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FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 1974: Volume 51, No. 2

Who Is Your Father? 4 SALLY GROOMS

The Nixon System: A Further Look 9 I. M. DESTLER

Urban Innovation Abroad 15 GEORGE G. WYNNE

Federal Income Taxes: Can, Not Cant 19 PARTNERS & STAFF, HURDMAN AND CRANSTOUN, CPAs

Clientism in the Foreign Service 24 ROGER MORRIS

DEPARTMENTS

Guest Editorial: Memories of ‘‘Chip’’ Bohlen 2 JOSEPH ALSOP

The Bookshelf 27

Letters to the Editor 35

AFSA News 37

Cover “The Four-Legged Flying Bumblebee Bat” by Becky Wolford

American Foreign Service Association THOMAS D. BOYATT, President F. ALLEN HARRIS, Vice President EDWIN L. MARTIN, Second Vice President RICHARD H. MELTON, Secretary LOIS W. ROTH. Treasurer MARY ANN EPLEY &

JOHN PATTERSON, AID Representatives FRANCINE BOWMAN, CHARLES T. CROSS,

CHARLES O. HOFFMAN & RAYMOND F. SMITH, State Representatives

CARL GEBUHR, USIA Representative JAMES W. RIDDLEBERGER &

WILLIAM 0. BOSWELL, Retired Representatives

RICHARD L. WILLIAMSON, Counselor

Journal Editorial Board

TERESITA C. SCHAFFER, Chairman RALPH S. SMITH, Vice Chairman FREDERICK QUINN JOEL M. WOLDMAN EDWARD M. COHEN ERIC GRIFFEL G. RICHARD MONSEN LAWRENCE B. LESSER

Staff

GERALD BUSHNELL, Executive Director HELEN VOGEL, Committee Coordinator ELOISE JORDAN, Scholarship Aide C. B. SANNER, Membership and Circulation

Foreign Service Educational Center CLARKE SLADE, Director

Journal

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■ American Foreign Service Association, 1974. The Foreign Ser¬ vice Journal is published twelve times a year by the American Foreign Service Association. 2101 E Street, N.W., Washington D. C. 20037. Telephone (202) 338-4045

Second-class postage paid at Washington, D.C. and at additional post office.

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Membership in the American Foreign Service Association is open to the professionals in foreign affairs overseas or in Washington, as well as to persons having an active interest in, or close association with, foreign affairs. Membership dues are: Active Members—Dues range from $13 to $52 annually depending upon income. Retired Active Members—Dues are $30 annually for members with incomes over $15,000; $15 annually for less than $15,000. Associate Members—Dues are $20 annually.

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Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts and/or America-. History and Life.

Microfilm copies of current as well as of back issues of the FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL are available through the University Microfilm Li¬ brary Services, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 under a contract signed October 30, 1967.

F5J GUEST EDTTDRIAL

Memories of “Chip” Bohlen JOSEPH ALSOP

You make a lot of discoveries as you grow older, some delightful, some painful and some odd. One that is both odd and painful is that reason does not matter very much when you lose someone you have greatly cared about.

He or she may be ending the richest possible life in the most cruel agony. You may tell yourself, again and again, that facing such agony after such a life, he or she would be far better served by a quick end.

But then the end comes at last, and you discover that all your logic is now worth a pin. The loss is still a bit like an actual amputation. And now it has been just like that to lose one of my two or three oldest friends in this city where 1 have lived for close to 40 years.

Even so, the death of Charles E. Bohlen would not require this kind of public comment, if his career and contribution did not teach a valuable public lesson. In¬ deed his service to the United States teaches a whole series of lessons, all of them highly relevant today.

This is a time, for instance, when a good many Americans are still being self-indulgently wishful about the Soviet Union, and some others are recovering, with comical difficulty, from the after-effects of wishfulness. Now modern Russia was “Chip” Bohlen’s subject. He chose this subject when he was a young man—which always makes wishfulness a strong temptation. It was a choice, as the event proved, that opened the road for one of the two or three most enviable careers in the history of American diplomacy.

Furthermore—what very few people ever grasped about Chip Bohlen—his whole working life was one long love affair with Russia and with his subject. He not only vastly admired and liked the Russian people. He also came perilously close to disliking any conversa¬ tion, except for conversation about his special subject.

In this last year, when he was a desperately ill man, half the time tortured by his disease, he was not always easy for a visitor to get through to, as you might say. So 1 used to save up a tidbit of Soviet news or rumor, or a question from Russian history, whenever I went to see him. Trot out such a tidbit, and instantly, as though by magic, he would be his old earthly shrewd, endlessly knowledgeable self again.

I think, too, that Chip Bohlen had the best time of his whole life when he was young in Russia, courting his beautiful wife-to-be, and getting to know the subject he had chosen at first hand. Consider, then, how difficult it must have been, in such a happy time, to see his chosen subject clearly, with a truthful, always humane eye, and 2 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February, 1974

without a trace of wishfulness. Remember, too, that the opinion Bohlen thereby formed of the Soviet system was then the very opposite of fashionable in many in¬ fluential quarters in this country.

Here, of course, was the second lesson of Chip Bohlen’s public service. It must have been a great temptation for him, especially after Joseph Stalin be¬ came our ally, to shade his judgments a bit to suit the fashionable mood. He was personally attacked for those judgments in TIME magazine, for instance. And, initially at least, there were also judgments that were most unpalatable to President Roosevelt’s wartime right hand, Harry L. Hopkins, that half-forgotten great man.

He did not shade his judgments, nonetheless. He stuck to them; and as experience taught Hopkins more and more about Bohlen’s subject, Hopkins came to hold Bohlen in higher and ever higher regard. In sum, the second lesson of Bohlen’s great career is that it pays to be courageous—if you just happen to have the guts to do it.

As to the third lesson, it concerns the value of abso¬ lute integrity. Everyone has heard the story of how Chip Bohlen refused President Kennedy’s invitation to join the special policy group that got us through the Cuban missile crisis. Bohlen refused on the simple ground that it would tip the Kremlin off that we knew too much, if he suddenly put off his expected departure for the Paris embassy. I was there that evening, as it happens. It was a chilling time, if one only knew what was afoot. Yet the evening’s surface was so pleasing that the picture of it often comes back to me, who did not understand the quiet, easy-seeming Kennedy- Bohlen colloquy.

Later, the President looked back on the evening, made mellow and reminiscent by the outcome of the missile crisis. Of Bohlen’s decision, he said something fairly memorable, too: “There must have been a hundred men in Washington who wanted to join EX- COMM (the inner policy group), and at least half of them were damned angry because they were not in¬ vited. But there I was, begging Chip to join, and there he was, refusing the invitation!

“Maybe it sounds a little thing, but by God, it seems to me a big thing always to put the country first; and that's what happened.” He always put the country first, in truth. It is no bad epitaph.

11 1974, Los Angeles Times Reprinted by permission

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“Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.” — George Bernard Shaw

Who is your hither? SALLY GROOMS

TitE cream-colored gilt-edged invitation card greeted me from its tray in the vestibule as I arrived home after a day at USIS New Delhi. “Mr. and Mrs. Sally Grooms” was the envelope address, lettered in the so¬ cial secretary's finest script.

Immediately my mind flashed back to scenes begin¬ ning some eighteen months earlier in Washington when we had taken the momentous decision which turned my lawyer husband into the first male dependent in USI A’s foreign service. My own route into the foreign service had been distinctly back door. A civil servant with five years experience, I was apologetically approached by my boss one day and told that my promised promotion was not forthcoming because the Director of DSIA wished to use non-promotion as a device to phase out the civil service in favor of the Foreign Affairs Specialist Corps (not yet created.) Tentatively I broached the idea of converting to the foreign service, and within two weeks I had been metamorphosed into FSLR-4, a “domestic” Foreign Service officer.

1 suppose it took me at least a week to request an overseas assignment ... an evil thought which had been lodged in some musty corner of my “domestic” mentality for years. The first and most persistent ques¬ tion was “what will you do with your husband?,” as though he were a piece of furniture which had to be shipped, stored, or sold. 1 calmly announced my deci¬ sion to ship him, as accompanied baggage, and within no time at all was assigned as Special Assistant to the Public Affairs Officer in New Delhi after some frantic cable traffic from the PAO reluctantly agreeing to the assignment “if husband no problem.”

But the fun had only begun . . . first there were the forms. “Residence and Dependency Report” was one. Someone had cosmetically changed the line which read “name of wife,” to “name of spouse” in my honor, but had neglected to eliminate the following parenthetical request: (give maiden name of spouse). Reasonably I complied with the requested name, “Thomas B," fol¬ lowing that with the logical explanation, “spouse has no maiden name . . . spouse has never been a maiden.”

And then there were visas and shots and passports. The experienced State Department nurse, confronting Tom for the first time turned on her tape-recorded mes¬ sage: “Name?” . . . “Tom Grooms” . . . “Post? . . . “New Delhi” . . . “Assignment?” . . . “Oh, 1 don't have an assignment, I’m a dependent.” The tape recor¬ der switched off. She looked once, then again, taking in

4 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February, 1974

Sally and Tom Grooms are both graduates of DePauw University, both Phi Beta Kappa. Sally joined UISA in 1966 as a management intern.

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Stilly and Tom Grooms in tlicir Washington apartment against the background of a poster designed by Tom as part of an “anti-erosion" ecology campaign.

the graying hair and law-school furrowed brow. She gulped and finally forced out, “Who is your father?”

Photos in hand we approached the passport office and filled out the necessary forms. Discreetly, the so¬ licitous clerk pulled me aside and whispered in my ear “we can get him a tourist passport.” “Why?” 1 in¬

quired. “Because a Diplomatic one will have to read that he's your dependent.” Confidently I assured her that "he didn’t mind.” But the matriarchal Indian Gov¬ ernment was less aware . . . back came our passports with my visa declaring “Good for any number of jour¬ neys to India while husband is on duty with USIS!”

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Finally we arrived in India only to discover that my husband’s legal career was being nipped in the bud by the reluctance of the Embassy to assist in seeking a work permit for him when unemployment among Indian attorneys was astronomically high. Being a pragmatic soul with a wealth of avocational interests and hardly wedded to the law, Tom's disappointment was rapidly overcome and days found him investigating our new environment and “integrating” bridge luncheons.

One of his first projects was to decorate our house ... a typical Embassy flat furnished with godown rejects. And a star was born! Imaginatively he made use of “bush” shirt material, lattice work over a wall enameled in Chinese red, and a profusion of green¬ ery. Friends and friends of friends flocked to see the house. Indians were delighted with his use of inexpen¬ sive Indian cotton fabrics to transform a pedestrian set¬ ting. Americans couldn't believe the chair that was in everyone’s house (early John Foster Dulles) could look so good in ours. Word spread and shortly magazines had featured the house and Tom was busily at work designing interiors and gardens and boutiques in Delhi and environs. Soon he had won the contract to restore and refurbish the US IS center and library in Katmandu, Nepal, a six month project which involved designing and supervising construction of all the furniture as well as re-doing the interior space of a five-story building. All of that led to losing my dependent ... he left India last fall to enter Parsons School of Design in New York City.

And what did we learn? Well, a tremendous amount

about each other and about other people. We learned that each of us needed an independent and distinct exis¬ tence to be happy. When we simply “role-reversed” a traditional marriage, we were both unhappy: Tom be¬ cause he had no sense of personal accomplishment; I because his being dependent on me (not financially but psychologically as his window to the outside world) was debilitating. We learned that the world is uncomfortable when it can't define someone in occupational terms. (I soon learned the best answer to the question “What does your husband DO?” was “He’s a very good lover!") And we learned that humor opens the door to many interesting conversations. People were reluctant to discuss our life-style with us until the Indo-Pak War of December, 1971, when talk of possible evacuation provoked Tom publicly to ask the question: “Let's get this straight, who gets evacuated first . . . women and children or dependents?!” When fellow officers and In¬ dians realized we weren't sensitive or embarrassed about our situation, we could begin to discuss it and from that jumped into fascinating conversations about modern marriage, and joint families, and women’s lib¬ eration, which would probably not have otherwise taken place.

Would we do it again? Sure, in fact come December, I'll be Branch Public Affairs Officer and Bi-National Center Director in Cartagena, Colombia. And Tom, well who knows . . . maybe he'll do free-lance design¬ ing for American firms ... or urban planning in Bogota ... or digging for pirate treasure in the Carib¬ bean! And who says women's lib isn't men’s lib as well!

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8 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February, 1974

In foreign relations, as in all other relations, a policy has been

formed only when commitments and power have been brought into balance.

—Walter Lippmann, U.S. Foreign Policy

The Nixon System a further look

I. M. DESTLER

ON AUGUST 22, 1973, President Nixon announced the resignation of William P. Rogers as Secretary of State and the choice of Henry A. Kissinger to replace him. Kissinger was to continue to hold the position of Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. The “purpose” of this new arrange¬ ment, said the President, was “to have a closer coordination” be¬ tween the White House and the State Department. “Another pur¬ pose,” he added, was “to get the work out in the departments where it belongs.”

Until this announcement, there had been remarkably little change in United States foreign policy¬ making since the Nixon adminis¬ tration developed its basic proce¬ dures and patterns in 1969-71. Pres¬ ident Nixon began his second term with a rare opportunity to under¬ take serious organizational reform. He had an overwhelming election victory, a reputation for major foreign policy achievements, and considerable experience with the people and processes of the foreign affairs government. He faced the future with the opportunity—and the expressed determination—to make widespread personnel changes. And vacancies were soon to be filled in four of the five top State Department positions, the

/. M. Destler, currently Research Associate at the Brookings Institute, has taught at Princeton University and the University of Nigeria and has held several foreign policy-related staff positions in the execu¬ tive branch and on Capitol Hill. This article is adapted from the "Epilogue” to his hook "Presidents. Bureaucrats, and Foreign Pol¬ icy," which will soon he republished by Princeton Press in an expanded, paperback edition. In the article. Destler expands on his analysis of Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy-making in the light of international and domestic events since the book went to press in mid-1971.

three top posts in Defense, the CIA and ACDA directorships, and the chairmanship of our SALT delegation. Had Nixon been dis¬ posed toward major changes in January 1973, he was in an excep¬ tional position to be able to put them across.

But apparently he was not, and he did not. Three days after the November election, the White House press office announced a major reassessment of “the basic organization and relations” among the foreign policy agencies. But no¬ thing discernible resulted. The high-level vacancies were filled mostly with persons known for loyal, reasonably effective previ¬ ous service to the Administration, but not of such strength and calibre as to “threaten” those closest to the President. Apparently this suited both Kissinger and his some¬ time White House rival H. R. Haldeman, who as chief Presiden¬ tial Assistant was the prime man¬ ager of the appointments process. But it was not in any sense a team of strong, aggressive foreign policy leaders chosen primarily by the President’s chief foreign policy ad¬ viser.

There were certain modest for¬ mal changes made in 1972 and 1973. The State Department ac¬ quired a “Deputy Secretary” with increased management responsi¬ bilities, and an “Under Secretary for Economic Affairs” to parallel its Under Secretary for Political Affairs. The Kissinger staff was re¬ structured to establish several dep¬ uty positions, with important¬ sounding mandates such as “plan¬ ning,” “operations,” and “inter¬ national economic affairs.” But in neither place were the elevations in title buttressed by the two further top-level actions that were prereq¬

uisites to making them effective: designation of strong people to fill the positions and support from their bosses (including, directly or indirectly, the President) to enable them to play strong policy leader¬ ship roles. Thus the student of or¬ ganizational reform has been given one more example of the futility of formal changes by themselves in changing how foreign policy really gets made.

Yet the President cannot rea¬ sonably be accused of wanting major organizational changes and failing to achieve them. Nor is there convincing evidence for an¬ other possible explanation—that he was temporizing on personnel and structural changes until the time was ripe to send Kissinger to State. We are not privy, of course, to his deepest intentions in making the new appointment, but there is no reason to believe it was done primarily on organizational grounds. Despite periodic public adherence to the virtues of strong Cabinet officers, the President’s actual conduct of his office has consistently underscored his pref¬ erence for dealing with and through a handful of White House-based advisers. His apparent satisfaction with the NSC system has been re¬ flected in recurrent efforts to re¬ structure the domestic government along parallel lines. Watergate has brought a tactical retreat from the most ambitious effort in this direc¬ tion, Nixon's January 1973 as¬ signment of overarching coordina¬ tion responsibilities to five Presi¬ dential Assistants and three Cab¬ inet members doubling as broader purpose Presidential Counselors. He announced the Kissinger ap¬ pointment as another move to push responsibility to the departments. But the President has not increased

9 FORKIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February, 1974

the number of people through whom he conducts serious gov¬ ernment business, whether foreign or domestic. It is more reasonable to conclude—unless and until events prove otherwise —that he intends little change in the way he and Kissinger handle foreign pol¬ icy, and that he has made the move for a range of other reasons—a de¬ sire to reward Kissinger and to eliminate the periodic embarrass¬ ment caused by having his Secret¬ ary of State on the periphery of ac¬ tual policy-making; the difficulty of getting another good man to take the Secretary job as long as Kis¬ singer remained in the White House; and above all the desire to demonstrate renewed Administra¬ tion vitality in the year of Water¬ gate.

The President has repeatedly expressed his satisfaction with both his foreign policy accom¬ plishments and the Kissinger-based system through which he achieved them. Since their personal relation¬ ship has been so important to both, it is likely that many characteristics of the process when Kissinger was Assistant will continue with him as Secretary. Nevertheless, Nixon Administration foreign policy¬ making institutions are clearly en¬ tering a new phase. This makes it doubly useful here to undertake a further assessment of the pre- August 1973 Nixon system in the light of the developments of the preceding two years. To the extent that some serious institutional change is now intended, a critique of the immediate past can highlight problems with which such reform should cope. To the degree that things continue as they are, the critique, if valid, may illuminate the future as well as our past.

And the developments since 1971 have a more general impor¬ tance to those interested in foreign affairs organization. For if little changed between mid-1971 and mid-1973 in the foreign affairs gov¬ ernment, very much changed in the broader international and domestic political worlds to which any or¬ ganizational approach must relate. From July 1971 through January 1973 we saw a series of dramatic Nixon foreign policy accomplish¬ ments. Then, beginning in about March of 1973, we had the crisis of the Presidency brought on by the Watergate revelations. Both raise 10 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL. Februurx. 1974

In the years before 1969, Henry Kissinger frequently expressed the view that only by freeing themselves from bureaucratic encumbrances would foreign policy leaders in modern states be able to accomplish substan¬ tial things.

important—and diametrically op¬ posed—questions. The achieve¬ ments suggest that the Nixon sys¬ tem has worked, whatever its ap¬ parent deficiencies. The Watergate not only suggests that the Nixon Administration has been a national disaster, but raises grave doubts about any effort to strengthen the foreign policy power of the modern Presidency.

Has the System Worked? In the years before 1969, Henry

Kissinger frequently expressed the view that only by freeing them¬ selves from bureaucratic encum¬ brances would foreign policy lead¬ ers in modern states be able to ac¬ complish substantial things. The major Administration foreign pol¬ icy achievements are a result of putting this concept into practice. The Nixon NSC system had been partially designed and totally ex¬ plained as a means of enhancing the quality and responsiveness of the bureaucracy’s contribution to foreign policy-making. But it be¬ came increasingly, in practice, a vehicle for excluding or diverting the bureaucracy while Nixon and Kissinger did the “real” business on their own. The primary targets of attention were China, Russia, and Vietnam. Kissinger handled the most critical negotiations per¬ sonally, very often secretively, keeping the rest of the US bureau¬ cracy in the dark. His one client was the President, who was inti¬ mately involved in planning and di¬ recting these efforts, and who cap¬ ped their achievements with visits to Peking and Moscow.

