After Russia massed 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders in what appeared to be preparations for an invasion, the Biden administration sent one of its top diplomats to talk to its Russian counterpart to try to dissuade Moscow from waging a full-scale war.
Wendy R. Sherman, the Deputy Foreign Minister, met with Sergei A. Ryabkov at the US Mission in Geneva in January 2022. Mr. Ryabkov, the Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia, left during lunch and returned with the demand that the United States respond in writing to draft treaties on security issues that its country had previously presented.
President Biden had nothing to do with the documents, and Ms. Sherman then realized that Mr. Ryabkov’s demands were a cover for an inevitable war.
“We knew we were going to the races,” she said in an interview Thursday evening.
In an email to State Department officials on Friday morning, Ms. Sherman announced her retirement, 30 years after she set foot on agency headquarters for her first diplomatic job and as the United States is embroiled in its most sweeping military campaign in Europe since the world war. War II. She plans to quit her job on June 30.
Ms. Sherman, 73, has been a fixture in foreign policy circles in Washington and capitals around the world as a diplomat of choice for tough negotiations with US rivals and adversaries: Iran, North Korea, Russia and, especially recently, China .
Gradually, Mrs. Sherman became a role model for women in foreign policy institutions. She was the first woman to serve as Deputy Secretary of State and, under the Obama administration, as Undersecretary for Political Affairs, the third post in the State Department. She has served in three Democratic governments and under five Secretaries of State. In her work as Assistant Secretary alone, she has visited 39 countries.
“For many of us, especially as senior women in national security – there are very few more effective or influential leaders in foreign policy in recent memory, and fewer women join them,” said Suzy George, the chief of staff. of the State Department and an associate of Mrs. Sherman since 1995.
Warren M. Christopher, the first secretary of state under President Bill Clinton, tapped Ms. Sherman, who was then working at a media consulting firm, for her first job at the State Department as Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs. Later, under Madeleine Albright, the first woman secretary of state, Ms. Sherman worked on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and talks with North Korea. She accompanied Mrs. Albright to Pyongyang during a US Secretary of State’s first visit to North Korea.
Perhaps her toughest diplomatic assignment was leading US negotiators in talks with Iran over a nuclear deal during the Obama administration. In 2015, Secretary of State John Kerry announced a final deal, which placed restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program, but was attacked by Republican politicians for failing to address certain military activities. President Donald J. Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018, to which Iran had adhered.
In Ms. Sherman’s current position, she was the liaison at the State Department on China policy. She has had to weigh conflicting priorities: working with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken to maintain communication channels while countering China’s policies around the world. She flew to Tianjin in 2021 to meet Wang Yi, then foreign minister, and men in white security suits escorted Ms. Sherman and her colleagues to a hotel.
When the Pentagon discovered a Chinese spy balloon hovering over the United States this year, Ms. Sherman enlisted a Chinese diplomat to make a démarche.
“She’s like an iron lady of American diplomacy,” said Cho Hyun-dong, South Korea’s ambassador to Washington, adding that Ms. Sherman had played a “very constructive role” in helping to improve relations between his country and Japan.
Jonathan Finer, the chief deputy national security adviser, said Ms. Sherman was the Biden administration’s default diplomat to send “difficult conversations in tough places”.
Mr Finer and Ms Sherman visited Kiev in January, but it was not her first time in Ukraine: in a photo opposite her desk in Washington, she lays flowers in Kiev’s Maidan Square in 2014, where security forces led by a pro-Russian president shot dead dozens of peaceful demonstrators.
In August, Mrs. Sherman visited the Solomon Islands with Caroline Kennedy, the Ambassador to Australia. One of the goals was to highlight US involvement in a region where China is making progress. But Mrs. Sherman also had a personal mission: The occasion was the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Guadalcanal, a landmark World War II battle that left her Marine father wounded. She wore his green military cap during the journey and took it to a stage when she gave a speech.
“It was a very, very powerful time,” Ms. Sherman said. “I landed right on the airstrip from which the Marines fought in World War II, and I landed on a plane named United States of America.”