The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2013

24 JULY-AUGUST 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL tacular, fascinating or inspiring, at least for the people at large, in the business of diplomacy.” Ethics for the Individual Diplomat While diplomats do many of the same things most bureau- crats do, they also perform, collectively and individually, the additional defining functions of official communicator and interpreter between the external and internal worlds of a given nation-state. This gives diplomacy and diplomats a Janus-like character, since they are responsible not only for transmitting official messages and reporting the responses, but also for describing and interpreting the environment even before the message is prepared, as well as interpreting the responses. The obligation of the career public servant as an agent is made more complicated in the case of the diplomat because the agent-principal rela- tionship takes two forms. Internally, within the bureaucracy, the diplo- mat represents his or her agency. Externally, the diplomat is the agent for the government as a whole. Diplomacy as a govern- ment activity is marked by this peculiar attribute. The job also has an interesting mirror aspect: the diplo- mats of each country engaged in this activity are simultane- ously matched by their counterparts from the other country in the relationship. The general code of ethics for professional public officials as a class must therefore include an additional subset of personal diplomatic ethics for this intermediary agent role. Threading the Needle The role of official reporter and observer—the official inter- preter of George Kennan’s “great external realm”—has always been fundamental to the definition of a diplomat. This has remained true at every stage of the development of communi- cations technology: from the spoken report, handwritten dis- patch and telegram or cable, to today’s e-mail and encrypted voice conversation. The most characteristic manifestation of the diplomat’s writing constitutes a form of dialogue or conversation between the diplomat in the field and his or her master back in headquarters. This conversation is, of course, official; but it does not necessarily constitute policy since it is about policy in its formative stage. As Hannah Gurman says in The Dissent Papers: The Voices of Diplomats in the Cold War and Beyond (Colum- bia University Press, 2012), this conversation is often about “informing and shaping policy through prophetic report- ing and analytical writing.” Or, to put it another way, it is an internal dialogue. Individual messages generally have little standing; it is the totality of diplomatic correspondence which is important. It is in the performance of this function that the distinction between the master and the agent arises. While the state may act amorally, the agent is required to conduct this internal dia- logue to some standard of professional ethics—or betray any pretense of performance as an objective public servant. In addition, of course, failure to act to acceptable standards can eventually destroy the diplomatic agent’s reputation among his peers and colleagues— both of his own county and among foreigners—which will also destroy his ability to function. Only the trust- worthy diplomat is useful to his or her government. During the McCarthy era, dedicated officers like Jack Ser- vice and John Paton Davies were hounded out of the Foreign Service simply for reporting accurately on developments and trends in postwar China. And Wikileaks’ release of thousands of confidential documents may have done comparable dam- age to the ability of U.S. diplomats to gather information, since local contacts are much less likely to speak candidly when they fear being quoted publicly. Though different in motivation, both these types of threats strike at the very essence of a diplomat’s professional ethics: the obligation to report, comment and advise objectively on matters of importance to his or her country. It is always tempting to prepare a report to satisfy the views of the recipient, or to justify the decisions made or about to be made by headquarters. Indeed, many senior officials, espe- cially political figures, expect this. Instead, after firmly presenting his or her own country’s views and policies externally, the truly professional diplo- mat must turn around and “report” objectively on the local After firmly presenting his or her own country’s views and policies, the truly professional diplomat must then report objectively on the local response.