The Foreign Service Journal, September 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2021 11 Professional Education I greatly enjoyed and appreciated reading the article “Revitalizing State— Closing the Education Gap” by Ambas- sadors (ret.) Miller and Pickering and Mr. Beers (May). Their observations and suggestions were spot on, but there is another angle to this issue that the State Department ought to consider. As we work to improve diversity and inclusion, professional development in the form of formalized education and training would serve to strengthen this effort. It is accepted that expanded efforts in education tend to lead to wider improvements within a community. Professional development does the same within organizations. Yet it is often pursued haphazardly, and is often the budget line that is the first or most frequent to be cut in hard times. If we, as a department, could be more strategic and farsighted in planning and implementing professional training, it would help to “level the playing field” of opportunity for all current and future Foreign Service officers. Curt Whittaker FSO U.S. Embassy Bratislava Lessons from Bohlen Congratulations to the FSJ for Ambas- sador (ret.) Avis Bohlen’s article in the May issue. Readers get a glimpse of the deep impact of Red Scare hysteria on her father, Charles E. “Chip” Bohlen, in March 1953. The excerpt from her biography-in- progress tells a tale of relentless allega- tions, inflated to a national media event, met by courage and integrity. There were diplomatic costs. Bohlen’s confirmation dragged on, delaying his arrival in Moscow until a month after Stalin’s death, depriving President Eisenhower the experienced and trusted observer he wanted in Moscow when a new chapter in U.S.-Soviet relations was opening. John Foster Dulles was ambivalent about Bohlen in part for his role in “20 years of treason,” the GOP’s label for FDR’s New Deal, and for his determined defense of the truth about the Yalta Conference during the Senate hearings. Behind the scenes stood the junior sena- tor fromWisconsin and his hatchet-man, Scott McLeod, appointed State’s chief of security by the blindsided new president. McLeod, in his brief tenure, forced the resignation of several hundred officers and staff, accused of a bizarre list of sins—“spies being in short supply,” as Ms. Bohlen notes dryly. She does not belabor recent parallels, but her comment on Senator McCarthy says it all: The case illustrates “how a demagogue can manip- ulate a backlash from his loyal supporters to intimidate his party into silence.” Events like the Bohlen hearing are not uncommon in Foreign Service his- tory—albeit in smaller doses. Her nar- ration brings to mind the corruption of mid-19th-century electoral politics, the era of Tammany Hall, Roscoe Conkling and the quadrennial auction of govern- ment positions, high, middle and low. In 1883 Sen. George Pendleton began a step-by-step reform process to profes- sionalize and protect the civil servants, joined four decades later by Congressman John Jacob Rogers’ gift to diplomacy, the 1924 Rogers Act. The process was gradual and bipartisan—it took a while for pro- fessionalism to become the norm and patronage the exception. McLeod’s scythe was a destructive aberration, a long step backward from the kind of bureaucracy worthy of a world power. A wiser Dulles and Secretary Christian Herter grassed things over; and JFK’s New Frontier quickened the intake of highly qualified appointees to State, USAID and USIA—patronage, without money. A blip by Reagan’s revolutionaries in 1981 was smoothed over by George H.W. Bush. His staffing plan worked well and began to moderate the horizontal zigzags and the vertical ups-and-downs common to a participatory democracy. Then, in 2016, overnight, aberrance became the norm and professionalism the enemy. It was a new game: Good govern- ment based on experience, consultation and research? A hoax. Dulles’ insistence on “positive loyalty”? A quaint precedent. Elections? Fraudulent. Plugging loop- holes? Nonsense—we need more. Abroad, where diplomats spend half their lives, the U.S. experiment in democ- racy, warts and all, has been a global bea- con since Emancipation and World War I. Today our friends struggle to explain what has happened, while our enemies stifle their glee. After World War II, Americans pledged “Never again!” Today the same two words sound like a prayer. During his ordeal, Bohlen was serv- ing as head of AFSA. Since its inception, AFSA has been the first source consulted by Congress when Foreign Service reform is discussed. Might it be time for AFSA to take the lead and begin sustained collec- tive thinking about the state of diplomacy and foreign affairs today? Minimizing the cyclical zigzags of U.S. foreign policy might be the goal. Decent foreign policy is stable, flexible, long-last- ing, consistent and reliable. Our partners want—and need—to rely on us; others may seek to be future partners. Still others need to know we are not afraid to act. The first step today is to shore up, preserve and press forward with our democratic experiment. Our nation must stand tall to work alongside the great powers to man- age the harsh realities the world faces.