The Foreign Service Journal, March 2023

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2023 33 “At the same time, many State heads of section saw no reason to waste their time, as they saw it, training an offi- cer who was only going to be in their section for a couple of months, and likely would never do that kind of work again,” she explains in her oral history. “It helped a lot if the DCM [deputy chief of mission] was on board and made sure it happened.” When USIA was consolidated into the State Department in 1999, the department promised that it would carefully study USIA’s personnel practices and adopt its “best practices.” In the end, however, State did not opt to take on any of the USIA best practices identified by the transition team. While the American Diplomacy Project blueprint makes clear that any expansion of training depends on a “training comple- ment,” the USIA rotational experience is worth consideration. Although participation was sometimes stymied by factors at post, USIA retirees universally cite the rotational program as a vital element in their early experiences as diplomats. As Gilroy notes: “In spite of technology, diplomacy is still a craft. We spend years learning how to cultivate contacts, report, and do outreach. We invest in years of training (language, tradecraft). It would be very helpful to the Foreign Service if we allowed our entry-level officers the chance to spend a year or two learning with practical hands-on work how our embassies function.” n Although participation was sometimes stymied by factors at post, USIA retirees universally cite the rotational programas a vital element in their early experiences as diplomats.