THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2025 21 issue, our ambassador at the time insisted he send it through the front channel instead, ensuring it would get much wider distribution. The ambassador personally forwarded it to key personnel. And in Washington, white boarding new ideas could replace some of the conventional round-the-room staff meetings. When I worked on Venezuela, the then special envoy gave wide latitude to a very committed staff to develop a broad range of options, often sitting in on brainstorming sessions to take full stock of their ideas. Follow-on measures from the new Secretary showing that creativity is not only welcomed but required, and will be protected at all levels, would unleash the very best the department has to offer while raising morale and engendering trust. Keith Mines State Department FSO, retired Vice President for Latin America, U.S. Institute of Peace Alexandria, Virginia Embrace an Alternative to Political Appointees America’s polarized politics deepen a perpetual challenge for career diplomats: to represent changing administrations credibly. Many practitioners today are uncomfortable with the incoming administration. A normal response might be to expand the ranks of political appointees. Any administration might feel better with politically appointed diplomats across the board. But if electoral change comes to mean complete turnover of diplomatic personnel, any leadership’s initiatives and intent can get erased without explanation. Any administration can look like a lame duck, and political discontinuity already shadows our national credibility. This is not in the interest of any political leader, let alone the nation. The new administration, or any other, has an alternative. The administration can choose to address diplomats as the national servants, fluent in a nonpartisan American sovereign interest, they are. A career diplomatic service must faithfully execute the policies of elected authority. It also adds long-term value for the nation when it carries institutional memory, and a durable, well-grounded sense of “we,” the sovereign people, who choose our varying administrations. Such a diplomatic service requires a common sense of America’s suprapolitical core identity and an institutional culture—namely, an intra-service language built on common reference points, confidence that colleagues have reflected deeply on this construct, and a shared commitment to serving elected authority faithfully. Full realization of such a diplomatic identity would, of course, reflect extended study and deliberation, but the new administration might usefully plant a seed germ with current diplomats in the form of the following exercise. Task every State Department FSO and foreign affairs officer to: • Read Walter Russell Mead’s Special Providence, and answer, as anonymous but publicly available data (APAD), what percentage they consider themselves Jacksonian, Hamiltonian, Wilsonian, and Jeffersonian. • Read These Truths by Jill Lepore and We Still Hold These Truths by Mathew Spalding, and state, APAD, what six words best capture their definition of America as a nation. • Read Richard Rumelt’s Good Strategy Bad Strategy, Part I, and draft, privately, their own “kernel” of the diplomatic service’s mission. • In assigned groups of 10, mixed by rank/seniority but otherwise randomly selected, write and submit, APAD, the group’s definition of that mission. These introductory steps will, provisionally: (1) offer career diplomats a common body of reading; (2) set the stage for discussion of mission; (3) give policy leaders and the public a profile of current diplomats; (4) give practitioners a chance to paint that picture; and (5) provide a data point for any institutional redesign process. George F. Paik State Department FSO, retired Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania The new administration, or any other, has an alternative. The administration can choose to address diplomats as the national servants, fluent in a nonpartisan American sovereign interest, they are.
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