State Department's Mission Threatened by Monolingual Diplomats

Yesterday, the American Foreign Service Association held a meeting on the challenges facing Foreign Service officers. John Negroponte was the main attraction, and rightly so. Even if one rarely agreed with his positions in foreign affairs, his first-hand experience of America diplomacy in action is beyond question. In his opinion, the "greatest challenge" to the State Department's mission is the shortage of officers who can speak some language other than English. The situation is worse than one ever imagined.

Naturally, much of this difficulty stems from the American resistance to retaining the language of grandma and grandpa when they came over from the old country, whichever one that was. "You're in America, now, speak English!" sums it up. And of course, the immigrants, contrary to nativist hysteria, understand that English is the ticket to wealth and power in the US. Thus, many Americans named Nagy don't speak Hungarian, the Swensons don't speak Swedish, and all the Muramotos down the block have lost their Japanese.

The American educational system does not help. It is possible in these dark times to graduate from a university of some standing without a rudimentary understanding of any language other than 'Murkin. Since few teachers have a command of another language, there are few classes. Emphasis on science and math further undermine the learning of a second language. And unlike in Europe, one can drive a couple of days without leaving the Anglophone zone of North America.

Nevertheless, Mr. Negroponte said, "There is no substitute, for recruiting, training, deploying, retaining and retraining," officers in languages and geography so they "develop the contacts, the knowledge, the insight, the local and area expertise" needed to further American foreign policy goals.

How bad is it? Last year, GAO issued the "Comprehensive Plan Needed to Address Persistent Foreign Language Shortfalls" that used data up to October 31, 2008. That report said almost one third "of officers in all worldwide language-designated positions did not meet both the foreign language speaking and reading proficiency requirements for their positions, up slightly from 29 percent in 2005." In the most sensitive parts of the world such as Arabic-speaking countries, South and Central Asia, and China, the percentage of language-deficient officers rises to 40%.

In the war zones of Iraq-Nam and Afghanistan, the most important places for Foreign Service offices to have a command of the local parlance, the situations are even worse. In Iraq, 57% of Foreign Service officers lack sufficient language skills, and that looks good compared with Afghanistan, where 73% of America's diplomats can't directly communicate with the locals.

The Washington Post reported, "State Department officials told the GAO that the language gap could begin to close next year if it gets requested funding, but they did not say when they expect the language staffing requirements to be fully met." Yesterday wouldn't be soon enough.

© Copyright 2010 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.

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