The Foreign Service Journal, April 2016

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL 2016 17 ited personnel in each other’s country, or the conduct of diplomacy . In essence, the Department of State is about dealing with foreign governments, foreign countries, foreign conditions and foreign citizens—Dean Acheson’s “vast external realm.” The Core Professional Staff These fundamental characteristics are crucial for organizational matters such as budgets, management processes and, most important, personnel. The U.S. Congress recognized this in creating the professional Foreign Service in 1924 and reinforced that view in later versions of the basic legislation. The latest, the Foreign Service Act of 1980, clearly states: “The scope and complexity of the foreign affairs of the Nation have heightened the need for a professional foreign service that will serve the foreign affairs interests of the United States in an integrated fashion and that can provide a resource of qualified personnel for the President, the Secretary of State and the agencies concerned with foreign affairs.” The Foreign Service was obviously intended by Congress to provide the professional cadre for the conduct of diplomacy, analogous to the role of the uniformedmilitary for the exercise of the military arm. It follows that the primary objective of the State Department’s per- sonnel system is to provide an adequate and dependable streamof professional experts to work in diplomacy. The special character of diplomacy led Congress to define the characteristics of the personnel system required for the Department of State. The Foreign Service is to be a professional meritocracy: a corps recruited by competitive examination, pro- moted by competitive merit and available for worldwide service tomeet the needs of the nation. This cadre is subject to very specific employment requirements starting with the entry examination process and includ- ing tenure, language proficiency, fair-share service, competitive annual evaluation, up or out andmandatory retirement at age 65. These are the same principles applied to employment in other specialized agen- cies of the U.S. government, such as the military services, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. The Foreign Service, in other words, was intended to be the core profes- sional staff of the Department of State. This role was clarified and emphasized by the Wriston reforms of the early 1950s that essentially eliminated the separation between foreign and home service by merging the international affairs profes- sionals of the department’s Civil Service into the Foreign Service. Losing Focus Over the years, however, State’s person- nel systemhas lost this focus as the depart- ment expanded and wandered away from its core mission. Other personnel systems have grown like Topsy. The extent of State’s divergence from legislative injunction is well described in the recent report, “Ameri- can Diplomacy at Risk,” by the American Academy of Diplomacy. This personnel shift was never promul- gated as official policy by any president or Congress, but appears to have occurred through a gradual process of adminis- trative creep. It has produced serious management problems with respect to the staffing of both the department and its overseas posts, by diminishing the resources and operational flexibility of the Foreign Service. While this may not be as dangerous to the republic as using non-soldiers (i.e., civilians) to conduct war, it is not an ideal way to conduct the nation’s business. The State Department has attempted to bridge over this growing gap by formulat- ing the slogan “One Team, One Mission.” But that only fudges the issue. Which team? Congress decided in 1924 that the United States needed a professional dip- lomatic cadre, recruited andmanaged in accordance with the principles of merito- cratic competition, group discipline and worldwide service at the discretion of the Department of State. Congress reiterated that decision in the Foreign Service Acts of 1946 and 1980. In the early 1950s, Congress extended that personnel decision to the headquarters of the Department of State itself with the Wriston reforms, which pointed toward a single personnel systemorganized on Foreign Service lines and principles. However, in the past several decades, State management has moved away from that system and expanded a General Schedule personnel systemwithout formal congressional authority or mandate. State now has two personnel systems, operating on different principles, undermining the congressional (and national) decision to create and operate a distinct professional diplomatic team. (Actually there are now four such systems, if you count political appointees of various stripes, as well as contractors.) In doing this, State appears to be returning to the pre-Wriston days when there was a gulf between headquarters and the field (the bane of all large and widespread organizations). This is the inevitable result of a bifurcation of person- nel between those recruited, employed and professionally focused on the main characteristic of international diplomacy, on the one hand; and home-based per- sonnel, recruited and employed on Civil Service standards who largely remain in