bout de papier, Vol. 13, No. 2 (1996) — Summer 1996 // Été 1996, pp. 31–33
There I was. In my tacky ten-by-ten on the seventh floor of “C’” Tower. The ten-by-ten had seen better days. So had I. This was a classy ten-by-ten: it had a window. With a view of some gravelled-asphalt roof, and another ten-by-ten opposite. With someone inside, looking out.
The phone rang.
It was a Monday morning in January. The mercury was in the minus decades. There was a lot of snow being blown around by a lot of wind.
I was cleaning my VDT while I waited for my COSICS terminal to boot up. Hardware, firmware, software, bleep.
I picked up the phone.
She was Personnel, and she didn’t say much. Just enough to make the ten-by-ten feel colder inside than it looked outdoors. They wanted to meet. Five o’clock. I’d be there? I’d be there. I forget now who asked and who answered.
They didn’t want much. Just me. In Zagreb. In ten days. Temporary duty. Two to four months. Not more than six, promise. Just until the Balkan crisis settled down….
The truth is, I had been trying rather aggressively to sell my services to Personnel. You can never leave a posting completely behind and when those horrific images from the former Yugoslavia began to appear on our screens in 1990 and 1991, I realized that my three rewarding years in Belgrade a decade earlier were still very much with me. With Croatia and Slovenia breaking away, there was a need for a presence in Zagreb, to feed first-hand information into the process of establishing a relationship with those new countries. Also, there was a major UN peacekeeping operation on the cards, with significant Canadian participation.
My suitability for such an assignment was self-evident, at least to me. I had served there, I had learned the language (as it then was), and I also had the experience of maintaining liaison with a UN peacekeeping operation in the field (Namibia, 1989-90). After a few months, Personnel saw it my way.
More generally, I had been advocating temporary missions as a response to the confusion and unpredictability which have beset international relations since the end of the Cold War. Contrary to a widely-discussed article of a few years ago, history has not ended. If anything, it has accelerated, and fixed points of reference are becoming increasingly difficult to find. As individuals, as a profession, and as an organization, we are faced with a world of increasing uncertainty. Transition, it seems, has become the normal state, rather than an interim between the former order and the next.
Some years ago, Alvin Tofler wrote a short book called The Adaptive Corporation, about the problems faced by large organizations in adapting to change. His principal conclusion was that in order to adapt and survive (let alone prosper) large corporations would have to change with change. Their fundamental organizing principles would have to alter. Structurally, they would have to be composed less and less of large, permanent, multi-purpose units, and increasingly of small, temporary, single-purpose units. Such units would be created to accomplish a single specific task, and would be planned from the outset to disappear when that task was accomplished.
Tofler was thinking of large businesses, but his analysis also seems applicable to our own Department and our approach to the management of change. Traditionally, we have established embassies or high commissions in countries where it was thought that the Canadian interest required a major long-term investment. Traditional diplomatic missions are intended to do all Canadian business in the host country, on an on-going basis; they are intended, at least by convention, to be permanent. The opening of such a mission is taken as confirmation that bilateral relations have developed a considerable degree of depth, breadth and permanence. This is corroborated by the agony which attends the closure of a diplomatic mission: no matter how many and sincere the assurances that relations have not deteriorated, it is hard to dispel the impression that they have.
By contrast a special mission (this is what my expedition to Zagreb was called, on the advice of the legal bureau who remembered a UN convention on such things) is, or should be, established to carry out a certain task. Get in, do the job, and get out. A special mission is temporary, and should be terminated when the objective has been accomplished, when a set period of time expires, or when a pre-defined set of conditions is met.
In Zagreb’s case, the need to send a special mission arose from a unique set of circumstances. Canada, like a number of other countries, had recognized the independence of Croatia in mid-January 1992, but had decided not to establish diplomatic relations until concerns about human rights, minority rights and democratisation had been dealt with. This was expected to be achieved through the negotiation of a settlement between the government in Zagreb and the Serb insurgents who controlled about a quarter of Croatian territory. The special mission’s defining task was thus to report on the developing situation, and advise when conditions existed for the establishment of diplomatic relations. It was expected that this would take between two and four months, and a notional time limit of six months was set.
Things did not work out quite as planned, due mainly to developments in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina. Independence there was quickly followed by a collapse into civil war, and subsequently by civil wars within civil wars, with the Croat and Serb factions receiving support through various channels from Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This had the effect of side-lining efforts to achieve an internal settlement in Croatia, and to implement the measures which would have satisfied Canadian concerns. We did not, as it turned out, establish diplomatic relations with Croatia until April 1993.
In the meantime, something which our colleagues in the military would recognize as “mission creep” had set in. The special mission to Croatia was originally planned to end when diplomatic relations had been established; there were no plans to establish a resident embassy. By 1993, however, expectations had been raised and imperatives had arisen which resulted in the temporary mission being converted into a traditional diplomatic mission. Something similar had happened in Namibia three years earlier.
One of the uncertainties with which we must live in these uncertain times, is when the next round of cuts will come and how much of our resource base will be left to us. This alone makes quite attractive the idea of small, relatively inexpensive, easily-terminated one-person missions. They can be established at short notice and terminated just as quickly. As we have confirmed in Zagreb and elsewhere, this is practically possible.
I therefore believe that temporary solo missions will become an ever-larger part of the Department’s operations. This, however, raises conceptual, personnel, administrative and technical challenges. We need to establish some ground rules, and adapt both ourselves and our headquarters organization to implement them.
