The Foreign Service Journal, October 2020

14 OCTOBER 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL for the public “who they are and what they represent.” Yet State has always tried hard to address gatherings of people interested in foreign affairs at universities, public conferences, world affairs councils, busi- nesses, think-tanks, military organizations and more. One reality is that far more American families are personally affected by fam- ily members in the military, and those relations being killed or wounded when fighting abroad—and this is reflected in Congress. So what is to be done? Clearly, there is a need for some area or country special- ists within the political, economic and public diplomacy cones; some politico- military specialists (like Christopher Smith and me); and some specialists in other functional areas like nuclear issues or climate change as those areas grow in importance around the world. But we shall always need generalists, as well. (Secretary of State Henry Kissinger imposed a program in the 1970s requiring at least one assignment elsewhere, even for area specialists.) At the very least, gen- eralists who attain senior ranks often act as umpires weighing the zeal of specialists in the overall balance of American policy as seen from the White House. All officers must serve at home and abroad, but some will be more attracted to, and be better at, one job or the other. The Service is already sensitive to this, and natural selection usually tends to the assignments. Finally, there is certainly a need for much more training guided by Foreign Service practitioners, along with outsid- ers, and a recognition by selection boards that people in training might also merit promotion (to reduce the tendency of high-flyers to avoid long-term training assignments). But this will take more money from Congress and is only likely to happen gradually, with much work needed on State’s presence and con- nections both in Congress and beyond the NSC, in the White House, to explain State’s unique selling points—continuous enlightened reporting from abroad, and the ability to prevent wars or pick up the pieces once the U.S. military has done its job. n