My Visits to Countries Nobody Has Ever Heard of

A few months ago, President Donald Trump made passing reference in a long address before Congress to Lesotho—“a country nobody has ever heard of.” His remark stuck in my mind, not just because I have heard of Lesotho, but because I have been there.

Well, sort of. I have never actually traveled to the landlocked country completely encircled by South Africa and recognized as a sovereign state by the United States since 1966. But I have visited its embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. In fact, over the last few years I have visited a whole slew of embassies representing countries nobody has ever heard of—Azerbaijan, Gabon, Kosovo, Togo—and many other well-known ones besides. If you live in the D.C. area, you can too, every year on Embassy Day, an annual two-week festival in May designed to remind Washingtonians that a world beyond our borders exists—and desperately wants our attention.

And oh how that world performs! Habitués of the festival know the iron law of Embassy Day: The more autocratic the country, the more lavish the display. Saudi Arabia, one of our empire’s wealthiest client states, understands quite well that, for its general comfort, whenever an American considers the kingdom, his thoughts must be rosy and essentially ignorant. Hence the annual song and dance: free lunch, a tourism expo, sword dances, and a petting zoo for the kids (or at the very least, a camel tied to a telephone pole). Last year, the special attraction was balloons emblazoned with the Shahada. They made for quite a sight in the days following—there is no no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet deflating in every street.   

This year, the big attraction was China, a country which in recent years has become to the American mind less a rival and more an enemy. Perhaps for that reason, the Chinese laid it on thick, emphasizing in many of their displays the “partnerships” the two countries have pursued in medicine, manufacturing, and technology since Deng Xiaoping opened the country to the world. The embassy also hired a troupe of performers dressed as giant pandas to roam its marble halls, much to the delight of the children—and, I’m afraid, to some adults, too. And just in case visitors didn’t get the message: At the very end of the embassy tour were portraits of every panda ever to have been loaned to the Smithsonian National Zoo, a reminder that what China produces, the United States greedily consumes.

Some nations pursue a different strategy. The big dogs need to maintain cordial (even if cordially hateful) relationships with the United States. Others, usually smaller countries, would prefer Uncle Sam forget all about them. Azerbaijan was for years a mainstay of Embassy Day—Baku, oasis on the Caspian! the ads proclaimed—but after the Muslim-majority country effectively cleansed an autonomous region within its borders of its Armenian Christian majority, Azerbaijan disappeared. I don’t expect to see it again anytime soon. Of course, some states simply spurn the whole affair: Russia has never participated for as long as I can remember.  

I haven’t even got started on the European Union, which distinguishes itself from le tiers-monde—which in effect includes the United Kingdom—by holding an Embassy Day separate from that of the rest of the world. Europe is in a strange position with regard to the United States. Many Americans reflexively admire the continent (the food, the churches, etc.) while holding its people in contempt. There is no overcoming this hurdle, alas, so the Europeans don’t even try. Instead, they compete among themselves. France and Germany, for example, every year hold a joint event, and it may as well be the Franco–Prussian War all over again. The show is amusing for a disinterested spectator, but it leaves you with the sense that, were it not for the 35,000 American troops stationed in Germany, all of Europe would be in chaos.  

All of this is to say that it is not without a tinge of regret that I have received the current administration’s curtailing of American overseas commitments. Even now, much of the world contorts itself in strange shapes for the pleasure of the United States. There is little honor in the act, either for the performer or the audience. And yet, sometimes it is hard to resist the glitter of the show.