Threats from these two Com¬ munist adversaries were, for most participants and observers, the overriding problem of postwar American foreign policy. Vietnam dominated the '60s. To have negotiated withdrawal from the war and built new relationships with Russia and China is no small set of achievements, even if chang¬ ing domestic and world political

conditions greatly facilitated them all. Moreover, these specific at¬ tainments appear to be linked to a broader conceptual approach, an effort to build a “structure of peace” around astute management of relationships among the major world power centers. A five power world is emerging, Mr. Nixon has suggested. And implicit in this Administration’s approach is the conviction that the world needs to be managed—and can be man¬ aged—much as the post-Napo- leonic world had ideally been— by careful dealings among strong leaders of these power centers, leaders politically and institution¬ ally free to bargain internationally, to offer inducements and respond to threats in a flexible (and fre¬ quently secret) manner.

An extended analysis of the rel¬ evance of this approach to today’s world would be beyond the scope of this article. But neither can the issue be ignored. For the real Nixon-Kissinger case for the effec¬ tiveness of a closed, “two-man” system for conducting our foreign policy has come to rest not on the once-emphasized distinction be¬ tween “policy” and “operations.” Rather, it depends on the assump¬ tion that US relations with a small number of counterpart power cen¬ ters are what count, that the prin¬ cipal foreign policy issues of con¬ cern to the United States can be dealt with effectively through ne¬ gotiating relationships with these power centers, and that top offi¬ cials in these centers (and in the United States) will have enough political weight at home to be able to deliver on the deals they make by getting the requisite actions out of their domestic political systems. To the extent these assumptions are valid, then maybe two men can handle this task (with appropriate analytic and operational staff sup¬ port), and perhaps they can handle it with greater coherence and pur¬ pose than a larger number. And maybe most of the day-to-day ac¬ tivities of the foreign affairs bu¬ reaucracy can be ignored—as un¬ necessary for the major enterprises of Nixon-Kissinger diplomacy, and as unimportant enough not to un¬ dercut these enterprises. Thus the Nixon-Kissinger system might work even if, as I believe, the “op¬ erational” decisions are what pol¬ icy usually consists of. For the

two-man system could dominate the operational decisions that count.

On the other hand, to the extent that power over the issues to be negotiated is widely dispersed, the two-man system will not do. If power is dispersed overseas, then the United States needs many more credible negotiators, able to speak authoritatively for the Presi¬ dent and the United States to sev¬ eral levels of many governments. If power is dispersed at home, then the Nixon-Kissinger approach is inadequate also. For the secrecy and masked maneuvers of the closed system tend to conflict with the building of the broader under¬ standing and alliances required for securing sufficient domestic sup¬ port to sustain the policy.

Obviously, some issues and some relationships will meet these criteria better than others. What is necessary, then, is to distinguish between those situations where a closed, Nixon-Kissinger-type ap¬ proach is likely to be effective, and those where it is not. Logic and ex¬ perience suggest that the system works well when three conditions are met. It is effective: (1) with countries which have strong coun¬ terpart leaders with whom to cut deals; (2) in bilateral relationships which are limited in depth and breadth; and (3) on issues where United States leaders can person¬ ally control the policy outcomes about which they need to deal. Each of these intertwined limits deserves spelling out.

The need for strong foreign counterparts. The apparent Nix¬ on-Kissinger preference for dealing with adversary nations has often been noted. And to anticipate a later point, the Nixon-Kissinger difficulties with international al¬ liance relationships are paralleled by their aversion to building and working with strong allies domesti¬ cally, whether in the bureaucracy, or the Congress, or the broader community of Americans con¬ cerned with foreign policy. But the taste for adversary dealings has structural as well as personal roots. For Nixon-Kissinger “diplomacy at the top” requires counterpart leaders in the other major power centers with political weight and flexibility comparable to their own, foreign leaders able to make large commitments and then deliver on

Finally, the Nixon-Kissinger sys¬ tem of closed policy-making is limited by the limits of Presiden¬ tial power at home. Spurning broader bureaucratic or domes¬ tic alliance-building, it tends to work only on those issues where the President can personally as¬ sure the official or unofficial US action which is at issue.

these commitments. Absent such counterparts, negotiating at the top brings meager results. And if many other foreign officials then need to be dealt with, the system doesn’t work. Nixon and Kissinger can’t do all this themselves, and lesser officials have neither the delegated authority nor the understanding of top-level aims that is required.

In the Nixon-Kissinger period it has been the adversary, totalitarian nations where such strong coun¬ terparts have been found. They cannot always be found even there—neither Leonid Brezhnev nor Chou En-lai, for example, had a domestic political base in the mid-’60s comparable to what each had developed by 1971. But strong central leadership is far less likely to arise in the advanced industrial, democratic societies of Europe and Japan. In Europe there is no one leader, but a “Community” of semi-sovereign states struggling to construct a larger economic and political order. Japan does have a chief of government, of course, and Nixon and Kissinger have sought to use periodic summit conferences to strike binding political bargains with Tokyo. But the Japanese Prime Minister is hemmed in by a collegial Cabinet system, a strong bureaucracy, and a political tradi¬ tion stressing broad consensus. He is unable to “deal” as Nixon and Kissinger would like, and the result of pressing him to do so has been frustration on both sides.

The need for relatively unen¬ cumbered bilateral relationships. Another way in which the Nixon- Kissinger system is better adapted to adversary dealings is in its need for relatively simple, unencum¬ bered relationships. China is the ideal example. Since few Ameri¬ cans had any serious ongoing deal¬ ings with Chinese counterparts in 1971, there was no network of offi¬ cial relationships and unofficial ties through which signals might be

communicated or aims might be pursued which were inconsistent with the clandestine efforts of those at the top. There were not the sort of vested interests in a many-faceted existing relationship which might inhibit, suffer from, or resist major policy changes when the leaders sought to spring them on their astonished publics. But if such an unencumbered “clean slate” minimized the costs of this approach to US-Chinese relations, the “Nixon shock” effects on Japan were multiplied because of many levels and forms of Jap- anese-American interdependence which the sudden US move toward China seemed to threaten.

And it is the US-Japanese case that seems more characteristic of the modern international system, above all in the relations among advanced industrial societies. Offi¬ cials deal with one another across a wide range of specialized but in- terwined policy issues. Their effec¬ tive management requires not bi¬ lateral summit dealings but com¬ plex, many-level, many-issue mul¬ tilateral negotiations on troop levels, trade barriers, and ex¬ change rates—negotiations that usually need to proceed on reg¬ ularized, separate, but somehow related tracks.

The need for issues that the US President can dominate. Finally, the Nixon-Kissinger system of closed policy-making is limited by the limits of Presidential power at home. Spurning broader bureau¬ cratic or domestic alliance¬ building, it tends to work only on those issues where the President can personally assure the official or unofficial US action which is at issue. Usually this reinforces the Nixon-Kissinger bias toward political-military issues and in¬ struments. It is easier to deliver a B-52 bomb load on Hanoi than to win Congressional approval of a piece of trade legislation.

Again—this time ironically —China is the clearest positive ex¬ ample. The President had the per¬ sonal power to dispatch his emis¬ sary and arrange the contacts re¬ quired, and the Taiwan lobby proved to be a “paper tiger.” With Russia, many of the new forms of bilateral cooperation are relatively non-controversial and subject to Presidential will. The SALT agreements, which did need Con-

FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February, 1974

gressional approval, encountered limited difficulty because they were generally consistent with Congressional predispositions. But the promise of most-favored-nation treatment for Russia on trade lacked effective Congressional support, and seems likely to foun¬ der because of American Jewish opposition to Soviet emigration policies. And there is strong Con¬ gressional opposition to the large defense budgets that Nixon and Kissinger see as essential to then- negotiating strategy.

The most dramatic case of the domestic political limits of the Nixon approach, however, has been the issue on which he has staked the most personally—his cherished, oversold Indochina ac¬ cord. Presidential rhetoric about “peace with honor" and “peace that will last” was widely dis¬ counted in January 1973. But Nixon apparently meant it, and staked his hopes for a lasting set¬ tlement on the expectation of con¬ tinued leverage with Hanoi. In part this was to be exercised through the new relationships with Moscow and Peking. But of critical impor¬ tance was direct leverage through the “carrot” of promised large- scale reconstruction assistance, and the “stick" of further use of the B-52s. Indeed, the December carpet-bombing looks, in retro¬ spect, not so much like an effort to win major changes in the terms of the agreement, as a demonstration to Hanoi that the President was both able and willing to inflict such punishment, and thus might do it again if the agreement were not ob¬ served.

But as of this writing, domestic politics has taken both options out of Nixon’s hands. The President has been forced by Congress to ac¬ cept an August 15th bombing cut¬ off not just for Cambodia, but all of Indochina. And the only thing with less Congressional support than the bombing is the aid program for North Vietnam.

Thus, these three limitations combine to reduce the range of ef¬ fectiveness of the Nixon-Kissinger approach to a very limited range of issues. And at least equally disturb¬ ing has been the way Nixon and Kissinger have tended to respond to difficulties engendered by these limitations.

One tendency has been to con- 12 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, Februan. 1974

Rather than seeking to broaden his base by mollifying some of his critics, he attacks those whose support he needs as vio¬ lators of some imagined Presi¬ dential prerogative of unham¬ pered executive action in for¬ eign affairs, or as advocates of “neo-isolationism” and a total retreat from America’s world role.

tinue to concentrate on those is¬ sues and relationships to which the approach is congenial, despite pub¬ lic statements that the priorities are changing. Thus, in the first eight months of their declared “Year of Europe,” Nixon and Kissinger still appeared to be giving their prime attention to those adversary rela¬ tions stressed in 1972. They did not seem to be focusing seriously on those economic questions which are central to any major Atlantic enterprise, partly because they lack substantive interest in these issues, partly because there are no authoritative counterparts with whom to deal on these issues.

A second tendency has been to lecture and sometimes punish those foreign governments which do not perform as the Nixon- Kissinger system needs them to. Thus when a Japanese Prime Minister is squeezed into promis¬ ing a textile export restraint agree¬ ment and proves unable (for pre¬ dictable reasons) to deliver on his promise, the fault is seen to lie not in unwise US tactics or unrealistic US expectations but in Japanese failure to measure up to the role of de-Gaulle-type world statesmen. They are lectured in State of the World messages about the “obliga¬ tion to keep the specific commit¬ ments made to one another.” Shock tactics are employed to get the Japanese to stand up and join the five-power world. Thus the needs of the Nixon-Kissinger in¬ ternal policy-making system and their particular approach to inter¬ national diplomacy are elevated to the level of moral truths.

It would be remarkable indeed if US pressure could somehow so alter the internal politics of Europe and Japan as to give rise to the sort of powerful leaders with whom our leaders like to play international poker. But while this is unlikely, the opposite is very possible. To

the degree that Nixon-Kissinger diplomacy with Russia and China is successful, one major (and ap¬ parently intended) result will be to transform the rather simple adver¬ sary relationships of the past into multi-issue, multi-level interde¬ pendencies much less manipulable through negotiations at the top, and much more affected by broader US domestic politics.

Most disturbing of all the reac¬ tions to limits of the system, how¬ ever, has been the President’s typ¬ ical response when domestic poli¬ tics keeps him from doing what he wants to do on the world scene. Rather than seeking to broaden his base by mollifying some of his cri¬ tics, he attacks those whose sup¬ port he needs as violators of some imagined Presidential prerogative of unhampered executive action in foreign affairs, or as advocates of “neo-isolationism” and a total re¬ treat from America’s world role. Thus he exacerbates those sub¬ stantive policy differences (and bad personal relations) which led to his setback in the first place. Appeals over the heads of the “elitists” to the “silent majority” can be tacti¬ cally effective on occasion. But if unaccompanied by serious efforts at dialogue and consensus-building with those Congressional ieaders and other foreign policy-concerned Americans who would be likely to respond positively to such efforts, such an approach is a prescription for continuing crises, for recurrent threats to that ability to act which the President so prizes, for the nur¬ turing of a strong policy opposition ever-ready to reverse or check him when it has the opportunity to do so. And this opposition's oppor¬ tunities to prevail have increased because the President, like his predecessor, has squandered a ma¬ jor asset for securing support for controversial actions—his personal credibility.

In sum, the Nixon-Kissinger closed policy-making approach seems effective only in a very lim¬ ited range of foreign policy situa¬ tions. And this range is narrowing as our relationships with Russia and China are transformed, as problems of the advanced, cap¬ italist societies come to the fore, and as Americans’ tolerance for discretionary Presidential foreign policy action diminishes. All of these limitations underscore the

need for Presidentially-linked for¬ eign policy institutions with broader substantive reach and bet¬ ter capacity to coordinate multi¬ subject and multi-level US nego¬ tiating initiatives. All suggest that the Nixon-Kissinger foreign pol¬ icy-making approach would be looking less and less impressive even had “Watergate” never en¬ tered the American political vo¬ cabulary. But it has, leaving no US foreign policy institution or issue unaffected. Watergate has weak¬ ened the ability of President Nixon to carry out any sort of strong foreign policy, however much he may be trying. And for some, it has also cast further doubt on the de¬ sirability of strengthening the Pres¬ idency for any purpose.

Today's crisis of the Presidency began well before Watergate. Con¬ cern about arbitrary and unrespon¬ sive Presidential power in foreign policy was nurtured by the Viet¬ nam war, and reached one crisis peak during the Cambodian incur¬ sion of 1970. Publication of the Pentagon Papers in mid-1971 rein¬ forced the impression that Presi¬ dent Johnson had been ordering one thing and representing his pol¬ icy publicly as the opposite. And revelations in 1973 suggest that the Nixon Administration may have been more systematic and more de¬ termined than its predecessor in the practice of official deception. The large-scale, “secret” bombing of targets in Cambodia begun by Nixon in March 1969, we now learn, was “covered” by falsifica¬ tion of Air Force reports, consid¬ erable wiretapping of government officials suspected of leaking in¬ formation about it to the press, and the President’s assurance to the American people 13 months later that Cambodia’s neutrality had been scrupulously observed.

It is the activities centering around the Watergate campaign espionage operation which have done the greatest damage to the Nixon Presidency. But the same pattern of closed policy-making, extreme distrust of the bureauc¬ racy, and official deception which the Ervin Committee hearings have illuminated is characteristic of Nixon’s foreign policy activities as well, and the lessons of Watergate have relevance for foreign policy organization as well. If those indi¬ viduals driven from office by the

If such an approach has a chance of being viable as a means to enhanced Presidential policy influence even some of the time, it is likely to be doubly tempting to future Presidents because it makes life so much more comfortable for them.

scandal to date do not include Henry Kissinger or any other im¬ portant foreign policy figure, it is evident the paranoid White House atmosphere was in considerable part a reaction to critics of Nixon's Vietnam policy, and that many of the violations of the rights of indi¬ viduals in and out of government were undertaken on “national se¬ curity” grounds.

The Nixon Retreat From Politics

The “essential mistake” of the Nixon men, wrote Nelson Polsby in the Washington POST last Au¬ gust has been their assumption “that the political process in the United States is something that takes place only every four years—on Election day —and that the right to exercise virtually un¬ limited discretion until the next election is conferred by success at the polls. This is simply wrong; politics in America was designed by the Founding Fathers to be a continuing process of mutual ad¬ justment among officials variously situated and differently em¬ powered—but all legitimate."

By the analysis in Richard Neustadt's “Presidential Power,” a President cannot act as Nixon has acted and still be effective—he is too dependent on his relation¬ ships with Congressmen, the news media, and the general “President¬ watching” group of government- related professionals that Neustadt calls the “Washington commun¬ ity.” Watergate seems to be vin¬ dicating this analysis; in some part, the outpouring of criticism can even be characterized as the “Washington community’s re¬ venge.” But until about March of 1973, it looked as if Nixon might be proving the contrary—that the President could ignore or scorn the Washington “influentials” and get away with it. Despite a part-secret and part-deceitful foreign policy persisted in against the predomi¬ nant “establishment” opinion fa¬ voring a more rapid Vietnam with¬

drawal, he was getting results and had even won through some com¬ bination of luck and shrewdness the reluctant admiration of his cri¬ tics. And not only did his foreign policy achievements look impres¬ sive. His FY 1974 budget was a major effort to “change national priorities,” and (again as of March) it appeared that, through persistent use of vetoes and impoundment of appropriated funds, he was likely to prove generally successful. To a significant degree, he may still be.

If such an approach has a chance of being viable as a means to en¬ hanced Presidential policy influ¬ ence even some of the time, it is likely to be doubly tempting to fu¬ ture Presidents because it makes life so much more comfortable for them. It is far easier for a chief ex¬ ecutive to deal through a few “loyal" aides almost totally de¬ pendent on himself, than to con¬ duct extensive personal efforts at bargaining and persuasion which will frequently prove frustrating and occasionally be directly re¬ buffed. It is easier to work with his own White House “court” than with those whose interests diverge from his and must be brought to see the gains for them in acting as he wants. And the closed Presidency is likely to give the President a feeling of great flexibility and room for maneuver. Those who have not been consulted need not be in¬ formed, much less heeded. The political limits on his power do not confront the President directly and daily in his personal relationships. He is encouraged to act as if he has, not a Neustadtian license to persuade, but a “mandate” to de¬ cide things and have his decisions obeyed. He leads less than he or¬ ders. Those who obey are “loyal”; those who do not are “enemies.”

On many issues, however, the President needs the constructive cooperation of persons outside his direct control, and where he does, this approach will be limited in ef¬ fectiveness even when he is riding high in the polls. For example, Nixon has had recurrent problems in getting Congressional approval of his legislative proposals. And it is more than coincidence that a “loner” President who built few al¬ liances with other major political figures and institutions during his days of plenty, now finds himself remarkably bereft of allies to give

FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February, 1974 1 3

him support and aid in his hour of need.

Nixon's closed system seems to have carried within it the seeds of its own destruction. The clandes¬ tine modus opemndi of an insu¬ lated White House spared it the corrective effect of the political process for its mistakes and mis- judgments, while at the same time creating that peculiar combination of bold arrogance and chronic in¬ security to which conspiratorial en¬ terprises cut off from the broader political community are prone. It was hardly surprising, in restro- spect, that some of the mistakes grew into crimes, and, nurtured in the unreal atmosphere of a White House which had lost its sense of proportion, they grew in number as well as magnitude. And the extent of the crisis once the revelations began was a function of the degree of the Nixon men's separation from the broader political commun¬ ity which was now passing judg¬ ment. The gap between what they said and what they did had grown so wide, and the habits of official deception and manipulation of facts so ingrained, that when the dam burst the gap guaranteed a tor¬ rent of revelations, and the habits of deception assured that the Pres¬ ident and his team would prove in¬ capable of operating credibly and persuasively in the public political climate of challenge and response to which they had grown so unac¬ customed. They have found it par¬ ticularly rough because they can no longer hide behind the mantle of authority, having destroyed by their actions the long-standing pre¬ sumption that the official version of an issue is more responsible and believable than that of the critics.

