Links to things I have written
My State Department oral history
Book reviews
The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter, by Kai Bird
https://americandiplomacy.web.unc.edu/2021/08/outlier/
Education of an Idealist, a memoir by Samantha Power http://americandiplomacy.web.unc.edu/2019/11/education-of-an-idealist/
Our Man, a biography of Richard Holbrooke by George Packer http://americandiplomacy.web.unc.edu/2019/05/our-man-richard-holbrooke-and-the-end-of-the-american-century/
Obama and China's Rise, by Jeff Bader.
http://americandiplomacy.web.unc.edu/2012/06/obama-and-chinas-rise/
The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, by Kai Bird
http://americandiplomacy.web.unc.edu/2014/05/the-good-spy/
No Exit from Pakistan, by Daniel Markey
http://americandiplomacy.web.unc.edu/2014/03/no-exit-from-pakistan/
Avoiding Armageddon: America, India, and Pakistan on the Brink and Back, by Bruce Reidel
http://americandiplomacy.web.unc.edu/2013/11/avoiding-armageddon/
Joint Letter to the President calling for a ceasefire in Gaza (did not write this, but signed it)
Peace Corps Days, Tamil Nadu 1970-72
Our India-102 website
A return to the village 40 years later
A religious festival in Thanjavur District
https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/it-happens-only-in-india/article7049878.ece
My Peace Corps oral history, RPCV Archives, Kennedy Presidential Library
https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/RPCV/BD2019/RPCV-ACC-2019-129/RPCV-ACC-2019-129
Soon Coming, the preface to my long-delayed Peace Corps memoir
https://donaldcamp.guru/f/soon-coming---my-peace-corps-memoir
A Peace Corps trek - from the plains of south India to the Nepali Himalayas
https://donaldcamp.guru/f/a-trek-in-nepal---1971
The Peace Corps at 60. I was one of three panelists on October 27, 2021 for a discussion of connections between the Peace Corps and the Foreign Service. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKNa1HW5ob4&t=23s
Sri Lanka
My article for the Island about the 50th reunion of a group of Sri Lanka Peace Corps volunteers
http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=184851
One of my first political reports for State Department - the Tamil separatist movement in Sri Lanka (1976)
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76ve08/d102
After the Easter Sunday attacks
What can the international community do to help after the collapse of the Sri Lankan economy (and polity) https://www.csis.org/analysis/sri-lanka-way-forward
Reflections on Sri Lanka 50 years ago
I arrived in Sri Lanka 50 years ago as a newly-minted foreign service officer at the U.S. Embassy at 44 Galle Road. The world was much different then and so was Colombo. The outdated State Department guide to life there advised arriving officers to pack “Red Sea rig” (a tuxedo without the jacket) for social events under the tropical sun. (Even I knew that Sri Lanka had shed that aspect of its colonial past). Duplication Road was just being surveyed to take traffic off what seemed to be a congested Galle Road. Sri Lanka boasted of its social welfare statistics but rationed rice and other scarce consumer goods. When a newly imported car received a 6ශ්රී1 license plate, it made the front page of the Daily News. Unawatunna was a deserted stretch of paradise just east of Galle.
I was excited as hell for my first diplomatic assignment. The State Department had made best efforts to teach me Sinhala and I already had passable Tamil from two years in the Peace Corps across the Palk Straits. In our relatively small embassy my assignment was to seek investment potential for U.S. companies, track the labor movement and follow political affairs. My colleagues generally shared my excitement about Sri Lanka and respected our boss, Ambassador Chris van Hollen and his wife Eliza, also an expert on South Asia.
The small but activist Foreign Ministry was led by Foreign Secretary W.T. Jayasinghe who I rarely saw (he was way above my paygrade); the Americas Division was run by the estimable Lakshmi Naganathan. I have always been grateful to the ministry for hosting a reception bringing together all the junior diplomats around town with the entering class of the foreign ministry; this group became the core of my social circle in Colombo, and I am still in touch with some of them today. Sri Lanka’s civil service was awesome; a real standout was the Government Agent in Galle Bradman Weerakoon who went on to much bigger roles.
