That I arrived at this point in the book with my heart turning in my throat speaks volumes about how skillfully Jovanovic tells his life story. Born in Montreal, she takes us from her childhood in Kent, Connecticut, through trips to Somalia, Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia. She started out as a young, reclusive rookie in the diplomatic service, treated with condescension by autocrats and bad bosses. She admits that her feelings of insecurity cannot be banished; they could only be manipulated—which likely made her encounters with Trumpworld all the more confusing as the “multi-thinker” in her kept trying to divert her attention from the absurd.
The attempts to warp her sense of reality were so relentless that when she returned to Washington from Ukraine, she found herself slumped on a psychiatrist’s couch. She spent decades working in difficult situations, forging uneasy relationships with foreign officials who were ready to lash out at “any gaffe,” she says. But what pushed her to the limit was “the actions of my own government.”
This does not mean that Yovanovitch was previously a blind and enthusiastic supporter of her government. In this book, she talks a lot about “values” in foreign policy, contrasting them with “interests.” Ideally, they can work in tandem. But she also saw enough to know that the United States, for all its talk of democracy and freedom, often ignored corruption and, worse, supported brutal dictators who seemed to serve American “strategic goals” whatever they were. were not determined.
In 1986, Yovanovitch arrived at her first job in Somalia, and she recalls how the daily routine of dealing with blackmail and extortion schemes made her “more cynical.” But she still retained her faith in diplomacy—an “optimistic profession,” as she calls it. She was ambassador to Ukraine for only a few months when Trump won the 2016 election, and while he was obsequious about Russia’s annexation of Crimea, she strongly believed “that the Republican foreign policy establishment would bring Trump into her fold” and that “long-term bipartisan consensus in support of Ukraine” will triumph.
So it was, in a weak and perhaps degraded form. Ukraine eventually received military aid that Trump threatened to withhold unless Zelensky announced an investigation into the Biden family, but Yovanovitch was stunned that no matter how much evidence emerged, Republicans were still unwilling to hold the American president accountable. for the attempt, “traded his post for the personal services of foreign governments,” she writes.
In 2019, perhaps all this talk of Ukraine and military aid seemed too distant to American ears to be of any significance. But as ambassador, Yovanovitch traveled regularly to the war zone on Ukraine’s eastern border, where the Russian invasion in 2014 “caused a humanitarian catastrophe.” Yovanovitch was well aware that even then she saw very little. “I remember looking out of reinforced windows and seeing how Ukrainians, without our thoughtful protection, go about their daily business and try to make ends meet,” she writes. “I was just a guest and I knew I could come home.”