Foreign service masochism.

• Author: Marks, Edward
• Position: Viewpoint essay

"A Glass Half Full", as our colleague David Jones put it in the March issue of the FSJ in describing the contemporary American Foreign Service. As he noted, FS personnel are congenital pessimists but then he reproved us all as things have gotten better and we "should appreciate the tough slog that got us here."

Indeed, as George Will is wont to say and would certainly say at this point if he were engaged in this conversation.

While the charge of being congenital pessimists is valid, so is the charge that "diplomats are professional optimists" as at least one professional historian has stated. We always really believe we can eventually come to an agreement. It is our saving grace as well as our most dangerous weakness.

There is no reason why we can't be both, human beings are complicated and it was long ago noted that we are capable, nay almost required by life, to hold disparate and even contradictory positions. Therefore I feel no reluctance to suggest that we also share another personality trait. We are masochists. Not personally or in the physical sense (although I don't want to imply any moral judgement here; "Fifty Shades of Grey" is very popular I am told) but in the collective and professional sense. How else to explain the apparently obligatory requirement to begin any discussion of the Foreign Service with a ritual criticism of the "bad old days" when the Service was "make, pale, and Yale" and "cookie pushers" ruled the roost and practiced daily ritual humiliation of everybody but themselves. Bad boys, bad boys.

Of course much of the criticism is justified, but it is curious to see that this genre of critical comment is indulged in almost solely by Foreign Service people. Journalists, academics and even politicians (well, most politicians) long ago gave up using it as filler in articles. If only because no one in the general public has the historical memory to relate to it.

In addition those who do make this sort of ritual incantation--presumably to advertise their own virtues--almost never do so in any the historical context. This is generally considered a no-no in historical studies but a common practice for us, and represents, I believe, a form or collective emotional masochism.

Yes, all those undemocratic practices existed, but the problem is that they were not necessarily considered undemocratic at the time. What we call the undemocratic practices of American diplomacy prior to the Rogers Act were perfectly consonant with the...