The Foreign Service Journal, December 2009

D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 7 Ambassadorial Jobs Still for Sale AFSA President Susan Johnson musters persuasive arguments in her October President’s Views column against our traditional, and pernicious, practice of reserving most, if not all, of our key diplomatic posts and positions in the State Department for those who contributed to the campaign of who- ever happens to be our president. As she points out, this practice is unique among what might be consid- ered “serious” countries, although one other government followed it to a lim- ited extent: the former Soviet Union. But in the Soviet case, those assign- ments were a punishment, not a re- ward, such as V.M. Molotov’s service in Ulaanbaatar following defeat of the “anti-Party Group” by Nikita Khrush- chev in 1957. I had hoped for better from the cur- rent administration in light of the state- ments by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton extolling the virtues of public service. Now we see that those decla- rations were mere window dressing. At least the George W. Bush ad- ministration made no effort to conceal its contempt for the career Foreign Service. The hypocrisy of the current White House makes it worse. Thomas Niles Ambassador, retired Scarsdale, N.Y. Diplomats in Conflict Zones Your September issue has three su- perb articles on “The Role of U.S. Diplomats in Conflict Zones” that de- serve the widest possible readership in the Service. They rightly remind us that the Foreign Service as a profession has a long way to go to develop the Service-wide competence to work on the ground in today’s (and tomorrow’s) counterinsurgency operations in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. The same issue contains a very rel- evant review by Ambassador David Passage of David Kilkullen’s recent book, The Accidental Guerrilla , on the same subject. Amb. Passage rightly commends it as something that “every American diplomat concerned with our national security needs to read and comprehend.” And he coins the use- ful phrase, “It’s the people, stupid,” to emphasize his point that that’s where any counterinsurgency must prevail. Old hands in the Service like myself recall our post–World War II experi- ence in occupied Germany, when en- tire A-100 classes were diverted and trained as “Kreis Resident Officers” to take over from the U.S. Army in de- veloping responsible local governance throughout the American zone of oc- cupation. Bruce Laingen Ambassador, retired Bethesda, Md. Where’s the Super-Diplomat? Kurt Amend’s recommendations in “The Diplomat as Counterinsurgent” (September FSJ ) are certainly valid, but they are pie-in-the-sky. What he describes is a kind of super-diplomat that does not currently exist. Nowhere in the article does he mention the im- portance of knowing the language of the country. It is doubtful that anyone, even at the ambassadorial level, would have the clout to whip the various agencies into line to support his strategic goals, and it is certain that he/she would not succeed without fluency in the local language. Does such a diplomat exist in the Department of State? Frank Huffman FSO, retired Washington, D.C. End Cuban Isolation I ask FSJ readers this question: How can we continue to justify a policy that has failed to meet its objective? For nearly 50 years the embargo on trade with Cuba has failed to achieve its goal: ending an authoritarian, un- democratic regime by removing Fidel Castro, who in 2008 took himself off center stage. A government seemingly more amenable to a resumption of re- lations with the U.S. continues under his brother, Raul Castro. Yet the U.S. embargo continues, and the nation closest to the U.S., after Canada and L ETTERS