The Foreign Service Journal, March 2006

failing to send qualified officers to that city. The inability of the Service to provide more experienced person- nel for this vital mission connotes a lack of seriousness to Iraqis. It also deprives entry-level officers of the full benefit of the unique expe- rience they would have received by having on-site a more experi- enced, better-qualified mentor. Thus, the Service has lost an opportunity to meet fully its duty both to our country and to its own next generation. What conclu- sions about the importance of duty in the FS culture are junior officers supposed to draw when they are left alone to fend for themselves, while on an important mission in a dangerous place? The Foreign Service needs to match the courage and dedication of such officers; it has not done so. A Paradigm, Not an Anomaly Many reasons for this institutional failure can be heard in corridor conversations: that Foreign Service personnel did not sign up to work in combat zones; that the dis- agreements of some officers with Iraq policy would force them to resign if they were ordered to go there; and that such resignations would damage the Service, as some say happened during the Vietnam era. The problem with all these arguments is that they rest on the assumption that Iraq is an anomaly in both policy and practice, rather than the paradigm it is likely to become. In an ever-more-chaotic world in which we face a multiplicity of relatively small-scale threats, all of which require a multifaceted and integrated response from the United States, this assumption seems unfounded. It is also the case, based on anecdotal evidence, that military commanders are eager to have more Foreign Service personnel, not fewer, in the field with them — both because they respect our expertise in both civilian policy and local culture, and because of the policy cover they get by having a direct policy connection next to them when they veer rapidly from war-fighting to politicking and project management. If the Foreign Service cannot provide these services, the military will take one or both of the following actions. It will either contract these ser- vices out, so that field foreign pol- icy companies will take their place alongside the private securi- ty contractors already so preva- lent in Iraq. Or the military will simply create its own policy ser- vice by picking a few thousand of its best and brightest and sending them to school. In either case, the Foreign Service is headed for irrelevancy, unless one thinks that service in Bridgetown is equiva- lent to service in Baghdad. Foreign Service personnel are serving honorably in several diffi- cult posts throughout the world, but the level of danger in Iraq combined with the policy requirement that we stay engaged with the Iraqis causes us to cross security red lines every day. It is that combination of service in a war zone and the policy necessity of exposure to danger there that makes the FS experience in Iraq unique. There are short-term and long-term fixes to this issue. Over the long term, we have to make clear to current per- sonnel and recruits that being “worldwide available” means just that, and that all personnel should expect unac- companied assignments in dangerous places in the course of a normal career. In the short term — to deal with the fact that we have used up all the volunteers for Iraq, at least those most qualified to be there — the Service has to identify qualified personnel, focusing on language and area expertise. It must make clear that failure to volunteer by a date certain will be followed by directed assignment, and that a refusal to serve under those conditions should have a resignation letter attached to it. Blunt, unnuanced directives are rare in our Service, reflecting an overall institutional predilection for cooper- ation and consensus — except, of course, when it comes to assignments or promotions. But every war, such as the one we are fighting in Iraq, has its own rules and creates its own imperatives. The Service cannot expect to apply its peacetime rules to staffing its part of the war in Iraq, if it expects to be as effective as it is able to be. The harshness of war, reflected in the death of several of our American and Iraqi colleagues, requires not a corre- sponding harshness, but rather the willingness of our Service to demand the best of its members in its most important work. n F O C U S M A R C H 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 45 The combination of service in a war zone and the policy necessity of exposure to danger makes the Foreign Service experience in Iraq unique.