The Foreign Service Journal, September 2017

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2017 45 Rice wrote in her memoirs that members of the Service “did sometimes appear less than enthusiastic about the president’s policies”—but public dissent was rare. The Temper of the Times Certainly the temper of the times had something to do with the relative lack of dissent. The street and campus protests, the civil unrest and the violent political movements of the Viet- nam era were absent. No senior official resigned as a matter of principle, as Under Secretary of State George Ball had done over Vietnam in 1966. Dissent was a lonely business, with no leader and no mass following. It held little attraction. In the past 18 months, State Department dissents have twice become public and earned headlines. In both cases, social media encouraged mass participation, and mass participation makes confidentiality hard to maintain. A July 2016 Dissent Channel memo on Syria, signed by more than 50 State Department officers, called for “a more militarily assertive U.S. role.”The memo leaked in draft to the press, which published it without the signatures. More dramatically, State Department officers reportedly num- bering more than 1,000 signed a Dissent Channel message at the end of January 2017, protesting the new administration’s executive order, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” commonly called the travel ban. The New York Times published a version of the memo, without signatures, and said it had circulated “like a chain letter—or a viral video.” White House spokesman Sean Spicer delivered the administration’s reaction: “Those career bureaucrats have a problemwith it?They should either get with the program, or they can go.” Technology makes the collection of large numbers of sig- natures possible, but dissent messages change their character when signed by a crowd and publicized. The leaking of these memos, even before they were delivered, shifted their audience from the senior officers to whom they were ostensibly addressed to the public at large. The memos became political statements, valued chiefly for their bulk (1,000 signatures!) and used as ammunition in partisan warfare. A memo signed by 1,000 peo- ple, or even 50, is sure to leak, as texts are shared online. Without confidentiality and discretion, there can be no trust. State Department diplomats concerned about the politi- cization of their profession should be wary. The times are ferociously, vituperatively partisan. Challenging administra- tion policy in public means entering the political arena, where public servants are ill-equipped to play, and where they will almost surely lose. For the good of the Service as an institution, dissent must remain confidential. n