The Foreign Service Journal, May 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2022 33 Then I moved up to role-play chief of mission, deputy chief of mission or POLAD for higher-level exercises. There are five of these exercises annually, and they normally occur at the unit’s home post, which may be anywhere from South Korea to Germany or across the United States. Due to my interaction with senior Army commanders and other interagency role-player veterans of these exercises, I started getting requests from other defense contractors to support special operations forces, U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Air Force. In the last three, my duties range from providing instruction (Embassy 101) to officers and units getting ready, or having to be ready, to deploy and work with an American embassy, to replicating an actual embassy. Sometimes I go for just two or three days, sometimes up to three weeks. In 2021, I flewmore than 50 segments with United Airlines and logged 110 nights in hotels. I also support one of the American geographic combat- ant commands (think CENTCOM, SOUTHCOM, EUCOM or INDOPACOM) for very high-level exercises. Duties start with helping to sketch out the scenario and rollout, and then script- ing. We draft authentic-looking embassy cables, news releases and other documents that replicate the environment in which the military has to operate. We are then present when the exercise takes place, sometimes to role-play one of the embassies the military has to deal with, at other times to dynamically replicate the information and message flow as the exercise plays out. On a separate track, I was also recruited by name as a “highly qualified expert” or senior mentor for a one-week annual planning exercise conducted at the Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. And West Point invited me to be a co-chair at its annual Student Conference on United States Affairs. Both of these affiliations only lasted for two years, but they were profession- ally rewarding. I was also asked to serve on a National Defense University workshop examining risks to the Baltics, which led to interactions with the Army’s Foreign Area Officer Association. All of the above helped widen my network and led to new employ- ment opportunities, including a new track to work with NATO. Semper Gumby! One thing to consider in working with the military is that it doesn’t last forever, and one must be adaptable. Semper Gumby (Always Flexible) is an unofficial motto in the military. Case in point: I wrote this piece in December 2021. At that time, my work calendar for January through June was packed. Because of Ukraine, nearly every gig was canceled or postponed, a good example of one of my “laws of the Foreign Service”—no job is certain until you get off the airplane. Contracts end or get modified, senior military leaders move on and new ones have new ideas—and one’s relevance has a sell-by date. The longer you have been retired, the less value you bring. Hence, defense contractors are constantly looking for Larry Butler, at right, on a training exercise at Fort Irwin in California in September 2017, role- playing the head of a small diplomatic mission in a fictitious country, Atropia. Col. Jay Miseli, at left, commander of the 2nd Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Division, was charged with defeating an invading enemy force while interacting with the mission and local civilian leaders (also role players). COURTESYOFLARRYBUTLER