The Foreign Service Journal, April 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL 2018 57 DEFINING DIPLOMACY for YEARS Above inSILVERFOILonCover FSJ February 1972 China— Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow FSJ May 1974 Dissent, Disloyalty, and Foreign Service Finkism Although there are fre- quent assurances that “responsible” dissent is encouraged in the Foreign Service, the impression conveyed to many of those who at some time in their careers consider swimming against the Policy tide is often quite different. …Despite these doubts, it is at least encouraging that the shameful wast- ing of the country’s most knowledgeable China specialists during the McCarthy era is still fresh in the American con- science. The fact that many of their views have proved to be accurate after all makes the episode all the most significant. Yet if we learned the lesson of our failures in China, how is it possible that we made similar mistakes in Vietnam scarcely 15 years later? –William R. Lenderking, FSO FSJ July 1976 Kissinger and the Press— A Mutual Malaise From the press viewpoint, information is too closely held in the State Department. The middle level officials who used to be knowledgeable sources during the Rusk administra- tion have lost their considerable utility. The Secretary’s lieu- tenants are difficult to reach, and often reluctant to discuss unless specifically authorized. The Secretary, himself, has not seen fit to hold regular background brief- ings in Washington although he has performed quite regularly at public press conferences. But press conferences are a limited mode of com- munication because the world is listening in, the Congress is listening, the public is listening. –Nicholas Daniloff, correspondent FSJ October 1977 Withdrawal from Korea: Are We Again Risking War? This is not the first time, as the historical record makes clear, that withdrawal from Korea has posed major problems for American policymakers and it is unlikely to be the last. Ironically, withdrawal from Korea is not, as widely believed, a new policy objective but is as old as the Korean problem itself—and as controversial. –John Barry Kotch FSJ May 1978 Decade of the Environment Eight years ago America’s virgin environmental movement willingly entered the embrace of big government. One offspring of this union was internationalization. Our President laid down a policy to encourage other nations to fight against pollution. This initiative was not just the re-flower- ing of our traditional missionary drive to make converts of our foreign brothers—though that element was definitely present as our scientists, engineers and ecologists pushed their new-found environmental religion on others. Ours was the zeal of the convert all right. But this time there was a provable, practical reason to sign up believers all over the planet: if mankind did not do something fast to rescue our deteriorating biosphere we faced ultimate extinction. –Fitzhugh Green, writer and environmental consultant FSJ October 1979 Mr. Black Gets the Sack: A Saga of Shipwreck, Selection Out and a Working Wife Portraits of former Secretaries of State adorn the depart- ment’s reception rooms and faded photographs of their ambassadorial colleagues form“rogues galleries” in embassies around the world. But except for such notables as Nathaniel Hawthorn and Townsend Harris, the lives and professional experience of hundreds of lower-ranking offi- cials, especially those who served the United States in the last century, have been largely neglected. One of these was John Black, a Scot, who was the first representative of the United States in the island of Ceylon, now called Sri Lanka. –Christopher Van Hollen, FSO April 1953 FSJ