The Foreign Service Journal, June 2021

16 JUNE 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL 50 Years Ago Embassies and Ambassadors T raditionally, ambassadorships in many U.S. missions abroad had been viewed by the party in power as polit- ical plums with which to reward its most generous cam- paign contributors. This practice was hard to defend even in the relatively quiet past when our involvement in world affairs was marginal. In a world buffeted by unpredictable new political forces, the choice of ambassadors on this basis would be totally irresponsible. I had discussed with Kennedy the need to strengthen our overseas missions and found that he shared my views. Although Kennedy naturally left the door open to make a few appointments on personal grounds, he and to some extent even Rusk agreed that recruiting a new breed of envoy should be at the top of our agenda; I was given primary responsibility for recruitment. … I decided that the abilities of all Foreign Service offi- cers qualified for ambassadorial posts should be carefully reviewed. This review should include outstanding employ- ees of the United States Information Agency and the Agency for International Development, which, while closely associated with the State Department, had previ- ously been bypassed in regard to ambassadorial appoint- ments.We needed to place particular emphasis, I thought, on the younger officers. At that time no one under fifty held the rank of career minister or career ambassador. (I once startled President Kennedy by remarking that under the existing Foreign Service promotional system the highest grade he could expect to achieve at his age, forty-three, was an FSO-3, a little more than halfway up the promotional lad- der.) —Excerpted from an article by the same title by former Ambassador Chester Bowles in the June 1971 FSJ . The OIG recommended that the Office of the Legal Adviser update its guidance to the Office of the Secretary on the use of department funds to pay for gifts to U.S. citizens and the use of department employees to arrange personal dinners and entertainment. It said the Bureau of Diplomatic Security should update its Protection Handbook to include examples of what to do when agents receive inappropriate requests for tasks of a personal nature. The OIG report also recommended that the Under Secretary of Manage- ment issue guidance on what employees should do when they are asked to do personal tasks for someone. The State Department concurred with OIG’s three recommendations. Pompeo blasted the report in a state- ment. “Every American should fear that their government can traffic in lies and deception in order to smear themand ruin their reputation because they disagree with their political positions,” he said. U.S. Troops Will Withdraw from Afghanistan P resident Joe Biden announced on April 14 that the United States will withdraw remaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan by Sept. 11, two decades after the United States went to war there to root out al-Qaida. “It’s time to end the forever war,” Biden said. “I’m now the fourth United States president to preside over Ameri- can troop presence in Afghanistan: two Republicans, two Democrats. I will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth.” On April 15, Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and other Afghan leaders in Kabul, and said U.S. support for the wartorn country will continue even after Sept. 11. “I wanted to demonstrate with my visit the ongoing commitment of the United States,” Secretary Blinken told President Ghani. “The partnership is changing, but the partnership itself is enduring.” Secretary Blinken said the United States will continue to pay the salaries of Afghan security forces, support Afghani- stan’s counterterrorism abilities and pro- vide substantial development assistance. Many in Afghanistan expressed anxi- ety over the U.S. decision to withdraw. “My views are very pessimistic,” said Naheed Farid, an Afghan parliament member who chairs a committee on women’s issues and met with Secretary Blinken. “No matter how you slice it, the withdrawal announcement will be hard for many Afghans to accept. There’s no way to sugarcoat a policy decision that’s quite likely to worsen instability in a country that has been at war for 40 years,” Michael Kugelman, an Afghan scholar at the Wilson Center, told The Washington Post . In testimony before the Senate Intel- ligence Committee on April 14, CIA Director William Burns said the with- drawal comes with “significant risk” of a resurgence of terrorism in the region.