Opening Address: January 2025
I have had the honor of serving in this role three times before, and I never approached the job the same way twice. That will continue to be the case. Foreign Affairs continues to be one of the most vital areas in this current state of the game, and I am pleased to offer my insight, relationships, and knowledge and experience to help the Delegate as he faces the tough times ahead. Something that is not customary for me is to be brief and succinct, but I see no reason to wax poetic about diplomatic philosophy or to drag out what is ultimately a very simple strategy and approach to handling FA in the term ahead. You know the Delegate's outlook on how to utilize our relationships with other regions, you know the course he is following militarily and with the major organizations and blocs in the game. I will not be diving into that here, though as you will see a lot of the work we will be doing is making that easier to understand and raising awareness for how it's all going. Instead I will focus on the ministry's nuts and bolts, the internal side of it.
The Delegate has laid out a vision for foreign affairs which is consistent with an approach I felt needed to be done in the previous term: reconsidering how we use our staff and handle ambassadors. I tried to reorganize them in a previous stint as Minister of Foreign Affairs, but it didn't change the fundamental flaw with the system: while raising new talent is crucial in this ministry, the ambassador postings do nothing to foster that talent and prepare staff for taking on greater responsibility and the important roles we need in this area. Busy work does not provide them with fun or engaging things to do and it does not make them better at this area of the game. We do not have time for such things. Per the Delegate's strategy, we will utilize a much smaller staff, one that provides clerical assistance to the deputies (such as working on the FA publications or reports that the Delegate wants to develop) and in practice is closer to the kind of work the old Comms staff (and current Culture staff) would do. These staffers will also continue to operate as what is known on the Discord as FA analysts, a training ground of sorts for staffers to be exposed to our FA discussions in kind of a summarized and sanitized form. The most promising of these staffers will get the opportunity to join the Foreign Affairs Committee, which will be expanded to account for newcomers who will be getting much more hands on training and experience in FA decision making. Obviously we will need to refine the space so that the most sensitive of matters continue to be in a closed loop, but the best and brightest who make it to this level of the ministry will be the prime candidates for future deputies and ministers in FA.
Our committee will also be attempting the Delegate's case studies, something that recent iterations of this ministry have been trying to develop. I too will try my hand at this, and I am optimistic we may get something going given the experience we have accumulated on the current committee and among our deputies. FA is hard to learn and even harder to teach, which has been and will continue to be the greatest challenge in fully realizing the case studies and our tiered staff system. But we need to try something to prepare the next generation and to improve FA literacy in the region. Hopefully these initiatives will make that happen.
Institutional memory is crucial in pulling this off. For that reason the committee will retain its current membership. Of these members, most have other roles in the region and taking on a deputy posting would add to their plate. It is my hope to have three individuals serve as deputies and effectively manage the three areas the ministry is loosely divided into (the analysts, the junior committee members, and the core committee). Which portfolio in particular they take on as well as which of them will step up is not fully determined, especially as I hope to have a newer face in one of these spots as we advance the Delegate's vision. I will start by reappointing @Attempted Socialism who has long been a champion of the very same case study type approach that is being planned for this term. I am also naming @Cosmic as a deputy, and while he is not a brand new face having been part of our discussions from the NPA's perspective, I believe he exhibits the curiosity and the growing knowledge that we're looking for in the individuals we bring into the ministry's higher levels. The beauty of the committee system is that we have a lot of valuable communicators and diplomats who can be of great help and assistance even if they are not actual deputies, but the deputies will be the ones who help manage the internals of the ministry and maintain the structure we are setting up. There's a bit more I will ask of these individuals, so we want to make sure we have the talent available for that work.
If all goes well, we will have recurring FA digests and substantive discussion and exercises for those interested in foreign policy in this game. These are the biggest metrics of our success this term. As for the old ambassadors, there will be some people disappointed they will no longer serve in that capacity, and this is good, because these are the people who should be most encouraged to seek greater involvement in this ministry. The junior committee members will be the ones who reach out to the various regions the ambassadors used to contact, and the extent to which they pay attention and provide information on the various regions will directly impact how they are evaluated and whether they continue to advance in the ministry. There will be communications we have sent out, as always, but there will be no reports or busywork, as was said previously. Instead, when developments occur in the embassy regions, we will provide the assigned committee members the first opportunity to work with us on a response and to prepare communication to the impacted regions. This is a hands-on, real time case study, and a huge opportunity for the prospective diplomat. Any response plan will of course need approval from the core committee and the Delegate, but I figure the opportunity is still a valuable teaching tool.
Admittedly there is experimentation involved with these plans, much as I have engaged in when previously in charge of this ministry. I hope that our narrower focus and more selective use of staff will be a good blend of factors to make a difference in diplomatic education and better use of our staff in general. As always if you want to get involved, apply to the ministry. If you want to get even more involved than the entry level, it will be on you to engage and participate and show interest. We will provide some opportunities, but most of them will need to be discovered on your own. For the higher levels, it is more a matter of us calling you, not you calling us, so keep that in mind. FA is an external ministry at its heart, and all the best and fun parts of it are external too. Anyone can do office work for an internal ministry, and we'll have that for you as well. But to really explore outside this region and its borders, you'll have to do your research, have an open mind, and demonstrate curiosity and interest in the matters we discuss in staff. I hope to see you apply and demonstrate that curiosity, and by the end of this term I hope we have realistic path to a more robust core staff that can lead the ministry in the years ahead.
-Pallaith
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