The Foreign Service Journal, October 2013

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2013 23 A self-professed adrenaline junkie traces the evolution of her thinking about spending most of her Foreign Service career in tough places. BY ANG I E BRYAN FOCUS RISK MANAGEMENT FOR THE EXPEDITIONARY DIPLOMAT DEFININGANDMANAGING ACCEPTABLE RISK Angie Bryan, a political officer, joined the Foreign Service in 1992. In addition to postings in Kuwait, Damascus, Algiers, Lahore, Islam- abad, Lyon, Sanaa and Washington, D.C., she has been acting prin- cipal officer in Peshawar, Strasbourg and Marseille. She is currently political-economic counselor in Stockholm. T he definition of what consti- tutes “acceptable risk” has evolved considerably during my 21 years in the Foreign Service. I still remember an A-100 instructor who assured us back in 1992 that State would close an embassy and pull out the entire staff if the host coun- try could not (or would not) protect us. Fast-forward to 2008. As I stood in the debris of a massive attack on our embassy in Yemen—during which host-country security forces literally fled the scene instead of defending our facility—I remembered that instructor’s comment. How differ- ent things had become over the course of my career! Sure, we’d sent home family members before the attack (one of three during my tour), but the majority of our officers