The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2011

Needed: A Professional Specialization in International Organization Affairs B Y E DWARD M ARKS S PEAKING O UT A mbassador Glyn T. Davies’ ar- ticle in the December issue of the Foreign Service Journal , “Wanted: Experienced Officers to Ad- dress Global Challenges,” persuasively explains the importance of multilateral diplomacy and the value to Foreign Service generalists of assignments to in- ternational organizations and agencies. I hope that many readers will take his advice to heart and bid on such postings. Still, his call verges on treat- ing such assignments as one-time post- ings—a 21st-century version of the old “take an excursion tour to see what the rest of the world looks like” approach. As such, it falls well short of what American career diplomats, the For- eign Service and the State Department must do to enhance our effectiveness in multilateral diplomacy, in general, and our performance at international organizations, in particular. Instead, the Foreign Service should be striving to establish a comprehen- sive, professional approach to the dis- cipline of multilateral diplomacy. Toward that end, what is needed is not merely a single tour for some offi- cers, but a career concentration for a significant number of FSOs. In other words, the Service needs to craft a pro- fessional career “area” specialization. It is true that much diplomatic ex- pertise translates from post to post, and multilateral assignments are no differ- ent from bilateral ones in that regard. And it is also true that no matter what kind of work they are doing, good offi- cers become knowledgeable well be- fore the end of the tour (especially if it lasts three years or longer). Acquiring Multilateral Expertise Nevertheless, one-off tours simply do not provide the concerned officer, nor the U.S. government, with real ex- pertise. No matter how skillful the in- dividual becomes, a good deal of that experience is lost, or filed away, simply because the officer only rarely gets an opportunity to use it in future assign- ments. For this reason, the Foreign Service has created both geographic and functional specializations, and pro- vided appropriate training, education and assignment patterns for each. The one-tour limitation is particu- larly characteristic of multilateral as- signments, where second tours are rare and where much of the experience ac- quired does not translate well to bilat- eral work. Certainly, at any one time a good number of our multilateral mis- sion staff should be “one-timers,” as is true in bilateral missions. But at the same time, there should be a core of ex- perienced officers with “local” back- ground and professional memory. One comforting aspect of this sug- gestion is that it does not require any fundamental change in the current sys- tem of five career tracks. These tracks (or “cones” if you wish) — consular, economic, management, political and public diplomacy — all represent pro- fessional perspectives in play at inter- national organizations. Every inter- national organization deals with those subjects daily, so country representa- tives require expertise in all of these subjects. For instance, there are many opportunities for management track of- ficers to represent the United States on various United Nations budget, man- agement and reform committees. But officers also require the “area expertise” of the specific organization as a sort of overlay to the track special- ization. For that reason, I would not recommend creating a sixth career International organization expertise would be an additional specialization — a sort of overlay to the officer’s main career track. J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 15