The Foreign Service Journal, June 2016

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2016 41 more than 2,500 policy studies of varying lengths, supporting current and future policymaking in the department. (The public website, mentioned above, includes not only FRUS content, but draws on many of these studies to provide institutional history and other policy material.) A decade ago, historians with regional portfo- lios established an ambassadorial briefing pro- gram to bring the lessons of diplomatic history to new Foreign Service officers as part of the A-100 orientation curriculum. The Historian’s Office also has a longstanding oral his- tory program that aims to build historical repositories on key foreign policy events, such as the Arab Spring uprisings and the 2014 Afghan elections crisis, before the documents are lost and participants’ firsthand recollections fade. Central to it all is the guidance provided to policymakers at State and in the broader national security community on events and issues of the most recent three decades. Occasional history emergencies notwith- standing (new Secretaries of State have called on the office for studies of their predecessors’ initial months on the job or the role of special envoys and representatives), the need for historical analysis is not limited to the top of the organiza- tional chart. Most weeks find the office providing just-in-time history to bureaus and officers from all corners of HST and the globe. On one recent warm spring day the historians were at work on these requests: • The National Security Council called with a query on visits by foreign leaders, drawing on information continually updated by a staff historian who also maintains a compilation of the travels of the president and secretary and of all principal officers and chiefs of mission. • A FRUS historian with expertise in Western Europe put the finishing touches on “A Historical Study of the ‘Special Rela- tionship’ Between the United States and the United Kingdom,” while other geographic experts worked on bureau-solicited papers ranging from “Leaving Mogadishu: U.S. Policy toward Somalia in 1990” and “The Reagan Administration’s Strategy to Counter Soviet Disinformation, September–October 1983.” • To move a major project combing oral and documentary history forward, a two- person teammined old files on Israeli-Pales- tinian negotiations for a history of the Middle East peace process under George W. Bush. • Preparing for a session with the incom- ing A-100 class, a historian supplemented the 1938 Vienna consular simulation exercise— How would you have implemented department guidance aimed at stemming the tide of would- be immigrants in pre-WWII Austria?—with material related to later refugee outflows from the Balkans, the Great Lakes (Africa) and the Middle East. • The office provided advice to an inquiring deputy chief of mission about identifying possible records of historical value related to the Ebola crisis and how to work with Administration Bureau records managers to preserve them. • In addition to requests for policy research, the historian staffing the history@state.gov mailbox fielded short-termmicro-taskers from the Secretary’s speechwriters, consulates and embassies, academics and journalists, in addition to responding to a sixth-grader hoping the Historian’s Office could email his questions to Henry Kissinger. Tapping the Mother Lode Why is it so important to know about State’s Historian’s Office? For current foreign affairs practitioners, it offers valuable histori- cal background. Few offices have an employee who can remember, for example, the most contentious issues in a round of United Nations negotiations 10 years ago; fewer still have the time or resources to gather this critical informa- tion before the next round starts. For researchers at all levels and in all locations, FRUS provides a mother lode of declassi- fied government documents that would otherwise require a trip to a federal depository library, as well as historical diplomatic information of record through history.state.gov . And for the American people, the Historian’s Office deliv- ers one of the benefits of responsible, democratic government: the transparency needed to interpret the past in support of informed policy decisions today. n