The Foreign Service Journal, June 2006

J U N E 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 49 FSJ: So there has not been a decline in the number of applicants over the past three years? WRP: In fact, the latest numbers are that 30,000 people sign up for the annual written exam and about 20,000 take it. Between 3,000 and 3,500 pass and go through our oral assessment. This is in order to get to a core group of 450 to 500 new Foreign Service officers each year. So we’re still getting a very large number of applicants. FSJ: In the 1990s, the Foreign Service had trouble retain- ing people in their 30s and 40s who were hitting their prime. What is the retention rate nowadays for people in this category? WRP: We did a study of people who came in roughly between 1982 and 1986. The ones who came in dur- ing, let’s say, 1985 and 1986 had been in about 10 years by the mid-1990s. [This group] had the worst retention rates. We can only reason from hind- sight, but many of them must have thought the department wasn’t going to get the resources [from Congress]; they were not going to have the advancement opportunities; they were going to be stuck in place for a long time. We’ve had a higher than usual loss for those people. If they stayed, they’ve all done fine. But we did have a higher loss. So if we were making the argument to the public, to the Congress, we could easily say that it’s very clear that when the department is under-resourced, we lose our best people. They lose hope. One way of keeping our best people is to give adequate resources to the State Department. And that’s why I think, looking at what’s happened over the last five years, you can say that our retention rate is very high. Our attrition rate is still very low even for younger officers who obviously are adjusting to the Service and sometimes are serving in the most difficult places. It is certainly lower than for the Civil Service and is one of the lowest loss rates of any [agency] in the federal service. FSJ: Another problem in the 1990s was the poor state of many embassies around the world. WRP: Embassies were run down. Consulates were closed. The USIA press centers and points of access to the public were closed. People wanted a dividend from the end of the ColdWar. It was a huge mistake. I can remember that when we opened our first embassy in Albania, it [consisted of] two unheated hotel rooms. In Armenia [in the early 1990s] Richard Armitage was sent on an [earthquake] relief operation to the Caucasus and was given the only heater in the embassy so he could have a good night’s sleep. [Recently] the head of the Office of Building Operations, Gen. [Charles] Williams, has done a magnificent job of get- ting the embassies and posts on line. [But] we still have a lot of facilities that by textbook standards are still not secure enough. We’re working hard to make them as safe as we can make them. FSJ: I understand posts in China will be getting 10 addi- tional officers under Sec. Rice’s Global Repositioning Initia- tive. WRP: There will be a more than 20-percent increase in officers in the substantive areas there: political, economic, cultural, public affairs. I think you could say that for many of the countries affected, it is in the neighborhood of a 20-percent increase in the staffing for those criti- cal responsibilities. Just from a demo- graphic standpoint, by the middle of the 21st century, the combined popu- lations of North America and Europe will represent 10 percent of the world population. Another group of 15 to 25 coun- tries are in the process of trying to reach the level of the mod- ern industrial democracies. So to make that success most likely, you have to put your assets into those areas. If you were a company, that’s certainly where you would put your sales force or business development force or strategic plan- ning people to concentrate on that deal. And diplomacy is a little like any other business. That’s almost an inevitable kind of logic because the world has changed. FSJ: Where are these 15 to 25 countries? Are they most- ly in Asia? WRP: No, they are scattered all around. Obviously China; also India, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan. [These are places] where there are going to be enormous changes in the next 25 to 40 years. Therefore, this is where we are going to have to be present. FSJ: Generally, is there less reporting and analysis out of embassies today, so that you can focus more on outreach? WRP: The news is transmitted almost as it happens nowa- days. And there is no requirement at all in embassies any more to report if [news is] carried back by media instantly. In many cases there are other things that don’t have to be reported, either: trends and things that are reported com- mercially or online or easily with the slightest bit of research. So embassies are going to end up doing more in-depth reflection on trends and [U.S.] interests and providing “value It’s very clear that when the department is under-resourced, we lose our best people. They lose hope.