Once the favored method of diplomacy, special envoys are once again in vogue to advance U.S. interests. But are there simply too many cooks in the kitchen?
Bio
Ambassador Charles Dunbar
Ambassador Charles Dunbar is a Professor of International Affairs at Boston University.
Dr. Michael Fullilove
Dr. Michael Fullilove, Program Director for Global Issues at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, has worked as a lawyer, a volunteer in the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor, and an adviser to Prime Minister Paul Keating. Fullilove was a consultant to Frank Lowy AC on the establishment of the Lowy Institute.
Fullilove graduated in international relations and law from the Universities of Sydney and New South Wales, with dual university medals. He also studied as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, where he took a master's degree in international relations and wrote his doctorate on Franklin D. Roosevelt's foreign policy. His dissertation was awarded the annual prize for the best international history thesis in Britain.
Fullilove has published more than fifty articles in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, The Australian Financial Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The International Herald Tribune, The Financial Times, The National Interest and Foreign Affairs. He has been quoted in publications such as The Yomiuri Shimbun, The South China Morning Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Economist, and he is a regular commentator for the ABC and CNN. Fullilove's first book, Men and Women of Australia! Our Greatest Modern Speeches, was published by Vintage in 2005.
Ambassador Marc Grossman
Marc Grossman is vice chairman of The Cohen Group, the strategic business consulting firm founded and headed by former Secretary of Defense and U.S. Senator William Cohen. He is also a current board member of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Prior to joining, he had been a career foreign service officer since 1976.
Ambassador Grossman was under secretary of state for political affairs at the U.S. State Department from March 2001 to February 2005. Additionally, he served as director general of the Foreign Service and director of human resources, assistant secretary of state for European Affairs, and as U.S. Ambassador to Turkey. From 1984 to 1986, Ambassador Grossman was the deputy director of the Private Office of Lord Carrington, then Secretary General of NATO.
He received a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a master's degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Nicholas Kristof
Nicholas Kristof writes op-ed columns for the New York Times. His columns have often focused on global health, poverty, and gender issues in the developing world. Since 2004, he has written dozens of columns about Darfur and visited the area eight times.
He has received two Pulitzer Prizes, one for his reporting with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, on China's Tiananmen Square democracy movement and the other for his reporting on Darfur. He has been a Times correspondent since 1984, becoming an associate managing editor and the first blogger on the New York Times Web site.
Kristof has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to 120 countries, all 50 states, every Chinese province, and every main Japanese island. Kristof and WuDunn are authors of China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power and Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia.
Ambassador Ronald Neumann
Ronald E. Neumann is the current United States Ambassador to Afghanistan and previously served as ambassador to Algeria from 1994 to 1997 and Bahrain from 2001 to 2004.
He is the son of former ambassador Robert G. Neumann and traveled extensively after college in Afghanistan while his father was ambassador there.
Robert Zoellick
Robert B. Zoellick has been the president of The World Bank Group since July 1, 2007. He served in President George W. Bush's cabinet as U.S. trade representative from 2001-2005 and as deputy secretary of state from 2005-2006. From 1985-1993, Mr. Zoellick worked at the Treasury and State departments in various capacities, as well as briefly in the White House as deputy chief of staff. In 2006 and 2007, he served as vice chairman international of Goldman Sachs Group. Mr. Zoellick holds a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, a master's degree in public policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and a bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College.
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