The Foreign Service Journal, May 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2019 7 am so pleased that this edition of the FSJ contains an interview with Bill Burns. For those of you who have missed the voice of Ambassador Burns—I know I have—there is cause for celebration. His book is now finished—and at the top of The Washington Post ’s nonfiction best- seller list, no less—and he is back in the public eye making the case for American diplomacy. AFSA was proud to host him on April 10 to talk about The Back Chan- nel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal. The Back Channel is getting excellent reviews, and The Washington Post review by David Ignatius, who writes regularly on national security issues, is no exception. He finds much to admire in this “master- ful diplomatic memoir,” but the line in the review that has most stuck with me, been hardest to shake, is Ignatius’ conclusion that the State Department is “gutted” and that, much as a reader wishes Burns were still in government, one “wonders if even he could make much of a difference.” That is a sobering, even jarring assess- ment of an institution to which I have proudly and gladly devoted myself for more than three decades. So, what is the state of the State Department? That is a topic retired members of the U.S. Foreign Service have been addressing all over the country as part of the Foreign Policy Association’s Great Decisions series, many of them draw- ing on background material and talking points provided by AFSA. We have given serious thought to “the state of State,” and I’d like to use this, one of my few remain- ing columns as AFSA president, to frame the issues facing our institution. First, the good news. The hiring freeze kept in place by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was lifted as soon as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived, and new members of the Foreign Service are once again filling our ranks, with A-100 and specialist classes reporting for duty even during the government shutdown. Strong bipartisan majorities in Congress have made clear they do not support weakening American diplo- matic capability. Congress instructed the department in Fiscal Year 2018 appro- priations to resume hiring; even stronger language in the FY 2019 appropriations prohibits the department and USAID from falling below specified staffing floors and encourages the department to hire above those numbers. What is more, Sec. Pompeo stated in his March 27 testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee: “By the end of this year, we’ll have at or near more FSOs than ever in the history of the United States of America.” Department workforce figures show State is well on its way to restoring FSO bench strength, particularly in the mid- ranks. There were more officers in each of the mid-ranks—FS-1, FS-2 and FS-3—in December 2018 than in December 2016. The mid-level staffing deficit is now behind us, and the hiring freeze was lifted in time to preserve the health of State’s mid-ranks. This bodes well for the future of our institution, and it also sets us up to restore core diplomatic staffing at embas- sies right now. That is, with our healthy mid-ranks and the $84 million plus-up for “overseas pro- grams” contained in the FY 2019 appropri- ations, State is in a position to address the deficit in overseas positions identified by the Overseas Staffing Board and described in such vivid detail by FS members serving in understaffed embassies—especially those facing daunting competition from China and other rising powers. As Sec. Pompeo said to HFAC, it is time “to get those folks out there so we can deliver American diplomacy in every corner of the world”—including in Africa, where American diplomats working on economic and commercial issues are regularly outnumbered by Chinese coun- terparts five to one. If State’s mid-ranks are in such good shape, why does a well-respected writer like Ignatius describe State as “gutted”? The problem, of course, is at the top. State’s senior ranks are, by all accounts, seriously depleted. The same workforce figures that pro- vide such a reassuring picture of the health of our mid-ranks highlight the weakened leadership bench: fromDecember 2016 Ambassador Barbara Stephenson is the president of the American Foreign Service Association. The State of State: Putting the Back Channel Up Front BY BARBARA STEPHENSON I PRESIDENT’S VIEWS