24 MAY-JUNE 2026 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Bass outlined a series of specific failures: The department did not activate existing contingency plans, failed to anticipate Iran’s asymmetric responses despite decades of intelligence on the subject, did not give U.S. citizens advance warning that the region was becoming more dangerous, and left embassies largely without guidance when the conflict began. Bass also noted that roughly 30 sitting career ambassadors had been removed from their posts in the months prior, including some from the region now at the center of active hostilities, leaving missions without experienced senior leadership at a critical moment. Other panelists—Ambassadors Jeffrey Feltman, Alina Romanowski, Elizabeth Richard, and Yael Lempert, representing a combined 171 years of diplomatic experience—echoed Bass’ assessment and said that operational planning and operational secrecy are not mutually exclusive. On March 21, the assistant secretary for global public affairs, Dylan Johnson, Ambassadors Criticize Iran Crisis Response At a press briefing, “Crisis Management Protocols of the Department of State,” convened by the American Academy of Diplomacy on March 19, five retired career U.S. ambassadors issued sharp criticism of the department’s handling of the crisis following the outbreak of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. The panelists, each with extensive experience in high-level positions handling emergencies, argued that the political leadership failed in two fundamental obligations: protecting embassy personnel and their families, and supporting U.S. citizens caught in harm’s way. Ambassador John Bass, a three-time U.S. ambassador and former under secretary for management, began by acknowledging the rarity of the event. “Like senior military officers, we have a cultural norm in the Foreign Service that conditions us to be very reticent about speaking publicly as retirees about operational issues in which the State Department is involved,” Bass said, adding that the group felt compelled to act given what he described as “the breadth and depth of the failings of the current State Department leadership.” used his State Department X (formerly Twitter) account to attack the ambassadors for sounding the alarm, calling them “partisan hacks.” AFSA released a statement calling these personal attacks via a government account “profoundly unprofessional,” noting these ambassadors all “spent their careers serving both Republican and Democratic administrations, advancing U.S. interests, and protecting American citizens abroad.” A recording of the AAD event is available at bit.ly/AAD-recording. Munich Security Conference—Old Order Is “Under Destruction” The 62nd Munich Security Conference, held on February 13–15, convened in what organizers called a moment of “profound uncertainty,” one shaped less by any single crisis than by a fundamental shift in how the United States relates to the international order it helped build after World War II—an order now being actively dismantled by the United States itself. The conference’s official report, “Under Destruction,” identified President Trump as the most consequential driver of this change, because of not only his stated convictions but also the structural conditions of his second term, which it characterized as operating with fewer institutional guardrails, an ideologically aligned team, and a determination to act. The report identifies three pillars of the postwar order now under strain: the U.S. commitment to multilateral The Failure to Scrutinize Power 50 Years Ago One would think that after the disasters of the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam, of bungled grain deals and the CIA’s assassination plots, it might be prudent to focus a small corner of the spotlight on the national security decision process and the officials responsible for it. Instead, we cling to the fiction of a decisive presidential father-figure, an omniscient and ubiquitous secretary of State, and a “dedicated” corps of public servants, thereby ensuring that the system and its personnel will never be subjected to the kind of scrutiny that exposes weakness and invites reform. — Charles Maechling Jr., “Foreign Policy Makers: The Weakest Link?,” in the June 1976 FSJ.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODIyMDU=