The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2013

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2013 41 which I consider valid for American diplomats of any rank. After all, every member of the Foreign Service takes the same oath, works together toward a common goal and is subject to the same high expectation of trustworthiness. Loyalty to Country Kishan Rana, a retired Indian ambassador, is a prolific author of books about diplomacy. His considerable diplomatic experience includes stints in the United States, where he had a chance to observe not only American diplomats, but also Americans and their culture. He now serves on the faculty of DiploFoundation, a European-based institute devoted to teaching diplomatic skills. Rana includes a short segment on ethics in his book, The 21st-Century Ambassador: A Practitioner’s Guide (Bloomsbury Academic, 2011). In it, he approvingly quotes Sir Harold Nicol- son’s classic 1939 work, Diplomacy : “The professional diplomatist is governed by several dif- ferent, and at times conflicting, loyalties. He owes a loyalty to his own sovereign, government minister and foreign office; he owes loyalty to his own staff; he owes a form of loyalty to the diplomatic body in the capital where he resides; he owes loy- alty to the local expatriate community and to its commercial interests; and he owes another form of loyalty to the govern- ment to which he is accredited and to the minister with whom he negotiates.” In Rana’s view, such ties should be considered the “profes- sional obligations” of any diplomat, which do not rise to the level of loyalties. Still, he acknowledges, ambiguity about these differences can arise when a diplomat works for an epistemic community like the United Nations or other multilateral and intergovernmental bodies—that is, a transnational network of knowledge-based experts who help decision-makers define the problems they face, identify various policy solutions and assess the policy outcomes. He cites the cases of national diplomats working to pro- mote the European Union or negotiating binding, multilateral environmental agreements. In such situations, he notes, diplo- mats work to advance issues for the greater good—even if they encroach on their respective countries’ sovereignty. Loyalty to the International System Although “My country, right or wrong” has been the watchword of the professional diplomat ever since the era of Richelieu, it may no longer have the same resonance in some countries. For instance, while the authors of most of the essays Martin Florian Herz has compiled in The Modern Ambassador: The Challenge and the Search (Georgetown University Press, 1983) seem to subscribe to a strict interpretation of loyalty, Hideo Kitahara, a former Japanese ambassador, has this to say: “Ambassadors [i.e., diplomats] must certainly strive to pro- mote their country’s national interests, but should not follow narrowly nationalistic impulses to which people are subject who have not made international relations their career. A good ambassador must be a patriot—that goes without saying; but he must always bear in mind that every country is part of an international system, and that the future of the world depends on at least a tolerably good functioning of that system.” Kitahara arrives at that conclusion after describing how during his own lifetime the world had changed dramatically, requiring diplomacy to adapt. For that reason, he identifies the key attribute of an ambassador as “broadmindedness,” which he defines as the ability to appreciate cultural diversity and to use it to suggest effective approaches for attaining diplomatic objectives. In other words, Kitahara is of the school that sees modern ambassadors as being part of the policymaking process, not merely executing directives. Loyalty to the Sovereign Many of the essays in The Modern Ambassador discuss the perennial question of the loyalty of diplomats to their own governments. This has been a large issue in the United States from its earliest days. Politicians often look askance at our diplomatic corps, somehow deeming Foreign Service person- nel “unpatriotic” when they advise new administrations about The issue of loyalty to one’s own values can be particularly challenging for diplomats.