Dinger, Larry
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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR LARRY DINGER Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: March 4th, 2014 Copyright 2018 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born in Charles City, Iowa on August 8, 1946 BA in Political Science, Macalester College 1964-1968 J.D., Harvard Law School 1972-1975 U.S. Navy 1968-1972 Coordinator, Udall election campaign 1975-1976 Senate Judiciary Committee Staff 1976-1978 Entered the Foreign Service 1983 Mexico City, Mexico—Consular officer 1983-1985 Ambassador John Gavin Narcotics Assistance Unit Visas Washington, DC—Staff Assistant, East Asia and Pacific Bureau 1985-1986 Paul Wolfowitz Jakarta, Indonesia—Political officer 1987-1990 Indonesian language and culture Transmigration and integration East Timor Corruption and Madam Suharto Communists Vietnam and Cambodia Chinese community Borneo Washington, DC—Indonesian Desk Officer 1990-1992 Dili Massacre East Timor 1 Canberra, Australia—Political officer 1992-1995 Australian politics Ambassadors Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting Australian foreign policy New Zealand Military collaboration Washington, DC—Special Assistant, East Asia and Pacific Bureau 1995-1996 Winston Lord EAP China Vietnam Suva, Fiji—Deputy Chief of Mission 1996-1999 Coups Ambassador Gevirtz Fiji Water Democracy development Mahendra Chaudhry Ethnicity China South Pacific Forum Kava Island cultures Kingdom of Tonga Peace Corps Nauru Washington, DC—National War College student 1999-2000 Curriculum Regional study for South Asia India and Pakistan trip Students Kathmandu, Nepal—Deputy Chief of Mission 2000-2001 Maoist insurgency Nepalese royal massacre China-India relationship Peace Corps Human trafficking Refugee camps Mountain climbing Gurkhas Kolonia, Micronesia—Ambassador 2002-2004 2 Compacts of free association Negotiations Peace Corps Visitors WWII ordnance Veterans Newport, Rhode Island— State Department Senior Representative, Naval War College 2004-2005 Grand strategy seminar Foreign students Suva, Fiji—Ambassador 2005-2008 Tonga, Tuvalu, Kiribati, and Nauru Fiji coup Elections Commodore Bainimarama Coup Embassy security China Nauru research Kiribati and climate change Cuban assistance U.S.-Tonga relations Typhoons Rangoon, Burma—Chief of Mission 2008-2011 Military dictatorships Aung San Suu Kyi Cyclone Nargis NayPyiTaw American Center in Rangoon Senator Jim Webb visit Censorship Constitutional referendum Election Aung San Suu Kyi release Burmese Army Rakhine State Travel Senator John McCain visit Wikileaks Retirement August 2011 Post retirement activities 3 Washington, DC —Office of the Inspector General 2012 Arlington, VA—Foreign Service Institute 2013 Jakarta, Indonesia— U.S. Mission to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations 2014 New York, NY—East Asia and Pacific Bureau, UN General Assembly 2013- INTERVIEW Q: All right. Today is the 4th of March, 2014, interview with Larry Dinger, D-I-N-G-E-R. This is being done on behalf of the Association of Diplomatic Studies and Training and I’m Charles Stuart Kennedy. And I assume you just go by Larry, don’t you? DINGER: I do. Q: Larry, let’s sort of start at the beginning. When and where were you born? DINGER: Charles City, Iowa, August 8, 1946. My parents lived in Riceville, Iowa, about 30 miles away. Q: All right. Let’s take the Dinger side of the thing, we’ll go to your mother’s in a minute. But can you tell me about the background, how did the Dingers end up with Iowa and all that? DINGER: All my grandparents were farmers. The ancestors had started out in various places in Western Europe, but by the mid 1850s they had all gotten to the United States. Some of them had come in the 1600s. Q: Do you know from whence they came? Dinger, sounds German. DINGER: Dinger is Pennsylvania Dutch, German. They may well have suffered religious persecution. One way or another they got to Pennsylvania and then they migrated on west and ended up in rural Howard County, Iowa. My mother’s family is Miles. They came to this country in about 1630 or ’40, I gather via Philadelphia, and eventually migrated on west and ended up in Iowa. And the other branches similarly. I’m a quarter Scottish, the Lockies and McClains. I'm an eighth Irish. I think those ancestors probably were starving and left Scotland and Ireland for better pastures, ending up in Iowa. The Wildmans came across at some point early as well, via New York. By about 1850 my ancestors were all farming in rural Iowa and many of them farmed throughout their lives. 