By James P. DeHart
Sunday, June 15, 2008
One of my U.S. Foreign Service colleagues has a great photo of himself from his time working with a Provincial Reconstruction Team in one of Afghanistan's livelier provinces. He's dressed in khaki, with an MP5 assault rifle slung over his shoulder. When I first saw it, I thought: There's a lot to say about service like that. It's adventurous. It's courageous. It's patriotic.
But is it diplomacy?
Maybe, maybe not. But it seems to be the trend. Since 2003, more than 2,000 members of the Foreign Service have volunteered to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan and -- last year's flap over forced assignments to Iraq notwithstanding -- continue to do so in droves. Often, they're involved in non-traditional nation-building work -- digging wells, building schools and mentoring city councils -- in military units far from the U.S. embassy.
This surge in war-zone assignments is an extension of the "transformational diplomacy" for which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called in a 2006 speech at Georgetown University. She said then that Foreign Service officers must learn to partner more directly with the military. True, no doubt, but as they have done so, these new ties have raised fears that diplomacy itself is becoming militarized.
As a bumper sticker, transformational diplomacy is bound to be peeled away by the next administration. But as a set of ideas, it's here to stay. Foreign Service officers have always been the first to say that they can't be cooped up in foreign ministries or fortress embassies -- that they need to be out on the street, engaging with diverse communities.
Today, in such places as Ramadi and Jalalabad, they're doing exactly that. Out with the Provincial Reconstruction Teams, where contact with real people is possible (though dangerous for all concerned), U.S. diplomats, together with soldiers, are working closely with local leaders, offering advice and support in addressing their communities' political, economic and security woes.
For many of these diplomats, this will be a transformative experience. Those who arrive in Iraq or Afghanistan not knowing whether a major outranks a captain or vice versa will know a lot more about the soldier's world after a year of climbing in and out of Humvees together.
But while expertise in military affairs is a good thing, should it overshadow all else in a world of shifting challenges -- climate change, energy security and the threat of global pandemics, to name just a few? As China buys up U.S. debt by the billions, let's hope that some U.S. diplomats are reading the Financial Times and not just Sun Tzu.
Today, we're seeing not only transformational diplomacy but also the transformation of diplomacy. Foreign Service officers emerging from war zones are in many cases being promoted ahead of their peers. This is understandable, but as they rise up the chain and gain a bigger say in future personnel decisions, the practitioners of more "traditional" diplomacy may find themselves relegated to an even slower track.
In recent years, the number of Foreign Service assignments categorized as "unaccompanied" -- that is, too dangerous for families -- has surged from 200 to 900. If the trend continues, new recruits may no longer view the Foreign Service as a career but as something to do for a few years before settling down to real life -- a bit like the Peace Corps, minus the peace. In a recent survey by the American Foreign Service Association, 44 percent of active Foreign Service officers said that "developments in the last few years" have made it less likely that they will remain in the Foreign Service for a full career.
Oh well. Maybe the State Department leadership will conclude that a new kind of diplomat is needed anyway, that a liberal arts degree isn't the best preparation for someone who has to learn to live with mortar fire. If so, will the diplomat of the future be just a little less cerebral and a little more likely to salute than to offer constructive dissent?
Much depends on whether nation-building remains a preoccupation of U.S. foreign policy. If it does, some will continue to propound the lessons of Iraq 2003, when diplomats were called upon to do such things as organize village elections but lacked the skills to do them well. Next time, goes the argument, the Foreign Service should be ready.
But it's also possible to draw a different conclusion from recent years: that nation-building deserves the bad name it earned in Somalia, and that there should be no next time. One might even be forgiven for thinking that good old-fashioned diplomacy should be enjoying a renaissance now that military might has failed to set all things right. But sadly, according to a Center for Strategic and International Studies report entitled "The Embassy of the Future," diplomacy is still mistaken as "a tool for the weak, always about making concessions or appeasing our foes." That's too bad, because when Foreign Service officers describe their work in Iraq and Afghanistan, their best efforts sound suspiciously like old-hat diplomacy -- working to establish relationships of trust with key locals to influence them in favor of U.S. interests.
Training in nation-building, however, is definitely the fashion today. At the National Foreign Affairs Training Center, a new division has been created to prepare civilians for service in war zones, and diplomats can spend several weeks at Fort Bragg, N.C., learning how to be less of a liability to troops in the field. This is fine, as far as it goes. Diplomats cannot and should not be turned into Rambos, but they should be given every possible preparation for the unique challenge of working in war zones.
But there's a rub -- and, as usual, it's resources. This ramped-up training effort is symptomatic of a broader shift in an overstretched State Department -- the Foreign Service faces a shortage of up to 2,000 people -- where trade-offs are inevitable. Will fully funding its new Civilian Reserve Corps for conflict stabilization and reconstruction mean eliminating other positions and training slots? When corners are cut, language training is often the first thing to go. But it's a cut that doesn't easily heal. More and more diplomats en route to war zones today are armed only with English. Deployed without the local language, they'll return without it, too, having met an urgent need without investing in the future.
Developing a Foreign Service wise in the ways of nation-building should not come at the expense of its core capabilities -- above all, its unrivaled language, area and cultural expertise. Lacking tanks, money and manpower, what is the State Department's value-added if not the ability to talk intelligently to foreigners? As former undersecretary of state David Newsom told a Georgetown University audience last October: "Behind each of these initiatives that people are talking about, there must be American diplomats with the capacity -- in personality, in experience and in language -- to sit down with those from other societies and to persuade them of the correctness of the American position."
Not a bad description of the diplomat of the past, present -- and future. When I hear it, I think not of my colleague armed with the MP5, but of a Foreign Service friend now serving in Iraq (and speaking Arabic). Asked what he wore in the heat and dust, working out of Humvees and helicopters, he replied: always a suit and tie. "The military officers are never without their uniforms," he explained. "I'm a civilian, and this is my uniform."
Well said. A Foreign Service that knows its strengths and conducts diplomacy without apology will be locked and loaded to advance America's place in the world.
James P. DeHart, a career U.S. Foreign Service officer, is a fellow at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy and will begin an assignment with a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan next year. The views expressed in this article are his own.
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