Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Speaker A: This is the owlcast, the official podcast of ACS Athens.
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[00:00:50] Speaker B: Welcome to the Outcast. This is the president's edition. Hosting today is the president of ACS Athens, Doctor Peggy Pelones. On this second episode of the Outcast Presidents edition, we have a very special guest, a distinguished american diplomat who has lived in Greece for many years, serving the US diplomatic corps, but also education from top leadership positions. Today we dive into the intricacies of diplomatic relations between the United States and Greece, spanning from the tumultuous years of the 1940s to the dynamic landscape of the 2020s. Our guest today offers a unique perspective on this topic, challenging conventional narratives and shedding light on lesser known angles. Richard Jackson has served as a diplomat from 1965 to 1999 in various missions in Somalia, Libya, Washington, Morocco, the United nations, and Greece. He served as the president of Anatolia College in Thessaloniki from 1990 to 2009 and president of Athens College from 2017 to 2020. His books include the Non Aligned the United nations and the Superpowers, the incidental oriental secretary, and other Tales of Foreign Service and American the True Story of Tommy Hitchcock. His latest book is in Greek, with a title not yet translated, but roughly it means absence make the heart grow fonder. It is about the US greek diplomatic relations as described by retired us diplomats who served in Greece from 1940 to 2022. Through the interviews they gave to the State Department oral History archives and personally to Mister Jackson?
At first glance, the topic of our guests book may seem tailored for diplomats and those keen on transatlantic relations. However, as our discussion unfolds, we uncover layers of insight that unveil a deeper understanding of the events that shaped these relations over the decades. Was this unexpected and why? The choice of a seemingly misleading title that belies the spirit of appreciation and cooperation emphasized by the diplomats within? Drawing from personal experiences as consul general in Thessaloniki and trade attache in Athens, Richard Jackson offers first hand accounts of the suspicions that ovens simmered beneath the surface, particularly during the post war years. Yet amidst this backdrop, the United States played a pivotal role in Greeces reconstruction, a testament to the enduring partnership between the two nations. Beyond diplomacy, our guests leadership roles in educational institutions such as Anatolia College and Athens College have left an indelible mark on greek society, steering it towards a more extroverted embrace of modern educational paradigms. Moreover, Richard Jacksons involvement in the home project underscores a commitment to providing educational opportunities for unaccompanied child refugees, reflecting a dedication to humanitarian causes that transcends borders. Join us as we attempt to unravel the threads of history, diplomacy and humanitarianism with our esteemed guest, offering a fresh perspective on the enduring ties between the United States and Greece. Here is the president of ACS Athens, Doctor Peggy Pelones.
[00:04:13] Speaker C: Good morning and thank you for joining us at ACS Athens. We're very, very excited to have you here with us today. Rick Jackson. And in light of the recent book that you have edited, ma cria que rapimeni, see, how do we translate that into English? Keeping a distance or staying far away from each other?
[00:04:32] Speaker D: But I don't believe it's translatable in English. We have absence makes the heart grow fonder and these kind of proverbs, but nothing with quite the nuance of this. That there's love, but there has to be distance.
[00:04:51] Speaker C: And that's the meaning. I was going to ask you when you came up with this title, what were you thinking? What's the essence of that?
[00:04:59] Speaker D: The essence is that over these 80 years that I tried to cover, there have been ups and downs. There's been some brilliant diplomacy, but also some huge mistakes. And like marriage or a relationship between states, you take the good with the bad.
[00:05:16] Speaker C: We hear a lot nowadays about, you know, this being a time when the relationship between the United States and Greece has been better than ever before. We hear it from many of our government officials, our us ambassador to the Hellenic Republic, our prime minister, what has contributed to that relationship being in such a good place?
[00:05:40] Speaker D: I think that it has matured. By that I mean Greece has emerged from world War two and the civil war with United States help both economic and military in overcoming the civil war, for example. And so it is much more a relationship today of equality. And it has allowed Greece to take its rightful part in the community of western european nations and to play a very important role, role in it, so that we are not necessarily the United States, the savior of last resort anymore. Greece is in its rightful setting in the EU and NATO, and we are freer to negotiate in our strategic dialogue with Greece, things that are totally win win for both countries and that we are both excited about doing.
[00:06:43] Speaker C: Getting back to the book at hand with close to 60 authors that you have edited. So the topic of the book initially appears to be of interest to diplomats and those interested in the relations between the US and Greece. But the angle covered reveals a not so evident view of the events that transpired between 1940 and 2020. Do you agree with this? And did you expect that this was going to be the case as you were editing all of these chapters?
