The Reluctant Diplomat is the third book of The Circle Trilogy. The preceding works are The Broken Circle and Inside the Circle in the order of publication. Fifteen years ago, when I first conceived of this work, the thought of terrorism in the Homeland was abhorrant, terrifying, and bewildering. 9/11 had happened. Why would a foreign power attack the mighty United States of America in such a heinous way? Historians will argue for a long time about the why. America teetered but didn't come close to toppling as Osama Bin Laden might have hoped. The mere thought of commandeering passenger jets and ramming them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and crashing another into a field in Pennsylvania defied all reason. Heroic Americans lived and died on that fateful day.Afterwards, America came together, if only for a moment in recent history. We buried our dead-almost 3,000-and returned the remains of visitors to World Trade to their home countries. Then America went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Quickly, the conflict devolved into a political one in the United States Congress. Nevertheless, radical Islamists had tweaked the tiger's tail, never thinking that one day they would have to deal with its teeth.The war is fifteen years old as of this writing. The President of the United States, a businessman and not a politician, has cut to the core of the conflict and means to end it, his methods not without fierce critics both inside and outside our government. He has focused on the waste of blood and treasure and the fallout in the region, Europe, Russia, and at home. Despite harsh condemnation of some of his actions, the president's policy of peace through strength is winding down the conflict and costing us less in blood and treasure.My inspiration did not come so much from contemporary history, which is very subject-rich. It arose from an anecdote found in the chronicles of the Kings of Pamplona and Aragon. One of several kings named Garcia, who reigned in the 11th century, became disenchanted with continuous internecine warfare and bickering between factions on the Iberian Peninsula. He also tired of fighting off the Moors invading from North Africa. The Moors, Muslims of North Africa, began conquering the Iberian Peninsula at the beginning of the 8th century and the incursions continued sporadically for most of 500 years. The European factions that shared a common racial heritage and Christianity fought each other over ancestral borders, land area, serfs, which ruler individual groups might recognize, and the papacy. On came the Moors who wanted everyone to be unified under the banner of Islam at the point of the sword.One of the Garcia's called a halt to hostilities through overwhelming strength. He invited a group of thirty-six scholars representing the known civilization of the 11th century to meet in the Monastery of San Juan de la Peña in Jaca. He charged the circle of scholars, which included Christian Europeans, Moors, non-African Muslims, and Jews to create a framework for negotiating peace and settling disputes equitably. Garcia dubbed the group, The Circle. King Garcia's laudable effort failed. Negotiators were murdered and The Circle decimated. Stragglers carried on undeterred at great peril and formed small cells loosely interconnected. Some achieved success; others were no more successful than the original members of The Circle. Cells of 3 or 4 members survived because only one member of each cell knew of the existence of one other cell. The cells became known collectively as The Broken Circle. I began a modern narrative of The Broken Circle after the disaster of 9/11. Inside the Circle picks up after a few years' gap. The Reluctant Diplomat chronicles the failure of The Circle idea but breathes life into a concept that will not die.