The diplomatic circle in Colombo was small. I did not know the Soviet diplomats (although their Sinhala-speaking third secretary and thus my rough counterpart at the time was Sergei Lavrov, now Russian foreign minister). Our rapprochement with China was still at an early stage so I sadly did not know the members of the large Chinese embassy. Colombo’s most famous foreigner was science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. In recognition of his early conception of geostationary satellites, NASA had gifted him Sri Lanka’s only satellite dish so he was the only person on the island with access to television (boring Doordarshan shows streamed to earth by the Indian Space Research Organization). Clarke always received an invitation to the embassy’s July 4 reception at the ambassador’s residence which was a coveted item in some Colombo households (surely Cinnamon Gardens social life was better than this.) I lived in a modest house on Gower Street in Havelock Town; my only social card to deploy was my ability to invite friends to the U.S. Marine House at 6 Rotunda Gardens, where they played up-to-date American films on 35mm reels every weekend.
My day job was to get beyond this group and what we called the Colombo 7 crowd to get a sense of what was happening in the rest of Sri Lanka. In retrospect, I could have done a better job. Despite my moderate fluency in Tamil, I downplayed the dangerous potential of the Tamil radicals of the north, even after the murder of Jaffna mayor Alfred Duraiappah in 1975. Separatism seemed an impractical solution to Tamil grievances although I did warn of the gradual shift toward radicalism in this now-declassified message to the State Department: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76ve08/d102. When the 1977 elections came around, the embassy, including me, didn’t give enough weight to the economic privation around the country and the consequent wide unpopularity of the Bandaranaike government. We – and the Colombo 7 elite – were not having any trouble getting rice and household staples. We did not expect J.R. Jayawardene’s landslide win and the rout of the SLFP.
My mistakes were not for lack of trying. I had good assistance at the embassy with Sri Lankan employees who knew the country well, as well as occasional help from the imperious, but delightful Diana Captain, who had been employed at the embassy almost since it opened; she knew everyone in Colombo and was every ambassador’s confidant and gossip-purveyor. (She once told me in shock that the ambassador, himself a coffee drinker, was serving visiting tea planters American instant tea. Many, many years later, I asked if she knew the then-President Ranil Wickremasinghe: “dear, I swaddled Ranil as a baby.”) I traveled as often as I could. I frequently went to Kandy where we had a small American Center and I befriended the UNP politician who later became J.R.’s foreign minister. I visited Jaffna where I felt very much at home. I climbed Sri Pada three times, visited Kataragama, and plantation lines. I didn’t pay enough attention to the south where the JVP insurgency had incubated.
Despite my professional shortcomings, I had a wonderful time. On weekends, I played a lot of tennis at the Queens Club, and took flying lessons at Ratmalana Airport until the landing wheel fell off the biplane on which I was training. I took sailing lessons in Colombo Port, dodging the freighters that were plying the same waters. I made long-term friends and nourished an affection for the island and a connection that has lasted 50 years.
India
India and multilateralism
The BJP Regime 1998-2004: Looking Back, Looking Ahead - a panel discussion at CSIS in 2014 Video here.
https://www.csis.org/events/bjp-regime-1998-2004-looking-back-looking-ahead
The BJP and Islam
The US-India nuclear deal - 15 years on
Ukraine: India's road ahead after abstention.
The world has now seen India abstain on UN Security Council, General Assembly, and Human Rights Council resolutions on Ukraine, putting themselves in a small minority of countries unwilling to call out Russia for its invasion. The most recent (March 24) General Assembly vote was 140 yes, 5 no, and 38 abstentions.
Russia can count on four countries willing to join them in opposing each resolution. Those countries – Syria, North Korea, Belarus, and Eritrea – are rightly condemned for standing with the invaders.
India and China are the most prominent of the abstainers. Opponents of India’s vote, in the US and elsewhere, decry India’s abandonment of its democratic values. India’s diplomats argue that the UN should put its efforts toward ending the hostilities rather than condemning the Russians. India’s defenders make the pragmatic argument that the nation’s armed forces are now and will be for the foreseeable future dependent on Russia for arms systems and spare parts.
But India can and should do more than mere words to move the combatants toward an end to hostilities. And its abstentions give it more standing with the Russians than other nations that oppose the invasion.
India is an aspirant for a permanent seat on the Security Council (where it now sits for two years as an elected member). It is a great power of Asia and of the world. It is a member of organizations that crosscut the Second and Third Worlds; BRICS is one such organization.
Why is India not actively working for an end to the violence? Statements at the UN are hardly enough. India has good relations with Russia and good relations with NATO, the EU, and the US. It’s even sending medical supplies to embattled Ukraine. The Russian and Chinese foreign ministers have come to Delhi to explain their positions and seek Delhi’s approval, and Foreign Minister Lavrov is due in Delhi again this week. Why not play those advantages? Why not take an activist approach to the Ukraine crisis and play a role in finding a solution?
