My sense is that the Warren plan actually reduces the State Department’s ability to get fresh perspectives and fill the (current or expanded) ranks. As unfortunate as it is, donor-Ambassadors are currently the only senior people who haven’t spent their whole careers at State, absorbing its prejudices, its paranoias, etc. There is no other route in from the outside. And while she does propose recruiting more outside of Ivy League colleges, she doesn’t address the more fundamental problem that if you want to be a foreign service officer, your two choices are to either look the part at age 22 or come in at the entry level later in life, so it ends up being a very unattractive career choice for anyone who was undistinguished in college (or uninterested in foreign service at that time) but successful in their career later.
There is something to be said for the civil service. But she picks the wrong military program to emulate. The National Guard would be a better source of inspiration than ROTC, as it allows people to have other careers, but receive the basics of military training and progress appropriately in rank, and then be called into active service when needed.
The National Guard system wards off high achievers who want to be devoted to their (primary) job.
It makes sense because of the military’s need for large potential reserves, intense deployments and long periods of low-intensity training and recovery. Would that apply to the civil service? I’m kinda skeptical.
I think you’d need to structure it somewhat differently. More like a permanent version of what the National Guard was a few years into Iraq and Afghanistan, where everyone knew they would eventually do a rotation, maybe a few, and they happened on reasonably predictable schedules. Less of the all-or-nothing model that you’d have if it’s meant to be used solely as a massive reserve for WWIII.
Considering that military veterans are overrepresented in Congress by a factor of 2 compared to the general adult population, and most of those are not people who have primarily spent their careers in the military, I don’t think the National Guard system does scare off high achievers, at least not public service-oriented ones. The bad reputation that the National Guard earned during and immediately after Vietnam may have had that effect, but I think that’s specific to that era.
My sense is that the Warren plan actually reduces the State Department’s ability to get fresh perspectives and fill the (current or expanded) ranks. As unfortunate as it is, donor-Ambassadors are currently the only senior people who haven’t spent their whole careers at State, absorbing its prejudices, its paranoias, etc. There is no other route in from the outside. And while she does propose recruiting more outside of Ivy League colleges, she doesn’t address the more fundamental problem that if you want to be a foreign service officer, your two choices are to either look the part at age 22 or come in at the entry level later in life, so it ends up being a very unattractive career choice for anyone who was undistinguished in college (or uninterested in foreign service at that time) but successful in their career later.
Thanks. I have rewritten it to be more qualified.
There is something to be said for the civil service. But she picks the wrong military program to emulate. The National Guard would be a better source of inspiration than ROTC, as it allows people to have other careers, but receive the basics of military training and progress appropriately in rank, and then be called into active service when needed.
The National Guard system wards off high achievers who want to be devoted to their (primary) job.
It makes sense because of the military’s need for large potential reserves, intense deployments and long periods of low-intensity training and recovery. Would that apply to the civil service? I’m kinda skeptical.
I think you’d need to structure it somewhat differently. More like a permanent version of what the National Guard was a few years into Iraq and Afghanistan, where everyone knew they would eventually do a rotation, maybe a few, and they happened on reasonably predictable schedules. Less of the all-or-nothing model that you’d have if it’s meant to be used solely as a massive reserve for WWIII.
Considering that military veterans are overrepresented in Congress by a factor of 2 compared to the general adult population, and most of those are not people who have primarily spent their careers in the military, I don’t think the National Guard system does scare off high achievers, at least not public service-oriented ones. The bad reputation that the National Guard earned during and immediately after Vietnam may have had that effect, but I think that’s specific to that era.