Senior Diplomat Sherry Zalika Jordan on International Relations: Complex Relationships
Magugu Davis, director of the Urban League’s Black Business Hub (l) and Sherry Zalika Jordan, a senior diplomat with the U.S. State Department.
by Jonathan Gramling
Sometimes our initial dreams of what we want to do as adults actually lead to the real dream that plays out in our lives.
Sherry Zalika Jordan, a senior diplomat with the U.S. State Department, dreamed of becoming a documentary film maker in high school. She applied to Stanford University and received a free ride. The only problem was that they didn’t have the major she desired.
“They gave me a free ride,” Jordan said. “I said, ‘Okay, I’m coming.’ I asked my advisor what I should do. You guys don’t have my major. And he said, ‘Just take classes. Take whatever interests you and come back in two years and we’ll see what that looks like. As long as the classes contribute to your distribution requirements and all of that, you’ll be good.’ I did, came back and he said, ‘Ah, you can be gender studies or women’s studies or you can do African and Afro-American studies or you can do international relations or you can double-major in any two of those three.’ And that’s what I did. I was an international relations major because I am curious about the world and how the world functions.”
Jordan’s career took her overseas and eventually she made her way to Tanzania, fell in love with a man from Tanzania and worked in community economic development.
“I was working for US Agency for International Development, the locally-engaged contractor,” Jordan said. “And I wanted better pay and better benefits. I asked my boss who was USAID mission director if she could make me permanent and an overseas employee and not a local one. And she said, ‘No, can’t do that. But the State Department is offering a test for the first time in two years. You can take that and join the State Department. And then you’ll have the career that you really want in terms of pay and benefits.”
Jordan took the Foreign Service Officer Test and for the next 28 years worked in the foreign service. When assigned to an embassy or consulate, the diplomat is a member of a team comprised of not only her fellow officers, but also the 300 million plus U.S. citizens.
“The United States is a huge, complicated country,” Jordan observed. “And we have many, many interests. And so when I was in charge of representing U.S. interests in a multilateral environment, before going there, we are consulting with industry, the relevant industry of whatever country we’re talking about. We’re consulting with the nonprofit organizations who advocate for environmental issues. We are consulting with state and local governments. We are consulting with a broad U.S. government and some agencies, like the EPA, will see things differently than the Department of Interior, which will see things differently than the Navy. And so we consult and collaborate. That is what the State Department does. It takes all of that input and then say, ‘Okay, what is the U.S. Government’s position on ABC issues?’ And those are competing interests. And we take those competing interests and we say, ‘Okay, what is the best way for us to do this?’ Depending on the nature of the issues, sometimes, we have to take it to the White House. But many times, if our superiors with the Department of State Building agree with it and legal agrees with it, then that is what we go in to negotiate based upon all of us coming together. And as the State Department person, my job is to be the lead negotiator and the team lead. And so, it’s not me walking a tightrope. It’s the whole team trying to walk that tightrope.”
In order to get issues addressed internationally — things like global warming and climate change — it requires a high level of collaboration and consensus to make headway on those issues.
“You have to be pragmatic,” Jordan said. “You have to say, especially in the UN, that most things are done by consensus because you can vote all day long. If everyone doesn’t agree to stop dumping in the world’s oceans from our ships, then we’ll still have people dumping. If we all agree that we are going to do it this way and ballast water is going to be treated a certain way, then we’ll see progress. It’s not a matter of being on the winning side but can we all walk together.”
Jordan has attended some of the UN COP — climate change — annual conferences. First, the world’s countries have to agree on what is happening.
“It has been vital in terms of where all the world’s clients come together, where everyone one says, ‘Okay, my scientific body and your scientific body and this set of universities and this set of thinkers, where we all bring all of that thought together and chew on it and decide what’s true as a global community,” Jordan said of COP. “And from there, we can, as a globe — whether it is government or businesses or organizations of various kinds — say, ‘Okay, it is true that if we don’t slow down by X amount, then we are going to warm by Y amount and therefore suffer X consequences. Having a convening body that gets us all to the same place of fact, which is really important.”
And then everyone has to decide the role they are going to play in the solution.
“From all of our separate corners, we can decide what to do about it,” Jordan said. “Now that body also wants to try to decide what to do about it. But it means very different things in very different corners of the world. And while some countries are able to command their economies to do ABC, other countries have less control over their economies and what people do and therefore, less ability to legislate certain things. So the U.S. has generally been in that bucket. The EU is another bucket in terms of what we are able to legislate and therefore the kinds of agreements we can come to. But just in the process, the process is the product for many of these forums.”
And the commitment of any one country doesn’t mean that it will remain the same throughout the implementation of solutions.
“One administration says, ‘Yes, this is what we really want to do,’ but they can’t get Congress to go along with it,” Jordan said about the U.S. “Congress is the one that decides what gets funded. And other times, the administration and Congress are working in lock-step and we can fulfill what we want to fulfill. And other times, it’s not. So it’s hard.”
And the countries want proof that each country is holding up its part of the bargain.
“We are checking one another’s progress,” Jordan said. “And we’re checking one another’s stats. It’s not just a bilateral thing between us and China or between us and Mexico. It is multilateral, so you have Vanuatu looking just as closely as Canada. Both of them have different issues, but both of them have very strong reasons to be there to understand what’s true. And not just what is true in the science department, but also what is true in terms of who is doing what to address it.”
On another level, programs like USAID are the face of the United States to the world. It is aid that countries are dependent upon to raise their living standards and grow their economies. It promotes a lot of goodwill. When the Trump administration suddenly cut USAID funding, it destroyed a lot of goodwill.
“Withdrawing the USAID funding was very disruptive,” Jordan said. “My husband was with USAID. He lost his position and so, so many people around the world had to make radical adjustments quickly. That has harmed our reputation around the world because to make a sudden change that way does not allow people to transition. It will break one’s trust.”
And the countries of the world can’t afford to wait for the U.S. to come around again.
“With the withdrawal of the USAID dollars, someone else will fill the vacuum,” Jordan observed. “Other partners who are already there — partners within Africa, partners from Europe, partners from Latin America and Asia — fill the vacuum, but our presence is missed.”
From Jordan’s experience, there is never a dull moment in the foreign service.
“What I enjoyed most was learning,” Jordan said. “I was forever learning something new: learning a new language, learning a new neighborhood, learning a new set of colleagues. 80 percent of those who work in our embassies are from that country. And so my colleagues in Tanzania were Tanzanian. My colleagues in Ethiopia were Ethiopian. Still people are people. Every day is a new opportunity to learn. And as and American foreign service generalist, I go from one type of assignment to another type of assignment in different topics. So one time, I worked on climate. Another time, I work on oceans. Another time, I will be working in human resources and logistics. And another time, I’m working in senior leadership in an embassy. So I am always learning and that is what I love the most.”
Sherry Zalika Jordan not only represents the U.S., she also represents the best of who we are as a people to the people of the world.