Actually, there are only two real divisions: those who are considered “substantive” and those who comprise the nameless rabble. Substantive officers are actually Foreign Service Officers (FSOs), who conduct the affairs of State, politically and economically. The rabble are Foreign Service Specialists, which comprises all of the support functions such as security, personnel, facilities, budget, finance, etc.
Having worked for Diplomatic Security, I can tell you that it is indeed a struggle to keep some of the FSOs from stepping on their own tools. Try telling an ambassador that he can’t keep his office television or FM radio right next to his telephone. Actually, getting past some of the dragons that pass as FS secretaries was the real challenge!
I read it, but you mention “countries that run themselves”. Of course, the UK isn’t a danger for the US, but still there are very sensitive matters to discuss with the UK. Would you trust a “friend of the president” to do so? Similarily, I remember that the credential of a recent ambassador to france were that she was a well-known actress. Would you have sent someone like her to negociate about the UN resolutions on Irak with the french government during the US/France crisis, for instance?
So, my question still stand : do these people actually have any real diplomatic activity or are they just there to hand out medals and attend cocktails while someone else do the real work? Are they even told about anything important?
Besides, for “not running themselves” important countries, you’re mentionning politicians. They’re certainly more capable, but still aren’t specialists in the diplomatic or security fielf. They’re are still “amateurs” in this field, by comparison with the guy appointed as ambassador to Lesotho as a reward at the end of his career you mentionned. Though they’re most probably politically savy, they’re not specialized in diplomacy, security, international law, languages, treaty negociations or even information gathering. So even in this case, I’m wondering to which extent they’re actually in charge of the diplomatic activity.
The rise of a professional diplomatic corps was a slow process that went forward at different rates in various countries. Even today, ambassadors from many countries are not their diplomatic corps’ best and brightest.
When we think of an Embassy today, we think of a permanent institution in one or more buildings owned by the sending country in the capital of the host nation. This was not always the case. At the start of the Modern Era in Europe, an embassy would be a temporary visit from a representative of a foreign power, who would then return home. There would be no permanent facilities in the host nation. Given the communication methods of the time, there was an imperative for the ambassador to return home from time to time to consult with the sending government.
In the case of an embassy from a monarchy, the ambassador would usually be a friend or relative of the ruling power. So cronyism in the selection of ambassadors was well-established.
Fast-forward to the American Revolution. The Continental Congress also felt the need to send representatives to foreign nations. Not having a surplus of royal cousins on hand, they sent “commissioners” chosen from their number. These included Silas Dean, John Hay, Ben Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and other distingushed, capable, intelligent men. On the Continent, diplomacy was still a matter of personal relations among the aristocracy.
After the Revolution, this trend of capable, individual, temporary embassies continued for a time. By the time of the Guilded Age, however, an ambassadorship was again a political prize. Cronyism was again a determining factor in the selection of the most prized of these positions.
Fortunately, the civil service organization also grew. So that the ambassador might not be a professional civil service officer with a long history of diplomatic training, but his subordinates would be. They function, in effect, as representatives of the nation. The ambassador, on the other hand, could claim to be a personal representative of the President.
It’s not as clear-cut as that, usually, but that’s the gist.
Any country can blow up politically, of course, even the most obscure. Not all friends of the prez are idiots, but some certainly are not qualified to carry out sensitive negotiations. This is why they are assigned to posts such as Luxembourg and Lisbon, where theoretically they can do little harm. The ambassador to Lisbon was a socialite who was married to a tobacco heir and a big contributor to Clinton. She was hopeless, but really didn’t have to make any earth-shaking decisions.
Keep in mind that there is a cadre of diplomatic professionals to take care of business and advise the ambassador on a regular basis, including the DPO (Deputy Principal Officer), who is invariably a career FSO.
They are absolutely told everything that is going on. You do not want the president’s representative walking into a minefield or saying something to the press or foreign government that he/she shouldn’t. But they also do a lot of the party-going activities and leave the grunt work to the underlings.
On the contrary, an appointee to a sensitive country probably has extensive knowledge of critical aspects of that country, particulary in the security and political arenas. A politician knows how our government works and what the current foreign policy is. He will be more in tune with modern America than some career guy who’s been languishing in Africa for 20 years. They will also have a savvy staff and may even bring their own along with them.
That should be that the relationship with the US more or less runs itself.
And yes, the ambassadors to these countries are fully responsible for the range of duties that any ambassador would serve, from sensitive negotiations to cocktail parties. The ambassador to any country is considered the President’s personal representative to that country, regardless of why the person was chosen. Their duties extend from cultral events to being fully prrised of all defense and intelligence matters that relate to the country at hand. Also, the President is not given a free hand in appointing ambassadors, for the nominees must be confirmed by the Senate.
That being said, part of the reason that some ambassadors don’t quite have the foreign relations experience that would be required of others is that all the really, really important issues are pretty much handled elsewhere in the US Government. For example, in the case of Britain, if there are particularly sensitive negotiations going on, the discussions will be held between Bush and Blair. Similarly, negotiations relating to EU-US trade policy will likely be handled by the US Trade Representative (who has the rank of ambassador), rather than the US Representative to the EU.
Also, these countries tend to have first-rate staff below the ambassador. Until very recently, IIRC, the US defense attache to France was required by law to be a two-star admiral, whereas a colonel or captain is the standard defense attache rank in nearly all other countries.
You should know that one of the politicians-turned-ambassadors that I mentioned above, Mike Mansfield, is quite possibly the finest ambassador that the US has had in the 20th century. Although he was a Democrat appointed by Jimmy Carter in 1977, Ronald Reagan kept him in that position to 1989, at which time Mansfield retired at the ripe age of 86.
I have personally spoken to Japanese foreign service officers who shared near-mythological tales of Mansfield, a small man but very intimidating in his giant Cadillac, cruising up to the front door of the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry unannounced, to buttonhole bureaucrats who were making decisions that were central to the US-Japan trade disputes of the 1980s.
Of course, that’s but one extraordinary example. But one could also point out fallacies in having all ambassadors be those who have managed to rise to the top of a foreign affairs bureaucracy. For example, the President may trust his ambassadors more if he knows them personally, and is confident that they will represent his own views, not the conventional wisdom at the State Department. I suppose it’s either a case of different strokes for different folks, or using the best tool for the job, depending on one’s point of view.
All in all, when there’s problems in the relationships among the US and itsclosest allies, I don’t think that an ambassador with lots of diplomatic experience will make things better. In those cases, the problem is usually at the top of the government, not the middle.
They are, utterly, in charge of diplomatic activity because they are, primarily loyal to the President that appointed them. Their primary role is to make sure the administration’s interests are served while the professional FSO’s are in charge of moving things along.
So the FSO might be negotiating with his opposite number on trade agreements, well and good. But the ambassador is there to make certain the FSO knows the end goal and his negotiating limits from the administration.
I remember reading about the disaster that was the new US embassy in Moscow! The russians planted bugs in the walls, as the building was going up! Why Nixon (the staunch anti-communist) allowed this is beyond me! But anyway, now that we knew that ANYTHING spoken in the building would be listened to by the KGB, did we in fact feed FALSE info to the Russians? Of course, if they knew that WE knew , that they knew…what the heck is truth anyways??
Yeah, the bug-infested U.S. embassy in Moscow certainly seems to have been a screw-up of major proportions on our part. On the other hand, it turned out after the Cold War was over that we had built a tunnel full of electronic surveillance equipment under the Soviet embassy in Washington. (On the gripping hand, it doesn’t seem that either of these elaborate plots yielded much in the way of results. We seem to have discovered our bughouse embassy before the U.S. ambassador got in there and had any sensitive phone conversations with the President about our position on the SALT talks or anything like that; and the existence of our tunnel was reportedly revealed to the Soviets/Russians by convicted spy Robert Hanssen.)
There was also a tunnel under the American Embassy in Moscow. I know the people who discovered and debugged it.
ralph124c : The amount of tit for tat in the intelligence and counter-intelligence business would probably overload the SDMB servers and is certainly complex enough to fill up many volumes of discussion. Feeding false information to the other side is a time-honored tradition.
In the line of the “we know that they know that we know” thinking, the bugging of the new embassy was found before construction was complete. So, if the Soviets knew that we knew, they would tend to disregard any intelligence coming from that system as compromised. What stunned those that discovered the problems with the NOB was the sophistication of the system, which American intelligence did not think the Soviets capable of (so much for OUR snooping abilities). Basically, the entire building was a giant transmitter.
Nixon was trying to reach a diplomatic common ground with the USSR. I believe he felt that by making some concessions about the embassies, he could be seen as making a good faith effort to come to the table. Security people were horrified, of course. An American embassy built with Soviet-made materials and built by Soviet (KGB) labor? Holy crap! It was doomed before it ever started, even though the place swarmed with cleared American security people checking everything that came in the gate. But if you’re looking for obsolete technology, you’re not going to find anything.
So suppose I am a Texas jillionaire (“Tex” Oilbucks)…I give $5 million to the Republican Party. Bush gets re-elected, and I want a job as ambassador…what kind of country does $5 million buy? Suppose I wind up in Lower Slobdovia…can it be assumed that I won’t be privy to the snooping going on?
Somehow, hosting parties and attending state funerals doesn’t sound like its worth $5 million!
Yeah, but if you’re a jillionaire, who cares? You probably spend at least that much each year on belt buckles.
I suppose you might want to angle for a country where a lot of on-location films are made, so you can host parties with celebrities taking a break from shooting and maybe nail an actress or two. Yeeeee-HAAA!
Ambassadors must be confirmed by the legislative branch. If you’re a complete idiot, you probably won’t be confirmed.
It isn’t the money; it’s having the title “Ambassador” for the rest of your life, even if only honorific. It’s like being called “General” even after you’ve retired.
It’ll buy you a stint in federal prison. What you’re talking about is bribery: offering money for an ambassadorship.
Those who are rewarded with ambassadorships are not rewarded because of money; they are rewarded because of loyalty to a President. There’s a big difference: about 20 years in prision.
Since nobody seems to have come up with a specific example of secrets being found out in this manner, an example: Donald Maclean in the British Embassy in Washington during WWII.
Maclean had been recruited by the KGB at university and had joined the Foreign Office in London, acting as a mole on behalf of the Soviets. Dispatched to Washington as a diplomat, a major part of his duties was liasing about the dispatch of the British Mission to Los Alamos. In this capacity, he was therefore able to tell the Soviets about the US-UK nuclear bomb project. The practical significance of this in Moscow was more confirmatory than anything else, but he was a valuable source.
Note that, in this instance, the secrets Maclean was privy to weren’t particularly technical. Still, being able to leak the mere existence of the Manhattan Project to the Soviets was important enough.
Maclean, of course, eventually fled to Moscow with Guy Burgess in 1951.
<------laughing bitterly. Oh please. Nobody familiar with the current administration believes any of this. I’ve got two words that will prove you wrong very neatly. Ready?
Your citation is “Halliburton Corporation?” Wow, that really upholds the high minded scrutiny of GQ.
My cite is 18 USC 201, “Bribery of public officials.”
(b) Whoever -
(1) directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official or person who has been selected to be a public official, or offers or promises any public official or any person who has been selected to be a public official to give anything of value to any other person or entity, with intent -
(A) to influence any official act…
…shall be fined under this title or not more than three times the monetary equivalent of the thing of value, whichever is greater, or imprisoned for not more than fifteen years, or both, and may be disqualified from holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.
If you have some factual evidence of Halliburton bribing US officials, I’m happy to refer to you to a US Attorney who would be pleased to look at the case.
Very pretty words, but pretty much meaningless unless someone can produce evidence of an exchange of money for favors. The reality is that someone like Elizabeth Frawley-Bagley can marry someone of wealth, conduct lavish fund-raisers for someone like Bill Clinton*, and be handed an ambassadorship as payment. This is done routinely and nobody cries “bribery”! And technically, it probably isn’t.
bonzer: See also “Moscow Station”, by Ronald Kessler. He reaches a bit, but the embassy was compromised by a foolish ambassador and a couple of Marines. The story of embassy life in Moscow, the affairs, etc. is absolutely spot on.
*I’m not picking on Clinton; all presidents do this.
It also appears that she was a law professor at Georgetown, served in the State Department during the Carter Administration, worked on the Camp David Accords, and was a congressional liaison to CSCE in addition to being a FOB. I don’t know anything about her personally, but I’m rather doubting that ralph presents similar credentials. From the evidence supported so far, it seems that she got her appointment because she worked to promote Clinton for president and she had rather extensive foreign policy experience.
What ralph asked was, if he gave $5 million in campaign contributions, to which countries could he buy an ambassadorship. That’s bribery, pure and simple.
Therein lies the rub. I could accuse you of slandering Mrs. Frawley-Bagley, but technically, it is not. So there we are.
Whoever or whatever you are ( or think you are ), this is not the United States Government Message Board. This is The Straight Dope. Even in G.Q., there is room for truth-edged satire.
Threatening Members of this Board with slander or anything else never sits well with the populace. It’s a big Internet. Maybe you will be much happier going to a message board that is more accepting of these kinds of lightly veiled legalistic threats. I grew up in a household with parents who held Q Clearance, quoting chapter and verse of some legal code doesn’t scare me one iota. M’kay?
I used the words Haliburton Corporation as cite because I give the members of this Board credit for knowing enough of the history of the Vice President of the United States and the facts surrounding behaviors in the last 3 1/2 years that I didn’t have to spoon-feed them generally understood truths. If you would be happier, I can do the legwork when I am at home and have appropriate time and provide enough written cite to lay out the details, accusations and generally held truths.
