The Foreign Service Journal, March 2016

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2016 87 Take One: What U.S. Diplomats Do “America’s Diplomats” A film produced by the Foreign Policy Association and airing on PBS stations this month Reviewed By Jane C. Loeffler Our diplomats do important and often dangerous work on our behalf, but explaining that work to a TV audience is no easy task. First, diplomats have an array of job descriptions—from those who negotiate peace treaties or commercial pacts to those who promote American culture or issue entry visas. There is no single sound bite that can summarize or even suggest the full range of diplomatic activity. Second, at distant workplaces, di- plomats labor beyond the radar of most geographically challenged Americans, who have a hard time locating London, let alone Lima or Lomé, on world maps. And third, what makes it especially hard to put diplomacy on film is that the best footage in terms of sheer drama is taken from the most glamorous or violent historical episodes. But alas, 99 percent of diplomacy is low-profile work, often best accomplished by low-profile people under less than ideal conditions. If military history is about big battles, diplomatic history is about how those big battles are best avoided. How do you put that on TV and make it watchable? To his credit, MacDara King has done an admirable job with his production of “America’s Diplomats,” a new film that airs on PBS stations this spring. (Noncom- mercial screening and viewing is available at https://vimeo.com/152777066 with the password “Diplomacy.”) Released by the Foreign Policy Asso- ciation, the film aims to raise awareness of this little known dimension of public service—its pitfalls and its pleasures. The film is strongest in its opening sequences that deal with the history of the Foreign Service, and how and why a merit-based system evolved in the first place. It is strong, too, in graphically pointing out the growing risk associated with overseas assignments since the 1980s when terrorists first turned U.S. embassies into accessible targets. Messages from Foreign Service officers and former ambassadors, all of whom are also career FSOs, underscore the film’s several themes. Ronald Neu- mann, for one, argues that “diplomats need to meet the public,” and Nicholas Burns speaks to the need to “balance risk and security.” Others place these issues squarely in the ongoing political dis- course that too often separates the State Department from its critics. The film is also effective in detailing peace negotiations, such as those led by Richard Holbrooke to end strife in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1995), and in showing the symbolic power of U.S. presence when Edward Perkins was appointed the first black ambassador to South Africa (1986). It also highlights the role of commercial diplomacy with a lively segment on how American diplomats made sure that U.S.- built Harley-Davidsonmotorcycle engines could roar on in Europe after European Union regulators tried to ban them. The film features a diverse group of diplomats, but it is weak, perhaps, in focusing too much on the traditional hierarchy that for decades excluded many of the faces that now make up a majority of the Foreign Service. The retro look of the title slate—it is almost all white men, for example—points to an underlying tension in a film that tries to look backward and wants to look ahead, but can’t do both at once. (Something curiously arresting about that is the uncanny resemblance between Benjamin Franklin and John Kerry!) Uneven film editing results in repeti- REVIEWS The film is strongest in its opening sequences that deal with the history of the Foreign Service and how and why a merit-based system evolved in the first place.