06:48 pm
Terrorism, Security, and the Foreign Service
I have long believed that Americans fail to understand or appreciate the heroism and courage of our foreign service officers (FSOs). Spending three years in the bowels of the State Department only reinforced that conviction.
If you ever enter the State Department via its main (C Street) entrance, you should look for large green marble plaques at each end of the lobby. Each lists those American diplomats who have lost their lives in the service of their country. As then-Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead noted in 1988,
In the State Department lobby, just inside the C Street entrance, there are two large plaques, where the names of ambassadors and others who have died while serving their country are inscribed. It is a grim list, but a proud list, too; a list of those who defended peace and freedom to the very end.
Much to my surprise, there is no page on the State Department website that reproduces the list or provides brief biographical information.
That’s a tragedy, because each of these individuals deserve greater recognition. But equally sad, the plaques include only Americans who have died — foreign nationals, such as those killed in the 1998 Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, are not honored (at least not there). That also is a fundamental — and almost criminal — oversight.
But the purpose of my post today is not merely to recognize the courage and heroism of those who have given their lives in the pursuit of American foreign policy, but also to ask whether Americans recognize the risks that diplomats must take to promote and protect American interests.
Most Americans think of our diplomats — if they think of them at all — as glamorous Cary Grant types, wearing black tie, attending parties, and sipping martinis. Certainly such representation duties are a part of a foreign service officer’s job, but only on rare occasions. Most of a typical FSO’s work involves tracking developments on the ground and then reporting back to Washington.
These days, that job is much harder, in large part because of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security’s fortress mentality — particularly their demand that FSOs work and live inside supposedly impregnable walls, often miles from a city center.
I fear that this emphasis on security at all costs has had a deeply corrosive impact on America’s ability to understand and interact with the world. But it also makes it harder and harder for the average foreign service officer to do their jobs.
Part of the problem is that our government does not think of diplomats the way it thinks of members of the military: as people who are willing to take certain risks to protect American interests. Instead, FSOs are treated like museum pieces that must be kept behind multiple layers of protection.
I do not mean to make light of the very serious threats that our diplomatic outposts face or the risks taken by those, foreign national and American alike, who choose to work in them. But is the greater security really worth the negative impact on American interests? And by wrapping our foreign service officers in a false cocoon of security, aren’t we isolating them from the very people with whom they should be meeting?
Reversing this trend is not going to be easy. Were a President or Secretary of State to instruct Diplomatic Security to stop building isolated citadels, sooner or later, terrorists (or an angry mob, as happened in Pakistan in 1979) would attack an embassy or consulate and kill Americans (and foreign nationals, lest we forget). That will result in months of finger-pointing, accusations and counter-accusations, and Congressional hearings on why we failed to protect our diplomats.
But chances are that another catastrophic attack will occur regardless of whether we decide to move our diplomats out of the fortresses and back into city centers. I didn’t check the Googles, but if memory serves me, there have been serious attacks on American diplomatic outposts in Serbia and Turkey in recent months. Chances are that there are more I don’t remember, and that DS has succeeded in preventing a few as well.
In the end, we need to ask ourselves which is worse: putting our foreign service officers at greater risk so that they can do their jobs, or turning them into diplo-hermits, so isolated that they cannot really understand or appreciate what is happening on the ground?
The time has come to recognize the courage of our foreign service officers. I have had the honor to know many FSOs, and without exception have found them to be deeply dedicated to their work and their country. They are nothing like the right wing stereotype, which paints them as disconnected East Coast elitists who share noting with the average American. In fact, most are themselves average Americans whose profession just happens to be promoting American foreign policy rather than building cars or writing code.
But the time also has come for Diplomatic Security to stop forcing American diplomats to hide behind blast-proof walls and let them interact once again with the local populace. Representing the United States means being seen by individuals who haven’t had to go through three layers of security — people whose assumptions about and stereotypes of Americans are only reinforced by such measures. Yes, that will put FSOs at greater risk, but that is the nature of service to our country, whether it be in the armed forces or the diplomatic corps.
I think that most FSOs would agree with me, but I doubt their political masters (or DS for that matter) will ever have the guts to make the changes necessary.
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