision makers, evenamongst businessmen.
You had to shape your proposalsin certain ways.
I'll give you one example thatkept coming up all the time
(25:34):
no-transcript necessary to takemy investment in there, make
what I invested in much morevaluable and then sell in five
years.
And they wanted to get Qataripartners to come in with them to
do this in the United States oranother part of the country.
(25:56):
In the Gulf all the Gulfcountries, not just the Qataris
investment is not seen as aquick in and then exit strategy
and get out.
They are building a portfoliofor the future.
These are again small countries.
They are generally dependent onone particular commodity, be it
(26:19):
oil or gas, for the nationaleconomies.
They want to be in a positionwhere, if something happens to
that one commodity in marketing,the prices go out of the market
wars.
What have you that?
They have a base of a largenumber of investments around the
(26:41):
world to fall back on.
So what is now?
Qatar Investment Authority, forexample, was originally named
the Supreme Committee for theProtection of the Future.
So they didn't want exitstrategies.
They wanted the kind ofbusinesses they wanted to invest
(27:04):
in the United States orelsewhere, in the kind of
investment that 20 or 30 yearslater would still be producing
something for them.
They had no particular idea ofwhen they would want.
They didn't want to exit inorder to make money, persuading
American, the American financialindustry, that this is the way
(27:28):
the Qataris, and in fact itapplies to all the Gulf states
that this is the way the Gulfstates want to do business was
like pulling teeth without ananesthetic.
Our financial wizards believethat they've got a monopoly on
who's smart, how to make money,and they've done a pretty good
job of it, but their goals werenot the same as the goals of the
(27:53):
Qataris and of the rest of theregion, so getting the American
companies to understand that wasa problem.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Ambassador Therese, how, in your opinion, has
economic diplomacy changed inthe Gulf region over the past
two decades?
Speaker 2 (28:13):
that the fact that the people of the Gulf, the
bankers, their own venturecapitalists, their governments,
no longer need the human input.
A long time ago not a long timeago, but maybe in your age a
(28:39):
little bit less virtually allthe managers, all the experts,
in virtually every field wereforeigners, usually Americans
and Europeans, a lot of Indians,some others, but primarily the
(28:59):
operators of the economies ofthe Gulf were foreigners.
Aramco was originally theArabian American oil company.
It was an American-ownedoperation until the early 70s.
Most of the other oil companiesin the Gulf were foreign oil
companies operating uh prettymuch uh as they liked, because
(29:26):
the inhabitants of the gulf, thepeople the gulf, still lack the
technical skills to uh tomanage these huge operations.
Well, that's changed.
Over a couple of generations ofkids going to school, kids
getting out of school, kidsgoing to college, getting
(29:48):
advanced degrees, many of themgoing to work for the foreign
oil companies.
They slowly began to supplantthe foreigners there, plant the
foreigners there.
In the final analysis, theforeigner yes, he was working
(30:09):
for the Saudi or the Qatari orthe Emirati, but he was also his
how can I say?
His mindset was always orientedtowards the benefit of the
foreign company, even when theywere working for the Saudis, for
the Qataris, the Emiratis, andthere was this assumption that
you could put something over onthe local, on the Emirati or the
(30:33):
Qatari, because you reallydidn't know what was going on
and you could sell him thingsthat you, things that he still
made money from them, but theweight of the money, most of the
money, was going abroad to theforeign customer, to the foreign
partners, whoever they might be.
(30:56):
The change has come slowly.
Let me just give you anillustration of a political
change that occurred in Qatarquite recently.
As you know, qatar contractedwith six American and three
(31:17):
European universities to comeand establish branch campuses in
Qatar.
Amongst them were Miami Mater,Georgetown University School of
Foreign Service and Texas.
A&m had an engineering faculty,petroleum engineering in
particular and these schoolswere brought out there because
(31:42):
the Qataris felt that the onlyway you could improve local
higher education, tertiaryeducation, was by bringing
foreign schools in and both theexample and the technical skills
that they would impart, theacademic skills that they would
impart to the indigenous schools.
(32:04):
Well, right now, so the I cansay that for the first 10 to 15
years, it's been 25 years nowsince most of the schools came
out 20, 25 years years now,since most of the schools came
(32:25):
out through 20, 25 years.
The schools were indispensableto Cutterie education.
Cutterie University has nowimproved to the point where it's
as good as it's up there withsome of these schools.
It's really quite good, they'regetting good kids out.
It's up there with some ofthese schools.
It's really quite good, they'regetting good kids out.
(32:45):
The schools themselves areslowly bringing more Qataris
into management and into thefaculties.
But the and I don't think werealize this quite so much as we
did this last couple of months,you know, with everything
that's going on, the politics inthe United States towards the
(33:06):
Middle East have becomeparticularly toxic.
Qatar has been mediating thedispute between Israel and Hamas
in Gaza.
There was a certain anti-Qatarifeeling was beginning to
develop in certain areas in theUnited States.
(33:27):
And then I woke up one morningto my great surprise to learn
that Texas A&M had decided toclose down its faculty in Qatar,
which to me was a shock.
Had decided to close down itsfaculty in Qatar, which to me
was a shock.
It was a faculty that thestudents who went there, the
(33:54):
branch campus, loved it, theQatari students, the foreign
students who were there.
It was an essential sort ofuniversity because it was
teaching primarily petroleum andgas engineering and everything
that went with it, which iscentral to the country economy,
and it basically figured out whythey closed it that sort of
(34:17):
horrid week in which thepresidents of Yale and Harvard
and some other schools werehauled up in front of a House
committee and were basicallycrucified.
And there had always been thisundercurrent by certain factions
, certain elements of the UnitedStates politics, against close
(34:40):
relations with Arabs and againstthe Arabs of the Gulf, and
particularly Qatar, because itwas seen as having too much
influence with, as being thecountry that we had to go to to
deal with our enemies in theregion.
And apparently the president ofTexas A&M was terrified that he
(35:03):
was going to be the next guy upin front of Elise what her name
is, elise Stefanik to becrucified.
So he made the decision and gotthe board it's called the Board
of Governors to go along withhim and they made the decision
to close the school, board ofGovernors to go along with him
(35:23):
and they made the decision toclose the school.
When I went out this trip, itwas to attend Qatar Foundation
events and I was surprisedrather pleasantly surprised to
discover that the Qataris haddiscovered that they could carry
(35:44):
the ball on their own, thatthey could move in, they could
replace the faculty, they couldreplace what Texas A&M had
brought to Cutter and operate itjust as well on their own.
As one person told me, theywere past, that they didn't.
You know, we shouldn't evenworry about trying to get Texas
A&M back into Qatar because they, the Qataris, can manage this
(36:08):
quite well.
So this has changed in manyways the environment into which
foreign companies are coming.
It is no longer let me find outwhich expatriate from my
country is in that company thatI'm dealing with the government
agency and see what I can dowith them.
(36:28):
It has become now you're goingout to a country that is
perfectly capable of running itsown affairs and cutting a deal
that is in its own interest,with its own people not having
to go.
I think a lot of companies inthe West, not just American
companies, have been sort ofslow to realize it.
(36:54):
The second factor that has comein, which is quite important, is
China.
Which is quite important isChina.
China is totally dependent onthe Gulf for its energy supplies
.
Beyond the coal that itproduces, all its oil and gas
(37:15):
comes from the Gulf, orvirtually all its oil and gas
comes from the Gulf.
Now and the Chinese are makingheadway and I don't see them.
I mean they are competitors ina way, but they are the other
huge economy that is now tryingto build a relationship in the
Gulf and too many Americans, inmy view at least, have seen this
(37:40):
as the Chinese are trying totake over the Gulf.
They're going to throw us out.
They're going to take over.
Chinese are more concerned withhow do they defend their
position in the Gulf, how dothey operate successfully in the
Gulf?
They didn't know much.
(38:00):
We're 1945.
We were fairly ignorant aboutthe Gulf.
They didn't know much.
We're 1945.
We were fairly ignorant aboutthe Gulf.
The Chinese knew even lessabout the Gulf than we knew in
1945, let alone today.
So they're developing expertise, they're developing
relationships.
In my lifetime, and probably inyours, I don't expect to see a
(38:23):
Chinese naval fleet in the Gulfproviding the security that
we've provided the Gulf statesthrough the years.
Chinese don't operate that way.
They're not going to risk it,but I can see them playing a
larger and larger role in theeconomy of the Gulf, playing a
larger and larger role in theeconomy of the Gulf and we are
(38:43):
somewhat at odds as to how wedeal with it.
Do we try to muscle, intimidatethe Gulf countries not to buy
Chinese products?
There are people doing thatright now, trying to get, for
example, gulf countries to stopbuying anything for Huawei, that
(39:16):
company, other Chineseindustries that have moved in.
And the people who I think aredoing it right are the ones who
say we've just got to get better.
We were asleep at the switch,we were too complacent, we
thought this was our backyardand we just have to get better
at what we do.
In competing with the Chinese,we have a position to defend.
The United States will alwaysbe the only country that will be
(39:39):
the security provider to theGulf, primarily because we're
the only country willing to doit or capable of doing it, and
we're going to have to learn howto compete with the Chinese.
The wrong term is to deal withthem.
You're not dealing with theChinese, you're dealing with the
Gulf countries in competitionwith the Chinese, and what I
(40:05):
hope doesn't happen is we havecommon interests with the
Chinese in the region.
Those common interests are tokeep the oil and gas flowing
flowing Instead of emphasizingwho's going to make more money
there.
Part of the business.
The common interest ismaintaining the flow of
(40:28):
hydrocarbons into the worldeconomy.
I don't know who's going to winthat battle in the United
States.
I hope it's the people who seea common interest with the
Chinese.
This has changed who thecompetition is for incoming
business, for buying oil and gas, it's the Far East and Asia.
(40:51):
The Gulf is situated where it'seasier to ship their stuff
eastward.
The United States is situatedin such a position that almost
all our oil and gas exportfacilities are in the Gulf of
America and I'm supposed to callit the Gulf of Mexico.
They're in Texas and Louisianaand for us it is easier to ship
(41:16):
to Europe and to West Africa andto South America and we are now
the.
We compete with the Gulf in thevolume of oil and gas that we
export.
So this is there's been afundamental change in who our
customers are and who thecompetitors are in the region.
(41:37):
I don't see this as a bad thing.
We're supposed to be good atbusiness and we need to simply
up our game.
What I'm worried about is thatthere are too many people who do
see it as a bad thing, who seeanything the Chinese engage in
(41:59):
as a zero-sum game with us.
It needn't be so, but we'll seehow that turns out.
Thirdly, the events of the lastyear in particular, but the last
two or three years have calmeddown the threat, have calmed
down Arab Gulf state fears ofIran.
(42:22):
The Iranians have suffered,they've been set down at a pace
by the course of the war and theIsraeli attacks and so forth,
and they are far more interestedin developing a better
relationship with the Gulfstates.
The Gulf states have a greatinterest in, in effect,
(42:47):
pacifying the Iranian threat andthey're doing it.
And right now there is aincreased, a better relationship
, an improved relationshipbetween the Gulf states and Iran
.
And we are going to startrunning into problems because
(43:09):
the Gulf states have no interestin getting into a war with Iran
.
Israel does I don't believeTrump does, I don't believe
President Trump does.
But so long as our policieshave always been to back up the
Israelis, we run the risk thatthe Israelis will involve us in
(43:32):
a war with Iran.
The last thing the Gulf stateswant is for themselves to get
into a war with Iran or for usto get into a war with Iran, or
for us to get into a war withIran.
They simply it would be acatastrophic development for
them and as a result, you cansee them.
They have, and I thinkthroughout the region they have
(43:56):
lost confidence in the UnitedStates, both as a protector and
as a business partner.
That the behavior of the UnitedStates, both as a protector and
as a business partner, that thebehavior of the United States
government the last two years,three years, has undermined
their confidence in us.
And then we have been a bit toofree at sanctioning everything
(44:21):
we come across.
The Gulf states want and need todo business with Iran.
It's part and parcel of having abetter relationship and again
we need to adjust.
And the US government's like anoil tanker you give it a right
helm order and it takes another10 to 15 miles before the ship
(44:43):
starts turning.
And we are very much like thatin terms of our sanctions policy
, of the economic warfare thatwe push.
So right now you have theSaudis, the Emiratis and others
talking about joining the BRICS,about getting in deeper in bed
(45:05):
in terms of business and perhapseven to a certain degree
politically with the Chinese andthe Russians, because we have
not sat down to review our ownpolicies and see how to deal
with this new reality and we'regoing to see, for example, more
(45:27):
arms sales going to armspurchases from the Gulf, other
going to China.
Right now, the Chinese totallydominate the consumer business
and they're going to startdominating in a few years, or at
least having a big impact onthe what's the term the
(45:49):
industrial equipment that theGulf needs to buy, and their
stuff is good and it's we'regoing to be competing with them.
We have to learn how to competewith the Chinese in an area
that was ours and we got fat andlazy in many ways.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Wow, yeah, so it seems like you know the products
there and everything hasremained the same.
The competition has beenchanging rapidly.
That's really just something,and I'm really excited for this
next question actually helpedrescue 147 Americans during an
(46:31):
uprising in Nicaragua.
Yeah, could you just take usback to that moment, kind of
what went into making those youknow critical decisions and kind
of what that high riskexperience has taught you about
leadership under pressure.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
Well, the first thing it taught me was that I was 26
years old and I wouldn't havedone it.
I wouldn't have done it now.
It would save your life.
When you're 26, there's acertain amount of excitement and
the whiz of bullets overheadsort of jacks you up a little
bit.
You are willing to take risksbecause you don't know.
(47:14):
The risks really are there andthere's this.
You know you think you'reimmortal when you're 26 years
old, but what happened was thatthere was a.
This was in the days of Samosain Nicaragua, and three of us,
all good Spanish speakers, weresent down to downtown Managua at
a time when there would be avery large-scale demonstration
(47:37):
in advance of national elections, because everybody felt that
the Somozas would try and rigthe elections and to say you
know, in a city of 400, you know300,000, there were probably
50,000 people in the streetsdemonstrating and we were down
there reporting back to theembassy what was going on.
(47:59):
These were days before cellphones.
There were such days, therewere times when we didn't have
cell phones, so all three of ushad friends around and we'd drop
into somebody's house and callback to the embassy and say
something.
You know what was happening,and it turned into a somebody
(48:21):
shot somebody.
It's unclear who shot first,but a lot of the demonstrators
had come armed.
The Nicaraguan National Guard,which was the police force and
army for Nicaragua, responded toa great deal of violence and
(48:43):
the center of Managua was justpeople shooting at each other
from all directions.
I got into a friend's housecalled the embassy, told them
what was going on they were somelittle bit distance out of town
.
They didn't believe me so untila few billets came into the
house and then they believed meand we were supposed to stay
downtown, the three of us, andcontinue reporting.
(49:06):
Within half an hour there wasone of us.
Within half an hour there wasone of us.
The one of the three ran into apolice station to call the
embassy and forgotten that justfor fun he'd pinned an
opposition campaign pin on hisshirt and the cops took one look
at him and he was sort ofdarkish and they just beat him
(49:30):
up and threw him in a cell.
We didn't get him out of thecell until many hours later.
And the second guy the guy Iactually go to school with
Georgetown was further downtown,towards the Grand Hotel, which
is something right out of novelsabout Central America in those
(49:53):
days.
But there were about 142Americans in the hotel, tourists
and a bunch of the people theinsurgents the more organized
part of the insurgents ran intothe hotel.
They were going to sort of keepthe Americans as hostages and
(50:14):
fight off the governmentattacking them, and so my
colleague was trapped inside thehotel.
We were all about the same ageand the same level of mental
maturity at that point and I wasthe only one going up and down
streets.
I was going up and down streets.
