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Copyright by Gregory Krauss 2007 Copyright by Gregory Krauss 2007 Impacting Foreign Policy as a Mid-Level Bureaucrat: The Diplomatic Career of George Lister by Gregory Krauss, A.B. Professional Report Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degrees of Doctor of Jurisprudence and Master of Public Affair Affairs The University of Texas at Austin May 2007 Impacting Foreign Policy as a Mid-Level Bureaucrat: The Diplomatic Career of George Lister APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: ___________________________ Alan Kuperman ___________________________ Karen Engle Dedication I dedicate this Professional Report to Margaret Eubank, Karen Engle, Tracy Wahl, and everyone who has helped me to explore George Lister’s career; to my parents, who have supported me through four years of graduate school; and finally, to all the people who have struggled on behalf of George Lister’s “hopeless cause.” iv Impacting Foreign Policy as a Mid-Level Bureaucrat: The Diplomatic Career of George Lister by Gregory Krauss, J.D., M.P.Aff. The University of Texas at Austin, 2007 Supervisor: Alan Kuperman Most models of foreign policymaking emphasize the role of high-level decision-makers. George Lister served in the State Department for 61 years, never assuming a prestigious post, yet he managed to have a profound impact on U.S. foreign policy, particularly in giving a higher priority to human rights. The following Professional Report evaluates Lister’s impact over the course of his career and the reasons for his success. v Table of Contents Chapter 1. “Mr. Human Rights” ..........................................................................................1 The Mid-Level Bureaucrat in U.S. Foreign Policymaking......................................3 An Exception to the Rule.........................................................................................5 Chapter 2. Early Career Impact (1941-1961) ......................................................................9 Early Life .................................................................................................................9 First Assignments: 1941-1957 ...............................................................................11 Rome: 1957 - 1961.................................................................................................15 Conclusion .............................................................................................................25 Chapter 3. Mid-Career Impact (1961-1973) ......................................................................29 Impact in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs....................................................32 Conclusion .............................................................................................................49 Chapter 4. Building a Human Rights Policy......................................................................55 Human Rights in U.S. Foreign Policy ...................................................................56 Lister and Human Rights .......................................................................................63 Impact on the Institutionalization of Human Rights in the State Department.......70 Impact on Human Rights Movement.....................................................................84 Conclusion .............................................................................................................93 Chapter 5. Human Rights Case Studies ...........................................................................100 Nicaragua .............................................................................................................101 Dominican Republic ............................................................................................106 South Korea .........................................................................................................107 vi Chile.....................................................................................................................111 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................120 Chapter 6. Conclusion......................................................................................................127 Reasons for Impact ..............................................................................................128 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................134 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................136 Vita...................................................................................................................................151 vii Chapter 1. “Mr. Human Rights” Early in 1941, months before the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent U.S. entry into WWII, a recent graduate of The City College of New York named George Lister moved to Bogotá, Colombia in search of adventure and employment opportunities. 1 Soon after arriving, by chance he met an officer from the U.S. Embassy. 2 Lister had previous experience working at a bank, and so the Embassy hired him to work in its commercial section. 3 Lister eventually took and passed the Foreign Service exam, beginning his diplomatic career in December 1945. 4 Lister’s service to the State Department would not be short-lived. Until 2002, Lister maintained an office in the State Department. 5 In total, his State Department career spanned 61 years and 12 Presidents, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush. The history of U.S. foreign policy is often written from the perspective of Presidents, cabinet members, and other high-ranking foreign policy officials. Those individuals explicitly entrusted with the authority to make major foreign policy decisions are thought to be the ones with the most influence and impact. Over the course of his lengthy career, George Lister never served as Secretary of State or as an Assistant Secretary with responsibility for a State Department bureau. He was never selected for an Ambassadorship—the position most coveted by career Foreign Service officers. Yet, those who knew him thought that he made fundamental 1 contributions to U.S. foreign policy, especially in giving a higher priority to human rights. Lister spent most of the early part of his career working abroad at U.S. embassies. In addition to Colombia, Lister’s assignments included Poland, the U.S.S.R., and Germany. 6 Between 1957 and 1961, Lister served as the First Secretary of the U.S. Embassy in Rome. 7 For the remainder of his career, Lister was based in Washington, D.C. In the 1960s and early 1970s, Lister served in the Department’s Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, his work centering on the promotion of democracy in Latin America. 8 Human rights legislation passed in the 1970s led, among other consequences, to the designation of human rights officers in every bureau. In 1974, Lister became the first human rights officer for Latin American. 9 In 1981, he joined the State Department’s new human rights bureau, then called the Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. 10 Lister officially retired in 1982, but he continued to work in the human rights bureau as an unpaid policy advisor until 2002. 11 He passed away in 2004. 12 In the last decade of his career, Lister received plenty of accolades. Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., a friend of Lister’s, described Lister to a reporter as “Mr. Human Rights.” 13 In 1992, the Government of Chile invited Lister to Chile to receive an award for his role in restoring Chilean democracy. 14 In 1997, Lister was nominated, but not chosen, for the Warren M. Christopher Award for Outstanding Achievement in Global Affairs. 15 In 1998, Kim Dae Jung invited Lister to his 2 inauguration as president of South Korea to recognize Lister’s help in bringing democracy to that country. 16 When Lister died in 2004, Bill Richardson told The Washington Post : “His contributions are going to have a lasting effect, but there is no George Lister now. There are probably a lot of people who have human rights in their titles, but the conscience of human rights is gone.” 17 The Mid-Level Bureaucrat in U.S. Foreign Policymaking Most studies of the U.S. foreign policymaking process emphasize the role of top decision-makers. Walter Issacson’s The Wise Men , for example, details how six high-level foreign policy officials, all friends, worked together to shape U.S. foreign policy in the post-war era: W. Averill Harriman, Robert Lovett, Dean Acheson, John McCloy, George Kennan, and Charles Bohlen. 18 In The Faces of Power , a well- regarded text on 20 th century U.S. foreign policy, Seyom Brown likewise chronicles the decision-making processes of top officials, namely the President and various agency heads. Brown writes that his “overriding purpose has been to gain insight into the worldviews prevailing at the highest levels of the United States government…” (emphasis added). 19 Brown, however, portrays a competitive process in which top officials compete to win the President’s favor. 20 Like Brown’s Faces of Power , Morton Halperin’s Bureaucratic Politics and U.S. Foreign Policy describes a foreign policymaking process in which top officials compete for influence. Halperin, though, portrays the process less as a competition 3 between personalities and more as a competition amongst the foreign policymaking bureaucracies:
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