The Foreign Service Journal, December 2004

D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 7 Remembering Lyall Breckon It was with great sadness that I read in the October Foreign Service Journal of the death this past June of Lyall Breckon. Without a doubt, he was one of the smartest and most tal- ented FSOs I encountered in my career, and — more importantly — one of the finest people. I worked for Lyall in the late 1980s when we both were on the U.S. con- ventional arms control delegation in Vienna. He was a brilliant writer, always able to find just the right phrase to explain concisely for Wash- ington readers the current status of those complicated talks. He was also a gifted negotiator, working tirelessly to achieve cooperation among the 23 NATO and Warsaw Pact participating nations. This was not an easy task in the twilight of the Cold War, with Pact discipline breaking down. By the time the Conventional Forces in Europe Negotiations began in March 1989, it had already taken almost two years for participants just to agree on the mandate for those talks. At the end, with a festive CFE launch by foreign ministers already scheduled, final agreement on the mandate was hung up over a dis- agreement between NATO members Greece and Turkey. Greece demand- ed that a particular port in southern Turkey (which had been used for the invasion of Cyprus) be within the CFE area of application; Turkey adamantly refused. Lyall broke the stalemate by proposing that — rather than continu- ing to use specific town names to describe the line marking the area of application in Turkey, as the text did up to that point — the disputed part of the line should simply be described “and thence to the sea.” This artful compromise by a master diplomat permitted each country its own inter- pretation. The mandate was signed and the new negotiations launched on time. I could tell other such stories, as I’m sure other former colleagues could. But most of all, I will remem- ber Lyall for his personal warmth and thoughtfulness, his modesty and his tremendous integrity. Janet Andres FSO, retired Longboat Key, Fla. International Visitors Enhance National Security “The Brave New World of Visa Processing” (September) really struck a chord. Having recently made the transition to academia from the Foreign Service, I now appreciate even more the importance of having international students and research- ers in the U.S. During my long overseas service I consistently met two categories of individuals who were highly favorable toward our country: those who’d had close contact with Peace Corps Volunteers, and those who had stud- ied in the U.S. These two groups have served as a natural, pro- American constituency in their own countries. Historically, we also attracted the very best scholars and researchers — many of whom ended up staying here and contributing tremendously in ensuring that our nation would remain the global leader in technology. I firmly believe that both groups — those who studied and left, and those who stayed — have added considerably to our fundamen- tal security. Now, regrettably, the message many international students are get- ting is that the hassles of getting to and remaining in the U.S. (application fees, the visa process, arrival indigni- ties, and Kafkaesque monitoring) are just not worth it, and that there are attractive alternatives. Meanwhile, Australia, Canada and the U.K. are all making major efforts to attract stu- dents who previously would have come to the U.S., and they are suc- ceeding. In our own case at Texas Tech University, there has been a decline in most international cate- gories, but an especially steep drop in Indian students (historically our largest group) as they opt more and more for Australia. Other categories have also declined, especially first- time students applying for visas. Higher education may be the United States’ fourth- or fifth-largest export product (something very few Ameri- cans even realize), yet we are volun- tarily giving away market share to our global competitors — something we forcefully oppose for other U.S. “products.” Of course, there is a need for vig- ilance in issuing visas and in moni- toring international students — but from my experience on both sides of the visa window, I believe the current system represents such overkill that it may amount to a Maginot Line giving a false sense of security rather than a real defense against terrorism. (After all, how difficult would it be for a group of L ETTERS