The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2011

66 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 n February, representatives from the United States and 15 other countries gathered at Wilton Park in the United Kingdom to debate issues related to— as the conference organizers put it —“creating the new diplomat.” Given the fluid, multifaceted en- vironment in which diplomacy now operates, par- ticipants agreed that relying on informal, on-the- job professional education and training for diplomats makes about as much sense as doing so for military officers. Coincidentally, the question of what the “new diplomacy” entails, and how to ensure that U.S. Foreign Service officers are fully equipped to carry it out, was the subject of a report the American Academy of Diplomacy released that same month. Titled “Forging a 21st-Century Diplomatic Service for the United States through Professional Education and Training,” the AAD study calls for amassing and sustaining the human and budgetary resources required for a system- atic regimen of professional diplomatic education at the De- partment of State. That objective dovetails nicely with the thrust of the Quad- rennial Diplomacy and Development Review, which con- cludes that building “a civilian capacity to prevent and re- spond to crisis and conflict and give our military the partner it needs and deserves” cannot be done on the cheap. More- over, it will require close collaboration, and a broad consen- sus about what is at stake, between the executive and legislative branches. The full report can be found on the Academy’s Web site: www.academyofdiplomacy.org. Conducting the Study In August 2009, the American Academy of Diplomacy’s president, retired Ambassador Ronald E. Neumann, asked me to take the lead in producing a report on how the De- partment of State educates and trains its professionals for their roles and missions, including specific recommendations for changes and improvements. With funding from the Una Chapman Cox Foundation and additional help from AFSA and the Delevan Foundation, we assembled an advisory group of some 25 concerned people, chaired by one of Amer- ica’s most distinguished senior diplomats, retired Ambassa- dor Thomas R. Pickering. Advisory group participants included retired U.S. diplo- matic and military officers, corporate executives, academic experts, congressional staff members, QDDR working group members, and representatives from the American Foreign Service Association and the U.S. Institute of Peace. Although they were not responsible for the study’s conclusions, the di- rector general of the Foreign Service and the director of the Foreign Service Institute were regular and welcome partici- pants in the process, along with senior members of their staffs. In addition, through the good offices of AFSA, we T AKING D IPLOMATIC P ROFESSIONAL E DUCATION S ERIOUSLY A NEW A MERICAN A CADEMY OF D IPLOMACY STUDY MAKES A COMPELLING CASE FOR ESTABLISHING A SYSTEMATIC TRAINING REGIMEN AT S TATE . B Y R OBERT M. B EECROFT Robert M. Beecroft, a Foreign Service officer from 1971 to 2006, currently serves as a supervisory senior inspector in the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General. His pre- vious assignments include: ambassador and head of the Or- ganization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina; special envoy for the Bosnian Federation; and principal deputy assistant secretary of State for political-military affairs, among many others. I