The Foreign Service Journal, June 2005

RL : I believe the Foreign Service has been doing much better at that, with the help obviously of the State Department and the White House, because I think at all levels of our government there’s recognition that not only the intelligentsia must have some knowledge of what diplomats do and how important they are, but also the American public as a whole must have something more than anecdotal material. But it’s part and p a rcel, I think, of our entire public diplomacy problem. Diplomacy is often thought of as how we’re going to present the better face of America to other countries, or gain their good will as they learn more about us and so forth. But I think the public diplo- macy issue with regard to the American public is almost equally important, so that people who are involved in the Foreign Service are not perceived as folks who are some- how divorced from the realities of American life or leading some privi- leged existence in some exotic locale. I think one way this can be done is by attempting to show the career pos- sibilities of public service in this form to talented young Americans. Some of that is succeeding because, as I was told a couple of years ago by Sec. Powell, the number of college stu- dents applying to take the Foreign Service examination has been increas- ing exponentially. And, of course, the great tragedy was that for two or three years back in the 1990s no exam at all was given, despite laments and p rotests from people like myself, sim- ply because of the devastating budget attrition in the 150 Account, not only for the State Department but for our foreign aid. So the change was a real victory. Again, this is all part and par- cel of getting into the educational sys- tem some idea that not everybody may want to serve in this capacity as a Foreign Service officer, but it’s a pre t- ty exciting career. And as people begin to think about that, even if they don’t adopt that, they will have, it seems to me, a much more enlight- ened view of what people who are doing the job are actually doing. FSJ : As during the Cold War, since the 9/11 attacks the U.S. has repeatedly found itself compelled to cultivate relations with authoritarian regimes which do not necessarily share our values in order to conduct the war on terrorism. How can the U.S. find an appropriate balance between helping such countries to promote human rights, democratiza- tion, and a free market while also working closely with them on military and security issues when that is in our interest? RL : I think we do so through very thoughtful diplomacy as we gain the confidence of leaders in our common battle against terrorism. Those lead- ers at some point also understand that the rest of the world around them is changing, and that they are going to need a good friend in the United States if those changes are going to be made incrementally, progressively and successfully, without total disrup- tion of the body politic of their coun- tries. It’s a situation in which obvious- ly Sec. Rice is now heavily involved in Southeast Asian diplomacy. Her recent trip manifested that, and she wants to talk a great deal more about that with senators, she’s told me as she’s called from various places, because it’s something we all need to get up to speed on. How, for example, in the case of Pakistan and India, to take the dra- matic example there, do we work with both of those countries that have very different levels of democracy present- ly? They both have nuclear weapons, and Kashmir between them, and a lot of other problems. They also have interlocking relationships with the Chinese. Our general attitude has been to extol the advent of democra- cy, the progress in both cases, on the basis of greater openness, trust and accountability on the part of the lead- ership to the publics of each country. Or to take another example: I was struck when I went to Uzbekistan on a Nunn-Lugar mission to take a look at how they were winding up a chem- ical and biological [weapons research] situation and getting into legitimate pursuits. President [Islam] Karimov sort of appropriated my trip and took me for a plane ride to Samarkand to tell me his side of the story. That took about three hours, but it was a very interesting story and was important for me to hear. Without making any brief for the Uzbek leader, who has all the prob- lems in the world there, the fact is that just makes my point. Here’s a person who understands that the world is changing and that friendship with the United States is very important if Uzbekistan is going to make it through that transition without chaos and difficulty. He wants our sympa- thy because he thinks he is dealing with some young people who would take Uzbekistan back to the 7th cen- 24 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 5 “Weapons of mass destruction may show up in all kinds of places, but some governments want to voluntarily work with us to destroy them and even go beyond that to help reform their military.”