Career Diplomacy: Life and Work in the U.S. Foreign Service, Second Edition

Preface

Preface Career Diplomacy: Life and Work in the US Foreign Service began as a gleam in a general’s eye. In 2005 retired US Army General John R. Galvin joined the policy committee of the Una Chapman Cox Foundation, a private foundation dedicated to a strong, professional foreign service. General Galvin, a soldier-diplomat who commanded allied forces in Europe and was dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, wondered out loud whether the foreign service had a book that would guide him through the basics. There is no such book, he was told. “Well, there should be,” he said, and Tony Gillespie, another member of the committee, agreed. Tony, the Charles A. Gillespie whose name is on the cover, recruited former foreign service officer Harry Kopp to work with him on the project, and the Cox Foundation provided some seed money. Tony died in 2008, before publication of the first edition. Whether America’s diplomacy succeeds or fails depends to a large extent on its foreign service professionals. Career Diplomacy describes the foreign service as an institution, a profession, and a career. It provides a full picture of the organization, its place in history, its strengths and weaknesses, and its role in American foreign affairs. It is not a polemic. The authors have (mostly) resisted the temptation to tell the world what is wrong and how to set it right. Readers of this book will come to understand who America’s professional diplomats are, what they do, the behavior they reward, and the culture in which they operate. If you are in, or interested in, the service, Career Diplomacy will teach you things you did not know. If you are thinking about joining the service, this book will help you make a wise decision. The first edition of Career Diplomacy: Life and Work in the US Foreign Service was published in 2008, from a manuscript that was essentially completed in 2007. This 2011 edition, from a manuscript completed in the first half of 2010, brings the facts and figures up-to-date and addresses three great changes that occurred in the intervening years. The first of these is the increasingly important—and increasingly competent—work of foreign service personnel alongside the US military in fragile states threatened with or emerging from combat. The second is the rapid growth of the foreign service in the US Agency for International Development, and the close xi xii Preface integration of that agency’s budget and mission with those of the US Department of State. The third, closely tied to the other two, is the arrival late in 2008 of a golden moment, which may have passed by the time this book is published, when Congress and the administration found a common determination to improve the foreign service by adding people, training them better, and giving them more money to work with. These changes are captured in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s slogan “Diplomacy 3.0,” or the three D’s—shorthand for diplomacy, defense, and development—treated as equally important pillars of American foreign policy. The website www.careerdiplomacy.com will try to keep readers informed when information in the book becomes outdated. Comments and questions are welcome via the website. ...