8 APRIL-MAY 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL LETTERS Thank You, AFSA! Thank you to AFSA for supporting the Foreign Service and for the Feb. 3 statement objecting to the administration’s decision to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), covered in the March 2025 FSJ’s AFSA News, “In Defense of the U.S. Foreign Service and USAID.” I couldn’t agree more. I spent my life as a Foreign Service kid (my father, William Gibson, was with Diplomatic Security and served last as the regional security officer in Tokyo), and I saw firsthand how important the work of our Civil and Foreign Services are, including with regard to our safety at home and abroad. Keep up the good work and let us know how we can help. Kathryn (Gibson) Eberhart Severna Park, Maryland Changing Foreign Service Culture Congratulations to the Journal for its many recent articles aimed at updating the Foreign Service—in particular, those in the December 2024 FSJ by George Krol (“The Foreign Service at 100: It’s Time for Renewal”) and John Marks (“Social Entrepreneurship and the Professional Diplomat”). I’ve addressed similar issues in my own Speaking Out articles: “Is the Foreign Service Still a Profession?” (June 2011 FSJ) and “A Plea for Greater Teamwork in the Foreign Service” (December 2013 FSJ). Ambassador Krol writes that for an ambitious officer, training and overseas assignments can be seen as obstacles to promotion. From my experience as director of training assignments in my day, I say check. He sees the Service dominated at highest ranks by those officers on fast tracks from executive assistants to senior positions in Washington and as ambassadors, without notable experience at desks or subordinate positions at embassies overseas. Check. Krol describes step by step his own purposeful concentration on picking assignments that specifically broadened his experience of jobs overseas and in Washington—just as my friend Ambassador Samuel Lewis has described carefully doing throughout his own career, with its due rewards. This reinforces Krol’s main argument that it is too easy to minimize the value of extensive and varied experience abroad (which he and I agree should be a necessary ingredient to effective foreign policy) in favor of a quicker rise in Washington through attention only to policies that suit domestic American political ambitions. (Perhaps you can call this “Wristonization” gone berserk.) Interestingly, Krol cites an “eight-year rule” that prohibits domestic assignment of FSOs for more than eight consecutive years. This is a rule I had never heard of in more than 30 years of service, and one I never saw applied to some FSOs who rose all the way to the top. Last but not least, I applaud John Marks’ description of the good Track II work done by retired diplomats, particularly my friend and frequent boss Assistant Secretary, Ambassador, and Foreign Service Director General “Roy” Atherton and my school classmate and longtime friend Assistant Secretary and Ambassador Samuel Lewis. Unfortunately, this does not modify my growing suspicion that arguing for group cohesion at the expense of individual ambitions in the Foreign Service may never succeed. The fact is that America has mainly been built by individuals coming to improve their own lives among relative strangers, unlike the case of diplomats from more ancient countries like Britain, France, Russia, and many others who have lived together longer and have older common traditions to guide their behavior. George B. Lambrakis, PhD Senior FSO, retired Brighton/Hove, England Don’t Forget About Language Skills English may be the language of the boardroom, but English is never the language of the bar. This adage is known well by world language educators and by those who are successful working internationally and interculturally. In the context of U.S. diplomacy, English may be necessary and sufficient in formal situations, but English alone is insufficient in many informal settings. And it is in informal settings in which relationships can begin to form and the foundations of trust be laid. The new administration must continue to steer American foreign policy through a tremendous number of international challenges, almost immediately. This will require cooperation across many nations with diverse and diverging interests. It will also require convincing
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