The Foreign Service Journal, May 2014

42 MAY 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL of several similar undertakings around the country. This program includes new curricula at the undergraduate and graduate levels, public outreach events so that our citizens are better educated about foreign policy issues and a new effort to elevate diplomacy as a subject for serious academic inquiry. We also aim to “internationalize” the study and practice of statecraft so that American and Chinese diplomats, for example, will have been trained in similar, or at least mutually compre- hensible, ways. Such a synthesis occurs in the academic study of international relations, but not in strategy and statecraft. It is a strange irony that international relations scholars from around the world speak a common professional language, read the same books and debate the same theories—but their statesmen and diplomats do not. Last spring we convened a major international meeting of scholars and practitioners to investigate the key elements of successful diplomacy. We all know what failure looks like, but we also need to recognize success. When have diplomats worked effectively to influence international outcomes? How can current diplomats learn from past experiences? The discussions produced a series of historical case stud- ies examining the evolution of successful diplomatic efforts in diverse settings, including the U.S. opening to China, the negotia- tion of the Camp David Accords in the Middle East, the manage- ment of Germany’s reunification at the end of the Cold War and completion of the North American Free Trade Agreement, among other topics. We have worked to consolidate “lessons learned” from these cases that diplomats can use when they approach cur- rent opportunities and challenges. A Call for Imagination Much work remains to be done: to train the next generation of diplomats and better equip those currently serving, to pro- duce a body of policy-relevant research on diplomacy, to reach International diplomacy remains one of the least studied andmost misunderstood elements of foreign policy. Take AFSA With You! Change your address online, visit us at www.afsa.org/address Or Send changes to: AFSAMembership Department 2101 E Street NW Washington, DC 20037 Moving?