P&P Live! Elizabeth Shackelford | THE DISSENT CHANNEL with Elise Labott

In 2017, Elizabeth Shackelford wrote a pointed resignation letter to her then boss, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. She had watched as the State Department was gutted, and now she urged him to stem the bleeding by showing leadership and commitment to his diplomats and the country. In The Dissent Channel, former diplomat Shackelford shows that this is not a new problem. Her experience in 2013 during the precarious rise and devastating fall of the world's newest country, South Sudan, exposes a foreign policy driven more by inertia than principles, to suit short-term political needs over long-term strategies. In navigating both American bureaucracy and the fraught history and present of South Sudan, she conveys an urgent message about the devolving state of US foreign policy.

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Elizabeth Shackelford was a career diplomat in the U.S. State Department until December 2017, when she resigned in protest of the Trump administration. During her tenure with the Foreign Service, Shackelford served in the U.S. embassies in Warsaw, Poland, South Sudan, Somalia, and Washington, D.C. For her work in South Sudan during the outbreak of civil war, Shackelford received the Barbara Watson Award for Consular Excellence, the State Department's highest honor for consular work. As an independent consultant, Shackelford focuses on human rights advocacy, conflict mitigation, political affairs, and democratic processes.

Elise Labott is a journalist covering foreign affairs, most recently as a global affairs correspondent for CNN. Since 2000, she covered U.S. foreign policy and international affairs for the network, reporting from more than 80 countries, and interviewing and traveling the world with seven secretaries of state. Her work currently appears in various news outlets, including, Politico Magazine, for whom she traveled to Israel and Turkey with National Security Adviser John Bolton. She also appears as a foreign affairs analyst on MSNBC. Elise traveled to the Olympics in Korea with Vice President Mike Pence and to Africa with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. She has reported extensively on the conflicts in Syria, Ukraine, and Israel, and covered nuclear talks with Iran and the signing of the 2016 nuclear agreement.