The Foreign Service Journal, December 2007

38 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 he United States faces unprecedented opportunities and challenges around the world. We will not meet these challenges, or grasp the opportunities available to us, without successful American diplomacy. What we think of as traditional diplomacy — where government and social elites interact in highly formal channels — is being transformed. As today’s diplomats continue to conduct traditional business, they must also adapt their capabilities to nontraditional settings, beyond conference rooms and offices. America’s diplomats are doing business in new ways. They work to bring development to mountain villages in Nepal and Peru, travel to remote jungles to support drug eradication missions in Colombia, and have delivered food and water in tsunami-devastated Indonesia. They deploy with U.S. military forces in provincial reconstruc- tion teams in Afghanistan and Iraq and operate from one- officer posts to promote American business in commer- cial centers in France. America’s diplomats are also struggling to break free from the bureaucratic practices that keep them inside U.S. embassy buildings and that emphasize the process- ing of information over the personal, active, direct engagement that wins friends and supporters for America — the kind of diplomacy that inspired Foreign Service officers to serve their country in the first place. Today’s diverse diplomatic challenges — such as high- lighting and demonstrating American values; strengthen- ing the growth of civil institutions and the rule of law; promoting democracy; serving and protecting the mil- lions of American citizens who live and travel abroad; promoting trade and investment; fighting drug traffick- ing; stopping the trafficking in persons; supporting sus- tainable development to combat poverty; preventing genocide; strengthening foreign cooperation and capaci- ty to address global security challenges such as terrorism, weapons proliferation, international crime, disease and humanitarian disasters — cannot be accomplished from Washington. These objectives require front-line activity by skilled diplomatic professionals operating in — and increasingly out of — embassies of the future. America’s diplomats will still put effort into influenc- ing foreign governments — bilaterally and multilaterally. But they increasingly will work directly with diverse parts of other nations’ societies, including the emerging inter- est groups and future leaders — from business and acad- emia, urban centers and remote villages, and religious institutions —who shape their nations’ values and behav- ior over the long term. Around the world, youthful pop- ulations are forming their identities. Will they view the United States favorably or as an adversary? F O C U S O N C O U N T R Y T E A M M A N A G E M E N T T HE E MBASSY OF THE F UTURE H ERE IS A VISION OF THE NEW A MERICAN DIPLOMACY , ALONG WITH PRACTICAL STEPS TO GET THERE . E XCERPTS FROM A RECENT REPORT . T