Dan Drezner is pondering how to answer all the people who ask him “how do you successfully pursue a career in foreign policy?”. He finds that Peter Singer at Brookings proffers the following advice:
[M]ulti-taskers tend to advance further than pure specialists. People who can also convene and bring people, programs, and events together are more likely to advance to the leadership level than people who lock themselves away and only write. That is, when you look around at who is in the leadership positions in this field at think tanks, NGOs and the like, it is not merely people who are good writers but people who bring other skills to the table: management, organizational process, strategy, budgeting, fundraising, etc. The funny thing is that many of these skills get absolutely no nourishment within the education backgrounds that typically bring people into the foreign-policy field. Most people either come in with a politics degree or a law degree, but the skills often called upon at the leadership level are of the MBA variety. As you focus on what sort of activities to undertake and skills to build on early in your career, I would keep this in mind.
Dan himself isn’t so sure:
If you want to move up the bureaucratic food chain, then by all means Singer is correct. If, on the other hand, you actually want to influence a specific set of policies, then specialization also has its merits.
But I like the guy on the comments section who says:
1. Pass the Foreign Service exam
2. “Serve” (issue/deny visas) at a US Embassy in a god-forsaken country
3. Muddle through a Washington-based assignment
4. Serve in a better position in a slightly-less god-forsaken country
5. Return to Washington and a “policy” position
6. Realize experience in foreign affairs and foreign policy are not worth much in the academic world
7. Join the political risk desk at ExxonMobil or Fidelity
