The Foreign Service Journal, September 2012

26 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 2 public.” I said, “Answer me this question: when I was Secretary of State, and it’s the same for today’s Secretary of State, thou- sands of cables come in during the day. He or she sees maybe 50, if they’re lucky. So then how do you turn the urgent into something important and long- range?” That’s the big challenge that we have in designing our diplo- macy. We are very good at the day-to-day stuff; we have more trouble with the long- range design. SJ: That’s a very interesting observation. From your perspective, how important is it to have a strong, profes- sional, career Foreign Service for the conduct of diplo- macy? HK: It is essential. All of us who have worked with the Foreign Service, even though we might be at times exasperated, know that it is crucial to American foreign policy. Without the people willing to go all over the world and to make huge sacrifices, our international ef- forts could not function. And their competence is the indispensable intellectual resource for the Secretary of State. We need a career Foreign Service with a high morale. We have to focus it more on the strategic aspects of the work, so that officers don’t get too absorbed in the daily flow of cable traffic, which threatens to drown everybody. As Secretary of State, what I found was that in any cri- sis, in any fast-moving situation, the Foreign Service is in- dispensable, because they know how you respond, to whom and in what way. They are essential to guide you through the crisis. I know all my fellow Secretaries of State, with whom I’m in close touch, feel the same way. What needs to be done more is to get a conceptual ap- paratus geared to day-to-day policymaking. I know there is the policy planning staff, but that sometimes becomes a sort of an academic enterprise that writes abstract think papers. The question is how to relate these two to each other. A professional Foreign Service is not only essential; it needs to be fostered and further developed. When people write about me, they usually say that I preferred to act on my own. But if you look at the people who worked with me as Secre- tary of State, an overwhelming majority were Foreign Service officers, especially on the Mid- dle East troubles. SJ: What would you say to someone considering a career in diplomacy today? HK: You have to know what you want to do with your life. If you want to be able to say at the end of your life that you left things better than they were and that you worked every day on something that made a contribution, then you should become a diplomat. But if you want comfort, and if you want to raise a typical family, and if the material pos- sibilities of this country are your principal objective, you should not do it. SJ: Well, that’s an interesting thing we’re wrestling with today … who joins and who doesn’t, and at what point do they decide that this is something that they want to do with their life, or that it isn’t. HK: You might know Winston Lord. Well, Winston wanted to quit when we went into the sanctuaries in Cam- bodia, and I said to him: “Winston, if you want to make yourself feel good, then go out there and march around with a placard. If you want to help end the VietnamWar, stay with me.” And to his enormous credit and sacrifice, and to the country’s benefit, he stayed. SJ: Turning to another topic, would it be fair to say that you see human rights as an important, but not necessar- ily determinative, facet of our bilateral relations with China? HK: That would be correct. SJ: And how do you think U.S. policymakers should balance competing national interests, in particular our human rights interests and others? HK: It depends. I don’t know the exact balance. If somebody does, he’s wiser than I am. Human rights are an important element in our policy. So the first thing you have to decide, of course, is if it’s best achieved by con- frontation or by engagement. I lean toward engagement, but I wouldn’t say that as an F OCUS For eight American administrations and four generations of Chinese leaders, the main lines of diplomacy established in the 1970s have been maintained and elaborated.