By Jeremy Carl, BFF Fellow

I read with interest the op-eds in the Foreign Service Journal in March/April by the former President of the American Foreign Service Association Eric Rubin and current President of the American Council of Diplomacy Ronald Neumann, both strongly criticizing the Ben Franklin Fellowship (BFF) amidst a more general critique of the foreign service under Trump. Because of the distinguished pedigree of the authors and because the substance of these critiques have recently been amplified and further legitimized by the New York Times, it is worth dissecting them in detail. These critiques represent, in many ways, the wrongheaded groupthink on BFF and the Trump administration more generally that is representative of many members of the Foreign and Civil Service foreign affairs community.

How the Foreign Service learned the wrong lesson from the right case — and what the Army figured out instead.

By Zed Tarar

“Totalitarian dictatorship ruling only through fear and propaganda. Cheap copycats incapable of innovation. Communist revolutionaries intent on global domination.” These are the legacy scripts buried in the dated source code of the U.S. operating system on China, both anchoring and restricting the policy options debated in Washington.

While discrediting the Ben Franklin Fellowship, the leaders of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) act as if no other foreign policy professional group is organizing inside Foggy Bottom. Specifically, AFSA has never voiced any concerns about the “politicizing” activities of Foreign Policy for America (FP4A), a liberal-left membership organization that has an entrenched network among former and active State Department officials. Many of us in BFF have concluded that AFSA leaders express no concerns about FP4A because they sanction what that organization does.

The recently released Farm National Security Action Plan, championed by Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, rightly highlights vulnerabilities in the American agricultural system, including risks posed by Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland. While safeguarding the physical integrity of the agricultural sector is essential, U.S. policy must also clearly recognize the economic and geopolitical importance of agricultural trade with China. Expanding—not constricting—agricultural exports to China supports American farm viability, reduces the trade deficit, enhances economic leverage, and reinforces a strategic pillar of bilateral engagement, all of which are in the national interest of the United States.

Special Report by the BFF China Working Group

Conservative career officials are fighting to break the globalist-woke mindset that is deeply ingrained in the U.S. foreign affairs bureaucracy.

By Phillip Linderman