The Foreign Service Journal, October 2011

L E T T E R S O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 9 management side of the house seems to make for less than a level playing field. Moreover, it is these officers who must get out of these embassy strongholds in order to establish the kind of personal contacts with host-country nationals that can be built into relationships of re- spect and trust aimed at gaining under- standing and respect for our policies. I retired from the U.S. Information Agency in 1984 as an FE-OC. During my 28-year Foreign Service career, I fo- cused on building a network of personal contacts in order to feel the pulse of each country and culture and to report accurately on the psychological climates of these countries for Washington end- users. My virtually bilingual German and 4+/4+ French were central to what I saw as my success. Attaining fluency in a foreign lan- guage is a labor of love. Promotion boards certainly ought to cut officers who have achieved high levels of profi- ciency, whether in easy or hard lan- guages, to the point of becoming truly effective cross-cultural communicators, as much slack as they do officers whose main achievements have been as man- agers. Selecting these officers out, thereby losing the skills, knowledge and experience they have accumulated over many years, is clearly a loss to the na- tional interest. Dean Claussen FSO (USIA), retired Bellevue, Wash. Training Is Required In considering the recommenda- tions presented in Bob Beecroft’s arti- cle, “Taking Diplomatic Professional Education Seriously” (July-August), it is worth recalling that Section 703 of the Foreign Service Act of 1980 re- quires that the Secretary of State “es- tablish a professional development program to assure that members of the Service obtain the skills and knowledge ... relevant to clearly established pro- fessional standards of expected per- formance ... required at the various stages of their careers.” More specifically, Sec. 703 states: “Junior Foreign Service officer training shall be directed primarily toward pro- viding expert knowledge in the basic functions of analysis and reporting as well as in consular, administrative and linguistic skills relevant to the full range of future job assignments. Mid-career training shall be directed primarily to- ward development and perfection of management, functional, negotiating and policy development skills to pre- pare the officers progressively for more senior levels of responsibility.” Further, “career candidates should satisfactorily complete candidate train- ing prior to attainment of career status” while “[m]embers of the Service should satisfactorily completemid-career train- ing before appointment to the Senior Foreign Service.” Todd Stewart Ambassador, retired Sun Valley, Idaho. Reform from Within Congratulations to the authors of the American Academy of Diplomacy re- port on professional training for diplo- mats, with its extensive and thorough recommendations for a Foreign Serv- ice worthy of the United States of America (“Taking Diplomatic Profes- sional Education Seriously,” July-Au- gust FSJ ). Having in my day spent a couple of years in the career development divi- sion, sending officers for training and helping to fashion the Foreign Service Institute, I applaud the emphasis on training and the call for such changes