Linda Thomas-Greenfield: Diplomacy and Global Challenges

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a veteran diplomat, emphasizes the power of empathy in international relations and highlights the potential of "gumbo diplomacy" in building meaningful connections.

### Linda Thomas-Greenfield: A Career in Diplomacy and Challenges at the UN
* 🌍  Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a veteran diplomat, has served in various foreign service postings and was appointed **US Ambassador to the United Nations in 2021**.
* 🇺🇸  She arrived at the UN during a challenging time for American diplomacy, with the US facing **skepticism and criticism globally**.
* 🍲  Thomas-Greenfield's "gumbo diplomacy" involves making gumbo for others to **build relationships and have difficult conversations**.
* 🌐  The world has changed significantly since Thomas-Greenfield began her career in 1982, with **instant news and social media shaping diplomacy**.
* 🇸🇩  She has been trying to draw attention to the crisis in Sudan, facing challenges in **diverting global focus to the region**.
* 🇵🇸  Thomas-Greenfield's role during the Israel-Palestine conflict has been complex, balancing **empathy for all affected parties** while following **US foreign policy**.
* 🇺🇸  Looking ahead to the 2024 US elections, she emphasizes the **importance of democracy** and **America's role in global stability**.
* 🌍  Thomas-Greenfield's personal journey from segregated Louisiana to US Ambassador to the UN inspires her to **encourage young people to pursue opportunities and make a difference**.

When I was in Rwanda during the genocide, I was face to face with a young man with a gun pointed at me. I thought I was gonna be killed, and I decided that it would matter to him if he knew my name. And so I told him my name. If he had killed me, I wanted him to constantly remember that he killed Linda, that I left two children behind. How did he react? We ended up having kind of a friendly conversation. With a gun pointed at you? He put it away from my face. Okay, so what is a friendly conversation like with someone- He told me his name. I told him that I lived in Kenya. And I can't explain to anyone why I survived, but I then saw him several days later when we were evacuating. He was at a roadblock, and he said, Oh, my friend. And let us answer the call to leverage AI for the good of all people in the only way we can -

together. Thank you. A veteran diplomat before being appointed US
Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield has
held foreign service postings around the world from
Pakistan to Kenya to Jamaica, and served as the Assistant
Secretary of State for African Affairs in
the Obama administration. In 2021, she arrived at the UN in a moment when America's image there had quite literally become a punchline. In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country. America's, so true. Didn't expect that
reaction, but that's okay. I caught up with her in DC to talk about the challenges
of American diplomacy in an era when the great powers are inching closer to conflict, and as the world moves through
a historic election year in which many democracies
are lurching to the right. So I wanna start talking
about where we are. We're in the Ralph J. Bunche Library.

He received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work mediating on
Palestine with the United Nations. What does it mean to you
to be in this place and- Well, it's interesting to be here. There are a number of places that I visit on a regular basis that
carry Ralph Bunche's name, so I remember him all the time. And as we're dealing right now
with the situation in Gaza, I think about everything
that he worked to accomplish and we're still in this place. So this library is really important. There's a monument in New York to him that I pass by on a regular basis. There's a Ralph Bunche
Center at Howard University, so his name is always,
always at the forefront of my thinking. He once said a quote about mediators and the qualities that
they should possess. Quote, They should be biased
against war and for peace, they should have a bias which
would lead them to believe

in the essential goodness
of their fellow men. And that no problem of human
relations is insoluble. They should be biased against
suspicion, intolerance, hate, religious, and racial bigotry. If we could get mediators who
have all of those qualities, we would find peace so quickly. And I think mediators do tend to, and particularly negotiators who are negotiating for peace, bring their biases into the room. And so it's hard sometimes to get to a middle point of a negotiation until they put their biases aside. So you've talked a lot
about gumbo diplomacy. Can you explain what gumbo diplomacy is? You know, gumbo is a very
famous dish in Louisiana. I'm from Louisiana, and most people who grew up in Louisiana know how to make gumbo. And so over the course of my
career, I would make gumbo. I couldn't teach my cook how to make it, so I would always make it.

And people would come and say, Well, how did you make that? And I would invite them
to come and, of course, give them the tough work, like chopping onions to cry with. I always made the roux, but you would get into
conversations with people. They would get comfortable with you in your kitchen, watching
you cook a meal for them. And that comfort allowed me to sometimes have tough conversations to talk about things that
people might not want to discuss if I was sitting in their office. Can you give me an example of a time when gumbo diplomacy really worked? It works all the time. Does it?
It really does. I use it in New York. I do it with my staff, with my family. It always works because it
makes people comfortable. There's something about
busying your hands, I think. Yeah, you're talking and you're chopping, and they talk about their
lives and their families, and you just learn about people.

You develop that relationship. And diplomacy is about
building relationships. So you started as a diplomat
some 40 years ago, right? Yeah, 1982. Can you talk about what's
different about the world now? The world is different, and there are a lot of differences. First and foremost, we
didn't have the 24 press, we didn't have all of the social media that would get the news out faster. So as a foreign service
officer, political officer, we were basically reporters reporting what was happening in the countries we were in back to Washington. It might take you a
week to get a cable out. Right, you're like magazine journalists. If you take a week to get a cable out now, it's all over the press five
minutes after the news broke. Right. And my first experience with that, I was living in The Gambia, and there was a movement
of refugees from Mauritania who had been kicked out of Senegal.

and they came into The Gambia. And I was the political officer. I was also the officer
responsible for refugees. And I did a report. It didn't take days, it
took more than 24 hours because I was also doing the work, and it was reported on CNN before I could get my cable out. And it kinda shocked me that the news could get out that quickly. So that's one of the biggest changes. Here in the state department, we get the news sometimes before we hear it from our embassies, but what our embassies do
is they provide context, they provide analysis, they put comments in that will
explain what is happening, and you don't get that from the news. Is the world safer now? That's a hard question. When I look back at Rwanda in 1994, look at 9/11, I look back at Liberia in 1989 when there was a coup, and thousands of people
fled across the border.

we were dealing with some of the same issues. So, I don't think the world is safer now, and I don't think it was safer then. I think we're dealing with different kinds of security issues, but they're security issues nonetheless. We were talking about information and how quickly information spreads now, but it's still not always easy to get attention on issues that you care about. Sudan is an example of this. You've been trying to sound the alarm about what is happening there. Can you talk a bit about why you think it has been difficult to divert attention to what is happening there? I think there are a number of factors. First, we're dealing with so many crises or concurrent crises now. So one doesn't end before the next one starts. So there's a bit of crisis burnout, I think, among the international community. But I also, to be frank with you, think that Sudan is in Africa. You know,

we have to always in Africa raise the flag a little bit higher to get attention. I was reading your New York
Times op-ed about Sudan, and I was struck by. You wrote beautifully and in such a descriptive
way about the devastation that you saw there and
about children starving, and what that looked like, and what it did not sound like contrary to what you were anticipating. You said that it was silent,
which you were not expecting. The way that you wrote about that and with such empathy
was. It seemed indicative of your values throughout
your 40 years in service. But it did strike me that
it is quite different from how you've been able to talk about what's happening in Gaza. There are also children starving there. There are some 30,000, more than 30,000 people who've died there. I talk about Gaza the same
way as I talk about Sudan. I have seared into my brain watching a young child in Gaza.

under the rubble with only one arm and their head sticking out, and people trying to get
that child out to safety. And to this day, I don't
know whether she survived. There is no lack of empathy or support. But it did strike me that it does not seem like you have the same amount of freedom to talk about what is happening in Gaza. You are in a much trickier predicament in terms of not stepping on toes, not getting out ahead
of the administration, not sounding more aggressive
about Israel, I presume, than the President does, for instance. Yeah, we take our guidance from the President on any issue. He's our foreign policy leader. There is the perception that the US is tacitly condoning what
amounts to a genocide. What do you say to that? I say they're wrong. I say that they need
to look at our actions at what we have done over the
course of the past six months to really try to bring this war to an end.

And as I've said to my colleagues in New York, we're the only ones on the ground trying to negotiate peace. As Israel became increasingly isolated diplomatically, images of Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield raising her hand at the UN to veto ceasefire resolution were widely shared online, symbolizing perceived American ambivalence to the massive loss of Palestinian lives. Even as the Gaza death toll surpassed 30,000, the administration kept sending billions of dollars worth of bombs, artillery shells, and other weapons to Israel. President Joe Biden at one point paused a shipment warning Israel of red lines that could trigger a severe US reaction, but it's unclear what those red lines are. Meanwhile, back at home, universities were erupting in protest. Two of them canceled planned commencement addresses by Thomas-Greenfield. And while she eventually did get to vote for a ceasefire, the Biden administration remains under intense scrutiny over the war.

