The Foreign Service Journal, September 2018

26 SEPTEMBER 2018 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Reform efforts at State are perennial. Several critical institutional issues have been studied again and again for decades to scant effect. Why is change so difficult? BY HARRY KOPP Blue-Ribbon Harry W. Kopp, a former Foreign Service officer, served as deputy assistant secretary of State for international trade policy in the Carter and Reagan administrations. He is the author of several books on diplomacy, including (with John K. Naland) Career Diplomacy: Life and Work in the U.S. Foreign Service , recently pub- lished in a third edition by Georgetown University Press, and Voice of the Foreign Service: A History of the American Foreign Service As- sociation (FS Books, 2015). He is a frequent Journal contributor and recently joined the FSJ Editorial Board. “T here have beenmany studies of the Foreign Service,” said Ivan Selin, the State Depart- ment’s under secretary for management, in 1989. “We’ve averaged one per year for the last 30 years.” Output has scarcely dropped off in the decades since. Studies of the Foreign Service and the Department of State rarely reveal problems not already widely known. Even more rarely do they produce the results their authors want. Ideas and proposals for change often founder on three obstacles: resistance, impracticality and inertia. Deep research and sound argument may not carry far. One former ambassador, often called upon to serve on commissions whose work was ignored, expressed his CAN STATE DELIVER? FOCUS