Moving Beyond Incremental Reforms: Proposals for the United States Foreign Service
Ted Burkhalter
July 2, 2025
INTRODUCTION
The United States Foreign Service is meant to faithfully execute the national security and foreign policy of the administration in power and to provide its best input and advice. To accomplish this, we need a Foreign Service that is properly trained, resourced, and managed. Today’s Foreign Service operates on the Foreign Service Act of 1980 and an accretion of internal policies. Agreement is nearly universal among Foreign Service personnel that reforms are needed; less so, just how comprehensive those reforms should be and what they should entail.
In this short paper, I will propose some specific measures amounting to comprehensive reform. I have attempted to avoid discussing in more than cursory form ideas that, in past reports, have already been put forward and that have gained sufficient attention. My goal is to spur conversation among colleagues and to present fresh ideas for use by the congressionally mandated, bipartisan Commission on Reform and Modernization of the Department of State and by State’s own Bureau of Global Talent Management (GTM). Nonetheless, as all reforms must be viewed as part of a comprehensive whole, I have attempted to categorize each proposal within the framework of an entire career lifecycle.
BASE ASSUMPTIONS
We begin with some base assumptions. These should guide any discussion of reforms.
A) Budget neutrality: Any proposals in the current fiscal and political environment need to be budget neutral or better. This will build political capital. Proposals that have upfront costs should have clear, medium- and long-term savings.
B) Some proposals will require legislative action: We should clearly identify, to the extent we can, what will require congressional action. We must be prepared with alternatives that do not necessitate legislative action.
C) Good action officers do not always make good senior leaders, and vice-versa: We need to create an alternative career path for officers who have spent 10+ years in the service and have proven to be good subject matter experts / action officers but who are not suited for senior leadership roles. We need to hold onto this talent. Much like the military, we must provide these personnel a viable path to retirement eligibility.
D) Leaders must be developed and rigorously selected: One is rarely born a leader. Leaders learn from training, example, and practice. State unfortunately lacks a rigorous, lifelong program for developing leaders or for screening for leadership potential. While we have some good leaders, we should have many more.
E) Career paths must include milestones that prepare personnel for the next stage: We lack a standardized career progression that ensures officers have the right mix of experience at each stage of a career. Instead, we take an à la carte approach to assignments.
F) Lifelong training and doctrine are necessary: Training at entry, mid, and senior levels must be more intensive, must be standardized, and must work toward a recognized doctrine (the ABCs of how we operate).
G) Language training must be rationalized, to produce the best results at reasonable cost: Many officers receive training in 3 or 4 languages, sometimes at the 20-year mark in their careers. Many officers receive ‘super-hard’ language training and serve only one tour using that language. We can do better.
H) We need to be clear on our recruitment goals, and our programs need to match the objectives: Example: The average age of a new FS entrant is now mid-30s, yet our official recruiters are based on college campuses. We need to get this right.
I) Don’t reinvent the wheel: The Foreign Service is a unique organization, with unique requirements. Still, we can and should look to other organizations for good ideas. This includes other U.S. agencies, other nations’ diplomatic corps, and the U.S. military. It also includes the private sector and, especially, those multinational companies that still hire and train for career-long employment.
PROPOSALS
I. Recruitment:
Much has been written about Department of State recruitment. The focus in recent years has tended to revolve around diversity. To be clear, the Foreign Service “should be representative of the American people” (22 U.S.C. 3901). Geographic, ethnic, linguistic, educational, and other forms of representation are a strength for our corps. Recruiting that focuses on bringing in groups that are underrepresented in our organization can, if properly designed, yield tangible benefits. However, three fundamental tenets must underpin our recruitment efforts. First, in looking at potential recruiting pools, we must not favor one element of U.S. society at the expense of another. Our goal is to attract the best recruits from wherever they may be found. Second, targeted recruitment cannot be a backdoor to hiring, which must remain impartial and merit based (ibid). Finally, we must approach our recruiting efforts clear-eyed: Not every sector of American society with otherwise qualified candidates will be equally attracted to Foreign Service life or prove equally able or willing to wait through the interminable government hiring process.
Various proposals exist to recruit a more representative Foreign Service. One is to establish a military service academy-style nominations process. I have not taken a position on this but believe the idea merits discussion. Such a system would require legislation and substantial political capital. Were such a regimen to be adopted, it should be aimed at intake of candidates below a certain age (and would require legislation exempting said program from age discrimination laws). As with the military academies, a nomination would be only the first step toward an offer: Candidates would still have to compete for a limited number of appointments.
A nominations system could provide additional benefits: Were we, for arguments sake, to recruit 70% of new Foreign Service officers through an age-limited nominations system, this might open the door to a mid-career entry program that would both provide the Foreign Service with critical skills and be palatable to the Foreign Service and our ingrained career progression system. A nominations system would also create an immediate Foreign Service constituency of 535 U.S. representatives and senators. Finally, it would raise awareness of who we are across the United States.
