The Foreign Service Journal, October 2013

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2013 19 security there in the months before his death? Perhaps. However we answer those questions, one thing is clear: If he were still with us, Chris Stevens would be making the case that diplomats must go to dangerous posts—and, once there, cannot lock themselves inside bunkers. Doing their jobs properly puts them in harm’s way, which means some of them are going to die. Such is the price of expeditionary diplomacy. Small Is Better It was right and proper for Secretary Clinton to convene a distinguished Accountability Review Board, co-chaired by retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, to identify mul- tiple mistakes and errors in judgment and recommend steps to avoid future tragedies. However, it appears the very global doubling down on security the same report warned against has already come to pass. U.S. diplomacy and development are increasingly con- ducted from fortress embassies, from which diplomats sally forth in four-car convoys of armored vehicles, protected by shooters who intimidate and alienate the very people the dip- lomats are trying to help and influence. That constraint on the work of diplomacy and development is a sword of Damocles hanging over the necks of decision-makers, from regional secu- rity officers to ambassadors and Cabinet members. The minutiae of providing overseas security—threat levels, static and mobile protection, setbacks, convoy protocol, move- ment approval, risk evaluation—are vital. But perhaps they are not as important as the initial decision on the size of the U.S. mission. Is it really worth risking the lives of hundreds of diplomats in Baghdad, along with thousands of contractors, when they are effectively locked away from Iraqis in a for- tress embassy compound? Similarly, did the civilian surge in Afghanistan accomplish anything of significance? In June 2011, before the downfall of the Moammar Qaddafi regime, the Center for Complex Operations at the National Plenty of FSOs willingly accept the risks of assignments to high-risk, high-threat places. There is no need to coerce their colleagues to bid on them.