The Foreign Service Journal, October 2014

I t seems to me that in exercising his freedom and obligation to pick the best man for the job, a president will wish to give as much importance to experience in diplomacy, or in a related field, as he gives to experience when he names a general or an admiral, and that, in the absence of such experience, he will wish to assure himself that the person he names possesses qualities and qualifica- tions that fully compensate for his lack of experience. The possible penalties of failure to select qualified ambassadors are now so great that no president will want consciously to risk them. From the summer of 1953 to the day Mr. Castro rode a tank into Havana, our ambassadors to Cuba were political appointees, without previous expe- rience in diplomacy, and unable to communicate with the Cuban people because they didn’t speak the language of the country. If we should ask ourselves whether, during those crucial years, we took reasonable advantage of opportunities open to us to try, through the legitimate exercise of diplomacy on the spot, to avert the loss of Cuba to communism, the answer would have to be that we did not. That is a harsh thing to say, in the light of what has hap- pened in Cuba, but it is true nevertheless. Perhaps the most powerful reason for naming career ambassadors is that unless a high and growing percentage of career men are appointed to top jobs, we won’t have an e¨cient Foreign Service, and without an e¨cient Foreign Service our national security will be gravely imperiled. We need well-trained, e¥ective diplomats as much as we need a well- trained, e¥ective army. Our hope of avoiding a nuclear holocaust depends on our not having to use our military forces, in large-scale war at least; and our ability to stave o¥ large-scale war depends to a high degree on the quality of our diplomacy. The quality of our diplomacy, in turn, will depend on the quality of the men who carry it out. —From“The Ambassador” by Willard P. Beaulac, FSJ , October 1964. The article was a chapter from Beaulac’s book, Career Diplomat : A Career in the Foreign Service of the United States (Macmillan, 1966). 50 Years Ago 12 OCTOBER 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL electrical analogy comparing U.S./foreign life. We use 110 volts to power simple devices, whereas most of the world uses 220 volts.” ■ Are We ere Yet? is a travel blog maintained by a Foreign Service Spe- cialist from Colorado Springs. With 423 posts from 20 di erent countries, the blog includes nearly 4,500 photos of the author’s experiences abroad. ■ My Journey to Join the U.S. Foreign Service is a photo-blog recording life as a Foreign Service Facility Manager. It o ers some amazing photos that depict life abroad for a real Foreign Service family, AFSA Scholarship AFSA.org/Scholar AFSPA AFSPA.org Clements Worldwide clements.com Cystic Fibrosis esiason.org Embassy Risk Management Embassyrisk.com The Hirshorn Company hirshorn.com/USFS Inside A U.S. Embassy afsa.org/Inside United Palestinian Appeal helpupa.org WJD Management wjdpm.com