Why Don't We Talk Anymore?

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to reform the Soviet empire and failed. Suddenly free as a result, Poles, Hungarians, and Romanians were desperate for security and prosperity. Membership in NATO and the European Union would give them both. The United States was supportive but insisted that these countries adopt genuinely democratic rules of political and economic competition. Even leaders with no democratic history, like Romania's ex-communist Ion Iliescu, put the interests of their people first. (On the darker side, Secretary Rice's refusal to allow a U.N. Security Council resolution helped lock Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert into his doomed 2006 invasion of Lebanon and the consequent rise of Hezbollah. Refusal to anger domestic supporters of Israel was in practice an ugly betrayal of an important friendship.)

The United States has enormous potential power for good in the world, such as the power to promote human rights; even its junior diplomats are occasionally allowed to exert this power. The fact that this sort of influence can be wielded most effectively within the constraints of international law offers diplomats a substantial advantage over their rivals in the Pentagon and the CIA. So why are so many diplomats leaving the profession prematurely?

As their counterparts struggled in Vietnam a generation ago, hundreds of young FSOs are struggling now against implacable human nature to rebuild failed states in Iraq and Afghanistan. They face physical danger and the hardship of separation from spouses and children. They can easily make personal sacrifices for 12 months, the standard time in these 'ultra hardship' assignments. What is harder to bear is the knowledge that their sacrifice will not save the Iraqi people. America's Iraq gamble was doomed before the State Department ever reached the Green Zone.

Still, as they struggle to learn diplomacy in an environment that makes personal relationships with Iraqis impossibly dangerous, FSOs are acquiring the diplomatic skepticism and humility that will protect American interests over the next 30 years -- assuming, of course, that the State Department is able to hold on to them.

More than its predecessors, this administration makes appointments on the basis of loyalty to the president. Loyalty is judged by willingness to describe the world in the same terms the administration uses. Terms like 'War on Terror' and 'Axis of Evil' were invented for domestic political purposes. Parroting them to incredulous foreigners runs counter to U.S. national interests. By making political oversight of overseas diplomats less immediate and draconian, by tolerating a more humane, accurate vocabulary in the real world, we could eliminate the need for FSOs to choose between devotion to country and devotion to career.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print