The Foreign Service Journal, February 2004

about them, unless one has a real love of life and a belief that there are things worth living for; unless one trembles occasionally for the civiliza- tion to which he belongs; unless one can contrive to see his work as relat- ed, however modestly, to the problem of saving this civilization; unless one consents, accordingly, to recognize that there are things at stake in his work vastly more important than the comforts or the financial enrichment or the career advancement of any single individual — unless one can do these things, then, my friends, I can give no assur- ance whatsoever that the strains and drawbacks of Foreign Service life are ever going to find their com- pensation. Whoever cannot understand that values more important than his own immediate personal interests are involved in the work he performs, and that unless these values are preserved, his own individual life can never attain full richness and meaning, that man does not belong in this profession; for to him it will never reveal its true rewards. … September 1992 — The Original Planning Staff The end of the Cold War prompted a new look at the policy planning function. Amb. Kennan’s incisive portrait of the Policy Planning Staff he established in 1947 led off the Journal ’s discussion. The State Department Policy Planning Staff of Secretary of State George Marshall’s time, from 1947 to 1948, was very much a unit of his creation. … There were at that time in the Department of State only three officials charged with the duty and authority of looking at American foreign policy in its entirety … the Secretary himself, the under secretary, and (when there was one, depending on the way in which he was used) the counselor of the department. This, however, placed a heavy burden on these three officials, the first two in particular. The recommenda- tions reaching their offices from the various geograph- ical and functional divisions were sometimes conflict- ing. Not only that, but the recommendations normally reflected short-term and parochial views of the prob- lems in question, not fitted into any more long-term and comprehensive concepts of what American policy ought to be. The senior officers of the department were usually too busy to do the spadework in analyzing the conflicts between the views and rec- ommendations of individual subordi- nate offices. They often needed someone to help them by studying through the matters at hand and sug- gesting ways in which the conflicts could be resolved. They also needed someone to help them infuse into the work of the individual subordinate offices an under- standing of the larger concepts on the basis of which policy was being conducted at the top. And, finally, they needed someone who could examine the day-to- day decisions being taken in the various offices of the department to see how these related to the more long- term interests of the country. … The staff had the privilege of direct access to the Secretary of State and the under secretary. We did our best to avoid abusing this privilege. In particular, we were concerned at all times not to undercut State’s individual geographic and functional offices. We invit- ed them, in every instance that I can recall, to send rep- resentatives to join us in the study of each of the ques- tions we took under advisement. Where there were unresolved differences with them, we urged the Secretary and the under secretary to hear their views as well as our own. … Finally, I might mention that we took pains to keep the staff small. We had a table that seated about 10 people at a maximum, and I can recall saying at the time that, if we ever had more members than could sit around that table, our usefulness would be lost, because we would fall victim to the disease of bureau- cracy that affected so much of the remainder of the department. … When, in 1949, a new under secretary of State, James Webb, decided that the staff should no longer have direct access to himself and the Secretary but that its papers would now require clearance throughout the department before being presented to them, I knew that this was the end of the usefulness of the staff for the purposes Gen. Marshall had intended it to serve. … If we did not always persuade others of the soundness of our views, we stimulated them to a brand of thinking of which there had previously been very little in the department. We provided a useful link, which had not 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 49 We took pains to keep the staff small.