8 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2026 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL LETTERS A Love Letter to the FSJ AFSA is the voice—the independent voice—of the Foreign Service. With the cutback in The Foreign Service Journal— AFSA’s flagship publication—to six issues a year, it is worth remembering what the Journal is and does, and why we need it. The Journal keeps alive the intellectual and emotional connection that Foreign Service members, past and present, have to the Service and to each other. Now, when the State Department and the president are engaged in a campaign to destroy the apolitical Service, the Journal is a trail guide and user manual for maligned and abused Foreign Service members seeking redress or rescue. The Journal is especially adapted to long-form articles, essays, and opinion pieces. It is a unique source for the preservation of a historical record that is at risk of being lost, distorted, or falsified. The Service as it existed for 100 years is gone and will not return. What will rise in its place? We can look to the Journal as the forum and platform for ideas from the people who know the Service best. The Journal is our present, our past, and our future. I can’t wait to see the next issue. Harry Kopp FSO, retired Baltimore, Maryland Peacebuilding Architecture The November-December FSJ is masterful. It comes across as the professional journal it has always been, never whiny or complaining, just the facts ma’am. It’s a great reminder for all of us of what our legacy is and what we stand to lose if we continue down the current path. I loved Dink’s opening remarks in President’s Views, and I can’t put the rest of the magazine down. Keep it up. I found John Mongan’s article on the closing of State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO), “Don’t Let Stabilization Expertise Go,” particularly timely and helpful (although I would leave out the offer to help with the occupation of Panama and Greenland, some bad raisins need to simply fall off the vine). Mongan raises two (relatively) minor issues and one (very) major issue. The loss of expertise and learning when bureaus, agencies, and institutes are eliminated is tragically short-sighted. Forty years of peacebuilding experience was lost when the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) was taken down by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and 60 years of experience lost with the elimination of USAID. CSO may be able to save some of its research, lessons learned, and analysis as some functions gravitate elsewhere, but the loss is truly medieval. A second issue is functional versus regional bureaus. This administration is partial to regional bureaus, but anyone who has worked in both a regional and functional bureau recognizes why both are needed. Regional bureaus are trains; functional bureaus are stations. The train just wants to get from point A to point B, heaving coal into the boiler as fast as muscle and shovel permit. At the station, meanwhile, the more technical and specialized work can be done, such that when the train pulls into the station it can get repaired, adjust course, receive guidance on track conditions. Over the decades this relationship has worked reasonably well. CSO has been caught up in this scrum, as with so much of government reorg today, driven by individuals who have had no real touch with what they are “reforming” and are rewarded not by what they build but by what they tear down. But the major issue is the U.S. architecture for peacebuilding and stabilization. Four key organizations were working this: CSO, USAID, the International Organizations Bureau coordinating UN operations, and USIP. The number of places in the world where threats of force and high-level diplomacy are being used to bring about peace is noteworthy, and President Trump deserves high marks for much of it. But in the cases I am most familiar with, the real issue now is not whether the U.S. can drive a lasting bargain between contending sides (as in Gaza), intimidate an oppressive government to allow a democratic transition (as in Venezuela), or push back gangs and restore order with a multinational force (as in Haiti). Rather, success will require the much harder and long-term work of ensuring that initial agreement leads directly to a governing arrangement that allows the country to cohere and deliver on the key issues of inclusive governance, security, justice, and public services. Only this will ultimately secure the peace. This is the work CSO, USAID, and USIP quietly did behind the scenes, anchoring the long-term peace that so often breaks down at the end of forced settlements. There is no one else really staged to pick it up. Keith Mines Senior FSO, retired Washington, D.C. n
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