The Foreign Service Journal, May 2010

M A Y 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 35 F O C U S O N T H E F U T U R E O F T H E F O R E I G N S E R V I C E T HE “R EFORM ” OF F OREIGN S ERVICE R EFORM ince the end of World War II, “reform” —which is to say, change, for better or worse — has been a permanent feature of the Foreign Service land- scape. About every decade a major reform has been pro- posed and implemented. Between those initiatives, a plethora of committees, commissions and study groups have kept the State De- partment and the other foreign affairs agencies under scrutiny, with the threat of further change ever present. As the great Foreign Service director general, Nathaniel Davis, once noted, “It’s hard to tend the tree when every couple of years someone pulls it out of the ground to see if the roots are growing.” Ambassador Davis makes a cogent point. Who among us has not thought, “Why don’t ‘they’ just leave us alone and let us get on with it?” Well, there is one very good rea- son why “they” won’t leave us alone. Contexts change over time, so all institutions, public or private, must reinvent themselves to deal with new realities — or perish. In the commercial sector the list of iconic companies (think RCA) that have disappeared is long. The list of corporations suc- cessfully reinventing themselves (IBM) is much shorter. The Foreign Service and State Department face the same imperative: adapt or disappear. The reality of the continuing need for reform is directly linked to the rapidly changing world of the 20th and 21st centuries. The Substance of the Debate The need to redefine the diplomatic mission and or- ganize accordingly has driven a debate that began in the late 1940s and continues today. The first phase of that process revolved around managing the bipolar world of the ColdWar and endured from 1946 until 1991. The current iteration of the debate centers on managing a multipolar, globalized set of state and non-state actors (from the Lit- tle Sisters of the Poor to al-Qaida) and coping with insidi- ous threats ranging from pandemics to nuclear terrorism. In both phases of the debate, participants within the State Department and the Foreign Service, including Sec- retaries of State and their political teams, and outside ob- servers have confronted the challenges of defining roles T HE CONSTANT NEED TO REDEFINE THE DIPLOMATIC MISSION AND ORGANIZE ACCORDINGLY CONTINUES TO DRIVE A DEBATE THAT BEGAN IN THE LATE 1940 S . B Y T HOMAS D. B OYATT Thomas D. Boyatt, an FSO from 1959 until 1985, served as ambassador to Colombia and Upper Volta (now Burkino Faso) and chargé d’affaires in Chile, among many other postings. Currently the treasurer of AFSA’s political ac- tion committee, AFSA-PAC, he has in the past been AFSA’s president, vice president and treasurer, as well as serving as a retiree representative. He is currently president of the Foreign Affairs Council, chairs the Academy of American Diplomacy’s “Foreign Affairs Budget for the Future” proj- ect, and lectures, teaches and consults. S