The Foreign Service Journal, January 2009

There was probably a time when performance pay meant something special, a time when the list was shorter and could almost be justified. Today, however, when embassies worldwide must identify painful cuts and freeze real jobs — threatening our ability to meet mission goals — ladling out mil- lions of dollars in bonuses to our high- est paid employees feels irresponsible and, frankly, grotesque. In rewarding exceptional perform- ance by seniors, why not use the Awards Program — the mechanism used for the rest of us. Awards are transparent, requiring nominations and committee decisions. Where is the transparency in performance pay bon- uses? The group deciding who gets them is a subset of the group receiving them. Nice arrangement! Doling out bonuses is not part of a struggle to retain seniors leaving for lu- crative private-industry jobs. Statistics don’t back that argument. And when the list becomes as bloated as it has, it is clearly no longer an issue of identify- ing the true standouts either. Real leadership comes from above, and real leaders lead by example. We are all public servants, accountable to taxpayers. Is it really ethical to spend millions on bonuses for those who are already at the top of State’s pay scale? Linda Ingalls Office Management Specialist Embassy Pretoria Voice of Experience on Mid-Level Hiring Contrary to Kevin Stringer’s asser- tions in his October 2008 Speaking Out column, “Mid-Level Hiring and the War for Talent,” bringing in all new FSOs at entry-level grades is good human resource management. The circumstances surrounding the han- dling of a prior mid-level hiring pro- gram show why. Allow me to quote a State memo of Nov. 14, 1983, in which then-Director General Joan Clark wrote to then-Sec- retary George Shultz recommending that the mid-level program be shut down: “Mid-level appointees usually re- quire a prolonged adjustment period to become familiar with Foreign Service procedures, such as administrative and consular regulations, and to develop ef- fective reporting techniques. The lack of prior Foreign Service experience will usually place mid-levels at a competi- tive disadvantage vis-à-vis their col- leagues of the same grade, who have generally been in the Service five to eight years and have had the opportu- nity to develop basic FS skills. In the consular and administrative fields, in particular, Class 3 officers are likely to have significant supervisory responsi- bilities which assume prior in-Service experience.” The memo continues: “The appro- priateness and necessity of a mid-level entry program are often questioned by those officers who have entered at the junior ranks through the highly com- petitive examination process. Since the recruitment of officer candidates at the mid-level has resulted in a reduced need for officers at the grades of FS-2 and -3, we have been obliged to make significant downward adjustments in promotion opportunities for junior offi- cers.” Ambassador Clark’s criticisms of the mid-level hiring program were not those of a management theoretician or armchair diplomat. They were the crit- icisms of the DG who worked with the program, an officer with 38 years of ex- perience. Her comments on the par- ticular inappropriateness of mid-level hiring in consular and administrative fields should not be brushed off. After all, she had spent most of her career in the administrative field, and her un- derstanding of consular work was so deep that, after finishing up as DG, she was selected to serve as assistant secre- tary for consular affairs. I am unaware of any proponent of mid-level hiring whose qualifications to offer an opinion come close to Amb. Clark’s. William E. Shea FSO Consulate General Nuevo Laredo England in the Muslim World Among many others over the de- cades, Foreign Service Journal contrib- utors have researched and commented upon U.S. relations with the Muslim world. Especially significant are Amb. Chas W. Freeman Jr.’s “America in the World” (November 2008) and Dr. Frederic Grare’s “The Pakistan Piece of the Puzzle” (July-August 2008). Inmy view—as someone who lived through the birth of our ally Israel, the independence of India and the creation of Pakistan —most of the charges and countercharges regarding U.S. involve- ment and the seemingly perpetual nightmarish problems fall well short of the mark. Perhaps weak institutional memory is at fault. Although the U.S. has positioned it- self at the center of this stage, everyone seems to have forgotten that, without reference toWashington, Great Britain created the contemporaryMiddle East as a result of her defeat of the Ot- tomans inWorldWar I. Unfortunately, the new nations could be said to have been stillborn, remaining under colo- nial domination for some time. Much of the stillborn quality continues. As Dr. Grare reminds us, the British merely drew a boundary in 1893, the Durand Line, in India’s Northwest Ter- ritories that incorporated part of Afghanistan into what 54 years later would become Pakistan. Then, of course, Pakistan itself was created sim- ilarly. Chaos, death and ill feeling en- sued and continue. Britain should remain responsible for orienting these regions, yet somehow the ball andmost of the bill have been passed to the 8 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 9 L E T T E R S