The Foreign Service Journal, September 2015

28 SEPTEMBER 2015 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL T he opening lines of great works in literature and history capture your attention. For example, “Call me Ishmael” from Moby Dick . “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” from A Tale of Two Cities . Or “All Gaul is divided into three parts” from Julius Caesar’s history of the Gallic Wars. Or “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” from…well, you can guess. We Americans quickly identify certain opening lines: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another...” Or “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union…” Or “Fourscore and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation…” I ammoved by the first sentence of Charles de Gaulle’s Mémoires de Guerre : “Toute ma vie, je me suis fait une certaine idée de la France.” Hard to translate, but maybe: “I have always been guided by a special image of France.” That is pretty much the way I feel about the Foreign Service of the United States. I served 39 years as a Foreign Service offi- cer. I was chairman of the American Foreign Service Associa- tion when it was elected exclusive representative of the Foreign Service. Some of us worried that when we added the responsi- bilities of a union to AFSA’s vocation as a professional associa- tion, the professional side would be crowded out. That had happened to the National Education Association. But AFSA has successfully combined the two missions. In fact, they proved to be complementary. True Professionals Foreign Service professionals develop a deep understand- ing of the concerns of other nations and, more important, of America’s own international objectives. Fundamental Ameri- can values and purposes remain largely constant over time. For generations, the Foreign Service has been promoting these enduring values and purposes. If we imagine the international relations of the United States to be a great ship, the Foreign Service would be its keel. The elected Democratic or Republican administration steers the rudder of foreign policy while the keel contributes stability and continuity—as well as practical expertise. All modern nations maintain a professional diplomatic service. So has the United States since the Rogers Act of 1924, which was extended by the Foreign Service Acts of 1946 and 1980. Article II, Section 2 of our Constitution provides that the president “shall nominate and, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls.” Section 3 adds, “he shall commission all the officers of the United States.” Thus, America’s diplomatic service consists of presidentially appointed and commissioned Foreign Service officers. These are reinforced by an increasingly sophisticated and technically expert Foreign Service specialist corps. And the Civil Service provides an essential, knowledgeable backup in Washington. By law, the Foreign Service is a rank-in-person system, whose members are available worldwide and recruited through rigorous examination. They are promoted on merit through competitive performance evaluation, and are subject to “up or out” provisions modeled on those followed by officers of the United States Navy. Through such provisions, Congress sought to establish an exceptional, professional diplomatic service. Non-career political appointees and Civil Service employees of the State Department and USAID are governed by separate personnel regulations; they are not subject to the legal require- ments and disciplines of the Foreign Service. Yet the Human Resources Bureau of the Department of State has been systematically blurring the distinctions between the two systems, apparently seeking to shape a more egalitarian and homogeneous workforce at home and abroad. This includes an absurd attempt to suppress the title “Foreign Service officer” in favor of the disparaging label “generalist,” and even to avoid public reference to the Foreign Service. This policy negates the intent of Congress. Such institutional disrespect of presidentially appointed and commissioned officers of the United States is unworthy. When I was on active duty, Foreign Service officers occupied all but a handful of positions dealing with foreign policy in the State Department’s geographic bureaus and over half of those positions in the functional bureaus. Today, 40 percent of the officer positions in the geographic bureaus and 80 percent in the functional bureaus are occupied by civil servants or political appointees. The Foreign Service is being squeezed out of the Guided by a Special Image of the Foreign Service William C. Harrop delivered these remarks at the 2015 AFSA Awards Ceremony.