The Foreign Service Journal, June 2016

16 JUNE 2016 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Dissent: No Easy Answers I t would be hard to find a Foreign Service officer who has not at some time disagreed with his superiors on policy—its direction or the manner of its execution. Usu- ally, if the decision goes against him, he shrugs his shoul- ders and does as he is told, solacing himself, perhaps, with some muttered comments on the obtuseness of the master minds back in Washington—or, if he happens to be in Washington, of those upstairs. But there are occasions when an officer finds that he cannot shrug it off. He is still not persuaded that higher authority is right and he is wrong. What then is he to do? One of the options is ignoring instructions and doing what you think is right. Unfortunately, this option is one few career officers will wish to exercise, or would be able to get away with for any length of time. Occasionally, though, when dissent involves tactics rather than strategy, one can get away with something that the high command might not have approved had it been consulted, but is con- strained to accept as a fait accompli. There is a certain amount of stretch in even the most tightly-written instruction, and it cannot provide for every possible contingency. Modern communications and the peripatetic habits of the top brass have tended to reduce the ‘plenipotentiary” in an ambassador’s title to a rueful irony. But there are still times when he can and must act without awaiting wisdom from on high. Events are moving too rapidly to permit his seeking instructions. He may be secretly grateful; he is not altogether confident that Wash- ington’s appraisal of the situation, from three to 10,000 miles away, is more accurate than his own close-up view. He can, of course, resign. There are distinguished precedents: William Jennings Bryan; Anthony Eden at the time of Munich; more recently—and more apposite to our discussion—George F. Kennan. For obvious reasons it has been exercised more often by non-career officials than by career men. …The career officer, on the other hand, has a deeper commitment and a greater stake. By mid-career he has invested 10 to 20 years in the Foreign Service. …If he resigns, how is he going to support his family and put the children through college? Thus practical consider- ations reinforce his reluctance to leave the Service that he entered with so much zeal and idealism. Moreover, a couple of decades have taught him that policy directives, country papers, even NSC documents, are not carved in obsid- ian, unchangeable as the laws of the Medes and the Per- sians. Is he not in a better position to work for a change in policy if he remains within the organization than if he leaves it and takes his case to the people? Provided this is not mere rationalization of timidity, the decision to stay on, even while dissenting, can be a per- fectly honorable one. But it carries with it the obligation to go on fighting, to reiterate one’s dissent at every opportu- nity, as stoutly and persuasively as one can. It is asking much of a career officer to accept such risks. The temptation is strong to temporize, to equivo- cate, to conform. Critics of our Foreign Service have charged that for at least a decade our political report- ing was diluted and emasculated by the memory of the McCarthy terror. The temptation is strong, but it should be resisted. And there is a corollary obligation upon the high command to tolerate rather than to penalize dissent. There are no easy answers. There is rarely an easy answer to any question really worth asking. It is the obliga- tion of every officer to contribute what he can to finding the right answer, or at any rate the best answer in the circumstances, even if it means taking an unpopular posi- tion. Beyond that, what he does rests with the ultimate authority—conscience. n —Excerpted from “The Dilemma of Dissent” by Ted Olson, FSJ , June 1966. 50 Years Ago