Joseph Sisco
1919 -
U.S. diplomat at the heart of Henry Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy.
Educated in Illinois, Joseph Sisco gained his Ph.D. (University of Chicago) between periods of service in the army (1941 - 1945) and in the CIA (1950 - 1951). From 1951 to 1968 he worked at the State Department on UN affairs, then was appointed assistant secretary for Near East and South Asian affairs in 1968 and undersecretary of state for political affairs in 1974. By that time, Sisco was Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's key adviser on the Middle East, and third in seniority in the State Department. From 1968 to 1976 Sisco played a key role in attempts to mediate between Israel and neighboring Arab states, notably the series of interim peace settlements reached through U.S. shuttle diplomacy - a term Kissinger attributed to Sisco underscoring the role of American mediators flying between enemies that refuse to meet.
Sisco had not served in the Middle East and did not speak Arabic, and he began his term as assistant secretary for Near East affairs with a personnel reshuffle that some saw as marginalizing its "Arabist" diplomats. Both Arab and Israeli critics claimed that Sisco's attempts to forge realistic interpretations of UN Resolution 242 were biased, but the shuttles nevertheless proved crucial in the 1974 and 1975 disengagement agreements between Egypt and Israel.
Sisco later became a member of several company and university boards, president of American University, chairman of the American Academy of Diplomacy, and a partner in the management consultancy Sisco Associates. He coauthored a Trilateral Commission report on the peace process in 1981, and was a regular commentator on Mideast policy thereafter.
Bibliography
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Middle East Negotiations: A Conversation with Joseph Sisco. Washington, DC: Author, 1980.
Kissinger, Henry. Years of Upheaval. London: Phoenix, 1982.
Oren, Nissan. Intellectuals in Politics. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984.
Sisco, Joseph. "Middle East - Progress or Lost Opportunity?" Foreign Affairs 61, 3 (1983): 611 - 640.
— GEORGE R. WILKES
