Marie Yovanovitch impresses me as a prim and proper little (she's quite diminutive) duck, paddling like crazy beneath the surface. Service is her watchword: Decent, respectful, meaningful service. In that realm, she would loom larger than even she had figured.
Her memoir of her foreign service, most of which took place in the old Soviet Union, Lessons from the Edge, depicts a career filled with challenges you and I would quickly, and gladly, shy away from: bullets whizzing by in places like Somalia and Russia, for instance, where civil wars dominated the proceedings. Few of us think about foreign service officers like her slogging within the chaos and frightening conflict. We got just a taste of it when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for whom Yovanovich once worked, got dragged through useless Republican smearing when Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed in Benghazi in 2012. Coping with foreign violence happens out there all the time.
Within it all, she constantly had to remind herself to keep her head down and do her duty. That, and a dogged, fierce devotion to her father's advice--"Just do the best you can. That's all anyone can expect of you," she gradually worked her way into one of the most significant foreign service positions--perhaps now the most significant, in retrospect--of ambassador to Ukraine, then a decidedly apolitical appointment that turned out to be one of the most political of the past half-century.
First, though, she had to battle her way through a foreign service that was thoroughly a man's world--"male, pale, and Yale." She had the brains and she knew what she wanted, though. Enough people saw her sincerity and talent to fit her through more than one needle. Her accounts of dealing with foreign leaders, most of whom wanted to grease their own palms sufficiently to justify dealing with the richest nation on earth, are a sad forerunner of what we, and she, had to deal with after 2017.
She got caught in the switches because the biggest weasel to ever live in the White House, backed by an even bigger weasel, Rudy Giuliani, who wished in his sycophantic zeal to lubricate the skids for a second term, tried to manipulate and lie and obfuscate corruptive intent onto Yovanovitch, simply because she would be the last person to do such nefarious actions. Because of her unbudgeable integrity, she would be in the way of ex- attempting to smear Joe Biden and the Ukrainians into a image of doing to the country what the Russians did in the previous presidential campaign.
It was all done badly and clumsily and wickedly, and reeked of transparency. It got Giuliani's boss impeached, even though we all knew the outcome of that far before it happened. The two of them, obsessed with image, took a look at the little woman, who otherwise would never hurt a flea, and probably figured that raining sudden corruption charges upon her would result in her slinking away without a peep.
They figured wrong. Finally adjusting to the new reality, she finally concluded that her once helpful but now albatross-like idealism about the facts and justice would not be sufficiently served if she just let the process happen. Seeing the same corruption that she vowed to oppose in Ukraine play out right in front of her in Washington, she turned to fight. She got good lawyers who volunteered their services pro bono and managed to dodge another sycophant, the excessively religiously afflicted Mike Pompeo, who happened to be her latest boss at State. She responded to Congress' (read: Democrats') wish to set the record straight and testify at two hearings: one closed door, the other very open door.
By the time you've managed to get there, at the very end of the book, you kind of figure: She's got this. She'd been through so many dangers and balancing acts that a few nasty, twisting, manipulative Republicans weren't going to bother her all that much. She saw them coming, and with the help and support of lawyers and family, stood strong as she stared them down.
She had this much figured out: They wouldn't see her cry. That way, they couldn't dismiss her as yet another weak woman. Whatever else they would throw at her, that much would remain her dominant attitude.
They tried to catch her by asking her to recount her activities again and again, much like detectives trying to wear out a guilty suspect. She wouldn't let them, though she wearied through the effort. Her time abroad and her experiences had attached a firm savvy; by that time, she was no one's fool.
For Republicans to believe the nonsense that got Yovanovitch in front of a hearing at all, for them to double down on their narrowness to convince themselves that she had something to hide, is and should be added to a long list of national embarrassments. For them to convince themselves that she was the one who should be investigated for corruption is one of the most awful Orwellian twists on the meanings of words that could ever be attempted by weak politicians.
The writing of the memoir is dense. Yovanovitch must have kept a detailed journal because her accounts of conversations and events are so vivid. I would have wished for more actual conversations with people being quoted, because such inclusions move the intense narrative better. But once you dive into her story, it isn't prohibitive. You realize, above all, that a career in foreign service, if done right, is remarkably selfless and is the essence of servitude. All this for poor slobs like you and me, who thought they knew something about diplomacy but never knew the details which make our foreign involvement what it is.
I met a couple of these people when I represented the NEA in Ankara, Turkey, in late 2004. I couldn't be anything but impressed by their steadfastness in sticking with the facts, even though they were working for an administration they might have opposed. They were professional and very helpful--just what you want Americans to be for other Americans in a foreign land that wasn't especially embracing, even at that point.
You can't help but marvel as you ask yourself if there are still people like that, pure and humble (an essential quality) patriots? Isn't it ironic that to remain that way, they have be so distant, so far from the internal chaos and disruptiveness that we're presently undergoing?
I was a bit disappointed, though, that in her epilogue, she deals only with the shoring up of the foreign service and the public's need to know more about it. She assumes, unfortunately, that we will somehow get past our present maladies. Her focus is to forge onward into a future in which foreign affairs are restored to their prominence. We aren't there, though. One of the most important things that's on the table--and won't be solved immediately--is if we will deal with other countries in all but a tertiary way.
Ex- didn't want to. Think of him in office now, with Ukraine under fire. He wouldn't have done a thing. In fact, he might have seized this time as the best one to get out of NATO. That would have served Putin perfectly, as he appeared to have done anyhow.
Marie Yovanovitch is a maven, though, who put pen to paper to remind us from whence we've sprung. In her work, she makes a solid contribution to the history of a confused era--not only her record, but what she actually did. She is a great American. She has lived a great life. When you're finished with this, you can't help but still think we have a chance to continue to matter in the world because there are still people like her around.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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