Holmes, John W
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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project JOHN W. HOLMES Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: March 18, 1996 Copyright 1998 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born and raised in Quincy Mass. Columbia University Entered Foreign Service 1957 CU E,change Program 1957-19.1 Iran 0horramshahr 1959-19.1 1ice consul Iran-Ira2 relations Petroleum Bahrain issue Environment Italy Naples 19.1-19.4 1ice consul Development projects 1isa issuance Economic Bureau Trade 19.4-19.5 Special Trade Activities Division Trade issues France sensitivities 1ietnam Saigon 19.5-19.8 6ocal situation Rice production Corruption U.S. ambassadors Tet offensive University of California Berkeley 19.8-19.9 1 Student movement riots Economic training Economic Bureau Trade 19.9-1974 Assistant chief Trade Agreements Division Trade 8ith Europe U.S. trade deficit 9om 0ippur :ar Belgium Brussels 1974-197. Trade Policy officer Mission to European Community Duties and issues French attitude European unity Communist bloc United 0ingdom 6ondon 197.-1979 Economic Counselor British bureaucracy Political environment Italy Rome 1979-1982 Economic minister Ambassador Richard Gardner Ambassador Ma,8ell Rabb "Euro-Communism" Cruise missiles Italy's economic development Corruption Bank failure U.S. business community Mafia EUR Regional Affairs 1982-1985 Relations 8ith OECD and EC Siberia-:estern Europe pipeline issue Mrs. Thacher and the U0 economy Richard Burt Italy Rome 1985-1990 Deputy Chief of Mission Italian leadership CIA Gladio program 2 Mafia Economic situation chille Lauro hijacking Rabb-Andreotti meeting Abu Abbas Arab terrorists at Fiumicino Airport U.S. attack on 6ibya Attitudes to8ard USSR Germany's role in Europe Ambassador Secchia INTERVIEW %: John, do you want to tell me a bit about your family and when and where you were born) HO6MES: :ell I guess my family and my background could be described as :ASP ":hite Anglo-Sa,on Protestant" but that 8ould be misleading. My family lived in an inner industrial suburb of Boston. My father 8as a house painter. :e 8eren't in poverty but 8e certainly 8eren't on easy street nor even middle class as I 8ould construe the term. %: You were born when and where) HO6MES: I 8as born in Quincy 8hich is ne,t door to Boston in 19A5 and spent all of my childhood and adolescence in Quincy and 8ent to one of the t8o local high schools. I did 8ell enough in high school and to8ard the end of my high school time got into the business of trying to get into college 8ith a scholarship. I did fairly 8ell in the game of trying to get somebody to pay for my education. The best offer came from Columbia University and that is 8here I 8ent. %: Talk a little about your high school and all. -as there any interest in Foreign Affairs, economic, anything of that nature) HO6MES: A little bit. One or t8o high school teachers took an interest in some of their students and they tended to be people 8ho 8ere active in things like the local UN Association. The UN Association 8as a more vibrant animal in the 1950's than it has been since. They 8ould invite us to go to meetings and hear lectures about foreign policy. I can't say that it 8as much more than that but I 8as e,posed a little to these 2uestions thanks to these high school teachers. %: How about the Catholic01rotestant thing in %uincy. I mean, were you getting any reflections of that) 3 HO6MES: 9es although it 8asn't particularly painful. Quincy 8as then half and half more or less Catholic and Protestant. This 8as still the pre-1atican II Catholicism...mainly Irish or at least the dominant and rather militant part of it 8as. I could turn the old phrase to say "Some of my best friends 8ere Catholic." In fact most of my best friends 8ere Catholic". And I came to realiBe that even in the 1950's not all Catholics 8ere lock step observers of the rules. Nevertheless there 8as a certain atmosphere created by this. %: How about the Irish 2uestion) Did that... HO6MES: 9es. I think so. It had one effect. Massachusetts politics 8ere determined then even more than they are no8 by ethnic 2uestions. So if you 8ere Protestant you 8ere almost certainly Republican and if you 8ere Catholic you 8ere a Democrat. I sort of rebelled against my family's Protestant Republicanism by being intrigued by Adlai Stevenson in 1952. Stevenson's campaign invited a bunch of high school editors--and I 8as one of the editors of my high school ne8spaper--to a talk and press conference