To return to foreign policy or¬ ganization, the dangers inherent in this White House style, so viv¬ idly dramatized by Watergate strengthen the case against building foreign policy-making around the Assistant to the President for Na¬ tional Security Affairs. Whatever his share of the blame for the wiretapping of at least seven mem¬ bers of his staff and ten others (without any remotely-defensible reason that has yet come to light), one factor was that Kissinger was—in 1969—a somewhat suspect figure in a loyalist White House, without the official stature and the responsiveness to his subordinates 14 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February, 1974

that might have encouraged his non-compliance. If Watergate-type isolation and paranoia are a malady to which the White House is par¬ ticularly prone, and if the Assistant cannot escape being affected, then we have one more reason why the President should be urged to locate his chief foreign policy subordinate elsewhere. And in this regard, the designation of Kissinger as Secre¬ tary of State seems a definite step in the right direction.

But does the lesson go further? Does it call into question the de¬ sirability of any foreign affairs or¬ ganizational strategy designed to build foreign policy coherence around the Presidency?

At the broadest level, what we face here is the age-old dilemma about power. In urging central purpose and coherence in foreign policy-making, this analyst has generally adopted a Hamiltonian, Rooseveltian view of government as the developer and pursuer of positive national purposes. But there is another view with compar¬ able historical credentials, one which stresses the dangers of con¬ centrated government power and the need for “checks and bal¬ ances” to preserve governmental accountability and personal liberty. In today’s atmosphere, this latter view is coming to the fore. The overriding emphasis is on restraint of excesses rather than achieve¬ ment of positive objectives, partly because most who write about such things today have grave reserva¬ tions about much of what the pres¬ ent incumbent is inclined to use his power for.

But the current predisposition against centralization of power for positive purposes runs the opposite risk—of neglecting the major pur¬ poses for which a coherent, pur¬ posive US foreign policy is much needed, above all the building of a basis for peaceful relations among nations. And it ignores the fact that one major cause of Watergate was that the Nixon Administration's “coherence” was largely limited to a White House which felt itself under siege in a community of enemies. Thus, for this author, coherence in foreign policy-making remains a goal eminently worthy of serious organizational efforts in its behalf. This coherence need not, however, take the form of a tight- fisted control from above in which

“President’s men,” distinguished by loyalty and efficiency, carry out orders without asking why and ex¬ pect 'heir subordinates to do likewise.

A State-centered strategy can simultaneously broaden the reach of the “Presidential” foreign pol¬ icy system and make the system more open, if it widens the number and range of officials with Presi¬ dential foreign policy mandates. To do this, of course, is to increase Presidential influence over “opera¬ tional" policy matters. But it also serves to broaden and open up ex¬ ecutive branch decision-making, and to make the President respon¬ sive to a broader range of facts and forces. For once it is recognized that such a Presidential “team” will be participating in a process of ongoing formulation and reformu¬ lation of objectives as well as work¬ ing for their realization, enlarge¬ ment of this team leads, other things being equal, to Presidential sensitivity to a broader range of substantive and political considera¬ tions. This is particularly true when this team is not a group of White House aides solely depen¬ dent upon Presidential confidence for their influence, but a group with “line” foreign policy positions and operating responsibilities which give them bases for bureaucratic and broader policy leadership to supplement their Presidential rela¬ tionships.

A further gain of a State- centered strategy is that it can re¬ store the accountability of top Presidential foreign policy appoin¬ tees to Congress, enhancing the prospects for a serious executive- legislative dialogue. This would not lead to a major shift of decision¬ making power to Capitol Hill—in most cases, Congressmen are no more eager to seize such responsi¬ bility than Presidents and bureau¬ crats are to yield it up to them. But it would facilitate what Alton Frye, writing in FOREIGN POLICY, has called the role of Congress as “constrainer,” by sensitizing the Administration to limits beyond which Congress could not be led. And most of all, the recurrent pres¬ sure for public and private explica¬ tion before Congress would put pressure on the Secretary and his key subordinates to provide consis¬ tent and credible explanations of

Continued on page 28

Divina natura dedit agros, ars humana aedificavit urbes.

(Divine Nature gave the fields, human art built the cities)—Varro

SUMMARY

The crisis of the American city has its roots in the institutions and attitudes that helped achieve an unprecedented standard of living for our people. We are bumping ggainst the limits of the market place in promoting a renaissance of urban values. The experience and techniques employed by foreign cities to stop their own deteriora¬ tion have much that is pertinent to our problems. To restore the qual¬ ity of urban life for the enjoyment of all citizens will require the ac¬ ceptance of far greater restraints on the individual than have been thought tolerable until now.

To DESCRIBE our massive urban problems as the by-product of suc¬ cess in achieving an unprecedented standard of living for the American people is entirely accurate but it does not make these problems any less real or less vexing. In provid¬ ing more material goods and physi¬ cal comforts for a greater number of people than at any time in the history of man, our bountiful sys¬ tem of private initiative and min¬ imum government direction has

This article is excerpted from a case study by George G. Wynne prepared for the I5tli session of the Senior Seminar in Foreign Policy. Mr. Wynne is now Foreign Service Inspector for USIA. He is a frequent con¬ tributor to the.JOURNAL.

now come to be haunted by the limitations in resources and shifts in attitudes it has itself created.

Where the population density is greatest—in our metropolitan are¬ as—the problems are particularly acute. An indigent, largely black population, disproportionately com¬ posed of the unruly young and the dependent old. presses against an aging infrastructure. The city’s tax base is eroding as those who are better off flee to the suburbs taking along not only their higher taxable incomes but some of the business establishments that have provided revenue for the city and jobs for the lower income groups. More services are expected and have to be provided for the jobless poor at a time when the city income base is shrinking rather than ex¬ panding. Municipal efforts to ex¬ tend the taxable resources by bringing the suburbs into the fold are fought bitterly and successfully by the suburbanite opponents of annexation who have the law on their side and see no reason to pay for services they do not receive nor require.

With the inner city darkening with every passing year and noth¬ ing discernible on the horizon that would change this trend, the nation appears to be sliding into apartheid on a metropolitan scale—black inner cities ringed by white sub¬ urbs. It is an American tragedy that this increasing polarization is the end result of a national com¬

mitment to integration launched by the 1956 Supreme Court decision.

The unskilled and the semi¬ skilled who are most in need of employment often cannot follow their jobs that moved out of the central city. They cannot afford suburban housing nor would the suburbs accept them. Not only is there no question of moving, there is no way to get to work given the inadequacies of urban mass trans¬ port that continue to plague most American cities. It will take well into the '80s to reverse the decline of mass transit; the required in¬ vestment is huge and the building of systems as an urban afterthought is complicated, time-consuming and disruptive. Meanwhile the fragmentation of the city by the glistening bands of lethal highways that were supposed to tie it all to¬ gether goes on unchecked.

There are a few particularly American aspects to the urban crisis faced by our society, those dependent on the fragmentation along racial lines, but the pressures of mounting populations on de¬ teriorating infrastructures and re¬ sources are of universal concern as city dwellers increase at more than twice the rate of the general popu¬ lation. The year 2000 will see 60 percent of the world's people living in cities of over a hundred thou¬ sand population.

We hold up the mirror of the fu¬ ture to the industrialized countries of Europe and Asia. In it they may

FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February. 1974 15

discern errors to avoid as we in turn can look to them for lessons to draw from the way they apply our experience to their own traditions. Urban problems cut clear across ideological lines—central planning as in Moscow does not produce immunity to traffic congestion— and the need for pertinent answers grows more critical with each pass¬ ing year. Somewhere there is a crossover point beyond which urban ills become terminal and the death of the city spells the end of civilized living.

Economic Stimulation and Disincentives

The private sector of the US economy has not made a significant effort to stimulate the economy of depressed urban areas, nor can it be expected to concern itself with a task that offers only risks without the promise of profits. The public sector on the other hand has not sought the powers to obtain the kind of measures and incentives successfully applied in many parts of Europe and in Japan to bring about industrial relocation. While subsidies and tax incentives are the tools used in mixed economies, re¬ location objectives can and are being obtained in Eastern Europe through master plans promulgated by the central planning authorities.

Industrial relocation through tax incentives and disincentives as practiced in Europe and Japan also serves as a tool of population and pollution control policy. The French government uses a system of accelerated depreciation of con¬ struction costs, business tax ex¬ emptions up to five years, cash grants up to 25 percent of the new investment costs and subsidies for training and moving personnel.

At the same time, disincentives in the form of a special tax per square meter imposed on all new industrial and commercial con¬ struction in the Paris area are in¬ tended to discourage further migra¬ tion into the metropolitan region which accounted for nearly 17 per¬ cent of the entire French popula¬ tion when the program got started. The success of this coordinated ef¬ fort is evidenced by the fact that new construction in the Paris re¬ gion, which amounted to half of all construction in France in the mid-’60s, was down to less than 10 percent by 1972. 16 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February, 1974

To set up counter-magnets to the attraction of Paris, the French gov¬ ernment designated eight provin¬ cial centers for preferential alloca¬ tion of public works and cultural development funds with special in¬ centives for the transfer of com¬ mercial and office facilities. The government itself took the lead in dispersing some of its research and development, military and indus¬ trial activities to the counter¬ magnet “metropoles d'equilibre.”

Another European example of economic stimulation through gov¬ ernmental incentives is given by Sweden which has offered low in¬ terest loans and special “employ¬ ment grants” to industry together with training grants and transport rebates up to 35 percent for goods shipped from the new facility. The Swedish government is transferring functions employing about 11,000 people to the provinces and plans ultimately to relocate 12 percent of the government’s work force. Dis¬ incentives now under considera¬ tion include a “penalty tax” to deter the movement of new indus¬ tries into the greater Stockholm area.

Along the same line, the Japanese Diet is debating a set of related laws that would make a des¬ ignated list of industries— gener¬ ally heavy polluters—liable to a so-called “evacuation tax” in¬ tended to encourage early depar¬ ture from the Tokyo region. This would be coupled with tax and other incentives for moving to un¬ derdeveloped rural areas. Stiff taxes on the expansion of existing facilities and all new construction by firms already in Tokyo are also anticipated under the proposed law.

The centrally-planned econo¬ mies of Eastern Europe being in full control of their industrial base can insure the execution of master plans by government action alone. The Moscow plan has thinned out and reshuffled the Soviet capital's industries with the intention to stabilize population at seven mil¬ lion. The current Five Year Plan foresees the transfer of over a hundred pollution-producing indus¬ trial plants to regional centers at least 80-150 kilometers away from the capital, strict control of migra¬ tion into Moscow and the reduc¬ tion of population in the city's his¬ torical center from the present half

million to 200,000 by 1985. The city's development into seven self- contained communities of about one million people each surround¬ ing the urban core as provided by the master plan will completely change the employment and trans¬ portation pattern. Chief architect Mikhail Posokhin notes that his emerging polycentric capital will provide employment within a 15-minute transportation radius for about three quarters of the popula¬ tion and elementary schools within walking distance for every pupil. To reach this goal the subway net is being doubled from its present 156 to 320 km by 1985, trolley and bus lines are being extended and housing construction continued at the current impressive rate of 120.000 units per year within the Moscow metropolitan area. The new housing, produced by indus¬ trialized on-site building methods using factory produced modular units, will permit the thinning out and relocation of people now living in the inner city surrounding the Kremlin. This inner core will serve as the governmental, historic and cultural center of the country, a showcase of Soviet achievement for citizen and foreigner who will come into the core city only to celebrate and partake of the attrac¬ tions it offers. To complete the transformation of the capital into a polycentric urban region the exist¬ ing greenbelt will be extended into the city by a finger system of park- lands along the banks of the Moskva and smaller rivers.

In Hungary, relocation subsidies to industries, coupled with housing restrictions in Budapest to discour¬ age internal migration, have re¬ duced the capital’s share of the in¬ dustrial population from 55 percent in 1966 to 38 percent in 1971 ac¬ cording to official Hungarian fig¬ ures. The renting or buying of apartments in Budapest has been limited to people registered as resi¬ dents for at least five years and not a single new manufacturing plant has been permitted to move to the Budapest region for the past five years.

While the dimensions of the re¬ location problem are thus different from the United States—the objec¬ tive in both Europe and Japan being the movement away from the congested, overactive capitals— the type of techniques and incen-

tives employed have a distinct bearing on the economic stimula¬ tion of our own central cities. Gov¬ ernmental incentives and disincen¬ tives can be used to promote movement out of the city even without those stringent measures available to central authorities in a planned economy that would be unworkable in an American con¬ text.

Land Use and Planning

The ugly sprawl of our met¬ ropolitan communities over their surrounding countryside, the can¬ cer of poverty in their urban core and the unrelieved monotony of the central business district which turns at night into a floodlit crime statistic have their roots in our re¬ nunciation of direct control over land use. Zoning regulations are re¬ lied on as the primary tool to shape the free flow of market forces. Land is a finite resource. Except for the occasional reclamation project it cannot be replenished for practical purposes and it becomes scarcer all the time as population pressure and economic dev¬ elopment drive up demand and prices. The United Nations has es¬ timated that by 1995 two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities and the larger the city the more rapid its growth. The di¬ mension of the urban land problem is put into perspective by the Un¬ ited Nations estimate which states that each year for the next 30 years the equivalent of 86 cities of one million population would need to be built just to handle the normal population increase plus the pres¬ ent rate of migration from the coun¬ tryside into the city.

Unlike the United States, other mixed market countries have long recognized the limited supply of land and have regulated its use like a public utility. Holding onto con¬ trol of urban land either through advance acquisition or through le¬ gal mechanisms regulating uses to which it could be put, European local governments could enforce adherence by private builders and developers to the municipal master plan for urban growth which is the bible for the city’s own coordinated development of mass transport and infrastructure.

European urban centers do not have the centrifugal problem faced by American communities, lndi-

‘Notwithstanding the current conventional wisdom that looks at the American city and con¬ cludes: “Who needs it in an ur¬ ban civilization?”, there is noth¬ ing in western experience to substantiate a historical neces¬ sity for the urban core to eke out its days as a processing station for the unskilled, the dependent and the abandoned.’

vidual mobility on the US scale came considerably later, master planning and advance land acquisi¬ tion have always prevented the situation from getting out of hand. Unlike the United States, a goodly proportion of the well-to-do is likely to live in the mixed neigh¬ borhoods of the urban core; mixed by income and commercial as well as residential land use. Historically most workers lived in the suburbs to the point where the very concept of suburb—the “Banlieu” of Paris, “Vorstadt” of Vienna, “Periferia” of Rome—became practically synonymous with “working class district.” Notwithstanding the cur¬ rent conventional wisdom that looks at the Amerian city and con¬ cludes: “Who needs it in an urban civilization?”, there is nothing in western experience to substantiate a historical necessity for the urban core to eke out its days as a proc¬ essing station for the unskilled, the dependent and the abandoned. The record of the world’s major cities beyond our shores points just in the opposite direction.

European governments, and more recently Japan, have consis¬ tently adopted urban policies that provide for balanced growth brought about by careful planning coordinated on a regional scale. Control over land use through ad¬ vance acquisition, tax incentives, commercial licenses and construc¬ tion permits is the key element in insuring compliance with plans. Besides making certain that de¬ velopers conform to official plans, advance acquisition and leasing rather than selling land allows the community, instead of private in¬ terests, to benefit from higher land prices due to urbanization. The city of Stockholm, for example, has been buying land since before World War 1 and now owns over two-thirds of its surrounding area. Likewise in the Netherlands, mu¬

nicipalities are the largest land owners, Spanish municipalities are developing large tracts of land for industry, and in Japan some twenty comprehensive regional develop¬ ment plans provide for government control over land use. This trend is fairly general outside the United States.

Besides, there is a consensus on national urban goals pursued by municipal planners that includes protection of environmental val¬ ues, preservation of historical and cultural monuments, effective mass transit systems and the search for optimum size. Of late there has been a greater emphasis on regional planning, recognizing that the city cannot be considered apart from its surroundings and that the fragmentation of responsi¬ bility among separate units of gov¬ ernment is costly and inefficient when it comes to carrying out the plan. Realignment of jurisdictions, amalgamation of small units and assignment of responsibilities to regional councils of government have been the roads followed by several European countries to cope with this problem. This approach has led to an orderly development of new towns that surround major urban centers in a planned way that provides for mixed residential/ commercial use and a triple tier of neighborhood, district and central core clusters. New suburbs do not spill out of the city in a ragged, haphazard way. A careful combi¬ nation of the residential, commer¬ cial and cultural uses right down to the neighborhood level has suc¬ ceeded in humanizing the suburban environment, particularly in Scan¬ dinavia, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Regional Planning

The principles of municipal land acquisition, coordinated regional planning and infrastructure de¬ velopment through government/ industry cooperation, which have proved successful in Europe and Japan and have so far been under¬ employed in the States, are also the underpinning of Australia’s assem¬ bly of seven new towns that will radiate out from the capital city of Canberra to form a metropolitan region of 330,000 by 1981. An eventual size of a million by the turn of the century is considered possible and provided for. The Au-

17 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February. 1974

stralian National Capital De¬ velopment Corporation which came into being in 1958, when Canberra had a population of 35,000, is a case study in the appli¬ cation of sound planning princi¬ ples. To confirm its belief that Canberra should grow by an accre¬ tion of new towns that will retain options for future development, the Commission tested several compu¬ ter models built on employment distribution, market demand and travel patterns. What emerged was a strategy for a Y-shaped linear de¬ velopment of towns grouped in three corridors radiating from the central area, each containing its own employment and activity center with its low-rise single fam¬ ily units planned to optimize traffic patterns. Each town is to have a population in the order of a hundred thousand and the Aus¬ tralian government will decen¬ tralize employment into the sub¬ centers. The hierarchical pattern will ease traffic, be flexible and promote a feeling of community among the residents. At the same time it retains a pleasant environ¬ ment and opportunities for an indi¬ vidual choice of location.

The Commission is funded by an annual parliamentary appropria¬ tion, has adequate land set aside through government action to ac¬ commodate the current doubling of the population every seven years, and it acts as both planning and construction authority. Land is leased to private developers in a way that retains detailed control over land use. Commission plan¬ ners have calculated that at current costs, $50 million in revolving loan funds permit outlays of $300 mil¬ lion over the next 25 years to ac¬ commodate increments of 150,000 people each in an environment providing urban and environmental amenities at socially-acceptable land prices. Elements of the Can¬ berra experience—control over land, available funds, a compre¬ hensive plan and concern for the environment—are present in the metropolitan development deci¬ sions of most industrialized coun¬ tries and they are directly applica¬ ble to the sound management of rapidly developing urban com¬ munities in the United States.

The Social Perspective

All urban agglomerations in the 18 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February, 1974

developed countries are troubled today by the stress of daily living, by that sense of boredom and emp¬ tiness commonly called alienation. The depersonalized atmosphere of the big city is particularly notice¬ able in the United States, where human values have often been sac¬ rificed for efficiency and economy. Other countries, though generally headed in the same direction, have not permitted market forces to dic¬ tate their life styles to the same ex¬ tent. Quality of life benefits persist to a considerable degree and their retention is the subject of con¬ scious planning. Planners don’t al¬ ways succeed in programing hu¬ man values into new projects but they try and their task is often somewhat less formidable than in this country where the scale of new buildings, shopping centers and urban renewal sites dwarfs their human occupants.

