THE UNITED STATES NAVAL WAR COLLEGE. National Security Affairs Department

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1 THE UNITED STATES NAVAL WAR COLLEGE National Security Affairs Department Theater Security Decision Making Course Extract from AMERICAN STATECRAFT: THE STORY OF THE U.S. FOREIGN SERVICE by J. Robert Moskin "Introduction - Closing Pandora's Box" Reprinted by permission from Amerian Statecraft: The Story of the U.S. Foreign Service, by J. Robert Moskin, pp Copyright 2013 by J. Robert Moskin. All rights reserved. Published by St. Martin's Press. TSDM Policy 12-1

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3 Introduction Closing Pandora 1 s Box W e Americans glorify our warriors and ignore our diplomats. Yet our diplomats are the ones whose job it is to keep us out of war, to keep the nation at peace. They have other functions, of course; they shape and sell the nation's foreign policy, rescue American citizens who get into trouble abroad, find markets for American business-but avoiding war is the crucial function. The men and women of the U.S. Foreign Service see themselves as "America's first line of defense." How did diplomats get this often-desperate job? French diplomat and historian Jean Jules Jusserand, who served as France's envoy to the United States for twenty-three years, gave us this answer: Diplomats, he said in 1921 when he was elected president of the American Historical Association, "became a necessity among men at the moment... when Pandora's fateful box having been opened, evils were scattered throughout the world, and prospered." "To an ambassador, the safety of the republic must be the supreme law," Ambassador Jusserand said, quoting Aristotle. He must be "rather the maker of peace and concord than of discord and war." Only three years after the horrors of World War I had come to an end, Jusserand, who was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for history, pleaded, "The fate of nations must depend in the future on something else than force and falsehood."

4 2 J. ROBFRT MO">ldN The world is now again experiencing what historian Arnold Toynbee called a "time of troubles," when the elements of civilization (nations and extranational elements} battle one another. Diplomacy is their least deadly weapon. Unlike the military, Foreign Service officers do not rush out to meet a crisis; they are already there. Permanent embassies have existed since the fifteenth century. (The British had a permanent embassy in Constantinople in 1583.) Jusserand quoted Franc;ois de Callieres, a powerful French diplomat of the eighteenth century: "1here are temporary embassies for mere ostentation, for the fulfilling of which nothing is needed but a great name and much wealth, like those for the ceremony of a marriage or a baptism... But when affairs have to be negotiated, a man is needed, not an idol." The people in the Department of State in Washington, D.C., call Benjamin Franklin the father of the U.S. Foreign Service. In Franklin's day, American diplomats were amateurs, members of a small circle of leaders among the colonials rebelling against their British rulers. They had to negotiate with seasoned and sometimes duplicitous European court diplomats. Later, the amateurs were celebrated as the "militiamen of diplomacy." The United States Foreign Service needed years to acquire a semblance of professionalism. Along the way, its members included many dedicated and courageous public servants, and also some political spoilsmen and rogues. At first, American diplomats were very much on their own. An American envoy would send an inquiry from his post in Europe to Washington and then wait weeks or months to receive instructions. The functions and responsibilities of American diplomats have evolved dramatically over the more than two hundred years during which the United States has sent the Foreign Service abroad. Time and distance have been squeezed by ever-swifter communications. Even so, the heart of the diplomats' job is still to report home what is being thought and done overseas and to bring the American story to distant regimes and peoples. For the United States, the conduct of foreign affairs has a bu lit-in dif-

5 AMFRIC.AN STATECRAF-1 J ficulty. A,fter serving for forty years, Ambassador Charles E. Bohlen described it, "... The American system of separation of powers was not designed for the conduct of foreign affairs. It was designed for the conduct of non-foreign affairs, really." Today, the United States Foreign Service consists of a community of men and women who sign up to spend a substantial part of their lives in foreign lands working for the benefit of their fellow Americans. They are the nation's eyes and ears, constantly collecting information and perceptions and, ideally, teaching their hosts how to understand the United States. Ambassador Jusserand was convinced that "there is no kind of knowledge, science, or accomplishment that cannot happen to be of use in such a profession." He added, "I should have been greatly surprised... had any one told me, when in boyhood days I was swimming in rivers and climbing rocks, that this 'accomplishment' would be of service years later, when, as an ambassador in far-off America, in order to keep company with the chief of state, President (Theodore) Roosevelt, I swam the Potomac and climbed quarries south of the stream." The President and the ambassador became close tennis-playing friends; in 1906 TR wrote Ambassador Whitelaw Reid that Jusserand was "one of the best men I have ever met." Today, U.S. Foreign Service members and retirees of the Department of State belong to an organization of more than 58,000 men and women. American Foreign Service officers serve at some 268 posts in 190 of the world's 192 nations. They are honed to a professional proficiency. Inside the State Department lobby as of May 2013 are plaques honoring the 244 American diplomats who have died in the line of duty. In the 180 years between 1780 and 1960, eighty one died. And the pace has quickened. In the half century since 1960, 163 have died. Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns said plainly at a Foreign Service Day in Washington, "Diplomacy has always been a hazardous occupation." And today it has become more dangerous than ever, as the members of the U.S. Foreign Service keep trying to shut Pandora's box. In awarding President Barack Obama the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, "Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts." This is hardly a new idea but, I hope, it is a renewed one.