The Foreign Service Journal, May 2011

M A Y 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 13 E arly in his presidency, Thomas Jefferson supposedly remark- ed that if he didn’t hear soon from the American minister to France, he would need to write him a letter. Despite the profound changes during the 200 years since Mr. Jeffer- son wondered about events in Europe, what he expected from his represen- tative in Paris does not differ that much from what is required of today’s diplomats. In their excellent book, Career Diplomacy: Life and Work in the U.S. Foreign Service (a second edition of which is about to be released), former Foreign Service officer Harry Kopp and the late Ambassador Charles Gilles- pie summarize the State Department’s recent efforts to determine what skills and abilities its work force needs to ac- quire to meet the challenges of the fu- ture (e.g., operational leadership and program management). Back in 2006, I took part in an exer- cise State conducted as part of that study. The purpose was to identify what skills diplomats would need to re- spond to various global scenarios. Other participants included several active-duty and retired FSOs, some of whom had recently served in Afghani- stan or Iraq, either on Provincial Re- construction Teams or similar organi- zations. Some of these colleagues ad- vocated moving from the traditional model to a more expeditionary Foreign Service, presumably to respond quickly to deteriorating conditions in failed states, post-conflict situations or states in transition. There is little doubt that Iraq, Afghanistan and other conflict zones will continue to generate new demands on the State Department and other for- eign affairs agencies. However, the basic tasks of diplomacy have not changed, and they continue to consti- tute the bulk of the work Foreign Serv- ice personnel perform wherever they are stationed. What will change are the environ- ments in which FSOs serve and the rel- ative importance of the skills required of them. So we must continue to strengthen our core skills to meet the traditional demands of diplomacy, while ensuring that we do not forget the lessons learned in non-traditional environments. An Afghan Case Study Near the end of my final Foreign Service assignment in Kabul, which ended in 2005, an FSO assigned to the Herat Provincial Reconstruction Team in western Afghanistan, near the Iran- ian border, alerted me to a problem. A group of about 200 Hazaras, an ethnic and religious minority in Afghanistan, had returned to the area after spend- ing a couple of years as refugees in Iran. When an Afghan strongman forcibly prevented them from reclaim- ing their properties, the local govern- ment not only refused to assist them, but blocked their access to the judicial system. Resolving the Hazaras’ problem would require a court decision on own- ership of the land, along with action by the police to force the gunmen to back off. We saw an opportunity to advance multiple objectives by helping the group seek justice. First, our intervention would send an encouraging signal to other Afghan refugees who were flooding back into the country and also being prevented from returning to their former homes. In some cases, local authorities were ei- ther complicit or ineffective in solving the problem. With nowhere to go, many of the refugees flocked to al- ready-overcrowded cities, aggravating serious housing problems. Helping to resolve the dispute would also strengthen the rule of law Building Professional Skills B Y W ILLIAM P. S CHOFIELD S PEAKING O UT The State Department should consider having generalists move primarily between assignments in one or two regions, or between one region and a functional field.