Q&A > John Blaney

​

What inspired you or motivated you to become a diplomat?

I was recovering in a U.S. Army field hospital overseas in 1971 when a famous U.S. diplomat fell ill and was rushed to that facility. For several days, he generously took time to answer my notes to him about the State Department and his profession, and then encouraged me to consider diplomacy as a career. As a young person with no previous international background, this encounter was fundamental to my decision to pursue a career in the State Department.

Who was your best boss and why?

I was fortunate to work for a number of fine people, and unfortunately worked for others as well. Even the experiences of working for really bad bosses, however, can be instructive.
On how to be an effective diplomat, Frank Wisner, was and is my mentor. Princeton Lyman was superb on stressing intellectual rigor. Susan Rice backed me to the hilt on what I wanted to do in southern Africa, and is a textbook on the virtue of persistence. Similarly, Jim Holmes, who supervised me on nuclear arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union, was a model boss. Although he was not my boss when I was an ambassador, Colin Powell’s and POTUS Bush’s (my boss’s) willingness to take real chances, trust me, and back my plays to end the war in Liberia enabled success there. I will remain grateful to both of them. Finally, my hat is off to Congressman Les Aspin and Senator Paul Simon, both of whom really taught me Washington politics, which I mistakenly thought I already knew.

What would you tell your a-100 self?

Unfortunately, I would have to say to my young self that idealism is fine, but should be tempered by the knowledge that while most people go into the Foreign Service, or otherwise come in to the State Department, to serve honorably their country and its principles, there are others who have neither honor nor any real principles, and are driven by ruthless ambition. Be very careful when dealing with such individuals.

Describe a day you felt you made a difference.

In 2003 I led a small convoy through “no man’s land” and successfully negotiated on the battlefield the end to a terrible 14 year civil war in Liberia. Undoubtedly, that is what I am most known for doing. However, I did that as an ambassador. What I would stress is that one doesn’t have to be an ambassador to make a significant impact.
When I was only a mid-level officer, I found myself assigned as the point man at the Reagan Administration’s first nuclear arms control negotiation with the Soviet Union in Geneva. The subject was how to avoid accidental nuclear war, a real concern even today. At the end of a pressurized day of negotiations, the head of the U.S. delegation and his Soviet counterpart decided to go to dinner. The Soviet ambassador turned to me and said, “You understand what (the Soviet Union) wants, and what (the U.S.) wants. Go back to your room and write what we want.”
It took me and my small staff all night, but we produced a draft that was little changed, and accepted by both sides. Originally a bilateral agreement, the concept and methodology of “Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers” was eventually cloned by other countries as well, and continues not only to reduce the risk of war, but also serves as a primary verification tool for many nuclear and other arms control agreements. Remember, you don’t have to be an ambassador to make a difference.

What has a colleague done for you that made you wish all of us had a colleague like that?

During the siege and bombardment of Embassy Monrovia in 2003, I was allowed to retain only a few staff members. One that I kept was a junior officer, Dante Paradiso. I did so not only because he was my very able factotum, but also because he was an honest and insightful sounding board for me to try out ideas on how to proceed in this life or death situation.
Moreover, he also had invaluable ideas of his own to contribute to handling this crisis. For example, we were having grave problems contacting the rebel army’s commanders, and Dante boldly suggested that I hold a press conference to present my peace plan. At first, I balked because it could cost me credibility since we had not been in contact with the rebels. But, I listened to his arguments, and came around. The rebel commanders hotly denounced what I proposed at that press conference—but much more importantly, we finally and critically had communication with them. 

What was the mistake you learned the most from?

If you want to explain an important personnel related matter about yourself, and get approval from a Chief of Mission (or other senior official) for taking an action, go directly to the Chief of Mission and do not depend on intermediaries. For example, in order to get a critical promotion, I needed a one-year drop of the assignment I was in, but was ready to stay at post if the COM said that my departure would be a problem.
At the request of my immediate boss, I let him explain the situation. He told me that he did so, and that the COM said my early departure would be fine. Later on, however, I found out that the COM hotly resented my departure, and subsequently intervened to prevent me from becoming an ambassador several times. Sometimes, trusting your immediate boss on critical personnel matters like this one is a mistake; go to the horse’s mouth yourself. 

