The Foreign Service Journal, November 2020

28 NOVEMBER 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL tant in policymaking and we have to get back in the habit or, as some observers might say, break new ground. Inmy remarks on that January day 36 years ago, I said “history never stops,” adding that “our duty must be to help shape the evolving trends in accordance with our ideals and interests.” Another point I made inmy talk with the Foreign Relations Committee that day is one that I want to expand on because it bears on the rebuilding that must take place in the federal government in general, and in the State Department and its Foreign Service, in particular. Referring to the new developments of those days, I said: “Our ways of thinking must adapt to new realities; we must grasp the new trends and understand their implications.” I stress this point because to me an important implication of recent trends is that rebuilding the State Department and its Foreign Service, like nearly all the rest of the federal government, cannot mean simply replicating what was there in the Obama and Bush and earlier administrations. Technology has empowered American citizens so that they can make their views known through social media and organize movements in the same way. This has changed the way politics and policymaking work in our country and elsewhere. Represen- tative democracies have all reacted to these changes, although in different ways, and their diplomacy must reflect those changes. Most governments, and I would say our own included, have not caught up with new realities. The people who succeed the present generation of civil servants and members of the Foreign Service will be familiar with the new realities because they will have been part of them during much of their lives; but the ways in which the future leaders of the State Department and its Foreign Service manage the professional development of incoming diplomats and policy advisers will require changes, and that is really hard to do. I was very pleased that during my tenure as Sec- retary of State, a National Foreign Affairs Training Center was established that absorbed the Foreign Service Institute, and I was proud that the center was given my name. As a former educa- tor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago and Stanford University, I cherished this legacy, and still do. One of the priorities of 2021 should be to review the resources devoted to the center in light of educational goals appropriate to the new realities. A few years ago, the U.K. government decided to create a British Diplomatic Academy for the first time in the long his- tory of British diplomacy. Probably in recognition of the fact that foreign policy, both in its making and its execution, had become dispersed through several ministries, the stated goals of the new academy included the vision of “a Foreign Office that is an international center of ideas and expertise; that leads foreign policy thinking across government.” Another stated goal, one more aimed at acquiring the people who could achieve this vision for the Foreign Office, was to become “the best diplomatic service in the world.” Other nations have had diplomatic acad- emies for many years, and they have sought more modest goals. The German diplomatic academy focuses on purposefully and strategically networking with counterparts from other nations. The French academy places high value on mentoring junior officers. The Making of Career Diplomats There are lessons to be learned fromother countries about the professional education of America’s diplomats, but of course our Secretary of State George Shultz meets staff at Embassy Moscow ahead of the May 1988 Moscow Summit meeting between President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev. George Shultz walks with President Ronald Reagan outside the Oval Office on Dec. 4, 1986. SHAWNDORMAN RONALDREAGANPRESIDENTIALLIBRARY,NARA