What Marine career choices would you recommend, for a International Relations major, that would help towards civilian employment?

Kimberly Palacios I would agree with CPT (Join to see) . You should also consider which path: officer, Warrant, or enlisted. If you seek to earn a commission, you could branch any of the regular accessions branches, then select FA 59 Strategic Plans and Policy for your career field designation (CFD) board around year 8 if I a man not mistaken. FA59 officers help shape policy at the national, international, and coalition level. FA59 doesn't have particular favored branch, they look harder at the masters degree and solid performance as a junior officer...if you lean this way, it would be a good idea for It to be annotated on your OER and Senior Rater comments. I was FA59 for 6 weeks while I was in grad school. Then involuntarily returned to Ordnance - Multi-functional logistician (FA90) due to a branch shortage.

You may also want to consider being a Foriegn Area Officer (FAO), where you learn the Area language (like Manadrin, Russian, Portuguese etc) then you serve as a Military Attaché to a country in that region.

There is also a CFD for Strategic Intelligence, which I do not know,much about. You may want to do research in this.

After the Military....that is a crap shoot. To try and figure out what you do after 4,8, 12, or 20 years...not sure there is a crystal ball with a valid DA Label 80 for that.

If you choose any of those routes and it is something that: 1. You were good at it and you built a good reputation, 2. You want to do something in this vein after you get out, and 3. You can gut out living in the D.C. Metro area. You could work in a political-military think tank. You could work at CIA, DIA, NRO, Department of State, DoD , or DHS as a GS employee. If you want to cross to the dark side, you could be a lobbyist or a defense contractor.

What is your particular draw to the Marine Corps? I am sure that if you apply yourself and work to succeed, you will be successful in what ever branch or MOS you choose. You could just go high and right and just pick an MOS that seems fun and go from there.

There is no guarantee in any of this. There will be needs of the service, draw downs, forced reclassifications, chance, fog, and friction. As an example my whole career has been a plan B.