The Foreign Service Journal, March 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2015 19 SPEAKING OUT A Glass Half Full BY DAV I D T. JONES F oreign Service personnel are congenital pessimists. But in light of today’s realities, we should not be. Perhaps to appre- ciate the pinnacle on which we now stand, we should recall the tough slog that got us here. We have had philosophical pessimism imbued in our souls. The maximmight be that while a pessimist can be pleasantly surprised, an optimist is continually dis- appointed. Still, there is more cause for optimism now than for several genera- tions. To be sure, there are many causes for legitimate complaint: the plethora of political appointees, each batch worse than their predecessors; the family challenges from “long war” terrorism and expeditionary diplomacy; the slow pace of promotions, ending with post-career challenges from “up or out” regulations; and grim recognition that the U.S. public notices its diplomats only when they get killed. But I write to praise the contemporary Foreign Service, not to toss a shovel of despair on its casket. I entered the Foreign Service in June 1968 and my wife, Teresa, in January 1974; between us, we are approaching a century of FS experience, both active and retired. And over the course of our David T. Jones is a retired Senior Foreign Service officer and frequent contribu- tor to the Journal . He is the author of Alternative North Americas: What Canada and the United States Can Learn fromEach Other (WoodrowWilson Center, 2014), editor of The Reagan-Gorbachev Arms Control Breakthrough: The Treaty Eliminating Intermediate-Range (INF) Missiles (New Academia Publishing, 2012) and co-author of Uneasy Neighbo(u)rs: Canada, the USA and the Dynamics of State, Industry and Culture (Wiley, 2007). careers, we have seen radical improve- ments. Greater Openness In 1968, when I entered the Foreign Service, its ranks included women—but still not married ones, because any female FSO who married had to resign her commission. But by the time Teresa joined in 1974, regulations had changed, creating “tandem couples.” Addition- ally, a naturalized citizen no longer had to wait 10 years to apply for the Foreign Service—another restriction that had previously excluded my wife. A generation ago, assignments were “old boy” directed. Friends in high places placed their preferred candidates in the best jobs, regardless of qualifications. Entrants who started their careers in backwaters rarely made the connections that led to choice assignments and rapid promotion. The current “bid” system is convoluted, and still subject to manipulation, but it is significantly more transparent than its predecessor. Greater Equality In my A-100 class, there were just three women, but there were five in my wife’s, all carefully positioned in the front row for the class photo. Now the changed composition of A-100 classes is obvious. Many classes these days are 50-percent female. Elimination of Open Racial Discrim- ination. While the Foreign Service wasn’t “lily white” in 1968 (African-Americans and other minorities had been serving for nearly a century), racial minorities were modestly represented. There were six black FSOs in my A-100 class, including one woman; five became ambassadors. There is still much more to be done to ensure that equal employment oppor- tunity extends to all Foreign Service personnel. But as organizations like the long-standing Thursday Luncheon Group can attest, State and the other foreign affairs agencies have made real progress. The Closet Is Open. For most of my career, there were no openly gay diplo- mats in the Foreign Service. They were well-represented in its ranks, of course, and as effective as any other officer. But they had to be extremely discreet in their romantic lives—if, indeed, they had any. The idea that LGBT individuals would eventually be accepted at the top ranks of the Service was inconceivable. But Much Stronger Security Rules State used to be remarkably casual about security. Fifty years ago, while I was serving as an Army intelligence officer in Seoul, the embassy passed an assortment of SECRET material to the Eighth Army G-2 Headquarters that arrived without cover sheets or a chain-of-transmission responsibility list. We were appalled. In Washington, the State Department had no “double-check” system for safes and office doors at the close of business and only casual control over who entered the building or your office. Steadily over the decades, not just after 9/11, security has tightened. The amateurish photo ID