The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2015

30 JANUARY FEBRUARY 2015 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL as the formulation of sound policy advice at home and e ective representation abroad. As heirs of George F. Kennan, American diplomats do not experience diplomacy in a compartment by itself. Kennan explained why in Measures Short Of War : “ e stu of diplomacy is in the entire fabric of our foreign relations with other countries, and it embraces every phase of national power and every phase of national dealing.” Today, we are accustomed to seeing our national diplomatic system range across departments responsible for diplomacy, development and defense. Some FSOs teaching diplomacy write their own case studies and simulations. Others make use of the rich collection devel- oped and made available by the Harvard Kennedy School Case Program and the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Diplo- macy. Although there are wonderful case studies on negotia- tions, international bargaining and con ict resolution, the vast majority center on the domestic struggle to determine American foreign policy, rather than the means by which policies, once determined, are carried out. So again, the techniques of diplo- macy as an instrument of statecraft receive minor attention. e diplomat, however, writes a syllabus with the wisdom gained and hands dirtied from hard work in the eld. Knowledge does not precede and is not separable from practice; it is created by it. Doing diplomacy for decades prior to teaching gives the practitioner a background understanding of the subject, guiding them to insights and intuitions about the realities of the prac- tice. e challenge is how to share this understanding. To teach e ectively, practitioners rst have to structure their own thinking and re ect upon what they might o er students, while being true to who they are. Reading assignments convey regional or issue-speci c knowledge; they are interdisciplinary, sometimes biographical and policy-relevant. Very rarely do FSOs assign readings from the academic sub eld of diplomatic studies; somewhat more often, they include material from the elds of foreign policy analysis and diplomatic history. Most admitted in our interviews that they had no time for reading academic literature while practicing their profession and began doing so only after decid- ing to teach. us, their reading is governed by what they have already chosen to teach as they search for materials to support their course objectives. Often, they adopt material used by other teaching FSOs. Think of a Zipper In spite of the limitations of the material chosen, the story of American diplomatic practice that emerges from syllabi writ- ten by practitioners is one of professionals for whom power, process and values are inherently linked. ey go into the world representing the United States and, repeatedly crossing sover- eign boundaries, gure out the personalities of the people who count on the issues that matter to the United States, and then build personal relationships to manage national di erences and align them politically to achieve objectives. ey succeed when they understand the political communities in which they work well enough to advance the objectives of the community they represent with knowledge, tact and integrity. One metaphor for this approach is a zipper. We ask a lot of a zipper slider, that small little piece with a tiny handle that we operate by hand to mesh or separate the alternating teeth on chains attached to adjacent exible parts. We know from experi- ence that when the slide fastener fails, when it is no longer able to couple and interlock the teeth protruding from fabric tape attached to the separated sides, we are in trouble. Jackets are no longer warm, luggage is no longer safely sealed shut, and blue jeans are a bit more exposing than we intended. e slider is an inexpensive part, really. But when it does not work properly— when it does not engage the articulated teeth, align the sides and withstand the tension between them—the expense of xing the ensuing problem can be quite substantial. Diplomacy is like that. As diplomacy studies theorist Paul Sharp conceives of it, diplomacy routinely enmeshes sepa- rated political communities into a single international whole, while recognizing the plurality of interests and values that keep nations wanting to be apart. Fundamentally, diplomacy functions politically through a series of nearly imperceptible adjustments along the chain of relationships between repre- sentatives of states and the international organizations created Doing diplomacy for decades prior to teaching gives the practitioner a background understanding of the subject, guiding them to insights and intuitions about the realities of the practice.