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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project MICHAEL CALINGAERT Interviewed by: Peter Moffat Initial interview date: April 3, 2000 Copyright 2017 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan Swarthmore College, 1955 University of Cologne, Germany (Fulbright travel scholarship), 1955-56 Entered Foreign Service 1958 Washington, DC 1958 Biographic Information Bureau, China-Southeast Asia Branch (Thailand, Cambodia, Malaya, and Singapore) Mogadishu, Somalia 1958-1961 Consular Officer Acting General Services Officer Bremen, Germany 1961-1963 Economic Officer University of California-Berkeley 1963-1964 Economic training Foreign Service Recruiter Colombo, Sri Lanka 1964-1968 Economic Officer Washington, DC 1968-1971 Division Chief of the Division of Food Policy, Economic Bureau Tokyo, Japan 1971-1975 Economic Counselor Rome Italy 1975-1978 Economic Minister 1 Washington, DC 1978-1982 Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Resources and Food Policy, Economic Bureau London, United Kingdom 1983-1987 Economic Minister Sabbatica 1987-1988 National Planning Association (NPA) Retirement 1989 INTERVIEW [Note: This interview was not edited by Mr. Calingaert.] Q: This is the oral history of Michael Calingaert, as taken by Peter Moffat. Please tell us about how you happened to enter the world of foreign affairs and your early life. CALINGAERT: I was born and brought up in Detroit, Michigan, in a rather international atmosphere. My father was born in Belgium, emigrated to the US in the ‘20s, married an American, and always kept a certain European aura around the home. Spoke French at home. I learned French before English, I’ve been told, but forgot a lot in the interim. Even though during the World War II period when we didn’t have that much contact with relatives in Europe, it was very much that kind of atmosphere. I was always interested in history and international affairs, and this was, perhaps in my own mind, though not that of my parents necessarily the thing that I was intended to do. As I went through college it seemed obvious. I studied history, some political science and economics, but I wasn’t particularly interested in an academic career. As I was approaching the end of college, I really didn’t see any alternatives that interested me. I went to Swarthmore College -- very good academics -- and it was generally assumed that people who did well would go on to graduate school, certainly in history. I studied history and then some more history, and I didn’t really like that idea. My only hesitation really was that the early 1950s was the period of McCarthyism, and that was not the atmosphere to entice a lot of people into the foreign service. The one thing I do remember is at some point, probably in my senior year, taking a break at the library and talking to one of my classmates, who was Michael Dukakis. He said, “What are you going to do,” and I answered, well, I thought I would take the foreign service 2 exam but I wasn’t sure. And he said, “Michael, that’s for you.” So I decided he probably was right. I didn’t want to go to law school, which seemed to be the other thing that one did under those circumstances, and so I took the exam and ultimately joined the foreign service. Q: What was your impression as to the likely future of Mr. Dukakis at that point? CALINGAERT: It was clear that Michael wanted to be the governor of Massachusetts. He had a political career in mind. With that as a goal, he volunteered for the army after college. He didn’t go immediately to law school. He went to Korea for two years instead. I’m sure it was so that he could say he was an army veteran. That was a ticket you had to punch and then into politics, including achieving his ambition to become governor of Massachusetts. I took the foreign service exam. Actually, it was the first time the so-called new exam was given in June of 1955, which was when I graduated from college. Prior to that, the service had used the old system, a two-and-a-half day written exam for which one normally had to go to cram school, and which clearly required a great deal more knowledge and preparation. And this stemmed from the Wriston Committee report on modernizing and democratizing the foreign service. So it was a one-day written exam, with multiple choice, plus, I think, the last hour was written. There was an essay, as well as a language test. I took that. Then I had a scholarship to go to Europe for the academic year following graduation. When I learned that I passed the written exam, I wrote to the board of examiners and said, since I was going to Europe in October, I think it was, could I take the oral sooner rather than waiting my turn, and they agreed. So I came down to Washington in September, and it was historical in a sense. It was the first day they gave the oral exam under the new system, and I was the second person to take it. So I may have been the first one ever to pass, but I don’t know and will never know of course. The oral exam was not too taxing except they started asking me what I would do if I were in the foreign service in certain circumstances. I did not have a clue, if you were a consul and a shipwrecked captain came in and so on. That was not very good. The only thing I do remember is one question they asked which I thought was rather stupid: if you were a British diplomat and were invited to the American Embassy for a July 4th reception, how would you respond and would you have a problem with this because the US had gained independence from Britain. And I said I thought the Brits had gotten over that long ago. Why that question came forth, I don’t know. But they didn’t say whether I passed or not. They did tell me to have a medical exam, and a security check, all of which sounded like good signs. And so then I went to Germany and I studied at the University of Cologne for a year. I had a travel fellowship from Fulbright and a scholarship from the university and spent a year really learning about Germany and seeing what Germany and German student life was about, which didn’t 3 appeal to me terribly. But it was an interesting experience. I did that for a year, and then I came back, at which point I said that as of the following summer I would be available if they wanted to have me. Q: (Recording Break) -- Germany back in 1955-56? CALINGAERT: It was, of course, 10 years after the end of the war when I was in Cologne, which had been very badly bombed, and one saw the results of that all over. The university -- I had gone, in a sense, to extremes -- was very different from the small college I had attended with 800 students and everyone knew everyone and it was a very informal atmosphere. The German system was very different. I don’t know how many thousands there were, but it was of course terribly impersonal. Two things, I guess, struck me most. One was the formality amongst students. Unless you really knew them well, everyone used the formal form of address which I found very strange. They were on the whole older because there were many students who had been in the war or had their education delayed by the war, and they tended to be very serious because they wanted to get through with their studies and be done, so there wasn’t much merrymaking. I was living in a student home which was rather interesting. It was built by the widow of apparently a very distinguished professor of sociology who had taught there, ran afoul of the Nazis who didn’t like sociology, and had him killed during the war; and she lived across the street and built this place. So it was a smaller atmosphere, about 30 people, but even there it was all very formal unless you had been there quite a while and had met people. There was an office for foreign students of whom there weren’t many, and there was also the America House. It was an American library at the university run by an American professor who had been born in Germany but whose Jewish family left before the war. His daughter had been in college with me, it turns out, and he was running this program. I met a couple of people through that, but in terms of social life, it was pretty grim. Q: (Recording Break and shift in topics to his first assignment) -- to the Southeast Asian section for biographic information. That’s an interesting assignment, how did it come about? CALINGAERT: Well, one never knows, and certainly at that stage in one’s career, it was never very clear. Our class was rather small; there was 15 of us at the Foreign Service Institute. About half received overseas assignments. I got Washington which is what I wanted. I don’t think anybody asked me, although I had one interview in another part of the Bureau of Intelligence Research but that was for Western Europe. I think the office was interested in an analyst on Germany. I remember vaguely having had an interview, but whether they checked my German or not, I don’t know.