Ambassador Christopher R. Hill on Leadership, Career Service, and the Craft of Diplomacy

Christopher R. Hill is a career U.S. diplomat who has served as U.S. Ambassador to Serbia, Iraq, South Korea, Poland, and North Macedonia, and previously served as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. He also led U.S. efforts as the chief negotiator in the Six-Party Talks aimed at addressing North Korea’s nuclear program.
In this Pathway Blog conversation, Hill reflects on what the Peace Corps taught him about American responsibility, why institutional legitimacy is more fragile than most people admit, how Foreign Service careers actually move, and what leaks often reveal about confidence inside a system.

This transcript has been lightly edited.

​Peace Corps and the Weight of “Being America”
Ben Wolf: Ambassador Hill—Looking back at your early career, what experiences most shaped how you think about diplomacy—not just what you believed, but how you learned to operate inside complex institutions and negotiations?

Christopher R. Hill: Let me start with something that was not terribly complex: the Peace Corps. Not complex in the sense that we weren’t dealing with a lot of different institutions—but complex in what it teaches you.
Many Americans don’t understand this: no one is indifferent about the United States. Everyone has expectations of the U.S. Of course there are detractors, but nobody is indifferent.
So any young American living abroad—as I was in the Peace Corps—realizes that when you say something, people listen. That gives us responsibility, and it’s something we all need to think harder about.
I was always struck by the fact that if there weren’t a United States in the world, someone would have to create one—because we’ve been (a term I hate) the “residual superpower,” but nonetheless, in many instances we’ve been the country that has kept the peace. And now it seems we have Americans who don’t understand that, and who think we’ve somehow been victimized by this role—without understanding that this role has not only secured peace, but has also secured our leadership. That’s a win-win.
But we have many Americans who think it’s been an onerous task—something we have to get out from under.

BW: The Peace Corps was right out of college and you entered the Foreign Service pretty soon after?

CH: Correct. I took the Foreign Service exam while I was in the Peace Corps. I rode my Suzuki 125 dirt bike down to Douala—which had a two-person consulate at the time—and I took the exam there.

BW: Before the Peace Corps, did you already know you wanted to enter the Foreign Service?

CH: My dad was in the Foreign Service, so I was aware of it. That wasn’t necessarily something I wanted to follow, but I knew enough about it to have my eyes open—about the lifestyle and the challenges.
But when I was in the Peace Corps, I decided that’s what I wanted to do.

What Stays Constant Across Regions: Institutions and Fragility
BW: When you look back across posts as different as East Asia, Iraq, and the Balkans, what’s the one thing that stayed constant about how diplomacy actually works—regardless of the region?

CH: Every country has problems. Every country is unique—but not all its problems are unique. So you start to recognize patterns.
And one pattern is that institutions are very fragile things. Countries that are not doing well are countries that don’t have faith in their institutions. And when people don’t have faith in institutions, they retreat to older loyalties designed to protect them—including tribalism.
So if you don’t have civil society in a place like Iraq, and people don’t trust the state, they retreat into tribal affiliations. They find security in origin—tribal origin. But those affiliations aren’t going to lead the country in a better way.
The lack of faith in institutions is a huge problem in every country, because institutions are something you have to work on every day. You have to believe in them as serving the common good.
And frankly, it’s astounding to me that when I used to talk about countries like Iraq having crises of institutions, it’s now the world’s oldest democracy—the United States—that seems to be having these crises and reverting to forms of tribalism: loyalties to religion, national origin, even the color of your skin. There’s much to be worried about.

How Foreign Service Careers Actually Move
BW: You’ve served in many different regions. When you shifted from post to post—was that something you initiated? And more broadly: how much say does someone have in which region they want to be an ambassador in?

CH: Your audience should understand: if you’re a career Foreign Service officer, it’s like the military—you don’t start out as a general. You don’t start out as an ambassador. You start out as a junior officer and work your way up.
Your earlier assignments may shape later preferences. My first assignment was in what was then called Yugoslavia. And it became especially interesting when it began to collapse and wars developed: wars of secession and succession as countries broke up.
That became a major interest of mine, but I didn’t want to do just one thing. I think it’s important not to tie yourself to one set of issues, but to be willing to go to things that are less intellectually comfortable—but no less challenging.
So I took on different assignments. For example: Korea early on, and then later I came back as ambassador. Poland as a relatively junior officer, then later I came back as ambassador. Think of it as two trips around the track.

BW: Practically speaking, how does that work? Are you going to the Secretary of State and saying, “This is what I want”? Or is it more informal?

CH: Ideally, you’re not going to anyone—people are coming to you. Ideally, you have skill sets the institution wants, and you get a call: “We have this assignment. We think you’d be good at it.”
And when I say “they,” I’m not talking about the Secretary of State—except maybe for very senior ambassadorships.
Now, you can register your interest. When I finished in Poland, I did get in touch with the Secretary of State at the time—Colin Powell—and told him I’d be very interested in going to Korea. He might not have thought of me for Korea, because he knew me from the Balkans and Poland and might not have realized my earlier Korea experience.
So yes—you do have to let people know. You can’t expect a system with thousands of officers to keep you top of mind.
But people who spend all their time marketing themselves are usually not doing enough of what they need to do. So I wouldn’t make self-promotion your full-time job. And if the system isn’t seeing it the way you see it, maybe you need to adjust your expectations.

Career Service vs Political Service—and the Role of Luck
BW: In an earlier interview, I spoke with Elliott Abrams. One thing he emphasized was the role of luck in government—timing, networks, administrations. You’ve served under presidents of both parties. How did that work, and what do you make of his point?

CH: I want to be clear: I didn’t “serve in parties.” I served in administrations led by different parties. I’m a career person. I took the exam. I took the oral exam. I schlepped my way up from the bottom. That’s what career people do.
If you enter as a party-affiliated person, you’re dependent on your party winning elections. Republicans bring in political appointees; Democrats do too. Not to displace career people, but to supplement them.
And you see it in recruiting pipelines. If you’re at a Republican-affiliated think tank, you’re more likely to be tapped by a Republican administration. If you’re at Brookings or the Center for American Progress, you’re more likely to be tapped by a Democratic administration. That’s a different track from joining the Foreign Service.
Foreign Service officers, like military officers, have generally tried to keep their political views to themselves.
Now, you hear accusations that the Foreign Service is “just Democrats.” That’s not true. If you did a census, maybe you’d find more Democrats than MAGA aficionados—but to say Foreign Service officers are ipso facto Democrats is not fair.
And yes—there’s luck in public life. In the sense of knowing people who take an interest in you and are willing to make calls—there’s no question that happens.

Persuasion vs Performance—and the Shadow of Force
BW: You’ve operated in some of the highest-stakes negotiations of the past few decades. How much of diplomacy is persuasion—and how much is performance meant to signal resolve or restraint to audiences who aren’t in the room?

CH: With social media and modern public diplomacy, you see more performative behavior than you used to.
Now, I’ll contradict myself: Henry Kissinger was famously media-savvy and sometimes used the press to gain leverage. So it’s not new—but it’s intensified.
At bottom, diplomacy is trying to convince the other side to do something they don’t want to do. Argument helps—trying to show them what’s in their interest—but it’s rare that someone suddenly says, “You’re right, I never thought of it that way, I’m changing course.”
So you look at incentives. “If you do this, we’ll do that.” Or you “sweeten the pot”—for example, arranging a leader-to-leader meeting. Leaders can market that back home.
And then there’s the extreme: the possibility of force. Americans in recent years have talked too casually about using force.
Clausewitz said war is a continuation of politics by other means—and also that war is a serious means to a serious end. Once you’re dropping bombs, it’s hard to un-drop them. It’s hard to stop without achieving your aims.
So you exhaust peaceful means, and you try to make the other side understand: we can travel this road together. But if we can’t find a solution, you may be on your own.

Management, the DCM Track, and Leadership
BW: Ambassadorship is often romanticized as negotiation and representation. In practice, how much of the job is organizational leadership—managing people, bureaucracy, interagency friction?

