The Foreign Service Journal, June 2017

42 JUNE 2017 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL needed to succeed. That is a nice way of saying we fielded some duds, which was sometimes worse than not fielding anyone. Added to the challenge of finding qualified FSOs to bid on these jobs is the fact that POLAD service is not seen as career- enhancing—an open secret that was underscored in 2013 in an unfortunate, pre-EER season DG cable that lumped those assignments together with academic training or diplomat-in- residence positions as akin to taking a year off. All good things do come to an end. By the time U.S forces withdrew from Iraq at the end of 2011, a new high point had been reached in FSO-military engagement. Concomitantly, however, influence with the military receded rapidly because we failed to lock in a sustainable level of interaction. With up-or-out personnel systems common to both the military and the Foreign Service, the cohort of people with experience in working with their respective services is shrinking and not being replenished. Today the only places where rising FSOs can develop lasting relationships with military counterparts are either in POLAD assignments or in the military’s senior service schools, where only a dozen or so FSOs spend a year. That adds up to about 100 FSOs per year, a fraction of the size of the Service, in mean- ingful interaction with the military. Today, astonishingly, not all of the U.S. division and corps headquarters rotating in and out of Iraq, Kuwait and Jordan have been assigned FSO POLADs. Nor have the smaller units operating inside Iraq or Syria, or those going to Europe as part of our European Reassurance Initiative for allies con- cerned about Russian intentions. What State Can Do Now If the State Department wants to claw back some of the turf it has ceded to the military, it is going to have to dig deep to find the positions and people to deploy with the military and to foster an organizational climate that encourages and rewards its people for investing a year or two to serve with the military’s current and future leaders. I would recommend the following specific actions: • Build relationships in advance—the center of gravity for State-DOD interaction is with the geographic and functional combatant commands, the partnered State National Guard and the Army division assigned as the regionally aligned force. Every chief of mission should visit the division headquarters that covers his or her country, as well as the adjutant general of their country’s partnered State National Guard, before leav- ing Washington. Make a call on the combatant commander a priority during the first 100 days at post. • The State Department should prioritize recruiting senior officers who still have five to 10 years left on active duty to serve as deputy commanders in the three combatant commands that have them (EUCOM, AFRICOM and SOUTHCOM) and as POLADs at all combatant commands; those who do well should be prioritized for onward chief- of-mission or geographic bureau leadership positions. • Recruit, train and deploy FS-2s and FS-3s who were recently high- ranked by promotion boards to serve with every task force, division and corps-level headquarters that operates in combat operations. • Invite combatant commanders to provide input to COM evaluations; this will give ambassadors incentive to develop productive relationships and influence. • Re-establish the flag/general officer deputy assistant sec- retary position in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. • Double the number of FSOs attending the military’s mid- and senior-level service schools; give priority to FSOs who have served as POLADs or in other positions with the military. • Make joint service with the military a bonus in consid- eration for promotion and a prerequisite for assignment to leadership (DCM and COM) positions. n Those FSOs and Civil Service professionals serving alongside division and brigade command staffs generated high regard for American diplomats among their comrades-in-uniform. We could knock off all the ISIL and Boko Haram this afternoon; but by the end of the week…those ranks would be filled… Many people, especially those in uniform, have said we can’t kill our way to victory here…The short answer is no, we cannot [win the war without soft power]. —General Thomas Waldhauser, Commander, U.S. Africa Command, March 9, 2017