The Foreign Service Journal, June 2023

18 JUNE 2023 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL A Tech Expert at Every Embassy J ust one year after its creation, the State Department’s Bureau of Cyber- space and Digital Policy is working to put a trained cyber and digital officer in every embassy around the world by the end of 2024. At an April 12 event hosted byThe George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, the bureau’s ambassador at large, Nathaniel Fick, said the Foreign Service created a new skill code for personnel who work on cyber, digital, and emerging tech issues to elevate the skill set across the workforce. “If a Foreign Service officer spends a couple of years in a designated technol- ogy tour, he or she gets credit for that in their record. That’s the first step towards incentivizing people to seek out these jobs,” Fick said. He said the new skill code demon- strates the cross-cutting role cybersecurity and emerging tech have in other policy areas, and could potentially serve as a core competency for senior leadership roles in the future. “I can imagine a future where every credible candidate to be a chief of mission, every future U.S. ambassador anywhere in the world, has to have some demonstrated understanding of technology issues, and a willingness to engage on that,” he added. remain closed through the end of the 2023-2024 school year and said it is “con- sidering our next steps in terms of clarity on what would be required to return to operations in the future.” AAS was founded in Moscow in 1949 by the U.S., U.K., and Canadian embassies, but it also teaches local Rus- sian students and students from expatri- ate families. The purpose-built campus in the northwest part of Moscow has been in operation since 2000. The smaller St. Petersburg branch of the school was forced to close in 2018 when Russian authorities declined to renew the school’s lease. That decision was made shortly after multiple Russian diplomats were expelled from the U.S. and U.K. in response to the poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in London. One former AAS teacher, Marc Fogel, has been in Russian prison since August 2021, when he was arrested for possess- ing medical marijuana; he is currently serving a sentence of 14 years in a Rus- sian penal colony. Too Many Vacancies A s an April 4 op-ed in The Washing- ton Post noted, too many crucial positions remain unfilled by the current administration well into its third year. Despite laudable progress in nomina- tions in the face of obstructive senators, many posts—such as Italy—still have no nominee on the horizon. The solution, writes the paper’s edito- rial board, would be a structural over- haul of how confirmations are handled: decreasing the number of nominees who require votes and changing Senate rules to require that lawmakers guarantee confirmation hearings to presidential nominees within a short, fixed period after their nominations. Since our last update in the March FSJ , the pace of confirmation has slowed to barely a trickle: Only three nominees have been confirmed since January. They are career FSO Michael Ratney to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia, political appointee Eric Garcetti to be ambas- sador to India, and political appointee Richard Verma to be Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources. Nominations have come at a much healthier clip. Since the beginning of the year, 16 career members of the U.S. Foreign Service have been nominated for ambassadorships to Micronesia, Djibouti, Albania, Georgia, Lebanon, Laos, Gabon, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Palau, Lithuania, Egypt, Liberia, Soma- lia, Burundi, and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Three political appointees have been nominated for the positions of Under Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy, special envoy for North Korean Human Rights, and Ambassador at Large for Arctic Affairs. As of mid-April, AFSA is tracking 29 ambassador vacancies, 14 of which have a nominee. The Biden administration has nominated 106 career members of the Foreign Service versus 67 political appointees—a ratio of 61.3 percent to 38.7 percent. The people who work for the State Department are this different class. They’re for the country in all senses; they give up their entire life. They usually speak multiple languages, and they’re positioned all over the world. … They’re the first ones in, before any soldiers, before any boots on the ground, and they’re the last to leave. It’s a really fascinating job that many people just don’t know about. —Keri Russell, lead actress in the Netflix series “The Diplomat,” in an April 11 interview on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” Contemporary Quote