The Foreign Service Journal, April 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL 2018 63 DEFINING DIPLOMACY for YEARS Above inSILVERFOILonCover FSJ September 1998 Diplomacy, Force and the Diplomat- Warrior Ask a diplomat from any country what the major international problems of the 21st century will be, and he or she will most likely focus on “soft” diplomatic issues: economic and commercial interests, environmental protection and the wise use of scarce natural resources, international crime, terrorism and human rights. …Although these issues are important, this emphasis minimizes diplomats’ need to learn more about how diplomacy and the use of force are linked, and how to make that linkage work well. –Howard K. Walker, retired FSO and former ambassador FSJ October 1998 President’s Views: Preventing More Needless Deaths In the aftermath of the tragic embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam, AFSA has been working to bring this message to the administration, the Congress and the American people. Our central theme is: Never Again. Many of us remember howmuch more attention we gave security issues following the 1983 embassy bombing in Beirut. .…As memories of Beirut faded, interest in security wanted. So did funding. Federal spending caps forced us to forgo security so we could respond to other urgent needs. …In doing so we shortchanged out security program. One recent example: Last March, the administration took $5 million of the $23.7 million appropriated for embassy security upgrades is fiscal 1998 and shifted it to telecommunications. –Dan Geisler, president of AFSA FSJ December 1998 The Politics of Saving Lives All policy disputes over disas- ter relief issues involve the same fundamental questions: First, will the moral imperative play a large or more periph- eral role in the formulation of American foreign policy, compared to more hard- nosed definitions of national interest? Second, should the United States rely on inter- national institutions to carry out disaster responses rather than bilateral relief programs? The realist school of foreign policy rigorously applied would subordinate U.S. govern- ment disaster relief to a narrower definition of vital national interests. Military intervention under this policy would only be used as an option if the disaster, left unchecked, would adversely affect those interests. –Andrew Natsios, senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and former director of the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance FSJ May 1999 75 Years of the U.S. Foreign Service: An Anniversary Celebration FSJ May 1999 Mr. X Goes to Washington: An Interview with George Kennan George F. Kennan is probably the best known and most highly esteemed scholar and shaper of foreign policy to emerge from the U.S. Foreign Service during its 75 years. Kennan joined the Foreign Service in 1926, just two years after the Rogers Act was signed. … FSJ Editor Bob Guldin: You are identified as a scholar and a writer with the realist, as opposed to the idealist, school of foreign affairs. We seem to be moving further away from that in the current period. Kennan: This is difficult to say in a few words. I feel that we are greatly overextended. We claim to be able to do more than we really can do for other people. We should limit our contributions, and let others take the initiative. I’m close to the isolationists, but not entirely, because I’ve always recog- nized that those alliances to which we belong and which the Senate has approved as provided for by the constitution, we must remain faithful to those. …Within our time, I don’t think that democracy is going to be the universal form of govern- ment. I’m very hesitant about our pushing democracy and human rights on other countries, whose democracy in any case would be rather different from our own. We can’t ask other countries to be clones of America. 2000 ~ 2010 FSJ September 2000 Hacktivism: An Emerging Threat to Diplomacy Hacktivism brings the methods of guerrilla theater and graf- fiti to cyberspace. It can be conducted by individuals acting alone or, as is often the case, in groups and coalitions. It can exhibit elements of art and theater. It can even be humor- ous. But it is not benign, and it threatens U.S. embassy computers and diplomatic missions. It can compromise sensitive or classified information and sabotage or disrupt operations. At the very least, it can be an embarrassment to those attacked and erode public confidence in the U.S. government. –Dorothy E. Denning, professor of computer science at Georgetown University