I had enough friends around atthe time that there were a
(50:36):
couple of dozen houses that Icould knock the door, go in and
call.
And finally I went down to myapartment, which overlooked the
Grand Hotel.
I looked down and I could seethat there was a lot of shooting
going between the hotel and thegovernment troops on the
outside, including some armoredcars.
And I called the embassy andthe ambassador got me and I
(51:03):
reported what I'd seen.
He said this is really bad.
There's 140 Americans.
We cannot have Americancasualties happening.
I'm trying to get through toSamosa to tell him to stop
shooting at the hotel.
I don't want Americans killed.
In the meantime the leadershipwas his.
I want you to go down and tellthe National Guard to stop
(51:26):
shooting at the hotel.
You know my response was, sir,yeah, okay.
And then I went downstairs,walked out on the street, walked
towards the hotel, was stoppedby a patrol and I explained who
I was.
I had my diplomatic ID card andit was sort of, take me to your
(51:50):
leader.
And I went.
They did take me.
It was a major commanding theforces there and I explained
that I had come, that I wouldlike him to stop shooting at the
hotel because there areAmericans in there and my
ambassador is trying to reachyour president to get this to
(52:10):
stop and, in the meantime, juststop shooting, because you
surely wouldn't want to beresponsible for American deaths.
And his response was to ask meif I'd been drinking and I said
no, stone Cold's over, and thisis really important.
And I talked him into orderinghis troops to stand down and
(52:32):
don't shoot at the hotel.
And I sat there and he said tome he was not a nice guy.
I'd known him a little bitbefore.
To say that he was guilty ofhuman rights abuses would be an
understatement.
Personally and I'm sittingthere I started smoking
(52:53):
cigarettes again.
I hadn't smoked in a long timewaiting for the call to come,
and about 20 minutes later hewalks up to me and he says
you're lucky, I just got a callto stand down and we're sort of
limited as to what we can shootat the hotel.
And then from that point on,papal Nuncio got involved and
(53:17):
about 2 o'clock in the morningwe got everybody out of the
hotel, including my colleaguewho sort of unluckily had a
stray bullet take his ear off.
That was the only Americancasualty of the day, but the
(53:39):
ambassador moved quickly.
I think Somoza was trying toavoid talking to him if he could
.
I don't know what transpired inthat conversation, but I do
know that at the end heconvinced Somoza that killing
Americans in a hotel would notbe would not be a good thing for
his government.
Speaker 1 (54:02):
Wow, that is an incredible story and as someone
who is, you know, of a similarage as you were at that time,
you know it's nothing short ofremarkable.
I can guarantee I know you saidyou know, when you you're 26,
you feel alive and that you cando anything.
You're invincible.
But I wouldn't have done that.
That's just.
Speaker 2 (54:21):
That's an incredible story it was fun, you know.
I think back about it and I'venothing but not nothing, but got
some funny stories out of this.
At one point I didn't realizeyet that the insurgents had
taken the hotel and that thearmy was beginning to move
(54:41):
towards it the National Guard.
So I walked up to the back doorof the bar.
The bar had another openingfrom the it was one of these
romantic bars but anotheropening onto the street from the
main entrance into the hotel.
And I opened.
The door wouldn't open.
I couldn't figure out what wasgoing on.
(55:02):
And then there was a windowbroke above me and I looked up.
Somebody stuck a rifle out thewindow and started shooting down
the street.
And I looked down the streetand saw a government armored car
coming up the street, shooting.
And I now hold the world'srecord for the 19 yard dash
(55:23):
which was, which was thedistance from the bar door to
the next corner where they canget behind a building.
Speaker 1 (55:32):
Someone may need to contact the Guinness Book of
World.
Records there, we'll get you intouch with the right people.
That's funny.
Again, I want to thank you foryour time here in this interview
today.
It's been really insightful andI just have one last question
for you, if we can, A holistic,again overarching question.
(55:52):
If you could change one thingabout US foreign policy today,
what would it be?
Speaker 2 (56:02):
Rather than getting specific on the US foreign
policy, on items of US foreignpolicy, what I think is needed
most is the understanding thatforeign policy is not a zero-sum
game.
It is.
(56:24):
It's like a business deal, butit is.
It isn't driven but necessarilyby money.
It's driven by many otherfactors and if you're trying to
negotiate a deal to buy a houseor anything, you make an offer,
they turn it down.
(56:44):
You make another offer, theycome back with a counteroffer,
but before you can get into it,you have to spend a great deal
more time understanding theforeign country.
The Americans have an inabilityto understand and let me say
(57:08):
I'm not being anti-American tounderstand what motivates
foreigners and from myexperience, chinese and Russians
fit into the same pattern.
Because we are a hugecontinental country, very, very
few Americans have any conceptof what life is like outside the
(57:32):
United States.
Chinese feel the same way,chinese feel the same way,
russians feel the same way.
You get into conversations withthem and to me, the most
important what's the word I'mlooking for element of US
foreign policy is the lack ofempathy, and what a diplomat
(57:54):
needs is empathy, not sympathy.
I don't have to like whatyou're doing, but I have to
understand why you are doing it,and the Department of State has
probably more people per capitawho understand what goes on in
foreign countries than anybodyelse does.
But the Department of State isnot in charge of making policy.
(58:16):
The Department of State is incharge of executing it when it
can and of trying to persuadethe powers that be the President
, the Congress they're.
Basically, we don't have aSecretary of State.
We have one Secretary of Stateand 535 people on Capitol Hill
who think they're the secretaryof state.
(58:38):
So we don't teach enoughforeign languages, we don't
teach enough in terms of foreignaffairs, we don't teach much of
other people's history and wedon't teach other people's
history from the other person'spoint of view.
There are a myriad of thingsthat we have done right in the
(59:01):
world and there are a myriad ofthings that we have done badly
in the world, and I can't reallysingle something out that would
be terribly important inchanging US foreign policy.
That would be terriblyimportant in changing US foreign
policy.
What I believe we need is,first of all, we need a bigger
foreign service, one that issufficiently well-resourced that
(59:28):
it can go out and sit in thecoffeehouse and talk to the taxi
driver and go to the ministryof the 200 other countries in
the world and then be listenedto.
And the only way they're goingto be listened to is if we do a
better job of preparing our ownpeople, of not preparing Somehow
or other.
We have to change the inabilityof the foreign policy home
(59:54):
establishment, of the politicalestablishment of the United
States, to understand whatmotivates somebody else and to
understand that you have to stayconstantly engaged.
There's this belief that if weopen diplomatic relations with
the other country, we're doingthe other country a favor.
No, we're doing ourselves afavor, because you will never
(01:00:17):
know what's going on in there ifyou break diplomatic relations.
The dumbest thing you can doand we've done it over and over
again is to break diplomaticrelations with countries in
which we have a bad relationshipand then think that we can just
intimidate people into doingsomething that they're not, that
their psyche doesn't allow themto do.
(01:00:39):
Look at Cuba.
We've spent what is it now?
50-odd plus years, no, 60 yearssince Castro.
The Castros took over in Cubaand put all the weight of the US
government into overthrowingthem, and I'll tell you, we
could have done a lot better atoverthrowing communism in Cuba
(01:01:01):
by embracing them.
We can.
American rock bands andMcDonald's have more influence
than speeches on Capitol Hilland cutting trade ties.
Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
Yes, I think I understand.
That's incredible to hear.
I appreciate you again for thisinterview.
Obviously, you're an extremelyaccomplished diplomat and it's
been amazing to hear from youtoday.
Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
Thank you very much for the compliments and the
flattery as well.
Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
I really appreciated the conversation today, so thank
you again, ambassador PatrickBarrows, everyone.
Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
Take care.
Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
You too.
Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
All right.
Welcome to the IdeaGen Global Catalyze Impact
podcast series.
Today, I am thrilled to havewith us former US Ambassador to
Qatar, Patrick Theros.
Patrick, thank you for joiningus today.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
It's a pleasure.
I always enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Absolutely.
I'm excited for thisconversation as well.
