The Foreign Service Journal, May 2014

12 MAY 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Sending Their Best to Washington A s AFSA delves ever deeper into the issue of political ambassadors, we have often made the case that our counterparts around the world do not contend with the same level of political patronage when it comes to the selec- tion of ambassadors—and particularly those being dispatched to the capitals of important allies. But would the actual statistics bear out the anecdotal evi- dence supporting that conclusion? After researching every ambassador currently stationed in Washington (167 in all) and scrutinizing their biogra- phies, it turns out we were even more right than we knew. To aid in our analysis, we divided these officials into three categories: career members of their country’s For- eign Service; highly experienced former government members; and political appointees. The chart shown here tells the story vividly. Only 13 of the 167 could be categorized as political appoin- tees—just 7.8 percent. In comparison, 37 percent of America’s ambassadors sta- tioned overseas were political appoin- tees as of April 1. As we broke the data down even further, we discovered that not a single member of NATO, the Group of 20 or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has a politically appointed ambassador representing it in Washington. The only nations with such political appointees in Washington are Haiti, Jamaica, Kenya, Kosovo, Lesotho, Mauritania, Moldova, Panama, Rwanda, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Trinidad & Tobago and Zambia. Clearly, almost every country in the world believes that its bilateral rela- tionship with the United States is so important that only highly qualified and experienced diplomats or government ministers are entrusted with conduct- ing it. We invite you to investigate the list by visiting www.afsa.org/foreignambs. (Note that the data there is accurate as of March 18; subsequent personnel changes may affect the accuracy of the data.) AFSA’s document, Guidelines for Successful Performance as a Chief of Mis- sion , is available online at www.afsa.org/ chiefsofmission. —Á sgeir Sigfússon, AFSA Director of New Media Addition by Subtraction? I n a March 24 statement known as the Hague Declaration, the United States and its closest allies formally suspended Russia from membership in the “Group of 8” industrialized democracies. As a result, the body will now revert to its Group of 7 structure, which dates back to 1976 and brings together finance ministers and central bank governors from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The Hague Declaration reads, in part: “This Group came together because of shared beliefs and shared responsibili- ties. Russia’s actions in recent weeks are not consistent with them. Under these circum- stances, we will not partici- pate in the planned Sochi Summit. “We will suspend our participation in the Group of 8 until Russia changes course and the environ- ment comes back to where the G-8 is able to have a meaningful discussion, and will meet again in G-7 format at the same time as planned, in June 2014, in Brussels, to discuss the broad agenda we have together. “We have also advised our foreign ministers not TALKING POINTS Jeff Lau