From Chapter One: “What is the Foreign Service?”

An Institution, a Profession, a Career

The Institution

The institution is the men and women—and their predecessors and successors— who serve the United States under the Foreign Service Act. But the people and the institution are not the same. Presidents often distrust the foreign service as an institution—President Nixon vowed to ruin it—even as they promote individual members of the service to positions of confidence.

Yet the spirit and culture of the service shape its members and, in turn, are gradually shaped by them. Seven events and decisions have played an especially large role in making the foreign service what it is today. In chronological order, they are

• the nineteenth-century split between diplomats, responsible for state-to-state relations, and consuls, who took care of commercial matters and citizens abroad;
• the reliance, until well into the twentieth century, on the well heeled and well connected;
• the wall, until the 1950s, between officers of the foreign service, who spent their entire careers abroad, and officers of the Department of State, who served only in Washington;
• the marginalization of the foreign service during World War II;
• the attacks, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, on the loyalty of the foreign service to the United States, and the absence of a robust defense;
• the rigor of the competitive entrance examination; and
• the control by existing members of the service of their own promotions and the admission of new members.

These factors have led to a service that, until quite recently, has been elite and clubby, hierarchical, cautious, strong in analysis but less so in operations, deeply patriotic, and deferential to the status quo and the weight of history. Over the past few years, the service has grown in numbers and become more diverse, more skilled in languages, less desk bound, and less obeisant to rank. The depth of patriotic feeling is unchanged.

The Profession

The profession of the foreign service is diplomacy. Among professions, it is an odd one, more like journalism than like law or medicine. It is open to all. Training in the field is available but not required. The skills needed to practice diplomacy at a high level are difficult to master, but they are not esoteric. They can be acquired in many fields, including politics, business, the military, and academia. Some of the best practitioners (and also some of the worst) are outsiders who start at the top.

Virtually every country that has a department of foreign affairs also has a professional diplomatic service, and almost none, save for the United States, employs amateurs in large numbers. Most governments recognize that diplomatic skills, though accessible in many ways, are most surely gained through diplomatic experience. A diplomatic service, with ranks gained by merit, also serves to identify the best talents and temperaments as it weeds out the worst.

Diplomatic professionals are skilled in negotiation, communication, persuasion, reporting, analysis, and management. They recognize ambiguity and dissembling and can practice both when necessary. They know foreign languages, cultures, and interests, and they have learned, for at least some parts of the world, how other governments make decisions and carry them out, and what motivates action and change. Equally important, they have learned how their own government works—its politics, laws, and bureaucratic processes. They know where diplomacy fits in the array of tools the nation can deploy to assert its interests, and they work effectively with military and intelligence professionals in pursuit of common objectives.

One need not be a member of the foreign service to be a skilled diplomat, or even a great one. Outsiders can bring new ideas and new energy. Most important in the U.S. system, outsiders can bring to diplomacy a relationship with the country’s political leadership that nonpartisan career diplomats rarely attain. But gifted amateurs and revolving-door diplomats are not enough to do the work the nation demands around the world and around the clock. This book will show that the administration of U.S. laws and programs with international reach, the management of the official U.S. civilian overseas establishment, and the daily negotiation of relationships with foreign governments on matters large and small require a dedicated, professional service.

The Career

A foreign service career is like a good limerick: It has unpredictable content in a predictable form.

The content of a career is a function of specialized knowledge, personal preference, and luck. In the Department of State, the individual’s knowledge and the needs of the service for particular skills place each officer in one of five tracks (political affairs, economic affairs, consular affairs, public diplomacy, and management), and each specialist in one of seven categories that cover nineteen kinds of jobs. Most if not all assignments for a particular individual will be in the same track or category. Of course, regional knowledge and language skills heavily influence the location of assignment—except when they don’t, and then it’s the assignment that drives language instruction and the development of regional expertise. Members of the foreign service must be available for assignment worldwide. Two-thirds of a career is likely to be spent abroad—and more than that for foreign service officers in agencies other than State.

