The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2013

42 JULY-AUGUST 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL how foreign governments might react to U.S. positions. In my own A-100 course, back in 1981, I remember a White House political appointee lecturing us on this very issue. He said something like, “You Foreign Service people are great at telling us what another country thinks about our policies, but you are terrible at selling our policies abroad.” In his foreword to The Modern Ambassador , Dean Krogh of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service observes: “New administrations frequently distrust the professionals in foreign affairs whom they have inherited to carry forward the new policies that they wish to institute.” By way of example, Krogh mentions that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles asked Foreign Service personnel to exercise not merely loyalty to the new administration, but “positive loyalty.” Krogh adds: “It is natural that every new government should seek, among the professionals it inherits and among people outside, individuals who it believes will be particularly attuned to the new policy approaches and with whom it thus feels especially comfortable.” But he contrasts this with the situation found in many other foreign ministries: “While most other countries have found their bureaucracies quite adapt- able, in the United States it usually takes a long time before incoming administrations discover that most professionals do not wear ideological blinders.” A forceful and articulate advocate for a professional Foreign Service with fewer high-ranking political-appointee ambas- sadors, Ambassador Malcolm Toon also contributed an essay to The Modern Ambassador. In it, he, too, challenges the claim that political appointees are more reliable implementers of policy than Foreign Service professionals. Toon argues that when the State Department appears to work at cross purposes with the White House, it is not an attempt to frustrate the latter’s policies. Rather, “A Foreign Service officer has an intellectual obligation to fight within the inner councils of government for policies he believes to be right, even if his recommendations go counter to the adminis- tration’s views.” But once the president makes a policy decision, Toon avers, “all Foreign Service officers must comply. If they feel they can’t, they must resign. In my experience, noncompliance with settled administration policy is rare.” He then hammers this point home: “The claim that politi- cos are more reliable than professionals is not only self-serv- ing. It is unfair, unfounded in fact and an insult to the Foreign Service. The career Foreign Service is professionally commit- ted to president and country.” Loyalty to Oneself The issue of loyalty to one’s own values can be particularly challenging for diplomats. Some individuals may rationalize that if their country asks them to do something, their job is to do it—no questions asked. But for others, it can be simply impossible to reconcile their own views with those of the state. Humans have consciences; states do not. Mindful of this balancing act, AFSA recognizes “construc- tive dissent” by FSOs through four annual awards. In addition, the State Department offers a Dissent Channel, to which offi- cers occasionally resort to generate greater scrutiny of policy issues. This mechanism not only gives a voice to those seeking high-level review of their individual perspectives, but protects them from retribution for doing so. However, if such a review fails to budge the system from its previous position, as often happens, the dissenter (a most pejorative term, it seems to me) is left with only two options: accepting the policy as is, or leaving the position that would require implementation of the policy. Three Foreign Service officers who used the Dissent Chan- nel to oppose the 2003 invasion of Iraq later resigned from the Service. (All three have contributed articles to this issue of the Journal .) One of them, John Brady Kiesling, sent his letter of resignation, addressed to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, to the New York Times . In it, he argued he had a duty to dis- sent. Reflecting on that decision in Diplomacy Lessons: Realism for an Unloved Superpower (Potomac Books, 2007), Kiesling quotes from his letter: “The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values, but also American interests.” He added that he was “resigning Secretary of State John Foster Dulles asked Foreign Service personnel to exercise not merely loyalty to the new administration, but “positive loyalty.”