[00:07:14] Speaker D: Well, let me say first that the 50 or 60 diplomats that are contained in the book, a very small slice of the hundreds that served in Greece over these 80 years, and I simply chose them myself. On what basis? Number one, I didn't have any particular axe to grind. I didn't use it as a researcher in the way that Alexis Papagelas did in his two wonderful books, that he knows the oral history archives probably better than I do, writing those two books on the junta and on Cyprus and now the new book. So I chose from the point of view that I've been in and out of Greece for a total of, I think now 27, 28 years at different periods of time. And I've had the good fortune to know and work with many of the people that I've covered here. And so I went into it from a point of view of trying to let these diplomats speak with their own voices and own personality as much as possible as individuals, to show, yes, the ambassadors, yes, the assistant secretaries, but the vice consuls, too, and cultural counselors, and the range of diversity that has developed over the years in a big embassy such as Athens. And it is a big one. Enlarging further now in construction, most of.
[00:08:48] Speaker C: The diplomats in the book make a conscious effort to discuss and stress the level of cooperation and appreciation that they had during their tenure here with the greek state and some of the major players in that process.
Obviously, you mentioned that in the beginning of our conversation that the relationship has evolved and is in a good place of maturity.
Is there any particular event, situation that stands out for you that contributed to this more than others?
[00:09:24] Speaker D: Well, I believe that the first segment of the book, World War two, the civil war, reconstruction, was far and away the most creative in these 80 years. That is, the British withdrew to repair their own country. We replaced them in many ways.
Hundreds and hundreds of technical people came in under ECA, the economic assistance program, with funding under the Truman and Marshall plans, and they, in a way overstepped the bounds of sovereignty in those early years. But that was absolutely necessary to streamline the civil service, to have free trade unions, to provide military assistance, in fact, to put the US finger on the scales in terms of the outcome of the civil war, which the country was so divided, there were many, many losers and winners, too. And that has, I believe, led to a partisanship in greek politics that lasts to the present day and undercurrent. It's fair to say, of anti americanism that comes out in times of tension.
[00:10:40] Speaker C: I'm inclined to say that some of the, you know, one of the sore points between us, diplomacy and the greek state is not necessarily one of hostility, but more one of suspicion. Suspicion especially, you know, between, in the years to, between the civil war, greek civil war, and the restoration of democracy in the seventies. Would you agree with that, or feel that it's more than that?
[00:11:04] Speaker D: Well, I think everyone suspects a big power.
There is certainly an acute curiosity about what occurs in the US embassy, I think, in the critical periods, that is, the junta and Cyprus invasions. My personal view is that the dealing with those challenges, the input of both the american and greek governments, was one of total ineptitude. And many Greeks picture the United States. In fact, I got a letter from a reader that pleased me immensely because he wrote me to thank me for two things which stunned me. He said. Number one, he wanted to thank he had felt that Richard Welch, the CIA station chief that was assassinated on December 2375, was a non person, that he never really existed. He had seen this man's obituary and photograph and nothing more, and that I was the first person for him to humanize Dick Welch, which stunned me 50 years later. He was a good friend of mine, although I was much, much younger. Such a hellenophile. He'd studied archaeology and ancient Greek at Harvard, and his dream was to come to Greece. So that filled me with joy. His second point was that he'd always pictured the US government and embassy as see all, know all monoliths, executing orders from on high and conspiring frequently against Greece. But that he was helped to realize, reading this book, that no, they were people inside the embassy and horrendous arguments and fighting over policies. And was not this monolith.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: Introducing the more than 60 testimonies of american diplomats serving in Greece since 1940? Robert Jackson writes, after I left the State Department in 1999, having served for 34 years, I worked as executive director of the association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, where my main task was to oversee the oral history program for the retired american diplomats. During my tenure, we came up with the idea of publishing volumes of testimonials by country, sorted by year. Today, for a country like Greece, these files contain thousands of pages. This shows the natural tendency of diplomats who retired and possibly have ample free time for the first time in years, to discuss their achievements in detail in places like Madagascar, Kabul, Paris, and even Greece. Thats how I thought that we could get a unique perspective about the complicated relations between Greece and in the United States, if we compile the most important of these achievements during the past 80 years, until the 200th anniversary of the greek revolution in 2021.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: You are listening to the owlcast, the official podcast of ACS Athens.
