From Prague to Washington: Lessons Learned from a Diplomatic Career

Q&A with Hynek Kmoníček, Ambassador of the Czech Republic

Michele Bendall
Aug 28, 2017 · 10 min read

Name: Hynek Kmoníček| Age: 55 | Hometown: Pardubice, Czech Republic Ambassador to the U.S. since: April 24, 2017

Tell us a little bit about your personal background. Where did you grow up, what was your family and childhood like?

I grew up in the East Bohemian city of Pardubice, an industrial city with a population of about 80,000 people well-known for the chemical industry. The Czech Republic is relatively small and most of the bigger career opportunities are therefore connected to the capital of Prague, some 80 miles west of birthplace.

I had a nice, pleasant, boring, very normal central European childhood. My father was a university professor and my mother was a teacher. For a long time I was the only child, which basically means that half of your childhood you spend with people preaching to you because they are teachers by profession, so you preach back to try and win the argument…which is the best preparation for a future diplomatic career.

Had you ever thought about a career in diplomacy?

No, not at all. It wasn’t my dream to become a diplomat. I come from a family with a long musical tradition. I played the violin and my first musical performance was at the funeral when I was 4 years old. Because I was very small with a very big bow tie they took it lightly that the only song I could perform was actually a wedding song, which was not the most appropriate thing for a funeral, but I got through it. Another good lesson for diplomacy: if you look like one, you are one.

It wasn’t your dream to become a diplomat, but was there a moment in your life that made it clear that you wanted to work internationally?

Growing up in a communist country I knew I didn’t want to become a communist diplomat. It was only after the change of regime that for the first time, something like that was even a possibility on my horizon. When the chance came it was more or less by luck, because at that time I was at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and the Czech Republic was looking for somebody who would be a reasonable communicator with both the Jewish and Palestinian sides. They basically found me at the university and made me an offer as a specialist for Middle East affairs.

Ambassador Kmoníček displays both the Koran and Torah on his mantle. He explains, “My wife is a Muslim, I happen to be Jewish, so we have these books in here as an example of the Middle East peace process (laughter)”

What was the deciding factor to leave behind your academic career and enter the world of diplomacy?

The decisive moment was when I realized there was a chance to do what I taught about. As every University professor you are so clever. You know how you would do things in real life and quite often you try to avoid real life because it’s too much for you. Because I was too interested in reality, I thought, how about if I try and see if my theoretical solutions were realistic? The desire to try what I had only wrote and talked about was what pushed me to the other side of the fence.

You’ve served as Ambassador to Australia, India, and the United Nations in New York, just to name a few of your many interesting postings. What is the most difficult challenge you’ve faced in your career and how did you overcome it?

The most difficult challenge was the realization that it is not the smartest guy in the room who wins. Naively during my university years expected something like that. I’m not sure I’ve overcome it, but I grew up into reality. But I’m still not fully reconciled with it.

What was your most memorable or formative experience?

When I was a young diplomat on camera in a TV studio for the first time, I found that instead of making me nervous it made me motivated and focused. Without knowing it prior to that experience, I found that the camera likes me a little bit, so I have tried to use it and misuse it later (laughter).

Ambassador Kmoníček standing in “the trophy room” alongside what he describes as “all the animals who had all the bad luck to meet me”

What is the most important lesson you’ve learned?

If you keep it as rational as possible, you might find the end solution of every situation. What spoils solutions is usually something close to your emotions or the emotions of the other negotiating partners. I found that emotions are major spoilers of causes.

What has been your greatest accomplishment?

I hope it’s still ahead of me because if you answer such a question it means you’re ready to retire and you just acknowledged it (laughter).

What do you like most about being Ambassador? Least?

Ambassador Kmoníček with the 14th Dalai Lama

That’s easy — I like meeting people I would normally have no chance to meet. It’s amazing to come from an East Bohemian City, from community apartments which look very much like American social housing where you are one of thousands and thousands of people, and then one day you’re sitting down and joking with the 14th Dalai Lama about what happened last week. My wife and I have been good friends with His Holiness for years. But it’s not just him.

And I’m grateful that I’ve had this experience which I never expected in my life, because it gives you a behind-the-scenes look into the things that influence our lives, whether we participate or don’t participate. All of these mechanisms have a great influence on our lives and it’s a privilege to have a peek behind the scenes into what really happens there.

What would you say is the most important characteristic or trait that a diplomat needs to be successful?

Empathy to be able to be in the shoes in your negotiating partner. To know how he thinks about you. Why he thinks that way and how he got to the point of thinking that way…basically to become him. To be able, at least for a fleeting moment, to live part of his life, to understand who he is when he sees you.

If you were not a diplomat, what would you be?

If my life turned out well, I would probably end up as a professor of the Middle East history at some university. If my life turned out really crazy, I would be probably a guru of some not-too-successful esoteric sect somewhere in the mountains (laughter).

What advice would you give to your younger self?

Probably the advice would be the exact opposite of what I said about the main spoilers of diplomacy.

