The Foreign Service Journal, January 2004

founded in 2001. It aims both to inspire talented professionals to join government service and to transform the way government operates. The “Best Places to Work” Web site contains the complete rankings and comprehensive information on the methodology behind them, as well as detailed analysis of the findings, frequently asked questions about the rankings and “fast facts.” On the Other Side of the Fence… The grass is always greener, according to the old saying. But Foreign Service folks, worried and dispirited by the almost constant bar- rage of attacks on American diploma- cy and diplomats from Capitol Hill to Istanbul during the past year and more, can take heart. News from France and Canada indicates that things could be worse. On Dec. 1 thousands of French diplomats and Foreign Ministry staff members resorted to a strike for the first time ever, protesting proposed 2004 budget cuts that would trim the Foreign Ministry’s operating budget by nearly 2 percent, do away with 116 jobs, and cut diplomatic housing allowances by $24 million. “After years and years of economiz- ing that have hit this ministry,” a strike leader said, “they’re asking us to go fur- ther — that is, to no longer have the means to do our job.” The French Foreign Ministry supports about 5,000 people in 154 embassies, 98 consulates and nearly 500 cultural offices and schools around the world. In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell pulled U.S. diplomacy out of the dumps into which it was cast during the 1990s, when the State Department’s budget was halved, Foreign Service ranks dwin- dled and for two years the FS entrance exam wasn’t even given. On his watch, the budget has been restored and the Diplomatic Readiness Initiative rapidly rebuilt FS ranks. But that doesn’t mean the plug won’t be pulled again on the ship of State in the future. To our north, the Canadian Foreign Service appears to be facing a truly existential crisis, its raison d’etre called into question as much by gov- ernment actions as by the stunning portrayal of Canada’s decline on the international stage in Andrew Cohen’s While Canada Slept, a book making the rounds among policy circles. “Do we want or need a professional career diplomatic service?” is the way Masud Husain, president of Canada’s Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers, put the fundamental question facing Canadian diplomats and the nation in a recent issue of PAFSO’s quarterly, bout de papier (Vol. 20, No. l, p. 4). There has been a sharp decline in Canada’s ability to project a diplomat- ic presence both abroad and in Ottawa, Husain explains. It is evident in the extent to which other govern- ment departments conduct their own foreign affairs without central coordi- nation, in the large number of vacan- J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 11 C YBERNOTES The National Security Archive, located at the George Washington University’s Gelman Library in Washington, D.C., is the world’s largest nongovernmental library of declassified national security docu- ments. A great many of these docu- ments are available, with annotation and well-written commentary, at the Archive’s Web site ( www.gwu.edu/ ~nsarchiv/ ). It is a gold mine of fas- cinating and topical material. Founded in 1985 by a group of journalists and scholars who had obtained documentation from the U.S. government under the Free- dom of Information Act and sought a centralized repository for these materials, the Archive also functions as a public interest law firm defend- ing and expanding public access to government information through the FOIA, and an indexer and publisher of the documents in book, micro- fiche and electronic formats. The Web site contains “Headlines” — which at this writing featured new documents on “Nixon’s Trip to China,” “The Dawn of Mexico’s Dirty War,” and “Kissinger to Argentines on the Dirty War: ‘The quicker you succeed, the better’” — as well as critical documents on 10 different topics such as Europe, Humanitarian Interventions and Government Secrecy. The site also contains special Archive projects. There are also links to a directory of the Archive’s books, with ordering information, and to the Digital National Security Archive, which, however, is a subscriber-only facility. Site of the Month: The National Security Archive