I know we've had you on severaltimes, but it's always a
pleasure to hear from you andyour extensive experience in
diplomacy and leadership and alltypes of things.
So with that I want to rollright into the interview here
all types of things.
So with that I want to rollright into the interview here.
As I said, you know you have anextensive experience in foreign
(00:51):
policy and diplomacy.
What kind of inspired you tojoin the US Foreign Service in,
I believe, 1963, was it?
Speaker 2 (00:59):
And what kind of kept you engaged for your I can
answer the last question first,which is it was the most fun job
I could ever imagine, uh, andyou walk away with a feeling at
the end of your career thatyou've actually made the world a
little bit better perhaps justa smidgen, but that you've
(01:20):
contributed to making the worlda little bit better and that
you've contributed to what yourcountry wants, what your country
needs relationships.
We live in a world that's nolonger.
We're no longer protected byoceans after they developed this
thing called an ICBM.
And so the isolationism, thedistance that the US kept from
(01:47):
the world, the lack of foreignentanglements those were fine
before the 20th century.
At some time in the middle ofthe 20th century it turned out
that we were no longer able tocheck out.
The world had come to us, we'dgone to the world, and what
seemed like a 15-day trip acrossthe atlantic a long time ago is
(02:12):
now down to six hours gettinginto london.
So you contribute at the endthat's.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
that's incredible to hear and it kind of just leads
into my next question about youknow you and your role as a US
ambassador in a prettytransformative period in Qatar
and the Middle East.
Could you kind of describemaybe some of the biggest
challenges and the opportunitiesthat came, you know, with
strengthening that US-Cutterrelationship?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Perhaps the biggest challenge happens before you
leave.
It's fully understanding whatyour government, what the US
government, wants from therelationship.
I mean there are certaingeneral rules.
We want people like us, we wantpeople to vote with us in
various forums like the UN andso forth.
(03:06):
We want to have a good traderelationship.
But also there are first of allthere's competing demands
within the United States as towhat we would like out of this
relationship and you have tosort them out and get the
Department of State toprioritize and occasionally
(03:30):
decide which agency of the USgovernment or which constituency
is going to get preferentialtreatment is first up in the
priorities of the US government,stop in the priorities of the
US government.
So the preparation to go outthere is quite difficult and in
(03:59):
my case it was sort of truncatedbecause before you are
confirmed by the Senate you'renot allowed to speak to anybody
because the Senate takes this assort of a threat to its own
prerogatives.
You are not an ambassador,confirmed ambassador, until they
actually vote for you, and thenyou've got a perhaps limited
period of time between theconfirmation vote and when you
(04:20):
leave to get all these thingstogether.
In my case I was very luckybecause I knew the region quite
well, because I pretty much knewwhat the host country wanted, I
had a pretty good idea of whattheir priorities were, though, I
(04:40):
must admit, in the end I wassurprised by some things.
Priorities were, though, I mustadmit, in the end I was
surprised by some things, butthe largest part.
For example, at the time theDepartment of State was trying
to mediate between Exxon and acompany called between Mobil Oil
I'm sorry, it was before ExxonMobil, just Mobil and a company
called Enron that you're, ifyou're old enough to remember,
(05:01):
went belly up about 30, about 25, 30 years ago, enough to
remember went belly up about 25,30 years ago and they were
engaged in a fight to the deathover who gets up front in what
the US government wants in termsof American companies
exploiting the newly developedcutter gas field, the newly
(05:21):
developed Qatar gas field.
We also had this question atthe time of the US strategic
posture in the region was notclearly worked out very well.
And also the other issue in theUnited States again was where
(05:45):
did the US stand on the disputesbetween the countries of the
Gulf?
We knew that the big dispute,which was Iran versus the
countries that we wereassociated with closely, which
were the Arab states of the Gulfon the other side, that one was
pretty clear what we wanted todo.
(06:05):
But there were other discussions, other disputes between the
countries in the region and onehad to try and figure out where
the US came down, because thiswould in effect determine how
you dealt with the host countrygovernment, in effect determine
(06:25):
how you dealt with the hostcountry government.
In this case, the US reallydidn't have or hadn't thought
through the disputes of the Gulfand you pretty much get out
there and then in the end, ifthe US doesn't have a position,
you have the ambassadors in eachcountry sort of taking the
position of each country againstthe neighboring one.
(06:47):
I mean, that's natural enoughanyway, because you're living in
the country, this is whereyou're getting your information
and the motivations from.
But trying to sort all this outcan become quite time-consuming
.
I frankly didn't have the time.
(07:11):
I was at less than 10 daysbetween my confirmation and
getting on the airplane to go toDoha.
When you get there, the firstthing you discover pretty
quickly is if you've been absentfrom the region for a few years
, things have changed and yourassumptions may not always be
accurate the case of Qatar.
(07:31):
The emir had displaced hisfather early.
His father had abdicated.
The father had particularpolicies that the United States
was not, in, which the interestsof the US were not pretty high
up.
And I arrived to discover thatthe new government was a
(07:52):
government that was determinedto be as close as possible to
the United States, which wasgreat for me.
When the Emir met me the firsttime after I presented
credentials, the custom wasyou'd sit and have tea or coffee
with him for a few minutes.
Ours turned into an hoursession which was pretty much
(08:16):
centered around his opening line, as I intend to become
America's best friend of theGulf, and I realized that nobody
in the United States governmentever considered this as a
possibility.
So these are the sort of theinitial problems, the initial
issues that develop when you.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
They're not necessarily problems when you
arrive in the first few days ofbeing ambassador the
understanding that whatWashington expects of you is
unrealistic and what the hostgovernment expects of the United
States may be equallyunrealistic sometimes, or
(08:58):
sometimes realistic, anyway, Ihope that's no, yeah, that's
that's, you know, veryinteresting and and your
perspective you know personallyis is key there and you kind of
touched on, you know, thepriority shifts that cutter had
(09:18):
um, but what about the priorityshifts and the diplomatic
strategies that change for the?
U within that region of youknow?
Rapid political and economicchange?
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah, specific to Qatar, the most important
developments were that theUnited States was extremely
interested in the exploitationof the North Dome gas field.
This was the single, thelargest single deposit of
natural gas in the world, givingQatar the third position for
(09:51):
the natural gas reserves.
The potential was huge.
When I got there, a newtechnology was being introduced
for the first time.
Technology had existed but noone had figured out how to make
it work on a commercial basis,which was the LNG technology.
(10:11):
Mobile oil was taking a bigrisk.
It was the American companythat was the first one to come
in because to see, first of all,to get the gas out of the
ground and then to figure outhow to make LNG work.
The transportation of naturalgas by sea and a little bit of
(10:34):
technical background.
Until then, the primary way ofmoving natural gas was by
pipeline.
Pipelines are high upfrontcosts, easy to manage, cheap to
send gas afterwards, but theproblem is that they've got to
run through somebody else'sterritory or they have to be
(10:56):
under the sea, where you haveother problems.
They can be interfered with.
They can have natural breaks,spilling of gas.
You don't know how to fix it orwhere it's fixed.
So there were lots ofdifficulties involved with
(11:17):
pipelines, but at the time itwas the principal technology for
moving gas from where it wascoming out of the ground, to the
customers.
Liquefied natural gas was atechnology that, even though the
basic science behind it wasknown for a long time how do you
actually commercialize it wasdifficult.
(11:40):
Mobile oil was the first majorcompany in the world to get into
it big time because the Qatarisdid not want to ship gas from
Qatar by pipeline because itwould have put them at the mercy
of their neighbors and this isa small country in a rough
(12:01):
neighborhood surrounded byneighbors who have certain
predatory views towards theQatari's wealth.
And at the same time we had aproblem with Enron coming in
wanting to do the same thing,because Enron wanted to ship gas
(12:23):
to India.
And they got into the USgovernment and they said we will
also be able to ship gas fromQatar to Israel.
