The Foreign Service Officer

Abstract

As career Foreign Service Officers (FSO's) carry out their diplomatic and consular functions, they necessarily assume a unique role in a foreign country as compared with their fellow overseas Americans. Conducting the business of the United States government in the host country, their re lationships with local people take on an inescapable official significance. In addition, their diplomatic status calls for par ticipation in the activities of the local multinational diplomatic corps. The result is a special set of conditions on which For eign Service life overseas is based. In the postwar period, the scope and variety of demands made on the Foreign Service have expanded along with increased United States responsi bilities and a vastly increased number of official Americans abroad. These changing conditions of international diplomacy have posed new problems in defining the professionalism of diplomacy for United States Foreign Service Officers. How ever, the Service is still given cohesion by participation in a common career "subculture" which derives from similarity of experience, the traditions of the Service, a sense of belonging to an FSO community which is dispersed over the world, and a common set of values and objectives.