The Foreign Service Journal, October 2009

O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 19 recent years, it is rare to find a public diplomacy section anywhere near the size of other sections in embassies. For example, think about the American officers in an overseas post. The consular section is swarming with entry-level officers. Management, even at smaller posts, still has a sub- stantial number of sections headed by an FSO: human resources, financial management, information manage- ment, general services, etc. Medium- size political and economic staffs generally number at least four to five officers, plus an office management specialist and, frequently, an Eligible Family Member. In comparison, AmericanOMS jobs in public diplomacy sections went the way of dodo birds in the 1990s, as did many assistant information and assistant cultural affairs officer positions. That means that only the very largest PD sec- tions, those that still have an AIO or ACAO, can compare even with medium-size political and economic sections in terms of how many officers section chiefs supervise. Or to put it an- other way, a political counselor at a medium-size embassy in Latin America is usually supervising at least twice as many American employees as the pub- lic affairs officer. This, in turn, means that all other section heads are gaining an advantage in managing personnel, which leads to opportunities to shine in Employee Evaluation Reports by working out em- ployee disputes and issues, writing eval- uations that get commendations, etc. As for Locally Employed Staff, once again the numbers in the consular and management sections dwarf those in PD. Even political and economic sec- tions seem to be adding LES, while PD’s ranks were chopped in 1999 when support staff —drivers, financial staff and data managers —were trans- ferred to State management sections. In short, according to what I saw in the EERs, any advantage in terms of man- aging people and resources that PD of- ficers may have at the FS-3 and FS-2 levels disappears by the time they reach FS-1 — which means PD offi- cers are operating at a real disadvan- tage vis-à-vis their counterparts in terms of supervisory responsibility, a key factor in making it across the threshold. Myth No. 2: Many of us are con- vinced that State’s culture is anti-PD, and that members of other cones have no interest in public diplomacy. I know all too well that this was true in the past, having suffered under a DCM who regularly admonished the country team that “If you want to ruin your career, speak to the press.” How- ever, based on what I read in the per- sonnel files, this old axiom is no longer true. Indeed, listing PD as a require- ment for advancement (e.g, including it in the promotion precepts) has been spectacularly successful. Every last officer overseas — if one believes what one reads in the EERs — is out there talking to the media, giving speeches at universities and high schools, and meeting with nongovern- mental organizations and other com- munity leaders. If they are not doing so, that failure is being written up as an Area for Improvement. (In fact, urg- ing officers to do more PD has become one of the most popular recommenda- tions for non-PD FSOs. For example, an economic or consular officer may be directed to increase his or her pub- lic outreach by giving public speeches or meeting with the media.) That said, I do not believe this sea change has come about because PD officers have successfully “infected” State with our values (as some officers claimed would happen at the time of consolidation). It occurred because changes in the world have made every- one more aware of the need to fight the battle of ideas in the public arena. Nor should this shift be surprising, given the younger generation’s propen- sity to use technology and to embrace openness. But old PD hands still act as if nothing has changed — when it most definitely has. A corollary to this myth is the belief that only seasoned PD officers can ad- equately “do PD.” That is not what the EERs indicate, with many officers from other cones getting rave reviews for their stints as PAOs, IOs and CAOs and for “new technology” pilot proj- ects. What Is to Be Done? If PD officers are not competitive classwide, what will become of them? One answer to that question comes from Bruce Gregory, who was for many years the staff director of the Ad- visory Commission on Public Diplo- macy and who currently teaches PD. Gregory has been saying for quite a while that the PD cone should disap- pear, with officers being absorbed into the political cone. The logic behind this is that the skill sets needed to be a good PD officer — good writing abil- ity, superior contact work, excellent po- litical judgment, and a “nose for the news” or for coming trends —are sim- ilar in both cones. Based on the EERs I read this sum- mer, I have to say that there may be something to this idea. Otherwise, how can political officers with no pub- lic diplomacy experience be function- ing successfully as public affairs offi- cers? Besides reading about officers from other cones successfully serving F S K N O W - H O W