given by Stevenson in Boston. I 8ent and the man really impressed me charmed me and I had a sudden conversion to being a Democrat. %: -hat were the years you were at Columbia) HO6MES: From 195A to 1957. People 8ere still talking about General Eisenho8er 8ho had been President of Columbia just earlier. It 8as sort of an in-bet8een period. The :orld :ar II veterans had departed. :e 8ere a little bit after the "beat" generation 8hich 8as a very significant group at Columbia 8ith people like Cack 0erouac and Alan Ginsberg. They 8ere still remembered but had left by the time I got there. %: Did the Korean -ar have any impact on you) HO6MES: Not directly. But I think the 0orean :ar 8as one of the first great 8orld events I follo8ed in an adult 8ay. I 8as in High School during the 0orean :ar. I paid attention to ne8spaper stories...in a 8ay I had been a8are of the second :orld :ar but I 8as really too young to kno8 8hat 8as going on. I follo8ed 8hat 8as going on in the 0orean :ar and had conventional responses on the big issue of the replacement of General MacArthur. I 8as pro-Truman and anti-MacArthur I recall. %: -hat were you studying at Columbia) HO6MES: Columbia 8as then as it is no8 very much into the general education great books approach. These courses dominated the first couple of years. I 8as in the last class at Columbia that didn't have to major in anything. DOn the one hand many courses 8ere re2uired. :hile you didn't necessarily need to have a major you could voluntarily major in something and I majored in History. My interest 8as mainly in European cultural history rather than anything strictly connected to the foreign policy 8orld. But I did take a 4 course in international politics 8hich 8as given by a man 0enneth :altB--at that time a young assistant Professor--8ho 8ent on to 8rite several of the big books of the neo- realist school of International politics. He impressed me...personally and in his thought. He left me 8ith an abiding bias to8ards a "Realpolitik" vie8 of foreign policy. %: You were sitting in a place where the 3N was. Did the 3N play much of a role...) HO6MES: No. The UN had been a source of amusement. In previous years during the 0orean :ar I do remember and this is perhaps the thing that mainly impressed me about the 0orean :ar all the UN debates that 8ere then carried on the brand ne8 television 8ith Glad8yn Cebb Henry Cabot 6odge Cacob Malik and all the other prime performers. They 8ere histrionic diplomats of a type you don't see today. Men of in some cases great 8it and elo2uence. 9es 8hen I got to Columbia 8e 8ere dragged off as Freshmen to visit the UN but more to look at the building from an architectural point of vie8. The UN by the middle years of the 1950's after the 0orean :ar had come to an end had passed into the shado8s. In my one course on international politics given the biases of 0en :altB the UN 8as virtually not mentioned. There 8as no such thing as International 6a8 there 8as almost no such thing as International Order. International policy or politics 8ere a matter of po8er. %: -hat sort of a world were you getting from this...I mean Realpolitik) HO6MES: I don't kno8. I 8ouldn't e,aggerate...one course didn't make that much difference. My main intellectual interests at Columbia lay else8here in cultural and intellectual history the sort of interest that the Columbia general education courses and transitions stimulated. Still 8hen I did get involved in foreign policy I found that I had been influenced by :altB and his ilk left 8ith an abiding skepticism about a moralistic approach to foreign policy. I should add ho8ever that there are realists and realists and I have al8ays been more impressed by the "softer" sort of realist epitomiBed by George 0ennan. But it 8asn't because of :altB's course that I thought of going into the Foreign ServiceE my motivations 8ere non-policy ones such as the lure of seeing and living in foreign countries. %: Let6s go on to your beginnings in the Foreign Service. How did you find the entrance e7am, the 2uestions they were asking) HO6MES: The 2uestions 8ere actually moderately demanding intellectually. One that sticks in my mind 8as about policy to8ards Canada. I think that 8hat they seemed to be getting at as far as I could tell is 8hether or not 8e 8ere articulate under pressure. And maybe they 8ould get some impression of one's personality as 8ell. %: -hat got you to join the Foreign Service) HO6MES: I 8as getting some8hat tired of college and so I didn't think of going to graduate school or professional school.