[00:14:44] Speaker C: Writing. Editing a book like this requires spending a lot of time getting to know the authors before you decide what actually goes down on paper. What was that like?
[00:14:55] Speaker D: As I was transitioning out of the state Department for a couple years, I was executive director of the association for Diplomatic Studies and Training in Washington, the training arm that also does the oral history program. So all of these, some 3000, let's say, exist, they are carefully recorded there. And they were for me to pick and choose from, supplemented by the knowledge I had of individuals, from working with them and being in and out of Greece over all of these years, from Lincoln McVeigh so many years ago to Ambassador Pyatt recently. So I did go out and do a few interviews that I thought were missing, but I didn't go back and go through all of them because the record was very complete. The difficulty for me was to take the thousands of pages and reduce it into a chronological and thematic narrative.
[00:15:53] Speaker E: It seems that recording the oral history from the diplomats that are serving abroad seems to be a very important part of keeping the history alive. Why do you think someone should read these oral testimonials? What can you gain from studying these? To understand history in general, especially in a place where you know how entangled are the stories of different people?
We've seen the different opinions from these people, whether it's from the political sector, the military sector, the intelligence sector.
They have all said that sometimes there was a disconnect. How can a reader see these things, knowing the story from the american side, from the greek side? What do these testimonials give to the reader?
[00:16:48] Speaker D: Let me say this is a fascinating question. Oral history, I believe, over the last two or three decades, has moved from the area of just gossip and to a real place in history itself. And that's been because of the tremendous work of the Holocaust archives, the slavery archives, and, yes, the armenian genocide archives. So that today, historians at their peril ignore the voices of people who actually live through the events. I think it's very important to hear their voice, and I think it's a voice that deserves to be heard outside the domain of academics and diplomats. I think it should be heard particularly by young people potentially interested in international careers. So to the extent I could, I retained anecdotes of humor and individual personality.
[00:17:52] Speaker E: That was one point that I saw and I figured, well, there is a reason why they say these things. For example, the effort to, in a sense, encourage the greek population to accept the money in the outskirts of the cities during the reconstruction, because they didn't really know what to do with this money. I'm talking about the Marshall plan. I mean, $400 million at that time. At that time, it was a humongous amount, and people were trying to see how to manage it. So that was an interesting example that I read.
[00:18:24] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:18:25] Speaker C: You know, I'd like to get back a little bit to education and students, and you have served as the leader of two of the most iconic educational institutions in Greece, Anatolia College and Athens College. And both institutions have played a major role through the years in preparing the greek youth and society to turn away from the introverted kind of approach, to become more extroverts in the modern educational paradigms of western Europe and the United States.
What are some of the major accomplishments that you can share with us in leading these institutions?
[00:19:04] Speaker D: Let me say in preface to answering the question that when I graduated from university in 1962, there was no mentorship. I don't recall getting advice on career outside of the family. The tendency was for most people to do that and sometimes to follow in the steps of the lawyer, the father, the architect, whatever it was. Today, we're in a world of AI. We're in a world of 60% of the jobs that today's youth find themselves in 2030 years from now don't exist today. This is a critical new function of schools such as this one. So I happily followed my brother into the foreign service of the US, and I don't regret any of those years, but wish I had had the spectrum of mentoring that exists today after 34 years of being a diplomat, in my case, that was about enough. And I happily found my way to Anatolia College with a bit of a break. Then Athens College, those were a welcome change, actually, as exciting and wonderful and varied as the diplomatic career is. And I like to quote what the secretary of state then said to my class of entering diplomats way back when. That was Dean Rusk. He was a very harried man working for Lyndon Johnson and with the weight of Vietnam on his back. And he said to all of us, don't ever forget that the poetry of the 20th century is the vision of the astronaut looking back at this emerald planet, lost and whirling away in the immensity of space that always stuck with me. Because at its best, diplomacy is that godlike vision of looking back at this vulnerable planet with all of its conflicts and wars as we now see them, and itself at serious risk.
[00:21:25] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's very relevant to education and the youth today. A school like ACS Athens, our school, naturally is a, you know, with american philosophy of education curriculum to a large degree. English is the language of instruction and so on and so forth. It gears its students towards. We gear our students towards studying abroad in english speaking countries, mainly the United States, but others as well. So it's natural that these students will move on and study abroad, particularly as we have people from 64 different nationalities. But schools like Anatolia and Athens College, a large number of those students will also study abroad in many ways, contributing to what we have, you know, Greece has been discussing for a long time the brain drain of the country. Do you feel that this is changing and that gaining this educational experience from abroad? And will Greece be inviting its youth back to this country to bring that experience here, that background here for the country to continue to develop?
