The Foreign Service Journal, December 2021

18 DECEMBER 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL 50 Years Ago Vietnamization of the Foreign Service N early three million Americans have now served in Vietnam. Of these, about 600 have been Foreign Service officers. Thus, roughly 20 percent of the Foreign Service has been exposed to many of the stimuli which have turned “nice” kids from Middle America into peace freaks, hawks, junkies, and even assassins. … About 350 FSOs have been assigned to the pacification program (CORDS). … Serving in Vietnam is not like service else- where. With respect to no other country could it be said that perhaps 20 percent of the FSOs had experimented with soft drugs, but that is the case in Vietnam. And in no other country do FSOs have their own personal automatic weapons and receive training in how to fire a grenade launcher before they go. Vietnam is different. Most FSOs who have served in Vietnam are acutely aware of the mistakes America has made in that coun- try and are determined that the experience shall not be repeated elsewhere. More than anything, they understand the limitations of military power. … Coupled with the Vietnam veterans’ mistrust of Ameri- cans in uniform will be their own activism. In Vietnam they left the traditional diplomatic world of reporting and demarches. The emphasis in Vietnam was on doing things, whether inside or outside the system. If Vietnamese officials would not feed hungry refugees, the FSO usually found a way to get the job done himself. … What the attitudes of the Vietnam returnees portend for the future of the Foreign Service is not yet clear. If the slight trend toward resignation increases, then the department may well lose many of those who have been most markedly affected by the Vietnam experience. Morale has unquestionably been hurt by the large number of Vietnam assignments, but morale has been hurt countless times in the past. FSOs who have been to Vietnammay well be viewed as a cadre for future counter-insurgency assignments else- where. But fewer and fewer people believe that anything approaching American involvement in Vietnam should or will be repeated elsewhere. In any case, the Vietnam war may someday come to an end. But many Foreign Service officers, and perhaps the Service as a whole, will never be the same again. —John Claymore, a pseudonym for a former FSO who served in Vietnam, from his article by the same title in the December 1971 FSJ . The U.S. government has long con- demned prominent offshore financial centers, where permissive regulations and guarantees of discretion have drawn oli- garchs, autocrats and foreign individuals and companies accused of wrongdoing. That the U.S. now serves as an offshore destination in its own right for trillions of dollars belonging to questionable actors stands in stark contrast to U.S. values and rhetoric, including the rule of law Ameri- can diplomats promote abroad. In response to the Pandora Papers, a bipartisan group of lawmakers announced in early October a bill known as the Enablers Act. This legislation would, for the first time, allow the Treasury Depart- ment to require trust companies, lawyers, art dealers and others to investigate the bona fides of foreign clients seeking to move money and assets into the American financial system. It also represents the most significant reform of rules against money laundering since 9/11. “If we make banks report dirty money but allow law, real estate, and accounting firms to look the other way, that creates a loophole that crooks and kleptocrats can sail a yacht through,” Rep. TomMalinowski (D-N.J.), co-sponsor of the proposed bill and co-chair of the Congressional Caucus Against Foreign Corruption and Kleptocracy, said. “Our bill closes that loophole and encourages the administration to move in the same direction.”