The Foreign Service Journal, October 2012

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2012 7 or several years now, our military leadership has called repeat- edly for an enhanced diplomatic capacity that can meet the mul- tiplicity of complex contemporary chal- lenges our nation faces, from terrorism to climate change. Can we build a stronger institutional capacity without a career Foreign Service that develops a deep senior bench of top-quality professional diplomats? As the following charts illustrate, the trend has been in the opposite direction. (The data are drawn from the Web site of the State Department’s Office of the Historian.) Exhibit 1 shows the top leadership positions (deputy secretaries, under- secretaries, assistant secretaries and counselor) at the State Department in periodic snapshots, starting in 1975. The total number of positions in this category has grown from 18 to 33 over 37 years. Meanwhile, the number of active duty Foreign Service positions has decreased, from 11 to 9, and the relative FS share has fallen from 61 percent to 27. Exhibit 2 shows an additional group: the 35 special envoys, representatives, advisers and coordinators in place today. Of these, only five slots (14 percent) are filled by active-duty Foreign Service officers. This is only a sliver of the data that AFSA has started to collect and examine. But it is more than enough to trigger a host of sobering questions, start- ing with this: If the trend continues, for how much longer will the United States have a professional diplomatic service? How can we maintain the quality, integrity, motivation and professional- ism of the career Foreign Service if three-quarters of the senior leadership posi- tions in the Department of State are filled by political appointments? What impact does this trend have on its institutional memory, to say nothing of the personal networks built over years that are so vital for success- ful diplomacy? Only an institution with a strong career diplomatic service can give sound, can- did advice to political lead- ers in order to shape policy and implement it effectively. Can we really expect such advice from an institutional leadership overwhelmingly drawn from the advocates of one party or the other, which changes hands with every new administration? In today’s world, it is hard to argue that the United States can afford to make mistakes on the diplomatic front because of our military superior- ity and the strength of our economy, or simply because we are the “indispens- able nation.” The questions raised above lie at the heart of the future of American diplomacy and the role we desire to play overseas in the coming decades. Please contact me at Johnson@afsa. org to share your thoughts. n Diplomatic Capacity Needs Professional Institutional Leadership BY SUSAN R . JOHNSON PRESIDENT’S VIEWS Susan R. Johnson is the president of the American Foreign Service Association. F Exhibit 2 Exhibit 1 FS Active Recalled Other 4 5 26 FS Active FS Retired/Recalled Other 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 1975 1995 2005 2012