Tony Quainton in the nation's service

When Tony Quainton '55 served as the U.S. ambassador to Peru, his house was blown up by a car bomb planted by the terrorist group Shining Path. Fortunately for Quainton, he and his family were away at the time and escaped the incident without harm. During his tenure in Lima, terrorist groups twice shot rockets at the U.S. embassy. These attacks occurred as Quainton was serving under the first President Bush from 1989 to 1992.

Twice awarded the Presidential Meritorious Service for his service, he was ambassador to four countries and was often in the middle of politically volatile situations during his 38 year career in the Foreign Service, trusted with difficult assignments.

The Iran-Iraq war raged in the Persian Gulf region during his stint as ambassador to Kuwait Kuwait assignment. Quainton also supervised relations with the Central African Republic and its repressive president during his years as ambassador there.

As a former head of the nation's counter-terrorism program, from 1978-1981, Quainton advised the Secretary of State on terrorist-related issues and oversaw crisis management during terrorist kidnappings of U.S. ambassadors in Columbia and Afghanistan.

His other two ambassador posts, in Peru and in Nicaragua, proved to be the most challenging — and dangerous — of his career.

From 1982-84, Quainton was ambassador to Nicaragua, a country torn by civil unrest. In what he called his hardest job, he dealt with the revolutionary Sandinista government, as well as with sometimes conflicting messages from the U.S. During his tenure, "we began the Contra effort," he said. "There was enormous controversy."

While in Peru, he organized U.S. policy on human rights, counter-terrorism, narcotics, and economic development. While heading the embassy to Peru, Quainton traveled with up to 14 bodyguards as a precaution against violence from the terrorist group Shining Path that blew up his house.

A career in the Foreign Service took Quainton, his wife Susan, and later his three children around the globe, to places as diverse as Paris, France and Kathmandu, Nepal.

"We moved every three years or so," he said, "either back to the United States or to a new job."

Language and cultural training were an important part of Tony's career, preparing him for a career abroad. Quainton speaks French and Spanish fluently, retains some knowledge of Russian, Hindi, and Urdu, had experience with Nepali, Arabic and Italian. Quainton also studied Russian and Chinese at Princeton.

While in college, the Washington state native was on the debate team and enrolled in a special program in the humanities, graduating summa cum laude. He also took the foreign services examination during the spring of his senior year.

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After studying at Oxford as a Marshall scholar, Quainton joined the Foreign Service and traveled to Sydney, Australia to work as a consular officer before rising through the ranks of diplomacy before serving as ambassador to various hotspots around the globe.

Quainton said the most rewarding aspect of diplomacy for him was representing the United States, and trying to make its voice in the world credible.

Cultural context played an active role in Quainton's mission. "I think one of the responsibilities of diplomats, and American diplomats specifically, is to understand the culture within which American policies are carried out, and to convey back to Washington that context, so you are sensitive to what is culturally . . . feasible within the context of a different society," he said.

Quainton drew on his unique experiences as both ambassador and former head of the nation's counter-terrorism program to share his views on the current war on terrorism.

"The President . . . has decided to put enormous resources into the most vulnerable parts of our society. The difficulty is that you can't protect every facility all the time. The challenge of counter-terrorism is how to engage in what one might call threat-management, a kind of triage of risk."

"Effective counter-terrorism," he said, "depends on good intelligence, and that's an enormous challenge."

Quainton retired from the Foreign Service after serving as its chief operating officer in his final three years there. He came back to Princeton for two years to teach conflict resolution as a visiting lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School.

Now the president and chief executive officer of the National Policy Association, Quainton runs a think-tank bringing together business, labor, and civil interests to work on issues such as globalization, trade, and improving the quality of the American workforce. Quainton stays involved with the University, where both his daughters attended, by serving on the Princeton schools committee in Washington, D.C., and through Project 55, which was founded in 1989 by his graduating class to promote greater involvement in the non-profit sector.

In keeping with the emphasis that his class year has placed on public service, Quainton paused to reflect on his career.

"That's the key word, I think, is to serve."