The Foreign Service Journal, February 2008

is summarily thrown out of govern- ment housing and ceases to exist in any official sense. Beyond the costs and disruption of moving twice in a one-year period, the family is left to set up a new household with no support network (and probably no furniture or car for the several months it will take for household effects to arrive). In my case, I would be expected to take my son out of school in the middle of 10th grade. Those serving in Iraq are per- mitted to leave their families in place, where friends and neighbors can lend support and disruption is minimized. Is Afghanistan a less important war? Are the other unaccompanied posts unimportant? The effect on the families is the same whether the employee is in Baghdad, Karachi, Lahore or Kanda- har. Maybe we need to explain to those in the media and Congress who hammer us for not being present in the difficult parts of the world how our families are treated when we go. Since the explanation usually given for these inequities is a lack of re- sources, I have to say I find it un- seemly, misguided and inappropriate that the major legislative priority for AFSA and department management is to secure overseas comparability pay. I like money as much as the next guy, but if the State Department is going to devote its efforts to seeking an additional 20-odd million dollars from Congress, let’s use those funds to provide acceptable support for families of deployed officers, rather than a pay raise. First things need to come first. Secretary of Defense Rob- ert Gates, the president of the Heri- tage Foundation and many others have called for increased resources for a truly expeditionary Foreign Service. Why is that not our number- one legislative priority? We all recognize that there are no longer purely military solutions to the many conflicts and crises our nation faces around the world. The Foreign Service needs to be fully engaged in difficult places. I stand ready, as do many others. Yet, if I continue to get the wrong answers for my family, I will have little choice but to consider declining the Afghanistan assignment rather than applying 17 years of experi- ence somewhere I might make a differ- ence. It is up to department manage- ment to make this call. I, for one, will be waiting to see which way they go. Jeremy Brenner Pol-Mil Chief USEU Brussels Strategic Outreach In his November 2007 column, “Telling Our Story,” AFSA President John Naland repeats the decades-old call for more efforts to raise domestic awareness of the Foreign Service. In the process, he minimizes what many of us in the State Department are actually doing, and doing well. He states that the Bureau of Public Affairs, “with rare exceptions in recent decades, has focused exclu- sively on building support for the day’s foreign policy initiatives, without also making efforts to build a long-term constituency for diplomacy.” As with most public affairs or- ganizations, PA operates both short- term and long-term programs. And yes, the short-term programs deal with breaking news and usually focus on explaining and defending U.S. government policy. In the long term, however, PA does exactly what Mr. Naland urges it to do: It seeks to build enduring con- stituencies for State and, by ex- tension, diplomacy and the Foreign Service. PA’s Office of Public Liaison directs speaking engagements nation- wide on topics that extend from human rights to recruitment to break- ing issues of the day. But PA/PL is only one among many offices active in this outreach. The Hometown Diplomats program arranges programs for State officers where they make news easiest, in their home towns. And the Diplo- mats in Residence program brings practicing diplomats to campuses around the country. My own Bureau of African Affairs has conducted strategic outreach — constituency building — over the course of its 50 years of existence. Consequently, AF maintains strong ties to colleges and universities long active in Africa, faith-based organi- zations, NGOs, African-American community groups, business organi- zations and World Affairs Councils. This extensive experience has re- sulted in a model of successful out- reach, one that could teach even our colleagues at the Pentagon something about the subtleties of building a constituency for foreign affairs. For example, a few months ago I traveled to Houston, where I spoke to an energy trade group focused on Africa, met with leaders of a Roman Catholic university that has a sister campus in Mozambique, and did a breakfast presentation at a historically black Rotary Club. This trip, one among many throughout the year that my office has organized with PA/PL, established relationships in a city with strong economic, social and cultural interests in Africa. Linking the State Department to that community has opened up a two-way channel that will demand care and feeding over the years. In AF, we’re not building a con- stituency for the Foreign Service per se. Rather, it is a constituency for U.S.-Africa engagement, diplomacy writ large. The story we tell is that of the Bureau of African Affairs, the State Department, the U.S. govern- ment and America. The benefits are legion, including grassroots support F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 7 L E T T E R S