Hart, Parker T.
As a Career Minister in the United States Foreign Service, Parker T. Hart was widely regarded as a consummate diplomatic professional, fluent in five languages and determined to know each host country in depth. One of the State Department’s most eminent authorities on the Middle East, at crucial junctures in the region’s tumultuous history he served as assistant secretary for Near East and South Asian affairs and ambassador to Turkey. (His 1990 book Two NATO Allies at the Threshold of War recounted the successful U.S. efforts in 1967 to prevent war between Turkey and Greece over Cyprus.)
Hart’s three tours of duty in Saudi Arabia, the last as ambassador from 1961 to 1965, gave him a unique appreciation of that desert kingdom’s culture and people. Helping forge the critical U.S.-Saudi security partnership, a relationship that remains to this day a key aspect of U.S. diplomacy, engaged all...