It has been said that communica¬ tion is the essence of community. Unfortunately much of our pres¬ ent-day architecture discourages communication. Our tall un¬ adorned office buildings, window¬ less fortresses or glass walls, shut out human contact even as they pretend it. Monuments to incom¬ municability, they lack the line- of-vision architectural variety and small scale elements to which the pedestrian can relate. Located in the central business districts of our cities that are deserted at night be¬ cause of the zoning practices al¬ ready discussed, these giant struc¬ tures, often floodlit for security, assume inhuman, sometimes frightening proportions. They may have a stark, silent beauty, but their scale is alien to man as a daily habitat. Asian capitals are now also full of tall office buildings, but a sea of people swirls around them. Plenty of humans manage to hu¬ manize even an unfriendly envi¬ ronment.

In the older cities of Europe and Asia, memories of the medieval layout of the city into various quar¬ ters, streets and squares devoted to the different trades persist to this day through street names, inter¬ esting spatial arrangements of squares, half moons and curves, in contrast to our rectilinear patterns, and in the survival of special mar¬ ket days and celebrations. This is perhaps most pronounced in Asia where to a greater or lesser degree

one can still find the streets of the iron mongers, food sellers, fish wives, carpenters, butchers and money changers. I understand that Hanoi provides one of the best- preserved examples of this urban tradition. In Europe, individual es¬ tablishments in these traditional quarters are often marked by signs and symbols that are visually stimulating instead of dully uniform or “Las Vegas pop." In contrast to the market place aberrations of “googie” architecture that turns the commercial strip into buildings that look like hamburgers or “Colonel Sanders” flanked by signs designed to be read at 60 mph, most European cities have handsome, covered shopping ar¬ cades with changing floral and shop window displays that provide vital¬ ity, diversity and visual excite¬ ment.

The phenomenon of urban alien¬ ation in our large metropolitan areas seems also to be promoted by the relative absence of pedestrians in the city as well as in the suburbs. The great cities of the world have a lively street life, their sidewalks, squares and parks are filled with people at night after the commuters have gone home. With no backdrop of animated street life an urban si¬ lence that is shattered only by in¬ sistent patrol car sirens, the whin¬ ing and clanging of ambulances and fire engines also contributes to the general unease in American cities. Some European cities ban au¬ tomobile horns and police sirens except for dire emergencies. One rarely hears those shrill crisis sounds so typical of the American city.

Moreover there is the metropoli¬ tan habit of devouring itself. This constant tearing down and rebuild¬ ing of the central business district usually with the depersonalized glass and steel boxes that pass for modern architecture, contribute to the general disorientation and distress with the pace of change that Alvin Toffler named “Future Shock.” The pace of change is considerably slower in other coun¬ tries and more attention is paid to the preservation of historic build¬ ings. A city without old buildings is like a man without a memory. The comfort of city dwellers, their sense of belonging and continuity require that handsome buildings of different epochs reflecting the taste

FEDERAL INCOME TAXES - Can i. r 'Jot Cant t —

PARTNERS AND STAFF, HURDMAN AND CRANSTOUN, CPAs

“Nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant." (Com¬ missioner v. Newman). This is a fair summation of the justification for tax avoidance, which is any legitimate method of holding taxes to a minimum. It must be distinguished from “eva¬ sion.” which is willful and wrongful failure to pay taxes, subject to criminal penalties. In any discussion of tax avoidance it is understood that the transaction is carried out in substance as well as form so as to qualify as legitimate.

The starting point for determining your tax is gross income, defined as all income from whatever source derived. Given the graduated tax rate schedules it quickly becomes clear that taxes may be saved if a taxpayer in a high bracket manages his affairs so that some of his income is earned by his lower-bracket children. The opportunity sometimes arises to conduct operations as a family partnership, corporation, or tax option corporation (which is essentially a cor¬ poration taxed like a partnership); all of which allow the taxpayer to split his income among the various members of his family. For taxpayers on a salary, opportunity for income splitting still ex¬ ists in the investment income area. Variations on the income splitting method are numerous and rather usual in accomplishing tax minimization. Many states and the District of Col¬ umbia have adopted a uniform law

Mario P. Borini, CPA, is national tax part¬ ner; Norman F. Lemnah and Leonard J. Lauricella, J.D., are national tax staff; and Richard L. Ericsson, CPA, is partner-in¬ charge of the Washington, D. C. office. Mr. Ericsson served as the Department’s first Chief Internal Auditor and has been a member of AFSA for more than 15 years.

which makes it possible to make gifts of securities to minors by providing for a custodian to hold the shares during the minority of the donees. Income or gain from the sale of these securities is tax¬ able income to the donee. Often gifts are made by persons about to dispose of property at a price which would re¬ sult in a large taxable gain. A bona fide gift of a part interest prior to sale will distribute the gain in proportion to the interests held by the donor and donee when the gain is realized. It is possible to make gifts to other than minors and of property other than securities. The principle remains the same: distribute income-producing property to a person taxed at a lower rate than the donor. If giving up permanent control of the property is not desirable, taxpayers may still receive income splitting be¬ nefits through the use of short-term trusts. However, the Internal Revenue Code (hereinafter IRC) provisions concerning trusts contain a labyrinth of traps and pitfalls. Caution should be exercised and competent legal counsel should be consulted.

Once the income items have been ar¬ ranged, the tax avoidance aspects of deductions should be scrutinized. If you itemize your deductions the ques¬ tion always arises “is this particular item deductible?” In listing question¬ able items as deductions, it is well to have an understanding of the tax con¬ sequences should they not be allowed. If the point is truly debatable, the tax¬ payer must decide whether he is willing to assume the calculated risk of disal¬ lowance. If the taxpayer takes the de¬ duction and makes adequate disclosure of the facts, disallowance does not re¬ sult in grave damage. The taxpayer pays the same tax as he would have paid had he not claimed the deduction, plus interest on the deficiency at 6 per cent per year. Assuming that the as¬ sessment is made somewhere near the

end of the customary three-year period available under the statute of limita¬ tions, the cost could not exceed 18 per cent of the potential tax saving. The interest is a legitimate deduction for tax purposes when paid, so the net cost is less than 6 per cent per year. It is un¬ wise to attempt to deduct something that is by long precedent certain to be disallowed. In deciding whether or not to claim a deduction the tax saving generated by the deduction must be balanced against the possible cost if the item is disallowed.

Some of the more frequent problems covering income, deductions and ad¬ ministrative matters affecting Foreign Service personnel are outlined below, primarily in a question-answer format for easier understanding.

DISABILITY ANNUITY NOT IN¬ CLUDED IN GROSS INCOME

Q. X, a Foreign Service Staff Of¬ ficer, is forced to retire because of a disability suffered in the course of his duty. Upon retirement he receives a disability annuity. Does X have to in¬ clude the amounts received under the annuity in his gross income?

A. No. Amounts received from a disability annuity payable under the provisions of section 831 of the Foreign Service Act of 1946, as amended, are excludable from income.

DEFERRAL OF TAX WHERE NEW HOME PURCHASED IS IN FOREIGN COUNTRY

Q. X, an FSIO, has been residing in his house in D. C. for the past five years. He receives an assignment to Spain for three years. He sells his D. C. house at a gain and within one year of that sale he buys a house in Spain for slightly more than the amount he re¬ ceived for his D. C. house. Will X have to pay a capital gains tax on the sale of the house?

FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February, 1974 19

A. No. X can defer the gain on the sale of the house even though the new residence is in a foreign country. The only requirements for complete defer¬ ral of the gain are: (1) the house sold was the taxpayer’s principal residence; (2) the new home must be purchased during the period beginning one year before and ending one year after the sale of the old home; and (3) the cost of the new residence equals or exceeds the adjusted sales price of the old resi¬ dence. Gain on the sale of the old resi¬ dence would only be recognized to the extent that the adjusted sales price ex¬ ceeds the cost of the new residence. If taxpayer constructs his new home the replacement period extends to eighteen months after the sale of the old resi¬ dence as long as construction com¬ mences within one year after the old residence is sold. Note that the basis of the new residence generally will be its cost, reduced by any gain not recog¬ nized on the sale of the old residence.

EXCLUSION OF EARNINGS

Q. S, an FSR, was physically pres¬ ent in a foreign country from June 30, 1972, until January 4, 1974. During 1973 he received $1,000 for lectures given at a university in the foreign country. May S exclude the $1,000 from his 1973 Federal income tax re¬ turn?

A. Yes. Since the income represents earnings from personal services ren¬ dered outside US, S was physically present in a foreign country for at least 510 days during a period of 18 consecu¬ tive months, income was paid to him not later than the year after which the services were performed, and payment was not made by the US Government or an agency thereof, he may exclude up to $20,000 of earnings under Section 911 IRC. However, salary income of employees received from the US Gov¬ ernment is fully taxable even though the services are performed in a foreign country.

EXCLUSION FOR ONE-HALF OF NON-RESIDENT ALIEN WIFE’S SHARE OF COMMUNITY PROP¬ ERTY INCOME

Q. M, an FSO, is domiciled in a community property state. He is stationed in Europe for all of calendar year 1973. During the year M married a non-resident alien who did not at any time reside in the United States. How should M and his wife, W, file their 1973 tax returns?

A. M should report Vi of his income on his tax return. W is not subject to tax on her Vi of the community income. W should file a Form 1040NR to obtain a refund of tax withheld on her share of the income. M and W may not file a joint return since W was a non-resident alien so M must file as married, filing 20 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February, 1974

separately. If M in the above example married a

US citizen, her share of the community income would be taxable.

NON-RESIDENT ALIEN WIFE TAKES HER DOMICILE FROM HER HUSBAND

Q. X. an FSIO, was domiciled in a non-community property state prior to his assignment overseas. On January 1, 1973, he married Y, a resident of a community property country to which X was assigned. May X exclude Vi of his income in filing his 1973 tax return on the basis that his wife, Y. is domiciled in a community property country and is entitled to Vi of his in¬ come?

A. No. X may not exclude Vi of his income from his 1973 tax return, but rather must include his entire income and may claim an exemption for his non-resident alien wife, Y. The domicile of a husband fixes the domicile of the wife. Because the hus¬ band is domiciled in a non-community property state, the exclusion is not ap¬ plicable.

EMPLOYEE BUSINESS EXPENSES

Q. B, an FSO, incurs representation expenses of $500 in the performance of his duties. He is reimbursed $100. B gets a certificate by the Secretary or a designee that $300 of the unreimbursed expenses would be properly reimburs¬ able under the Foreign Service Act of 1946 if sufficient funds existed. The remaining $100 B spent for ordinary and necessary expenses in the performance of his duty as an FSO but these expenses (such as printing and engraving) were specifically made non-reimbursable by State Department Regulations. B also incurs $50 in ex¬ penses for the use of his private au¬ tomobile on official business for which he is not reimbursed. How should these items be treated by B in filing his tax return?

A. B should include his unreim¬ bursed employee business expenses on Form 2106. Expenses which may be listed in Part I of Form 2106 are travel expenses while away from home and transportation expenses (but not com¬ muting to and from work). B's $50 for use of his personal automobile would qualify for inclusion in Part I, whether B takes the standard deduction or itemizes his deductions.

Representation expenses and all other employee business expenses not qualifying for Part I should be listed in Part II and may be deducted only if B itemizes his deductions. If B itemizes he may deduct the entire $400 in Part II. IRS has ruled that representation expenses in excess of reimbursements that are supported by a certificate re¬ ferred to above are deductible by an

FSO if he itemizes. Another IRS Rul¬ ing provides a deduction for ordinary and necessary expenses in the performance of duties as an FSO even if such expenses would not be reim¬ bursed.

DEDUCTION BY FSO FOR TRAVEL EXPENSE OF HIS WIFE WHO AC¬ COMPANIED HIM ON HIS BUSINESS TRAVEL

Q. X, an FSO, is required to do some traveling away from his tax home. His wife, W. accompanies him. His wife has a considerable amount of experience and background with the Foreign Service. 1'he trip schedule is very tight and not conducive to sight¬ seeing or suited to a vacation purpose. W. by performing numerous incidental tasks, freed her husband to devote more of his time to substantive duties. By contact with families of other FSOs, W is able to relate to X impor¬ tant information he might not otherwise observe.

A. Under similar circumstances the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has upheld a deduction for the travel expenses of the wife.

MOVING EXPENSES

Q. The moving expense deduction allowed employees was changed by the Tax Reform Act of 1969. What Moving Expenses Are Now Deductible?

A. Moving expenses may be de¬ ducted provided two conditions are met. The first requirement is that the distance from the new place of work to the old residence must exceed by fifty miles the distance between the old re¬ sidence and the old place of work. The second requirement is that the taxpayer must be a fulltime employee in his new principal place of work (not necessarily with the same employer) for 39 weeks during the 12 months immediately fol¬ lowing his arrival in the new area. Both time periods are measured from termi¬ nation of taxpayer’s last trip to the gen¬ eral location of his principal place of work before beginning work on a regu¬ lar basis.

If taxpayer meets the above re¬ quirements then the following expenses may be deducted:

1. The cost of moving household goods and personal effects from the former residence to the new residence: included here are packing, crating and in-transit storage, and insurance for all goods and effects of taxpayer and any member of his household. If goods are shipped from places other than the old residence, those expenses will be al¬ lowed only to the extent they do not exceed the expense that would have been incurred had the goods been shipped from the old residence. The reasonable expense of moving the taxpayer’s personal automobile to the

new place of residence also qualifies, f or post-1969 years taxpayer may also deduct costs of connecting or discon¬ necting utilities required because of the moving of household goods, appliances or personal effects. Expenses of storing and insuring houseshold goods and personal effects are deductible if incurred within any consecutive 30-day period after the day they are moved from the former residence and prior to delivery at the new residence.

2. The cost of traveling (including meals and lodging) from the former res¬ idence to the new place of residence: included jn this category are the ex¬ penditures for transportation, meals and lodging incurred enroute from the old residence to the new residence by the taxpayer and members of his household. including expenses incurred on the date of arrival. These traveling expenses are allowed for only one trip, but it is not necessary that the taxpayer travel with the members of his household. Travel expenses include the use of taxpayer’s own automobile for transportation between the old and new residences. Taxpayer may deduct out-of-pocket expenses (he must keep records) or he may deduct 6 cents a mile for auto travel in taxable years after 1969.

Also deductible are the indirect mov¬ ing expenses listed below. Three tests must be met for deduction: taxpayer must have already obtained employ¬ ment at the new place of work before the trip is begun; taxpayer must travel from his former residence to the gen¬ eral location of the new principal place of work and return to the former resi¬ dence: and the principal purpose of the trip must be to search for a new resi¬ dence.

3. Cssts of traveling (including meals and lodging), after obtaining em¬ ployment. from the former residence to the general location of the new princi¬ pal place of work and return, for the principal purpose of searching for a new residence: the intent here is solely to allow a deduction for house-hunting trips after employment has been se¬ cured. and only house-hunting trip ex¬ penses may be deducted under this sec¬ tion.

4. Costs of meals and lodging while occupying temporary quarters in the general location of the new principal place of work during any period of 30 consecutive days after obtaining emp¬ loyment: only meals and lodging may be deducted. Thus entertainment, laundry, transportation or other per¬ sonal living expenses are not deducti¬ ble under this section. Taxpayer may choose whatever 30-day period he wishes.

5. Costs constituting qualified resi¬ dence sale, purchase or lease expenses; expenses incident to the purchase or sale of the house include real estate

commissions, attorney’s fees, title fees, escrow fees, appraisal fees, points or loan placement charges the seller is required to pay, state transfer taxes and other similar expenses, but not fixing-up expenses for the old house.

Expenses incident to the settlement of an unexpired lease held by taxpayer on his former residence include consid¬ eration paid to a lessor to obtain a re¬ lease from the lease, attorney’s fees, real estate commissions, or any similar expenses incident to obtain a release from a lease or to obtaining an assignee or sublessee such as the difference be¬ tween rent paid under a primary lease and rent received under a sublease. Expenses incident to the acquisition of a lease include commissions paid to ob¬ tain a lease, sublease, or assignment of an interest in property used as the new residence.

Qualified real estate expenses do not include any losses on disposition of property or mortgage penalties which may be deducted as interest if you itemize your deductions.

For categories 1 and 2 above, there is no dollar limitation. The sum of categories 3 and 4 (residence hunting expenses plus temporary living ex¬ penses) may not exceed $1,000 for any one move. The total deduction for categories 3. 4 and 5 above cannot ex¬ ceed" $2,500.

DEPRECIATION DEDUCTION FOR RENTING FSSO'S HOUSE WHILE HE IS STATIONED ABROAD

Q. J, an FSSO living in a house in 19. C., is assigned overseas for a two year tour. During that period J rents his furnished home. Where should J report his rental income and expenses and how should .1 compute his depreciation for the house and furniture? Suppose .1 tries to rent his home but is unsuccess¬ ful in obtaining a tenant. May .1 still de¬ preciate the house and furniture?

A. J should report rental income and expenses on Schedule R which he should attach to his Form 1040. The question of depreciation on the house will depend on: when the house was built, when .1 acquired it. the fair mar¬ ket value of the house at the time of conversion, and the remaining esti¬ mated useful life of the house. No specific answer may be given on the above facts except to suggest that ac¬ celerated depreciation is a possibility depending upon the answer to the above questions. The furniture may be depreciated and accelerated deprecia¬ tion is possible depending again on when the property was acquired and its remaining useful life. If J makes im¬ provements to the house such as a new roof to make it more attractive to pro¬ spective renters, these capital im¬ provements may be depreciated at an accelerated rate provided they have a

remaining useful life of at least three years. If J purchases new appliances which he will rent with the house. J may take accelerated depreciation on them if they have a remaining useful life of at least three years. If the ap¬ pliance has a remaining useful life of at least six years or more at acquisition. J will be entitled to “additional first year depreciation" of 20 per cent of the cost of the new appliance (up to a maximum depreciation deduction of $2,000 on an individual return and $4,000 on a joint return).

J should be aware that if he takes ac¬ celerated depreciation he may be sub¬ ject to ordinary income recapture at sale of the house and furniture. Also, the excess of accelerated depreciation over straight line depreciation on realty is an item of tax preference on which a minimum tax of 10 per cent will be paid. There is an exclusion for the first $30,000 of preference items plus the amount of income tax paid for the year.

The mere fact that J tries but is un¬ able to rent his house will not prevent him from taking the depreciation de¬ duction.

AUTOMATIC TWO MONTH EXTEN¬ SION FOR U.S. CITIZENS RESIDING ABROAD

Q. G, a Foreign Service Staff em¬ ployee. is stationed abroad during calendar year 1973. G is a cash basis taxpayer and files his returns on a calendar year. What is the last filing date for his 1973 tax return?

A. Normally, June 15, 1974. An American citizen residing outside the US and Puerto Rico is granted an au¬ tomatic extension up to the 15th day of the 6th month following the close of the taxable year for filing his return. A statement must be attached to the re¬ turn showing that the person for whom the return is made qualifies under this section. Interest at 6 per cent will have to be paid on the amount of tax due from April 15th until June 15. but that interest will be an itemized deduction for the following year so the actual ef¬ fect of the interest will be less than 6 percent. Note that since June 15. 1974 falls on a Saturday, G will have until June 17 to file, with corresponding in¬ terest to that date.

HOME LEAVE

The status of the Home Leave de¬ duction. for travel, meals, and lodging, has changed but not enough. The Stratton case from the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, is still good law. the Supreme Court having denied the Government’s request for certiorari. The IRS Commissioner re¬ fuses to follow Stratton outside of the Ninth Circuit, and even in the Ninth Circuit only the expenses of the tax¬ payer himself have been allowed.

FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February, 1974 21

Last year this column reported the success encountered by an AFSA member who appealed this issue to the Small Claims Division of the Tax Court. IRS decided not to contest the issue in the Smith Claims Division.

There have been some changes since last year in the Tax Court. The Small Claims Division will now hear tax de¬ ficiencies up to $1,500. Form 2 is the new Petition Form for Small Tax Cases, obtainable by mail from the Clerk of the Court, United States Tax Court, Box 70, Washington, D. C. 20044. Your argument should be based on Stratton r. Comm. 448 F.2nd 1030 (USCA 9. 1971). If you desire consid¬ eration of your case by the Small Claims Division, your petition, ac¬ companied by a $10 filing fee, must be filed with the aforesaid Clerk of the Court within 90 days (150 days if the notice is addressed to a person outside the US) after the notice of deficiency is mailed.

FOREIGN TAXES Q. What foreign taxes may be de¬

ducted? A. Real property taxes imposed by a

foreign country are deductible on Schedule A if deductions are itemized. Other foreign taxes such as personal property, sales and gasoline taxes are deductible only if they are incurred in a trade or business (for example unreim¬ bursed employee business expenses) or in the production of income. If a foreign country imposes income taxes alternative treatment is available. The foreign income tax may be taken as a credit against US tax liability, or it may be deducted as an itemized deduction on Schedule A.

Instructions for computing the credit may be found on Form 1116. If you select the tax credit you may not use the standard deduction and the credit is subject to overall and per-country limi¬ tations. You should figure your tax under both the credit and the itemized deduction methods and choose the more favorable one.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO A FOREIGN BRANCH OF A US ORGANIZATION

Q. G, an FSIO, made a contribution of $500 to a religious missionary or¬ ganization at his foreign post of duty, which organization was completely under the control of a US religious or¬ ganization. May G deduct the $500 contribution on his 1973 Federal in¬ come tax return? In addition, G’s wife, K, donates one day a week of her time to the organization during which she uses the family car to benefit the or¬ ganization. May G and K claim a charitable deduction for K's services?

A. G and K may deduct $500 for their cash contribution. Contributions to a charitable foreign organization are 22 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February, 1974

deductible if a US organization con¬ trols the use of the funds by the foreign organization or if the foreign organiza¬ tion is merely an administrative arm of the US organization. While G and K may not take a deduction for the value of the services rendered by K. they may deduct their out-of-pocket ex¬ penses incurred for the benefit of char¬ ity. Thus, expenses incurred in the op¬ eration of the car such as oil and gas may be deducted, or in the alternative they may deduct 6 cents per mile.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO FOREIGN ORGANIZATIONS

Q. H, an FSO, joined a foreign church at his foreign post of duty and made a $1,000 contribution to the church in 1973. May H deduct the con¬ tribution on his 1973 Federal income tax return?

A. No. Contributions made directly to a foreign church or other charitable organization are not deductible, except for certain Canadian organizations.

WHERE TO FILE RETURN Q. Where should foreign service

employees file their returns? A. United States citizens with

foreign addresses (except APO and FPO) and those excluding income under Sec. 911 (Earned income from sources without the US) and Sec. 931 (Income from sources within posses¬ sions of the US) should file with the Internal Revenue Service Center, 11601 Roosevelt Blvd., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19155. Taxpayers with APO and FPO addresses should file with the Internal Revenue Service Center for their home state. Taxpayers required to file a Form 1040NR (for non-resident aliens) should file at the above Philadelphia address.

CAPITAL ASSET TREATMENT FOR FOREIGN CURRENCY

A recent Revenue Ruling involved a US citizen, not a dealer in foreign cur¬ rency, traveling in a foreign country who converted US dollars to that country’s currency for his personal use. At the conclusion of his stay he reconverted the foreign currency to dollars. While he was in the foreign country the value of that country’s cur¬ rency changed. IRS held that any gain or loss realized on conversion is a capi¬ tal gain or loss. Presumably adequate records would have to be kept to sub¬ stantiate the loss.

DEPENDENCY DEDUCTION FOR NON-RESIDENT ALIEN MOTHER OF FSO

Q. X, an FSO, has a non-resident alien mother whom X completely sup¬ ports in his home in Europe. Is X enti¬ tled to a dependency deduction on his Federal income tax for his mother?

A. No. An individual, in order to qualify as a dependent, must be a citi¬ zen or resident or National of the US or a resident of the Canal Zone, the Republic of Panama, Canada, or Mex¬ ico, at some time during the calendar year in which the taxable year of the taxpayer begins. Since X's mother is not a US citizen, she must be a resident of the United States or one of the above mentioned areas at some time during X's taxable year or the depen¬ dency deduction is not allowed. This same logic applies to a mother-in-law.

APPELLATE RIGHTS FS employees have the same rights

of appeal from proposed or actual changes in their tax liability as do tax¬ payers in the United States. The first appeal is from the adjustment proposed by the IRS officer who examines the return. The appeal is before a District Conferee, if held in the United States, and before a conferee of the Office of International Operations if held at an IRS overseas post. In the past, the conferee’s determination was made solely on the facts and application of law, regulations, revenue rulings and court cases to such facts. However, conferees were recently authorized by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue to settle cases involving $2,500 or less in proposed tax deficiencies by consid¬ ering litigation hazards. This new au¬ thority will now benefit FS employees because they may be able to settle their tax cases under $2,500 overseas, whereas previously it was necessary to appear before an Appellate Division office in the US to settle their cases. Consequently, many Foreign Service employees were unable to exercise their Appellate rights because the ex¬ pense of a hearing in US was prohibi¬ tive in comparison with the amount of the tax deficiency. However, if the tax deficiency is over $2,500, Foreign Ser¬ vice employees still have a right to a hearing before a representative of the Appellate Division in the US and gen¬ erally, the hearing can be scheduled when the taxpayer is on home leave.

CONCLUSION

In writing this article we have at¬ tempted to highlight some of the areas of interest to members of the Foreign Service. If you have further questions or are in need of assistance in preparing your income tax return, you may con¬ tact the IRS in person or by mail at their offices in Bonn, Rome, Tokyo, Paris, Ottawa, Manila, London, Sao Paulo and Mexico City. The offices are located in the US embassies except in Sao Paulo where the office is located in the Consulate General’s office. During the tax season, forms and instruction sheets may be obtained from US em¬ bassies and consulates abroad.

and culture of their day be pre¬ served. They form an umbilical cord with the past. The Kremlin is a history of Russia in stone and owes its eminence to the fact that it includes a building from each cen¬ tury beginning with the 15th. Con¬ sidered as a part of this historical progression even the glass facade of the Soviet Palace of Congresses built in the 1960s becomes accept¬ able. Old buildings preserved with care have a charm of their own, they lend flavor and character to the entire city. Vienna and Stock¬ holm, Paris and London, to cite just a few, have carefully preserved entire quarters that celebrate the past without neglecting the pres¬ ent. Some American cities on the other hand have “modernized” handsome old buildings, defacing them with huge signs and false fronts where they haven’t been mercifully razed to the ground.

Trees like buildings impart char¬ acter to the city and oxygen be¬ sides. They soften the harsh lines of modern buildings and permit the city dweller to glimpse the rhythm of nature in his artificial environ¬ ment. Too often trees have been eliminated on our shopping streets for the convenience of traffic or made to eke out a scrawny exis¬ tence amidst the wall-to-wall con¬ crete of our downtown shopping malls. European towns carefully plan in the greenery. Some of Rome’s most elegant shopping streets, closed recently to vehicu¬ lar traffic, now have potted flower¬ ing trees in huge straw baskets that provide color and shade for the strolling pedestrians; the glass- domed shopping arcades in major Benelux, German and Swiss cities put flowering bushes and potted plants, changing them with the sea¬ sons, throughout the walking area to brighten the well-tended store¬ fronts and show windows. It is a pleasure to window-shop, whereas much of the pleasure of window¬ shopping and therefore of strolling has gone out of our central busi¬ ness district. Some of our large de¬ partment stores used to have bal¬ conies with chairs for tired shop¬ pers to sip tea and watch the bus¬ tling scene below. It was true urban entertainment, all the more needed as the downtown gets stilled with cars and concrete, but it seems to have gone out of fashion in this country. In Sweden, on the

The automobile that started as a luxury, then became a necessity, has now turned into an obstacle to the city dweller’s enjoyment of his environment in the met¬ ropolitan areas of the indus¬ trialized world.

other hand, this sort of activity is a vital part of the shopping scene. In the towns surrounding Stockholm even the food supermarkets lo¬ cated inside an attractive covered arcade have second floor snack bars and coffee shops with chairs and tables along the railing to watch shoppers and displays below while taking a break from one’s own daily expedition to the com¬ mercial center. This kind of thoughtful architectural gesture, also present in sidewalk cafes, re¬ lieves boredom and tired feet and recognizes what we do not, that “people-watching” is a healthy sport that relieves tension.

Still on the subject of shopping, European new towns generally have adopted a size and shape of neighborhoods to retain the amen¬ ity of the corner newsstand, gro¬ cery store, butcher and baker who can be reached on foot along plea¬ sant walkways. Schools are also within walking distance. This ar¬ rangement not only limits the number of trips out of the neigh¬ borhood to satisfy daily needs, it gives neighbors an opportunity to meet and talk with each other. Tapiola, Finland, for instance, has been planned in such a way that no resident has to walk or push a baby carriage more than 250 meters to reach a desired shop. Suburbs around Stockholm are planned in the same way and the Moscow master plan mentioned earlier foresees the triple tier of retail out¬ lets, schools and cultural centers that characterizes this arrange¬ ment. There are neighborhood out¬ lets satisfying basic needs, the dis¬ trict center where somewhat more extensive versions are present to¬ gether with goods and services not found in the neighborhood such as small restaurants, taverns, branch libraries. The third level at the town center also repeats and adds the entertainment and cultural in¬ stitutions. The center of the me¬ tropolis itself is intended for spe¬ cial, occasional trips to take in a major cultural event or dine at a

first-class restaurant. The frequent interaction of people promoted by this spatial combination helps deal with the boredom and monotony associated wtih life in the suburbs. Some high-rise apartment com¬ plexes in European downtowns and new towns encourage social contact among tenants for the same reason. No actual “Street in the Sky” advocated by avant-garde town planners has come to the at¬ tention of this writer but there are at least six apartment houses in Stockholm with a communal res¬ taurant, catering and club facilities for the working couples and sin¬ gles, among them a large propor¬ tion of single parents, who form the bulk of the tenants. The tenant committees who run Moscow’s cooperative (owner-occupied) apartment houses also promote cordial relations among residents. A club room used for committee meetings is provided in each com¬ plex and a common social area is often fixed up by the tenants them¬ selves on the elevator lobby on each floor. A somewhat similar ar¬ rangement obtains in some Ja¬ panese centers.

The Taming of the Car Our bulging cities are faced with

unprecedented traffic congestion and pollution because of the relent¬ less increase in the number of pri¬ vate vehicles circulating and at¬ tempting to park in the downtown area. The automobile that started as a luxury, then became a neces¬ sity, has now turned into an obsta¬ cle to the city dweller’s enjoyment of his environment in the met¬ ropolitan areas of the industrialized world. Losing patronage to the pri¬ vate car, urban transit in the US has registered an 85 percent decline in usage since the early ’50s. Re¬ lated to this distortion of the traffic pattern that has choked the central city with private vehicles has been the steady deterioration of public transit services for inner city resi¬ dents. The urban poor who depend on public transportation have found themselves increasingly immobilized and isolated from the fast-growing suburbs.

Massive efforts are now under way to build, improve and revive public transportation systems in major metropolitan areas and there is a growing reluctance to permit

Continued on pttge 32

FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February, 1974

“An honest and sophisticated

cliency—as a sensitive apprecia¬

tion of other societies—is the

heart of diplomacy.”

Clientism in the Foreign Service ROGER MORRIS

“Tell Madame Gandhi how lucky she is,” Lyndon Johnson called after a startled Indian am¬ bassador as he left a White House meeting in 1968. “She’s got two ambassadors workin’ for her . . . you here and Bowles out there.”

Not that the President doubted the national loyalty of Chester Bowles or the US embassy in India. But the Johnson sarcasm, an epitaph on years of bureaucratic battles, struck at a complex prob¬ lem in the bureaucratic politics of foreign policy.

Charged to understand and in¬ terpret the views of other govern¬ ments, US diplomats are some¬ times drawn on by career or conviction—by the peculiarly insu-

Roger Morris, who has worked in the State Department and National Security Council staff and as a legislative assistant in the Senate, is writing a hook about humani¬ tarian problems in foreign policy.

Copyright THE WASHINGTON MONTHLY. Reprinted with permission.

24 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February,

lar culture of their bureaucracy—to defend or at least acquiesce in those views. Ensnared in a pa¬ rochial view of the national in¬ terest, some officials come to resist almost instinctively any policy that threatens to rub the client regimes they deal with the wrong way. The results of this “cliency,” which makes diplomats align their in¬ terests with those of their hosts, are sometimes absurd, sometimes tragic.

Cliency has become a major oc¬ cupational disease of modern American diplomacy. Although many American diplomats refuse to yield to its impulse, even at the expense of their careers, cliency in¬ fluences much of what the United States does or does not do in the world—from its failure to speak out against genocide in Africa to the multiple tragedies of Vietnam. And it has taken a heavy toll on government—in honesty and ob¬ jectivity, in time and energy sapped by bureaucratic conflict, in ideal¬ ism, in enormous human costs abroad that might have been les¬ sened, and in the further erosion of public trust in foreign policy.

The Red-Headed League

In the summer of 1967, after a sequence of political intrigues and tribal massacres, civil war broke out between Nigeria and its seces¬ sionist Eastern Region, which be¬ came Biafra. When Biafra col¬ lapsed more than two years later, hundreds of thousands were dead, the vast majority from starvation caused when Nigeria blockaded rebel-held territory. The war was essentially a battle for power be¬ tween post-colonial elites. Neither side would subordinate its political or military goals to relieve the enormous human cost.

Under both Presidents Johnson and Nixon, United States policy toward the conflict was a combina¬ tion of political neutrality, includ¬ ing an arms embargo, and a major commitment, over $100 million, to the international relief efforts op¬ erating on both sides. Behind the relief policy was an extraordinary outpouring of public concern and bipartisan congressional support across the political spectrum. All the major American religious relief agencies were involved in aiding Biafra, along with the International Committee of the Red Cross and

1974

several private European relief groups.

There were disputes in Washing¬ ton over whether the US should play an intermediary role in trying to end the conflict, but no apparent question that the United States should make some humanitarian response to the starving children of the Nigerian civil war. Or so it seemed. In the United States em¬ bassy in Lagos, ardently commit¬ ted to its Nigerian clients, it was a different world.

Only weeks after the outbreak of the war, the wife of an American embassy official in Lagos startled her Nigerian dinner guests with a toast to “the destruction of Bi¬ afra.” When numberless Biafran children, dying of protein • defi¬ ciency, their hair turned rust color, became symbols to the world of the war’s wanton suffering, United States embassy officers in Lagos somberly explained to visitors that the clever rebels had found an ob¬ scure red-haired tribe, starved its infants, and put them on display.

The mission’s zeal was not al¬ ways so overt. Sources that served in the Lagos embassy during the early months of the war recall a pervasive suspicion in the form of official restrictions on the contacts of junior officers lest they acquire rebel sympathies. Officials tell of recurrent attempts to alter or al¬ together suppress reports to Washington unfavorable to Ni¬ geria, including eyewitness ac¬ counts of Nigerian atrocities. Dis¬ sent, according to many accounts, was severely punished by unfavor¬ able performance ratings.

There was visible irritation with the embassy back in Washington, where Nigerian policy was guided by career officers who had served in the country earlier. Letters, then official visitors, were sent to urge more complete reporting. One source recalls that the CIA even sent an investigator to, Lagos to discover why the embassy’s intel¬ ligence was so different from all accounts of the war in the media and from other governments. But those efforts soon gave way to a weary resignation and State’s own growing reluctance to offend vic¬ torious Nigeria as Biafra’s collapse became imminent.

To the end, the Lagos mission resisted the awful reality of Biafra's starvation, refusing to

support the presentation by Ni¬ gerian relief authorities of vital sci¬ entific data on the famine de¬ veloped by US public health ex¬ perts. Convinced that the public, Congress, the White House, and the State Department were either duped by Biafran propaganda or else were conspiring to dismember an important client, the Lagos em¬ bassy largely followed its own foreign policy for the duration of the war.

Our Friends the Enemy Cliency is seldom so bizarre or

concentrated as the Lagos exam¬ ple. More often, missions inflict their bias through long battles of bureaucratic attrition. And no¬ where have the campaigns been longer than on the South Asian subcontinent, where India and Pakistan—and the United States embassies in each country—are historic rivals.

“We need a modem tank here. You know what the enemy has.” The speaker was a United States military attache talking to a visitor to Pakistan in 1967. It wasn’t the American embassy that needed modern armor, but the Pakistani Army; the “enemy,” of course, was India. Some months later, an equally earnest Air Force attache used home leave in Washington to warn a White House aide “unoffi¬ cially” that he believed the “enemy” was “up to something” around Kashmir. This time the “enemy” was Pakistan.

Frequently, the United States missions in both countries seem to have believed there were also “en¬ emies” in Washington—the New Delhi mission when the United States began to arm Pakistan in the early fifties, and Rawalpindi when congressional pressure forced a United States arms embargo against Pakistan during the 1965 war with India, and more perma¬ nently in 1967. Almost as soon as the 1967 decision was made, the United States embassy in Pakistan urged our government to circum¬ vent the embargo by selling the Pakistanis United States-made tanks from some third country. This device, predictably enough, was anathema to the American embassy in India.

But the same mission in New Delhi which saw the wisdom of de¬ nying Pakistani generals their

weapons in 1967 found no reason at all to recommend withholding food aid as a means of persuading a venal Indian bureaucracy to sus¬ tain long-overdue agricultural re¬ forms. This and other disputes be¬ tween the mission and Washington, leaving President Johnson to doubt if he had an ambassador to India, illustrate the pernicious character of cliency.

Chester Bowles was then on his second tour as ambassador in Delhi. An early casualty of the Washington bureaucracy under President Kennedy, he was to prove the most humane policy¬ maker of the glittering lot. In his earlier experience in Congress and the executive branch, Bowles had observed the anti-Indian prejudice that dominated parts of the gov¬ ernment. To his New Delhi ap¬ pointment, say several sources, Bowles brought an abiding deter¬ mination to shield US-Indian re¬ lations from the biases experi¬ enced. Former aides say Bowles was often privately frustrated with the Indians but usually concealed his criticism in reporting to Washington in the belief that long- run United States interests in India were more important than any single clash that might resurrect old hostilities.

Unlike his Lagos counterparts, Bowles was not imagining an¬ tagonism in Washington. Congres¬ sional distaste for India’s neutrality was clear. LBJ and Dean Rusk fell into annual rages when Madame Gandhi sent birthday cables to Ho Chi Minh. “How long can you kick a cow in the udders and still expect it to give milk?” Rusk once asked with Georgian earthiness in an “eyes only” telegram to Bowles.

Bowles must have felt the same way himself at times, and if only he had posed that same question to Washington, he might have been taken more seriously by other policy-makers. As it was, his be¬ leaguered, self-righteous cliency tended to provoke the very forces in Washington he hoped to disarm. After reading the cables from Delhi and hearing in person Bowles’s spirited defense of the Indians, LBJ seems to have become con¬ vinced that if he didn’t insist on In¬ dian reforms, his embassy never would. And whatever the merits of the issue, he was probably right.

Looking back on the Biafran

tragedy, a ranking State Depart¬ ment officer remarked: “My regret is that there was such emotion gen¬ erated in this country . . . today we have strained relations with one fifth of Africa because of the focus on relief. ...” For that official and others in the State Department’s regional bureaus, relations smooth or strained with an entire region can be the daily reality of work, much as one client government can absorb the allegiance of an em¬ bassy abroad. The hungry children come and go from public sight; the clients are always there. Staffed predominantly by Foreign Service officers bearing career pressures and marked by a parochialism simi¬ lar to that felt abroad, the Depart¬ ment often sees its role as protect¬ ing its clients from the special perils that American democracy holds for traditional diplomacy— public naivete (“emotion” over Biafra), a meddling press, an unin¬ formed or partisan Congress.

Has cliency kept us from inter¬ vening as often as we should? Not necessarily, for cliency distorts the way we make decisions more than it imposes any clear direction on our foreign policy. We may disa¬ gree about whether or how the US should ever intervene in cases of starvation, slaughter, or rebellion, but we should be able to agree to make those policy choices with all the logic and clear-headedness we can muster.

The State Department is not alone in steering our foreign rela¬ tions around obstacles to clear thought. The Pentagon, CIA, AID, Commerce, Treasury, Ag¬ riculture all crowd upon the scene in Washington and abroad with programs, bureaucratic preroga¬ tives, various clear-cut views of the national interest, and, of course, foreign clients. Added to the per¬ sonal stake and convictions of career officers there is a host of other concerns (domestic clients) that may put a premium on access with foreign regimes—from the munitions industry to Iowa farmers to ITT and Wall Street. To busi¬ ness or bureaucracy trail lines of interest from nearly every corner of the world, at once an index of our colossal power yet a mass of potential inhibitions on the inde¬ pendent and principled use of that power.

The extreme example of the in- FOREION SERVICE JOURNAL, February, 1974 25

terplay of bureaucracy and cliency, as of much else, is obviously Viet¬ nam. In a sense, it was a return to the medieval practice of cliency. A country can do no more for its client states, after all, than fight their wars for them. But to the bureaucracies in Washington and their proconsuls in Saigon, the war was often only another arena for the jousting of power and interests. “They could accept more easily a complete reversal of objectives or grand strategic design than a revi¬ sion of their own roles,” reflected a veteran of the bureaucratic battles both in Washington and Saigon.

Behind the lines and sometimes on them were the endless jurisdic¬ tional disputes—CIA operatives, generals, deputy ambassadors, AID administrators, each with Vietnamese clients on whom he was somehow dependent for suc-

,cess, each suspicious that his col¬ leagues would expand their domain and advance their clients at his ex¬ pense. The war, to be sure, was more complex than this single di¬ mension. But the dishonesty, the zeal, the secrecy, the ambitions and fears that drove us on belong in large measure to such bureaucratic politics.

Cliency-in-Waiting

The most dependable clients for all these purposes are not always actually in power. But subtle inter¬ vention, a kind of cliency-in- waiting, can help put them there. Indonesia and Chile are cases in point. Economic pressure on left- wing regimes, coupled with a steady relationship with the colo¬ nels in the wings, helped to pro¬ duce less troublesome client re¬ gimes in both countries, albeit again at a cost in human rights enormous in Indonesia and yet to be counted in Chile.

Ideology certainly plays a role in these decisions, which are cus¬ tomarily made in the White House. But bureaucrats may also find anti-Marxist dictators, especially the efficient martial variety, easier to deal with as clients than unruly democrats like the Indians.

Ideology has also explained one of the few consistent exceptions to cliency—our relations with the USSR. US diplomats in Moscow and on the Soviet desk in Foggy Bottom are expected to be habitu¬ ally aloof from their clients. In this 26 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February. 1974

they are unlike all their colleagues except, perhaps, those in South Africa. The Russian attitude may all be changing, however, with the latest detente. One wonders what new clients we may acquire when Chase Manhattan invests in Si¬ beria.

Cliency seems both a cause and effect of the larger malaise envelop¬ ing the State Department and Foreign Service. Controlling its abuses probably begins with the long-needed reform of that bu¬ reaucracy.

It flourishes, like other dubious practices, in the guild mentality of the State Department, in an elabo¬ rate career system that rewards caution, compliance, and evasion while punishing dissent or “mis¬ takes.” In an environment where advance depends on conforming to habit, it is perhaps the most com¬ mon habit of all.

Cliency seems almost inherent in the psychology and sociology of diplomatic work abroad. The British used to mourn the victims of this parochialism as being “too long in the East.” State Depart¬ ment desk officers now call it “localitis,” certain that it afflicts only their colleagues in the “field.”

The malady probably begins with the need to rationalize against the realities of foreign service, whatever the venue. While Henry Kissinger flits dramatically from Georgetown to Peking, most American diplomats in a hundred other capitals are locked in tedious, obscure, and rarely meaningful work. And people who spend most of their adult lives dealing with other bureaucrats in remote places tend to persuade themselves, sooner or later, that dealing with other bureaucrats in remote places is pretty important. From there it’s a short step to the added conviction that good relations with a particular regime, are, or ought to be anyway, urgent national business.

In any event, to be without live clients, right or left, in or near power, is often to be bureaucrati¬ cally impotent either in a mission abroad or in Washington. Ameri¬ can officials assigned to forgotten arenas like the UN are seldom a bureaucratic match for their col¬ leagues whose clients are actual governments with the real power. Special State Department offices responsible for international law,

environmental matters, refugees, or population control may create an organizational illusion of author¬ ity, but none acts without the veto of the regional bureaus, whose clients generally frown on such concerns.

The assistant legal advisor who wrote the unheeded memorandum on human rights during the mur¬ ders in Burundi personally carried a copy to each policy-maker in the African bureau, skeptical that it would ever reach them by regular staff channels. At the time, how¬ ever, the legal advisor’s office was never asked to prepare an opinion on whether events in Burundi con¬ stituted a violation of human rights. Moreover, career officers who are assigned to clientless duties like legal affairs know that the promo¬ tion system of the Foreign Service follows bureaucratic power, and that it rarely rewards such “margi¬ nal” work. “Did you ever know any official,” asked a young dip¬ lomat, “whose career has been ad¬ vanced because he spoke out for human rights?”

Bureaucratic and career interests reinforce this sense of priorities. If there is direct official involvement with the country, such as an aid program or arms sales, there may naturally develop close working re¬ lationships with the recipients. Some individual careers and bu¬ reaucratic prestige become inevit¬ ably linked to the “success” of programs which, in turn, may de¬ pend on US influence with the foreign regime. For the American mission as a whole, these programs represent a tangible investment of time and reputation, a call on Washington's resources, and thus further proof of the mission's importance—all bureaucratic as¬ sets to be nurtured and protected, and all assuming continuing coop¬ eration from the clients.

Even without major programs to dispense and husband, American missions in most countries are likely to acquire a strong collective tendency toward agreeable rela¬ tions with the host government. US diplomats of every rank depend on the regime and the elites around it for much of the information and influence by which their perfor¬ mance is measured. It is what the Foreign Service prizes as “ac¬ cess,” the ability to hear and to be

Continued on page 30

CgJ BOOKSHELF

JAPAN, A HISTORICAL SURVEY, by Mikiso Hone. Scribners, $15.00.

SURVEY courses in American col¬ leges have been maligned too often. They are hard to teach (particularly when the entering classes vary widely in talent and interest) and their overall aim is easily lost to the students in a welter of facts and examinations. Out of these courses, and possibly because of these difficulties, have come some fine texts; other texts, not so fine, have come out of these courses because of the economics of the textbook industry and the publish¬ ing demands of the academic industry. Professor Hane of Knox College has used his experience to turn out a good text on Japan.

In a survey text there is obvi¬ ously room for argument about proportion. This volume tends to scant Japan’s long pre-Perry his¬ tory in favor of a generalized ap¬ proach on how institutions de-

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veloped. For the student and general reader (Professor Hane’s targets) this is probably right.

Professor Hane’s treatment of the Pacific War and of the eco¬ nomic difficulties of Japan in mak¬ ing modern war are models of com¬ pression and clarity.

—J. K. HOLLOWAY, JR.

CHINA JOURNAL, by Emmett Dedman. Rand McNally, $8.95.

L IKE manuals on how to have a happy sex life, travelogues by recent visitors to China are much of a muchness. If you've read one, you’ve read them all.

But this one is different. Written by a veteran newsman, one of the twenty directors of the American Society of Newspaper Editors who toured China in October 1972, it is entertaining instruction for those who can know China only through a tour de chamhre and worthwhile reading for those who know a good deal about China. Wide-ranging reportage, many fine photographs, and accomplished writing in a per¬ sonal style make this an outstand¬ ing account of a perceptive odys¬ sey.

A detailed report on the editors’ midnight “friendly conversation” with Premier Chou En-lai may spe¬ cially interest JOURNAL readers.

To a question suggesting that Peking’s recent conciliatory state¬ ments about American and Japan might indicate a softening in China’s leadership of world rev¬ olution, Chou said there had been no change in “line.” “The foreign policy of China, as approved by Chairman Mao and the Central Committee, has followed the same revolutionary line for the past 23 years.” However, he added that Mao had stated that an ideological dispute could go on for 10,000 years and should never be used as an excuse for force.

Not the least of the pleasures of this book is “Tips for Tourists”: “There is no bargaining. . . There is absolutely no tipping. It is con¬ sidered an insult if you offer a tip . . . Anyone who has been in a Russian hotel will find the appoint¬ ments comparable, including the plumbing and the dim light over the sink. . . The friendliness of the people to foreigners is extraordi¬ nary and obviously a matter of pol¬ icy as well as basic human nature.”

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THE NIXON SYSTEM from page 14

US actions and objectives. And in today’s crisis of Presi¬

dential credibility (and of Ameri¬ can foreign policy purposes), this last need may be the most impor¬ tant of all. Reflecting on the failure of the Johnson Administration’s Vietnam policy, Bill D. Moyers wrote in a 1968 issue of FOREIGN

AFFAIRS that “The reaction to the war has been so fierce and sus¬ tained that 1 cannot see future de¬ cisions involving similar conse¬ quences being made without asking the people to share more fully in the responsibility.” Yet the Nixon Administration proceeded to re¬ peat the same mistake. Kissinger now says publicly, “No foreign policy—no matter how ingenious —has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and car¬ ried in the hearts of none.” But as a public official, he has acted so as to impede the development of the consensus he now sees as essen¬ tial. In the address to the Interna¬ tional Platform Association in Au¬

gust quoted above, Kissinger cited “a series of tragic events over the past decade” as the main reason why “the consensus that sustained our international participation is in danger of being exhausted.” (Italics added.) Hopefully, as a man who has achieved what he has under a President and an approach which has essentially scorned ser¬ ious dialogue and consensus¬ building for four-and-a-half years, he also recognizes the need to look closer than the stars for much of the fault.

The consensus was, of course, largely exhausted in 1969. And to give Kissinger his due, he has made real efforts to articulate a new foreign policy approach. But he has given us a lecture rather than a dialogue, an intellectual construc¬ tion more than an American politi¬ cal construction, a “private” pol¬ icy with not just its tactics but some of its key premises shielded from Americans prominent and humble alike, who are intended to admire the end product but not contribute to its design or its man¬ ufacture. And it has been tar¬

nished, to say the least, by the periodic Presidential propensity for what Spiro Agnew once called “positive polarization,” manifes¬ ted recently in Nixon’s telling a Veterans of Foreign Wars conven¬ tion that to “save American lives” he would do the Cambodian bomb¬ ing the same way if he had the choice to make again.

A more open approach would not mean making everything pub¬ lic. There is an obvious, and still widely-accepted need for secrecy on many foreign policy-related matters. But it would mean giving priority, wherever possible, to in¬ volving other Americans in the pol¬ icy, and to making serious re¬ sponses to the concerns of dissent¬ ing Americans. It would mean a predisposition toward providing the public with an accurate picture of major US foreign policy objec¬ tives and operations, and of their underlying rationales. And in cases where frankness proved impossi¬ ble, it would replace the official lie with the ancient and honorable “No Comment.”

With the designation of Kis-

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3 THE NEXT CRISIS? Food Lester R. Brown

34 Treating NATO’s Self-Inflicted Wound R. W. Komer

49 Getting Out And Speaking Out James C. Thomson, Jr.

(MORE) ON MULTINATIONALS

71 Poverty Is The Product Ronald Midler

103 Does Society Also Profit? Raymond Vernon

118 Comment: Richard J. Barnet

123 The Great Oil Sheikdown Stephen D. Krasner

139 America’s Moral Confusion Philip Windsor

154 God And John Foster Dulles Townsend Hoopes

178 Washington Dateline: The New Battlelines Richard Holbrooke

190 Contributors

SPECIAL TO AFSA MEMBERS

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28 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL. February, 1974

singer as Secretary of State, the Nixon Administration now has the opportunity for something of a fresh start. The merging of the Sec¬ retary and Assistant positions is mechanical and unconvincing as a long-range organizational solution, but it makes sense as a short-run expedient, though some new ten¬ sion in the relationship seems an inevitable result of the increased strength of Kissinger’s position. And while it is unclear what rela¬ tive emphasis Kissinger will give to the two jobs, and what will happen to his National Security Council staff, the State Department does now have, in form at least, the strong Secretary that is a prerequi¬ site for its rejuvenation as the lead¬ ing US government foreign policy- influencing institution. Also, Mr. Kissinger now has a platform from which to speak if his recent con¬ version to domestic political heal¬ ing and consensus-building is a serious one, and if the President permits him to practice the new re¬ ligion. As this article is completed, he is beginning so to speak.

But the closed Nixon-Kissinger decision-making style and sys¬ tem has had personality roots as well, which work against both the needed trust of underlings and the conduct of serious dialogue in the political arena.

But if the prescriber must retain his hope, the analyst must keep his skepticism. Kissinger now has the State Department base which would, if this analysis is correct, make it easier for him to build a team of strong subordinates and supporting staffs, and give them the needed backing. If one Presi¬ dential aim is really a “closer coor¬ dination” between the White House and State, it is on the build¬ ing of such a team that its success will, above all, depend. But the closed Nixon-Kissinger decision¬

making style and system has had personality roots as well, which work against both the needed trust of underlings and the conduct of serious dialogue in the political arena. And their personal penchant for secretiveness as a weapon in bureaucratic, domestic, and inter¬ national politics is reinforced by a belief in extreme top-level flexibil¬ ity on both bureaucratic manage¬ ment and international relations grounds. None of this will be easily changed. Kissinger’s new job is bound to alter his relationship with Richard Nixon as well as how he deals with others; there is room for hope that some of the changes will be in directions urged here. But the changes to date have been more in what the Secretary is saying than in what he and his President have been doing. The old Nixon- Kissinger system has probably run through the largest of the problems to which it was suited. Its replace¬ ment by a new approach better adapted to today’s domestic and in¬ ternational environment, however, is anything but assured. ■

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FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February. 1974 29

CLIENTISM IN THE FOREIGN SERVICE from page 26

heard, which many career officers regard as the essence of their pro¬ fession.

To that end, American diplomats may cultivate their contacts liter¬ ally day and night. In many coun¬ tries their universe is peopled largely by distinct groups— politi¬ cians who are sensitive to slight or interference, landowners who abhor economic reform, police who see conspiracy, and not the least, the ubiquitous colonels who exude authority and grow impa¬ tient with democracies. Over a desk or at a dinner party, the US diplomat feels the importance of these citizens (a reflection of his own), their ardor, their wrath or approval at first hand—realities which may be scarcely appreciated in distant Washington, though they loom large from Athens to Jakarta, from Rio to Lagos.

That distance from Washington gives a US mission abroad its strongest single impulse toward

identifying with the interests of its hosts. Among diplomats who es¬ cort junketing congressmen and watch the steady shrinkage of their aid appropriations, who see de¬ partments recurrently placed under the direction of a new set of “amateurs” and ever hostage to politics or fickle public moods, there grows the conviction that one of the major burdens of career foreign service is to protect US re¬ lations with other regimes from the excesses of Washington. That perspective, too, can be personal as well as bureaucratic. Who in¬ deed is the expert on the scene? Who, after all, spends his life de¬ fending the national interest on these frontiers? The view of Washington as ignorant and dis¬ tracted, as the source of perhaps dangerous meddling for transient reasons, can give the career of¬ ficialdom of a US embassy a com¬ mon zeal, sometimes a fervid sense of mission, in representing the pos¬ ition of another government.

There are also human commit¬ ments no institutional factor quite explains—an intense loyalty some

diplomats cultivate for a country or region, a matching of personalities and views that may leave an American official feeling more comfortable with a Pakistani gen¬ eral than with many of his own col¬ leagues, the prejudices and emo¬ tions released by being witness to dramatic events such as civil wars.

Any of these influences may blur that critical boundary between the US national interest, or simply what is right, and the bureaucratic or private interests of American of¬ ficials abroad.

Then, too, the Department of State and its officers are still pecul¬ iarly isolated among the great agencies of government. The prob¬ lem is not only that diplomats spend years out of the country. Even in Washington they seldom encounter the people they are sup¬ posed to represent. Nearly every other bureaucracy must face some public constituency — welfare mothers at HEW, rent strikers at HUD, truckers at Transportation. And nearly every other bureau¬ cracy has felt recently the cleans¬ ing light of exposure in the era of

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30 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL. February, 1974

public interest research. But State continues to govern by inertia and default, in camera, unaccountable except to bureaucratic self- interest.

Yet, ironically. State may also be the bureaucracy with the greatest potential for responding to the public interest. Foreign Service officers are free of the huge pro¬ grams and special domestic in¬ terests that so often freeze their colleagues in other agencies.

It is ironic too that cliency, as a product of this isolation, has only served to deepen the eclipse of the State Department in the making of foreign policy. Presidents watching some of the absurdities and distor¬ tions of State's efforts to protect their clients have been further con¬ firmed in their accumulation of power in the White House.

The answer to the many prob¬ lems of cliency surely starts with the opening of the foreign policy process—much as the habits of government are under challenge domestically. And of the many re¬ forms that would mean for the Foreign Service, the most vital are

genuine provision for internal dis¬ sent and a wider exposure of American diplomats to their own society.

Diplomacy can be a career truly open to talent, its ranks refreshed at all levels by the infusion of short-term officers from outside government, men and women cho¬ sen precisely for their indepen¬ dence and unorthodox and critical views of policy. Those who repre¬ sent America in the world could usefully spend at least half their careers in the country that pays their salaries, in more than token positions on congressional staffs, on newspapers, in what State De¬ partment bureaucrats call with nervous sarcasm "the real world” of people and perspectives beyond the encapsulated worlds of embas¬ sies and bureaus.

But none of this is new. These steps are endlessly discussed, and the outlook for real change is still bleak. Foreign Service officers know that their pseudo-elitism, their parochialism, their penchant for cliency are all a malignant waste of individual talent and of the

Department's potential role. Their reaction is too often a weary cyni¬ cism. Foreign Service reform may resemble nothing so much as the reforms of tsarist Russia—agreed necessary for survival, much heralded, never quite taken before it was too late.

Ultimately the answer to the problem must lie in the consciences of the career officials. They know more than any critic that an honest and sophisticated cliency—as a sensitive appreciation of other societies—is the heart of diplo¬ macy. No government, however willful, can rationally dispense with that observation and interpreta¬ tion, least of all in this incendiary age.

