The Foreign Service Journal, September 2017

22 SEPTEMBER 2017 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL T he Planning Committee was convened by the Board of Directors of the American Foreign Service Associa- tion late last year to appraise the present activities of the Association and the manner in which future activities might evolve over the coming decade. The principal recommendations of the Committee follow: As it read the Charter of the Association, the Committee concluded that the Association’s principal purposes were to advance the welfare of its membership and “the intelligent, efficient and skillful discharge of the duties of the member- ship.” These purposes will remain the tasks of the future, and it is to them that the Committee has directed its recom- mendations. The Committee assumed that the foreign relations of the United States would become more complex in the next 10 years. It assumed that the president would rely increasingly on the Secretary of State for direction and coor- dination of foreign affairs, provided that the personnel avail- able to the Secretary of State were adequate to the task. The Committee concluded that those concerned with foreign affairs—whether they be serving at home or abroad—will require greater expertness in familiar, as well as new, fields. The Committee also assumed that to meet these future requirements, the Foreign Service will have to attract and retain the brightest, most imaginative and dynamic young Americans entering the job market. This, in turn, will require attractive conditions of employment and a concern for the continuing well-being of the employee which do not always characterize the agencies concerned with foreign affairs. It follows, the Committee believes, that the Association must concentrate in the years immediately ahead on the essential tasks of becoming an organization with a serious intellectual base and an active—even combative—concern for the people at the heart of foreign affairs, regardless of their agency affiliation. Should it succeed in these tasks, the Association may attract to active membership the many who now stand aloof from the Association and may also elicit greater understanding and support from those in American society who have a special interest in the conduct of foreign affairs. –E. Allan Lightner Jr., chairman of the AFSA Planning Committee. Excerpted f rom the September 1967 Foreign Service Journal. 50 Years Ago Report of AFSA’s Planning Committee Governors Asa Hutchinson of Arkan- sas, Chris Sununu of New Hampshire and Phil Scott of Vermont, all Repub- licans, have made free trade a pillar of their message in recent trips as the Trump administration mulls revising or outright rejecting existing trade agree- ments, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement. Gov. Hutchinson traveled to Europe to meet with industry leaders, and Govs. Sununu and Scott traveled to Canada to reaffirm the importance of NAFTA. “We’re going to keep pushing this administration so it knows the benefits for countries on both sides of the bor- der,” Sununu declared. Gov. Scott says the intent was to give “reassurance that we’re there for them.” Prime Minister Trudeau addressed the Governor’s Association meeting in mid- July, the first foreign head of state to do so in the association’s 109-year history. While offering to remain open to updating the existing agreement, Trudeau remarked: “Since the trilateral agreement went into effect in 1994, U.S. trade with your NAFTA partners has tripled. That accounts for millions of well-paying middle-class jobs, for Canadians and Americans. Free trade has worked. It’s working now.” The meeting was also attended by officials from Mexico, Vietnam, China and Japan. Climate change policy shifts also prompted state-level breaks with the administration. A coalition of 12 states launched the United States Climate Alliance to uphold their commitments to the Paris Agreement on the same day that President Trump announced the United States’ withdrawal from the climate accord. Gov. Jerry Brown of California, a Democrat who co-chairs the alli- ance, traveled to China days after the announcement to attend an energy conference and meet one-on-one with Chinese President Xi Jinping. n This edition of Talking Points was prepared by Gemma Dvorak, Dmitry Fili- poff, Donna Gorman, Susan Maitra and Andrea Philbin.