The Foreign Service Journal, May 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2019 23 faced, in which individual mid-level employees are blacklisted because they worked on controversial issues in the previous administration. That all adds up to a pretty uninspiring recruit- ment campaign. It will take time and effort to reverse those trendlines. We’re digging a hole for ourselves right now, at precisely the moment when diplomacy ought to matter more than ever; but there’s every reason to believe that we’ll find our way up and out of that hole. That’s why I urge young people (and some not so young) to try to join the Foreign or Civil Service now. They’ll have an important opportunity to help renew diplomacy. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote nearly two centuries ago that “the greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” I wish we weren’t testing our capacity for self-repair so severely, but I’d bet a lot that we’ll rebound. FSJ: Are you optimistic about the future of diplomacy and the Foreign Service? WJB: I am. I wrote The Back Channel not as an elegy for diplomacy, but as a reminder of its significance and promise, and of the wider value of public service. I try to illuminate our profession, which is filled with honorable, committed and patriotic Americans. It’s the nature of our profession to operate much of the time in back channels, out of sight and out of mind. We’re mostly engaged in preventive care, working to forestall conflicts and quietly build partnerships or limit the range of adversaries. We don’t often bask in the kind of surgical triumphs that the U.S. military can achieve. We need to do a better job of making the case in our own society, of showing that smart diplomacy not only begins at home, in a strong political and economic system, but ends there, too, in more jobs, more prosperity, a healthier environment and better security. There’s a compelling case for American diplo- macy as our tool of first resort in this new and more competi- tive era, a case that can win more respect and support from our fellow citizens and attract a new generation of the best that our society has to offer. n