The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2023

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2023 15 Share your thoughts about this month’s issue. Submit letters to the editor: journal@afsa.org Mr. Hill believes that career-minded FSOs would not be interested in doing tours as policy game designers and facilitators. My work in conflict game design in the Bureau of Conflict and Stabiliza- tion Operations was some of the most important work of my FSO career. Since the diplomatic gaming article appeared in the FSJ last November, I have been approached by several FSOs and FS spe- cialists seeking advice on how they can get involved in policy gaming at State. I believe there is a great deal of inter- est in policy gaming, and such positions would be highly sought after. We should hear directly frommembers of the Foreign Service and Civil Service. Would you be interested in learning how to design and run policy games in the State Department? Mr. Hill believes that bureaus should not have their own gaming staff, and I disagree with this. They do now. Educa- tional and Cultural Affairs uses games as outreach tools for youth. Consular Affairs created games to prepare embassy staff for providing emergency services to Ameri- can citizens during a crisis. Conflict and Stabilization Operations runs numerous games on border conflicts, political transi- tions, stabilization operations, potential future conflicts, and other topics. Games improve decision-making, and decisions are made throughout the orga- nization and at all levels. Decision games are not limited to only the highest levels of the department. To support this use by embassies and offices, we need game designers in all bureaus. A central office could support these bureau designers, but a central office could not manage all the games in the department. Mr. Hill provides good arguments for locating an Office of Diplomatic Gaming at FSI or in the Policy Planning Office (S/P). There are likely good arguments for other locations, as well. I welcome greater debate on this topic. Wherever such an office is located, it must be able to support policy gaming throughout the entire State Department and beyond. (The importance of the State Depart- ment leading interagency policy games deserves its own article.) Some of the functions of an Office of Diplomatic Gaming are: developing high-level policy games for State Depart- ment leaders, running interagency games, providing consulting services for bureau game designers, organizing training efforts in game design and facilitation, providing State Department design input and participants to games run by other departments and agencies, and recruiting outside experts for participation in State Department games. Which location would provide the best home to carry out these functions and maintain a departmentwide (and beyond) focus? I look forward to the con- tinuing conversation on these pages. Robert Domaingue FSO, retired Seattle, Washington “ Meritocracy at State” — The Author Respond s I want to thank Ambassador James Jeffrey for his thoughtful response to my article ( “Meritocracy at State and the Foreign Service ExamAre Not Incompat- ible, ” Letters-Plus, June 2023 FSJ ). I’m glad it generated so much interest! I would also like to briefly respond to a few points. Recent State Department decisions with regard to the FSOT were indeed made in response to, and not despite, data regarding applicants’ ability to pass the Foreign Service Oral Assessment (FSOA), which is widely considered the most indispensable step in the candidate selection process. (That’s why even Fellows like me who do not have to pass the FSOT still must pass the FSOA.) I disagree that the “main mission” of the Foreign Service is to develop candi- dates for the approximate 10 percent of officers making up the Senior Foreign Service, which has only formally existed since 1980. To Amb. Jeffrey’s point about the exceedingly few officers (four in 40 years) who attain Cabinet-level positions, I believe this illustrates the opposite of his intended conclusion. The “routine” work of the Foreign Service is in fact the rule, while outlier FSOs in Cabinet positions are rare exceptions. And if the success of those outliers is somehow related to their performance on the FSOT, it begs the question of why they then find themselves in the company of the most senior policymakers, who typi- cally never passed the FSOT themselves: What was Susan Rice’s FSOT score? Or Kissinger’s? Or Blinken’s? As I stated in my article, it is under- standable—for both of us—to extol the system that allowed us to achieve success. For me, that was the Pickering Fellowship. For Amb. Jeffrey, that was an FSOT-weighted system that no longer exists. He has proved through his numer- ous career achievements that, in his case, that selection process certainly worked. I hope to do the same, like many other Fellows already have. Marshall Sherrell FSO U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv n