May 24 is the 100th anniversary of the Rogers Act, the law that established, for the first time in our country, a professional Foreign Service.
Before the Rogers Act, the United States was represented abroad by a hodgepodge of amateurs. Some of them were pretty darned good (starting with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson), while some of them were mediocre — people connected to politicians or the East Coast “foreign policy establishment,” and who used those connections to get important jobs.
But what does the Foreign Service do and why does it matter who does it? Foreign Service officers, in the organization established in 1924 and still going strong today, are the people who staff American embassies and consulates abroad. They are a key component of the U.S. foreign policy machinery in Washington.
Their job, fundamentally, is to persuade foreign governments and (especially if the governments in question happen to be democracies) those governments’ people to see things more or less the way we do.
The U.S. government has opinions and objectives with respect to any foreign policy issue you can think of — such as mustering support for Ukraine or for Taiwan vis a vis China, maintaining our leadership within NATO, strengthening cooperation with Mexican and Central American governments to get a handle on the flow of migrants, and working to control the spread of nuclear weapons around the globe.
Foreign Service officers also advocate for American business in its never-ending contest with foreign competitors (Kansas exported more than $14 billion in goods and services last year). And much more.
FSOs know the issues, from Ukraine to global warming to fair trade, and they know the countries where they are serving well enough to argue persuasively for our preferred solutions to those issues. They keep Washington agencies — the White House, the State Department, the Defense Department and others — apprised of the state of play in particular countries and help shape how we approach foreign governments to get the outcomes we want.
Foreign Service officers are good at what they do. They know their country: I mean the United States of America. They speak foreign languages and are comfortable working in strange foreign cultures. They know how to figure out the best ways to keep other governments with us, rather than watch them drift off into the orbits of China or Russia.
Basically, they practice politics, on a different and often complicated playing field. Unlike the military, the State Department does not have bases in numerous congressional districts in the United States. It cannot point to victories in battles or the sacrifice of lives, although several hundred officers have died in the line of duty.
Many decades ago, Foreign Service officers were disproportionately from the East or West coasts and the products of Ivy League institutions or their equivalents. It used to be said that the Foreign Service was “pale, male and Yale.” That’s not true anymore, and hasn’t been for a long time (if ever). Today’s Foreign Service much more closely reflects who we are as Americans, with a racial, geographic and gender mix that at least approximates America at large.
Everyone comes into the Foreign Service through the same portal — a more or less day-long written examination followed, for the candidates who have not been weeded out, by a several hour oral exam. Then comes a security vetting second to none in its thoroughness. A hundred years ago (OK, only 61 years ago) when I joined, there were 18,000 candidates for 200 openings. That ridiculous ratio has changed some, but getting into the Foreign Service remains highly competitive, and it doesn’t matter where you grew up or went to school.
The Foreign Service, and the State Department, are an often misunderstood part of the American “bureaucracy” — which itself is not the most popular entity in our country in this age of resurgent populism. I’m sure I was not the only Foreign Service officer who, after once telling someone what organization I worked for, was asked “the State Department of what?”
Unlike the military, the State Department does not have bases in numerous congressional districts in the United States. It cannot point to victories in battles or the sacrifice of lives, although several hundred officers have died in the line of duty. The State Department budget is always vulnerable, and “foreign aid,” administered by a related but separate Agency for International Development, is always vastly exaggerated in the minds of members of Congress when looking for spending to cut.
In fact, on average over the last decade, the entire “international affairs” budget — all State Department expenditures plus foreign aid — accounts for roughly 2% of our total federal budget.
