Brement, Marshall

The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR MARSHALL BREMENT Interviewed by: Thomas S. Estes Initial interview date: April 5, 1989 Copyri ht 1998 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Early career in Foreign Service Staff Assistant, ureau of Far Eastern Affairs 1956-1957 Chinese language training 1957-1960 Political officer, Hong )ong 1960-1963 Russian training 1963-196, Political officer, -osco. 196,-1966 Sino-Soviet relations Far Eastern duties Singapore 1967-1970 /a0arta 1970-1973 Counselor for Pu1lic Affairs Saigon 1973-197, Counselor for Pu1lic Affairs Counselor for Political Affairs, -osco. 197,-1976 Senior Staff -em1er 2Soviet Affairs3 National Security Am1assador to Iceland 1981-1985 Political situation in Iceland 7.S military considerations Importance of understanding Icelandic culture Economic pro1lems 9haling Naval 9ar College and Retrospective INTERVIEW ": This is an interview with Ambassador Marshall Brement by Ambassador Thomas S. Estes. The interview is takin place on April 5, 1989 in Ambassador Brement's office at 1 the Naval War Colle e, Newport, R.I., where Ambassador Brement is the Director, Strate ic Studies -roup. This interview is part of the .ral History Pro1ect bein conducted by the Association for Diplomatic Studies. All ri ht, Marshall, let's try it a ain. Run over your joinin the Forei n Service. RE-ENT: 9ell, I joined the Foreign Service--actually quite by chance. I had al.ays .anted to be a .riter, that .as all I .as ever thin0ing of doing. ut I'd gotten out of the Air Force and I .as studying for a masters degree in American Civilization--a com1ination of American history and American literature and philosophy and political science and so forth. And I .as in the li1rary one day, supposedly studying for an exam, .hen the person .ho .as sitting next to me left the college ne.spaper behind and so I idly pic0ed up the ne.spaper. I read that some fello. .as there to tal0 a1out a State Department career and miraculously he .as a1out to tal0 .ithin five minutes of the time I pic0ed up the ne.spaper and the place he .as going to tal0 .as no more than ten yards a.ay from .here I .as sitting. So I .andered in and it .as Olcott Deming, .ho .as a very polished and ur1ane Foreign Service Officer of the old school and I sort of li0ed the cut of his ji1. His pitch .as essentially to go ahead and ta0e the test. It had been restructured at that point, it .as no longer the old three-day test .here you had to .rite... Q: That's what I took. RE-ENT: ...a .hole series of essay exams. It .as more or less restructured to be a college board type test, I guess. His pitch .as .ell ta0en, you had nothing to lose by ta0ing it. And so I did and here I am. Q: Well, fine. I took that old three and a half3day test so I know what you missed. The old bio raphic re ister shows that you entered the Forei n Service in 1954. 5ou be an to study Chinese at the Forei n Service Institute and in 1958 you were sent to the FSI field school in Taiwan. Can you tell us somethin about why you decided to study Chinese6 RE-ENT: 9ell, again, it .as sort of an accidental turn in my career. I came in, in -arch of '56, and too0 the old A 100 course for beginning officers and then .as assigned to the ureau of Far Eastern Affairs. I'd as0ed to go overseas but they said, "No, you have to go to 9ashington," and I .as simply assigned to FE .here I .as the assistant staff assistant. The staff assistant .as first a fello. named Ne.t 9addell, and then O.en Aurhellen, to 9alter Ro1ertson .ho .as Assistant Secretary for Far Eastern Affairs and a very dynamic and polished Birginia ban0er gentlemen .ho'd been in Chung0ing during the .ar and then .or0ed for Ceneral -arshall .hen he had his mission to China and had very, very strong vie.s a1out China. In any case I .or0ed on his staff, partly as a staff assistant and partly as the author of the Far East Section of the daily secret summary, an old pu1lication of the Department .here I essentially summarized ca1les on a daily basis--important ca1les on the Far East to be read by the principal officers of the DepartmentD and also .rote a .ee0ly item on su1jects 2 of interest dealing .ith the Far East, an internal pu1lication the Department put out at the secret level called "Current Foreign