Political/Economic Tradecraft

As of today, I've finished the last course of my initial training at the Foreign Service Institute. My final class was the three-week course on how to be a political officer (the second year of my rotation at Embassy Copenhagen). It was definitely a high point of the overall instruction.

One of the best aspects was a good overview of basic economics. Through lectures and a book ("Naked Economics" by Charles Wheelan) we got just enough of an introduction to speak somewhat comfortably about international economics.

In the second week, we had opportunities to practice various skills of an embassy's political section. We prepared three-minute briefings on a topic related to our destination countries (mine was on the Danish government's environmental policies), wrote and revised cables reporting to Washington, created and presented a PowerPoint on the destination country's economy, and practiced "elevator briefings" (the subtle art of boiling down a complex issue to a sixty-second explanation that one could give to a VIP during the ride in the elevator down to the meeting room). They also showed us some technology, ranging from a pretty cool wiki that the US government uses to share sensitive and classified information between various agencies, to the sometimes bizarrely counterintuitive program that we use for writing and sending "cables" to the Department.

During the Pol/Econ course I was also able to join a meeting the Danish Embassy in DC held for various U.S. diplomats who will be going to Copenhagen this year. My friend Spencer, who passed the FSOA with me and was in the A-100 class right before mine, helped set that up for me. It will be fun working with him in Denmark. The embassy lunch meeting was a great chance to hear the Danish point of view on issues ranging from the climate change conference to prospects for economic recovery in the EU to the best way of keeping a healthy lifestyle in Copenhagen. It was also a good opportunity to enjoy real smørrebrød prepared by a professional Danish chef.

Another highlight was a briefing by Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter, State's Director of Policy Planning. She said that she enjoys meeting new officers and encouraged us to go out and have great careers. She also gave us some insights into Secretary Clinton's major speech at the Council on Foreign Relations this week, and into the general style and substance of the Obama administration's approach to foreign policy.

While we were at the main State Department building for the meeting with Dr. Slaughter, I also had a chance to meet with one of the coordinators for our delegation to the climate change conference in December. In general, I've been impressed with how easy it is to make appointments with all kinds of different people who have information that might help me in Denmark, and how happy they are to take the time to share that information. People have prepared print-outs of briefing info for me, talked about the kind of reporting they need to receive back from post, what I can do to make their jobs easier and what I can do to make my own work more rewarding. It seems like a great atmosphere at the Department. Which is good, because another office I checked in on that day was the Office of Nordic and Baltic Affairs in the European Bureau, where I'll be working for five weeks starting on Monday. I introduced myself to the receptionist, confirmed that they're expecting me, and checked out the room that she thinks will probably be my office. I am most definitely looking forward to being productive again - while I've enjoyed learning new things for the past 20 weeks, it will be nice to feel like I'm making a contribution, and earning the salary on which the government is spending your tax dollars.

Diplomatic And Consular Officers, Retired

During the final week of A-100, DACOR invited the 144th (along with our spouses) to a reception at their cool historic house near the State Department building. In addition to having this beautiful old house for members' use, DACOR holds various forums and lectures, and also parties for new FSOs, FS Specialists, and new Ambassadors at the completion of their Ambassadorial Seminar at FSI.

In that they are justly proud of their wonderful edifice, DACOR is kind of the Di-Phi of the Foreign Service. Alternatively, the Foreign Service itself is kind of like Di-Phi (incredibly bright people who take themselves very seriously), in which case DACOR is analogous to the Foundation. Either way, it seemed like a cool thing to join, and Bongsu and I became DACOR members after our A-100 reception a couple months ago.

As such, this evening we attended the reception for the most recent Ambassadorial Seminar. Most hilarious moment: the Ambassador-designate to [Redacted], on being introduced to me and hearing that I am headed to Copenhagen, assumed that I was going there as the Ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark. I had to explain that I will actually just play the role of the bureaucrat behind the Non-Immigrant Visa window, and that Ambassador-designate Laurie Fulton had her confirmation hearing before the Senate yesterday. As soon as I started to explain, Amb. [name redacted] caught up to speed very quickly, but it was good for a laugh all around.

Another amazing moment came near the end of the party. I was talking with a guy whose name I am annoyed with myself for not having gotten, and in the way of small-talk mentioned that I was from North Carolina. He responded that he had only been to that state a few times, for work, having made several visits to Fayetteville in connection with some military cooperation work, and also a couple trips to Chapel Hill when the State Department was trying to interest the Kenan-Flagler Business School in setting up a satellite campus in Qatar in the middle east. I was amazed to hear that, since I was a UNC student at the time and, as University Columnist for The Daily Tar Heel, had broken the story and dedicated a couple of my columns to supporting the Qatar campus. So, we got a chance to reminisce together about the goal we didn't even know we were working on together. (Now, almost eight years later, there is still no business school satellite campus in Qatar, and it doesn't look like there will be, despite the great effort of the guy at the party and my small contributions.)

I also enjoyed chatting with some of the non-career political appointees. Those I spoke with seemed very well-qualified to lead a large team working on a vitally important mission. Given that Fulton herself is a non-career political appointee, I was glad to see how comfortably I am able to accept the authority of such people. To be honest, actually, I'm not sure I fully agree with the argument that career ambassadors would be preferable; in the private sector, after all, you don't usually hear much complaining when a top executive is hired from outside the firm. Anyway! I don't intend to get into this complex issue at the moment. For a discussion on that topic, the comments to this post at Hegemonist.com raise most of the important aspects and points of view.

Anyway, the party itself was fun. Bongsu and I both enjoyed wearing a suit and mingling with interesting people and asking them about their lives while drinking mediocre wine and eating hors d'oeuvre . We are happy to find that we like this kind of event, as we have been led to expect that we'll have many, shall we say, "non-declinable opportunities" to go to similar things in the future.