What Should Diplomats Do When the President's Policies Are Beyond the Pale?
As with their military counterparts, diplomats are expected to adhere to "service discipline," i.e., to loyally carry out the orders and policies given them from above. Presidents come and presidents go. Republicans and Democrats. Great leaders and poor. Pillars of rectitude and scoundrels. The career public servant is honor bound to serve their commander in chief loyally and put aside personal beliefs. Policies laid down from the top are to be vigorously defended and promoted. But what does one do when the policies are extreme, destructive, immoral, even insane? Today, many in the American Foreign Service and Civil Service face such a dilemma, rare in our history in face of the scope of terrible and indefensible policies. Where past officials may have battled their consciences over the Vietnam War, Cuba policy or ratcheting up Cold War tensions in order to bring down the "Evil Empire," the array of destructive, even illegal, policies of the Trump administration challenges all who have taken the oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.
Cases in point:
"America First" neo-isolationism and hostility toward the E.U. and NATO; a president hell-bent on dismantling the structures that have kept the peace, defended the West against foreign adversaries and built prosperity over three-quarters of a century.
Putin-friendly policies, including attempts to do away with sanctions and leaving our guard down in face of Russian cyber attacks and meddling in our elections.
Senseless trade wars centered on imposing tariffs against our largest trading partners.
Immigration policies that are in clear contravention of human rights not to mention traditional American decency. Denying or delaying asylum processing. Racist and Islamophobic visa policies.
Scrapping a deal with Iran that was working and backed not only by our allies but also Russia and China. Then amping up tensions with Tehran to the point of war.
Cutting off aid to troubled Central American countries to spite ourselves in response to their citizens fleeing violence and seeking refuge in the United States.
Trying to avoid explaining what our president meant by referring to developing nations as "shithole countries."
Sidling up to Saudi Arabia's murderous young leader. And taking sides with the Saudis against Qatar, which hosts some 10,000 U.S. soldiers, for what increasingly looks like self-serving financial reasons on the part of the president and his son-in-law.
The president's cozying up to autocrats like Hungary's Orban, Egypt's al-Sisi, Putin and the Philippine's Duterte while repeatedly dissing Germany's Angela Merkel and other allies.
President Trump's meddling in the U.K's domestic affairs during a state visit to that country, including promoting Boris Johnson to succeed Theresa May and calling for London to go through with Brexit.
How does a diplomat in good conscience explain, much less promote, such policies, largely formed by whim and devoid of process?
A handful have tried and largely failed. During his two-week stint as acting secretary of state, star senior diplomat Tom Shannon, Jr. made a valiant effort to corral an anxious State Department bureaucracy in support of the new president. But in the weeks that followed, 60 percent of the department's top-ranking career diplomats left and new applications to join the Foreign Service plunged by half.
One career FSO, Robert Blau, threw himself behind Trump with the fervor of a medieval crusader. After serving as a speech writer for candidate Trump after retirement, he was rewarded as head of the Millennial Challenge Corporation, a small agency dealing with foreign assistance. The Washington Post reported that "Soon after arriving at MCC, he filled his office with Trump campaign memorabilia. During a staff meeting last year, he urged employees to watch Fox News and read Breitbart News and characterized The Washington Post and CNN as 'very biased.'" He also expressed anti-LGBTQ sentiments. In a scenario straight out of "Goodfellas," the White House used the MCC as a patronage waste dump, destroying it from within by rewarding a slew of unqualified hacks jobs at MCC, including a former Florida municipal worker, a GOP congressman's wife and a 2016 college graduate with a degree in English literature whose grandmother worked in the White House's personnel office. Blau quit after little over a year in the job. Not sure what he accomplished during his tenure at MCC.
Members of other nations' diplomatic services have followed their consciences when serving an evil regime - and paid with their lives. While the focus of attention on internal opposition to Hitler is on Claus von Stauffenberg and his circle of military officers who conspired in a failed assassination plot against the Fuehrer, a group of German diplomats was also involved. The most interesting figure for me is Adam von Trott zu Solz. Also born into Prussian aristocracy, von Trott, a devout Christian, saw Nazism for the evil it was. Determined to help bring the Third Reich down, he joined the Nazi party in order gain access to the secrets and inner workings of the regime. At the same time, he served as a foreign policy advisor to a clandestine group of anti-Nazi intellectuals known as the Kreisau Circle, which coordinated with Stauffenberg. He met secretly with allied diplomats to pass on what he learned as well as the views of his fellow conspirators. After the bomb Stauffenberg placed in the Wolf's Lair failed to kill Hitler, von Trott and his fellow diplomats were rounded up along with the involved Wehrmacht officers, given a kangaroo trial and hanged. He reportedly said, "It's living that makes sense of dying."
In The Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt said, "Conscience is the anticipation of the fellow who awaits you if and when you come home." In other words, one's actions should not be based on society's widely accepted norms at a given period of time, but rather on whether one will be able to live with oneself when contemplating one's words and deeds. Can you look at yourself in the mirror without shame?
See also:
State Department in Crisis? - A Foreign Policy Based on Whim, Driven By Theology and Implemented By Hacks