The Foreign Service Journal, March 2023

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2023 11 the overall foreign policy of the United States. The military and CIA role in the ongoing war in Vietnam, overriding State diplo- macy, played a big role in my decision. But the smaller-scale Pakistan arms resumption was the final nail. Thank you for letting me share my story. R. Allen Irvine Former FSO Plainfield, Massachusetts As You Train, So Shall You Fight Cheers to Robert Domaingue for his excellent argument to revisit the establish- ment of a gaming office at the Foreign Ser- vice Institute ( “Why the State Department Needs an Office of Diplomatic Gaming, ” Speaking Out, November 2022). I fear use of the word “gaming” might trivialize this important initiative. This is not diplomats gathering to pass the time with chess, the latest version of Monopoly, or (gasp) Dungeons and Dragons. Rather, gaming is about exercising sce- nario responses for urgent problem sets. Whether you call it a game or the loftier sounding “exercise,” as the military often does, testing our plans, assumptions, and abilities before crisis ought to generate State Department interest and support. State is a long way from the military’s prioritization of planning and exercises, but we need not try to emulate the time and resources our Defense Department colleagues expend on these efforts to see significant benefit. These “games” do not have to be time- intensive or require copious preparation to be useful. A day or even half-day game/ exercise can force thinking and expose blind spots in planning before a brewing problem leaves us flat-footed. I implore leadership to consider the benefits of Mr. Domaingue’s suggestion. Further, I ask them to consider coun- try- and region-specific scenarios linking D.C. and field participants. I helped organize a table-top exercise for an FSI group a fewmonths before heading out to that country’s embassy. We looped in some key country teammembers to observe and reality-check via video. Assumptions were challenged, and insights were sharpened to a degree that classroom instruction cannot replicate. Timing was key, as there was a space for thoughtful discussions well ahead of the chaos that is transfer season, where good intentions regarding overlap and handover notes go to die. For scenarios that require a robust interagency response, a gaming office could invite interagency players, as the military sometimes does, to its exercises. We ignore, underplay, or fake those inter- agency aspects to the detriment of future crisis response. Above all, we should endeavor to “keep it real,” as my martial arts instructor used to say. He insisted we wear shoes and street clothes to practice. “If you get in a fight, no one is going to wait for you to take your shoes off. As you train, so shall you fight.” Joe Relk FSO, retired Burke, Virginia Greece and the Balkan Storm FSJ articles over the years frequently suggest policy directions for the U.S. government to take. Such articles when read by serving diplomats abroad and at home can provide useful food for thought. In that spirit, let me add a relevant note connecting Greece to Denis Rajic and Marko Attila Hoare’s interesting take on Serbia’s closeness to Russia and a coming Balkan storm in the July-August 2022 FSJ ( “Serbia and Russia and the Coming Balkan Storm” ). Greece and Serbia have a long com- mon history of resisting and eventually overcoming Muslim Turkish colonial- ism for several centuries in the past. Both countries (along with Montenegro) share the Greek Orthodox religion in a neighborhood of Catholics (Croatia) and Muslims (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania, or Turkey). Both remained allies in the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, first against Turkey and then against Bulgaria (another Slav state with ties to Russia). Churchill and Stalin agreed at the end of WorldWar II to share the Balkans, with most going to the Russia sphere of influ- ence and Greece to Britain. The Greek civil war that followed—pitting the Communist resistance to the Nazis and Italian Fascists against the anti-Communist resistance eventually supported by the British and Americans—ended when Yugoslavia, dominated by Serbia, closed its borders to fleeing Communist troops and thus helped guarantee a Greek government victory. Such histories leave memories. Greece, particularly under its present moderate right government, plays a central role in facilitating U.S. assistance to Ukraine through its formerly sleepy port at Alexan- droupolis, in northern Greece, neighbor- ing Turkey. It is a reliable NATO ally some- what different from Turkey—particularly since Turkey invaded Greek-dominated Cyprus in the 1970s. Authors Rajic and Hoare suggest some sort of U.S. and NATO intervention is necessary today to prevent the current Serbian government from continuing its