Politics & Power Quote by Lawrence Eagleburger

Eagleburger’s line lands like a bureaucrat’s confession with a strategist’s edge: the hard problem isn’t data, it’s influence. He’s puncturing the comforting fantasy that government competence is mainly about mastering “a statistical matrix.” Numbers are tame; they sit still, they yield to technique. The American business community, by contrast, is a shifting ecosystem of incentives, networks, and suspicion of government meddling. “Get Embassy Officers into the minds” is intentionally invasive phrasing, a reminder that diplomacy isn’t only conducted in foreign capitals - it’s also fought for attention and legitimacy at home.

The subtext is about relevance. Embassy officers can gather reporting, write cables, and map political risk abroad, but if that knowledge doesn’t shape corporate decisions - investment, supply chains, technology partnerships - it doesn’t convert into national advantage. Eagleburger is implicitly arguing for a different kind of foreign service: less inward-facing, less enamored with analytic outputs, more fluent in how American firms actually think and what they reward.

Context matters: this is the late Cold War-to-post-Cold War era, when economic statecraft is rising and “commercial diplomacy” starts to sound like security policy by other means. He’s also acknowledging a cultural gap. Many executives view diplomats as abstract, slow, or moralizing; many diplomats view business as parochial or mercenary. Eagleburger’s intent is to bridge that divide by reframing the job: persuasion and translation, not just information management. The quiet warning is that if diplomats can’t earn mindshare with U.S. business, someone else - competitors, foreign governments, private intelligence - will.