(bright music) - Tonight, we're talking diplomacy and the importance of having ambassadors around the world, representing the US.

Ambassador Charles Ray served our country for 20 years in the army, and then for 30 years as a diplomat assigned to places like China, Thailand, Vietnam, and many other countries.

He's also a former Deputy Secretary of Defense and an author, Ambassador, thanks for joining us, we appreciate it.

- My pleasure, thanks for having me.

- Tell us what you've been doing in Illinois this week.

- Well, I came up on Tuesday, and went first to Springfield, where I met with a number of student groups, mostly college, community college up there, talking not just about this blueprint for modern diplomatic service, but also careers as a diplomat.

Some of these kids are really interested in foreign relations and international relations.

And then, I came to play at Peoria, you know, I just learned yesterday what that phrase actually means, that the old vaudeville days.

- Sure.

- So yesterday, I played it in Peoria to the World Affairs Council here, to some high school students, incredibly talented young people.

And that's basically what I've been doing is talking to people about diplomacy and diplomats and what they do for the everyday person on the street.

I mean, that it's not a bunch of people walking around in cocktail party dress and, you know, at these fancy receptions, but that, we in the diplomatic service, impact your daily lives in ways that you're only aware of when we fail.

And the example I gave to the audiences here that I gave once to a high school group in Houston, Texas, the shoes you wear, those expensive, incredibly expensive running shoes, are a great international relations lab because there's about five or eight countries involved in the manufacturer and delivery of a pair of Nike shoes.

And that's basically what I've been doing here is just talking about the role that diplomacy plays in the day-to-day life of people of this country, and how important it is to have a diplomatic service that's able to compete effectively anywhere in the world on any issue at any time.

- Well give us a better idea of what you would do in a day-to-day role, especially if you're assigned to a country that maybe isn't friends with the US or not friendly towards our country and culture, what are some of the things that you do as a liaison to our country to kind of warm that relationship?

- Well, I mean, well, to start with, the one thing, and I spent a lot of my diplomatic career in countries that didn't have friendly relations with the US.

But, you know, the first thing that I do is remind myself of what the basic mission of a diplomat is.

And that is, it's not to make friends, contrary to what people might believe, being a diplomat, your job is not to make friends.

Your job is to establish and maintain an effective working relationship, and that's two different things.

I mean, we can be friends with people and not be able to work with 'em very well.

But you can be enemies and work.

And the basic role of a diplomat is to represent your country's interests where you are, and to take care of your country's people who happen to be where you are.

And then you do that by being able to talk to the people who run things in that country.

And whether you agree or disagree is irrelevant, to be able to get things done that are mutually beneficial to both sides.

I mean, my mantra and how I tell all the people who've worked for me over the years is the first thing you learn to do is listen more than you talk.

And the second thing you learn to do is to disagree with people without becoming disagreeable.

And the third thing you do is to remember, you're not there to make friends and you're not there to make enemies, you're there to make contacts, and that's what you do.

You know, you can't look at movies and TV in this country and figure out what an embassy does or a diplomat does, like you can with the military, although, I think even the war stories are a little weird too.

But most people have no idea what, you know, diplomats, an embassy is like, it's like City Hall overseas for an American citizen.

Forget about the, you know, negotiating treaties and talking to foreign ministers, we issue birth certificates, we issue death certificates, we help people who are in jail, we help people who are sick and in the hospital, we help American companies navigate the Byzantine business regulations of countries, and, you know, we do things for people in a foreign country what City Hall does for people here in the US, we look out for their interest.

And most people don't realize that because it's the type of thing that, when it works, you don't notice it.

You know, it's like breathing, you can't see the air you breathe, and you don't even notice it until it's no longer there.

Well, that's what we do as diplomats overseas, we're the air you breathe, and it's only when we screw up do you recognize that we're not there.

That sounds hokey, but it's just that routine, it really is just that routine.

I mean, I spent 30 years as a diplomat, the first 10 years, I've probably issued over a thousand birth certificates.

I mean, there are at least a thousand Americans walking around who have my name on their birth certificate, also issued about twice that number of death certificates.

I've presided over funerals, it's one of the less pleasant tasks.

But I've dealt with Americans in some of their darkest moments and in some of their brightest moments, and the people who I work with probably remember it, but, you know, they go back home, do they tell their neighbors and friends what happened?

Probably not, because, you know, you go back to your life.

That's what diplomacy is, that's what diplomats are.

And so, whether you're in a country that has good relations with the US or you're in a country that doesn't have good relations with the US, your job's still the same, your job is to establish the effective working relationships that allow you to serve the interest of the American people.

- Well, how did you transition from being in the army to being a diplomat?

Is that something you had your eyes on, or was it something that fell in your lap?

How did that work?

- That's a good description, fell in my lap.

After 20 years in the Army, I was getting ready to retire, and I had looked at, actually, I had a job offer that was quite good.

The problem was that I joined the Army at 17, and I've never done a nine to five job in my life.

I honestly was having some angst about transitioning to that kind of life, I didn't know if I could do it, frankly.

At the time, I was assigned to the Defense Language School in Monterey, California, as of all things, a Slavic language training advisor, I was an Asian specialist, but that's a whole other bureaucratic story there.

But I was friends with our post librarian, who was a very intelligent woman who wasn't even an American citizen, she was a French-Senegalese.

And we shared confidences, and I shared with her my concern about, "I don't know if I can be a civilian."

I really didn't think that I would be able to effectively make the transition.

And she just sort of said, "Well, you should be a diplomat."

And this might seem strange, after 20 years in the military being all over the place, working with embassies, I had no idea how people in embassies got their jobs.

I'd never really thought about it, but that's what got me to apply.

And I applied for the test, I passed the test, and they hired me.

- I think a lot of people probably don't understand that whole process, we'll talk about that a little bit more.

We also wanna talk about the future of diplomacy, and we're gonna talk about a report that gives recommendations on how to improve our diplomatic efforts, our Phil Luciano has some highlights of that report.

- [Phil] How can the United States improve diplomacy to better ensure peace, expand freedom, and create markets?

September, 2022 saw the release of Blueprints for a More Modern US Diplomatic Service.

The 216-page report was spearheaded by Arizona State University's Leadership, Diplomacy and National Security Lab.

The action plan touches on four vital areas.

America's diplomats must boast political expertise and strategic thinking, especially at the top.

Whereas advancement now is often based on politics, the blueprint emphasizes practical factors, like leadership and experience.

The world is becoming increasingly complex and dangerous.

The State Department needs to provide diplomats with more opportunities for ongoing training.

The State Department must become more modern, flexible, transparent, diverse, and strategic.

The blueprint sketches pathways to produce senior leaders with multifaceted relevant skills and experience.

Each branch of the military has a reserve corps for emergencies, the same is needed for the State Department, which, in so many ways, is America's first line of defense.

The Diplomatic Reserve Corps would enable adding staffing during political crises.

- So, Ambassador, with this report, do you feel like this is going give us a better blueprint on how to recruit more people into the diplomatic service area?

- The blueprint, as we envision it, is much broader than that.

Because one of the problems that we discovered, this was actually the second phase of a project that started at Harvard back in about 2019.

Recruiting wasn't really our problem, we actually were hitting all of the marks in recruiting people.

But the problem which we discovered belatedly, was that we weren't retaining the proper people and the proper numbers, and this was across the board.

I mean, it arose on issues of diversity, when we discovered, for example, that in 2022, the numbers and statistics, I'm sorry, the statistics and status of diversity for gender and ethnicity and the like, were actually worse than they were in 1980.

And the reason we discovered they were is because people were coming in, but then, at some point, not very long into their career, they were going out and no one was tracking to find out why.

So as we worked on the blueprint in 2022 from about January to September, we focused on four major areas that would improve the service capability as a whole, and recruiting actually was just a small part of it.

The issues had to do with, first of all, what's the mission and mandate and the understanding of that of the State Department and the Foreign Service or diplomatic service as a whole.

Do we, that is we who are doing it, the politicians, the senior policy makers and the American public, understand what the role of the diplomatic establishments should be, and have we made sure that everyone knows what it is so that, I mean, do we have the proper marching orders?

So that was issue one, the mission and mandate of the Foreign Service and the State Department.

Then we looked at personnel, are we recruiting the right, not just the right numbers of personnel, but the right skills?

And are we providing them with the feeling of belonging so that they become invested in the institution as a career?

And that includes taking care of their families, I mean, unlike the military, 20 years in the military, my family traveled with me to a lot of places, the military has a lot of unaccompanied assignments.