BUT only the career service can perform that essential role with in¬ tegrity, unafraid of career or bu¬ reaucratic loss. Only they can en¬ sure that the real clients of Ameri¬ can foreign policy are the people beyond governments—people at home and abroad who must pay the flesh-and-blood costs of our deci¬ sions. ■

FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAI . February. 1974 31

URBAN INNOVATION from page 23

proposed beltway spurs to dump more cars into congested cities but we are considerably behind Europe in banning the car from the central business district and in promoting the use of public transit.

initially European cities pro¬ vided for vehicle-free shopping streets in the downtown area, sometimes extending the traffic ban to adjoining and parallel streets or squares to create compact pedestrian shopping zones as in Copenhagen (Stroget), Amsterdam (Kalverstraat), Rotterdam (Lijn- baan), Helsinki (Aleksanterink- atu). In Rome several non-con- tiguous historic streets and squares are reserved for pedestrian use and during the summer tourist season the vehicle ban is extended to Via Veneto which is taken over en¬ tirely by strollers and sidewalk cafes.

More ambitious schemes for the closing of entire shopping districts are also on the books. The Hague

and Duesseldorf have created traffic-free zones of 2.4 and 3.4 km. respectively and Essen enlarged the system of pedestrian streets and malls to create a connected car-free zone that is over a kilome¬ ter long and 300 meters wide. Vienna’s ambitious program calls for a large traffic-free inner city zone of 1.2 km. in diameter that would be served by non-polluting miniature buses.

When pedestrianization projects are proposed and implemented there are usually sharp protests from area merchants who are con¬ cerned lest business will drop off. Experience bears out that this is not the case. Rouen, France, which closed to traffic and repaved with cobblestones its historic Rue du Gros Horloge, reports an in¬ crease in retail sales and requests for extension of the zone by mer¬ chants in adjoining streets. The same reaction came from Norwich, England, which paved over Lon¬ don Street, closed it to traffic and furnished it with attractive flower boxes, benches and display cases used by street merchants. Pollution

and noise levels have gone down in all cases—Tokyo reports a drop of carbon monoxide concentrations from 14.2 to 2.9 parts per million in the central Ginza during a tempor¬ ary closing in August 1970—and there have also been marked esthe¬ tic improvements in the appear¬ ance of historic streets and squares returned to pedestrian use.

Seeds of the Future

The limited scope of this paper allows only the skimpiest look at a few examples of technological and organizational innovation that pos¬ sibly contain the nucleii of things to come:

Underground and Domed Cities

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main station, as well as principal hotels and main squares above ground. An increasing number of these underground malls are also appearing in Europe and Japan and their future seems assured. In addi¬ tion there is the advent of the multi-purpose building, called "Kaikan” in Japan, outwardly un- distinguishable from an office building, but inside containing all the facilities of a city center —restaurants, shopping arcades, theaters, hotels and offices. These superbuildings are also linked with the underground shopping centers that connect central train stations with the heart of the city. Some Japanese architects foresee as the next step the construction of entire connected city centers above and below ground. An entire domed city for Arctic use is now under de¬ sign in Germany. It is entered by airlocks and the pressure- supported transparent membrane roof covers an area of several square kilometers. Climate and daylight is man-made.

Plagued by urban density that has 80 percent of its people living

on 2 percent of the land, Japan has been experimenting with multi¬ purpose artificial land involving a large concrete deck set above park¬ ing areas, roads, railways, ware¬ houses and other urban facilities. The deck itself serves as a founda¬ tion for office structures, parks, apartments and detached single family dwellings. These pilot proj¬ ects aim at turning the airspace above low-slung essential urban facilities such as stations and mar¬ shaling yards into residential land.

Moving sidewalks already in use at air terminals will make their ap¬ pearance in new towns of tomor¬ row. Complete traffic separation and people movers operating at 4 kmh are a feature of an Italian new town for 65,000 people—Citta Nolana—which will occupy a hill- site behind Naples, if the red tape that now ties up the project ever gets unsnarled.

Waste Treatment

Some 90 Danish municipalities jointly own and operate a waste oil treatment plant that reclaims useful substances and renders pollutants

harmless. The intermunicipal com¬ pany organized recently by the Danish Municipal League manages its own collection depots, treat¬ ment tanks and laboratories.

Some Swedish new towns boast ingenious waste disposal systems that use pneumatic tubes to “vac¬ uum” household garbage to a cen¬ tral treatment plant whence the heat generated is recycled back into the heating system of the apartment complex. In Japan, a pilot process compacts treated waste into building blocks.

The presence around the world of some ingenious new urban tech¬ nology, from the convenience of TV rear view monitors on Tokyo buses and quick-coupling fire jacks in Germany to potential break¬ throughs in building techniques now being worked on in several countries, strongly argues for ac¬ tive information exchange by mu¬ nicipal leagues for the considera¬ tion of local authorities.

Conclusions and Recommendations

What emerges clearly from this survey is that the roots of

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America's unprecedented urban crisis lie in the past, in cherished ideas and traditional attitudes that until recently were beyond ques¬ tion like the holy cows that block traffic in the streets of New Delhi. Equally compelling is the evidence that the decline cannot be halted or reversed through the use of patch- work temporary and stopgap mea¬ sures, palliatives that treat the symptoms and not the disease. A rethinking of basic values and prin¬ ciples of urban living is required together with the courage to take bold measures and devolve on strengthened local government le¬ gal powers that will close tradi¬ tional private options for social goals.

The unwritten dogmas that need rethinking include:

• The American practice of zon¬ ing for single rather than multiple use which compartments urban liv¬ ing space into residential, commer¬ cial and industrial districts. Separa¬ tion of shopping, office and living quarters leads to deserted central business districts, urban monot¬ ony, the accelerated decline of

poor neighborhoods and in many instances the fragmentation of communities along racial lines. In the absence of comprehensive ur¬ ban planning, zoning ordinances were an imprecise tool to bring some kind of order into an urban scene dominated by the dynamics of the market place. But they are no substitute for planning, and their underlying philosophy of neat sepa¬ ration of urban functions is very much open to question in the age of alienation.

• Reliance on the property tax as the main revenue source of our communities which has rendered them highly vulnerable to the de¬ parture for the suburbs of the more affluent segment of their popula¬ tion. This at a time when they need more funds than ever before to provide services for the indigent and the dependent that have re¬ mained behind. Revenue-sharing is only a partial recognition of the problem. The local tax system it¬ self needs to be reexamined.

• Land use policies that shirk municipal acquisition and tend to assume that the public interest is

the sum total of private interests. In this view private investment is considered productive but public investment as wasteful and the best thing a community can do is to stay out of the real estate business. Commercially-unattractive social goals get lost in this approach.

• Reluctance to engage in com¬ prehensive planning for urban growth and hesitation to provide municipalities with the legal tools and financial resources necessary to put plans into effect.

• Reliance on the market place to provide economic stimulation and disincentives for depressed or overheated urban sectors. The forces of the market place geared to the expansion of production and profits have been unable to meet desirable social goals that have a low expectation for private gain.

The resistance to change in the present outdated structures of local government and in public housing policies which perpetuate poverty and social ills, likewise block prog¬ ress towards the major reforms re¬ quired if a renaissance of urban values is to be achieved. ■

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34 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February. 1974

LETTERS TO | Wisdom of the Middle East

In a recent issue of the Foreign Service JOURNAL, 1 read with great interest a letter on the Middle East¬ ern problem by a former Foreign Service officer. The tragic events which have since occurred in this troubled area of the world under¬ score and add a sense of immediacy to the questions which he has raised concerning the wisdom of United States policy toward the Middle East.

While it is neither prudent nor appropriate for me to comment directly on the current conflict in the Middle East, 1 would like to make a few personal observations about some of the issues raised in the article. In 1967, Personnel as¬ signed me to the American Em¬ bassy in Baghdad where I served until June 1967 when Iraq broke diplomatic relations with the US because of our policies in the last Arab-Israeli war. As an officer with aspirations for a career in the political field, I carefully consid¬ ered the possibility of specializing in this troubled but important and fascinating area of the world. After weighing the professional pros and cons, 1 rejected such a career com¬ mitment basically for reasons alluded to in the officer’s letter. From my brief acquaintance with the area, it seemed very clear that domestic political considerations largely dictated US foreign policy in the Middle East to the detriment of longer range US national objec¬ tives. A Foreign Service officer certainly should not and cannot ignore domestic forces and opin¬ ions which play a legitimate role in shaping US foreign policy. Nevertheless, 1 reached the con¬ clusion at that time that a political officer working in the Middle East would continually encounter diffi¬ cult, perhaps insurmountable, obstacles, in providing objective analysis and policy recommenda¬ tions which could reasonably be expected to influence the formula¬ tion of a rational US foreign policy for the area. In retrospect I recog¬ nize that rejection of a career in the Middle East for the reason outlined above constituted an abdication of responsibility but the prospect of having to submerge and/or adjust political convictions to conform

with a policy largely dictated by domestic political interests was personally intolerable.

Regardless of our periodic public rhetoric about the USG’s neutral posture aimed at promoting a last¬ ing peace in the Middle East, our policy did not change after 1967. Indeed, if anything it moved fur¬ ther in the direction of supporting one nation—Israel—even though its rigid and expansionist policies offered little hope creating the basis for a viable Middle East settle¬ ment.

The cost of our policy since 1967 has by any objective standard been tremendous—both in terms of growing Arab hostility toward the US and expanded opportunities for Soviet influence in the area (al¬ ready evident in 1967) and most recently the prospect of undermin¬ ing our relations with the friendly Arab countries left in this part of the world which control energy resources vital to the economic well being of the US and its Euro¬ pean and Asian allies.

The current war in the Middle East is a tragedy for all concerned and a genuine threat to world peace. Fortunately, Foreign Ser¬ vice officers specializing in this area are now in a better position to make their convictions known, so that the Secretary, the President and other responsible officials now have the benefit of sound profes¬ sional advice in reaching decisions which seriously affect our national interests.

RICHARD B. HOWARD

Washington

CHARLES E. BOHLEN Qualities of a Senior Diplomat

Charles Bohlen will remain best known as a specialist on Soviet af¬ fairs and a practitioner of the dip¬ lomatic art who not only reached the top of his profession but also attained an influence and standing in and outside of government rare for a career Foreign Service of¬ ficer. Much has been made, as it should, of the impressive intellec¬ tual credentials he brought to the job, of his arduous study of the Russian language, Communist theory and Soviet history, and of the experience and insight he gained in his long years of dealing with the leaders of the USSR. But emphasis on these qualities of mind

and on academic and professional accomplishments can be mislead¬ ing, as they distract attention from the innate qualities of the man which so contributed to make him the success in his profession he was to become. Ambassador Bohlen himself always made it a point to distinguish between intel¬ ligence or knowledge and judgment in individuals; in keeping with his own general attitude, an evaluation of his personal attributes rather than of his acquired professional skills is probably more useful for a true appreciation of the man.

The Ambassador’s approach to his work was characterized by modesty and simplicity. The title of his memoirs “Witness to History,” is illustrative; no grandiloquent claims to influence over events, just the admitted realization that he was fortunate to be at the right place, performing an interesting function, on significant occasions. His personal modesty was also re¬ flected on a wider scale in his often expressed opinion that the actions of individuals, no matter how highly placed, could have only rare and limited influence on the course of events; the historical process, in his opinion, was the result of vast impersonal forces largely beyond the control of statesmen or sol¬ diers. This view of history does not lend itself to sweeping conclusions, colorful language, or easy solutions and his words and writing were consequently sometimes disap¬ pointing to some, containing such phrases as "... 1 still think it would have been better to do (such and such) but it probably would not have made much difference.” But it was the only language possible for a man of his outlook articulating his thoughts with absolute sincer¬ ity.

The simplicity of Ambassador Bohlen’s approach to issues or problems could be surprising in one known to be so experienced and erudite. Yet it was precisely be¬ cause of his great knowledge that he could permit himself to speak in extremely basic terms, completely without affectation, on subjects concerning which few could match his understanding. It was not the simplification imposed by limited knowledge; rather his intellectual curiosity, voracious reading, and continuous contacts with the know¬ ing and powerful had placed him

FOKLKIN SI RVICK JOURNAL, February, 1974 35

beyond the stage where the com¬ plexity of issues fascinates or overwhelms and is therefore re¬ flected in one’s words. His direct approach led him to the crux of situations, disregarding or master¬ ing the attendant facts or circum¬ stances as appropriate, and his modesty and straightforwardness did not permit him to embellish his plainly stated conclusions for the sake of appearances or to impress an audience. Nor were his opin¬ ions affected by any personal stake in the matters under discussion; his lack of egocentrism allowed him to remain relatively detached and take a completely objective view even on matters in which he was deeply and personally involved.

Lest anyone gather the impres¬ sion of a colorless and faultless paragon Ambassador Bohlen's well known personal foibles can also be recalled. His delight in poker, golf and hunting, his enjoy¬ ment of good food and drink made him, in spite of his often reserved public demeanor, a delightful com¬ panion to his intimates. He also could become properly irritated at displays of stupidity or pretension. As he himself relied on and trusted his subordinates, he could be driv¬ en into fits of indignation, spirited and profane, by untoward advice or backseat driving from Washing¬ ton.

But these personal quirks only made all the more welcome and ac¬ ceptable the laudable human qual¬ ities which he brought to his pro¬ fession. These, combined with his impressive physical presence, the powerful scholar-athlete still very much apparent, made of him an American Ambassador of surpass¬ ing dignity and effectiveness who imposed, sometimes by his pres¬ ence alone, good sense, order, and simple but proper decorum on any situation in which he participated. It was largely because of his.presid- ing role that the US military with¬ drawal from France in 1966-67 was accomplished in such a way that it could serve as a model of conduct for two friendly and allied sover¬ eign states in disagreement.

Ambassador Bohlen’s effective¬ ness with governments or individu¬ als was largely the result of the re¬ spect which he showed toward the insitutions and the positions of the men with whom he dealt. He could be properly objective in appraising 36 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, Februarv. 1974

people and organizations and occa¬ sionally wittily irreverent in pri¬ vate. This would be for the sake of the joke, however, and he was never hostile toward or cynical about human insitutions, but al¬ ways conscious of the lofty aspira¬ tions they embodied. On a higher plane his awareness of the fragility of existence and the ephemeral na¬ ture of human accomplishments was matched by an appreciation of and admiration for man’s strivings. This attitude was made evident by the dignity, courtesy and deference which were the most noteworthy outer qualities of Bohlen the man, who made his career in diplomacy.

R.B. Saigon

IN MEMORIAM JOHN CALVIN HILL 1921-1973

/ only know the night was cold outside, with harsh unpitying light of piled up snows; inside the dim blurred white of rubber-matted corridors. The quiet tread of nurses in the

gloom whispered, but no murmur came from the darkened sick-room.

And finally she came to tel! me he was dead, so I picked up my foolish hat and

walked along the street, while overhead the moon shone and the stars were much too bright . . . as if God had been kind or the world right.

WILLIAM A. KRAUSS

A Salute to a Colleague

Retired Ambassador Nathaniel P. Davis died in Winter Park on the evening of September 12, 1973. He passed away quietly and peace¬ fully while reading in a home he had recently acquired after decid¬ ing to transfer his permanent resi¬ dence from the severe winters of Glens Falls, N.Y. to the milder climate of Florida.

Pen, as he was known to all of his friends and associates, be¬ longed to a generation of Foreign Service officers that is rapidly dis¬ appearing. Most of his service took place during the period 1920-1950 —an era that saw the great changes brought about by the Rogers Act of

1924 and the Foreign Service Act of 1946. He started at the bottom as a career Vice Consul in 1921 and, in a period when promotions came slowly, as a rule, he reached Class 1 in 1940. Eventually, he attained the goal sought by all officers; he became an Ambassador with the permanent rank of Career Minister and served in Costa Rica and Hun¬ gary. However, my purpose is not to dwell on his successful career but to express appreciation of his qualities as a man and a friend. He served at one time or another as Chief of the Division of Foreign Service and Chief of the Division of Foreign Service Personnel; con¬ sequently he had a very wide ac¬ quaintanceship in the Service. All who brought their problems to him were sure of a sympathetic hearing and a fair decision. Those who worked with him as subordinates or associates came to feel toward him not only loyalty and esteem, but genuine affection.

Today, when the Foreign Serv¬ ice has grown to enormous pro¬ portions, with some loss of a feel¬ ing of fraternity and esprit de corps, the new generation is in¬ clined to forget what things were like in Pen Davis’s time. He worked countless hours of uncom¬ pensated overtime and he probably seldom if ever came home on leave at government expense. Even so, he never felt that he was being mis¬ treated or taken advantage of be¬ cause he loved his work and was convinced that he was doing some¬ thing useful for his country. Awards and citations were practi¬ cally unknown in his day and he never expected either. He would have found it unthinkable to con¬ sider forming a union or any other type of organization to negotiate with the Secretary of State about conditions of employment. It would have been just as logical, in his opinion, to go to the Secretary and demand to be given a certain post.

Well, autres temps, autres moeurs. My purpose is not to make invidious comparisons but to salute a colleague who was not just a suc¬ cessful officer but a man of char¬ acter, integrity and compassion. Those who knew him will join me in mourning his loss.

WILLIAM E. DE COURCY

Ambassador Ret. Winter Park

Election Results AFSA's election votes have

been counted and the Elections Committee has certified the follow¬ ing results:

Total number of ballots cast, 2353; number of ballot envelopes found invalid, 30. Of the votes cast. Tom Boyatt received 1668 for President, John D. Hemenway, 518, Robert T. Willner garnered 3 write-in votes and James S. Sutter- lin and Sandra L. Vogelgesang, 2 each, with 20 other AFSA mem¬ bers getting one write-in each.

For Vice President, Tex Flarris received 1543 votes and his oppo¬ nent, John J. Harter. 649, with 4 write-ins for John D. Hemenway, and 14 others receiving one vote each.

Edwin L. Martin, unopposed candidate for second vice presi¬ dent, garnered 2023 votes, with two write-in votes for Robert H. Harlan and Norman G. Wycoff, respectively, and Rick Melton was elected Secretary with 2020 votes. Lois Roth received 2050 votes tor the Treasurer's position.

AID representatives, Mary Ann Epley and John Patterson, re¬ ceived 338 votes, with Roy A. Harrell, Jr. the write-in candidate on two ballots; State representa¬ tives are Charles Cross (898), Chuck Hoffman (898), Ray Smith (842). and Francine Bowman (804). Robert T. Willner, independent candidate for State representative received 440 votes, with write-in votes for John J. Harter (5) and Robert F. Pfeiffer (2). USIA will be represented on the Governing Board by Carl Gebuhr (205 votes) and two write-in votes were re¬ ceived by Duane L. King.

AFSA's retired constituency elected representatives James W. Riddleberger (394) and William O. Boswell (377).

There were also scattered write- in votes for other positions.

Capsule biographies of the new officers and representatives follow:

ELECTIONS NOTICE

For 45 calendar days following pub¬ lication of this provision, the Elec¬ tions Committee shall accept for consideration any formal, written complaint by a Member on the con¬ duct of the 1973 elections; and the Committee shall respond in writing to each such complaint within 30 calendar days of its receipt. Any complaint so submitted and consid¬ ered and which is not thereby re¬ solved shall be regarded as open to further consideration in accordance with the provisions of E.O. 11636.