CH: Ideally, you’ve had serious management experience. Most career ambassadors have come through the Deputy Chief of Mission role.
A DCM is managing the internal aspects of an embassy. The DCM looks inward; the ambassador looks out. And in the Foreign Service, most management training is on-the-job: budgets, personnel issues, discipline, all of it.
But the ambassador role is a step above management. It’s leadership.
You have to get people to follow where you’re going—not literally up a mountain path, but in terms of mission. People have to believe in what you’re doing and believe that subscribing to your approach is the best way to get there.
Leadership is getting people to go where they might not have gone if you weren’t there—and instilling confidence that you’ll get them there. When people doubt you’ll get them there, they don’t want to be on that team.
One of the problems with appointing ambassadors whose only qualification is that they’re a friend of somebody’s is that people underneath them can’t say, “I’m following this person because they know what they’re doing.” Because maybe they don’t.
Putting people with real experience in the right positions—that’s a full-time job, and it has to be done well. Otherwise you get fragmentation and dysfunction.

Leaks, History, and the “Thin Fact Base”
BW: I recently interviewed David Sanger of The New York Times, and one of the things we talked about was how major diplomatic plans, like the since-revised 28-point Ukraine Peace Plan, can leak—he told me he wasn’t surprised at all that it did.
How has the erosion of confidentiality—from leaks to social media—changed diplomacy?

CH: Well, if I’m David Sanger--who’s a good friend of mine, I might add--I don’t mind leaks at all.
But if I’m doing my job, I sure mind them.
Leaks often signal a lack of confidence in the system. Sometimes it’s people pushing their own agenda rather than the agenda set by leadership—whether the Secretary of State or an Assistant Secretary. It’s a symptom of a system that’s not functioning well.
Often it’s a breakdown in communication. People don’t feel brought into a process. They don’t understand the purpose. They don’t have confidence in what they’re being asked to execute.
And on issues like Ukraine—among the most consequential questions the world faces—complexity matters. When leadership doesn’t embrace complexity or understand historical antecedents, you get mistakes and mistrust.
In other countries, when people say “that’s history,” they mean the background you must master to make progress. In America, “that’s history” often means “that’s irrelevant.” I’m not on that side. You’re not going to understand what’s going on now unless you know what went on before.
A big problem right now is Americans aren’t doing their homework. You’ve got to read until your eyes fall out. Then you have to listen—really listen—more than you talk.
And another problem—probably amplified by the internet—is that people’s opinions are way out of proportion to what they know. Too often, even senior leadership skates on a thin fact base. When you don’t have the facts, you make mistakes. When you make mistakes, people don’t trust you. And when they don’t trust you, they leak—to slow things down, or shut things down.

Advice to Students: Fit, Mission, and Deep Reading
BW: To close, I want to turn this directly to students. How should an ambitious student think about the tradeoff between deep expertise in one region versus being broadly useful? And if you were 19 again trying to build a career in foreign affairs today, what steps would you take?

CH: People need to look in the mirror and decide what they’re good at. If you’re good at solving complex jigsaw puzzles, you might think about the Foreign Service, because this work is complicated.
If you understand that American leadership has been broadly positive—look at the 20th century: two world wars, and none since Americans asserted leadership; the creation of the UN, IMF, World Bank; NATO and other regional structures—that’s an extraordinary record.
If you don’t see it that way—if you only see America as being mistreated by other countries—fine, but maybe you should do something else. If you don’t see why American leadership is important and why it should continue, this probably isn’t the role for you.
And finally: if you’re interested in something, read a book about it. Get deep reading under your belt before you get too attached to strong opinions.

BW: You mention reading. At The Pathway Blog, I usually like to end by asking: if someone wanted to follow your career path, what piece of literature would you recommend?

CH: I’m a big believer in history. People who do best understand patterns of history. So I would crack a number of books.
I don’t have a single “how-to” book for this. It’s a life’s work—not one book.

BW: Ambassador Hill, thank you for your time—this was terrific.
​
CH: Thank you—and good luck. And thanks for doing this. It’s important for your contemporaries to hear these views. We’ve got to do a better job of listening to each other.