[00:22:37] Speaker D: The shift from diplomacy to education was so welcome to me for two reasons. Number one, in diplomacy, if you're sitting in Washington and you're country director for XYZ countries, at the end of the year, how do you measure success or progress? How do you decide that us Mauritanian relations have gotten worse or improved over the past year? It's such an intangible. And then you come to a school and you have these very defined goals, objectives that you measure. What was recruitment last year? What was the fundraising you did last year? What was the college acceptance rate? All of these yardsticks so you can evaluate. And that was a welcome change after the absence of that in a huge bureaucracy. So I think that what you are doing as a school in study abroad and the other schools as well, is absolutely vital in a global world. And like it or not, we're stuck with globalization and globalization and cooperation, for example, between the United States and China, is the path of the future, if there is to be a future. So I think this is a very important component of education, really, at all levels, to strive for that planetary vision, but to strive to know individuals, friends, classmates who don't look like you, who are different. I was disappointed in some cases when we had a robust cohort of interns, graduates from various universities doing an intern year as teachers aides. We would have usually three or four Afro Americans, and the kids, through no prejudice, would rush to them and touch their hair and say, you're from Africa, aren't you? And that was so misunderstood by the kid who maybe their great grandparents were slaves and they were so proud to be Americans and didn't want to be told they were Africans. And that's just something that you can do something about by diversity and study abroad and travel, it's just parochial view that sees a person who's different and says something that is not meant as racism.
[00:25:19] Speaker C: As both an educator and a diplomat, what would you say to a student today that would like to study diplomacy and go into that as a career? What would you say to them?
[00:25:32] Speaker D: As Reagan would often say, trust but verify.
What do I mean by that? I think I mean that the 34 years is a long period to have been a diplomat. One has seen many changes in that period.
You come in idealistic and enthusiastic, everything is exotic. The travel every two or three years gets wearisome as you go along, as your kids are growing up, it's not easy to manage. And also as you change position on the triangle, if you think of the triangle as the hierarchy, at the top is the secretary of state. Everybody at some level must aspire to that and it's a very narrow and competitive place in bureaucracy.
[00:26:22] Speaker E: I guess what I would also like to know on this question, what kind of skills should someone have to say that I'm an aspiring diplomat, and through your experience, I mean, you've gone through so much both as the consul general and the trade attache in Athens. What's that advice based on? What skills should someone aspire to be a diplomat?
[00:26:45] Speaker D: Well, there's a choice if you're going to be a generalist or a specialist. Get a couple languages, pick them strategically according to where you want to go and where you think will be important. Certainly with the race of technology master, what's the latest and various other skills going along. I have been a great believer in area studies and knowing particular countries well. But I have to point out that at the time of the Cyprus crises in 1974, the US government was dysfunctional from the spring of 74 until August, in the period of President Nixon's resignation. And he was mostly at the Western White House in California. Kissinger was frequently visiting him there. And just at that moment, Kissinger introduced his pet project, Glopp. It was his idea that us diplomats were provincial. They spent years learning difficult languages, and in the same countries they couldn't see the big picture. They weren't at a level to converse with him, and so they were assigned to the ends of the earth away from their countries. I dont think that was a good decision. If you want my point of view, the ones who really had learned Arabic of course, quadrupled their salaries moving to oil companies.
[00:28:16] Speaker B: Richard Jackson, in introducing the last chapter of the book dedicated to the first couple of decades of the 21st century, some of the events chronicled in the previous pages were painted harmful, and some were rightly or wrongly attributed by the Greek left to mistakes unintentionally or deliberately committed by the United States. For example, the support of the pro monarchists during the Greek Civil War, the tolerance of the hunter, the failure to prevent the overthrow of the turkish invasion, and failure, together with Greece, to dismantle November 17 for a whole 27 years. As these events unfolded, however, wider changes shape the world we live. The enlargement of the European Union with the inclusion of Greece in 1981 and the adoption of the common currency in 2001, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rise of China, the invasion of Ukraine and the pandemic, not to mention the revolutions in biotechnology and information technology.
