Career as a foreign service officer?

For a career foreign service officer, what is it like to work across administrations, whose policies inevitably vary from his or her personal views?

• Answer:

  For the most part, it goes extremely smoothly. Part of this is due to the fact that -- campaign promises notwithstanding -- there is great continuity in US foreign policy. This something incoming administrations sometimes discover to their chagrin. If there were good, easy answers to problems, they'd already be being implemented. What US policy is, is the result of many years and many administrations dealing with complex problems. They more or less come down to the same answers, so there's not much disruption. Another part is the continuity of General Service (formerly, Civil Service) employees. GS employees work in vastly larger numbers than do Foreign Service Officers. They are in almost every office within State and many hold high level positions, including within policy-making offices. Due to laws that protect government employees (both GS and FS), these employees cannot be fired or displaced by cronyism. This leads, for better or worse, to a large amount of institutionalization of policies, even if the 'best solution' argument fails. As far as differences between the employees' personal views differing from an incoming administration goes, that's usually not a problem. All government employees (with the exception of the few who are politically appointed) are supposed to be politically neutral in their work. They work for the Administration, no matter which party, no matter who the President. They follow the orders of the boss. As they say, "elections have consequences." No government employee, though, should be so politicized that s/he cannot shift gears. All know, too, that in another four or eight years, there's likely to be another political party, another president at the helm. Additionally, government employees are not supposed to have publicly stated political views. That's for the politicians and the policy-makers in the administration. There are two areas that do see change, however. First, all ambassadors submit their resignations upon the election of a new president. Ambassadors serve as personal representatives of the president and the new guy gets to pick his own representatives. The resignations of almost all political appointees are accepted. Those of career ambassadors are usually rejected. There are exceptions, but they're rare on both counts. Second, certain programs, particularly high-profile ones that are closely identified with a former administration, are sometimes cancelled or reduced funding is provided to them so that they wither on the vine. This can be frustrating for those (both GS and FS) who have worked for years on building the program. Not only is a good program -- it got funded and supported in the first place, right? -- killed, but the ripple effect can be immense. Many programs depend on the work of people in other countries. Some draw salaries, some are volunteers, but now are all being told they're out of work. And of course the beneficiaries of those programs are up the creek. Most frustrating, though, is when (after a year or two) the new administration decides that that was a pretty nice program after all and decides to reinvent it under a new label. By that time, not only have the people who have been working on the program moved on to other things, but all the groundwork has to be redone. Institutional memory is lost. The paperwork is in some government archive and, for all intents and purposes, inaccessible. Connecting with people in other countries to ask them to start reinventing is awkward, embarrassing, and often fruitless as they've moved on, too.