40 MAY 2024 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL 1973 1975 Barbara Tuchman: “Why Policy Makers Don’t Listen” No matter how much evidence was reported indicating that the collapse of the Kuomintang was only a matter of time, nothing could induce Washington to loose the silver cord tying us to Chiang Kai-shek nor rouse the policy-makers from what John Service then called an “indolent short-term expediency.” —From the historian’s Jan. 30, 1973, talk at AFSA’s event honoring the Foreign Service “China hands,” March 1973 FSJ. 1971 President Richard Nixon signs E.O. 11636, settling labor-management rules for the Foreign Service. 1973 AFSA wins representation elections at State, USIA, and USAID. The Thursday Luncheon Group of Black officers in foreign affairs agencies holds first meeting. The Fall of Saigon Service in Vietnam shaped a generation of Foreign Service officers, but do we understand how? … The FS experience, and in particular with the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support program, or CORDS, and its predecessor counterinsurgency efforts, was “expeditionary diplomacy” in all but name. —Shawn Dorman, editor in chief, April 2015 FSJ. It Didn’t Start with 9/11, It Didn’t Start with Tehran … In the eight weeks between mid-June and mid-August 1976, seven American government employees were murdered in foreign countries. … U.S. ambassadors have been killed in Guatemala, 1968; Sudan, 1973; Cyprus, 1974; and Lebanon, 1976. Terrorists have attacked American embassies in more than 30 countries during the past eight years. —David Fitzhugh, frequent FSJ contributor, February 1977 FSJ. 1972 State issues a policy on wives: “The wife of a Foreign Service employee who is with her husband at a foreign post is an individual, not a government employee.” 1974 FS personnel at USAID are brought into the FS retirement system. A reduction-in-force at USAID results in dismissal of hundreds of FS employees.
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