The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2021

22 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL “So howmuch training did you have?” They would all say, “Well, except for language training, maybe a couple of months.” This is just not acceptable anymore. We need a lot more. We need to develop the intellectual capital of the entire State Department. We really need career-long education for everyone. It should include the kind of tradecraft and short-term training that we have now, but it should encompass a larger body of knowledge. There should be more focus on current and future challenges, on strategic thinking, on leadership and, of course, on improving our diplomatic skills and tradecraft. ACTION #6—MODERNIZE THE PERSONNEL SYSTEM Ambassador Marc Grossman: The sixth recommendation is making the personnel systemmore modern andmore flexible. The 15 percent float for training and transit—that would allow enough people to get the kind of education that Marcie has just talked about, get people to that education, and let them stay there—that’s a 2,000-person increase in the Foreign Service. We figured that’s about a $400 million expense over three years. That’s an extremely important foundational idea, and that’s where we start. We then said to ourselves: “Well, there’s two things you have to ask yourself. One is let’s get the right balance between service in Washington and service overseas. More Foreign Service people should be serving abroad than in Washington, D.C.; and let’s see if we can cut down the size of some of these enormous embassies that were created as a result of the land wars.” We would recommend that after the 15 percent, the Service then grow again between 1,400 and 1,800 people. That number [of new FS members] would be focused on people who do IT, people in the medical field, OMSs. ACTION #7—MIDLEVEL ENTRY Ambassador Marc Grossman: We have recommended a defined midlevel entry program to try to get people into the State Department who have the specialized skills that we need to be a high-performing Foreign Service: people in AI, people who do all kinds of expert things that are required today for the country to serve its citizens. Start small—25 people in the first year, 25 in a second year, 50 people in a third—and then evaluate how you’re doing and if you want to go forward, and have a cap of 500 midlevel entrants total. If you consider that against the larger Foreign Service, we think that’s manageable. We recommend very strict criteria— nonpolitical, pass rigorous tests and, extremely important as well, worldwide availability at entry. Another reason to do a midlevel entry program is diversity. Even if you hired many new diverse people at the entry level, you can’t get there until 20 or 25 years from now. One of the things that we are trying to do here is find the right balance in today’s conversation about midlevel entry. ACTION #8—ESTABLISH A DIPLOMATIC RESERVE CORPS Ambassador Marc Grossman: Establish a Diplomatic Reserve Corps—again, not a new idea, but one we think whose time has come for a couple of reasons. One is to help with the surge capac- ity and emergencies all around the world; and second, to again find a way to bring in the specialized expertise that we think is required today. There’s a third reason I’m really attracted to it, and that’s the reciprocal aspect of it, which is to say that people who came to the Service, who came to the State Department, did a deployment, came for their two weeks, would go back into their home communities and say, “People at the State Department, are serving the citizens of the United States of America.” We think about a 1,000-person Reserve Corps, so that you can have a way to think through a better personnel system, ways to bring people in and out [that] would enhance the capacity of the service to serve the American people. ACTION #9—CREATE A STRONGER, MORE NONPARTISAN FOREIGN SERVICE Ambassador Nicholas Burns: Our ninth recommendation is to preserve a resolutely nonpartisan Service and to increase opportunities for Foreign and Civil Service officers in the key ambassadorial and senior-level positions. The Department of State has more political appointees inside the department than any other U.S. Cabinet agency. As you all know, we’re one of the smaller U.S. Cabinet agencies. Of our 23 assistant secretaries of State—and they are the critical ambassa- dorial-level line managers of American diplomacy—not a single one of them right now is a Senate-confirmed career professional. We think that 75 percent of our assistant secretaries should be career Foreign Service and Civil Service officers. Right now, it’s zero. The position of under secretary of State for political affairs should always be a career Foreign Service or Civil Service officer. We think one of the other five under secretary of State positions should be a career officer so that the Foreign and Civil Service are present in the leadership of the Department of State. On ambassadorial appointments, I think everybody here knows the post–World War II ratio is that about 70 percent of our ambassadors come from the career ranks, and about 30 [percent