Diplomatically Speaking By Jonathan S. Addleton “Can a TCK honestly and faithfully serve their passport country in a foreign affairs role?” Hard questions are appropriate at the outset of any career—and throughout the career that follows, regardless of which path it takes. Having been born and raised in the Himalayas as the child of American missionaries to Pakistan, my path included a thirty-two-year career as a US Foreign Service Officer, involving assignments in ten countries: Afghanistan, Belgium, Cambodia, India, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, South Africa, and Yemen. My passport country—the United States—is not included in that list because I never served there. Indeed, possibly my biggest achievement is that I managed to avoid working in Washington, D.C., the true “hardship post” for those motivated primarily by operational rather than headquarters-based interests and concerns. And yet, looking back, I have to think that I made more of a difference as a career US Foreign Service Officer than in any other career I might have imagined. Certainly, the gifts of a TCK childhood—including an ability to cross the lines of class, culture, and nationality from an early age—helped strengthen the qualities of empathy and understanding that are essential for diplomatic success.
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Among Worlds
Jonathan S. Addleton as a child
“ Can a TCK honestly and faithfully serve their passport country in a foreign affairs role?” At a more technical level, the fact that my diplomatic career centered largely on USAID was clearly linked to vivid childhood experiences in some of the most remote corners of Pakistan. Having witnessed death, disease, and poverty from an early age, I determined early on that my calling in life was to work to help alleviate it. Of course, a more fundamental question is centered on the implied dual loyalties involved in taking on an official government role rather than, say, working for a seemingly more
