F OCUS - American Foreign Service Association

52 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL/JULY-AUGUST 2008
efforts, Kennan himself was hauled
before the Senate Internal Security
Subcommittee, an experience he
describes as “traumatic” and “Kafkaesque.”
Kennan was among the first figures
to draw attention to the dangers
of the McCarthyite onslaught — not
just to the targeted individuals, or to
civil liberties, but to the integrity of
the Foreign Service itself. His July
1955 Foreign Affairs article, “The
Future of Our Professional Diplomacy,”
states in stark terms his fears
for the morale and effectiveness of the
career Service under a security
regime he suggested had been
inspired by “the totalitarians.” When
Averell Harriman described the
Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs, which
he took over in late 1961, as “a disaster
area filled with human wreckage,”
and when John F. Kennedy called the
State Department a “bowl of jelly,”
they were bluntly confirming the
cogency of Kennan’s analysis.
In one of the great ironies of Cold
War history, it fell to the prosecutor of
Alger Hiss and scourge of liberals,
Richard M. Nixon, to pick up the policy
threads that the China hands had
tried to weave and finally permit the
lifting of the cloud of suspicion hanging
over their heads. Davies probably
flashed one of his sardonic smiles
when he learned that one of the few
prestigious journalists to win a coveted
spot on the presidential plane carrying
Nixon to his historic meeting
with Mao was his old friend and
defender, Eric Sevareid.
Since AFSA paid tribute to the
China hands a third of a century ago,
their reputation has been further
enhanced and that of their detractors
further diminished. In 1973, many
bemoaned the consequences of their
loss to American diplomacy. Surely it
is time now to be more positive and
emphasize their enduring importance
as role models for a 21st-century
Foreign Service. ■