The Foreign Service Journal, May 2009

18 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 9 throughout the government to spend money wisely and to be care- ful with resources.” But at the same time Hale doesn’t see a lot of waste in the Foreign Agricultural Service budget. Zarit feels similarly. “Every- thing that we are doing is important for our mission,” he says, adding that the Commercial Service has become one of the most efficient agencies in government and its officers are “excellent stewards of the taxpayers’ dollar.” One point that’s often missed, Zarit says, is how im- portant commercial officers are to small businesses. It’s easy to dismiss their work, FCS members say, when the perception is that all they do is help major U.S. companies that have the resources on their own to work with foreign governments and expand their exports. Advantages for Small Businesses FCS officer Nicholas Kuchova is a perfect example of a small businessman who benefited from the Commer- cial Service’s assistance. In the 1980s, before joining the Foreign Service, he invested in a homebuilding venture in Japan. He came to Tokyo with a U.S. crew to train them on the company’s building techniques, only to learn that Japanese import officials were refusing to release the company’s supplies. Stuck paying for his crew while they could not work, Kuchova turned to the Commercial Service. A locally em- ployed staffer went to bat on his behalf, and the supplies were released. “I thought that was the coolest thing ever,” he recalls. Years later, Kuchova saw an advertisement for a commercial officer and applied. He’s been working on behalf of similar small and medium-size companies ever since. In the same way, Foreign Agricultural Service officers say that in many of the countries in which they work small businesses could never navigate the hurdles to a success- ful export business without government help. “When times get tough in the United States, more people look to export,” says an FAS officer in South America. “We help people to bring products into a market that is very bu- reaucratic and difficult to get into, and presents lots of red tape for the would-be exporter. It’s so bad that when times are good in the United States, they might just say ‘I’m not interested’; but in times like these, when people don’t have sales options back home, they are a lot more willing to come and spend the time that it takes.” Hale notes that her agency’s re- cent reorganization was aimed specifically at combating such non- tariff trade barriers. The new Of- fice of Scientific and Technical Affairs works to break down rules made by foreign gov- ernments that impede trade. Tough for huge companies to deal with, she says, those hurdles are impossible for small ones to negotiate. The Diplomatic Dividend At the same time, commercial and agricultural trade between countries is one of the most effective forms of diplomacy. “We are very people-to-people. When you get businesspeople talking and doing business, there is a dividend that is hard to quantify in terms of improving the relationship,” Kuchova says. The effectiveness of trade in overcoming political con- flict hit home for Stephen Anderson, a longtime com- mercial officer, when he was stationed in China. During his second month there, in May 1999, North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces accidently dropped a bomb on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three diplomats. The U.S. embassy in Beijing was the target of demon- strators for a week. Returning to his office, Anderson found a paving stone on his chair that had been thrown through the window— and wondered how he could ever promote U.S. exports in such an environment. But within a month, he was helping U.S. companies sell services to Chinese companies coping with the im- pending Y2K transition. Thanks at least in part to those efforts, China — and the rest of the world — averted the computer glitch. “I was hooked,” Anderson says. “It demonstrated to me that the business relationship is the foundation for peace. I became fully engaged with com- mercial diplomacy because, to me, that was a concrete ex- ample of how the job could overcome incredible conflict.” Like the State Department, both FCS and FAS pur- sued the “transformational diplomacy” initiative of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, moving officers from developed countries in Europe to the developing ones of Asia and Africa. They also have officers in coun- tries vital to U.S. security interests, including Iraq and Afghanistan. One Commercial Service officer who served in Bagh- F O C U S The return on investment is estimated at $400 for every $1 the taxpayer invests.