I was the political counselor at the U.S. embassy in Greece. "Revolutionary Organization 17 November" (17N) started killing American officials in 1975. Four Americans died in Athens, and the rest of us lived under the shadow of violent death. We were grimly determined to punish those terrorists.

In action-adventure movies, CIA officers and Special Forces teams find and slaughter America's death-worshipping, freedom-hating foes wherever they lurk. Hollywood terrorists are expendable sociopaths.

Real-life terrorists, unfortunately, recruit from a different talent pool. Every society includes a few members with a moral code rigid and narcissistic enough to make them kill and die for tribal justice or personal dignity. As Pakistan's sympathy for Osama bin Laden and the Taliban suggests, most societies will not easily join in a war against such people, certainly not a war waged by foreigners.

For 26 years, the energetic, expensive efforts of the FBI, CIA and State Department failed to catch 17N. Ordinary Greeks saw no reason their officials should break Greek law to help an unpopular superpower wage war against fellow Greeks. When we pushed too hard, Greek services went limp.

When we did the work ourselves, pursuing a Greek needle through a Greek haystack, we embarrassed ourselves. So we fell back on patient diplomacy to persuade Greeks that the war against 17N was their war.

In one shining moment after the 9/11 attacks, America's war became the world's war.

Global public opinion then placed a true value on the suffering of terrorism's innocent victims. Once it was good local politics to be efficient, Greek police followed a lucky break to the end and caught our terrorists. The FBI director came and handed out the medals our Greek colleagues had earned.

I resigned from the Foreign Service in February 2003. I had spent a career working to build America's diplomatic capital, the network of trusting relationships without which it is impossible to persuade foreigners to fight alongside America in its struggles.

We were about to invade Iraq, now allegedly the central front of our "war on terrorism." Americans might believe the lie that killing Iraqis was the same as killing the 9/11 psychopaths. Foreigners would not. If they became party to such lies, diplomats poisoned the relationships that protected U.S. lives and interests around the world. Iraq was thus a double disaster for the United States.

To thwart terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation, global warming or any other threat, U.S. diplomats must persuade skeptical foreigners to cooperate with an alien superpower against their wayward neighbors and cousins. Human nature permits such cooperation only when individual self-interest and universal moral instinct firmly coincide.

This insight must be the basis of America's new diplomatic realism: When we limit ourselves to policies and practices that restore us firmly to the side of law, justice and common humanity, our wealth and power can easily recruit us all the foreign allies the safety and prosperity of the American people require.

Former U.S. diplomat John Brady Kiesling will present his new book "Diplomacy Lessons: Realism for an Unloved Superpower" at 4 p.m. today at the University of Washington and at 7:30 p.m. at Eagle Harbor Church on Bainbridge Island.

© Copyright 2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

###