At that time most of the Arabworld had maintained a boycott
against Israel and, trying tobalance out, the Qataris were
prepared to lift the boycott forshipping natural gas to Israel,
(12:46):
but they had the contract withMobil.
My job was to, on the ground,keep the Qataris on board, to
modify the contract.
The State Department had topersuade Mobil in the United
States to agree to modify thecontract, united States to agree
(13:06):
to modify the contract, and itwas a fairly ugly fight between
the two companies, in which youhad to keep your eye on the
future, never mind what peopleare saying to each other at this
time.
The other problem was, as Isaid, the hostilities between
the various countries in theGulf, between the various
countries in the Gulf, and theseare in most cases they're not
recent hostilities and they arepretty much like, say, the
(13:35):
attitude that Armenians havetowards Turks.
These are things that happeneda long time ago, but people are
still feeding the resentmentsand in the Gulf these
resentments were in the form ofbattles that had taken place 100
years before, in which piecesof territory had been lost, or
(14:06):
the Saudis believing that theyshould be the paramount country
in the Gulf, trying tomonopolize American the
relationship with the UnitedStates and trying to get the
United States to execute itspolicies with the small
countries through Saudi Arabia,rather indirectly and as a
consequence, it was a fairlycomplex series of relationships
in the Gulf.
Complex series of relationshipsin the Gulf and again, the worry
(14:27):
about Iran, the largest countryin the Gulf, the most powerful
one and the one with which theUS had, and still has, obviously
, a rather toxic relationship.
That, for the United States,goes back to the taking of
hostages in the American embassyin Tehran, and for the Iranians
(14:48):
it goes back to the USoverthrowing the first and only
democratic elected government inIranian history in 1953.
So there was an awful lot to do, complicated by the fact that I
had a tiny embassy includingthe communicator and the admin
(15:08):
officer and the consular officer.
I had five American diplomatsat the post, so you had a very
small group of people with whichto carry out, to work on these
things.
And so we were off to a sort ofa fun start trying to sort all
(15:31):
these things out, figuring outhow to make things work in Qatar
and how to make things work inthe United States.
And I have to tell you ageneral rule of diplomacy it is
usually more difficult dealingwith your own country's
government the people sent youout than it is dealing with the
country of the government you'reaccredited to.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Wow, just you know the amount of angles here that
you described.
I mean you have the domesticand the private sector and then
you have, of course, thesurrounding countries involved.
I mean no short, no small job,obviously for your team, but you
guys did incredibly well.
That's really cool to hear andit leads me into our next
(16:15):
question.
You know, throughout yourcareer you've worked under
different administrations with,you know, varying foreign policy
priorities.
How do you adapt maybe yourleadership style or your you
know working style to navigatethose changes?
Speaker 2 (16:32):
As I said, the most difficult part of the job is
dealing with your country, withthe United States.
The style in dealing with thehost country doesn't change very
much from country to country.
There are some idiosyncrasiesbetween monarchies and
dictatorships and republics asto how you deal with these
(16:56):
governments, but those thingsare sort of set.
You know that you try to get afeel for how stable the
government is.
You try to get a feel for howwilling the government is to
listen to its own public opinion.
You try and meet as many of theopinion makers, influencers of
(17:19):
government and so forth as youcan in the country.
But that's you know in writlarge.
That's a fairly standard way ofdealing.
The differences in dealing withWashington are more pronounced
as you go from administration toadministration.
Not so much the administrativedifficulties of how do you do
(17:45):
the post, how do you set it up,how do you organize, how do you
budget and so forth, but thedifficulties of getting how can
I say of getting the informationyou need from Washington and
who to go to in Washington toinfluence American policy in a
way that you see beneficialtowards the relationship with
(18:08):
the host country.
Some administrations, forexample, kept a tight hold on
communications.
Everything went through thedesk officer of the Department
of State.
Other administrations were veryloose.
You'd get phone calls in themiddle of the night from
somebody who wanted you to dosomething and you had to balance
(18:30):
off the fact that the personmay be very high-ranking with
the possibility that he may nothave even told the Department of
State that he's going to callme.
And they say this varies fromadministration to administration
.
How much does the presidentcare about your part of the
(18:53):
country?
I have served in countrieswhere the president cared a
great deal about what was goingon, in Jordan, for example, and
I have to say that my initialtime in the UAE and in Qatar
later, the US government didn'treally care about the region
very much and you were lefttrying to figure out what you
(19:16):
could do to improve thingswithout getting anybody mad at
you, back in Washington on yourown, without much instruction.
So dealing with Washington isthe most difficult.
How do you deal with a company,for example, like Exxon, which
would call you and say I'mcoming, the president of Exxon
(19:37):
is coming to Qatar and I want tosee the Emir of Qatar at 10
o'clock on Sunday morning?
Exxon may think Exxon may beable to play that game in
Washington, but you havefeelings on the other side.
The Qataris were deeplyoffended that the president of
(19:58):
Exxon was going to set theemir's schedule.
So I tried to do Washington andWashington apparently was sort
of afraid to have somebody callExxon and say look, you've got
to be more flexible.
We worked through it, but it wasa good example of how that
relationship could have beentanked rather badly.
(20:21):
Exxon could have sufferedtremendous reputational harm and
the hostility of the governmentif they had persisted in this.
Exxon did this because theyfigured they're the biggest
company at that time, thebiggest oil company in the world
, and the Qataris were a tinycountry.
So this is, you know, issueslike this, issues like the
(20:43):
Qataris wanted to buy certainkinds of military equipment.
Other countries that were onbad terms with Qatar would then
be lobbying in Washington sayingdon't sell them this, don't
sell them that.
Then other countries theQataris were sort of new to the
game.
They did not have a largediplomatic establishment and the
(21:07):
Saudis, who had been dealingwith the United States for a
long time and knew the US welland had a very large and
efficient diplomaticestablishment in the United
States, would frequently get into bend somebody's ear when the
Qatari diplomats couldn't do it.
We had sort of early on in myposting there it was 6th of
(21:34):
February 1996, the Qatarisdiscovered an attempted coup
d'etat.
They rolled it up sort of a fewhours before it was to happen
and things began to get reallyugly as we realized that the
coup d'etat had been organizedby all three of Qatar's
(21:55):
neighbors Bahrain, saudi Arabiaand the UAE plus Egypt, and
things had gotten really tense.
If you 2017, we got a repeat ofthat in a different sort of way
, but there was real worry of anarmed clash, of these Saudis
(22:17):
rolling into Qatar, and therethe job was to get the
department to tell everybody tocalm down and sort of stand the
troops down without breakingother relationships.
Again, this took a fair amountof being up all night talking to
Washington, sending cables backand persuading Washington what
(22:43):
was, at least what I believe tobe, in the best interest of the
United States, and I did notbelieve that a Saudi attack on
Qatar was in the best interest,and the Saudis are sort of
dropping hints in the otherdirection.
So I don't know.
I may be wandering a little bitoff the subject right now, but
(23:06):
anyway, how does that sound foran answer?
Speaker 1 (23:10):
That's.
I mean, I just keep going backto the angles and like the way
that you have to communicatewith the variety of stakeholders
, and each are very important,but you know, maybe think
they're the most important aswell, and it's a challenge, I'm
sure.
And so, yeah, you discussed theprivate sector and your work
(23:30):
with business, so you're alsopresident of the US Qatar
Business Council.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I was.
That's my second retirement now.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Well, could you talk about?
Maybe you know the challengesand what went into strengthening
the trade and investmentbetween the two countries
through your work with the USQatar Business Council.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Two or three important roles.
First of all, the, I'd say, thespecific case of Qatar.
This is an extremely richcountry that most people in the
United States didn't knowanything about.
So you had a long list ofcompanies coming to the business
council saying this is what I'dlike to sell, this is what I'd
(24:13):
like to invest, and so forth,and it was separating the wheat
from the chaff.
You had to tell companies,including some pretty big ones,
that you know you may want tosell this product in Qatar, but
the Qataris don't want to buy it.
And I'm going to save you$20,000 in airfares and hotels
going to Qatar only to find outthat there's no market for what
(24:39):
you want you want.
