The Foreign Service Journal, April 2015

8 April 2015 | the foreign Service journal Explaining What Diplomats Actually Do I have the January-February Journal on my desk—an excellent issue. I had previously seen Donna Oglesby’s writing on the subject of teaching diplomacy, but not the others. As someone who teaches diplomatic practice to both undergraduates and graduates, I find an extraordinary craving among the young to understand exactly what we do. They are not much interested in theory, but are eager to understand what they might actually do if they joined a diplomatic service, whether American or foreign. They are often disconcerted by the day-to-day work that FSOs do and the substantial disconnect between that and the making of foreign policy. For all the talk of a notable decline in the State Department’s influence in recent years, the Foreign Service remains a highly sought-after career. Those who get through the fine examination sieve are very talented, although often unsure whether they want to make diplomacy a career—i.e., to stay with it more than five to 10 years. I try to give them a realistic under- standing of the challenges, both personal and professional, in a Foreign Service career. Many thanks for exploring the subject so successfully. Tony Quainton Ambassador, retired Co-Director, Center for North American Studies American University Washington, D.C. Teaching in France Thank you for putting together your recent focus on teaching diplomacy. It could not have been more timely. I retired from the Foreign Service at the end of 2014, and one week later began teaching a class on foreign policy and diplo- macy. The themes evoked by your contributors, particularly those offered by Barbara Bodine and Donna Oglesby, gave voice to questions and experiences I have only begun to consider. I found their insights immensely helpful. I teach in France, so most of my students are not American. However, they resemble the students Ambassa- dor Bodine describes as having “a very declaratory and directive approach to diplomacy.” I am convinced that FSOs temper that approach with their focus on process and the actual conduct of diplo- macy, while hopefully not dampening the students’ ardor for change. Ms. Oglesby gave very good advice when she observed that practitioners have to “structure their own thinking and reflect upon what they might offer stu- dents, while being true to who they are.” As someone who is just at the beginning of that process, the January-February FSJ was a gift from the heavens. Philip Breeden FSO, retired Aix-en-Provence, France Russia for Real It was a pleasant surprise—make that a shock—to read Ambassador James Goodby’s “The Putin Doctrine and Pre- ventive Diplomacy” in your November 2014 issue. I honestly did not know there was anyone in the State Department capable of long-term thinking. After joining the U.S. Agency for International Development in 1979, I worked on programs in the Middle East, South Asia, El Salvador, Eritrea, Russia and the former Soviet republics. Throughout my career, I sought to demonstrate that the economic development of other countries, even our enemies, benefits the United States in the long term. During those 23 years I never encountered a single State Depart- ment officer who thought beyond the next presidential election—and there were far too few on the USAID side, as well. Fast-tracking the privatization of Russia in the 1990s was a colossal failure, and probably produced some of the animosity we are now experiencing from President Vladimir Putin. And every- where we’ve tried it, regime change has produced results that are probably worse than what we started with. Expecting real development to come from helicoptered-in technical assistance teams in just two or three years is incoher- ent and wasteful; doing that in the midst of an armed conflict is insane. When we added democratic governance as a development goal without understanding the interdependence of political and eco- nomic systems, and how either one can overwhelm the other, we set the stage for the losses, even tragedies, that followed. That is why Amb. Goodby’s article was like a breath of fresh air rolling across the years of exhaust fumes. We need to reflect on what our real national interests are—not just currently, but 30 years from now—and then think about how best to achieve them without being hijacked by politicians and ideologues who have no idea what they are talking about. That’s what the State Department and USAID should be doing. Could anything be more obvious? Kristin Loken USAID FSO, retired Falling Waters, W.Va. letters