What do you think is the most important role that the EU plays today, both in Europe and in the world?

I think the EU is the model for healing the pain of history. Europe was the cause of two world wars just in the last century.

The EU is also role model for other parts of the world who would like to share the same standard of living.

What would you say is the EU’s greatest benefit to the citizens of Europe today?

For the first time, there is the realistic attempt to create something like European-ness — your European identity which doesn’t contradict your national identity. For the first time in the history of Europe, Europeans can travel all around Europe and can live in every part of Europe. The younger generation considers it absolutely normal that they will go on an Erasmus program and spend time in France and Spain. Whereas with my generation, we lived in a time where we knew that Vienna was only 4 hours from Prague, but that I would never see it in my life. And if I saw Vienna in my life, it meant that I emigrated and would never again be able to see Prague in my life. This is not even emotionally imaginable for young Europeans of today. So Europe is, maybe for the first time in its long history, in a time when we are trying to create a European identity from individual, nationalistic European souls.

What would you like to see the EU accomplish in the next 5 years?

In the next 5 years I would like to see the EU to be able to talk to the European citizens in the language they would understand. That there would be no gap between language used by people running the EU and people living in the EU.

You’ve lived in the States for many years. What is one aspect of American culture that you appreciate the most?

Optimism, especially optimism without reason. It’s very pleasant.

Ambassador Kmoníček, with the help of his cook, created this gallery wall of art and objects he’s collected from around the world, including Vietnam, Israel, Thailand, Peru, India, Nepal, Australia, Mongolia, Italy, and Prague.

In what ways do you think Europeans and Americans are similar or different?

We share the same culture, but we are like two branches of one tree. The branches can look the same, but at the same time they are already very individual. If I say I admire American optimism without reason I would say that the basic difference between Americans and Europeans is that because we Europeans need a reason for our optimism, we don’t know how to be optimistic very much.

So, I want to hear about hot sauce. Your twitter bio says, “Collector of hot sauces and witty stories.” What’s the hottest sauce in your collection?

I’ve collected hot sauces for a number of years. I am even on the boards of competitions for hot sauces. As with many things in hot sauces and diplomacy, individual perceptions are hard to measure. In the beginning of the 20th century, the professionals of the hot sauces developed the Scoville unit. The hottest sauce I have in my collection with which I’m actively cooking has 6 million Scoville units. I cook with it once a year just for fun, but I’m not sure that anybody with the exception of my family can touch the result. Usually it’s not advisable even to open this hot sauce bottle without protective gloves and glasses. With quality hot sauces it’s not actually about how hot it is. The trick is that the good sauce must have taste first and then the heat comes in the second wave. I make my own hot sauces and try to find the right multicultural blend, which for me has the smoothness of the Central American ones and the proper strength of what I have only found in Malawi, Africa. There’s not much in Malawi, but their hot sauces are from heaven.

What’s your favorite hot sauce that you can find on the shelves?

I really like Bushman’s Fire — it’s perfect with any type of meat.

What is something that most people don’t know about you?

What they do not realize is that I learned how to cook because I needed to impress girls. I found that it’s not enough to talk, it’s better even to cook if you want to make an impression. Also, I have a beetle named after me (Anthaxia kmoniceki).

A beetle?

Some years back I had to get two famous Czech scientists out of jail who were collecting beetles in the Indian peninsula. Some years later they went on an expedition to northern China and found a new type of beetle there and named it after me as a sort of thank you. I also have a scorpion named after me that we happened to find just at the beginning of this year on a scientific exhibition in Somaliland. Nobody goes to Somaliland. But I do, and I took the scientists there with me. They found two types of scorpions and one of them is already named after me (Pandinurus kmoniceki). They have just published it in a scientific magazine at the University of West Virginia two months ago.

If you could only pick one thing to share with Americans about the Czech Republic, what would it be?

That we are a Central European, not an Eastern European country. If you say Vienna, everybody knows that Vienna is in the West. If you say Prague, everyone feels like it must be somewhere close to Kiev, but no. It’s actually to the west of Vienna! It’s on your way from Vienna to Paris. So what I would like to say to Americans is that if you have five seconds of your time to spare, please, look at the map and see where we Czechs are. It will tell you a full story about the difference between the mental map one has printed in the mind and the real geopolitical map. The main goal of our diplomacy is to unite these two. We want you to think of us automatically as the West because that is how we’ve felt about ourselves for centuries.


Ambassador Kmoníček in front of his mini-Tibetan temple

This story is part of the @EUintheUS “Ambassador Spotlight Series,” featuring in-depth, personal interviews with ambassadors from the European Union’s 28 member states. Follow our publication and stay tuned for the next story.

Delegation of the European Union to the United States

Writing from European Union staff on issues of interest to the EU in the United States, with occasional guest posts

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Michele Bendall

Written by

Editor + Content @EUintheUS | California born, Portland raised | @BYU Alumna

Delegation of the European Union  to the United States

Writing from European Union staff on issues of interest to the EU in the United States, with occasional guest posts

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