Relations". This .as an excellent introduction to a Foreign Service career because it gave me the full range and the full sense of .hat .as going on in a major geographic bureau of the Department. I .as mildly interested in the Far East .hen I came in but I .as pointing to.ards Europe. ut this indeed a.a0ened an interest in the Far East for me and so I applied for Chinese language training, and had a great deal of trou1le getting in, by the .ay. It .as only that I .as .or0ing for the Far Eastern Assistant Secretary .hich allo.ed me to get into the course. -ostly because the head of Personnel at the time, .hose name escapes me, had been an inspector and he'd inspected the language school in Eo0ohama and he found that of the four graduates t.o of them had decided it .as a terri1le mista0e to study /apanese and .anted to go some.here else. And I'd never even been overseas--I'd never been anyplace outside the 7nited States except Canada or -exico. And he decided that before I do something li0e ta0e t.o and a half years of the taxpayer's money to study... Q: That's why I asked. It's unusual. RE-ENT: ...I'd better at least loo0 around and get a sense of the area, .hich .as sensi1le enough. ut there .ere no particularly attractive assignments at that time and indeed I felt that my exposure to the ureau and to the general area .as such that I 0ne. .hat I .as doing. So 9alter Ro1ertson, .ho .as quite a des0-1anger, and could handle a meeting, I .ould say, better than any1ody I've ever seen in the 7S Covernment... Q: 5es, I knew him. RE-ENT: ...in terms of getting his .ay, he almost al.ays did. He got his .ay. So I entered Chinese language training and spent nine months at the Foreign Service Institute and then 18 months at the field school in Tai.an .here .e studied Chinese every day. Q: That interested me because I studied Mandarin in Pekin , China when I was in the Marine Corps. And then after that you... RE-ENT: After that I .as assigned to Hong )ong. I had .anted to go to Taipei actually, but I couldn't complain too much a1out being assigned to Hong )ong. -y first year in Hong )ong I .as assigned to the Political Section of the Consulate .or0ing on China. Of course, in those days .e had no relations .ith China and Hong )ong .as the premier China .atching post of the Department. In my first year I .as in charge of the unit .hich pu1lished the survey of the China -ainland Press .hich .as the standard source of reference both for the government and for the academic community on current developments in China. I had ten translators and 20 typists and .e had a su1scription list of a1out 600 and .e turned out 60 or 70 single-spaced sheets of paper a day. I found that great fun and a great .ay to learn a1out China and my translators .ere an enormous source of 0no.ledge. I only spent a year at that, then .ent off on home leave, and came 1ac0. And then I spent t.o years in the Political Section .or0ing on internal political developments in China. 3 Q: Do you still keep up your lan ua e6 RE-ENT: 9ell, it's difficult. I've been learning languages .herever I've been for so long and they sort of drop a.ay .hen they're not being used. ut I .ould say that I certainly have day-to-day Chinese. I .ill al.ays have that because I've raised three small children in a house .here the servants spo0e nothing but Chinese. So I'm still a pretty good man in a Chinese restaurant. ut in terms of reading political editorials I'm not .hat I used to be. Q: That was the level of my achievement. I could order a meal in Pekin and I thou ht I had achieved a great deal. Well then, we come to '43 and you made a switch, another lan ua e, Russian which is 8uite a chan e. Do you want to comment on that and how it affected your subse8uent assi nments6 RE-ENT: I've al.ays been interested in the Soviet 7nion and Chinese and Russian seemed to me an excellent com1ination so I applied and, some.hat to my surprise, .as accepted. I've pro1a1ly had more language training at government expense...actually I came into the Department as .hat they called a language pro1ationer. I had no language that I .as sufficiently qualified in. I gave French as my language but I .as not proficient enough in French to satisfy the Department's language requirements.

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