The Conscience of a Diplomat: When It's OK to Buck Orders
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
~Edmund Burke
I can recall defying orders twice in my two decades as a U.S. diplomat. In the mid-'80s, as head of one of our consulates in Thailand, I issued scores of official letters declaring {NAME} was "a person of interest to the United States government and therefore warranted protection under international law." I did this to try to save the lives of Cambodian and Lao refugees who were being forcibly repatriated by Thai authorities, many facing death by drowning or violence. The State Department did not instruct me to this. In fact, U.S. policy was that Thailand and UNHCR must take responsibility for protecting these people. The Thai clearly were not and the UN was slow off the mark. The Thai respected my confected letters. And I hoped lives indeed were being saved.
My second act of insubordination was in the early 2000s. American couples were seeking to adopt Vietnamese orphans. But scammers were ripping off the Americans and basically selling children to the highest bidders in what was flat-out human trafficking. As political counselor in our Hanoi embassy, it was not my job to be involved in such a matter. But I made it so because it was also a human rights problem. State's Bureau of Consular Affairs sent a telegram ordering the embassy to stand down, not to get involved. Obviously the lamebrained idea of some knucklehead bureaucrat. I ignored the instructions and, then as acting chief of mission, sought the Vietnamese government's intervention and crackdown. And they did.
Late UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said, "It is sometimes said that diplomats lack a moral compass, passively following the orders of bosses and regimes regardless of their political or ethical character -- or lack thereof."
The U.S. military trains members to know what orders are legal and which are not. For example, if your superior officer orders you to kill unarmed civilians, you do not follow that order. The Nuremberg trials were all about "following orders" is no defense for committing crimes against humanity or violating the the laws of war.
The State Department never provided us such training. If it does not exist already, a course in ethics for all incoming diplomats seems like a good idea.
History is replete with stories of diplomats facing moral quandaries of government orders vs the morally right course. I always took inspiration from the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg who saved thousands of Jews from perishing in the Holocaust. In fact, I took my cue from him in ginning up my confected "protection letters." But few people are aware there were more Wallenbergs saving lives from the Nazis.
According to the Study of Rescue and Altruism in the Holocaust (ISRAH), between 1933 and 1945 diplomats representing 27 countries rescued Jews in more than 35 geographic areas. These included diplomats of Axis nations as well of neutral and Allied countries. Japan's vice consul in Vilnius, Chiune Sugihara helped some 6,000 Jews flee Europe by issuing them exit visas to Japan. German diplomat Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz covertly helped arrange the mass flight to Sweden of almost the entire Danish Jewish population and other Nazi targets, totaling some 8,000, in 1943. Swiss diplomat (and U.S. immigrant) Carl Lutz saved the lives of thousands of Hungarian Jews, including 10,000 children, through his own "protection letters." At one point, Lutz even jumped into the Danube River to save a bleeding woman, a victim of Hungarian fascists. At least three American diplomats are recognized for taking extraordinary measures to save Jewish lives as well.
Some of these courageous envoys were fired or forfeited their pensions for bucking their governments' orders or policies.
Last September, a senior official in the Trump administration published a letter anonymously in the New York Times informing the world that there was a secret cabal in the government that sought to thwart Trump's worst impulses and policies.
"Many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations," this official said. "We believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic... That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office... This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state," he concluded.
America's first diplomat, Benjamin Franklin, warned us that "a man without courage is a knife without an edge" and that "it is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority."
Those in the diplomatic trenches, trying to keep their heads low, biding time until the Trump occupation ends, may nonetheless be confronted with instructions to pursue policies that are legally or morally questionable. Will they merely follow orders, or act on their consciences?
See also -
What Should Diplomats Do When the President's Policies Are Beyond the Pale?