What was your best and worst experience working with the interagency?

The best experience I had was working directly in an interagency context with then Vice President Gore and his senior staff, and then Assistant Secretary Susan Rice, in setting up a system of binational commissions with certain African countries, which comprehensively reviewed bilateral relationships and set out clear paths and programs for improving each one. The interagency representatives worked synergistically and successfully.
The worst episode I had in the interagency process was as U.S. Ambassador to Liberia, when I came under very heavy pressure from certain agencies in Washington to strike the flag and abandon Embassy Monrovia at the climax of Liberia’s civil war. I knew if I yielded, however, the fighting would move downtown amidst more than a million helpless displaced persons who had fled there in terror, and that West Africa would likely collapse into another vast incubator for international terrorism.

What is one tour you would recommend to FSOs to consider?

Definitely get at least one tour outside the State Department fairly early on in your career. For example, my out of agency tour at the U.S. Treasury Department made me a much better economist, and later enabled me and my section at Embassy Moscow to better point out to Washington the Soviet Union’s rapidly growing economic and social instability before it disintegrated. My time working in Congress gave me invaluable perspectives as well. It makes sense to do this just after getting promoted since out of agency assignments seldom result in immediate promotion.

If the State Department had a mascot, what animal should it be?

Unquestionably, the Naked Mole-Rat! This little known African creature confounds science because it can live for long periods underwater without gills by somehow creating its own oxygen metabolically. It survives, blends in and thrives where other animals cannot go. Sound familiar? Further, it is regarded unfairly by most as extraordinarily ugly. In other words, it’s perfect.

What was the biggest challenge of FS life for your family, and how did you manage it?

While some children thrive in FS life, many do not. The realities of losing friends often, changing educational systems, having to adapt to new cultures repeatedly and so forth can be very rough on kids. While we did not completely manage all these sorts of impacts, we did lessen them by trying to be as sensitive as possible to the strong psychological pressures that FS life puts on children.

What is your leadership philosophy?

Be persistent, and remember that when it’s all over, what you did and did not do is what really matters and will remain, not what you wanted to do, or tried to do, or what title you held.

What tips would you give a first-time manager?

Don’t be afraid to be the boss, but while doing so, listen, and try to understand and take care of your people. Loyalty should flow in both directions, but often does not.
Finally, don’t be afraid to change your mind. The best leaders and intellectuals I know change their positions or courses of action when warranted; stubbornness in the face of ever changing facts is a real weakness.

What would you do to change the State Department?

I would move rapidly to de-politicize the State Department by vastly curtailing campaign pork barrel political appointments, an accelerating practice of both political parties. To be sure, there are excellent politically appointed ambassadors and others who have had no previous genuine diplomatic or even governmental experience. But, that is a rarity. Like anything else, diplomatic and government skill sets are learned through experience, and the place to start to learn them in general is not at critical positions near the top. No other government in the world makes this dangerous mistake as frequently. The argument that there are safe places for political ambassadors is no longer valid. Further, I have had a second career in the private sector, and those skill sets are very different. Similarly, I would reduce the politicization of FS professionals, which greatly weakens and divides the State Department. 

What were your pet peeves?

Backstabbing colleagues for the sole purpose of advancing one’s career is a pet peeve of mine. Another is the plethora of 7th floor glib dilettantes that construct highly successful careers by attaching themselves sycophantically to senior officials and thereby vault upwards without having really accomplished much themselves. They often are ineffective later on in senior positions, having spent too little time in the trenches to know what to do when they are in command.

How did you promote diversity and inclusion in your Mission or your office?

