Analysis | It’s time to reform the Foreign Service assignments process
(and so much more)
This piece is part of ISD’s Fall 2021 blog series, “A better diplomacy,” which highlights innovators and their big ideas for how to make diplomacy more effective, resilient, and adaptive in the 21st century.
Every November, many American diplomats await news of their next assignment. By now, most will have found out whether they will be heading to career-enhancing positions in plum posts overseas, or whether they will need to settle for something less than ideal. The rest are left empty-handed and will have to scramble over the next weeks to find their next job. Meanwhile their families await news of what country their kids’ next school will be in. In the end, very few will have any idea as to why they received the assignment they did.
The assignments, or “bidding,” process is opaque and the subject of derision within the Foreign Service. It is also fundamental to the development of the institution and to its ability to meet America’s diplomatic challenges, as well as a useful prism through which to examine the Biden administration’s goal of “revitalizing America’s foreign policy.” The assignments process also illustrates how the Foreign Service would benefit from developing its own clear, unifying doctrine to guide its decision-making, including how it undertakes institutional reform. Absent a cohesive doctrine, today’s reform efforts will continue a decades-long pattern of failing to address many of the pathologies they seek to resolve.
First, admit that there is a problem
The assignments process is an easy target for complaint, and ripe for our reform-minded attention. In an essay last year, Ambassadors William Burns and Linda Thomas-Greenfield decried a “careerist” bidding process tied to “connections” rather than performance and expertise. In a report recently published by the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, one third of survey respondents at the State Department noted that they were seriously considering leaving the Foreign Service; chief among their concerns was an assignments process broadly viewed as unfair. Furthermore, the Harvard Belfer Center’s report on the Foreign Service describes the assignments process as a patronage system that undermines the Department’s efforts at diversity.
On paper, the assignments system appears reasonable. State Department policy lays out an open assignment process that is designed to be “transparent and equitable.” The Bureau of Global Talent Management (GTM) manages the process in close coordination with the geographical hiring bureaus. Most Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) scheduled to transfer in the summer receive the official list of available positions the preceding September and then must reach out to prospective supervisors and other decision-makers to “lobby” for the position. This includes both formal interviews and an informal networking process, where FSOs seek to leverage connections with senior officials whose interventions can often be determinative. In theory, GTM-administered panels make formal assignment decisions, though semi-formal “handshake agreements” with hiring bureaus are nearly always honored.
In practice, the bidding process can get ugly. Because senior officials are given such deference in the assignments process, a perception has taken hold that, “when push comes to shove, getting the best jobs depends far more on who you know than what,”as one former GTM official put it. In one particularly egregious example, an Under-Secretary’s mid-level staffer was selected over more seasoned officers to a substantially more senior role in Brussels, prompting the president of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) to call it a “striking breach of faith” and an “affront to the Foreign Service.” Stories abound of “short lists” altered at the last minute by senior officials, preferential treatment of staff aides to senior officials, processes manipulated to shield preferred candidates from competition, and senior officials pressuring offices to take unwanted candidates. All contribute to a sense among some FSOs that the game is rigged.
Reform driven by doctrine
We can suggest any number of specific reforms to the system, and Secretary Blinken in a recent speech committed the State Department to making improvements. But the same issues have plagued the assignments process since 1975 and through decades of repeated efforts at reform. To affect real, sustained change, the Foreign Service needs to formulate a doctrine to guide a cohesive, long-term program of reform. Otherwise, we get what we have — what the American Academy of Diplomacy described as a “system of recruitment, staffing, assignment and promotion [that] appears to be so full of ad hoc changes over time that it no longer constitutes a coherent system. . . . It is not a single system, but rather a patchwork of plans, practices, and authorities.”
Doctrine is a set of values and principles, articulated by professionals and informed by lessons-learned, that guide the actions of professionals and professional organizations. Doctrine has the potential to drive reform from within an organization. Following the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army created its Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), which became the engine that powered reform in the decades that followed. The reforms in training, personnel processes, and leadership philosophy that transformed the “broken Army” of the late-70s to the successful force in the 1991 Persian Gulf War were all nested within a doctrinal framework that ensured that reforms were mutually complementary and geared toward an identifiable strategic goal. The Foreign Service lacks an institutional corollary to TRADOC and does not have a cohesive mechanism for articulating the diplomatic doctrine that would better guide all manner of reform efforts. Rather than focusing on addressing the wide constellation of reform issues currently gaining attention — including assignments, training, and leadership culture — we should focus on establishing a mechanism for articulating and implementing doctrine as a way toward a broader reform effort.
Take the narrow example of assignments. We may see the need to reform, but toward what end should we design those reforms? A doctrine developed within the Foreign Service by Foreign Service professionals would provide an agreed upon benchmark to guide our efforts and measure success. Do we see a future world where deep regional expertise will be highly prized? Then we should incentivize long stretches in the field and use the assignments system to encourage the development of language, contextual knowledge, and cultural acumen. Or perhaps cultivating relationships in Washington would best meet the national interest? Then we should reward staff positions in the Department and encourage internal networking in our assignments process. Having an articulated doctrine on hand would help us identify strategic needs and tailor the institution’s internal processes to meet them.
Compared to many reform recommendations, some of which would include revisiting the Foreign Service Act, redirecting substantial government revenue, or asking for deep congressional involvement in things like ambassadorial appointments, developing something along the lines of an “Office of Doctrine” would be relatively simple. The bureaucratic bones already exist through initiatives in place at the Foreign Service Institute and can be enhanced through greater coordination with GTM, the Policy Planning Staff, and others. By implementing appropriate incentives, we can draw together our best-performing mid- and senior-level officers under the leadership of the most seasoned ambassadors to set out, in consultation with political leadership, a Foreign Service doctrine that would drive systematic and continuous institutional reform.
With a doctrinal framework established, this “doctrine cadre” could then work with the Undersecretary of Management and relevant bureaus to direct a coherent program of reform that would be designed to incubate a Foreign Service culture and institution that meets our strategic objectives. By embarking on a systematic and continuous doctrinal project the Foreign Service, as an institution, can assert its independence, take ownership of its future, and use the tools at its disposal to nurture the diplomatic service that the United States needs.
Aaron Garfield is a Rusk Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. He most recently served in Cairo as the External Affairs Unit Chief in the U.S. Embassy’s Political Section, where he covered Egypt’s foreign policy on issues including Libya, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Middle East peace, and the Eastern Mediterranean.
While Aaron Garfield is a career U.S. diplomat, the views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of State or the U.S. government.