Secondly, you had to help thesecompanies shape their approach
to the cutlery customer.
The different countries havegot different how can I say?
Environments for doing business, certain views, the cutleries
(25:01):
again, a small country, a verysmall number of people in the
total population and a verysmall number of people among
major decision makers, evenamongst businessmen.
You had to shape your proposalsin certain ways.
I'll give you one example thatkept coming up all the time
(25:34):
no-transcript necessary to takemy investment in there, make
what I invested in much morevaluable and then sell in five
years.
And they wanted to get Qataripartners to come in with them to
do this in the United States oranother part of the country.
(25:56):
In the Gulf all the Gulfcountries, not just the Qataris
investment is not seen as aquick in and then exit strategy
and get out.
They are building a portfoliofor the future.
These are again small countries.
They are generally dependent onone particular commodity, be it
(26:19):
oil or gas, for the nationaleconomies.
They want to be in a positionwhere, if something happens to
that one commodity in marketing,the prices go out of the market
wars.
What have you that?
They have a base of a largenumber of investments around the
(26:41):
world to fall back on.
So what is now?
Qatar Investment Authority, forexample, was originally named
the Supreme Committee for theProtection of the Future.
So they didn't want exitstrategies.
They wanted the kind ofbusinesses they wanted to invest
(27:04):
in the United States orelsewhere, in the kind of
investment that 20 or 30 yearslater would still be producing
something for them.
They had no particular idea ofwhen they would want.
They didn't want to exit inorder to make money, persuading
American, the American financialindustry, that this is the way
(27:28):
the Qataris, and in fact itapplies to all the Gulf states
that this is the way the Gulfstates want to do business was
like pulling teeth without ananesthetic.
Our financial wizards believethat they've got a monopoly on
who's smart, how to make money,and they've done a pretty good
job of it, but their goals werenot the same as the goals of the
(27:53):
Qataris and of the rest of theregion, so getting the American
companies to understand that wasa problem.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Ambassador Therese, how, in your opinion, has
economic diplomacy changed inthe Gulf region over the past
two decades?
Speaker 2 (28:13):
that the fact that the people of the Gulf, the
bankers, their own venturecapitalists, their governments,
no longer need the human input.
A long time ago not a long timeago, but maybe in your age a
(28:39):
little bit less virtually allthe managers, all the experts,
in virtually every field wereforeigners, usually Americans
and Europeans, a lot of Indians,some others, but primarily the
(28:59):
operators of the economies ofthe Gulf were foreigners.
Aramco was originally theArabian American oil company.
It was an American-ownedoperation until the early 70s.
Most of the other oil companiesin the Gulf were foreign oil
companies operating uh prettymuch uh as they liked, because
(29:26):
the inhabitants of the gulf, thepeople the gulf, still lack the
technical skills to uh tomanage these huge operations.
Well, that's changed.
Over a couple of generations ofkids going to school, kids
getting out of school, kidsgoing to college, getting
(29:48):
advanced degrees, many of themgoing to work for the foreign
oil companies.
They slowly began to supplantthe foreigners there, plant the
foreigners there.
In the final analysis, theforeigner yes, he was working
(30:09):
for the Saudi or the Qatari orthe Emirati, but he was also his
how can I say?
His mindset was always orientedtowards the benefit of the
foreign company, even when theywere working for the Saudis, for
the Qataris, the Emiratis, andthere was this assumption that
you could put something over onthe local, on the Emirati or the
(30:33):
Qatari, because you reallydidn't know what was going on
and you could sell him thingsthat you, things that he still
made money from them, but theweight of the money, most of the
money, was going abroad to theforeign customer, to the foreign
partners, whoever they might be.
(30:56):
The change has come slowly.
Let me just give you anillustration of a political
change that occurred in Qatarquite recently.
As you know, qatar contractedwith six American and three
(31:17):
European universities to comeand establish branch campuses in
Qatar.
Amongst them were Miami Mater,Georgetown University School of
Foreign Service and Texas.
A&m had an engineering faculty,petroleum engineering in
particular and these schoolswere brought out there because
(31:42):
the Qataris felt that the onlyway you could improve local
higher education, tertiaryeducation, was by bringing
foreign schools in and both theexample and the technical skills
that they would impart, theacademic skills that they would
impart to the indigenous schools.
(32:04):
Well, right now, so the I cansay that for the first 10 to 15
years, it's been 25 years nowsince most of the schools came
out 20, 25 years years now,since most of the schools came
(32:25):
out through 20, 25 years.
The schools were indispensableto Cutterie education.
Cutterie University has nowimproved to the point where it's
as good as it's up there withsome of these schools.
It's really quite good, they'regetting good kids out.
It's up there with some ofthese schools.
It's really quite good, they'regetting good kids out.
(32:45):
The schools themselves areslowly bringing more Qataris
into management and into thefaculties.
But the and I don't think werealize this quite so much as we
did this last couple of months,you know, with everything
that's going on, the politics inthe United States towards the
(33:06):
Middle East have becomeparticularly toxic.
Qatar has been mediating thedispute between Israel and Hamas
in Gaza.
There was a certain anti-Qatarifeeling was beginning to
develop in certain areas in theUnited States.
(33:27):
And then I woke up one morningto my great surprise to learn
that Texas A&M had decided toclose down its faculty in Qatar,
which to me was a shock.
Had decided to close down itsfaculty in Qatar, which to me
was a shock.
It was a faculty that thestudents who went there, the
(33:54):
branch campus, loved it, theQatari students, the foreign
students who were there.
It was an essential sort ofuniversity because it was
teaching primarily petroleum andgas engineering and everything
that went with it, which iscentral to the country economy,
and it basically figured out whythey closed it that sort of
(34:17):
horrid week in which thepresidents of Yale and Harvard
and some other schools werehauled up in front of a House
committee and were basicallycrucified.
And there had always been thisundercurrent by certain factions
, certain elements of the UnitedStates politics, against close
(34:40):
relations with Arabs and againstthe Arabs of the Gulf, and
particularly Qatar, because itwas seen as having too much
influence with, as being thecountry that we had to go to to
deal with our enemies in theregion.
And apparently the president ofTexas A&M was terrified that he
(35:03):
was going to be the next guy upin front of Elise what her name
is, elise Stefanik to becrucified.
So he made the decision and gotthe board it's called the Board
of Governors to go along withhim and they made the decision
to close the school, board ofGovernors to go along with him
(35:23):
and they made the decision toclose the school.
When I went out this trip, itwas to attend Qatar Foundation
events and I was surprisedrather pleasantly surprised to
discover that the Qataris haddiscovered that they could carry
(35:44):
the ball on their own, thatthey could move in, they could
replace the faculty, they couldreplace what Texas A&M had
brought to Cutter and operate itjust as well on their own.
As one person told me, theywere past, that they didn't.
You know, we shouldn't evenworry about trying to get Texas
A&M back into Qatar because they, the Qataris, can manage this
(36:08):
quite well.
So this has changed in manyways the environment into which
foreign companies are coming.
It is no longer let me find outwhich expatriate from my
country is in that company thatI'm dealing with the government
agency and see what I can dowith them.
(36:28):
It has become now you're goingout to a country that is
perfectly capable of running itsown affairs and cutting a deal
that is in its own interest,with its own people not having
to go.
I think a lot of companies inthe West, not just American
companies, have been sort ofslow to realize it.
(36:54):
The second factor that has comein, which is quite important, is
China.
Which is quite important isChina.
China is totally dependent onthe Gulf for its energy supplies
.
Beyond the coal that itproduces, all its oil and gas
(37:15):
comes from the Gulf, orvirtually all its oil and gas
comes from the Gulf.
Now and the Chinese are makingheadway and I don't see them.
I mean they are competitors ina way, but they are the other
huge economy that is now tryingto build a relationship in the
Gulf and too many Americans, inmy view at least, have seen this
(37:40):
as the Chinese are trying totake over the Gulf.
They're going to throw us out.
They're going to take over.
Chinese are more concerned withhow do they defend their
position in the Gulf, how dothey operate successfully in the
Gulf?
They didn't know much.
(38:00):
We're 1945.
We were fairly ignorant aboutthe Gulf.
They didn't know much.
We're 1945.
We were fairly ignorant aboutthe Gulf.
The Chinese knew even lessabout the Gulf than we knew in
1945, let alone today.
So they're developing expertise, they're developing
relationships.
In my lifetime, and probably inyours, I don't expect to see a
(38:23):
Chinese naval fleet in the Gulfproviding the security that
we've provided the Gulf statesthrough the years.
Chinese don't operate that way.
They're not going to risk it,but I can see them playing a
larger and larger role in theeconomy of the Gulf, playing a
larger and larger role in theeconomy of the Gulf and we are
(38:43):
somewhat at odds as to how wedeal with it.
Do we try to muscle, intimidatethe Gulf countries not to buy
Chinese products?
There are people doing thatright now, trying to get, for
example, gulf countries to stopbuying anything for Huawei, that
(39:16):
company, other Chineseindustries that have moved in.
And the people who I think aredoing it right are the ones who
say we've just got to get better.
We were asleep at the switch,we were too complacent, we
thought this was our backyardand we just have to get better
at what we do.
In competing with the Chinese,we have a position to defend.
The United States will alwaysbe the only country that will be
(39:39):
the security provider to theGulf, primarily because we're
the only country willing to doit or capable of doing it, and
we're going to have to learn howto compete with the Chinese.
The wrong term is to deal withthem.
You're not dealing with theChinese, you're dealing with the
Gulf countries in competitionwith the Chinese, and what I
(40:05):
hope doesn't happen is we havecommon interests with the
Chinese in the region.
Those common interests are tokeep the oil and gas flowing
flowing Instead of emphasizingwho's going to make more money
there.
Part of the business.
The common interest ismaintaining the flow of
(40:28):
hydrocarbons into the worldeconomy.
I don't know who's going to winthat battle in the United
States.
I hope it's the people who seea common interest with the
Chinese.
This has changed who thecompetition is for incoming
business, for buying oil and gas, it's the Far East and Asia.
(40:51):
The Gulf is situated where it'seasier to ship their stuff
eastward.
The United States is situatedin such a position that almost
all our oil and gas exportfacilities are in the Gulf of
America and I'm supposed to callit the Gulf of Mexico.
They're in Texas and Louisianaand for us it is easier to ship
(41:16):
to Europe and to West Africa andto South America and we are now
the.
We compete with the Gulf in thevolume of oil and gas that we
export.
So this is there's been afundamental change in who our
customers are and who thecompetitors are in the region.
(41:37):
I don't see this as a bad thing.
We're supposed to be good atbusiness and we need to simply
up our game.
What I'm worried about is thatthere are too many people who do
see it as a bad thing, who seeanything the Chinese engage in
(41:59):
as a zero-sum game with us.
It needn't be so, but we'll seehow that turns out.
Thirdly, the events of the lastyear in particular, but the last
two or three years have calmeddown the threat, have calmed
down Arab Gulf state fears ofIran.
(42:22):
The Iranians have suffered,they've been set down at a pace
by the course of the war and theIsraeli attacks and so forth,
and they are far more interestedin developing a better
relationship with the Gulfstates.
The Gulf states have a greatinterest in, in effect,
(42:47):
pacifying the Iranian threat andthey're doing it.
And right now there is aincreased, a better relationship
, an improved relationshipbetween the Gulf states and Iran
.
And we are going to startrunning into problems because
(43:09):
the Gulf states have no interestin getting into a war with Iran
.
Israel does I don't believeTrump does, I don't believe
President Trump does.
But so long as our policieshave always been to back up the
Israelis, we run the risk thatthe Israelis will involve us in
(43:32):
a war with Iran.
The last thing the Gulf stateswant is for themselves to get
into a war with Iran or for usto get into a war with Iran, or
for us to get into a war withIran.
They simply it would be acatastrophic development for
them and as a result, you cansee them.
They have, and I thinkthroughout the region they have
(43:56):
lost confidence in the UnitedStates, both as a protector and
as a business partner.
That the behavior of the UnitedStates, both as a protector and
as a business partner, that thebehavior of the United States
government the last two years,three years, has undermined
their confidence in us.
And then we have been a bit toofree at sanctioning everything
(44:21):
we come across.
The Gulf states want and need todo business with Iran.
It's part and parcel of having abetter relationship and again
we need to adjust.
And the US government's like anoil tanker you give it a right
helm order and it takes another10 to 15 miles before the ship
(44:43):
starts turning.
And we are very much like thatin terms of our sanctions policy
, of the economic warfare thatwe push.
So right now you have theSaudis, the Emiratis and others
talking about joining the BRICS,about getting in deeper in bed
(45:05):
in terms of business and perhapseven to a certain degree
politically with the Chinese andthe Russians, because we have
not sat down to review our ownpolicies and see how to deal
with this new reality and we'regoing to see, for example, more
(45:27):
arms sales going to armspurchases from the Gulf, other
going to China.
Right now, the Chinese totallydominate the consumer business
and they're going to startdominating in a few years, or at
least having a big impact onthe what's the term the
(45:49):
industrial equipment that theGulf needs to buy, and their
stuff is good and it's we'regoing to be competing with them.
We have to learn how to competewith the Chinese in an area
that was ours and we got fat andlazy in many ways.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Wow, yeah, so it seems like you know the products
there and everything hasremained the same.
The competition has beenchanging rapidly.
That's really just something,and I'm really excited for this
next question actually helpedrescue 147 Americans during an
(46:31):
uprising in Nicaragua.
Yeah, could you just take usback to that moment, kind of
what went into making those youknow critical decisions and kind
of what that high riskexperience has taught you about
leadership under pressure.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
Well, the first thing it taught me was that I was 26
years old and I wouldn't havedone it.
I wouldn't have done it now.
It would save your life.
When you're 26, there's acertain amount of excitement and
the whiz of bullets overheadsort of jacks you up a little
bit.
You are willing to take risksbecause you don't know.
(47:14):
The risks really are there andthere's this.
You know you think you'reimmortal when you're 26 years
old, but what happened was thatthere was a.
This was in the days of Samosain Nicaragua, and three of us,
all good Spanish speakers, weresent down to downtown Managua at
a time when there would be avery large-scale demonstration
(47:37):
in advance of national elections, because everybody felt that
the Somozas would try and rigthe elections and to say you
know, in a city of 400, you know300,000, there were probably
50,000 people in the streetsdemonstrating and we were down
there reporting back to theembassy what was going on.
(47:59):
These were days before cellphones.
There were such days, therewere times when we didn't have
cell phones, so all three of ushad friends around and we'd drop
into somebody's house and callback to the embassy and say
something.
You know what was happening,and it turned into a somebody
(48:21):
shot somebody.
It's unclear who shot first,but a lot of the demonstrators
had come armed.
The Nicaraguan National Guard,which was the police force and
army for Nicaragua, responded toa great deal of violence and
(48:43):
the center of Managua was justpeople shooting at each other
from all directions.
I got into a friend's housecalled the embassy, told them
what was going on they were somelittle bit distance out of town
.
They didn't believe me so untila few billets came into the
house and then they believed meand we were supposed to stay
downtown, the three of us, andcontinue reporting.
(49:06):
Within half an hour there wasone of us.
Within half an hour there wasone of us.
The one of the three ran into apolice station to call the
embassy and forgotten that justfor fun he'd pinned an
opposition campaign pin on hisshirt and the cops took one look
at him and he was sort ofdarkish and they just beat him
(49:30):
up and threw him in a cell.
We didn't get him out of thecell until many hours later.
And the second guy the guy Iactually go to school with
Georgetown was further downtown,towards the Grand Hotel, which
is something right out of novelsabout Central America in those
(49:53):
days.
But there were about 142Americans in the hotel, tourists
and a bunch of the people theinsurgents the more organized
part of the insurgents ran intothe hotel.
