The Foreign Service Journal, November 2013

12 NOVEMBER 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL The system is not designed to diagnose mental health problems or assess the potential for violent acts. It’s designed to assess your trustworthiness for handling classified information. And just because you’re depressed doesn’t mean you’re going to sell secrets to the Iranians. —Marc Frey, a former senior adviser at the Department of Homeland Security, questioning claims that the security clearance process could have prevented Aaron Alexis from carrying out the Sept. 16 Navy Yard shooting in Washington, D.C.; quoted in the Sept. 18 Washington Post. Contemporary Quote Obama’s bundlers may actually be get- ting a bargain: Nixon declared that donors needed to pony up at least $250,000— about $1.4 million in today’s dollars when adjusted for inflation—to be considered for an ambassadorship ahead of his 1972 re-election, according to White House tapes released in 1997. (Herbert W. Ka lm- bach, Nixon’s personal lawyer and a major campaign fundraiser, ultimately pleaded guilty and served jail time for selling the U.S. ambassadorship to the Caribbean island nation of Trinidad and Tobago.) —Steven Alan Honley, Editor Speaking of Ambassadors I n his Sept. 19 “InThe Loop” column, Washington Post columnist Al Kamen gives mini-reviews to some of the best and worst video “introductions” the State Department has produced as new U.S. ambassadors head overseas. Kamen reports that the slick spots, each roughly two minutes long, are TV-broadcast quality, though they’re more likely to be seen on YouTube or on embassy websites. They all follow the same general format, declaring the ambassador’s excitement to be repre- senting America abroad—mixed with brief, sometimes painful attempts to speak the local language—and talk about increasing trade, historical ties and so forth. State says the pro- cess of producing the videos is consultative, but each chief of mis- sion is given latitude in tailoring the message to his or her own interests and strengths. This sometimes results in presentations that are interesting, but not necessarily for the right reasons. For instance, Kamen deems the video profiling U.S. Ambassador to Germany John Emerson “a bit overexuberant,” beginning as it does with “Hahlowwwww, Deutschland!”The former Clinton White House official and major bundler then praises the wonders of California, giving the video a campaign commercial feel, before talking about his family and love of film, tennis, golf, skiing and scuba diving (complete with a rather odd underwater photo of the ambassador in scuba gear). Kamen says that colleagues who worked in Germany and a German reporter panned that video, noting that Germans are quite formal in general and most serious about foreign policy and government. “It’s silly and feeds into the stereotype that Germans think Americans are spacey, trying to be too happy,” the German reporter said. Still, “it’s not offen- sive, just American.” “Hey! We like hot dogs,” Kamen quotes an anony- mous State Depart- ment official in response. The job of ambassadors “is to be Americans.” Judge for yourself: www.washington post.com/blogs/in-the-loop. — Steven Alan Honley, Editor Make Room! A s the world population grows, pro- foundly altering global demograph- ics, the Population Reference Bureau is taking it all into account. The organiza- tion’s annual World Population Data Sheet, released on Sept. 12, highlights several trends it expects to unfold over the next few decades. For instance, the PRB projects that the current sub-Saharan population of 1.1 billion will more than double by 2050, ris- ing to 2.4 billion. In contrast, the popula- tions of Europe and North America are expected to remain at current levels, 0.7 billion and 0.4 billion, respectively. The bright, colorful graphs that illus- trate the data sheet contain a rich array of information that sheds light on many different angles of future demographic shift. Wealth disparities, HIV/AIDS levels and settlement preferences, among many other items, give readers a well-rounded, informative picture of what is to come. Interesting takeaways from the 2013 Data Sheet include: n The trend of the “rich getting richer and poor getting poorer” is not ending anytime soon. In developed countries,