The Foreign Service Journal, September 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2018 43 Career public servants at all levels and specialties make diplomacy work. How do we find them, keep them, grow them? BY BARBARA BOD I NE Barbara Bodine is the director of the Institute for the Study of Di- plomacy and Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Among many assignments during a more than 30-year Foreign Service career, she served as U.S. ambassador to Yemen from 1997 through 2001. T he State Department, like the roads in Washington, D.C., seems to be in a con- stant state of repair, with new potholes for each successive Secretary to fill as he or she deems best. No one knows better than those who work there that State could use some fixes; that structures, technologies, missions and mandates become outdated and need rethinking. Over time, State has gone through its fair share of such proj- ects. Some of the repairs are right and proper; and they do, in some small way, make the wheels go ’round a bit more smoothly. Many are well-intended but poorly planned and poorly executed, with an inevitably poor result. Too often the repairs focus on the wiring diagrams; too infrequently on the mission, the funding and, most important, the people. And some, such as those initi- ated by former Secretary Rex Tillerson, seem designed by a ditch digger bent on just tearing it all up. In the months preceding Secretary Mike Pompeo’s tenure, the well-documented realities of the administration’s rhetoric and broader actions discouraged and, in some cases, drove away the very people whom the Secretary, the department and the country need to restock our ranks and provide the quality workforce pipe- line to go forward. Secretary Pompeo’s selection of a respected senior career officer as under secretary of State for political affairs, his day one reversal on employment of eligible family members (EFMs), the lift of the hiring freeze (albeit without restoration of abolished positions) and reinstatement of intake classes (including Picker- ing and Rangel Fellows) at credible levels, among other changes afoot, signal an understanding that the bedrock of the department is our people, both Foreign and Civil Service. It’s the career public servants at all levels and specialties who make diplomacy work. This is good. A strong—swaggering?—call to serve is back. Who will answer that call? More precisely, can we recruit and retain the quality of officer needed to meet the demands of this new era in ways that serve our interests for the long haul? Without the right people, the best plans, the noblest intentions and the most stirring rhetoric will all fail. Who are those people? CAN STATE DELIVER? FOCUS Who Is the Future of the Foreign Service?