The U.S. government’s default position when confronted with an international crisis is usually to try to mediate or at a minimum, work through other channels to restore peace. A few other countries -- Norway, with its tiny foreign ministry, is one –- throw their limited resources toward resolving international crises. When the war in Ukraine erupted, Israeli Prime Minister Bennett traveled to Moscow and made an early stab at facilitating a solution.
So where are Prime Minister Modi and Foreign Minister Jaishankar? International mediation has never been a staple of Indian foreign policy, and there is ingrained resistance to anything that might appear to be interference in other countries’ internal affairs. But India has a deep and strong foreign policy team and aspirations to play a much bigger international role. Delhi should be showcasing its capabilities to find a solution.
The efforts don’t have to be public but they could start with India telling Foreign Minister Lavrov this week that Delhi’s patience is not unlimited. As the war of attrition continues in Ukraine, India’s continued silence should not be taken for granted. If there is need for active mediation, India should be prepared to use its good offices in Kyiv and add its voice to those seeking an end to the violence.
India
India and multilateralism
The BJP Regime 1998-2004: Looking Back, Looking Ahead - a panel discussion at CSIS in 2014 Video here.
https://www.csis.org/events/bjp-regime-1998-2004-looking-back-looking-ahead
The BJP and Islam
The US-India nuclear deal - 15 years on
Ukraine: India's road ahead after abstention.
The world has now seen India abstain on UN Security Council, General Assembly, and Human Rights Council resolutions on Ukraine, putting themselves in a small minority of countries unwilling to call out Russia for its invasion. The most recent (March 24) General Assembly vote was 140 yes, 5 no, and 38 abstentions.
Russia can count on four countries willing to join them in opposing each resolution. Those countries – Syria, North Korea, Belarus, and Eritrea – are rightly condemned for standing with the invaders.
India and China are the most prominent of the abstainers. Opponents of India’s vote, in the US and elsewhere, decry India’s abandonment of its democratic values. India’s diplomats argue that the UN should put its efforts toward ending the hostilities rather than condemning the Russians. India’s defenders make the pragmatic argument that the nation’s armed forces are now and will be for the foreseeable future dependent on Russia for arms systems and spare parts.
But India can and should do more than mere words to move the combatants toward an end to hostilities. And its abstentions give it more standing with the Russians than other nations that oppose the invasion.
India is an aspirant for a permanent seat on the Security Council (where it now sits for two years as an elected member). It is a great power of Asia and of the world. It is a member of organizations that crosscut the Second and Third Worlds; BRICS is one such organization.
Why is India not actively working for an end to the violence? Statements at the UN are hardly enough. India has good relations with Russia and good relations with NATO, the EU, and the US. It’s even sending medical supplies to embattled Ukraine. The Russian and Chinese foreign ministers have come to Delhi to explain their positions and seek Delhi’s approval, and Foreign Minister Lavrov is due in Delhi again this week. Why not play those advantages? Why not take an activist approach to the Ukraine crisis and play a role in finding a solution?
The U.S. government’s default position when confronted with an international crisis is usually to try to mediate or at a minimum, work through other channels to restore peace. A few other countries -- Norway, with its tiny foreign ministry, is one –- throw their limited resources toward resolving international crises. When the war in Ukraine erupted, Israeli Prime Minister Bennett traveled to Moscow and made an early stab at facilitating a solution.
So where are Prime Minister Modi and Foreign Minister Jaishankar? International mediation has never been a staple of Indian foreign policy, and there is ingrained resistance to anything that might appear to be interference in other countries’ internal affairs. But India has a deep and strong foreign policy team and aspirations to play a much bigger international role. Delhi should be showcasing its capabilities to find a solution.
The efforts don’t have to be public but they could start with India telling Foreign Minister Lavrov this week that Delhi’s patience is not unlimited. As the war of attrition continues in Ukraine, India’s continued silence should not be taken for granted. If there is need for active mediation, India should be prepared to use its good offices in Kyiv and add its voice to those seeking an end to the violence.
Nepal
King Gyanendra, after he stepped down, once passed a message to me in Kathmandu "you see what happened after you told me I should give power to the people."
https://www.voanews.com/archive/us-urges-nepal-restore-democracy
https://thehimalayantimes.com/opinion/tht-10-years-ago-donald-camp-set-to-arrive-here-today/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4631511.stm
2005 Congresstional testimony
https://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/nepal/document/papers/05USnepal.htm