The Foreign Service Journal, December 2022

58 DECEMBER 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL pected we were the source of leaks. There was a sense of: they know what we think, and they’ve made it clear that they don’t care or trust us.” Continuing, Walker described what he perceived to be his possible dissent options: “Leaking wasn’t an option because I took my oath about protecting classified information and the process very seriously. From an integrity point of view, that was not an option for me. I didn’t formally convey my concerns to my chain of command because I didn’t feel I needed to: these were abundantly clear from conversations we had with the Front Office every day. Everyone knew what we thought. One thing we could do, and did do, at the working level to act on our dissent was to prepare and send forward accurate daily press guidance. Our drafts would inevitably get changed by the time it got to the Spokesman, who would reiterate the administra- tion’s ‘moral equivalency’ line at the noon briefing. But the guidance we sent up was honest. After consulting with our embassies, press reports, and intel analyses, we would truth- fully state what happened and suggest text for what the depart- ment should say publicly about it.” As the end of August neared, the choice was clear to Walker: “Suck it up and go along, or resign.” It felt “black and white,” Walker recalled. “I felt I couldn’t be effective trying to change the policy from inside the organization … we were frozen out, distrusted, and I was just a mid-level FSO. And the policy was starting to go in an even more cynical direction. I had to get out.” Exhilarating Clarity Stephen Walker vehemently disagreed with the Clinton administration’s Bosnia policy, but this was, in his mind, insuf- ficient justification to resign. What tipped the balance for him was his determination that he could no longer be effective: His “disloyal” office was frozen out of policymaking, and formal dissent had failed. He had acted “prudently”—as a good For- eign Service officer, he had tried to navigate a morally complex environment, publicly supporting established policy while seeking to change and challenge it from within, but eventually reached a tipping point where he could no longer do this. Looking back, Walker, who now teaches high school in New York, vividly remembers the liberating “clarity” he had when he quit. “I knew I was taking a stand and doing the morally correct thing,” he said. “It was frustrating and hard, but it was a rare opportunity to make a little bit of difference.” The exhilarating clarity Stephen Walker experienced following his resignation is what professional integrity feels like. n he would be expected to support and help execute: The United States would privately pressure the Bosnian Muslims to give up and sign a Milosevic-drafted partition plan and, once the agreement was finalized, arrange for the U.S. military to imple- ment it. Walker was horrified by the plan, which in his view ratified the Serbs’ ethnic cleansing. “At this point the United States was not simply prevent- ing the Bosnian Muslims from defending themselves (by not acting to lift the U.N. arms embargo),” Walker explained to me. “It was now contemplating putting the full weight of American diplomacy behind an ethnic partition plan and, in essence, put a gun to their head to get them to give up. This was mor- ally abhorrent and counter to American values and interests.” Walker left the meeting knowing he would return on Monday with his letter of resignation. Effectiveness . Dobel argues that morally conflicted officials should remain in government as long as they are still able to fight the good fight and correct what they believe to be wrong. But, he says, “if individuals have no power to act or speak and are ignored, then all their good intentions and tortured integ- rity will accomplish little good and probably abet harm,” and they should leave. This is the position in which Walker found himself in the days leading up to his resignation. As he told me: “On the one hand, we felt a sense of disillusionment and that the Dissent Channel mechanism had failed. It was clear to me that the poli- cymakers understood our reservations and concerns but were determined not to change policy. Twelve people had already formally dissented to no avail. If that didn’t change their minds, why would a dissent from me do it? Also, by the time I resigned, [the Bureau of European Affairs’] Balkan Conflict Group had been frozen out of the policymaking process because they sus- In essence, Dobel is insisting that, ethically, it is incumbent on government officials to operate and be effective in the real world, which is often morally ambiguous.