The Foreign Service Journal, June 2014

56 JUNE 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL AFSA NEWS Revision of FAM Regulations on Public Speaking and Writing Many members enjoy speaking and writing in a professional and personal capacity. (Have you thought about contributing to The Foreign Service Journal ?) Developing these skills is important to an employee’s professional development (see promo- tion precepts). AFSA is particularly interested in protecting the employee’s ability to do so in a private capacity. For more than a year AFSA has been negotiating a revision to the current Foreign Affairs Manual regulations governing public speaking and writing (3 FAM 4170). As mentioned in our 2013 Annual Report, our focus has been to accommodate the rise of social media and protect the employee’s ability to publish. We have emphasized the importance of a State Department response to clearance requests within a defined period of time (30 days or less). For those items requiring interagency review, our goal is to increase transparency, communication and oversight. We look forward to finalizing the negotiations on the FAM chapter soon—stay tuned for its release. n AFSA BOOK NOTES The Importance of Diplomacy in the Information Age On April 29, AFSA welcomed retired Ambassador Lau- rence Pope to speak about his new book, The Demilitar- ization of American Diplo- macy: Two Cheers for Striped Pants (Palgrave Pivot, 2014). Both in that volume and his prepared remarks at AFSA headquarters, Amb. Pope viv- idly described what he sees as the growing marginalization of the State Department and its Foreign Service. Among several trends converging to intensify those problems, according to Pope, are the downgrading of pro- fessional diplomats in favor of non-career appointees, and the migration of policy functions to the White House and the National Security Council staff. The ambassador also deplored the growing vogue within State for elevating networking with civic and nongovernmental actors, at the expense of dealing with nation-states. All these trends are reflected in the 240-page report issued following the 2010 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, which only mentions the Foreign Service a few times. Amb. Pope expressed the hope that the new QDDR pro- cess, now underway, will do a better job of empowering the career Foreign Service to deal with the world as it is, utiliz- ing creative government-to- with his enthusiastic audi- ence. He wryly noted that he had few solutions to offer, but hoped that there was value in asking the questions. During his 31-year Foreign Service career (1969-2000), Laurence Pope served as U.S. ambassador to Chad from 1993 to 1996 among other senior posi- tions. From 2012 to 2013, he served as chargé d’affaires in Tripoli. He is also the author o f Letters (1694–1700) of François de Callières to the Mar- quis d’Huxelles (Edwin Mellen Press, 2004). To view the event online, please go to www.afsa.org/ video. n –Steven Alan Honley, Contributing Editor Ambassador Laurence Pope, speaking at AFSA on April 29. government diplomacy. Following his presenta- tion, Amb. Pope engaged in an extensive Q-and-A session NEWS BRIEF ÁSGEIRSIGFÚSSON