The Foreign Service Journal, June 2008

o ensure that the Foreign Service is capable of conducting America’s increasingly complex and multidimensional diplomatic relations and helping to solve the key national security and foreign pol- icy challenges confronting the country, the Department of State must move beyond its traditional way of manag- ing careers by implementing structural changes to encourage and reward functional policy expertise. Throughout this article, I use that term to refer to the types of issues handled by bureaus and offices without a conal or geographic affiliation, such as the Office of the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security (T), the Office of the Under Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs (G), the Bureau of International Organization Affairs (IO) and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR). (See p. 40 for a more complete list of State functional policy bureaus and offices that lack a conal or geographic affiliation.) I advocate this shift in perspective not as an FSO, but as a former member of the Senior Executive Service in the Office of the Secretary of Defense who has spent more than 37 years in federal service, most of it handling arms control, nonproliferation and verification issues. I am also a former participant in the State Department’s Senior Seminar. Although I have never been a Foreign Service officer, over the course of my career I have known and worked with many excellent FSOs. The vast majority were regional experts, and I learned a great deal from them about the politics and cultures of capitals as diverse as Moscow, Kuala Lumpur, Brasilia and Pretoria. However, during the Cold War, with a few notable exceptions, I rarely saw a career member of the Foreign Service in a leadership role on the delegations that nego- tiated the nuclear arms control and risk-reduction treaties with the Soviet Union. Indeed, our teams main- ly consisted of civil servants from State, Defense and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, as well as intel- ligence analysts and military officers. This disparity persisted after the fall of the Soviet F O C U S O N T H E F S P E R S O N N E L S Y S T E M R EWARDING F UNCTIONAL P OLICY E XPERTISE S TRUCTURAL CHANGES TO ENCOURAGE SERVICE IN FUNCTIONAL POLICY OFFICES WILL HELP THE F OREIGN S ERVICE MEET THE CHALLENGES OF THE 21 ST CENTURY . B Y S ALLY K. H ORN T Sally K. Horn, a retired member of the Senior Executive Service, is now a senior adviser to the assistant secretary of the Bureau of Verification, Compliance and Imple- mentation. She wishes to thank the following T Family FSO Steering Group members for their advice and assis- tance in preparing this article: Eric Andersen, Bessy Bray, Thomas Cynkin, Timothy Sears, Barry Sternberger and Yvette Wong. However, the views expressed in this article are those of the author only, and do not necessari- ly reflect those of the U.S. Department of State or the U.S. government. 36 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 8