How to get ahead in foreign policy

by | Nov 22, 2007 | Influence and networks

Dan Drezner is pondering how to answer all the people who ask him “how do you successfully pursue a career in foreign policy?”.  He finds that Peter Singer at Brookings proffers the following advice:

[M]ulti-taskers tend to advance further than pure specialists. People who can also convene and bring people, programs, and events together are more likely to advance to the leadership level than people who lock themselves away and only write. That is, when you look around at who is in the leadership positions in this field at think tanks, NGOs and the like, it is not merely people who are good writers but people who bring other skills to the table: management, organizational process, strategy, budgeting, fundraising, etc. The funny thing is that many of these skills get absolutely no nourishment within the education backgrounds that typically bring people into the foreign-policy field. Most people either come in with a politics degree or a law degree, but the skills often called upon at the leadership level are of the MBA variety. As you focus on what sort of activities to undertake and skills to build on early in your career, I would keep this in mind.

Dan himself isn’t so sure:

If you want to move up the bureaucratic food chain, then by all means Singer is correct. If, on the other hand, you actually want to influence a specific set of policies, then specialization also has its merits.

But I like the guy on the comments section who says:

1. Pass the Foreign Service exam
2. “Serve” (issue/deny visas) at a US Embassy in a god-forsaken country
3. Muddle through a Washington-based assignment
4. Serve in a better position in a slightly-less god-forsaken country
5. Return to Washington and a “policy” position
6. Realize experience in foreign affairs and foreign policy are not worth much in the academic world
7. Join the political risk desk at ExxonMobil or Fidelity

Desperate times call for desperate measures

by | Nov 22, 2007 | Africa

You know you’re in trouble when you need combat camels to save you. The latest masterstroke in the world’s response to the genocide in Darfur is to import specially trained Indian camels to transport African Union and United Nations peacekeepers around the province. The Sudanese government, the main aggressor in the conflict, has helicopter gunships, but the peacekeepers will have to chase these on humpback because the West won’t send in its own helicopters.

All is not lost, however – Darfurians can be reassured that the camels will have gone through a “crash course in combat” where they will learn how to crawl and, according to the head of the Indian army’s camel division, perform other “soldierly movements.” Phew.

Israeli paper names Muslim as world’s best leader shock

by | Nov 22, 2007 | Middle East and North Africa

OK it’s Haaretz, a left-wing rag, but hey. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdo?an, they argue, is the pick of today’s rum bunch of global leaders. Without him, “belligerent Iran, medieval Saudi Arabia or shaky Pakistan (caught in the calipers of sinister madrasas and a state of emergency) would be setting the tone.” Haaretz even parades Tayyip’s charms before a sceptical European Union, warning:

“You have 70 million Turks in your court, Europe. Instead of embracing Turkey, you are sending it scurrying hither and yon. Instead of proving that this is not a matter of ego, prejudice and xenophobia, you are humiliating the very sane alternative that Turkey represents.

“As though the Turkish democracy is the only one that’s not perfect, the only one whose laws are flawed and in need of amendment – the only one violating civil and human rights.”

The latter point echoes a letter I wrote to the FT in September bemoaning the double standards surrounding Turkey’s EU accession, but Tayyip might be useful for Israel as well as Europe. As a friend of the country but also a respected and devout Muslim, could he be just the man to act as honest broker with the Palestinians?