Elections Committee

Achievement Slate TOM BOYATT (FSO 3) NEA

Country Director; decorated by Department for valor; winner of the Rivkin Award for creative dis¬ sent; AFSA Chapter organizer and committtee member for 10 years; manager of AFSA’s successful election campaigns for exclusive representation of State, AID, and USIA.

TEX HARRIS (FSO 5) Office of Trade; Board Vice Chairman; spent 17 months in 1972-73 as AFSA's full-time Counselor: lawyer; drafter of new AFSA Con¬ stitution and the Pell Amendment which guarantees rank order pro¬ motions in the Service.

EDWIN L. MARTIN (FSR 2) Education Adviser in AID; former President of Trenton State Col¬ lege; Co-Chairman of AFSA's campaign for election as exclusive representative in AID; co-organ¬ izer of AFSA's AID Advisory Group; currently AID/AFSA Chief Negotiator.

RICK MELTON (FSO 4) Dep¬ uty Director, Policy Planning, ARA; member of AFSA's Com¬ mittee of Forty which did the groundwork for E.O. 11636; cur¬ rent Chairman of AFSA's State Department negotiating group.

LOIS ROTH (FSIO 3) Western European Area, USIA; activist in

AFSA’s Tehran Chapter for five years; AFSA Board liaison with the Foreign Service JOURNAL;

serves on the Finance Committee; Chairman of AFSA's USIA ne¬ gotiating group.

FRANCINE BOWMAN (FSS 6) Chairperson of the Staff Corps Advisory Committee; organizer of AFSA’s demarche on overtime; member of the board of the Women’s Action Organization; principal drafter of the Bill of Rights for Secretaries.

CHARLES CROSS (FSO I) Policy Planning Staff; former Am¬ bassador to Singapore following several posts in the Far East; began in USIA and has also served in AID: Chairman of AFSA's Awards Committee.

CHUCK HOFFMAN (FSSO 2) Chief of the Maintenance Branch of the Office of Communi¬ cations; member of the Staff Corps Advisory Committee; appointed to AFSA Board in June 1973 on Jim Holmes’ departure.

RAY SMITH (FSO 6) Country Officer for Sudan; former labor re¬ lations examiner with NLRB; or¬ ganizer of AFSA's Tunis Chapter; currently serving as Treasurer of JFSOC and Acting Treasurer of AFSA.

MARY ANN EPLEY (FSS 7) Secretary in the Supporting Assist¬ ance Bureau, AID; organizer of first open meeting for AID FSS; member of AID/AFSA Election Committee and currently Chair¬ man of AFSA's AID group.

JOHN PATTERSON (FSR 4) Office of Development Adminis¬ tration. AID: organizer of AFSA’s Kabul Chapter in 1970; Chairman, AFSA's Steering Committee; Chairman, AFSA/A1D personnel negotiating group.

JAMES W. RIDDLEBERGER (Career Ambassador-ret.) Asst Prof. International Relations, Georgetown U. 1926-29; Tariff Commission 1927-29. Entered Foreign Service 1929, serving prin-

FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL. February, 1974 37

cipally in Europe and in State De¬ partment on European affairs in 1930s and 1940s, including tours of duty as POLAD to CINCEUR and HICOM, Germany in late 1940s. On loan to ECA 1950-53. Ambassador to Yugoslavia 1953- 58; to Greece 1958-59. Director 1C A 1959-61. Chairman, Devel¬ opment Assistance Group in Paris 1961- 62. Ambassador to Austria 1962- 68. Retired 1968. Serving since 1968 with the Population Crisis Committee, 1835 K St., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20006.

WILLIAM O. BOSWELL (FSO-ret.) Entered Foreign Ser¬ vice 1939 and until mid 1960s served mainly in diplomatic and consular posts in Europe. Was Consul General in Rome and in Milan 1955-58. Served as DCM and Consul General with Personal Rank of Minister in Cairo 1962-1965. Performed personnel work in State Department 1950-53 and 1965-68. Was Director of Of¬ fice of Security SC A. 1959-62. Served in International Confer¬ ences in State Department 1968-70 until retirement.

THIS MONTH IN WASHINGTON By Rick Williamson

This month, your trusty AFSA Counselor spent two weeks in California visiting family (via a DSRA Charter—everything possi¬ ble went wrong on the flight out, but you can’t beat the price). It turned out to be one of the best months for AFSA in recent mem¬ ory . . . Which says a lot about my irreplaceability. Last month 1 promised to do an interview with those heating-grate bums. Unfor¬ tunately, the Washington POST, having scooped the nation on Watergate, now has a reputation to maintain. Having learned perhaps from “This Month in Washington” of the possibilities of a story of in¬ ternational interest, the POST got an exclusive interview while we basked in the California sun. By popular demand, we will try to get reprint rights to bring you this ex¬ citing exclusive.

The month saw the political temperatures in Washington heat back up, and the Redskins cool off. Both were predictable, both re¬ grettable. The collapse of the Red¬ skins meant that there would be no Super Bowl madness in Washing¬ ton, forcing us all to concentrate on 38 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL. February, 1974

the nation’s political problems, and on those strange colored corridors they keep painting in New State with reckless abandon.

This was the month that the bal¬ lots were counted for the AFSA elections. There had been some thought that the vote turnout for the election would be rather light. In reality, the problem was the other way around. Verifying, sort¬ ing, and counting ballots proved to be a major exercise, but Mike Gannett, as Chairman, had done an excellent job of organizing his Elections Committee to handle the workload. A full report of the elec¬ tion results appears elsewhere in the AFSA News. On January 15, as provided for in the Bylaws, re¬ sponsibility for running the As¬ sociation’s affairs was passed from the old Board to the new.

This month also saw the begin¬ ning of our luncheon series. How¬ ard Schaffer, Chairman of the Luncheon Committee, has done a fine job of organizing an excellent program which focuses on foreign ambassadors in Washington. The guest speaker at the first luncheon was Ambassador Ortona, of Italy. In his remarks, Ambassador Or¬ tona emphasized the long-standing and positive contributions which Italy has made to European inte¬ gration. The speaker at the second in our luncheon series was Mexi¬ can Ambassador to the United States, Senor Ottaqui. Ambas¬ sador Ottaqui was introduced by Ambassador Jova, who had just been sworn in as American Am¬ bassador to Mexico. Ambassador Ottaqui stressed the unresolved problems in hemispheric relations, and emphasized the need for a con¬ tinuing dialogue between the United States and the countries of Latin America. Both luncheons were very well attended.

As we reported last month, the Secretary had ordered the Director General to undertake a thorough study of the cone system. Given this opportunity to present our views to the Director General and independently to the Secretary, we sent a circular cable to all overseas posts requesting the views of AFSA members on the cone sys¬ tem. Shortly thereafter, we re¬ ceived a second request from man¬ agement to work together to estab¬ lish priorities for those members’ interests proposals which AFSA

had already raised during the negotiations which had major budgetary implications. Accord¬ ingly, we again used the cable agreement (which permits AFSA use of the Department’s telecom¬ munications system when man¬ agement needs a rapid response from AFSA for which we need to communicate with the mem¬ bership) to ask for views on the re¬ lative priorities on five items.

We received responses from over 75 AFSA organizations over¬ seas (representing yet a larger number of posts) on the cone sys¬ tem study. We received an even larger number of responses from our overseas organizations on the priorities on the members’ interests questions. The overwhelming re¬ sponse which our cables received, and the amount of careful analysis which went into several of the re¬ sponses, was very gratifying. Taken together, the response to the two cables constitutes the most widespread and indepth Service pulse-taking ever attempted by AFSA, and permits us to pass our responses to management not only on comments received in Washing¬ ton, but also from the vast bulk of our members overseas. We have already tallied the responses on members’ interests, and have in¬ formed management of the result¬ ing priorities. We have also nearly finished our comments on the cone system, and will be submitting these directly to the Secretary this week. We will send out a summary of the comments received on the cone system shortly via a “red top.”

This month also saw a ruling by Judge Gesell of the Federal Dis¬ trict Court on selection out. As we indicate elsewhere in the AFSA News, the Judge in his ruling closely followed the principal rec¬ ommendations of AFSA’s friend- of-the-court brief, namely, that selection out is useful and should be retained, but that present pro¬ cedures for selection out in State and US1A lack adequate due proc¬ ess safeguards.

In USIA, we are currently seek¬ ing to negotiate an agreement to safeguard the promotion process, similar to the agreement which we already have signed in State. The Agency is inexplicably dragging its feet on an issue central to the integ¬ rity of promotion process, and we

may have to take the issue to the Disputes Panel in order to get it re¬ solved.

The big news in AID is that Foreign Service retirement finally passed both Houses of Congress and was signed by the President (more on this below). This month, we finally received the findings of fact and recommendations of the Disputes Panel in the case involv¬ ing ship travel for AID personnel. The Disputes Panel found entirely in AFSA’s favor, which is a major victory for the Association and for AID personnel. The final step in this process requires a decision by the Board of the Foreign Service. We trust that the Board will in fact confirm the Disputes Panel's rec¬ ommendations and permit AID personnel the same limited rights to use American vessels that are al¬ ready enjoyed by State and USIA personnel. We also continue to make some progress with AID on a number of outstanding issues, par¬ ticularly the new Personnel Hand¬ book and the establishment of a policy of conversion of limited status employees.

AID EMPLOYEES FINALLY RECEIVE FOREIGN SERVICE RETIREMENT

After six years of persistent ef¬ fort on the part of the Association, a major step forward has finally been taken by Congress on behalf of AID employees. The 1973 Foreign Assistance Act was signed into law by the President this past month. This bill provides that all career AID employees may be¬ come eligible for Foreign Service retirement, and beginning in 1975 all Foreign Service employees in AID will automatically be covered under the Foreign Service Retire¬ ment System. Achieving this goal has been a protracted uphill fight for the Association. AID was un- enthusiastic and for years only gave halfhearted support, but under prodding from AFSA gradu¬ ally came to recognize that Foreign Service retirement for AID em¬ ployees would not only be in the interest of AID employees but also of the Agency. We also had a major selling job to do on the Hill. Re¬ peated representations on AFSA’s part, particularly on the Senate side, were needed to reduce sub¬ stantial opposition to this move. Again this year, we worked with a number of friendly Congressmen

and Senators to get this provision put into law. AID employees, who almost without exception serve in the less developed areas of the world, share the same or even greater hardships than their Foreign Service colleagues in State and USIA, and thus have long mer¬ ited Foreign Service retirement. As welcome as this step is, it is but one of many needed to be taken in AID before we have a genuinely unified Foreign Service.

Selection Out On December 12 the Federal

District Court in Washington, closely following the recommenda¬ tions of AFSA’s friend-of-the- court brief, decided that the selec¬ tion out system in State and USIA should be preserved. However, Judge Gesell characterized the present limited hearing procedures as “constitutionally defective.”

The court set forth the minimum safeguards it considered essential when an officer in State or USIA is identified for possible selection out:

• the officer must be advised of the facts upon which selection board recommendations are based;

• the officer must have full ac¬ cess to all materials available to the board in reaching this recommen¬ dation; and

• the officer must have an ade¬ quate hearing enabling him or her to appear with counsel before a final review panel and to interro¬ gate adverse witnesses and present evidence.

The specific result of the court ruling is that the three plaintiffs in this case, who sued on behalf of themselves and other officers —about ten—currently being con¬ sidered for selection out because of substandard performance, now have the right to request a formal hearing. If, after the hearing, the final administrative determination is made by State or USIA to sepa¬ rate any of them from the Service, no further remedy will be afforded them as a result of the present deci¬ sion. Any officer so affected should immediately contact Tex Harris, or Dick Finn (chairman of the AFSA Legal Committee) do AFSA.

The court decision is of great significance, not only for its hold¬ ing that due process requires a fair hearing for officers under consid¬ eration for selection out because of

substandard performance, but also because:

• Selection out for time-in-class is not affected.

• Selection out for substandard performance is in other respects maintained.

• The right of an officer to see all materials relating to his case which were considered by a selec¬ tion board is clearly affirmed, as is his right to an adequate statement of reasons for a selection board recommendation that he be selected out.

Judge Gesell’s decision accords in every important respect with the brief filed by AFSA in this case on August 31, 1973: officers should see all relevant documents consi¬ dered by selection boards; officers should receive a statement of reasons why they were placed in the selection out zone; and they should have the right to a fair hear¬ ing with opportunity to be rep¬ resented by counsel, to present jus¬ tifying documents and information and to challenge adverse state¬ ments. AFSA strongly supported the principle of selection out as necessary to a vigorous and com¬ petitive service, a position which the court decision supported.

FOREIGN SERVICE ARTISTS This month’s JOURNAL cover is

the work, of Becky Wolford, 17-year-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Richard F. Wolford. Becky won first place in the junior cate¬ gory in the 1972 State-USIA Rec¬ reation Association art show and her paintings are to be exhibited in the Poto Mitan gallery in Port-au- Prince this year.

The Corcoran Gallery is present¬ ing an exhibit of the work of Sheila Isham, a frequent contributor to the JOURNAL, in February and March. The exhibit is entitled “Sheila Isham: Paintings 1969- 1973” and the catalog features an introduction by Roy Slade, Direc¬ tor of the gallery, and an insightful essay by Edward Fry. Mr. Fry writes, “After more than a decade of quiet and persistent develop¬ ment, Sheila Isham has reached a level of realization in her art that is exemplary for its fusion of image and intention. Her present achieve¬ ments—the orchestration of com¬ plex and subtly modulated color in paintings of monumental scale— are totally satisfying as perceptual experiences.”

FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February, 1974 39

r"C> I SPECIAL SERVICES

REAL ESTATE

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APARTMENT FOR SALE BY OWNER, LARGO AREA, $22,000 SPACIOUS 1-BEDROOM CONDO, lived in less than 1 year by original owner; 2nd floor with cook-out balcony; pool. Adjacent Prince George's Community College. By appointment only. CALL 350-3610 EVENINGS & WEEKENDS.

EDUCATION

ST. JOHNSBURY ACADEMY—Coed, board¬ ing. Grades 9-12 & Post Graduate. Broad College Prep plus vocational. Small city in mountain environment. All sports plus camping, skiing next door. Many electives. Individual guidance. Active social program. Community projects. Admissions Director, 8 Main St., St. Johnsbury, Vermont 05819.

COMING EVENT

HOW YOU COULD BE EARNING SOCIAL SECURITY COVERAGE NOW: By popular demand, this seminar, presented by Mr. Grover J. REES, Jr., Director of Investment Planning for Reynolds Securities, Inc. Members of the New York Stock Exchange, will be given again on Thursday, February 21, from 12:00-1:00 PM, in the East auditorium, Dept, of State.

The seminar covers the various ways that YOU can qualify for Social Security benefits in addition to all your existing benefits. For example, did you know that it’s possible to merely invest your money—not your time or effort—and get this coverage? These TAX-FREE benefits include: A RETIREMENT ANNUITY (for your¬ self and family); FAMILY INSURANCE (for widows and dependents); DISABILITY BENEFITS; FREE MEDICARE (Part I)—If you have any further questions, please call Mr. REES at 296-2770 (if no answer, call 530- 8515) or write to him c/o REYNOLDS SECURITIES, Inc., 1735 K Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006.

Tax Services

TAX PROBLEMS? It’s that time of year again. If you need professional help, call or write Jim Mills. I've helped many of your colleagues over the years. JAMES M. H. MILLS & CO., CHARTERED, 1730 M St., N.W., Suite 511, Washington, D.C. 20036, (202) 785-9494. 40 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL, February, 1974

MARRIAGES

Keeler-Rochow. Prudence Gloria Keeler was married to FSIO Joel Wendell Rochow on November 17, in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. Mrs. Rochow formerly taught at the American International School in Warsaw. Mr. and Mrs. Rochow will reside in Washington.

Maurer-Belcher.Marila Maurer was married to Taylor Belcher 111, son of Ambassador and Mrs. Taylor G. Belcher, in Lima, on December 15.

BIRTHS

Chaplin. A son, Christopher David, born to FSIO and Mrs. Stephen M. Chaplin, on September 27, in Washington. May. A son, Fred L.ester, born to FSO and Mrs. James A. May, on November 21, in Asmara.

DEATHS Adams. Robert M. Adams, Jr., AFSA Associate, died on June 17, in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He was with the Public Members Associa¬ tion. Mr. Adams is survived by his wife, of Edgewater Dr., Edgewa- ter, Maryland 21037, a son, two daughters and five grandchildren. Bohlen. Charles E. (Chip) Bohlen, Ambassador-retired, died on January 1, in Washington. Ambas¬ sador Bohlen entered the Foreign Service in 1929 and served at Prague, Paris, Moscow, Tokyo, Paris and as Ambassador to the USSR, to the Republic of the Philippines and to France. He served as Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 1968 until his retirement in 1969. His memoirs, “Witness to History, 1929-1969,” were published last May by W. W. Norton. Ambas¬ sador Bohlen is survived by his wife, 2811 Dumbarton Avenue, N.W.. Washington 20007, two daughters, Avis Thayer and Celes- tine, a son, Charles Eustis, Jr., and a sister, Ellen, of London. Memo¬ rial contributions may be made to either the American Cancer Soci¬ ety or the American Foreign Service Association Scholarship Fund. Cusick. Thomas W. Cusick, Foreign Buildings Officer, died on December 28 in Brasilia. Mr.

Cusick entered on duty with AID in 1967, with State in 1971, serving at Amman and Ankara before his assignment to the Department. He is survived by his wife, c/o Henry Savaet, 4128 Windsor Road, Youngstown, Ohio 44512. Hill. John Calvin Hill, FSO, died on December 26, in Washington. Mr. Hill entered the Foreign Ser¬ vice in 1947 and served at Bucharest, Trieste, Guatemala, Bangkok, Ciudad Trujillo, Santo Domingo and Caracas. He was as¬ signed to the Inspector General’s Office at the time of his death. Mr. Hill was credited by President Kennedy with working out the formula for a provisional govern¬ ment in the Dominican Republic in 1961. He is survived by his wife, McCoy Metts Hill. 1615 33rd St, N.W., Washington, 20007 and three children, John, Catherine and Isabel. Hope. Janet Barker Hope, wife of FSO-retired A. Guy Hope, died on December 19 in Richmond. Mrs. Hope joined the Service in 1940, serving at Niagara Falls, Cairo, in Albania and Italy, and at Shanghai. At the time of her marriage in 1949 she was on the staff of FS1. Dr. Hope writes, “Wherever we have served, whether in F.S. and De¬ partment positions or in the academic world which I have in¬ habited since my retirement as an FSO in 1964, she has made many friends, aided many charities, looked after many foreigners . . . She is the co-author of our ‘Sym¬ bols of the Nations,' just published on UN Day. Mrs. Hope is sur¬ vived by her husband, 2011 Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia 23220. two daughters, and her mother, Mrs. John Barker of Glens Falls, N.Y. Quin. Frederick S. Quin, FSO. died on January 9, in Washington. Mr. Quin entered the Foreign Ser¬ vice in 1957 and served at Algiers, Stockholm, Quebec and Reyk¬ javik, where he was political officer from 1971 until his return here last October. He is survived by his wife, Diana Scott-Smith Quin, and four children, Douglas Hyder, Ali¬ son Joan. Miles Gordon and Colin Wyndham, of 11601 Virgate Lane. Reston, Virginia and his mother, Mrs. John H. Quin of Rochester, New York. Memorial contribu¬ tions may be made to the AFSA Scholarship Fund.

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