If we ask students from the international relations department of the university the first part of this question, the majority of will probably answer the following: “Because it is an interesting profession.” Meanwhile, I am certain that many wish to become a diplomat after getting attracted to the profession from the distance and the symbolic significance. By choosing that profession, the adolescent simply strives for the beautiful life in the beautiful foreign world. That is natural and there is nothing to criticize. However, misinformation plays a key role here and that can put many obstacles in front of the young student in the future.
The fact that diplomacy is an interesting profession, there is no doubt about that. But we can not doubt that the road leading towards the beautiful life with the help of diplomacy can be rough and hazy. Nobody talks about this neither in schools nor universities. Meanwhile, the information is given to youth through watching films, television networks, magazines, bestsellers, where diplomacy is presented as a profession that opens many doors, with many villas, many brand name cars, in other words, something which can keep you happy. However, young people today must be told that the promising future as a diplomat in Armenia is more of an illusion. I would not like to make them desperate, but if I am to compare, I must say that my monthly salary in Beirut as an Ambassador to Armenia was $1800 dollars, whereas in the U.S., David Saterfield’s was $36,000 dollars. As a matter of fact, he is a very modest and extraordinary diplomat with the will to work, a great professional in the Middle East who was appointed as the vice state secretary of the U.S.
Generally, diplomacy is a job based on budget and I have not seen a rich ambassador who has not paid any taxes to the government. So, if our oligarchs want their inheritors to be rich, they would do the right thing by teaching them the profession rather than sending them to study at the international relations department of the university, which has become something common these days.
Adults (especially professional adults) are obligated to explain to the young student that diplomacy is first and foremost a job and a hard one at that. We must emphasize that diplomacy is a top-duty state service. Only people with a university education, high culture, a wide outlook, with an analytic mentality, and moral ethics can carry out foreign policy, and defend the homeland’s interests. One must work long and hard to take on that mission.
Let’s talk about another issue. It is hard to find one country in the world women make up most of the workers of the Foreign Ministry and the number of female undergraduates continues to grow. Despite the deep respect that I have for the female gender, I have some bad news for them: diplomacy is not a profession for women. I am not the one that made that up. There are no exceptions in cadre policies.
Now let’s talk about the second part of the question: “How to become a diplomat?”
In my opinion, despite market relations won in Armenian reality, preparing diplomats must be the state monopoly, it must be realized by its supervision and care with planned principles. The international relations faculties of the state and private universities of Armenia are far from meeting international requirements. Let’s set aside the doubt that we have that universities can prepare professional diplomats, the lack in the base of professional staff and scientific technology and other important preconditions.
It is necessary for the state to plan out and pass a correct policy for preparing diplomats. Is the Yerevan State University able to do that, or any university for that matter? I doubt that. In order to solve the issue, we must understand what is going on in the field and if there is a coordinating structure. For example, who decided to open up multiple international relations faculties or departments, when that profession is the same as history? Meanwhile, judging from the foreign politics perspective and the diplomatic issues, Armenia needs specialists in the fields of international law, economics, journalism and political analysis. How can we consider the fact that one of the state universities prepares international economists? They probably concluded that they could help develop Armenian economy. There is no criticism for the number of undergraduates at the Ministry of Education and Sciences. Armenia “produces” so many diplomat undergraduates that we can open up our embassies in the Marshal islands and Barbados and still have more specialists. Finally, we must stop transferring students from the university to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and making them shine. Thanks to that, Armenian diplomacy has made a new innovation in the history of world diplomacy: appointing 20-something young adults as extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassadors for the countries most important for Armenia.
The abovementioned flaws are only the top part of the iceberg of preparing diplomats. But that is a different story. If the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education and Sciences are planning on working with this method, then we will nto get too far.
I would propose the following scheme for preparing diplomats in Armenia: with the order of the Armenian government, open a diplomacy academy in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (school, courses and the name is not important). The student would study for 2-3 years and the faculties would be: a. international law; b. international economics; c. international journalism; d. political analysis; e. diplomatic service. There would be no tuition, the status would be supervising in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the student would take admission exams only for people with university education and there would be 20-25 professionals checking test results a year.
The approximate, limited number mentioned above is due to the fact that the diplomatic courses must be individual, non-conveying. Basically, lectures must be read to a minimum of one, in some cases, two students by professional lecturer/experts.
We can consider U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as the founder of this methodology. In 1933, when the U.S. and the former Soviet Union had diplomatic relations, it turned out that nobody in the States knew Russian or anything about Russia. Thanks to Roosevelt’s guide, 15 undergraduates were gathered from the best universities of America and they started to teach them individually at the State department. So, they prepared a group of experts fluent in Russian and acquainted with Russia and that group led U.S. foreign politics against Russia. Many of them worked as ambassadors in Moscow, including one of the best diplomats of the 20th century-George Kennan.