How would you distill your many years of foreign service-in Southeast Asia, with the Department of State, and as Ambassador-into several salient lessons?

Number one: don't assume that in the country you are dealing with that people think or act the same way or work out of the same set of historical precedents that we do in the United States. One of the great mistakes is to assume that the leaders or people of another country view a problem or an issue in the same way as we do in the United States. You must make the effort to breach the cultural and linguistic barriers to understand how people in another society view issues, the US approach, and the United States as a whole.

Second, it is terribly important to speak with clarity so that other nations understand who exactly is speaking with authority. The United States is an open society, in which many citizens travel around the world and interact with other governments and political leaders; determining which messages come from the US government can be muddled as a result. For example, we weren't getting anywhere in terms of POW/MIA accounting with Vietnam in 1990 until I was able to convey to my Vietnamese counterparts a message directly from President Bush, making clear what exactly our policy was and assuring them that this was the approach the United States would take. Once they understood, then we could work to enact reciprocal actions in terms of POW/MIAs.

A third lesson I take away at the end of my career is a sense of concern that the United States is increasingly seen abroad as arrogant and, in some instances, as a bully toward smaller countries. I worry that we are going to be seen, not as a country that has sacrificed much, assisted nations in rebuilding after World War II, or contributed much through aid programs, but as a country that is pressing and pushing its positions, often for its own domestic political considerations.