When I started out in the Foreign Service, in the mid-1970s, its composition was almost all white males, usually from Ivy League schools. Minorities and women had only token representation in those days, and were sidelined. I later sought to help rectify such biases, especially when I began to supervise my own staff.

Fortunately, things have improved a great deal since then, and we often lose sight of that fact. While looking for opportunities for diversification and inclusion, my priorities always had to be the candidate’s likely impact on the unit’s mission, the qualifications of each candidate for the job, and the readiness of that candidate to succeed in it. Situational differences were and are important. For example, sometimes the mission was so dangerous or delicate that you just had to go with the best candidate likely to contribute the most and be successful—full stop. At other times and in other places, however, you could give the edge to diversity, assuming the candidate was likely to be successful.

These days, a minority or female candidate may well be the most qualified and best suited for the job anyway. But remember, assigning anyone to a job in which they are likely to fail, no matter what pressure there is from personnel, is not doing them or anyone else a favor.

Lastly, don’t forget that inclusion does not stop with paneling someone into your team. Make sure they get into all meetings that are appropriate. Hold office or Embassy-wide meetings where the lowest ranking persons are included, so everyone understands basically what is going on and the general strategy being followed. Hold group lunches and dinners, holiday events, and so forth. In other words, don’t be a prig. Some of your team, including some minority members, will try to opt out, and may think you are corny with all this team building. Make it hard for them to find the door. Team Building can do a lot to break down social barriers and create and strengthen group identity. And, if they think you are old fashioned, just remember you are the boss, and do it anyway. 

How did you and your team respond to “fake news” or disinformation?

Almost every single posting I had overseas bombarded us with disinformation or “fake news” as we would call it today. For example, I was denounced on Soviet television, and my team vilified for alleged attempts to undermine the USSR. Later in my career, Charles Taylor’s Liberia constantly asserted that my Embassy was in league with the attacking rebel armies, and so forth. 

The short answer is to counterpunch. Although I am not someone who seeks the limelight, when possible, I would hold press conferences, go live on CNN, on radio stations, and we would write articles for the press; all in order to tell the local population what we really were doing or thought. In South Africa, for example, I asked Nelson Mandela to help me (as COM) convince the South African public that we really were the victims of 9/11, since many of them thought we had it coming, and there was plenty of disinformation blaming the United States for the attack. He and I immediately held a huge press conference. The next day, millions of flowers surrounded Embassy Pretoria. 

In even tougher environments, where there is no free press and constant monitoring of your team or worse, like the Soviet Union and its KGB, you usually have to meet with both officials and with the people they don’t want you to contact in order to get the truth out and understand what is really happening. So my Embassy Moscow team would talk to academics, church officials, free labor leaders, dissidents, the opposition (like Boris Yeltsin), and others. I would then await my summons to be more or less threatened by Soviet state security. The point is that you can’t ignore disinformation because in the absence of anything else, it becomes what people believe. Fight back.

Who was your “brain trust” or sounding board, and when would you go to them for guidance?

Of course, my various bosses would often task and advise me. But on the whole, I would say that the most influential sounding boards I ever had were my wife, and my many staffs.

When I went back to Washington to accept a promised plum ambassadorship, my assignment was suddenly switched to Liberia because quite a number of other senior officers had declined to go to that terrible war zone. I told my wife I would retire and not go into another dangerous situation where I would be separated for years from my family. She replied sharply that I was going to accept that assignment, and become an ambassador, given everything that we had gone through together to get that far, adding correctly that I would never be offered another post if I turned this one down. So, I did. That’s real Foreign Service guidance.

While I certainly had my share of incompetent or worse bosses, my staffs were generally first-rate and loyal. They made persuasive arguments many times that altered my courses of action. I always insisted that they operate right at the “coal face”, so they usually knew the situational facts very well. I often would call a Country Team meeting or just talk to them individually in order to run my ideas past them. More times than not, I came out of those meetings with an additional thought or two that made my approach stronger, and sometimes such exchanges even altered my course entirely. I have worked in two branches of the U.S. government, in five Executive branch agencies, for the White House, and in several private sector companies. Foreign Service people are the brightest of the lot, so don’t fail to tap in to all that strength!

