Can You Stay In One Country For Foreign Service

The American diplomatic mission in Havana, Cuba. (Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images)

Members of the U.Due south. Foreign Service, the professional diplomats who represent the Usa government and help U.South. citizens abroad, have long been the target of jibes from lawmakers, pundits and the public. Ofttimes portrayed in films as elitist dilettantes, they typically come off 2nd best compared with difficult-charging war machine officers or focused intelligence agents. But information technology's worth taking a closer look at the people who make up the Strange Service and the work they do abroad.

Myth No. 1

Foreign Service officers live large.

Co-ordinate to any number of spy films, diplomats are always going to cocktail parties in luxurious settings, where men are decked out in tuxedos and women in stunning evening wear.

Working dinners and receptions have always been parts of a Foreign Service workweek. But today's diplomats enter the job with the expectation that they will ofttimes serve in hardship posts and state of war zones. Out of 170 countries with authorized Foreign Service posts, officers serving in 27 of them (almost 16 percent) are eligible to receive "danger pay" because of active hostilities, civil conflict, high levels of criminal violence or the existent possibility of targeted kidnappings, oft aimed at U.Southward. diplomats.

Since 1950, eight U.S. ambassadors have died in the line of duty overseas. Six were killed by militants and 2 in plane crashes. The nearly recent example was Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, and allow'south not forget communications specialist Sean Smith, who died with Stevens, and public diplomacy officeholder Anne Smedinghoff, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2013. And recall the 52 Foreign Service officers and other diplomatic mission workers held in Tehran for 444 days from 1979 to 1981.

Apart from the more than severe dangers inherent in Foreign Service life, those serving at no less than 67 percentage of U.S. posts are also eligible for hardship differential, which tin can exist based on challenging health conditions, extreme climates, concrete isolation, difficulties in maintaining a healthy diet or other conditions that the Country Department monitors and documents regularly.

Myth No. two

Foreign Service officers are white, male elites.

In a 2014 web log post, a former diplomat complained that "Breaking into the Skillful Former Boys Diplomatic Gild is Still Difficult to Do," and in his volume "A Lifetime of Dissent," Raymond Gonzales likewise argues that "as Strange Service Officers, the odds for Hispanics or Blacks making the cutting are pretty grim. Thus, the good ol' boy network perpetuates itself."

There was a fourth dimension when members of the Foreign Service almost exclusively came from well-heeled families of American patrician guild and were educated in one of the Ivy League bastions of privilege, part of an "old boys' " network (sarcastically referred to every bit "pale, male, and Yale").

These days, though, Foreign Service officers await more than like America. They come from rural and small-town besides as urban areas, and from country and small individual colleges as well as the Ivy League. If you call up yous tin can compete for the opportunity to represent this state abroad and are prepared to tolerate — in many posts — regular power outages, poor public health and sanitation standards, and a danger-concise lifestyle, you're welcome to apply.

But while the Foreign Service has changed, when it comes to gender and racial variety, there's nonetheless work to be done. Almost half a century ago, in 1970, less than 5 percent of Foreign Service officers, and only ane percent of senior-level officers, were women. By 2003, women were one-3rd of the officer corps and 25 pct of those at senior levels. The latest State Department written report lists women as xl per centum of the "FS Generalist" corps (accounting for most diplomats) and 1-third of the Senior Foreign Service.

Likewise, the share of black career officers is still disappointingly small merely growing from prior decades: It reached 6 percent in 2005 and by this bound was not any higher. That's better than the mere two dozen black officers at piece of work in 1968, simply with clear and needed room for comeback.

Myth No. three

Foreign Service officers advance their own agendas.

According to a 2015 essay in Foreign Policy, at least some presidential administrations accept reasons to mistrust Strange Service officers. "Republican administrations," announcer Nicholas Kralev wrote, ". . . tend to view the diplomatic service equally liberally inclined and excessively internationalist." Indeed, former speaker of the Firm Newt Gingrich suggested in Strange Policy in 2003 that President George Westward. Bush's State Department was purposefully undermining his objectives away. But this mistrust mistakes specialized knowledge, which may not reflect what administrations believe, with rogue agendas.