They were going to sort of keepthe Americans as hostages and
(50:14):
fight off the governmentattacking them, and so my
colleague was trapped inside thehotel.
We were all about the same ageand the same level of mental
maturity at that point and I wasthe only one going up and down
streets.
I was going up and down streets.
I had enough friends around atthe time that there were a
(50:36):
couple of dozen houses that Icould knock the door, go in and
call.
And finally I went down to myapartment, which overlooked the
Grand Hotel.
I looked down and I could seethat there was a lot of shooting
going between the hotel and thegovernment troops on the
outside, including some armoredcars.
And I called the embassy andthe ambassador got me and I
(51:03):
reported what I'd seen.
He said this is really bad.
There's 140 Americans.
We cannot have Americancasualties happening.
I'm trying to get through toSamosa to tell him to stop
shooting at the hotel.
I don't want Americans killed.
In the meantime the leadershipwas his.
I want you to go down and tellthe National Guard to stop
(51:26):
shooting at the hotel.
You know my response was, sir,yeah, okay.
And then I went downstairs,walked out on the street, walked
towards the hotel, was stoppedby a patrol and I explained who
I was.
I had my diplomatic ID card andit was sort of, take me to your
(51:50):
leader.
And I went.
They did take me.
It was a major commanding theforces there and I explained
that I had come, that I wouldlike him to stop shooting at the
hotel because there areAmericans in there and my
ambassador is trying to reachyour president to get this to
(52:10):
stop and, in the meantime, juststop shooting, because you
surely wouldn't want to beresponsible for American deaths.
And his response was to ask meif I'd been drinking and I said
no, stone Cold's over, and thisis really important.
And I talked him into orderinghis troops to stand down and
(52:32):
don't shoot at the hotel.
And I sat there and he said tome he was not a nice guy.
I'd known him a little bitbefore.
To say that he was guilty ofhuman rights abuses would be an
understatement.
Personally and I'm sittingthere I started smoking
(52:53):
cigarettes again.
I hadn't smoked in a long timewaiting for the call to come,
and about 20 minutes later hewalks up to me and he says
you're lucky, I just got a callto stand down and we're sort of
limited as to what we can shootat the hotel.
And then from that point on,papal Nuncio got involved and
(53:17):
about 2 o'clock in the morningwe got everybody out of the
hotel, including my colleaguewho sort of unluckily had a
stray bullet take his ear off.
That was the only Americancasualty of the day, but the
(53:39):
ambassador moved quickly.
I think Somoza was trying toavoid talking to him if he could
.
I don't know what transpired inthat conversation, but I do
know that at the end heconvinced Somoza that killing
Americans in a hotel would notbe would not be a good thing for
his government.
Speaker 1 (54:02):
Wow, that is an incredible story and as someone
who is, you know, of a similarage as you were at that time,
you know it's nothing short ofremarkable.
I can guarantee I know you saidyou know, when you you're 26,
you feel alive and that you cando anything.
You're invincible.
But I wouldn't have done that.
That's just.
Speaker 2 (54:21):
That's an incredible story it was fun, you know.
I think back about it and I'venothing but not nothing, but got
some funny stories out of this.
At one point I didn't realizeyet that the insurgents had
taken the hotel and that thearmy was beginning to move
(54:41):
towards it the National Guard.
So I walked up to the back doorof the bar.
The bar had another openingfrom the it was one of these
romantic bars but anotheropening onto the street from the
main entrance into the hotel.
And I opened.
The door wouldn't open.
I couldn't figure out what wasgoing on.
(55:02):
And then there was a windowbroke above me and I looked up.
Somebody stuck a rifle out thewindow and started shooting down
the street.
And I looked down the streetand saw a government armored car
coming up the street, shooting.
And I now hold the world'srecord for the 19 yard dash
(55:23):
which was, which was thedistance from the bar door to
the next corner where they canget behind a building.
Speaker 1 (55:32):
Someone may need to contact the Guinness Book of
World.
Records there, we'll get you intouch with the right people.
That's funny.
Again, I want to thank you foryour time here in this interview
today.
It's been really insightful andI just have one last question
for you, if we can, A holistic,again overarching question.
(55:52):
If you could change one thingabout US foreign policy today,
what would it be?
Speaker 2 (56:02):
Rather than getting specific on the US foreign
policy, on items of US foreignpolicy, what I think is needed
most is the understanding thatforeign policy is not a zero-sum
game.
It is.
(56:24):
It's like a business deal, butit is.
It isn't driven but necessarilyby money.
It's driven by many otherfactors and if you're trying to
negotiate a deal to buy a houseor anything, you make an offer,
they turn it down.
(56:44):
You make another offer, theycome back with a counteroffer,
but before you can get into it,you have to spend a great deal
more time understanding theforeign country.
The Americans have an inabilityto understand and let me say
(57:08):
I'm not being anti-American tounderstand what motivates
foreigners and from myexperience, chinese and Russians
fit into the same pattern.
Because we are a hugecontinental country, very, very
few Americans have any conceptof what life is like outside the
(57:32):
United States.
Chinese feel the same way,chinese feel the same way,
russians feel the same way.
You get into conversations withthem and to me, the most
important what's the word I'mlooking for element of US
foreign policy is the lack ofempathy, and what a diplomat
(57:54):
needs is empathy, not sympathy.
I don't have to like whatyou're doing, but I have to
understand why you are doing it,and the Department of State has
probably more people per capitawho understand what goes on in
foreign countries than anybodyelse does.
But the Department of State isnot in charge of making policy.
(58:16):
The Department of State is incharge of executing it when it
can and of trying to persuadethe powers that be the President
, the Congress they're.
Basically, we don't have aSecretary of State.
We have one Secretary of Stateand 535 people on Capitol Hill
who think they're the secretaryof state.
(58:38):
So we don't teach enoughforeign languages, we don't
teach enough in terms of foreignaffairs, we don't teach much of
other people's history and wedon't teach other people's
history from the other person'spoint of view.
There are a myriad of thingsthat we have done right in the
(59:01):
world and there are a myriad ofthings that we have done badly
in the world, and I can't reallysingle something out that would
be terribly important inchanging US foreign policy.
That would be terriblyimportant in changing US foreign
policy.
What I believe we need is,first of all, we need a bigger
foreign service, one that issufficiently well-resourced that
(59:28):
it can go out and sit in thecoffeehouse and talk to the taxi
driver and go to the ministryof the 200 other countries in
the world and then be listenedto.
And the only way they're goingto be listened to is if we do a
better job of preparing our ownpeople, of not preparing Somehow
or other.
We have to change the inabilityof the foreign policy home
(59:54):
establishment, of the politicalestablishment of the United
States, to understand whatmotivates somebody else and to
understand that you have to stayconstantly engaged.
There's this belief that if weopen diplomatic relations with
the other country, we're doingthe other country a favor.
No, we're doing ourselves afavor, because you will never
(01:00:17):
know what's going on in there ifyou break diplomatic relations.
The dumbest thing you can doand we've done it over and over
again is to break diplomaticrelations with countries in
which we have a bad relationshipand then think that we can just
intimidate people into doingsomething that they're not, that
their psyche doesn't allow themto do.
(01:00:39):
Look at Cuba.
We've spent what is it now?
50-odd plus years, no, 60 yearssince Castro.
The Castros took over in Cubaand put all the weight of the US
government into overthrowingthem, and I'll tell you, we
could have done a lot better atoverthrowing communism in Cuba
(01:01:01):
by embracing them.
We can.
American rock bands andMcDonald's have more influence
than speeches on Capitol Hilland cutting trade ties.
Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
Yes, I think I understand.
That's incredible to hear.
I appreciate you again for thisinterview.
Obviously, you're an extremelyaccomplished diplomat and it's
been amazing to hear from youtoday.
Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
Thank you very much for the compliments and the
flattery as well.
Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
I really appreciated the conversation today, so thank
you again, ambassador PatrickBarrows, everyone.
Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
Take care.
Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
You too.
Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
All right.
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