THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL-MAY 2025 9 foreign governments and local populations of the salubriousness of American policy and projects. When you speak in another’s language, you speak with the weight of that society’s history, culture, and values. It is critical that American embassies be equipped with myriad highly skilled, bilingual professionals. This cadre of diplomats, who are essential workers, will serve as the face of U.S. foreign policy within host countries. They will explain American interests and values to the societies of the world in a language accessible to the majority of that society. Bilingualism is an essential tool for these essential workers. While not every member of an embassy team needs perfect fluency in a local language, it would be prudent for American diplomacy to err on bilingualism being a default quality of embassy staff, and English monolingualism reserved for those in exceptional circumstances. This reality should become the norm at all levels of the Foreign Service. Within embassies, American diplomats should be encouraged and supported to undertake language learning that would maximize their effectiveness within the host country. Subsequently, this norm should permeate the FSO candidate selection process. Candidates with exceptional bilingual proficiencies, particularly those with advanced proficiencies in rare or critically important languages to national security or American interests, should be prioritized within the selection process. As highly competent, bilingual U.S. diplomats, they will succeed in advancing U.S. interests when given clear policies and realistic objectives. Dr. Roger W. Anderson Independent Scholar Monterey, California Engaging Religious International Youth Today’s youth must navigate an increasingly complex religious landscape. Our experiences with religion are being influenced by the breakdown of traditional religious institutions, the impact of social media on religious practices, and the deterioration of the current world order. To achieve prosperity and security for Americans, the new administration will therefore need to take a hard look at the preexisting whole-of-government and agency-specific strategies, policies, and procedures for promoting religious freedom, openness, and tolerance among the world’s youth. Otherwise, American diplomats will struggle to make strategic choices that advance our national interests among the world’s youth. More than a decade ago, the Obama administration released the National Strategy on Integrating Religious Leader and Faith Community Engagement into U.S. Foreign Policy, but it was a missed opportunity because it failed to include an explicit reference to youth in its strategic objectives. To shift the needle, the Trump administration should consider creating a new national strategy centered on the promotion of freedom, openness, and tolerance to integrate international youth religious engagement into U.S. foreign policy. Among the elements of such a program, the new administration could, for example, leverage the “International Religious Freedom Reports” to systematically generate a high-quality country-level dataset that sheds light on the nature, scope, and distribution of youth religious experiences; champion industry standards for promoting and safeguarding international youth religious freedom, openness, and tolerance in artificial intelligence and social media; and develop a program-specific sanctions program to accomplish the national security and foreign policy goals articulated in the new national strategy. One of the added benefits of a new national strategy is that it would provide a useful platform for the new administration to reset bilateral relations with a number of countries around the world— for example, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has made it a national priority to promote tolerance in its primary and secondary education systems. His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan declared 2019 to be the “Year of Tolerance.” That initiative was intended to position the UAE as “a communication bridge between countries and different cultures of the world by promoting coexistence and upholding the values of dialogue, respect, acceptance, kindness and openness.” The initiative revolved around a set of seven pillars that included tolerance in education. The new administration could take inspiration from the UAE framework. Such a move would not only boost the prestige of the UAE on the world stage; it would strengthen the cultural bonds between our two countries. Kana Walsh Youth Ambassador U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Washington, D.C. and Michael Walsh Occasional Lecturer Foreign Service Institute Munich, Germany n Share your thoughts about this month’s issue. Submit letters to the editor: journal@afsa.org
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