What tips do you have for the “tough talk” on performance management, counseling and honest feedback. (for FSOs, Civil Service employees, and LES)?

If someone’s performance really deteriorates, my tip is to do one thing before you call them on the carpet. Make sure you try to find out why. Sometimes, it is just them. So you can and should be frank.

But in my experience, and I have supervised hundreds, I discovered underlying factors such as very serious health conditions, unfaithful spouses or other romantic issues, problems with the employee’s children, personal financial troubles, and some even more bizarre facts that explained, to a large degree, why an employee was not cutting the mustard. Look in particular for a relatively rapid deterioration of performance as an indicator of an underlying problem. Once identified and discussed collegially with that person, and this may sound strange, performance often improves, even if you can’t help them fix it, although sometimes you actually can help find a solution.

How did you build resilience in your team and yourself?

Resilience and respect are cousins. If your team is under real pressure, don’t try and lead from the rear. When I wanted helicopters to land on a pad taking stray fire, I went out there and stood beside it with team members until they were down. When I wanted a small convoy to go through “no man’s land” in an ongoing civil war in order to end it, I led the convoy. 

Secondly, be transparent in times of danger. During the climax of Liberia’s civil war, Embassy Monrovia was hit repeatedly by mortar fire and endless bullets, mostly from nearby battles. We took casualties, and I decided that I would call my skeleton Embassy staff together in a basement in order to tell them that they had done a terrific job, but that Embassy Monrovia was not a fort, they had families back in the U.S., and we could be overrun soon by either out-of-control army-- so they would be leaving with my deepest thanks. I had arranged to get them out by helicopter. A young Marine asked me if I was going to stay. I told them why I was going to remain, the stakes at hand, and my reasons for doing so. I left, so my Defense attaché could fill in the sign-up roster for evacuation. A few minutes later, she came to my office and presented it to me. It was blank.

What are your best practices for crisis management?

Much of my private sector second career was as a crisis management consultant and teacher for the USG, foreign governments, academic institutions and academies, and private companies. Perhaps my most known article on crisis management is: The Art of Strategy Creation for Complex Situations. Google it using quotes. It has appeared in books, and a shortened version is in The National Defense University’s PRISM journal. It was often the basis for my lectures at dozens of academic and governmental institutions in the U.S. and abroad.

What tips do you have for first-time mentors? For establishing a mentoring program at a Mission or an office?

The most frequent mistake I see in mentors is that they often try and turn their mentee into a “mini-me”. Simply put, try and figure out an optimal path for the person you are mentoring, given the highly diverse strengths and weaknesses of us all. It can be useful to recount and explain what worked for you, but it is more important to try and bring together a composite view of your mentee, and from that perspective, think through together what might help them better succeed (which is usually quite different than your own path).

Personally, I usually did not volunteer to mentor anyone until they either requested it or the situation left me little choice. A lot of people do not like to be mentored at all, and if that is the case, the whole experience can be a negative one for all parties if it is imposed upon them. Sometimes, however, there is no choice, and I have even assigned people to do it in situations where I could not.

How did you adapt to hostile or unforgiving environments? (eg. authoritarian host governments, high-risk security situations, aggressive foreign media, etc.)

Every situation is going to be different in a thousand ways, including the people you are working with, so it's hard to generalize. But, let me offer a couple of thoughts after years in such hostile and unforgiving environments.

The need for real time, constantly updated information in such environments is usually always present. You can’t afford a mistake, so solid, timely information is critical. Understandably, Washington is often also anxiously demanding updates during dangerous or threatening times on the ground. That can even get in the way of what you have to accomplish in such pressurized situations.

What this usually means over the course of weeks or even many months, is non-stop work and tremendous stress. I can remember vividly working almost non-stop and getting little sleep for months as the Soviet Union was collapsing around me, or later during the siege of Monrovia in 2003, as rebel armies bombarded and attacked the capital.

