What the Foreign Service Actually Is
Most Americans know there are embassies. Fewer know who staffs them, or what those people do all day.
The United States Foreign Service is the country's professional diplomatic corps. It was created as a unified, merit-based service by the Rogers Act of 1924 and is governed today by the Foreign Service Act of 1980. Its members serve at embassies and consulates around the world, and in Washington between assignments.
Foreign Service Officers at the Department of State work in one of five career tracks:
- ConsularProtecting American citizens abroad and adjudicating passports and visas.
- EconomicAdvancing American commercial and economic interests overseas.
- ManagementRunning the people, budgets, and facilities that keep a mission operating.
- PoliticalAnalyzing host-country politics and carrying American positions to foreign governments.
- Public DiplomacyExplaining American policy and values directly to foreign publics.
Officers rotate between posts every few years. That means repeated moves, new languages, and new problems, often in places with real hardship. It is demanding work, and much of it is invisible by design. When diplomacy succeeds, nothing happens, and nobody writes about it.
That is exactly the point.