Within these parameters, there is plenty of room for surprise. The next post, the next job, the next boss are rarely predictable. Change is constant, but it is not random. The needs of the service impose constraints, but foreign service personnel make many of the choices that determine the progress of their careers. When you are in the service, you cannot control what positions are open when you are ready to move, but the preferences you express among them weigh heavily on the outcome.

The form or trajectory of a foreign service career has less variation: four or five years in entry-level positions, about twenty years in midlevel positions of increasing responsibility, and, for a few people, several more years in the senior ranks, until mandatory retirement at age sixty-five. Pay and benefits are fixed by Congress, with managers able to intervene only at the margins. The checkpoints for an officer’s passage from entry level to midcareer to the senior ranks and eventual retirement are well established, though the requirements for passing through the checkpoints change from time to time and have recently grown more rigorous.

Foreign service takes over a life in a way that few occupations do. Where you live, the food you eat, the languages you hear and use, even the diseases you contract, come with the job. If you have a family, the service is a family affair. Children experience the benefits—and drawbacks—of frequent moves and exposure to many cultures. Opportunities for a spouse to work will be erratic. Hazardous duty is likely to impose a separation of a year or more at some point, or at several points, during a career. Nevertheless, retention rates are high. “In for two, in for twenty” is a fair summation, except when “in for three, in for thirty” is more appropriate.

The personnel system gives strong guidance to new recruits, but it has declining influence as a career progresses. After two or three tours, a member of the foreign service should know how assignments come about (this book will help), and should take responsibility for his or her career. The service is small. In all probability, once you have finished three or four tours, which will take about ten years, anyone interested in you will know you or will need no more than two telephone calls to find someone who does.

By 2008 the term transformational diplomacy had become politically charged. It may not outlast the administration that coined it. But in Iraq and in trouble spots around the world, members of the service are deeply engaged in the work of stabilization, reconstruction, and development. The center of gravity of the service has shifted—more missionary, less Metternich. The shift can be exaggerated. American diplomats for a generation have worked, sometimes with marked success, to move foreign societies toward democratic government, the rule of law, respect for basic human freedoms, and provision of basic human needs. But the change, though some dispute it, is real. The stars of the service in the years ahead will be those who really master critical languages, serve (often without family) in hard and dangerous places, and get things done, not just written.

Diplomatic accreditation is not automatic. A government may reject any request for accreditation, either through a declaration of persona non grata or through denial or withdrawal of a visa. Some governments formally or informally limit the number of people they will accredit, or prohibit access by diplomats to parts of the country.

From Chapter 6: Politics and Professionalism

Tension between the professional foreign service and its political masters is inevitable. It can be invigorating or corrosive. The professionals are proud of their knowledge, skill, and experience, but it’s the elected officials and those they appoint who set the policies and vote the taxes and budgets to carry them out. Foreign service professionals must give effect to the policies of the administration and the laws of the land, even as policies change and laws are revised. To maintain the flexibility they need, many professionals try to hold themselves above politics. If they succeed, they succeed just barely, for try as they may they are in politics up to their eyeballs.

There is no way around it. As members of the foreign service advance in their careers, they take on jobs of increasing responsibility and public presence. Whatever their position in internal foreign service debates, when ambassadors, their deputies, their press officers, and their senior aides deal with foreign officials or the public, they have to follow the official line and defend it vigorously. So do assistant secretaries, their deputies, and their office directors. All foreign service officers are commissioned by the president and, at least notionally, serve at his pleasure. They speak not only for their country, but also for their government, which means for the administration in power.

Once upon a time, politics stopped at the water’s edge. So said Senator Arthur Vandenberg, the Republican chairman of the foreign relations committee who abandoned isolationism to support the Marshall Plan and the United Nations during Truman’s presidency. But bipartisanship in foreign policy was a bit of a myth even during Senator Vandenberg’s ascendancy (he died in 1951), and in recent years it has been rarer than the unicorn.

