If there’s a silver lining on the political cloud that continues to hover over the tragic attack on the Benghazi consulate, it may be that politicians have finally begun to portray diplomats as important national assets. This has not always been the case.
Like spies—who for better or worse retain a glamorous reputation in some quarters—diplomats have long worked in the shadows. They are, for the most part, happy to remain anonymous, and have done so, apart from a few well known exceptions.
Ambassador Chris Stevens is probably destined to become one of those exceptions. Few people today remember the names of the other diplomats who have lost their lives in the course of duty.
Their deaths can seem as poignant, even ironic, as they do tragic. We take for granted that those who volunteer for military service put their lives at risk. The same is true, to a lesser extent, of intelligence operatives. We commend them for their bravery. Diplomacy does not usually carry the same connotation. Diplomats are meant to preserve and enhance peaceful relationships; they are not usually sent abroad to defeat or subvert enemies but rather to build and maintain healthy ties among friends.
The real world is more complicated than that, of course. Still, diplomats like Stevens who devote their professional and, as has been suggested by the coverage of his death, personal, lives to public service in the cause of peace seem especially vulnerable. However great the dangers may be, we don’t expect them to be on the firing line. And we should not excuse our government for putting them in harm's way, neither by intent nor by negligence.
Stevens' death was not unique in this respect. One of the first such tragedies in the foreign service was just as unnecessary. In the 1920s, J. Theodore Marriner was the professional’s professional. In fact he was one of the members of the first professional generation of American diplomats. It was only in 1924 that the diplomatic and consular services were combined into the foreign service, and a competitive examination and promotion scale were required.
By many accounts, Marriner was one of the new service’s stars: subtle, wise, multilingual, and able, like any good diplomat, to assimilate other cultures while remaining a loyal servant of his own country. Marriner was also something of a workaholic and, like Ambassador Stevens, he was unmarried, or rather, he was married to the foreign service. Unfortunately, the service was not married to him.
Marriner’s special expertise was Europe, which during the interwar years was like today’s Middle East: where the action was, and where the best and the brightest wanted to serve. He had been so effective in several European capitals and also as a bureau chief back home (the equivalent of an Assistant Secretary today) that he was expected to have his pick of an embassy, and probably would have gone even higher in the department. This followed the election of Franklin Roosevelt—and Roosevelt had another idea.
Back then many New Dealers regarded the State Department as being a host of reactionary Republicans. In addition to making several appointments of Democrats to its senior ranks, Roosevelt later decided to teach the rank and file a thing or two about humility. Thenceforth foreign service officers had to perform consular duty. Despite the recent unification of the two services, this had not yet been the policy, unlike today when nearly all new recruits must spend some time stamping passports.
Marriner was ordered to report to the American consulate at Beirut. He took the assignment stoically and resolved to make what he could of it. He never got much of a chance. One day on the way to work, he was shot dead outside the consulate by an angry visa applicant. The man’s visa actually had been approved but he thought otherwise since the paperwork had been sent to the wrong address.
When told of the murder, Roosevelt sighed and said, it is just “one of those things that can’t be helped.” There was little public outrage or finger-pointing. And so his life came to seem as inadvertent as his death.
Let’s hope this doesn’t happen to the memory of Chris Stevens. However ugly the political mudslinging has become over his murder, being forgotten is much worse.
Kenneth Weisbrode is a historian and author of The Atlantic Century (Da Capo).
Photo courtesy of the White House (government domain).
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Diplomatic Martyrs
November 1, 2012
If there’s a silver lining on the political cloud that continues to hover over the tragic attack on the Benghazi consulate, it may be that politicians have finally begun to portray diplomats as important national assets. This has not always been the case.
Like spies—who for better or worse retain a glamorous reputation in some quarters—diplomats have long worked in the shadows. They are, for the most part, happy to remain anonymous, and have done so, apart from a few well known exceptions.
Ambassador Chris Stevens is probably destined to become one of those exceptions. Few people today remember the names of the other diplomats who have lost their lives in the course of duty.
Their deaths can seem as poignant, even ironic, as they do tragic. We take for granted that those who volunteer for military service put their lives at risk. The same is true, to a lesser extent, of intelligence operatives. We commend them for their bravery. Diplomacy does not usually carry the same connotation. Diplomats are meant to preserve and enhance peaceful relationships; they are not usually sent abroad to defeat or subvert enemies but rather to build and maintain healthy ties among friends.
The real world is more complicated than that, of course. Still, diplomats like Stevens who devote their professional and, as has been suggested by the coverage of his death, personal, lives to public service in the cause of peace seem especially vulnerable. However great the dangers may be, we don’t expect them to be on the firing line. And we should not excuse our government for putting them in harm's way, neither by intent nor by negligence.
Stevens' death was not unique in this respect. One of the first such tragedies in the foreign service was just as unnecessary. In the 1920s, J. Theodore Marriner was the professional’s professional. In fact he was one of the members of the first professional generation of American diplomats. It was only in 1924 that the diplomatic and consular services were combined into the foreign service, and a competitive examination and promotion scale were required.
By many accounts, Marriner was one of the new service’s stars: subtle, wise, multilingual, and able, like any good diplomat, to assimilate other cultures while remaining a loyal servant of his own country. Marriner was also something of a workaholic and, like Ambassador Stevens, he was unmarried, or rather, he was married to the foreign service. Unfortunately, the service was not married to him.
Marriner’s special expertise was Europe, which during the interwar years was like today’s Middle East: where the action was, and where the best and the brightest wanted to serve. He had been so effective in several European capitals and also as a bureau chief back home (the equivalent of an Assistant Secretary today) that he was expected to have his pick of an embassy, and probably would have gone even higher in the department. This followed the election of Franklin Roosevelt—and Roosevelt had another idea.
Back then many New Dealers regarded the State Department as being a host of reactionary Republicans. In addition to making several appointments of Democrats to its senior ranks, Roosevelt later decided to teach the rank and file a thing or two about humility. Thenceforth foreign service officers had to perform consular duty. Despite the recent unification of the two services, this had not yet been the policy, unlike today when nearly all new recruits must spend some time stamping passports.
Marriner was ordered to report to the American consulate at Beirut. He took the assignment stoically and resolved to make what he could of it. He never got much of a chance. One day on the way to work, he was shot dead outside the consulate by an angry visa applicant. The man’s visa actually had been approved but he thought otherwise since the paperwork had been sent to the wrong address.
When told of the murder, Roosevelt sighed and said, it is just “one of those things that can’t be helped.” There was little public outrage or finger-pointing. And so his life came to seem as inadvertent as his death.
Let’s hope this doesn’t happen to the memory of Chris Stevens. However ugly the political mudslinging has become over his murder, being forgotten is much worse.
Kenneth Weisbrode is a historian and author of The Atlantic Century (Da Capo).
Photo courtesy of the White House (government domain).
