The Foreign Service Journal, January 2009

J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 29 W e are short-staffed all over the world, so the impacts [of the GRP] are extremely significant at losing and gaining posts, while at the same time insignificant in terms of being able to make a dent in managing the con- tinually growing workload overseas. I served at both a losing and a gaining GRP post. My public affairs position in Italy was eliminated under the GRP at the end of my tour; I later encumbered a newly created GRP position in Vietnam. The U.S. mission to Italy receives a large number of VIP and congressional delegation visits that it is expected to support, so taking a working-level officer “off the pay- roll” inevitably increases that burden. The GRP has stripped many positions out of Western Europe, which is home to key NATO, Group of Eight and United Nations al- lies. We may take them for granted, but the truth is these diplomatic relationships require continuity, maintenance and support. Our alliances there are not a given, and any- body who has served there knows the high degree of anti- Americanism and skepticism regarding our policies that abounds. In the short term, reductions in Western Eu- rope will have an expected and manageable effect on workload and VIP-visit support for the losing post. In the long run, however, taking FSOs out of Western Europe will only hurt us diplomatically and make our foreign policy objectives there harder to achieve. The gaining post in Asia where I served could easily have absorbed three to four more positions. There was an impact with the additional position for sure, but everyone is still ultimately doing more with less at the end of the day. The problem is not so much one of shifting posi- tions as it is about prioritizing and reducing the workload, eliminating redundancies and adding positions only when truly required. Right now we need more everywhere in the world to manage the ever-expanding workload. On paper, the concept of transformational diplomacy is a good one — get diplomats away from writing e-mails, cables and reports and into engaging with host-country communities and doing transformational programs. However, operational realities overseas prevent TD from having any serious relevance. Unfortunately, it is the U.S. government business model overseas that has been “transformational” — we have added significantly more U.S. government personnel overseas in the last 20 years while we conduct less and less actual diplomacy. Most diplomats are spending a lower percentage of their time engaging host-country in- terlocutors as the reporting requirements, VIP visits and demands from Congress and Washington are over- whelming for most posts. And at more and more posts, Foreign Service officers, tasked to explain America to the world, are now in the minority. We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to recruit each U.S. diplomat (many with advanced degrees), train them in foreign languages and send them overseas. There they make hotel and transportation arrangements for the ever-increasing number of U.S. government trav- elers; manage the impact and growth of (usually better funded) non-State agencies; research and write a growing number of redundant, congressionally ordered reports, many originally mandated in the pre-Internet era; and han- dle extensive grant and exchange program administrative requirements. They also administer an immigration sys- tem where we have a visa category for every letter of the alphabet, a security advisory opinion named after every animal, a whole series of visa ineligibilities and a separate waiver process for every one of those ineligibilities. In addition, we tell our diplomatic recruits not to talk to the media overseas lest they not be promoted, while our enemies engage the media every day. Our critical devel- opment assistance programs and personnel have been significantly reduced or rerouted, and Congress contin- ues to add more and more reporting and regulatory re- quirements, while embassies add more non–Foreign Service personnel every month. We do not need additional training to talk to foreigners and decide priorities. If Washington wants us to engage in transformational diplomacy, then our political leader- ship needs to first decide why we have diplomats over- seas, what they should be doing on a day-to-day basis, and which agency should lead our foreign policy execu- tion. — Ralph Falzone Abu Dhabi F O C U S Global Repositioning On the Ground