How many civilian casualties is too many? Any civilian casualty is too many, anywhere in the world. Any. In a situation like this, and I don't mean to make light of it, but where does gumbo diplomacy factor in when you're talking about something this complicated? You know, it's interesting you asked that question. I met with the Palestinian representative in New York over an Iftar dinner, and we prayed together. I stood in the back of the room, and at the end of the prayer, they prayed for all of us. And for me, that was gumbo diplomacy without the gumbo. Can you explain to me what is it like emotionally when you have to do something difficult in your job, like veto a ceasefire resolution? I'm a very emotional person. You are? People have seen me cry in public. And so for me, all of this is emotionally taxing. I have the responsibility of explaining to the world

why certain decisions are being made by the United States government. Decisions that I support,
decisions that I agree with. How do you think that solution will come? It will come at the end of this fighting with a two-state solution, in which Palestinians can
live in a country of their own, and Israelis can live
in security and peace. And that's the goal that we have been working
toward for many, many years. And we have to put that at the forefront of what we're doing right now. I'm confident in the role that I play. I am representing the
government of the United States, and I describe it as using a
needle to carve a mountain. And if you're up close, you see the changes that are being made. If you're at a distance,
you don't see those changes. And I do see myself as
contributing to our policies, contributing to the
nuances in our policies. Carving a mountain with a needle is fine.

for the slow march of a traditional democracy, but the direction of American foreign policy faces a more immediate timeline. Former President Donald Trump, twice impeached, indicted four times, and now a convicted felon, is statistically a coin toss away from winning back the presidency. America's reputation took quite a hit, I think, during the Trump years, globally. America's reputation had taken quite a hit during our wars on terror. And we are in quite a different position than we were, I think, when you started your career, when it was kind of a pretty simple story about good guys versus bad guys on the world stage. How do you communicate a positive message about America when there is so much, I think, often justifiable skepticism about the US and our intentions in the rest of the world? You know, one of the questions I get asked regularly by my interlocutors here in New York is, how do we know you're back for good?

How do we know that you can be trusted? And I don't have an answer for that. They have to answer that
question for themselves. They have to look at what we do. They themselves will have
to work to help us ensure that the next generation of young people around the globe have a world
that they can have faith in, that they will find peaceful, and one in which they have hope. And there are a lot of people in the world who at this moment are devoid of hope. Do you think that the US'
posture towards Israel makes that a bit more
challenging right now? I think it has made that challenging, but I think our leadership has
never, ever been questioned. I think people see-
I think it has. I don't think so. There's no-
What do you mean hasn't been questioned?
Time in the world where the US presence at
the table is not wanted. We may be in disagreement with each other.

Right. So it's not our leadership
that's being challenged. It's sometimes our stances or
our policies are questioned. Okay. But US leadership is
still at the forefront. And that is why countries
continue to engage with us, even on the most difficult of issues. On issues where we
disagree with each other, we're not being ignored. Looking ahead to November, if former President Trump does win, how fragile a situation
do you think the US is in, in terms of our standing
on the world stage and the world's perception of us? The world is very, very dependent on us. They're worried about our place and whether we will
continue to play the role that we are playing. And I can only say to them that we can't predict the future, but know that the US will always be there. How we are there, I can't
say that, I don't know that, but I know that what we're working on now.

is a process of cementing
and giving people confidence that the US will be there for them. 2024, in terms of democracy,
is very important. Some two billion voters are gonna be going to the polls worldwide. What is the worst-case scenario
for the elections in 2024, domestically and abroad? Let's start with abroad. We want to see countries
continue to embrace democracy. We want to see them
really support the values of human rights, press
freedoms, of inclusivity that democracies bring. And we have seen some backsliding over the past few years in
countries around the world. Do you include the US in that backslide? I don't. I think our democracy
continues to be strong. Democracy is not a straight narrow line from point A to point Z. There are always barriers in the way. We have seen some of those barriers happen here in the United States, but our democracy continues
to thrive in this country.

I think others around the world
are looking at our country, and they're worried about
whether our democracy is strong. I have assured them that
we continue to be a country that they can depend on, and a country where our democracy
will continue to thrive. Why are you confident about that? You know, I've lived it. I grew up in the segregated South when my parents couldn't vote. And to see my mother vote for the first time was huge for me. And she had an eighth
grade education, right? She had an eighth-grade education. She grew up in a town where the Black school
only went to eighth grade. So if kids wanted to get
a high school diploma, they had to move away. And so she didn't finish
high school until 1989, and it was a proud moment for us. And your father, I believe you've called
him the smartest person that you ever knew, but he could not read. Is that right?