4 Q: Well, how about, take your grandparents and father and mother. Where did they -- were they farming too? DINGER: Grandparents were all farmers. My mother's relatives, the Miles family, were pretty prosperous farmers in Iowa. My grandfather and both uncles retired from the farm. The Miles family is not farming now, although my brother and sister and I still own 160 acres of inherited land near Riceville. We went to the Iowa State Fair a couple of years ago and received a "Century Farm" certificate for the Stella Miles farm, named for my grandmother. Q: When you say they’re farming, what kind of farming? DINGER: This was typical Iowa farming, where they were raising cattle and pigs and also grain farming, mostly corn and soybeans. And so in childhood I was out helping to hay and pick up rocks, and stuff like that. Q: Did your grandparents and your father and mother go to college? DINGER: My grandfather on my mother’s side went to teachers college for a couple of winter quarters when he wasn’t busy farming. My mother was the first person going back in my branches who graduated from college. She went to Iowa State Teachers College, now the University of Northern Iowa, and graduated with honors as a French major. That choice was not the smartest move going into the Great Depression, jobs were very scarce. She ended up being a teacher in a number of schools in the Iowa area and during World War II went to Chicago to work in a bank. She and my father, who had enlisted in the Navy, married during World War II. My dad’s family had no college in its background and my dad did not go to college. He was a high school graduate. Q: That is often the pattern. If anybody -- so many people I’ve interviewed -- I’m still dealing with a generation where their parents, if anybody had a college education it was usually the mother in often sort of a teaching or nursing degree. Mine didn’t, both -- mother never went to college, anything, father had one semester I think. DINGER: No, it’s not at all unusual. I do have older cousins who went to college, but in that previous generation my mom was the only one. Q: But interesting thing is that knowing this, that generation was heavily into reading. It wasn’t as though we’re talking about an uneducated group. It’s just that college was for the rich and the others you had the Carnegie Libraries and the free libraries and all and they did very well, thank you. DINGER: That’s right. There wasn’t a Carnegie Library in Riceville, Iowa, but they had access to books one way or another and, and they’d get a newspaper now and again, and they were avid readers. There’s no question about that. Q: Yeah. Well then -- 5 DINGER: I should mention my father’s side. My grandfather, was a part-time farmer. But he also was a small businessman. He owned the Acme Store along the railroad that went through the Riceville area, and serviced the community there for a while. And he eventually ended up in Minnesota. But that was after his first wife died of what they called consumption. Q: Well, it’s Riceville? What was it like when you were a kid? DINGER: Bucolic (laughs). Q: (laughs) DINGER: It was the perfect place to grow up. It truly was one of those places where you knew everybody and everybody knew you. My friends when I was two-years-old were my friends when I graduated from high school. I don’t think anybody locked the door when I was a small child. We lived right next door to my mother’s parents, my grandparents. I wandered over there at will to sit on Grandma’s lap and have her read books to me and -- yeah, it was just practically a perfect way to grow up (laughs). Q: And you had brothers? Sisters? DINGER: Had a half brother, older, considerably older. He was from my father’s first marriage. And he lived in Riceville for most of my life. And then I have a younger brother and younger sister. Q: As a kid, were you much of a reader? DINGER: Oh yeah. I practically exhausted the town library. I think I still remember the first time my mom took me to the library, which was then in the high school. And I think it was probably Bobbsey Twins that I checked out. I still remember the corner of the library where those books were. Q: Yeah. DINGER: Maybe five years, six-years-old. Q: Well, later on, looking back on sort of your early years up through early high school, were there any books that particularly influenced you or excited you or not, or any type, or? DINGER: Not in particular. I was an eclectic reader I think. Through junior high I probably wasn’t reading that huge a variety. I remember the Hardy Boys and things like that. But no, nothing particularly special. By the time I got to high school I just read through the entire library.