Military service matters. Every Memorial Day, Americans honor those who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. The men and women who have served in the armed forces are greeted with the expression: “Thank you for your service.”
Civilian public servants don’t get the same recognition. During my career with New York State government, I was referred to as a “state worker,” a term that had a pejorative connotation despite widespread evidence of excellence and a rigorous, merit-based Civil Service system.
There is a third category of government employee that is largely invisible to most Americans: The Foreign Service professionals who serve our country at more than 270 embassies and consulates around the world.
This cadre of highly skilled men and women implement the president’s foreign policy agenda. Under the leadership of appointed and Senate-approved ambassadors and following the direction of the State Department, nonpartisan Foreign Service officers have for over 100 years represented our country around the world.
In July, in an unprecedented move, the Trump Administration decimated the Foreign Service ranks by firing more than 1,300 State Department employees—246 Foreign Service officers and 1,107 civil servants. The State Department layoffs were based solely on domestic assignments—not on merit, performance, or qualifications.
The firings came on the heels of dismantling the U. S. Agency for International Development (USAID)—abandoning critical public health and economic development programs around the globe—and shutting down the Voice of America (VOA)— ending 83 years of continuous broadcast news service to underserved countries worldwide.
The wholesale dismissal of rare expertise and the surrender of America’s global leadership undermine the intent of the Foreign Service Act and erode the foundation of American diplomacy. The White House is hobbling our country’s diplomatic prowess at precisely the time that world affairs demand a global leader.
This is personal for me. I was raised in the Foreign Service during my father’s diplomatic career with the U. S. Information Agency (USIA) in Caracas, Rome, Bogotá, and Madrid.
My parents, my sister, and I were Embassy People abroad, appreciative of the responsibility and privilege of representing America. Foreign Service families carry a deep, quiet pride in serving the United States as families, even as “home” is in perpetual transition. We can feel like foreigners in our own country.
It is also a career fraught with sacrifice, isolation, and downright danger. My family lived through a Venezuelan revolution that ousted a dictator in Caracas, and Vice President Nixon was attacked by a Venezuelan mob during a state visit. Twenty-seven terrorist bombs exploded the night we arrived in Bogotá, and the very real threat of kidnapping in Colombia meant my sister and me could never be out of the sight of an adult. Our Rome apartment was on a list of potential targets of Italy’s militant Red Brigade.
Like most Foreign Service officers, my father’s career included a stint at the State Department in Washington, DC, where the expertise he had gained in embassy postings prepared him to manage delicate regional relationships. If my father had still been on the job, he might well have been among those fired from the State Department in July.
The America that emerged from World War II as the leader of the Free World, shining the beacon of democracy, engaged people like my father to maintain and enhance its position in the world. The VOA began broadcasting in 1942. USIA was a 1952 creation of President Eisenhower. USAID was established by President Kennedy in 1961, the same year as the Peace Corps.
My father’s time in diplomacy was in a way simpler, with the United States’ main worry the USSR. Today, things are more complex, making diplomats’ expertise and the work of their civilian support staff that much more important. The risks and challenges have never been greater.
If ever there was a time for American diplomacy to be at the helm, it is now. By eliminating the very experts we need, the Trump administration is relinquishing America’s leadership role in the world.