All of these are changing the lives of individuals and states, as well as the greek american strategic dialogue. In 2021, the year of the 200th anniversary of the Greek Revolution, and for the near future.
James Warren, who served as a diplomat in Greece from 1948 to 1951, said about the marshall, at that time we provided two two thirds of the foreign currency needed by the country. The total amount it had was around $400 million. We provided 280 million.
The person in charge of the greek affairs in Washington between 1966 and 1969 was Herbert Daniel Brewster. He said about a 1967 military couple. The next morning I went to see Secretary dean Rusk and inform him about the coup. He advised me, mister Brewster, don't get too upset. It's my 90th coup. And I said, yes, but here is different. It's a cradle of democracy.
John D. Negroponte was the general consul in Thessaloniki from 1976 to 1970.
He said the general consulate was like an observatory in a way. It was not much different than what I was doing in Vietnam when I was acting consul in Chue in the demilitarized zone.
Ambassador Monteagle Stearns served in the embassy in Athens between 1981 and 1985.
He I think that notwithstanding the mistakes and failures of the PASOK government, the Papandreou government, Greece had for the first time a genuine non communist left government.
Political councillor John Brady Kisling served in Athens between 2000 and 2003. He mentions, I resigned from the State Department February 25, 2021 because of the US invasion of Iraq. I was the first of the three diplomats that resigned.
[00:31:42] Speaker C: You're also an active advisor with home project and we have an ongoing collaboration with the home project.
[00:31:51] Speaker D: Great cooperation and congratulations on it.
[00:31:55] Speaker C: Thank you. In supporting the young, unattended refugee minors. What prompted you to get involved with this organization and what's your role there?
[00:32:05] Speaker D: Well, I looked around when I was at Athens College, and we didn't have such a cooperation then as you did. And that seemed to me a lack in moving that institution from a focus on elite in the northern suburbs to something more diverse. Happily, the head of the project, Sofia Cuvellaki, was a graduate of Athens College and alumna. So we did successfully institute a modest program that is still there but faces some challenges. So when I finished that assignment and she invited me to join her advisory board, naturally, I was delighted to, to do that. And I've been really impressed with everything that goes on and with Sophia's leadership that showed at the recent meeting with Andreas Jacopoulos and President Obama.
[00:33:07] Speaker C: And it's one of the programs that we're most proud of as well, because it not only supports the young refugee minors, and as a result, we have received scholarships for some to attend our school, but also it benefits our students as well, because it really puts perspective in their lives and they're able to put themselves in another person's shoes who's suffering and has tremendous loss. So in many ways, I guess you could say, our minds are expanding in different directions. Getting back to the book, as a final comment here, all of these chapters, all of these authors perspectives, is there one thing that you would like to leave us with as a result of this experience?
[00:33:52] Speaker D: Well, I got into the book finding myself unexpectedly in an apartment in Athens in lockdown.
And as I got into it, it was easy for me, coming previously from the association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. So I had access easily to all of this material. In fact, they are very excited about it in terms of encouraging further books of this kind that are accessible to an average reader rather than the length of the normal oral histories. So I think the lessons to take away from the book are how entwined we all are. And I hope, therefore, that it will be used as a training book for kids at different levels going forward that are interested in the wider world.
[00:34:52] Speaker C: Are there any plans to have the book in English?
[00:34:54] Speaker D: Yes. Yes, we will come out with the book in English. We wanted it first to come out in Greek, and Ambassador Pyatt made it part of his program of things and was a great supporter of the book. And I have to go back to the US and work with a publisher there a little bit, but that is on the horizon.
[00:35:13] Speaker E: I'm looking forward to see the english translation of the title.
[00:35:16] Speaker D: Ah, yes. Yes, yes. Yes.
[00:35:20] Speaker C: Well, thank you so much today, Rick Jackson, for joining us here at ACS Athens and enlightening us with your book. And in so many ways, I think this is a fantastic resource for our students, though, especially those interested in history and politics in the future. Thank you for joining us.
[00:35:41] Speaker D: Thank you so much, Doctor Pelones. And if I might add, I neglected to mention our wonderful publisher, Hestia, and its leader, evaca Ray TV.
[00:35:51] Speaker C: Thank you again.
[00:35:52] Speaker D: Thank you.
[00:35:55] Speaker A: You are listening to the owlcast, the official podcast of ACS Athens. Make sure you subscribe to the Allcast on Google Podcast, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. This has been a production of the ACS Athens Media studio.
