Personal integrity

100 days into the Trump Regime, why are you still in the US Foreign Service?

How can my former colleagues in the Foreign Service continue to serve abroad as representatives of the Trump Regime? After 100 days, we all know what Trump 2.0 is about. How can you work on behalf of a predatory power that tries to extort its former allies, sends residents of the US to foreign gulags (and without due process), seeks to suppress freedom of speech and political opposition at home, and undermines and obstructs every international institution that supports cooperation on human rights and democracy, global health, and humanitarian and environmental challenges facing humanity?

I understand that some FS officers face personal responsibilities that prevent them from leaving the Service, and others are on the verge of retirement and would simply lose too much if they left early. I cut them a lot of slack. Others may actually agree with what Trump and Rubio are doing with US diplomacy and the Foreign Service. I find it hard to believe there are many in that category, but for them, I suppose, remaining in Service poses no problem of personal integrity - or at least a different one. Some of my former colleagues work in areas that are relatively insulated from direct involvement in the worst parts of Trump’s misrule, such as consular affairs and management, so they also face less of a personal predicament in staying on. I get that.

My question is directed at the large number of relatively senior officers in political, economic, and public affairs positions, and particularly career Chiefs of Mission (generally ambassadors). How can you justify representing this predatory administration? Particularly for ambassadors, you essentially embody the US Government abroad as the most senior resident representative. Your positions are non-partisan but not politically meaningless. You swore an oath to defend the Constitution. Do you have some tripwires that would prompt you to resign? After seeing Trump 2.0’s first 100 days, what are you waiting for? How do you sleep at night under the Trump Regime?

I left the Foreign Service in 2015, so I never faced the dilemma of whether or not to serve under the first Trump Administration. Even so, I appealed to my former colleagues in public, including in an op-ed in the Seattle Times, to think seriously about resignation or early retirement. I got pushback of various kinds, including the argument that it was essential that the Service retain the expertise of experienced personnel, or that officers could protect their colleagues and staffs by staying on. Some even dreamt of influencing policy in the first Trump administration. None of that was persuasive then, in my view. How much more dramatic the moral and ethical challenges of continued Service have become under Trump 2.0. Yet very many of my former colleagues continue to serve. Why?

I missed the Trump challenge, but I did not miss the George W. Bush challenge. Some good people resigned from the Foreign Service after the unlawful and stupid US invasion of Iraq, but I stayed on. I managed to avoid much direct involvement in US Iraq policy. Some good colleagues chose to go to Iraq to be part of the policy, to learn about it first hand and try to help as best they could. I took a different approach. I did all I could to avoid service in Iraq. I did not want to be part of it; I could not imagine living with the cognitive and moral dissonance of working on the US invasion and occupation of Iraq every day. When my time as Charge d’Affaires in Berlin came to an end in 2009, I left the Service and joined the NATO International Staff (IS) in order to avoid an assignment in Iraq. In my NATO command structure job I helped oversee the NATO Training Mission in Iraq, but that was something that caused me no ethical qualms. It did not cross my mental line. In the end, I chose not to cut all my HR ties to the State Department, and was thus eligible for nomination as ambassador to Cyprus in 2012. I guess I was a wily bureaucrat in that sense, but it helped me to preserve my personal integrity.

I like to believe I would have resigned when Trump took office on January 20, 2017, like some friends whom I admire. I am pretty sure I would have done that. But I will never know.

Anyway, after the NATO command structure I went on to serve as ambassador in Cyprus from August 2012 to July 2015. My ambassadorship in Cyprus ended in a mess, and the picture at the top of this article, taken in June 2015, is just a lie. It shows me and Cypriot President Anastasiades getting all jovial on the stage at the Embassy’s Independence Day reception and party. The truth is, we really hated each other.

It all started a few months earlier, in February 2015. Until then I had fairly productive but sometimes contentious relations with Anastasiades, whom I regarded as a fraud and a blowhard. I had worked with him, the UN, Turkey, the Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots on the Joint Statement of February 2014 that launched the last round of Cyprus settlement talks. I had helped to arrange US Vice President Biden’s visit to Cyprus, during which Biden spent a lot of time with Anastasiades. Anastasiades did not like me; he would sometimes glare at me theatrically when I was in his office. But I could do my job. At least I thought I could.

In February 2015, though, Anastasiades announced that he planned to visit Moscow and meet with Putin, breaking the EU embargo on high-level meetings with Putin put in place after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea in spring 2014. I lobbied Anastasiades hard not to break the embargo. He said he had to go to the Kremlin, undoubtedly with an eye on the large amounts of Russian money that flowed into the Cypriot financial sector. Then, just as Anastasiades was wrapping up his visit to Moscow, Putin’s most influential Russian critic and political opponent, Boris Nemtsov, was assassinated just outside the Kremlin’s walls. Back in Nicosia, I had the temerity - and stupidity - to try shaming Anastasiades and his government on Twitter, which was all the rage back then. Something along the lines of “choose your friends wisely.” Shit hit the fan. Local Russian-linked trolls jumped on my Tweet, and then it went viral worldwide. Anastasiades went on Cypriot TV in a special broadcast solely to denounce me. My usefulness in Cyprus was over.

I was too proud to let Anastasiades drive me from my post early, and Secretary of State Kerry and others defended me when Anastasiades demanded my recall. But I wanted to leave Cyprus as soon as my dignity would permit. I got out in early July of 2015. I had an onward assignment in DC, but I was done. By the end of the month, I had left the Foreign Service.

This entire episode was called to mind by an absolutely cringe post that my old Embassy put on Facebook earlier today:

I have ranted about that elsewhere. It is inappropriate anywhere in the world, but particularly witless and offensive in Cyprus. The military division of Cyprus is an open wound. Trump and Rubio in action. Stupid and shameless. The landscape in the picture even looks like Cyprus, for heaven’s sake. What does this all mean for Embassy officers? The role of the ambassador? What in the hell is going on with this?

Back in June 2015, at the Independence Day reception, my pretend joviality with Anastasiades was not the end of the party. This is what the party looked like after Anastasiades left:

Carpe Diem. Life goes on. After a duplicitous encounter with someone you hate. After you leave the Foreign Service. But no matter what, it helps to keep your personal integrity intact.

By the way, I was right about Anastasiades.