One reason surely is that foreign policy is no longer foreign. Ambassador L. Craig Johnstone wrote in 1997: “Almost every international issue has a domestic consequent, more visible and direct than ever before. Almost every major domestic issue has an international component. The distinctions between domestic and foreign are gone.”

The past decade has proved him right. How we respond to international terrorism affects our civil liberties, and how we define our liberties affects our response to terrorism. Budget decisions made in the U.S. Congress affect the value of the trillion dollars of U.S. bonds held by the Bank of China, and what China does with its holdings affects U.S. economic welfare. How we deal with global warming affects spending by domestic businesses, and vice versa. Political differences over privacy, taxes, and regulation—and over almost any other domestic issue—are differences over foreign policy as well.

Political clashes over foreign policy pose two questions for the foreign service. First, how does the foreign service remain professional while carrying out policies that may change radically with each election? Second, how can each new political leadership comfortably entrust its policies to a foreign service that worked hard and effectively for the policies of its predecessor?

Staying Professional

The first question is less difficult than it seems. Diplomats represent their countries the way lawyers represent their clients. They do not speak for themselves. The placard on the green baize table says “United States,” not “Ambassador Patterson” or “Ms. Woods.” A foreign service officer conducting official business always says “my government believes” or “the position of my government is.” An officer’s personal views are of no consequence and should never enter an official discussion. […]

Dissent

Dedication and loyalty do not imply servility. On the contrary, a member of the foreign service owes his political superiors his honest opinion and best judgment, even (or especially) when they conflict with the current line of policy. Sometimes, though, conflicts between the policies adopted by the administration and those favored by the individual member of the foreign service are more than differences of opinion. They may be differences of values, or of conscience.

How does a member of the foreign service remain true to his profession, his country, and his conscience, when each may pull in a different direction? What military historian S. L. A. Marshall wrote of the military officer applies to the foreign service officer and specialist as well: “His ultimate commanding loyalty at all times is to his country, and not to his service or his superior. He owes it to his country to speak the truth as he sees it. This implies a steadying judgment as to when it should be spoken, and to whom it should be addressed.”Marshall’s answer starts with clarity but ends in ambiguity. If there is a better answer, it has not been revealed.

Tony Motley, who taught a State Department seminar for new ambassadors from 1986 to 2001, has straightforward advice for dissenters: “When you don’t like a policy, admit it.” A professional member of the foreign service should be enough of a diplomat to figure out how to tell his boss what he thinks without committing sabotage, and how to be loyal without pandering. “It’s more art than science,” says Motley. “Some people are just better at it than others.”

Of course, supervisors, whether political or professional, need to be able to tell the difference between frank advice on the one hand and disloyalty or flattery on the other. Ambassador Chas Freeman wrote: “Governments that condone candor will get it; those that don’t, won’t. . . . The candor of diplomatic reporting depends on the integrity of the reporting diplomat, which in turn reflects the degree of official tolerance for the confidential expression of unconventional, nonconforming, or dissenting views.”

Many foreign service officers—no telling how many, but more than a few—believe that the top levels of the Department of State have a low tolerance for candor, even privately expressed. “This [George W. Bush] administration poses every question in terms of loyalty,” said a political officer with twenty years of service. “In the past, professionals were chosen for senior positions so that policymakers could draw on their knowledge and experience. Now they’re yes-men. You don’t have people who will stand up and say, ‘Madam Secretary, what you propose won’t work in my region of the world, which I know intimately.’ There is no discussion of policy or policy implementation, at least none that involves the foreign service.” Another officer, quoted in the Washington Post, said: “I’ve heard about low morale and a number of people seeking to leave because they don’t find the atmosphere so rewarding as it had been when it was not so politicized.”

Ambassador Craig Kelly, a career officer who served as executive assistant to Secretary of State Colin Powell, said, “Powell and his top aides—Deputy Secretary Armitage and Undersecretary for Political Affairs Marc Grossman—were always willing to listen to people who walked into their offices with divergent views. They often pushed back, but their minds were open. Meetings on policy issues were free-wheeling, with no punishment for contrary views.”Foreign service officers don’t seem to have the same feelings about Secretary Rice.

