The Foreign Service Journal, February 2004

Let no one underestimate the importance in this life of the manner in which a thing is done. … I would plead, then, for concepts of national interest more modest than those with which we are accustomed to flatter our sensibilities, and for a greater dignity and quietness and self- discipline in the implementation of those concepts. I would plead, particularly at this genuinely crucial moment in American history, for cool nerves and a clear eye, for the husbanding of our strength, and for an iron self-discipline in refusing to be provoked into using that strength where we cannot see some plausi- ble and reasonably promising end to what we are beginning. I would plead for the restoration of a sense of comradeship and tolerance in our public life and public debates, and for a recognition of the fact that Americans may be wrong without being evil, and that those wrong ones may even conceivably be ourselves. If we can achieve these things we need not be too exacting in our demands for a definition of national interest. We will then have done the best we can do to bring the world closer to that state of understanding, based necessarily more on respect than on intimacy, but fortified by mutual restraint and moderation, and all the more durable and serviceable for its modesty of concept. Therein — not in the world of hatred or of intolerance or of vainglorious pretense — lies the true glory and the true interest of this nation. May 1961 — Diplomacy As a Profession From Ambassador Kennan’s March 30, 1961, speech to AFSA. It is not easy for me to tell you with what feelings I find myself again in this company. Twenty-seven years in the American Foreign Service do not come and go without leaving their marks on a person. Of course, this is not the only life one can lead; there are other things you can do, even in the wake of a Foreign Service career, and great satisfaction to be derived from doing them. But an organizational framework which has held you for so many years of your life, and particularly of your youth, never fully loses its claim on your feelings. … This is, of course, not exactly the same Service that I entered 35 years ago. Great changes have occurred, in spirit and in organization. … But despite these changes, it seems to me that the basic function of the Foreign Service has remained the same. This is the classic function of diplomacy: to effect the commu- nication between one’s own govern- ment and other governments or individuals abroad, and to do this with maximum accu- racy, imagination, tact, and good sense. Of course, this is not all there is or not all there is on the surface. But at the bottom of almost every fact of Foreign Service work, if you analyze it, you will find, I think, that what is essentially at stake is this process of communication. People have often alleged that the invention of the telegraph and other technological changes have detracted from the importance of this task — that they have reduced the diplomatist to a glorified messenger boy. This view could not, I think, be more mistaken. The sort of communication which the modern diplo- matist is called upon to effect demands from him an independent contribution fully as responsible, and just as replete with possibilities for originality and creativi- ty, as that of any other profession. Any of us who has had so much as a single year in this work has learned, I am sure, the first great lesson it has to teach: and that is, that what is important in the relations between gov- ernments is not just, or even predominantly, the “what” but rather the “how” — the approach, the pos- ture, the manner, the style of action. The most bril- liant undertaking can be turned into a failure if it is clumsily and tactlessly executed; there are, on the other hand, few blunders which cannot be survived, if not redeemed, when matters are conducted with grace and with feeling. … There is a special reason, in my mind, why it is important to recognize this connection between diplo- macy and the life of the intellect. … [When I joined the Service] there was still a hang- over from the older assumptions of dynastic diploma- cy. It was still assumed that what was most important- ly involved was to know and understand, in any given country, only a small group of highly placed and influ- ential individuals. It has taken the events of recent decades to teach us that in the modern age diplomacy has a task far wider, more difficult, more challenging than this. The conduct of foreign policy rests today on F O C U S F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 47 The national interest does not consist in abstractions.