The Foreign Service Journal, December 2007

58 F OR E I GN S E R V I C E J OU R N A L / DE C EMB E R 2 0 0 7 A F S A N E W S A growing number of voices are crit- icizing the State Department and ForeignService fornot “steppingup to the plate” in Iraq. Some, including the very people who urged the 2003 invasion, clearlyseektoshiftblameforfailuresbyother actors. While other critics appear to have no such malicious agenda, their criticisms are based on wildly inflated estimations of the capacities of civilian agencies to oper- ate in combat zones such as Iraq. Com- parisons between themilitary and the State Department areoftenmadewithcomplete disregard for the facts relating to scale: bud- gets, personnel and capacity for war-zone service. AFSA is making an effort to set the record straight. Toward that end, AFSA President John Naland sent a response, “Telling Our Story,” on Oct. 16 to a jour- nalist who had written an error-laden dia- tribe about ForeignService staffing in Iraq. Thetextofthenote,summarizedbelow,was then sent out by AFSAnet in order to offer members information that can be used to help educate those outside the Service on therealitiesoftheForeignServiceroleinIraq. We encourage members to find talking points here and help tell our story. Baseline Facts about the Foreign Service The huge disparities between the State Department and Defense Department in operating budgets are widely known. Ambassador (ret.)ChasW. Freeman Jr., in his article “Can American Leadership Be Restored?” in theNovember FSJ , estimates that the total budget inFiscal Year 2007 for defense-relatedactivitieswas$935billion. In contrast, the 2007 budget for international affairs was $30 billion—only $5 billion of which was for State and USAID operating expenses(withtherestgoingforforeignassis- tance,peacekeepingandothersuchoutlays). The State Department Foreign Service is made up of approximately 11,500 peo- ple. Of them, 6,500areForeignServiceoffi- cers while 5,000 are Foreign Service spe- cialists (for example, Diplomatic Security agents). There are another 1,500 or so Foreign Service members at USAID, the Foreign Commercial Service, the Foreign Agricultural Service and the International BroadcastingBureau. Because it is where most of the criticism is aimed, this article will focuson theState Department Foreign Service component. Let’sputthesizeof theStateDepartment Foreign Service in perspective. TheU.S. active-dutymilitary is 119 times larger than the Foreign Service. The total uniformed military(activeandreserve)is217timeslarg- er. AtypicalU.S.Armydivisionislargerthan the entireForeignService. Themilitaryhas more uniformed personnel in Mississippi than the State Department has diplomats worldwide. The military has more full colonels/Navy captains than the State Department has diplomats. The military has more band members than the State Department has diplomats. The Defense Department has almost asmany lawyers as the State Department has diplomats. Thekeypoint—especially forobservers who think in terms of the myriad capabil- ities of our nation’s largemilitary—is that the Foreign Service has a relatively small corps of officers. A Forward-Deployed Force Moreover, incontrast tothemilitary, the vast majority of Foreign Service members are forward-deployed(hence theword“for- eign” inForeignService). Today, ina time of armed conflict, 21 percent of the active- dutymilitary (290,000 out of 1,373,000) is stationed abroad (ashore or afloat). That compares to the 68 percent of the Foreign Service currently stationed abroad at 167 U.S.embassiesand100consulatesandother missions. There is nothing new about this high percentageof Foreign Service forward de- ployment. The per- centages are the same as they were two decades ago when I joined. Thus, the typ- ical Foreign Service member serves two- thirds of his or her career abroad. Over a 30-year career, that adds up to 20 years spent stationed overseas. Where are these overseas Foreign Ser- vice members? Nearly 60 percent are at posts categorized by theU.S. government as “hardship” due to difficult living con- ditions (for example, violent crime, harsh climate, social isolation, unhealthy air and/or terrorist threats). Of those hard- ship posts, half are rated at or above the 15-percent differential level that constitutes great hardship. Thus, unlike the old stereotype that has most Foreign Service members serving in comfortableWestern European capitals, only one-third of overseas posts are non-hardship. The majority of people at such posts are decompressing after serving at a hardship post, and they are doing important work. Again, the contrast with the military is instructive. As previously mentioned, 79 percent of the active-duty military is stationed stateside (including 36,000 personnel in Hawaii). Of those serving abroad, there aremore U.S. military per- sonnel serving in the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan than the State AFSA Issue Brief Telling Our Story BY JOHN K. NALAND, AFSA PRESIDENT