The Foreign Service Journal, May 2020

10 MAY 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Professional Integrity I fully endorse the tenets Ambassador Alan Larson set forth in his excellent article, “Integ- rity First” (March FSJ ). I would urge that Foreign Service officers continue to maintain the prin- ciple of “integrity first” after they depart government service, as well, especially if they enter private-sector roles as advisers or consultants on foreign policy matters. We former FSOs should be wary of inducements or efforts to use our names, contacts and expertise in ways that could, wittingly or not, benefit cor- rupt people, practices and regimes. Such behavior can damage the pro- fessional integrity of the Foreign Service as a whole and undermine the confi- dence the public and the Service should have in FSOs present and past. Finally, as an old Russia/Ukraine hand, I’d like to give a big shout out to my dear colleague Ambassador John Tefft and, indeed, to all the authors of the pieces published in the March Journal ’s “Dealing with Russia and Ukraine” focus. As one who now teaches about this subject, I appreciate these efforts; they immensely help me and my students grapple with one of the thorniest chal- lenges America faces today. Thanks, FSJ ! George A. Krol U.S. ambassador, retired Middletown, Rhode Island Kudos Congratulations! The March FSJ is a great issue. All kudos to John Tefft. And having the companion piece by Dmitri LETTERS Trenin was a stroke of edito- rial genius! Nicholas A. Veliotes U.S. ambassador, retired McLean, Virginia Speaking Frankly Shortly after I retired, I was given a contract at the Foreign Service Institute to chair the three- week political tradecraft course. One of my innovations in the years that followed, and there were sev- eral, was to bring in from other countries pairs of young diplomats, whom I encoun- tered socially, introduce them and explain that I had instructed them to speak frankly about how they and their colleagues viewed U.S. diplomats, personally and professionally. “Not very well,” was always the answer. And they would gently explain that they found Americans intelligent and pleasant, and very interested in discussing what they knew and thought, but not really interested in the opinions of other diplo- mats. I was highly gratified by the reactions of my students, who found the presentations evocative and very useful. That part of the program ended with my contract. I am both impressed by and highly supportive of the Journal’ s broaching that approach [in the January-February focus on “How They See Us”] given its obvious but long-ignored utility. Ed Peck U.S. ambassador, retired Washington, D.C. Afghanistan: Correcting the Record The latest effort to bring peace to Afghanistan is unraveling with a negoti- ated cease-fire failing and contention within the Afghanistan government. This has encouraged bleak analyses portraying Afghanistan as inherently unstable and ungovernable. This assessment draws on four decades of chaos and war, which began with the 1979 Soviet invasion and occu- pation of Afghanistan and U.S. support for primarily fundamentalist Islamic resistance to the Soviets. Those fun- damentalist factions are the forebears of the Taliban and other elements that have battled U.S. forces since 2001. What many analysts, and U.S. policy- makers, ignore is that Afghanistan was a united nation for several centuries and defeated British colonial forces twice. More to the point, Afghanistan enjoyed a golden age of unity and prosperity through much of the 20th century. The Afghan king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, set his country on a modernizing course after World War II and, with a new constitution in 1964, established Afghanistan as a democratic monarchy with elections and respect for human rights. While women in conservative rural areas had very limited freedoms, in urban areas Afghan women enjoyed substantial freedoms, participating in the Afghan parliament and playing a prominent role in education. Crucially, Zahir Shah balanced the Cold War competitors, winning significant aid programs from both, and remained a popular monarch from his inauguration in 1933 to his overthrow in a coup in 1973. In the decade-long anti-Soviet “jihad,” the United States refused to