Conceptually, temporary solo missions should be seen as filling the wide gap between brief visits and permanent missions. In terms of duration, we might think of a special mission as being no shorter than six weeks and no longer than six months. Anything shorter can be handled as a visit. Anything longer will be vulnerable to the accumulation of additional tasking and a dynamic leading to the establishment of a permanent mission.
The concept of the single, specific, time-bound objective should be central to such missions. In such a mission it is even more important than elsewhere to measure performance against pre-established objectives and deadlines. The existence of a mission almost inevitably attracts opportunistic tasking, and this must be resisted if the temporary nature of the mission is to be preserved. The officer on the ground should be able to insist on this, and to rely on the support of the headquarters unit to which (s)he reports. Once, for example, I had to be quite short with someone who wanted a report on flight safety and security at Zagreb airport.
On the personnel side, there are special considerations. A great deal can be accomplished by a single officer, provided that the right one is selected. Familiarity with the task, the issues, the local operating environment and possibly the local language, are essential. The requirement is thus for an experienced officer, probably with a previous posting in the region, capable of working autonomously.
The officer will need to be provided with appropriate equipment and trained to use it. Here again, previous training and experience will be essential. Such assignments are not for those who have never used a PC before, or who think that typing is for someone else to do. Cyber-diplomacy has become a reality.
Given their short duration and the likelihood that such missions might be initiated outside the normal posting season, those selected for them will probably not be accompanied by family. This raises questions of family separation and employee welfare. Single officers might well find it easier to accept such assignments, but even for them there will be difficulties. The assignment will be almost be definition a high-pressure one, under stressful and isolated circumstances. This is another argument for limiting such missions (or at least tours of duty at them) to six months. There should in any case be a designated alternate available at short notice.
Personnel might attempt to identify a pool of qualified officers who would be willing and able to accept such assignments, and ensure that they receive the required technical training. Officers at the senior FS-2 level would probably form the core of such a group.
On the administrative side it is important that everything be geared to the temporary nature of the mission. Not only do such missions not need the same administrative establishment as an embassy, too much administrative overburden could be detrimental to achieving mission objectives on time. Officers on temporary missions should be considered to be in travel status, and administer themselves by means of travel advances and expense claims. If such claims go beyond the usual expenditures for transportation, meals and accommodation to include vehicle and equipment rentals and temporary local staff, so be it. There are obvious disadvantages, however, to large cash advances; perhaps corporate credit cards are the answer.
It might be advisable to establish a headquarters unit to act as a clearing house for proposals to establish temporary missions, and to undertake their coordination, staffing, funding and administrative support. Such a unit might be located in the Corporate Services Branch, while the requesting geographic or functional unit would exercise policy control. Resources for temporary missions would be held by this central unit; if any mission had to continue beyond six months, it would be up to the requesting branch to provide the resources.
It is technological breakthroughs that have made such missions practical. In only the last few years, equipment has become available which makes it possible to dispatch a mission consisting of a single Canada-based officer, who will be able to remain in full communication with Headquarters. As recently as 1989 in Namibia, an office manager, a secretary and a communicator had been required to support three mission officers.
When I set out for Croatia, my baggage included a satellite telephone terminal and a laptop computer with fax/modem. Support staff functions, to the extent they were required, were fulfilled by the computer’s word-processing, communications and information management software. After about a year, thanks to technical and bureaucratic breakthroughs, secure communications became available.
Hardware and software, however, cannot replace locally-engaged staff functions. Fortunately, I was able to rely on the preexisting Honourary Consulate for assistance in getting established and gaining access to important interlocutors.
For the individual involved, the attractions of such an assignment are undeniable. Temporary missions are, almost by definition, established in response to high policy priorities, and can thus rely on the interest and attention of Headquarters. You are on your own, free to do the job in the manner you judge best. It is a source of stress to know that you are solely responsible for the success or failure of the mission, but it is also a source of exhilaration.
On the negative side, you are likely to be dealing with some very unpleasant situations and people. In the former Yugoslavia, the continuing crisis was attended by complete contempt for international humanitarian law and ordinary human decency, and by atrocities so gross that initial reactions were to dismiss reports of them as the imaginings of sick minds. (And so they were, but those who imagined these things have gone on to do them.) Confronted with such issues, you feel keenly the absence of colleagues with whom you may discuss them freely.
You put your life (single or family life) on hold when you accept such an assignment. Living and working in a hotel, there is an inevitable tendency for life to merge into work. This is especially the case when dealing with a situation which generates requirements at all hours of the day and out of five living in hotels, I can attest that night. In any case, having spent three years hotel life, however comfortable, is no life at all. It is an odd combination of isolation and lack of privacy. You are out of touch with everyday realities, and you get the feeling of having wandered into a Dashiell Hammett novel. For anyone who envies me this aspect of the experience: you should have it, were it transferable.
You have to hope for and rely on, the understanding of those to whom you have commitments. I was lucky in this regard. A friend took care of my house for several months. But there are two individuals who had shared my bed for years, and to whom I had to make serious amends when we were re-united: Pushkin of Tanzania and Ruthless Koevoet (Ruth) of Namibia, otherwise known as the Catterlings of Africa. While I was in Zagreb my two furry co-habitees wore out their welcome in three foster homes. We are now together again, but it took them some time to forgive me.
So, having said all that, let me say only this.
Someday, it might be you sitting in your ten-by-ten. And it might be your phone that rings. And it might be you that they ask to head off somewhere at short notice for six weeks to six months.
Look at it this way. It’s bound to be a great experience. You’ll be your own boss, even if you are all you get to be boss of.
And it will get you out of that ten-by-ten for a while.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 13, No. 2 (1996) — Summer 1996 // Été 1996, pp. 31–33. Read the rest of this issue →