The State Department, the Foreign Service has very few unaccompanied assignments.

My wife and two youngest children were with me in Sierra Leone in 1993 in the midst of a rebel war.

So you know, in establishing a sense of people feeling that they belong to an organization, you have to include their families and that includes the whole range.

If you have someone who has a spouse who has a career, and you wanna send this person somewhere, what happens to the spouse?

Does he or she have to put a career on hold?

Do they have to split up?

I mean, these are all issues that the institution has to be aware of, has to take into account in its policies.

Are people being given the right training?

And are they being encouraged or incentivized, if you will, to maintain a career-long process of education to constantly better themselves?

One of the issues in the State Department, in the Foreign Services, it's an education averse culture.

Basically, people in the Foreign Service feel that every hour spent in a classroom is an hour you're not competing for promotion because it's not like the civil service where you get hired and that's what you are until you die or retire, we compete for promotion, and there's this cultural mindset that if you're sitting in a classroom, the people out there on the job are outpacing you.

We need to change that culture.

And then, the other is to ensure overall that we have the right numbers of people with the right skills, able to be put in the right place at the right time.

And that included looking at the assignment system, looking at the recruitment system, and looking at what we do to retain.

And then, finally, the one issue was in building a capacity to respond to emergencies and unusual events by creating a diplomatic reserve corps, on the model of military reserves, citizen diplomats who, living in their communities, they have their jobs and careers, but they're members of the reserves who devote a week or two a year to training and who are available for deployment when needed with the reemployment rights, just like military reservists, who also served, by the way, as spokespersons for the State Department in their communities.

We don't have that now, I mean, I was just noticing here in Peoria this morning, in my hotel, I noticed several people in uniform.

So, you know, you have military people all over the country, in communities, large and small, you don't have diplomats all over the country.

With this reserve corps, we could have that, although, not quite the, I mean, we're not looking at several hundred thousand people, we were proposing a reserve corps of 1,000 people, which actually would help us to meet all of the foreseeable emergency needs.

As, for example, as I mentioned to a group last night, right now, because of the situation in Israel with the Israeli/Hamas thing, we probably have 60 or more people on a task force in the Department of State 24/7 dealing with that emergency.

And they came from jobs all around the Foreign Service in the department, which means those jobs aren't being done right now.

- Okay.

- And so, that's really what the blueprint was, not just how to improve recruiting, because basically a little tinkering here and there will take care of the recruiting, but recruiting, it's not the answer, it's a component of the answer.

Once you recruit, you have to train, educate, inspire, and retain.

- Well, I'm curious about the recruiting aspect of it.

Tell us from an education standpoint what someone might be looking for in a diplomat, but maybe more importantly, from a personality aspect, the kind of thing that you want in your ideal diplomat.

- Well, look, I can answer that best by starting with your second question.

We look, when we recruit, more at the personality aspect than the transcript.

I mean, we check their college transcripts and their educational record, not so much to see if they've studied this course or that course, but to see if they've got a well-rounded education and they did a good job in acquiring that education, because, you know, there's no you need a degree in this or that to be an effective diplomat.

To be an effective diplomat, you need to have an affinity for foreign cultures, an ability to learn foreign languages, be comfortable with ambiguity, be flexible, be a problem solver.

We look for people like that, people who are interested and able to deal with cultural diversity and who are able to work in situations that are sometimes not totally clear.

Because diplomacy is not, the mission of diplomacy is never ending, you know?

And one of the things that I've done and had to do for almost 40 plus years now in talking to people is, while we do and should take best practices of the military and adapt them to our career and our profession, we're not the military.

The military is a mission-oriented organization that gets a discreet, its function is to defend the country, but it carries that out by conducting very discreet missions.

Blow up this, take that, do this, and you're done.

In diplomacy, you're sent somewhere to maintain a relationship, that's never ending.

And so, you need people who can look at the tasks that they have to achieve over any given period, as part of, not a, "I do this and I'm done," but part of this, it's like breathing, I mean, you breathe in, you breathe out.

- And sometimes, depending on the conditions, it's very difficult.

- It's very difficult, but you better keep doing it.

(chuckles) - Certainly, well, Ambassador Ray, we appreciate your time tonight.

It was very, very informative and good luck on the rest of your tour across the country.

- Thank you.

- Appreciate it.

- Thank you very much.

My friend, Phil Luciano, joining us now on set, that was an interesting interview.

- He's a very interesting guy, very well-spoken, very thoughtful.

You can see where he could be an ambassador, right?

He's just kind of- - [Mark] Levelheaded.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

One of the things you guys didn't get a chance to get to, but I talked to him offset is one of the books he's written.

And I found the title fascinating, it's "Things I Learned From my Grandmother About Leadership and Life".

And I haven't had a chance to read the book yet and I want to, but I was asking him, "Okay, what's the biggest lessons that you learned from your grandma?"

And I guess she was this tough spitfire from East Texas, and he said the two biggest things were treat others as you would want to be treated, you know, be respectful, but don't take any guff, she didn't use the word guff, don't take any guff from anyone.

And you think about those things, you know, treat others respectfully and stand up for yourself, these are like lessons you learn or we're supposed to learn in kindergarten, right?

And that's what has served him all this time.

And what he was talking about was interesting too, about what one needs to do as an ambassador.

He said, "You have to learn to listen more than talk," you know, you don't wanna be the ugly American, you wanna listen to what's going on.

And you also want to, you can disagree, but don't be disagreeable, but in other words, be polite.

So you think about that, that you wanna be attentive, listen, and you also wanna be polite, again, things we're supposed to learn in kindergarten, but you think about what ambassadors do, they further US interests, but, meantime, they're keeping the world from blowing up, right?

I mean, this is big stuff and we don't hear about 'em, which is great, I mean, they're doing what they need to do, and all they're doing is, or not all, but the core things they do, be respectful and listen.

And man, we should have kindergartners or students or teachers out there doing all this stuff, right?

- No kidding, and I thought it was interesting that he said, "Our job there is not to make friends, you don't wanna make them an enemy."

But I just kind of assumed, you know, you go to a foreign country, maybe you don't know the language, you probably don't know the language.

And I would say, "Okay, well can we do this?

Can we do that?"

No, this is how we wanna do things and trying to keep everybody getting along while standing your ground.

- Here's how we wanna do things and what can we do for you and all that teamwork type stuff, and that certainly takes quite the touch.

But I gotta tell you, you know, I never, I mean, like most people, I don't think about ambassadors and diplomacy, but you know, he's going around to all these schools.

He was at UIS, ISU, Bradley, he's been talking to a lot of students, and that's just here, he's going all across the country, right?

But one of the big pushes is, is he was talking about, is there is the recruitment to get more people in, there's more to it, of course, like he was saying.

But if I had known about this when I was a young person, this sounds like a pretty good setup for a job, right?

I mean, you can go around the world, meet new people and you don't have to be like Jason Bourne, you're not necessarily a spy or anything, you can be, you know, public relations or IT or whatever.

And I think there are hundreds and hundreds of these positions that are open.

And so, if you're a college student or a parent of a college student, look into it, you know?

- My high school guidance counselor definitely did not mention US diplomat on my career paths.

I mean, who would've even thought about it?

- No, and my guidance counselor coming to school with the latest black eye or whatever, you know?

No, you're not a diplomat material, but when you find out what it involves and if you are a problem solver, boy, that's a heck of a career to go into.

- It sure is, well, I'm glad we have people like him and, yeah, he's out there trying to recruit the latest generation of us diplomats.

Phil, we've got "You Gotta See This" coming up in just a few minutes.

- Always a great little chunk of what's going on in the area, right?

And I know you've done news for a lot of years, I did news for a lot of years, and one of the things, I'm sure you heard the same thing all the time, was, "Why don't you have more good news stories?"

And I'd say about 95% of the time, that's what "You Gotta See This" does, right?

That's what we're reporting on, so that's where, if you're looking for that in Central Illinois, there's your place to go.

- And if you say, why didn't you cover my events?

Well, you gotta let us know your event's going on, you can get ahold of us at wtvp.org, look for our email addresses.

You can also catch us on Facebook, on our WTVP page.

We're always looking for suggestions and all that kind of fun stuff.

- Please do.

- You never know when the next story could be yours.

Thanks for joining us tonight, we appreciate it.

Again, you can catch us every Thursday night at eight o'clock on WTVP.

"You Gotta See This" is next, have a great night.

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