The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2015 23 ADAR (as we will refer to the report henceforth) does not just describe the problem, but offers solutions. The contents of the report should concern all active-duty, retired and prospective Foreign and Civil Service personnel. It is the product of a year’s work by a drafting team including Thomas Boyatt, Susan John- son, Lange Schermerhorn and Clyde Taylor under an advisory committee co-chaired by Thomas Pickering and Marc Gross- man and a red team, listed in the report. The Politicization of State The report starts from the basic proposition that a strong State Department, based on a strong Foreign Service and a strong Civil Service, is a critical component of America’s secu- rity. Both services are diminished by the increasing politiciza- tion of American diplomacy and by the lack of flexibility and career possibilities in the outmoded Civil Service personnel sys- tem. One aspect of this is the change in who occupies senior leadership positions (which we defined as assistant secretaries and their equivalents, and above). In 1975, more than 60 percent of the then-19 assistant secretary positions were held by Foreign Service officers. Civil Service professionals accounted for just 3 percent. (There were also 12 positions that might be considered assistant secretary equivalents, of which six were held by FSOs.) By 2014, FSOs in assistant secre- tary and equivalent positions and above, now expanded to 57, had shrunk to only 18, approximately 30 percent. The Civil Service contingent remained at 3 percent. In press guidance issued on April 12, 2014, the Department of State tried to refute our assertion about the erosion of the policymaking role of the Foreign Service by omitting our definition of senior positions as assistant secretaries and the equivalent, and enlarging the numbers by including all ambassadors and deputy assistant secretaries. This blurred the issue of the Foreign Service role in policymaking without even trying to make the case that all of these positions have the same importance for policy formulation, a case our critics would have considerable trouble sustaining. Our point is much larger than protecting turf. To quote the report: “The price for the declining repre- sentation of the professional Foreign Service at senior levels in Washington is three-fold: “1. Loss of long-term field perspec- tive —knowledge essential for melding the desirable with the possible. FSOs speak foreign languages and have exten- sive knowledge of foreign nations and their policies, cultures, thinking, peoples and regions. They have spent years living among and working abroad with people from all walks of life and with leaders whose cooperation we need if U.S. poli- cies are going to be successful. No other part of the federal government provides this knowledge. “2. Loss of Washington experi- ence —loss of the Washington posi- tions that provide essential experience necessary for FSOs to excel in the criti- cal interagency aspects of making and implementing foreign policy, and loss of the benefits in the interagency process of the unique blend of field and Washington experience among those who have implemented foreign policy abroad. This result leaves too many FSOs without sufficient Washington experi- ence to match their overseas experience, which is essential to the development of officers’ careers, such as that of former Deputy Secretary William Burns. The report starts from the basic proposition that a strong State Department, based on a strong Foreign Service and a strong Civil Service, is a critical component of America’s security. The American Academy of Diplomacy released the report, American Diplomacy at Risk , on April 1.