The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2015 9 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Diplomacy: The State of the Profession BY SHAWN DORMAN D Shawn Dorman is the editor of The Foreign Service Journal. lay out the problems—in particular, the degradation of the role of Foreign Service officers in the policy process due to a variety of factors, including an influx of political appointees and non-career officials. They then offer a set of 23 spe- cific recommendations for renewing the career Foreign Service’s role in formulat- ing and implementing U.S. foreign policy. We shared links to the report and the recommendations with AFSA members, and you will find their feedback in the compilation, “Continuing the Conversa- tion.” The specialists we heard fromwere particularly unhappy that their role was only given a one-line nod, even as the report devoted considerable space to assessing the Civil Service. This touches on a central theme that deserves further discussion: how to define the “diplomacy team.” Who gets to be on that team, and how do we reconcile the need for a truly professional Foreign Service with the reality that diplomacy is being carried out more broadly by more types of agents than ever before? In this month’s Speaking Out column, “America Needs a Professional Foreign Service,” retired Ambassador Charlie Ray poses a different question: Is the Foreign Service a profession? His answer may surprise you. Next, we hear from the head of the brand-new British Diplomatic Academy, Jon Davies, who shares the goals and plans for this first-ever institution—much of it actually online—to educate and train members of the British Foreign Service. The opportunity for collaboration between the United States and the United Kingdom in diplomatic training has never been greater. In “FiveThings You Should Know about the QDDR,” FSO Chris Degnan brings us back to the United States and the current state of the Foreign Service, offering a look at the strategic plan for the State Department and USAID. Here’s hoping some may find inspiration there. Finally, we share the full text of the George Kennan article I quoted at the start of this column, “On Diplomacy As a Profession.” Based on a speech Kennan gave at AFSA, it was published in the May 1961 Foreign Service Journal . As promised last month, and as a follow-up to our April focus on Vietnam, we bring you “Uncovering the Lessons of Vietnam,” including two 1975 Lesson s Learned memos—one by State FSOs, the other by Henry Kissinger. They illustrate two very different interpretations of what one could, or could not, learn from the American involvement in the Vietnam War. We discovered the memos thanks to Ambassador David Lambertson, who drafted the State memo. State Depart- ment Historian Steve Randolph frames the two pieces with a useful intro. In “Surviving Al-Jazeera and Other Public Calamities,” FSO Alberto Ferna n- dez deconstructs the uproar over one comment he made in an interview with Al-Jazeera, offering insight into the art and craft of speaking publicly today. Help us keep the conversation about the state of the Foreign Service going; send letters to journal@afsa.org or submit a Speaking Out column. n “Diplomacy is always going to consist to some extent of serving people who do not know that they are being served, who do not know that they need to be served, who misunderstand and occasionally abuse the very effort to serve them.” George Kennan, May 1961 FSJ iplomats have long been the unsung heroes of international relations. As George Kennan famously observed, no bands will ever play for the Foreign Service. Our profession is and has always been misunderstood, if thought of at all, by the American public. The Foreign Service Acts of 1946 and 1980 call for the United States to have a professional diplomatic corps, but the implementation of that goal frequently bends to the political winds. For all these reasons, the institution seems to be in a perpetual existential crisis. So in this issue, we consider the current state (pun not intended) of the Foreign Service and the diplomatic pro- fession today. Just how bad are things? Is the Service truly in crisis and, if so, is the situation indeed more serious than in the past? First, American Academy of Diplo- macy President Ronald Neumann, a distinguished three-time ambassador, summarizes AAD’s latest report, Ameri- can Diplomacy at Risk. Released in April, the study sounds the alarm about a Foreign Service under increas- ing threat. Its authors