The Foreign Service Journal, May 2022

16 MAY 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL I t is important for the officer coming toWashington to know what he is. He is only occasionally the advocate, only in lim- ited doses the academic; on rare and stimulating occasions a policymaker, but he is none of these basically. Basically, to be successful, to be effective, and to give to the Secretary of State the kind of support he needs, the Foreign Service officer must be essentially a professional expert capable of analyzing a situation in an area, functional or geographic, and distilling the essence of problems and the alternatives which face us for the consideration of the higher levels of the Department and of the United States Government. In this definition there is wide scope for initiative, freedom of expression, and the courageous pursuit of that which an officer believes to be right. Such a role is distinguished, how- ever, by an intelligent recognition of the total environment, in which policy must be made and carried out; by recogni- tion of the pressures upon the higher echelons of the government; and by recognition that at some point the debate must stop and decisions must be made. … The man sitting across the table from an FSO in an interdepartmental meet- ing works for somebody else who rates his performance on a different, perhaps opposite, set of objectives than the FSO’s boss. The FSO’s job is to convince or to reconcile these opposing viewpoints in order to present to the ultimate decision-makers the most effective recommendations on dealing with an issue. —FSO David D. Newsom, then–Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, excerpted from his article of the same title in the May 1972 FSJ . 50 Years Ago KnowYour Environment (Or Bureaucratic Survival for Fun and Profit) Human Rights Council), two retired Foreign Service ambassadors (for Serbia and the U.N. Economic and Social Coun- cil) and seven senior officials, including the assistant secretaries for population, refugees, and migration (PRM), arms control, verification and compliance (AVC) and international security and nonproliferation (ISN), the ambassa- dor at large for global criminal justice, special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, and two USAID assistant administrators. Currently, seven senior positions at the Department of State have nominees who have yet to be confirmed. In addition, two positions do not yet have a nominee, including the position of under secretary of State for public affairs and public diplo- macy. State still has no one nominated to be inspector general. At USAID, four nominees remain unconfirmed and only one position lacks a nominee. The Director General of the Foreign Commercial Service and the CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media have yet to be confirmed, despite being nomi- nated a year ago. AFSA is currently tracking 61 ambas- sador vacancies across the globe, 28 of which have a nominee. Among the most high-profile vacancies are the United Kingdom, Italy, Australia, Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, South Africa, Ukraine and three of the five Nordic countries (only Finland and Sweden have confirmed ambassadors in place). Members can follow AFSA’s ambas- sador tracker for real-time updates at afsa. org/ambassadorlist. In a Jan. 31 letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Scott said he was placing holds on “all relevant State Department nominees” until President Joe Biden lifts the Pan American Health Organization’s legal immunity so it can be sued in U.S. courts by Cuban physicians who have allegedly been trafficked. Three Pillars of Diversity and Inclusion C hief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley wants to make the State Department a leader in governmentwide efforts to improve diversity and has developed three pillars to support her office’s efforts. In December 2021, Ambassador Aber- crombie-Winstanley announced that the Office of Diversity and Inclusion would focus on intentionality, or who isn’t being represented and why; transparency, col- lecting detailed data on the demograph- ics of the department’s workforce; and accountability, holding perpetrators of discrimination, harassment and retalia- tion accountable. “A State Department that looks like America will enhance our national security and better position us to handle the challenges of the 21st century,” Abercrombie-Winstanley said at the Senior Executives Association’s Federal