The diplomat’s goal is to build a correct, if boring, model of the world, continuously update it, and prepare decision-makers to hold to that model with the right level of confidence. Here’s how diplomats see the world. The Foreign Service was explicitly designed to displace the 19th-century spoils system, in which jobs went to loyal partisans. This compartmentalization around foreign policy does not mean that the people in the foreign service are apolitical in their personal lives. In 2020, there were roughly 14,000 Foreign Service personnel, including generalists and specialists, and about 13,000 civil service employees in the State Department.