38 JUNE 2024 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Most studies on modernizing American diplomacy call for more officers and funding for the State Department, which aligns with our traditionally resource-intensive approach to foreign policy. Yet the perennial call for more resources can serve as a distraction from more cost-effective reforms. In coming years, it will be critical to find ways to enhance the Foreign Service—without relying on institutional expansion—for two reasons. First, the American public broadly believes we should freeze or cut our spending on foreign affairs, not increase it. Second, the department needs to adapt to a more competitive global landscape where our historical advantage in diplomatic budgets and personnel, relative to other powers, can no longer be taken for granted. While the U.S. may or may not have more military marching band members than diplomats, we greatly outnumber other countries’ foreign services—to give just one example, the U.S. has nearly as many personnel in Mission India as India has foreign service officers abroad. Competitors have learned to do more with less: the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs budget was roughly one-tenth the size of the State Department operations budget in 2022, but it is increasing rapidly—and the PRC already has 265 bilateral diplomatic missions around the world, compared to our 249 posts. FEATURE BY DARROW GODESKI MERTON Beyond Scale Three Steps Toward Modernizing the Foreign Service To honor the 100th birthday of the U.S. Foreign Service— and AFSA’s role as the “Voice of the Foreign Service”—the Journal held a writing competition for members with cash prizes. The topic: Looking ahead to the next century, describe the ideal Foreign Service, as an institution and a profession. We were thrilled to receive 65 submissions, and judging was challenging. Name-blind submissions were evaluated by a volunteer panel on the basis of originality, cogent and concise reasoning, clarity, and applicability. This essay, by Darrow Godeski Merton, won second place; first place was published in the May edition, and third place will appear in the July-August edition. We congratulate Mr. Godeski Merton and extend sincere thanks to our judges. —The FSJ Team In that spirit, here are three suggestions to make the Foreign Service more effective, dollar for dollar, officer for officer. Train for Functional Job Skills, Hire for Language State is currently expanding the Foreign Service Institute, aiming to more closely match the training float that the Department of Defense enjoys. But how much we train is not nearly as important as what we train. Today, many FSOs can count the time they spent in language training in years and the functional training in weeks. This is backward, as it plays against one of our great national strengths—a deep pool of linguistic talent—while neglecting our institutional weaknesses. State lags behind other diplomatic services in functional job training, both in terms of learning basic tradecraft as well as specialty topics like technology and energy diplomacy. Outside of FSI’s standout Econ Course, opportunities for officers to dive deep into practice areas are scarce. Given these gaps—and the increasingly specialized nature of many job portfolios—it is paradoxical that we allocate the bulk of our limited training time to language study. Consider that for virtually any language, from Russian to Tagalog to Swahili, the U.S. already has tens of thousands of citizens whose fluency far surpasses what most FSOs can attain FSJ Writing Competition 2nd Place Winner
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