He could not read, and I didn't know that for many, many years. One of the rituals in our family, and I don't know if we considered it a ritual back then, but my mother would sit at the dining room table in the evening and read the newspaper out loud, and we would all listen to her reading the newspaper. And I realized she was reading it for my father after the fact. So when you look at the trajectory of your life starting out there and becoming one of the top diplomats in the world, what do you think of that? It reminds me every day, and I say this to every young person, particularly those who are from disadvantaged backgrounds, that the first chapter of your life will not define the last chapter. And I had no clue when I was born in Charity Hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana, and raised in a segregated community in Baker, Louisiana, that I would become the US Ambassador to the United Nations.

because I didn't even know what that was. So what I want to say to young people is don't limit yourself. There are lots of opportunities out there, and you just have to make yourself available for those opportunities. And that's how I got here. What keeps you up at night? You know, that's a good question. So at some point I said to someone, Sudan was keeping me awake at night because nobody was paying attention to Sudan. But I also worry about the next Sudan. I worry about what the next generation will experience with climate change. I have three grandchildren. I don't know what their lives will be like 20 years from now because we didn't make the right decisions 20 years ago. And I'm at that stage in my life where I have less time looking forward. And I do worry all the time about what the world would be like in 10 years and what I can do today to make it better for people 10 years from now.

Are you optimistic about your ability to do that? I'm not. I am not narcissistic; my ego is very small. I said optimistic, not narcissistic. I know. So I am optimistic that it can be done. When I say my ego, I'm not optimistic that necessarily I will be the person that will make that change happen. But I do know that every single day I contribute to that. So I'm just one in millions. So when I say I'm not narcissistic, it means I don't think I'm going to be the person that will change the world. I just know that I'm gonna be one of the people who will contribute to making the world a better place.

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Bloomberg Originals

Linda Thomas-Greenfield: From Facing a Gun to Gumbo Diplomacy

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a veteran diplomat and the US Ambassador to the UN, shared her remarkable experience of facing a young man with a gun during the Rwanda genocide, which unexpectedly turned into a friendly conversation.

She highlighted the importance of Ralph J.

Bunche's legacy in mediating for peace and the qualities that mediators should possess.

Thomas-Greenfield also discussed the concept of "gumbo diplomacy," where she used the famous Louisiana dish to build connections during her diplomatic career.

The Power of "Gumbo Diplomacy" and Changing World Dynamics

"Gumbo diplomacy" is a powerful tool for having difficult conversations while building relationships, using the act of cooking and conversing to make people comfortable.

The evolution of media and technology has significantly changed the speed of news reporting and the role of embassies in providing context and analysis.

The world's safety is not significantly different now, as we continue to face various security issues, with the spread of information still not guaranteeing attention to important global issues like the crisis in Sudan.

The Diplomatic Challenges of Addressing Conflict in Sudan and Gaza

A New York Times op-ed vividly described the silent devastation of starvation in Sudan, showcasing empathy and values in diplomatic service.

The ambassador faced constraints in addressing the Gaza conflict, being careful not to outpace the administration's stance on Israel.

Despite efforts to negotiate peace, the US's actions in vetoing a ceasefire resolution and providing weapons to Israel have sparked intense scrutiny and domestic protest.

The US Government's Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The US government is working towards a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, aiming for security and peace for both parties.

The current foreign policy direction faces a more immediate timeline, especially with the potential return of Donald Trump to the presidency.

The US government's posture towards Israel is seen as challenging, but its leadership in the conflict has never been questioned.

The Strength of US Leadership and Democracy

US leadership is crucial on the world stage, with other countries depending on its continued role.

The US is focused on cementing confidence in its presence for the future, although the specific approach is not predictable.

Despite some barriers, the interviewee expresses strong confidence in the ongoing strength and thriving of US democracy, based on their personal experience growing up in the segregated South.

Overcoming Challenges and Fostering Optimism

Growing up in a segregated community, the former US Ambassador to the United Nations emphasizes that the beginning of one's life does not determine their future.

She encourages young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to remain open to opportunities.

Despite worrying about the impact of climate change and the future, especially for her grandchildren, she remains optimistic about her ability to contribute to positive change on a global scale.