Page 20 - Acoustics Today Spring 2011

drafting of that policy), frequently an office will respond to the memorandum with recommendations that need to be considered before providing clearance. Going through the two-week interview process gave each new Jefferson expo- sure to a variety of such offices, and their personnel, which ultimately made it a little easier to operate within that system that functions by consensus.
The final decision regarding which Jefferson would go to which office was made in the Jefferson Room of the Ralph Bunche Library. That room contains treaties and other diplo- matic artifacts that go all the way back to the days when Thomas Jefferson was our country’s first Secretary of State. It was at that moment that I was struck with the seriousness of the responsibility I had assumed by allowing myself to become part of the United State’s primary international diplomacy apparatus.
The Office of Regional and Security Policy Affairs (EAP/RSP)
The office in which I served during my year in DC as Senior Science Advisor, and for which I am now serving as a consultant, is the Office of Regional and Security Policy Affairs within the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs (EAP/RSP). I was interested in that position for several rea- sons. That office has primary responsibility for the US rela- tions with the ten members10 of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). ASEAN was very attractive to me because of the variety of cultures and political systems (not to mention cuisines!) that were represented, ranging from the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation (Indonesia) to the small and prosperous city-state of Singapore. It includes long-time US allies like Buddhist-majority Thailand and the Catholic-majority Philippines, as well as communist coun- tries and former adversaries (Viet Nam and PDR Laos) and Burma (Myanmar), a military dictatorship which presents many current diplomatic challenges. It also appeared to me that ASEAN was similar in many ways to the European Common Market that was the precursor to the European Union, since those ten countries had different languages and a history of armed conflict, but also had common political and economic interests that were strongly influenced by their geographical (though not cultural!) proximity to both India and China (hence, their former designation as Indochina).
I was also attracted by the variety of different specialists that were working in EAP/RSP. There was one Foreign Service officer with responsibility for congressional relations who had just rotated out of Afghanistan and another who concentrated on human rights issues and trafficking in per- sons. There was also an exchange officer from the Japanese Foreign Ministry (their equivalent of our State Department) and a colonel detailed to that office from the US Army who focused on regional military issues.
Each office is led by a Director and Deputy Director. EAP/RSP also already had one Science Advisor. Most of my interview time was spent talking with Phil Antweiler, the Deputy Director, and William Behn, their Senior Science Advisor. Both struck me as being extraordinarily competent and very intelligent. As I discovered long after the interviews,
Antweiler was a former academic, and like many in the Foreign Service, made the State Department a mid-career choice. Bill Behn was serving in that office as an IEEE Policy Fellow. He was about my age and had worked at Rand Corp., was a licensed patent agent, and had spent twenty years working for Hewlett-Packard. Prior to coming to State, he worked in Congress. It seemed to me that both our back- grounds and our styles were complementary and that the two of us, both working as Senior Science Advisors in EAP/RSP, could be much more effective than either of us working alone. Those assessments turned out to be among the best I’ve made during my entire career, which has been built on the ability to quickly recognize talent.
Getting down to work
Within EAP/RSP, Jack Andre, a retired Foreign Service
officer, was the expert on ASEAN. Like any academic, I asked
him to recommend reading that might provide some useful
background. He recommended a variety of materials from
reports produced by the Congressional Research Service on
US relations with individual countries in the region11 and on
East Asian regional architecture,12 articles on strategy,13 recent
speeches by regional leaders,14,15 international diplomatic
16 17,18 agreements, and relevant ASEAN documents.
(Fortunately, the official language of ASEAN is English.) I consumed hundreds of pages over the long Labor Day week- end and returned to Jack’s office with several questions based on my reading. After answering all of my questions (as well as addressing the misunderstandings that motivated some questions), I asked what I should read next. His answer came as a shock to a physicist, since our training requires years before we are empowered to attempt anything “original”. Jack said, “That’s it; time to hop in.”
My first “official assignment” was to assess the value of having the U.S. become a partner in the ASEAN University Network. Given my academic credentials, this seemed per- fectly reasonable. I was told that I was also expected to use my expertise to determine the most diplomatically important issue affecting the ASEAN region in which U.S. science and technology could have a significant and positive impact. “Time to hop in” indeed!
Even to one as inexperienced in diplomatic matters as I was, by late-2008 it was fairly clear that the most important global scientific issue facing the State Department was cli- mate change mitigation and adaptation. Fortunately, I had the wise counsel of my Jefferson colleague, Phil Hopke. He is a professor at Clarkson and a Princeton-trained nuclear chemist who focused his career on atmospheric aerosols. Phil was a co-founder of the American Association for Aerosol Research and was the oldest Jefferson in our year group. By the time I met Phil, he had published over 400 referred jour- nal articles, over 700 conference presentations, and directed 47 M.S. and 30 Ph.D. theses. He had served on several National Academy committees and did so much work for the Environmental Protection Agency that he had an EPA access badge. Phil told me that carbon dioxide was actually neither the most significant climate forcer in South and Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, nor necessarily the best target
16 Acoustics Today, April 2011