Rethinking the Battlefield

With top State Department positions unfilled and the hiring freeze extended, it's nice to know there are people out there who get it.

I'd like to thank Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut for his Rethinking the Battlefield initiative, which seeks to xpand and strengthen America's diplomatic might.

Talk is cheap, but it can move mountains. Analysis and expertise are never to be devalued.

Guadalajarences?

For reasons that are not entirely clear, very few people from cities in Latin American have demonyms which have obvious origins.

People from Mexico City are chilangos.

From Buenos Aires, portenos. 

Bogota, rolos. 

And people from Guadalajara are called tapatios. 

The term apparently derives from an old Nahuatl coin or monetary unit, the tapatiotl. 

It is also a brand of hot sauce.

 

Why Join the Foreign Service? Part VI

“The life you have led doesn’t need to be the only life you have.”

– Anna Quindlen

No Bueno

Julia Ioffe has written a bleak description of a forlorn State Department in her latest piece for The Atlantic. “The cafeteria is so crowded all day” because “no one’s doing anything,” one official told her; another said her job “feels like coming to the hospital to take care of a terminally ill family member.” “I don’t think this administration thinks the State Department needs to exist,” Ioffe was told. “They think Jared [Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law] can do everything.”

Full article here.

The Foreign Service on the Page: Foreign Service Girl

The more things change...

Foreign Service Girl the tale of young Francine Dudley, a bright young woman whose dream is to be become a Foreign Service Officer. Of course, this is in the Bad Old Days when the diplomatic corps was very decidedly 'male, pale and Yale'.  Career opportunities for woman or minorities of any kind were decidedly limited.

After passing the Written Test but failing the Oral Assessment (there was no QEP back then - oh sweet time of innocence!) Francis decides to join as a secretary.

Her first assignment is to Oram, a vaguely Middle Eastern country which is something like a cross between Iran and Morocco. After serving her tour there, she is transferred to her dream assignment of Paris. There are some misadventures and cultural misunderstandings, but finally things work out happily (though somewhat disappointingly for modern readers).

Of course, some aspects of foreign service life have changed. The service is more diverse, attitudes towards the local staff are (usually) more enlightened, and women are no longer forced out when they get married.

On the other hand, some aspects of Francine's experience are remarkably current. Her bewilderment over being assigned to a little-traveled backwater, the stark difference in social life between a small hardship post and a large European capital, and the emotional stresses Foreign Service Officers undergo still happen with regularity.

We've come a long way. But the world can still be a very intimidating place.

Speak Up, but not too much

Word has been spreading about the 1,000 Foreign Service Officers who have signed a dissent cable protesting the president's recent executive order on immigrants and refugees.

But what IS a 'dissent cable' anyway? Well, let's break it down.

A cable is the method of communication between America's various representative's abroad - ambassadors, diplomats, and other members of the mission - and the 'home base' in Washington. These cables are usually assigned a marker indicating their urgency.

Dissent cables are different. They were created during the Vietnam War as a means for members of the diplomatic corps to express disagreement with official policy without risking their jobs. The most famous example is the Blood Telegram, written by the staff of Consulate General Dhaka (and named for Consul General Archer Blood to protest the Nixon Administration's support of Pakistan during the Bangladeshi war for independence:

 So, are dissent cables effective? That depends on who is in charge - some administrations are more open to different viewpoints. Others simply ignore them, or view dissent as disloyalty. No guesses as to what the current administration thinks.

The Foreign Service on Screen: Embajada Gringa

There are endless myths about how to acquire an American visa - what to say, what to bring, what not to admit etc. We FSOs try to take them in stride.