II. Entry-level intake and training:
Ask a general in a modern army what happens when raw recruits with a mere eleven weeks of training are sent to the front lines, and he or she will point you to the slaughter of WWI trenches or to Russia’s more recent campaigns in Ukraine. Yet the United States Foreign Service sends new officers to the field with little more than this (and perhaps some language training). They arrive at overseas posts without an adequate understanding of how the U.S. government works: How domestic political considerations impact foreign policy decisions in the White House and on Capitol Hill, how the competing priorities of key cabinet agencies interact to impact policy, how key national security documents drive policy execution, how the Department of State functions, how diplomats negotiate successfully, and how their own work fits into the overall national effort. This is an outdated approach that has unfathomably persisted. We must present logical and financially defensible training reforms to Congressional appropriators and authorizers.
A modern Foreign Service could learn (and adapt) from our military officer training programs. New Foreign Service officers should undergo comprehensive and extended professional training, covering the above topics and tradecraft. This could last as much as six months. It would ideally be followed by a year working at the Department of State, during which time the new officers would continue to attend periodic training. During this time, they could be evaluated for potential, and decisions made on whether to continue their employment. These new Foreign Service officers would also benefit: Seeing what government is, they could decide if this is a life for them. Should they choose to walk, they would have accrued useful skills and experience for the next stage of their lives. We, in turn, might avoid needlessly sending them overseas, with the accompanying expenses, only to see them resign.
III. Language training:
The Foreign Service has complained for decades about the lack of a training float and the need for more intensive mid-career professional training. This could be solved in one stroke and money saved: Concentrate language training in the first two overseas assignments. Design an assignments system that keeps officers for several assignments in the same language group (if Arabic, then Arabic-speaking countries; if Polish, then Slavic-language countries; etc.). Combined with a lifetime limit of two full language training rotations, this would save the Department language instruction money, produce higher foreign language proficiency, and free a float of officers for additional professional training at the mid-level. Officers receiving orders later in their careers to posts where they do not speak the language could receive rudimentary training.
The Foreign Service should also consider conducting all language training abroad. This is an expensive proposition, but the payback in language acquisition and job effectiveness would provide a defensible argument. One good officer with high fluency, especially at the lower and mid-levels, is often worth two similarly talented officers without that fluency. Over time, that advantage only grows.
Finally, the Department of State should build on recent language instruction and testing changes at the National Foreign Affairs Training Center’s School of Language Studies (SLS). SLS has recognized that the in-demand skill set for Foreign Service officers is speaking and listening and particularly in the vernacular. While we recognize the importance of reading in the learning process, the test no longer includes a reading component. This has generated some controversy, but early results and feedback from students are positive.
IV. Career paths:
The Foreign Service needs clear gateways for progression. This is intricately connected both to ensuring we are developing leaders and to efficiently utilizing our workforce. This progression must include a proper balance between overseas postings and Washington assignments. It must also include milestone supervisory positions, without which promotion to the next level would be impossible.
The Foreign Service should also consider leadership evaluation panels that evaluate candidates at various stages of their careers to determine whether they are ready to assume increased leadership responsibilities. Again, the military offers an example: These panels occur, in the military, separate from and prior to the assignment selection process. At more senior levels, equivalent to our senior FS-02, they are in person and last several days. Such a process, properly managed to avoid influence, recommends itself.
V. Incentive structures:
Although outside the scope of this paper, incentives require brief mention. If we wish to attract critical talent – quantum computing or financial analysis experts, for example – we will need incentives geared to market realities. If we wish to bring Foreign Service personnel back to D.C., or to convince them to return overseas once in D.C., we will need to be aware of the unique financial impact of Foreign Service life on spousal careers. These are just two examples.
VI. The Fork in the Road:
Not every good leader is a good worker bee, and not every successful worker bee makes a good leader. This problem has dogged U.S. businesses for ages and has been the subject of countless papers on corporate management. The Foreign Service is no different. Under our current up or out structure, though, we send excellent subject matter experts into retirement when they fail to continue climbing up the leadership and promotion ladder. We are needlessly sacrificing talent into which we have placed hundreds of thousands of dollars – perhaps millions – in training and support. As mentioned in the base assumptions at the beginning of this article, State Department should strongly consider seeking legislative changes that would allow effective officers who are not or do not wish to be senior managers the opportunity to continue their careers to full retirement. In other words, this would be an alternate career track with limited or no managerial responsibilities. Promotion eligibility could be somewhat curtailed, so long as an effective incentive structure remains. The option is to hire entry-level personnel at higher than necessary rates and spend years training them.
CONCLUSION
This paper has taken a brief stab at several issues I do not believe have been addressed with an adequate level of determination or creativity. Some will appeal to the reader; others, perhaps not. Many of these ideas are the product of conversations had over a 25+ year career with colleagues from the junior ranks to the most senior. If they spur productive discussion and, more importantly, action, I will have accomplished my purpose.
Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are my own and are not necessarily those of the Ben Franklin Fellowship, the United States Department of State, the United States Foreign Service, or the United States Government. Errors and omissions are my own.