Under such pressure, try and steady your team, make them take some breaks, hold meetings to keep everyone in the loop, and even parties to avoid feelings of isolation. Worry with them about the home front, and try to find some appropriate humor in bad situations. For example, many grim smiles were evoked by exchanging stories about the KGB’s dirty deeds directed at all my team’s members in Moscow.

Exogenous pressure, especially if everyone knows they are not the only ones receiving it, can actually work to strengthen team identity and resolve. I’ve seen desperate situations on the ground, such as Embassy Monrovia at the climax of the war, where local agency-by-agency differences melted away into total unity.

How did you manage transitions—between administrations, between senior leaders (Ambassador/DAS), or during extended staffing gaps of key personnel?

Of course, there is a lot of situational dependency here too, but gaps of higher up, senior personnel are different in nature than staff shortages. On senior leader absences, the biggest problem I had was that formal appointment to a senior position brings clout with it. For example, I spent over half my time in South Africa as COM, and did well, but I never had the authority I would have had as an ambassador. On the other hand, I often found incoming senior political appointees, who were formally appointed, to be problematic because too many of them did not have the background, experience or the skill sets to be effective. I was too often put in the uncomfortable position of having to politely educate them while being their subordinate.

I also cringed during transitions of administrations from either party, both of which had no shortage of overconfident “know-it-all” political appointees who were really unwashed rookies. The rest of the world does not make such expensive mistakes, including China and Russia. Regardless of merit, I always tried to build up my incoming superiors in the eyes of my staffs. But my staffs were smart people, and soon recognized a lemon when they saw one. 

The worst staffing gaps and shortages I faced were overseas. Ironically, when you are in a pressurized and/or dangerous situation, Washington accelerates sharply its demands for reporting and other work, while simultaneously cutting your staff to avoid or lower casualties. You end up doing whatever you have to do. For example, after mandatory drawdowns of staff at Embassy Monrovia, I had one person who was my acting DCM, PAO, Consular Section Chief, and Political Counselor. He was a junior officer.

How did you form and manage coalitions and policy advocacy (within the USG interagency, with like-minded partners, or though multilateral institutions)?

There are at least three overlapping but very different settings in this question. Permit me to focus on international relationships since everyone in our line of work quickly gets on the job training on forming interagency coalitions and policy advocacy; like it or not.

I was the U.S. Deputy Representative to the ECOSOC of the United Nations and the head of our sanctions unit at the Security Council. Genuine multilateral diplomacy is really quite different from bilateral work at embassies or back in Washington. It took me about six months before I knew what I was doing at the United Nations.

What I learned in this setting was the power of creating holistic approaches to issues. In other words, I launched ceaseless issue-related campaigns, sometimes in an assembly of all parties, but more often in subgroups, with our allies, our sometimes friends, neutral countries, and held meetings with our opponents and enemies. 

When there was a vote, I learned to lobby countries like Palau, and it paid off. At the Security Council, working with the like-minded was crucial, but so was negotiating privately with opponents. I was often surprised at the progress towards compromise that could be made in private meetings at the Security Council, the ECOSOC, or in the UNGA, even with seemingly intractable opponents.

Don’t underestimate the importance of networking in this regard; you can’t just talk to representatives that agree with you. I don’t think I would have been successful without having many personal relationships outside the negotiating table. And this was hard for me because I am not an extrovert. So, if policy permits it, go out there and have lunch or at least a coffee with that representative of a heinous country! It helps.

I applied many of my new multilateral skill sets later on in crisis situations, like Liberia. In short, I helped create and foster a kind of multi-tier web of countries, international organizations, NGOs, local groups and others, and got them all working, albeit imperfectly, to push for peace in Liberia. I also used all my multilateral skills to help create and fund not only the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, but also develop a system-wide economic, security, judicial and political architecture for addressing a very difficult post-war reconstruction period, including a return to democracy. Don’t forget, you have to have money to create a real path forward, and to attract funding from other parties. So lining-up Washington’s support, including strong lobbying in Washington for what you want to do, is critical.

