The Foreign Service Journal, March 2007

In a Pinch, Call in a Diplomat “Conservatives may love to bash the State Department; but when their policies fail, they always turn to Foggy Bottom to pick up the pieces,” writes special correspondent Joshua Kurlant- zick in a Jan. 25 post to The New Re- public Online ( https://ssl.tnr.com/p/ docsub.mhtml?i=w070122&s=kurl antzick012507 ). The Web-only arti- cle helps to set the record straight at a time when a new round of the blame game threatens to erupt over Iraq. Highlighting the recent White House appointment of veteran FSO Ryan Crocker to replace political appointee Zalmay Khalilzad as ambas- sador to Iraq, Kurlantzick avers that the president knew what he was doing: “Only someone like Crocker, who speaks Arabic and understands inter- necine Iraqi politics, could even begin to solve the mess in Baghdad.” Crocker’s previous tours include Bei- rut; Saddam-era Iraq, where he was under round-the-clock surveillance; Pakistan; and Syria, where, in 1998, angry mobs attacked the embassy, trapping Crocker’s wife in a safe room inside. However, Crocker is “only the lat- est fireman for conservatives’ fiascos,” Kurlatzick notes, recalling other, recent clean-up missions. In Latin America, where the U.S. is now highly unpopular, “the White House has brought in Thomas Shannon, another longtime FSO, to calm tensions as assistant secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere,” Kurlantzick points out. He adds that the previous Bush appointees to Latin America, such as Otto Reich, “had only fueled Latins’ anger, whether by seeming to condone a coup against Hugo Chavez or appearing to meddle in Bolivian elections.” Kurlantzick also cites the cases of John Negroponte, a career diplomat brought in to serve as the first director of national intelligence, and Eric Edelman, another respected, long- time diplomat who stabilized the posi- tion of under secretary of defense for policy after several years of turmoil. What accounts for this curious behavior on the part of conservative administrations? FSOs tend to be lib- eral, Kurlantzick says. “State Depart- ment officials, because they serve longer in the field than political appointees and witness the difficulty involved in actually carrying out policy initiatives, are also often more reticent to embrace transformative foreign policy, including the Bush administra- tion’s transformative policies,” he ex- plains. “Yet, I’ve met no sour-faced, bitter Foreign Service officers trying to undermine U.S. foreign policy, as [Newt] Gingrich has charged. ... “More important, because of their long service, State officials tend to have insight into potential catastro- phes. When it comes to fighting fires, knowing what worked — and didn’t work — in the past, is essential. ... “Career diplomats also possess skills that simply cannot be filled by political appointees,” Kurlantzick states He cites FSO William Davnie’s observations [in the Foreign Service Journal , November 2006] that “politi- cal-appointee ambassadors coming from domestic U.S. politics tend to have skills in crushing the opposition, rather than engaging a broad segment of a public, which is what’s needed in a foreign country. Appointees coming from the private sector have difficulty adjusting to the bureaucratic nature of diplomacy, where ambassadors cannot just give orders like CEOs.” “The careerists’ strengths often go 10 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 7 I want today to pay tribute to the many civilians who on a daily basis see mortar attacks against their positions, who travel in convoys that are dodging attacks. ... When it comes to the need to get Foreign Service personnel out to the field, we’re doing that. ... We are fully staffed in our PRTs. ... We are fully staffed not just in places like Baghdad, but also Kabul and Islamabad and Sudan and difficult posts of those kinds, and we already have people volunteering in large numbers for the follow- on service. It’s a very, to me, courageous thing for civilians to do because they are not war fighters; they are political officers and linguists and economic officers, and yet they have gone to this fight. — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing, Feb. 7, www.house.gov . C YBERNOTES