The State Department’s leadership recognized years ago that employees who are afraid to say what they think may become unhappy and unproductive. However, the results of the department’s efforts to protect the expression of views that challenge the official line have been mixed. In 1971, during the Vietnam War, the department created a dissent channel to allow foreign service personnel to express their opinions on important policy issues in writing directly and confidentially to the department’s most senior officials. The channel has had a checkered history. Use of the channel declined from a high of thirty-two messages in 1977 to fewer than five in 2005. The department’s regulations prohibit reprisals against dissenters, and no formal complaint of reprisal has ever been lodged, but off the record some officers believe that dissenters are often punished with poor assignments and slow promotions. Is this cynicism justified? Craig Kelly, writing about his time as executive assistant to Secretary Powell, says that “dissent channel messages were read by the very top people. They got very careful replies. I always felt that [dissent messages] were not used more because people felt they could weigh in through more normal channels.”

It may also be true that would-be dissenters stay silent because their messages rarely if ever carry the day. Dissenters are often speaking for the losing side of a policy debate that has already taken place. The arguments they raise may have been considered and rejected or discounted before the decision was taken.

In recent years the dissent channel has been used more for management than policy issues. The American Foreign Service Association gives four annual awards for constructive dissent. The issues addressed by recipients of the 2006 awards included an employment dispute involving a foreign service national, procedures for issuance of visas to skilled workers, screening procedures for certain Muslim travelers, and parity in benefits and training between spouses and unmarried partners of foreign service personnel. Yet the 2007 awards show that the channel may be regaining the purpose its designers intended. Awards went to one officer who warned that a covert operation in support of Somali warlords opposing Islamist forces would backfire (it did), and to another officer who argued that much greater U.S. engagement in Sudan would be needed to end what the U.S. government called genocide in Darfur. At the ceremony, former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger urged foreign service officers to take constructive dissent seriously. “Maybe if there were more of that,” he said, “we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in.”

What should members of the foreign service do when they disagree with a policy or course of conduct that as a matter of professional duty they must publicly support? The Department of State puts a weaselly answer on its website: “As public servants, Foreign Service [specialists and officers] must publicly defend U.S. government policy, despite personal reservations. There is an internal channel through which an employee may present dissenting views on specific foreign policy issues. If a [specialist or officer] cannot publicly defend official U.S. policy, he or she has the option to resign.”

Are there other options? The department does not say, but one senior officer laid it out this way: “In the beginning we were told that if you didn’t agree with a policy you could, one—shut up, two—move and work on something else, or—three—tackle the issue and seek to change it. I think I have done all three. In some cases I argued for change, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, with no consequences to my career. In some cases I’ve said nothing, where the ball is already rolling. In some cases I’ve managed just to stay away from an issue and not work on it.”Another said, “For the most part we manage to put our views and our politics aside. There are times when that’s hard to do, but I’ve usually found that there are at least some rational policy grounds on the other side of the argument, so I can say there are good reasons behind this, and I can live with that.”

Most members of the foreign service have had serious reservations about some U.S. policy at some point in their careers, but in fact very few people resign over policy. Attrition rates in general are low compared to the private sector, and they have not changed significantly in over twenty years, despite policy shifts and ups and downs in the general morale of the service. However disgruntled some members of the service may be, they are rarely unhappy enough to quit, and it is news when they do. In recent years, three foreign service officers have resigned over Balkan policy, and three over Iraq.

Family obligations are one undeniable reason why some dissenters stay on the job. It is hard to quit your job when your skills are esoteric, your kids are growing up, and your benefits, including your pension, are not portable. Some dissenters may also be too cynical to take an action based purely on principle. A more important reason, though, may be that most members of the foreign service, especially those who have spent long years abroad, are deeply if quietly patriotic and passionate about their work. They believe that what they do will over time make America a better, safer country, and even if they believe current policies are profoundly wrong, they will not abandon their profession.