Reflecting on a Foreign Service Career

I had the privilege, thanks to the U.S. taxpayer, to serve as a Foreign Service officer (FSO) for over twenty years until March 2003, when I left the State Department in opposition to the Bush administration's war plans toward Iraq.

As I reflect upon my years serving, as best I could, our country overseas (mostly in Eastern Europe, including Russia, pre-post the Cold War), I often speculate on what the State Department (and yours truly) could have done better for our country.

One way would have been to extend Foreign Service officers' overseas assignments to more than two- three-years in the country to which they are assigned.

Reason: To serve our country abroad, FSOs must become acquainted with the local culture/language as thoroughly as possible. This takes time.

Time being, in our social-media, instant communication, age by far the most valuable commodity. Forget about bitcoins.

Mind you, I have no illusions if this -- really learning about a country and its culture/language -- can be accomplished, easily or not, as I learned from my Russian studies stretching back to my high school years:

Learning Russian? The first twenty years are the easiest.

Still, the endless State Department "rotation" system  -- one year here, one year there  (which keeps the personnel and administrative sections of Foggy Bottom -- God bless 'em -- gainfully employed) has its limitations as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy, in that a diplomat's primary function is to understand the country where she's serving in and how the local situation affects U.S. interests.

Don't tell me that presumably sophisticated, cosmopolitan senior State Department Foreign Service officials don't realize this -- that moving FSOs from place to place, their ignorance of local conditions increasing as they move up the Foggy Bottom ladder, is not always a positive contribution to America's national interests.

But then why don't they -- those in charge of the State Department, if such an "in charge" entity can actually be found in the bureaucratic Foggy Bottom maze -- do something about it?

Image from, with caption: Victoria Nuland, right, meeting the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, in Kiev. Photograph: Markiv Mykhailo/Itar-Tass Photo/Corbis