1. U.S. Foreign Policy History and Contemporary Issues. This includes traditionally valued topics such as area studies, language skills, history, and policy histories. 2. Bureaucracy, Management, and Culture. This category includes many of the soft skills necessary to excel, including leadership skills, communications, organizational culture, management, and national security procedures and law, such as familiarity with the Foreign Affairs Manual. 3. Academic Theory and Methods. “Systemic” and grand theories of international relations are useful frameworks, and “mid-level” research on topics like peacekeeping, nonproliferation, and mediation help policymakers systematically understand how different types of interventions work in the real world. Methods training promotes rigor and discernment. 4. Policymaking Skills. This category includes the “how-to” of policymaking, such as strategic planning, budgeting, policy analysis, intel analysis, monitoring and evaluation, and audience analysis. Foreign Service officers are called “generalists” for a good reason. Successful diplomats possess encyclopedic knowledge of world affairs, culture, and history. These fields, broadly categorized as humanities, emphasize unique context and subjective meaning. These traditional sources of wisdom are necessary but insufficient for the development of expertise. They are also the easiest to pick up on the job. Effective diplomats must also be scientists. Social science, in contrast to the humanities, guides adherents to produce highquality feedback necessary for the development of expertise. It seeks patterns of human behavior while seeking to minimize subjectivity and bias. Thus, the skillful command of the scientific method—the process used to build shared knowledge—is an essential foundation for the development of foreign policy expertise. This is not rocket science: The same methods are used in the medical field. Notably, the medical world was highly distrustful of science too. Well into the 20th century, physicians resisted medical trials on the grounds that it was dangerous to insert a scientist between the doctor and the patient. Doctors also argued that every human body is unique, rendering any largeN study dangerously naive. But our views have evolved. Today, we consider medical trials essential, and medical training is routinized and rigorous. Emphasizing Science in International Affairs Many senior diplomats with whom I have spoken reject the utility of science in international affairs, claiming that there are no patterns to be discovered amid the many varying contexts. Make no mistake: This is a denial of the possibility of expertise. Certainly, all countries are unique, as are human bodies, but science sharpens our ability to detect patterns amid the noise and collect knowledge over time. Sure, diplomacy is hard—but if you confuse hard with impossible, you’re in the wrong line of work. Of course, not every aspect of foreign policy can be evaluated under the rubric of expertise. There are irreducibly subjective aspects of diplomacy. The extent to which the United States should be willing to expend blood and treasure to defend another country’s citizens, for example, is better answered by politics than claims of superior expertise. Both humanities and social science are important, but they receive disproportionate attention in the hallways of Foggy Bottom. As I have written in these pages before, foreign policy must be more scientific and evidence-based. The curriculum should reflect that. Certainly, different career tracks or specializations should emphasize different distributions of these skills, but the above categories form a common basis of understanding within our institutions of foreign policy. These categories are only a starting point, a framework, for developing an official curriculum for foreign policy expertise. Next Steps The Foreign Service must take the lead in demanding high standards for itself. Official endorsement of a robust curriculum for foreign policy expertise would signal a paradigm shift in the practice of foreign policy. Such a curriculum offers a recipe by which policymakers can upgrade their approach to decision-making and build an institution more demonstrably capable of achieving discrete national security goals. Three tasks are necessary to advance the implementation of a new curriculum at the State Department. First, the content of the curriculum needs to be developed, ideally by a wellMethods training promotes rigor and discernment. 34 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL
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