The Foreign Service Journal, June 2017

overall readiness of the nation for international emergencies, as well as Cold War situations. This year 149 students, including 27 civilians, of whom three are Foreign Service officers, are engaged in making this analysis. By June 1961, they will have heard some 200 lectures on the national security, viewed in its military, diplomatic and economic aspects; each will have prepared a written thesis on a personally selected aspect of national security policy; and all will have worked together in small seminar groups to develop an agreed solution to a major “final problem” arising out of the major types of international conflict situations facing the United States. In addition to the lectures and student research program, the course of studies at the College includes visits to military and industrial areas within the United States as well as a pro- gram of visits to selected foreign countries. … For the civilian student taking the resident course, and particularly for the Foreign Service officer, the lectures by the Defense Department officials on international problems are often challenging and stimulating, representing as they sometimes do, a different but always thoughtful emphasis of the American military and diplomatic posture. One of the most impressive features of these presentations is that they rarely seem to represent the thinking of that stereotype, “the military mind.” Instead, they are almost always characterized by an integrated view of all of the factors—military, economic, social and political—that constitute the equation of national security. The encouragement of this integrated approach to national policy is the most important objective of the College. … Insofar as the Department of State is concerned, the greatest impact of the College on matters of immediate concern to the department is, of course, through the regular 10-month course at Fort McNair. Here, in excellent surroundings that would be difficult to duplicate in the Washington area, senior military officers and selected civilian officials are given an opportunity to stand back and appraise the posture of the United States in the world today. During those 10 months, every effort is made to stimulate creative thought and understanding on the part of students regarding the complex problems of national security without regard to service or departmental requirements or positions— only the national interest. … n D ecember 1960: Education For the National Security BY JAMES J . BLAKE The late Ambassador James J. Blake retired from the Foreign Service in 1981 after a 34-year career during which he served overseas in Brussels, Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Tripoli, as well as Reykjavík, where he was U.S. ambassador. In Washington, he served as deputy assistant secretary for African affairs and on the Army staff in the Pentagon as a political-military officer concerned with strategic planning, among other assignments. He graduated from the In- dustrial College of the Armed Forces in 1961 and earned a master’s degree fromThe George Washington University in 1962. This excerpt is from his December 1960 FSJ article, which did not include an author biographical note. O ne of the most important develop- ments in foreign policy since World War II has been its general recasting into the mold of national security. Today few significant areas of Ameri- ca’s foreign relations are without their national security aspects: regional alliances, foreign aid, the status of forces and trade policy come most readily to mind, but there are others. The result is that the military, economic and political components of our foreign relations today are far more closely associated than was ever the case before World War II. Similarly, our own policies and actions in the fields of eco- nomics, science and civil defense—to name only a few—have come to have an important bearing on our international pos- ture. In such changed circumstances the comprehensive study of national security problems by senior military educational institutions has become of increasing interest to the Depart- ment of State and the Foreign Service. Evidence of this enhanced interest was the appointment for the first time in 1959 of a State Department Representative and Foreign Affairs Adviser to the Commandant of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. The appointment was in recogni- tion of the fact that the College had become, since its establish- ment in 1948 in Washington, D. C., one of the most important senior military educational institutions. … Throughout the 10 months of its resident course, a searching and critical analysis is made by its students, who are generally in the grade of colonel or Navy captain and are drawn from among the highest qualified officers of the four Services, of the FROM THE FSJ ARCHIVE 30 JUNE 2017 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL