LETTERS
;
“EERs: The Forgotten Front in the
War for Talent.” Having just witnessed the process for the first time, I
feel like Alice in Wonderland.
This spring, I proofread many Employee Evaluation Reports and did not
see a single negative statement —
even in the one for my office’s former
Office Management Specialist, whom
I’ll call “Janet.” Janet was assigned to
cover the phones in our busy office,
but spent half the day in the hall chatting with friends. When she was at her
desk, surfing the Web was one of her
prime activities. She worked with us
until the head of our office told the
human resources director at post that
he never wanted to see her again. HR
moved Janet to another office, where
she has continued to be unmotivated
and uncaring.
Janet’s EER rater joked to me that
he’d had to include her participation
in a local 5K race as an achievement
because it was so difficult to come up
with anything good to say about her
work. Apparently, being nice is much
more important than being truthful.
After only one year with the Foreign Service, I’ve come to a depressing conclusion: because FS personnel
aren’t actually evaluated, we are just
like Soviet factory workers — lacking
any incentive to excel.
Name withheld by request
Foreign Service employee
A post in Africa
On Officers and Specialists
I recently read the June Speaking
Out column by Jonathan Fritz. While
I certainly agree that there are many
shortcomings in the personnel evaluation system, one absolute requirement
for the promotion of Foreign Service
officers should be the recognition and
understanding that not all members of
the Service are officers. A failure to
understand the categories of FS personnel should automatically disqualify
any generalist or specialist from promotion, regardless of other sterling
qualities.
Additionally, Mr. Fritz may not be
aware that, at times, FSOs are the subordinates of specialists, and their evaluations are written by the specialist
supervisor. Therefore, the term “
officer” should not have been universally
applied in the article. (In that regard,
I’d point out that I was misidentified as
an FS officer rather than as an FS specialist in my July-August letter to you.)
Ken Yeager
FS Specialist, retired
Großhansdorf, Germany
Stabilizing Afghanistan
Why, in 2009, is the United States,
and its NATO allies to a lesser degree,
still almost solely responsible for resolving Afghanistan’s political future?
We live in a multipolar world, and the
Obama administration appears to be
committed to the idea that the U.S.
will accomplish more by working with
other countries and through international organizations to achieve national objectives than going it alone.
Our national security interests in
Afghanistan are essentially limited to
preventing that country from once
again providing a secure base for al-Qaida and its ilk. (The Obama administration once claimed it would
not pursue the broader nationbuilding goals of the Bush administration,
but its subsequent actions have been
more ambiguous.) While our NATO
partners share that goal, many of
them remain reluctant to become engaged in the (hopefully) short-term
military phase.
Contrast that with the interests of
Afghanistan’s neighbors — China,
India, Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and, by extension, Russia. All of them have
concerns about Afghanistan’s potential to become a terrorist base of operations. But they also have a direct
interest in keeping it from becoming a
destabilizing vacuum in the center of
the region. They probably don’t agree
on what a stable Afghanistan should
look like, but with real national security interests involved, they probably
can find a formula that satisfies each
of their essential needs.
So I suggest that the time has
come for the U.S. and NATO to sit
down for a serious discussion with
those countries, making clear to them
that we share their concern that
Afghanistan never again become a
safe haven for non-state terrorists.
Moreover, given their direct stake in
the future of their region, we should
also make clear that we intend to turn
over responsibility for Afghanistan’s
security and political future to local
leaders at the earliest possible time.
At the same time, we should also
commit to playing a supportive role
with a reasonable level of financial
and human resources.
Such a step would imply abandoning plans for a long-term U.S. military
presence in Central Asia. But in light
of the concerted opposition of the region’s powers to such a presence, such
plans — assuming they exist — are
simply not realistic. Given the limited
tolerance of the American people for
extended military adventures halfway
around the globe, the most sensible
course is to leave the region’s problems primarily in the hands of those
directly involved. What better way to
do so than by beginning serious discussions right now on handing over