Like military officers, Strange Service officers have commissions from the president and have an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Nosotros serve the president elected past the people of the U.s., as well equally the officials appointed and confirmed to help formulate and execute our country'south foreign policy and international relations.

We also, nonetheless, are responsible for advising the secretary of country or the president when we believe differently than they practice, peculiarly when information technology comes to advancing the nation's best interests. Later 266 Foreign Service officers resigned in 1968 over the Vietnam War, the Land Department in 1971 established a formal "Dissent Channel " to be used for transmitting recommendations that disagree with official policy. Such messages might say that some of our "friends" are politically corrupt, bleeding their countries dry out through bribery or payoffs, or telling u.s.a. what we want to hear most political democracy while jailing those seeking a modicum of political space. This is not disloyalty but frank and very helpful advice — from the perspective of on-the-footing observers.

Myth No. 4

Face-to-face affairs isn't necessary anymore.

According to a 2012 Atlantic article, "digital diplomacy . . . faces such high expectations as a supposedly revolutionary technology." Indeed, later the Obama assistants prioritized digital affairs, and with some hailing it as a way for "governments and citizens to communicate faster and more than finer," ane might come to the conclusion that loftier-tech diplomacy could soon border out sometime-fashioned diplomatic work.

Social networking is useful as a diplomatic tool, just only as a complement to the work of face-to-face up contacts with key audiences and determination-makers. There comes a point in human relations (particularly when dealing with some other society and culture) when y'all must appoint face up to face, in the local language, to develop the trust and committed relationships that nosotros need to discuss serious international bug (including, equally an extreme example, armed forces and/or diplomatic back up).

For instance, then-Secretarial assistant of State John Kerry didn't Skype in to Ukraine merely instead visited that country twice in recent years, first in March 2014 in the face of the Russian campaign to annex Crimea and then in July 2016 to promote solidarity with the United states of america amongst separatist fighting. He personally took his message to Kiev, making his point more forcefully than if he had delivered it through an electronic transmission. We obviously didn't coil back the Russians, just it was a clear demonstration of where we stood and our willingness to send personnel in the flesh to brand our betoken.

Myth No. 5

Diplomacy can't attain much without the war machine.

From Teddy Roosevelt'southward famous "Speak softly and deport a large stick," analysts and strange policy professionals have agreed that affairs without strength to back it upwards rarely gets the job done — especially in cases that are vital to national security (think Iraq, Syria and Due north Korea).

Simply the pendulum may have swung also far in recent years to favor the large stick. The all-time response to this statement probably came from then-Defense Secretary Bob Gates. He told a Washington remember tank in 2008 that diplomacy and development should lead American efforts abroad, and he warned against a "creeping militarization" of U.S. foreign policy. "It is of import," he said, "that the military is — and is conspicuously seen to be — in a supporting role to civilian agencies."

The Foreign Service is typically our first contact in our relations with other states and other peoples. Experts inside and outside authorities know that it is cheaper and more than effective to let our diplomats to deal with crisis situations earlier they explode, rather than afterwards. But even if the money is appropriated, it is hard to claim success for the civil war that has been averted, for the mass rapes that take non occurred or for the state that has non failed. We all know, however, how easy (if regrettable) information technology is to claim success for the combatants killed, the enemy strongholds taken and the number of prisoners captured. In an update of Gates's statement, we can recall Gen. Jim Mattis's 2013 remarks, while leading U.S. Central Control: "If you lot don't fund the Country Section fully, then I need to buy more ammunition ."

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Can You Stay In One Country For Foreign Service,

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-myths-about-the-foreign-service/2017/07/20/8aac2a4e-67f5-11e7-8eb5-cbccc2e7bfbf_story.html

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