bout de papier, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2000) — Summer 2000 // Été 2000, p. 3
In response to a recent discussion among users of the informal chat room of foreign service officers, the “e-whine” messages urging that we stop using the word “diplomat” to describe ourselves, I would like to offer a somewhat different perspective on this question.
Years ago, the Department quite reasonably began to look to the private sector for ideas that could help the Department to operate in a more efficient, “business-like” manner. While this was a commendable goal, I would argue that it has now gone to such an extreme as to remove the conceptual underpinnings of a distinctive Foreign Service. Indeed, the Department has so completely bought into the analogy with running a business that the Foreign Service’s symbolic universe has been effectively transformed into that of an MBA course. From the moment of recruitment, all FS officers are urged to focus on the efficient “delivery of services” to “clients”, with constant emphasis being given to the ultimate goal of becoming good “managers” (who should perform in a manner consistent with their bureau “business plans”).
In this headlong rush to embrace the symbols of business, what is particularly noticeable is the virtual absence from our professional self-description vocabulary of what I call the “dreaded D-word”: Diplomat. This is a word which nowadays rarely appears in our personnel-management lexicon (e.g., in human resource strategy documents). While most other countries find it quite normal to call their foreign ministry training institutions “diplomatic” academies, Canada has now reached the point that its own Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade seems reluctant to acknowledge that there actually is a distinctive profession called diplomacy, much less that this is a profession with a history stretching over centuries, and whose practitioners — whether Ambassadors or Third Secretaries — are most accurately described as “diplomats.”
A sense of professional pride and identity is important from a number of perspectives. It is particularly important in sustaining what military organizational specialists would call “unit cohesion” — more popularly known as “esprit de corps.” Like the military, diplomats face particular burdens driven by rotationality — which in our case is now aggravated by an exponential workload expansion generated by globalization in all of its dimensions.
Unlike the Canadian military, which in spite of all its problems continues to command public recognition as a distinctive profession, Canadian diplomats — at least as demonstrated by some recent e-whine messages on this subject — now seem to be succumbing to the conceptual dismantling of our profession. True, the label “Foreign Service” remains — at least for the time being. But to the extent that “Foreign Service” is no longer seen as encapsulating a distinctive profession, it will come to be seen as a mere administrative category which ultimately can be abolished as well.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2000) — Summer 2000 // Été 2000, p. 3. Read the rest of this issue →
