How to Write a Cable | Foreign Policy By Peter W. Galbraith

How to Write a Cable | Foreign Policy

By Peter W. Galbraith

Feb. 22, 2011 
Contrary to what Julian Assange might tell you, most ambassadors do not worry that the wrong people will read their cables, but that the right people won't. The U.S. State Department receives several million cables a year, and while most deal with mundane administrative matters, several hundred thousand report on political and economic developments. The secretary of state reads just a handful of these, and assistant secretaries read a small portion of the cables from their geographic regions. Even the desk officer might only have time to scan the post's voluminous cable traffic.
How to have your cables read? Here are a few key guidelines. Some I followed myself as an ambassador. And as WikiLeaks has revealed, my fellow diplomats have adopted their own strategies for getting noticed. The cables show that the United States has a superb diplomatic service consisting of knowledgeable and literate realists. Even when U.S. policy seems divorced from ground reality, diplomats clearly understand what is going on around the world -- and how best to describe it for the folks back in Foggy Bottom.