Insider : Gaining Friends, Knowledge Abroad: Embassies’ Social Policies Debated : Foreign policy experts see showcase celebrations of Americana such as July 4 parties as vital to understanding host countries. Some in Congress aren’t so sure.

The American Embassy in Rome will celebrate its annual Fourth of July party this week on the Fifth of July. If the embassy did not shift the date and insisted instead on clinging to the good old American way, no Italian or any other foreigner would show up, because on July 4, all of them will be watching the semifinal match of the World Cup soccer tournament.

The schedule shift reveals a good deal about the nature of embassy July 4th parties around the world: Whether formal or picnic-like, these affairs are not staged for Americans overseas but as a way of impressing foreigners with the dignity and stature and, sometimes, the way of life of America.

In addition, entertaining by State Department officials overseas--while sometimes sniped at by Congress--is seen by foreign policy experts as a vital avenue for making friends in order to gain information and understanding about foreign countries. Indeed, some fear that U.S. diplomats--especially younger Foreign Service officers--do not do enough of that kind of socializing.

“If we had more Iranian friends in the 1970s or more Nicaraguan friends in the 1970s, the nature of the reporting we got would have been different,” said John Bushnell, a veteran diplomat who has studied the amount of socializing that American diplomats do with foreign nationals.

In Paris, some Americans feel miffed every year when they fail to receive invitations to the annual Fourth of July party at the impressive 18th-Century mansion that serves as the residence of the American ambassador on the elegant Rue du Faubourg Saint Honore, not far from the palace of the president of France.

“We were celebrating our national day as a promotional thing for the people of other countries to come to us and congratulate us,” said Joe M. Rodgers, a Tennessee businessman who served as ambassador to France during the last years of the Reagan Administration, trying to explain why his invitation list of 2,000 guests included fewer than 200 Americans.

“In any case, there are 25,000 Americans living in Paris,” he went on. “Who do you invite and who do you not invite?” Rodgers, speaking by telephone from Nashville, said he limited the American guests to no more than two representatives of each American organization or business in Paris.

Embassy Fourth of July parties are the showpiece expenditure of the $4.6-million “representational” or entertainment allowance in the Department of State budget, a tiny (less than 0.3% of the total) but much-bashed item in State’s annual spending blueprint.

Over the years, there have been complaints within the State Department about the size and cost of the July 4 affairs. And some congressmen used to enjoy bashing all entertainment spending by “striped pants cookie-pushers”--as these congressmen liked to call American Foreign Service officers.

Complaints about Fourth of July parties have subsided--in part because only a couple of Fourth of July celebrations now take up more than 10% of an embassy’s entertainment allowance.

But now there is a new complaint within the department--that Foreign Service officers may be entertaining too little. Junior officers, especially, may be shirking their work by failing to use their homes to entertain their contacts, some insiders contend.

There are a number of reasons why such home entertaining is on the wane: Working couples simply don’t have the time for entertainment; young Americans generally seem to shy away from entertainment at home these days.

The slump in entertaining is so pronounced that some State Department officials and members of Congress are beginning to wonder whether junior diplomats deserve the large houses often provided by the U.S. government. Evangeline Moore, the vice president of the Assn. of American Foreign Service Women, warned her colleagues recently, “We should bear in mind that if we are provided representational housing abroad, we should use it for that purpose or risk losing it.”

The total entertainment budget of the State Department has remained more or less the same since 1985. This amounts to a cut in spending every year if you take inflation into account.

“I guess Congress thinks we should entertain officially out of the joy of doing it,” said Ted Wilkinson, president of the American Foreign Service Assn. “Or maybe they think that some of the people who are sent abroad after paying $100,000 to the Republican Party to buy their post should pay for the parties on their own.”

Yet, despite Wilkinson’s biting comment, there is relatively little grumbling from Foreign Service officers about the entertainment allowance.

“But that is a problem of Foreign Service officers,” said Bushnell, who has completed an official State Department survey of representational housing and spending throughout the world. “There should be more complaints. They should want more money for entertainment. But increasingly, the Foreign Service officer doesn’t see himself making friends with his contacts. You don’t develop the sort of in-depth relationship that was common in my generation and the generation before me.

“We have become much more couch potatoes, and an awful lot of our embassy people go home and watch videotapes,” he went on. “Officers are not complaining that they lack representational funds, but they do lack them. We need to provide the funds and get people involved.”

The State Department divides its representational budget of $4.6 million among more than 120 embassies in accord with what officials believe are the needs of each. According to State Department officials, a small embassy like that in Nairobi was allotted $33,000 for 1990 while London received $164,000, Paris $140,000 and Tokyo $115,000.

Each embassy then divides its allotment among the ambassador, the deputy chief of mission and other diplomats. There may be some friction at this juncture. Insiders say that there is resentment about some ambassadors, especially political appointees, hogging too much of the allowance for themselves. At the same time, many political appointees end up paying for some entertainment out of their own pocket.

There is little doubt that while junior officers may be diminishing their entertainment, ambassadors are not. The official residences of most ambassadors bustle with dinners and receptions for top officials of the foreign government, American businessmen and visiting Congress members.

For years, there have been complaints that career ambassadors suffer financially when they take over a post because they can ill afford to pay for extra entertainment out of their own pocket. But that does not seem to be a major issue anymore--perhaps because ambassadors are using the unspent entertainment funds of the junior officers.

“Where I was, there was enough,” said George Vest, retired director general of the Foreign Service and former ambassador to the European Community in Brussels, “but we had to watch it very carefully. It was not an orchids and caviar and 1928 Corton Charlemagne sort of life.

“I would wager, though, that practically everyone has to pay some out of your pockets. We paid some. But then you get to deduct this on your income tax. My wife Emily kept strict records.”

“The entertainment allowance provided Paris with enough to do the job properly,” said Ambassador Rodgers. “But I went overboard because I had the funds. It cost me about $30,000 extra a year. We sometimes had eight guest rooms full of visitors. The ambassador’s house in Paris is the largest residence in the world, and my wife, Honey, and I really opened it up.”

“The Fourth of July was a big expense for the embassy,” he said. “We had to sort of save up to make sure there was enough surplus in the first two quarters of the year to help pay for the party in the third quarter. But I also spent some myself. One year we bought country hams and watermelons and shipped them to Paris for the party. . . .

“The taxpayer is getting a good deal on the representational allowance.”

Times staff writers William D. Montalbano in Rome and and Michael A. Hiltzik in Nairobi contributed to this report.