The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2013

32 JULY-AUGUST 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL MY RESIGNATION INRETROSPECT Those of us in the Foreign Service must keep our moral and professional compass calibrated to that point where integrity and love of country declare, “No further.” BY JOHN BRADY K I ES L I NG I n the process of justifying to foreigners the policies of a moralizing, occasionally overbearing super- power, U.S. diplomats develop formidable powers of rationalization. Our understanding of our For- eign Service oath harmonizes elegantly with our professional ambitions and personal convenience. But what happens when suddenly it doesn’t— when we can no longer rationalize away some fun- damental analytical or moral intuition we have? Then we confront the fundamental career decision of whether to carry out a bad policy, obstruct it from within or resign. My moral intuition tells me that I did not violate my oath as a Foreign Service officer by abandoning the modestly impor- tant post of political counselor at Embassy Athens at a critical time for U.S. global interests. My wife can confirm that I still flagellate myself, decades after, for other things I said and did, or failed to say and do, as an FSO. But I have never flagellated myself over my decision to resign in February 2003 as the Iraq War loomed. Ten years later, I am still proud of the resignation letter I leaked to the New York Times . I am ashamed only that I did not have the forethought and ruthlessness to make my resignation a more effective policy tool. John Brady Kiesling entered the Foreign Service in 1983, serving in Tel Aviv, Casablanca, Washington, Yerevan and Athens (twice, the second time as political counselor). He resigned from the Service in February 2003 in protest of the impending war with Iraq. Now a writer and lecturer, he is the author of Diplomacy Lessons: Realism for an Unloved Superpower (Potomac Books, 2007). FOCUS PROFESSIONAL ETHICS