The Foreign Service Journal, December 2019

14 DECEMBER 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL 50 Years Ago Advice to the Foreign Service I would urge that the Foreign Service Association greatly strengthen its defenses against the political ambassador. As I have been one of the latter, I assume I can speak without being accused of excessive bias. There is a place, no doubt, in the system for political ambassadors. But they should be confined to the positions of empty gran- deur, to those where someone is needed to serve as a political lightning rod and to those where some exceptional qualification is required. ... I suggest that a committee of your organization, including young officers as well as old, look at all political appointees somewhat in the manner of the [American] Bar Association. And if a man is obviously unqualified, I suggest that it so advise the President and the Senate, with courtesy but without reticence. If this is done in defensive and parochial fashion it will, of course, be without influence. But if it is a careful and fair and large-minded exercise of judgment designed to screen out political nonentities and oddities, it would be influential. —Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith, from his article of the same title in the December 1969 FSJ . and homeland less safe, embolden our enemies and weaken important alliances.” “Once again, President Trump is deserting an ally in a foolish attempt to appease an authoritarian strongman,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wrote in an Oct. 7 statement. “This deci- sion poses a dire threat to regional secu- rity and stability, and sends a dangerous message to Iran and Russia, as well as our allies, that the United States is no longer a trusted partner.” On Oct. 23, Career Ambassador (ret.) Jim Jeffrey, the State Department’s special representative for Syria engagement and the special envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he was not consulted or advised in advance about the president’s decision to pull U.S. troops from northern Syria. “Turkey has not really gained all that much from this,” he testified, “but in the process has scrambled the entire north- east, undercut our efforts against ISIS and brought in the Russians and the Syrian regime forces in a way that is really tragic for everybody involved.” Ambassador Jeffrey also testified before the House Foreign Affairs Commit- tee Oct. 23: “We haven’t seen widespread evidence of ethnic cleansing. Many peo- ple fled because they’re very concerned about these Turkish-supported Syrian opposition forces, as we are. We’ve seen several incidents which we consider war crimes.” (Turkey denies it has committed any war crimes, according to an Oct. 23 Reuters report. ) President Trump announced Oct. 23 that Turkey would abide by a “perma- nent” cease-fire along the border of Syria. On Oct. 30, The New York Times reported that around 200,000 Kurds had been displaced from the region as a result of the fighting, and more than 200 civilians had been killed. On Oct. 27, President Trump announced that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of ISIS, had committed suicide after U.S. Special Forces descended on his Syr- ian compound during a nighttime raid. Senate Panel Urges Action Against Russian Election Interference R ussian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. elections through infor- mation warfare are likely to expand and intensify in 2020, according to a report released Oct. 8 by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee. “Russia is waging an information warfare campaign against the United States that didn’t start and didn’t end with the 2016 election,” said Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the committee’s chair- man, according to an Oct. 8 article in The Washington Post . “Their goal is broader: to sow societal discord and erode public confidence in the machinery of government. By flooding social media with false reports, conspiracy theories and trolls, and by exploiting existing divisions, Russia is trying to breed distrust of our democratic institutions and our fellow Americans,” said Burr. The Russian attack, the committee found, was “a vastly more complex and strategic assault on the United States than was initially understood … an increasingly brazen interference by the Kremlin on the citizens and democratic institutions of the United States.” The bipartisan panel of U.S. sena- tors called for sweeping action by the Congress, the Trump administration and technology companies to prevent social media sites from being used to interfere in the upcoming elections.