From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Mon Sep 14 2009 - 23:11:33 EDT
Hitting Bottom in Foggy Bottom
The State Department suffers from low morale, bottlenecks, and bureaucratic
inepititude. Do we need to kill it to save it?
BY MATTHEW ARMSTRONG | SEPTEMBER 11, 2009
Discussion over the fate of Foggy Bottom usually focuses on the tenure of
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the troubles of public diplomacy, and
the rise of special envoys on everything from European pipelines to
Afghanistan and Pakistan. But Americans would benefit more from a
reassessment of the core functionality of the U.S. State Department.
Years of neglect and marginalization, as well as a dearth of long-term
vision and strategic planning, have left the 19th-century institution
hamstrung with fiefdoms and bureaucratic bottlenecks. The Pentagon now
funds and controls a wide range of foreign-policy and diplomatic priorities
-- from development to public diplomacy and beyond. The world has changed,
with everyone from politicians to talking heads to terrorists directly
influencing global audiences. The most pressing issues are stateless:
pandemics, recession, terrorism, poverty, proliferation, and conflict. But
as report after report, investigation after investigation, has highlighted,
the State Department is broken and paralyzed, unable to respond to the new
21st-century paradigm.
But how did it get so bad? Is it possible to fix? Or should we just push it
over the wall like a great Humpty Dumpty and reassign the pieces?
Related
There is growing evidence that the internal machinations of the State
Department have corrupted its "core missions" of traditional diplomacy and
public diplomacy. This year, for example, the Government Accountability
Office (gao) found that the department completely failed in its now
four-year-old attempt to reorganize its nonproliferation bureau (a bureau
that remains leaderless). Besides failing to address mission overlap, low
morale, and lack of career opportunities, the failed reorganization caused
a significant drop in expertise in offices focused on proliferation issues
-- including "today's threats posted by Iran, North Korea, and Syria," the
gao's report said -- and coordination with bodies like the International
Atomic Energy Agency.
Another report by the State Department's inspector general this year
described severe and broad dysfunction within the Africa bureau, while
ignoring -- perhaps considering it a given -- the lack of departmentwide
integration and leadership in operations. Examples of the dysfunction range
from not providing public diplomacy personnel with computers capable of
reading interoffice memos to a failure to effectively work with the new
Africa Command.
By necessity, the Defense Department has stepped in where State Department
has tuned out: Foggy Bottom relies on Pentagon funding and even personnel
for basic operations central to its mission. For example, the Defense
Department now performs much strategic communications work traditionally
the purview of the State Department. In Somalia, for example, the State
Department's budget for public diplomacy is $30,000. The Pentagon's is
$600,000. And, in the State Department's bureaucratic wisdom, the $30,000
does not even belong to its undersecretary for public diplomacy and public
affairs.
Further, rivalries between the different "cones" -- or career tracks,
referred to by one insider as the "conal caste system" -- at the State
Department severely impact morale, career growth, and even operations. The
report on the Africa bureau noted that in 2002, public affairs and public
diplomacy was a "failed office" -- and that the situation is worse in 2009.
Public outreach workers said the bureau's leadership "does not understand
public diplomacy." The sentiment is widespread. A 2008 report by a
congressional ombudsman, the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy,
described a systemic failure to support and train public diplomacy officers
in the field, as well as professional discrimination against those in the
career track.
Attempts to fix the State Department have focused on short-term issues,
such as ameliorating its shortages in human and financial resources. The
last eight secretaries of state have attempted to bolster the department by
bolstering its bottom line. No less than Defense Secretary Robert Gates and
the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, have long
suggested transferring funds from the Defense Department to State
Department. But the situation is so dire that the State Department, at this
point, could not even absorb and spend that much-needed infusion of cash.
If there were a wholesale transfer of funds tomorrow, the lack of capacity
and skills at the State department would mean it would have to give it back
to the Defense Department or dole it out to contractors.
The creeping militarization of U.S. foreign policy is itself deeply
worrying, not just to Gates and Mullen, but also to such luminaries as
Secretary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden. In 2008, then-Senator Biden
questioned the "expanding role of the military in U.S. foreign policy." He
said he was concerned by the "migration of functions and authorities from
U.S. civilian agencies to the Department of Defense."
Some commentators have even wondered aloud whether the best way to fix the
State Department might be to destroy it. Foggy Bottom could retain a small
core staff for its embassies and ambassadors. All other functions -- such
as public diplomacy, countering misinformation and propaganda, and
development, including provincial reconstruction staffing -- could migrate
to the Pentagon or become wholly independent agencies.
But atomizing the State Department would ultimately prove dangerous and
further the militarization of foreign policy. The Pentagon needs a
counterbalance, a vertically integrated State Department that the
president, Congress, and the U.S. public can count on. Change, rather than
creative destruction, is what Foggy Bottom needs.
Envision a State Department capable of leading whole-of-government
initiatives with a strategic focus instead of one hidebound department
geared by structure and tradition to execute state-to-state diplomacy. This
"Department of State and Non-State" would be as deft at tackling stateless
terrorist networks and hurricanes as it would be at fostering and upholding
alliances with foreign ministers. To transform Foggy Bottom in this way
will require breaking the rigid hierarchy, stovepipes, and bottlenecks
which make the Pentagon look lean and dynamic in comparison.
Modern global affairs are not compartmentalized by political borders.
Besides expanding the overly shallow and narrow authorities of the public
diplomacy bureau, Clinton must restructure the State Department to focus
less on countries and more on regions. Currently, each of Foggy Bottom's
regional bureaus, such as Near East Affairs, is configured to oversee its
patch of embassies. Country desk officers, and most ambassadors, report to
an assistant secretary, the regional head. The assistant secretary in turn
reports to an undersecretary, who reports to Clinton.
Clinton should name the regional bureau heads, currently assistant
secretaries, to undersecretary status. This would help eliminate an
unnecessary bureaucratic layer and would also align the State Department
with the Defense Department (which has powerful regional commands, such as
Centcom and Africom). The State Department's regional leaders would hold an
equivalent civilian rank to four-star combatant commanders like Gen. David
Petraeus. These changes would promise to improve communications,
synchronize missions, and put the department on the right path for today's
requirements.
But Clinton should beware reforming the State Department too quickly from
within -- her efforts could be paralyzed by a bureaucracy in mutiny that
would simply wait her out. U.S. national security would suffer and the
Pentagon's growing power would become more entrenched. Clinton will need
the clear and unequivocal support of the president and more importantly
Congress, which authorizes State Department spending bills, to have a
chance at success.
In a burst of activity after Barack Obama's election, Congress authorized
more money and people for the State Department and pushed for greater
public diplomacy. Still more is required. The question asked over the last
eight years as the State Department abrogated its various responsibilities
-- if not Defense, then who? -- will not, indeed cannot, be answered until
the department steps up to the plate and becomes effective and visible in
leading and implementing U.S. foreign policy. This will take time. But, as
the saying goes, there is no time like the present. The United States now
has a Congress that supports change, secretaries of state and defense who
want change, a president whose entire election platform was built around
the word "change," and an American public that would be outraged at the
dysfunction if it only knew the details.
Can Mosquito Nets Stop Terrorists?
The battle between the State Department and the Department of Defense to
control public diplomacy.
By Elizabeth Dickinson
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