The Dissent Channel American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age

Description

In 2017, Elizabeth Shackelford wrote a pointed resignation letter to her then boss, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. She had watched at the State Department was gutted, and now she urged him to stem the bleeding by showing leadership and commitment to his diplomats and the country. If he couldn’t do that, she said, “I humbly recommend that you follow me out the door.”

With that, she sat down to write her story and share an urgent message.

In The Dissent Channel, Shackelford shows that this is not a new problem. Her experience in 2013 during the precarious rise and devastating fall of the world’s newest country, South Sudan, exposes a foreign policy driven more by inertia than principles, and one designed to suit short-term political needs over long-term strategies.

With a wry sense of humor and a skeptic’s thirst for understanding, Shackelford shares extraordinary tales of life as a young female diplomat, making policy and politics come alive. Her personal idealism and mission-driven purpose to help a young nation contrast starkly with the transactional minimalism that has stunted recent US foreign policy.