The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2023

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2023 95 came with an extended stint as chargé, I could relate to the scenes at Winfield House—where I hosted both Robert Red- ford for a Sundance Festival event and the 4th of July celebration in 2013. As a career officer, I may have known all the right players to work an issue and been adept at navigating the U.S. national security apparatus, but, like Kate, I owned “no art” and sometimes struggled with the wardrobe requirements. Unlike Kate, though, I enjoyed giving speeches and talking to the London media, and I couldn’t help wondering how she got as high up in the Foreign Service as she did without an interest in mastering those essential skills. Kate did remind me that I haven’t lost the habit of briefing breathlessly, in short bursts, a carryover frommy years as a staffer. For all the overdone drama in the depiction of the marriage between this tandem couple of ambassadors—includ- ing the painful scene of Kate beating up her husband in Winfield’s garden—Kate and Hal Wyler also remind me of the best FSOs I know. When someone asks you whether “The Diplomat” is “realistic,” I urge you to seize the moment to share your best story (the unclassified version, of course) about a Foreign Service colleague who saved the day—by tapping into relationships of trust, by getting to the bottom of things and averting bloodshed, by making sense of things, and navigating with great skill so that America could do the right thing. Nor does the show get everything about Foreign Service romantic relation- ships wrong. Eidra Park, the CIA station chief (played by Ali Ahn), struggles over whether to pursue a promotion in Cairo if that means leaving behind her partner, Stuart Hayford, the DCM (played by Ato Essandoh). The pair struggle together to find the right time to make their relation- ship public, knowing that it will come at a cost to their credibility. Eidra games the scenario, observing that things would be different if they arrived at a new post as an established couple. Go ahead and scoff at the absurdity of the station chief in London (home of the richest bilateral intelligence partnership in the world, as Eidra accurately explains at one point) seeking a promotion to Cairo. Go ahead and point out that the DCM would be in a heap of HR trouble for sleeping with a subordinate (although the chief of station technically reports to the ambassador rather than the DCM). But don’t miss the chance to talk to fellow Americans about the deeper truths “The Diplomat” unveils about the difficulty of establishing and sustaining a romantic relationship or marriage in the Foreign Service. This is one of the more profound sacrifices we make: All that moving around, with tour lengths and bidding cycles among agencies not aligned, are among the many obstacles to finding a suitable partner either inside or outside the embassy. “The Diplomat” does us all a service by bringing this built-in sacrifice to the forefront. We all know how to talk about the health risks of exposure to malaria and dengue fever and even dysentery, and we often revel in stories about incoming fire, but we tend to suffer our aloneness in silence. “The Diplomat” makes a conversation about this sacrifice a much lighter lift. And let’s be honest, the show is entertaining and even fun. And putting two career diplomats as the heroes of any movie or TV series feels like a big step forward for the public image of the U.S. Foreign Service. During a 34-year Foreign Service career, Barbara J. Stephenson served as consul gen- eral in Belfast, ambassador to Panama, and deputy chief of mission (DCM) and chargé d’affaires for U.S. Embassy London, among other assignments. She was president of AFSA for two terms from 2015 to 2019. Ambassador Stephenson is the inaugural vice provost for global affairs and chief global officer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A Missed Opportunity “Transatlantic” Created by Anna Winger and Daniel Hendler, 2023, Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/title/81473474. Reviewed by Ásgeir Sigfússon Kate Wyler of “The Diplomat” isn’t the only Foreign Service officer gracing the Netflix home screen these days. Only two weeks prior to the show’s release, the streaming giant offered up a very different look at American diplomacy with “Transatlantic.” This other one is historical and based on a true story— well, mostly true. Inspired by Julie Orringer’s 2019 novel The Flight Portfolio , this seven-episode limited series takes place in Marseilles in 1940. The protagonists are involved with the (American) Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC) operating in the city at the time. Their focus is on rescuing well-known Jewish scholars, artists, and intellectuals from the Nazi regime by pro- viding documents—authentic or not—for passage to the United States. Some of these real historic figures—Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Walter Benjamin, and Peggy