Mid-Career entry is a hot topic. Good or bad? Advantages and disadvantages? How do we sell this to FSOs facing slow promotion rates?

Mid-career entry, with very few exceptions, is a terrible idea and should be strongly opposed. Making a strong diplomat is like aging a bottle of wine. It gets better, develops its own character, and becomes more and more valuable through time. Mid-Career entry is like serving up hard cider instead. Not that hard cider doesn’t have its place, but not at fine dining.

If more diversity is sought, as it should be, work much harder to get the best and brightest minority and female candidates to take the exam and have more of them in A-100 class intakes. Basically, mid-career entry is further politicizing and weakening the Foreign Service, and is a means for pork barrel politics to reward partisanship by getting their people into the Foreign Service without having to pass the exam. Its effect on lowering morale is obvious.

There are undoubtedly a very few cases where very special skill sets merit an exception. But, that is not what is happening. I see mid-career entry as something that should be fought tooth- and-nail as harmful to our country. Again, other countries know better. They know that their diplomats must be the smartest and most able they can field. The 21st century is a far too dangerous place for us to do otherwise. 

How do we improve relationships between political appointees and career officers? Is the era of majority political appointees here to stay?

Unfortunately, I would have to say that the era of majority political appointees is likely here to stay, and continue to expand. I also believe that this type of decadence can help cause the decline of the United States. Both political parties have weakened American diplomacy by expanding political appointments, which on average result in inferior representation of U.S. interests. It’s okay for political appointees to be at the wheel of diplomacy, including appointments to places or situations where a personal connection to POTUS is essential, but get them out of the engine, please, before it dies.

I am probably not a good person to ask about improving relations between political appointees and professional diplomats. Having tried it all, from patience, to toadying, to cleaning up their endless mistakes on aisle 6; I am overall dismayed with the performance of political appointees. I will resist herein recounting any of the countless horror stories I could convey. And, I will add in balance that I have worked for and with several political appointees that did an excellent job. The problem is that the vast majority of them are weak representatives of the United States, and most also politicize career FSOs, another grave sin.

Is it time to get rid of the cone system?

This is a very difficult question. On the one hand, the Foreign Service really needs specialization in areas such as economics, security, management, technology and consular affairs, even when the State Department is not the lead agency in a functional area. On the other, ascending to the top, such as becoming an ambassador or top official, usually is more appropriate and easier for those who spend most of their career in the political cone (N.B. I was in the ECON cone).

Rather than abolish cones, and have too many strive to be political officers, I think the answer is to maintain them, but do a much better job enabling and compelling all FSOs to take out of cone and out of agency jobs earlier in their careers in fields they don’t know. For example, I would have had a much easier time convincing Kremlinologists in Moscow and Washington that the Soviet Union was disintegrating if they had better understood economics. Otherwise outstanding political officers often lack a multidisciplinary background and viewpoint, a serious flaw.

In fact, everyone should have some assignments that help them build a multidisciplinary background. When that happens, it will also be easier to diversify picks for top assignments.

How did you encourage creativity and generate ideas from your staff?

I am a big believer in horizontal communication. In other words, lots of leaders talk at people, are terrible listeners, and more or less intone them to be quiet while they lay out what is to be done. Then the meeting ends.

My style was to frame the issue, say what course of action I was considering, and actively solicit comments, criticism, and alternative options.

Now sometimes, and for good reasons, especially newer FSOs are reluctant to tell their boss that he/she ought to do things differently. I understood that, so I tried to make it clear that I expected them to be my active sounding board as part of their job. I was also not afraid that I would appear weak if I changed my mind, a real failing of many senior leaders.

After my staff understood my open style, there was never any problem getting lots of ideas from them from which to pick and choose. There was also more consensus and buy-in to my strategies since they had actively participated in forging them. In sum, I think I was a stronger, not weaker, leader because of my open, more collegial approach.

​

​