Wang Yi, Qin Gang . . . and foreign ministers' tales

Wang Yi, the senior Chinese diplomat, is back in his old job as his country's foreign minister. He replaces his successor Qin Gang, who was in the job for slightly over six months. In the past few weeks, there has been no news of Qin, which is not surprising given the historical opacity that has characterised important appointments and departures in Beijing's political hierarchy.
The top job in diplomacy, in any country nowadays, is an important undertaking. In China, Marshal Chen Yi served as foreign minister for a good number of years in the 1960s. Prior to that, Zhou En-lai was both prime minister and foreign minister at a formative stage of communist rule in Beijing. By that measure, Qin Gang's presence in the foreign ministry was all too brief.
Conversations on foreign ministers in modern times are often part of the historical narrative. Long-serving foreign ministers have often had an impact on the development of their countries' links with the rest of the world. Take, for instance, Andrei Gromyko, who after a stint as ambassador to the United States went on to serve as Soviet foreign minister for decades, all the way from Nikita Khrushchev to Mikhail Gorbachev. Not until Gromyko was elevated to the presidency of the Soviet Union did the country have a new foreign minister in Eduard Shevardnadze.
And, of course, Sergei Lavrov has been foreign minister of the Russian Federation for a good many years and in this position has been presenting a strong defence of his country in the councils of the world. Some foreign ministers have been unfortunate, to the extent that they have lost their lives at the hands of the governments they served. SadeghGhotbazadeh took charge as Iranian foreign minister following the Islamic revolution. In the event, he did not survive long in that position. Removed from office by the clergy, he was soon executed by the regime.
In India, Jawaharlal Nehru served, in addition to be being prime minister, for nearly the entirety of his days in power carrying out responsibilities as minister for external affairs (that was how foreign ministers were referred to in India at the time). SardarSwaran Singh was for a number of years foreign minister under Indira Gandhi. An unfortunate instance of an Indian foreign minister unable to perform to his full capacity was K. Natwar Singh, who was forced to resign in the oil-for-food scandal during Saddam Hussein times.
Pakistan has had an interesting cycle of foreign ministers. Choudhry Muhammad Zafrullah Khan served as the country's first foreign minister before moving on to serve at the International Court of Justice at The Hague. Later, in the Ayub Khan era, he was president of the United Nations General Assembly. President Ayub's first foreign minister was the lawyer ManzurQuadir, who was later succeeded by former prime minister Mohammad Ali Bogra. When Bogra died in January 1963, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, minister for industries and natural resources, took over as the new foreign minister.
Bhutto was forced to resign in mid-1966 when he publicly began to raise questions about the Tashkent Declaration signed by Ayub Khan and Indian prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. He was succeeded by Syed SharifuddinPirzada, who in turn was replaced by Mian Arshad Husain, Pakistan's high commissioner to India. Bhutto's stint as foreign minister was remarkable for the shift toward China which Pakistan initiated, a clear move away from its membership in such US-influenced regional associations as CENTO and SEATO.
A formidable foreign minister in the Cold War era was Indonesia's Subandrio. With him in charge of diplomacy --- and Ahmed Sukarno was president --- Indonesia developed extremely close relations with China. The Suharto coup put paid to that relationship, with Jakarta making a complete turn away from Beijing. Subandrio remained in prison for a long number of years. Under Suharto, Adam Malik took over as Indonesia's foreign minister, performing his responsibilities with dexterity. Carlos P. Romulo was a respected foreign minister of the Philippines, much admired for his diplomatic skills.
The same could not be said about George Brown, the erratic politician who for a time served as Britain's foreign secretary under Harold Wilson. Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who succeeded Harold Macmillan as prime minister in 1963, later would serve as foreign secretary in the government of Edward Heath. Sri Lanka's scholarly foreign minister LakshmanKadirgamar was killed in a sniper attack in 2005. Meanwhile, the mystery of the death of Czechoslovak foreign minister Jan Masaryk's death has never been fully explained. Masaryk, the son of Czechoslovakia's first president Thomas Masaryk, was in office as foreign minister from 1940 to 1948. He was found dead in the courtyard of his office, dressed in his pajamas.
In Bangladesh's history, KhondokarMoshtaq Ahmed, the first foreign minister (and that was during the War of Liberation), was stopped by Prime Minister Tajuddin Ahmad from travelling to the United Nations, where he had been expected to speak for the country, in September 1971. It had transpired that in New York he would reverse government policy and advocate a political settlement with Pakistan. Independent Bangladesh's first foreign minister was AbdusSamad Azad. Following the election of March 1973, Dr. Kamal Hossain, the law minister, took over as foreign minister.
Hossain played an instrumental role in securing Bangladesh's admission into the United Nations in September 1974. Hossain, who was in Europe on official visits when Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated, did not return home despite Moshtaq's entreaties. His place as foreign minister was then taken over by former president Justice Abu Sayeed Chowdhury, who only days before the 15 August tragedy had been inducted into the cabinet as a minister without portfolio by Bangabandhu.
America's top diplomats, otherwise officially referred to as secretaries of state, have had a mixed history. Dean Acheson under President Truman played a pivotal role in the reconstruction of Europe as well as a reshaping of US foreign policy in a post-war world. In the Eisenhower administration, John Foster Dulles cheerfully helped in a shaping of policy that would exacerbate tensions around the world. President Kennedy's secretary of state, Dean Rusk, was in charge of a department where the views of the man in the White House mattered.
Rusk went on being part of the Johnson administration right till the end. His successor in the Nixon administration, William P. Rogers, was unfortunate in that he was from day one upstaged by Henry Kissinger, the national security advisor. Kissinger secretly went to China in July 1971 and Rogers was kept in the dark about it. In September 1973, Rogers was eased out of his position for Kissinger to take over as secretary of state.
Qin Gang's departure or dismissal is but an instance of the pitfalls foreign ministers often stumble into. Conversely, men like Israel's foreign minister Abba Eban knew how to navigate their way through the woods, diplomacy their yardstick of skills. It's all a mixed bag.

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