18 DECEMBER 2024 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL SPEAKING OUT George Krol retired from the Foreign Service in 2018 after a 36-year career during which he served as ambassador to Belarus, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan; and as deputy assistant secretary of State for South and Central Asian affairs. He spent most of his career dealing with the states that emerged from the former Soviet Union, including postings to Russia and Ukraine. He resides in Rhode Island, where he is an adjunct professor at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport and an associate of Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. S ince retiring from the State Department at the end of 2018, I have read with great interest the numerous reports and articles regarding reform and the future of the U.S. Foreign Service, including those featured in the pages of the FSJ during this year’s centennial. I served in the Foreign Service for 36 of its 100 years; those long years have given me some ideas about how to improve the Service. Getting Back to Basics First, we need to define the essential work and value of the Foreign Service. Aside from the important and necessary administrative and legal (i.e., consular) duties members of the Foreign Service perform, the professional diplomat has four major functions: (1) to facilitate communication with the host government; (2) to understand in depth the host government and society; (3) to persuade the host government to take stances in support of U.S. policies and interests, and (4) to represent the United States and its policies publicly to broader audiences in host countries. The State Department should prioritize training Foreign Service officers in these core missions from day one. As many before me have noted, the department does not do enough to equip officers with the basic skills needed to perform these duties at the start and throughout the course of their careers. Too often, officers are thrown into sometimes-murky pools of diplomacy abroad, where they can struggle to keep afloat. Yes, embassies can and should train officers in the field; but our embassies are often too busy and understaffed to make this training a priority. Moreover, most FSOs have no training in how to train other officers. As a section head, deputy chief of mission (DCM) and even ambassador, I often asked myself why I was spending so much time being a copy editor for officers who seemed unfamiliar with basic principles of grammar, or why some officers seemed to have no idea how to negotiate and work in another culture outside the embassy’s perimeter. A six-week orientation class (that we knew as A-100 when I joined) does not produce competent diplomats ready to hit the ground running when they arrive at a U.S. mission abroad. Other agencies of the U.S. government require their entry-level officers to undertake many months or even years of basic tradecraft training before deployment, as do many other foreign diplomatic services. Officers need instruction in the basics of diplomacy, ideally using relevant case studies to prepare them before they go abroad. I know I could have used such training before my first assignment to our embassy in Warsaw in 1982 under conditions of martial law. Before arriving at post, I got six months of Polish language training, a couple sessions of area studies, a week of consular training, and a stern lecture from Diplomatic Security. Economic reporting and cable writing did not figure in the mix. I agree with the reports that call for officers, especially those who aspire to enter the Senior Service, to hone their basic skills and add new ones like management and leadership throughout their careers. Unfortunately, the department does not make most such training mandatory. For those who do participate, a two-week course in leadership training does not a leader make. The Foreign Service at 100: It’s Time for Renewal BY GEORGE KROL What is needed is stricter enforcement of existing rules regarding Foreign Service recruitment, training, and service.
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