The Foreign Service Journal, March 2004

crueler and more dangerous place. We undervalue to our detriment the skills required for successful diplomacy, and the time they take to learn. Over 20 awkward years, I built the relationships with foreign diplo- mats, journalists and politicians that allowed me to feel I was earning my pay. As I rose in the ranks, the out- look seemed bleaker. I thought we were swindling ourselves with our mantra of “management” over diplo- macy. Should the Foreign Service really exchange its role as the over- seas eyes and ears and brains and voice of America for a modest subsis- tence as concierge? Five years remained in my promotion window. I was too lazy or proud to learn the open assignments game properly, but not stellar enough to coast along without it. And so I was looking for- ward to being posted to Kabul via Dari-language training, and to one more posting before retirement at age 50. Once the Bush administration took the reins, instructions to posts challenged the agreeable notion I had formed under George Bush the elder and Bill Clinton, that America was the leader of an evolving interna- tional system based on rules we our- 14 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A R C H 2 0 0 4 S P E A K I N G O U T Repackaging the administration’s populist rhetoric for foreign audiences is a safe bureaucratic strategy — but not enough to lead a skeptical planet.