Writing and Diplomacy

 by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

There is something about diplomacy that strongly attracts writers and people who, although they do not consider themselves writers, nevertheless love the act of putting down their ideas on paper.

In the first place, diplomacy is a career that involves a lot of writing.  A career diplomat’s working day typically consists of writing notes verbales, aides memoires, briefing papers, talking points, reports, demarches and a host of other forms of diplomatic correspondence.  Even if he rises to a position where his staff will be doing the actual writing of the drafts for him, he will still have to vet, edit and sometimes rewrite the drafts altogether before signing them or endorsing them to his senior officers. For this reason, a career diplomat who does not somehow enjoy writing will find it hard to derive satisfaction from his job.

Secondly, the annual FSO (Foreign Service Officer) Examinations, which any aspiring career diplomat must pass before he can be qualified for appointment by the President as a Foreign Service Officer, require a solid writing skill.  The centrepiece of the rigorous, five-part FSO Exams is the Written Test where aspirants are asked to answer (in essay form) some of the most abstruse questions one can imagine.  Some aspirants make the mistake of thinking that they must rack their brains for the “correct” answers to the questions if they want to pass the exams.  Yet, the truth is:  there is really no single “correct” answer to most of the questions.  What the examiners ultimately want to test is an examinee’s ability to present his answer or position in a clear, organized and persuasive manner.  The ability to write well is, without a doubt, one of the keys to passing the FSO Examinations.

Diplomacy, therefore, not only attracts those who somehow love the act of writing.  In general, it also admits (through its main screening mechanism, the FSO Exams) only those who can, in fact, write well.

The third reason that makes writers gravitate towards diplomacy is the priceless opportunity it offers in terms of “materials” one can later write about.  The challenges and joys that come with living in a new country, learning a new language, adapting to a new culture, making new friends in various parts of the world; representing our country before kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers; advancing our national interests and assisting our countrymen in need of help in a foreign land, constitute a vast treasure trove of materials for eventual essays, poems, short stories and even novels.  No wonder, some of the most interesting men/women of letters in history also worked, at one time or another, as diplomats (Benjamin Franklin, Washington Irving, Niccolo Machiavelli, Baldassare Castiglione, Paul Claudel, Alexis Leger, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, Carlos Fuentes, Czeslaw Milosz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, George F. Kennan; and our very own Carlos P. Romulo, Salvador P. Lopez and Armando D. Manalo, to name a few).

But that’s not to say that being a writer and a diplomat at the same time is easy.  Diplomacy is a very demanding job.  It consumes enormous amounts of one’s time and attention.  Writer-diplomats have to be determined and disciplined enough to “make time” (instead of just “finding time”) for their writing if they want to produce anything during their diplomatic career.  This often entails literally sacrificing their weekends and holidays, and the hours they could have spent watching a movie on Netflix or strolling in the park with their spouses at the end of a tiring day.  Writer-diplomats have to doggedly create time for their writing within the sparse interstices of their diplomatic life.

Even then, because of the demands of their diplomatic career, they can only write a little of the many things on their heads which they wish to put down on paper.  While still in the service, they have to patiently carry around with them an invisible suitcase filled with “songs unsung” (to borrow the title of a poem by Rabindranath Tagore).

Many of those “songs” will have to wait until they finally retire.