10 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL LETTERS The Journal’s Enduring Value After a brilliant centennial celebration, The Foreign Service Journal suddenly faces a less certain future. The Trump administration is squeezing AFSA and thinning the ranks of the State Department, two bedrocks of the Journal’s existence. Now, as it goes to publishing only six issues a year, we should pause to reflect on the publication’s enduring value. I would highlight three aspects. First, the Journal is uniquely entwined with the Foreign Service. The two claim a common origin, the drive culminating after the First World War to modernize American diplomacy. The two have grown up together. The Journal has provided an established forum for American diplomats. That makes it not so much a trade journal as a tradecraft journal, a space for practitioners to reflect on the real work of diplomacy. A good example, from the October 2022 issue, is an essay by Rose Gottemoeller on the 1994 Budapest memo that assured Ukraine of its security if it handed over its nuclear weapons. That agreement became fiercely controversial after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As a lead negotiator, Gottemoeller was an insider, allowing her to explain the geopolitical context of the memo. Second, over the past century, the Journal has served as a repository of the stories of diplomacy, surely the profession with the most wonderfully droll incidents of all. Its archive, now available online, is a treasure house. anniversary was marked in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and a group of us met that morning at the plaque honoring the victims in Arlington National Cemetery. This year’s gathering came on the heels of the State Department’s unfortunate decision to eliminate the Office of Casualty Assistance, which was created after the bombings to support the families of U.S. personnel or family members killed or injured overseas, and to fold the function into another office. I was chargé d’affaires in Tanzania at the time of the bombings. For a large group of American and Tanzanian survivors of the Dar bombing, the anniversary engendered numerous heartfelt and inspiring email messages as we commiserated with one another. One colleague wrote: “No one who wasn’t there can fully understand, and I don’t believe those of us who were can ever truly express the multitude of emotions that remain even 27 years later.” Another wrote: “We are all part of a united group, brought together by tragedy and now a group that has been blessed because we learned the true value of living each and every day because of that tragedy.” Most of us by now have retired from U.S. government service, but many emails reflected today’s unsettled situation in U.S. government agencies. One person noted: “We have been saddened by the rapid changes our friends have been reacting to.” Another said: “The changes across our institutions have been difficult to witness—and for many, to personally endure. As painful as they are, they also underscore how much we’ve all given, and how deeply we care about the missions we served. For those of us who’ve moved into retirement or new chapters, the sense of purpose doesn’t disappear— it simply shifts form.” One of my favorite examples comes from the November 1993 edition in which a British diplomat—and none other than the Permanent Under Secretary, the highest position in their career hierarchy— related the rendering of his august title into Japanese, which then came back as “immortal junior typist.” Let me conclude with an observation drawn from my experience years ago as an editorial intern in the New York office of Foreign Affairs. That magazine shares a similar trajectory with the Journal. It, too, was conceived in the 1920s in reaction to the sudden American assumption of international responsibility. Then, over the next century, Foreign Affairs was to the expanding globalism of U.S. foreign policy what the Journal was to the deepening professionalism of U.S. foreign relations. Note that distinction between foreign policy and foreign relations. Where Foreign Affairs is comparatively weak—sifting and refining the rich raw material of the actual practice of diplomacy—the Journal is uniquely strong. These are just a few reasons why I value the Journal, and wish it well in its second century, and deplore the infringements on its viability. Fletcher M. Burton State FSO, retired Nashville, Tennessee Survivors Remember the East Africa Bombings August 7, 2025, marked the 27th anniversary of the East Africa embassy bombings. Thank you to AFSA and the FSJ for remembering every August. While the State Department this year chose not to issue a public statement, the
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