THE DISSENT CHANNEL

A young diplomat's account of her assignment in South Sudan, a firsthand example of US foreign policy that has failed in its diplomacy and accountability around the world.

In 2017, the State Department lost 60% of its career ambassadors. Hiring has been cut and the budget slashed. The idealistic women and men who chose to enter government service are leaving in record numbers, jeopardizing operations both domestically and internationally, and eroding the U.S. standing on the world stage.

In The Dissent Channel, former State Department official Lizzy Shackelford shows this erosion first-hand through her experience within the precarious rise and devastating fall of the world's newest country, South Sudan. Shackleford's excitement about the possibility of encouraging democracy from the ground up quickly turns to questioning, then to shock at the under-resourced American embassy in the capitol and at the miscommunication and willful ignorance perpetuated within the State Department itself. She argues that the decline in diplomacy didn't begin with the current administration, and illustrates the damaging effects of an American foreign policy approach that gives short shrift to the values of democracy, accountability, and human rights that we have long feigned to promote in our overseas engagements.

Policy and politics come alive through Shackleford's sense of storytelling and suspense, as she weaves extraordinary tales of life as a young female diplomat with a wry sense of humor and a skeptic's thirst for understanding. And in navigating both American bureaucracy and the fraught history and present of South Sudan, she conveys an urgent message about the evolving (and devolving) state of U.S. foreign policy.

Elizabeth Shackelford was a career diplomat in the U.S. State Department until December 2017, when she resigned in protest of the Trump administration. During her tenure with the Foreign Service, Shackelford served in the U.S. embassies in Warsaw, Poland, South Sudan, Somalia, and Washington, D.C. For her work in South Sudan during the outbreak of civil war, Shackelford received the Barbara Watson Award for Consular Excellence, the State Department's highest honor for consular work.
Her resignation letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, first shared by Foreign Policy, went viral. Since her departure, Shackelford has continued to raise awareness about the consequences of our troubled diplomacy in the press, in academic and community groups, and through other public commentary.