Unfinished Business

I have been asked to post this article that I wrote in 2001 on State Department reform and reorganization. It will be obvious to everyone that while a couple of the ideas in the paper found favor on the 7th floor of State, most of the ideas were rejected as in the "too hard to do" box. In some ways, the time when this paper was written seems a 100 years ago; in other ways just yesterday.

Unfinished Business:

Foreign Affairs Consolidation was

only the Beginning

William P. Kiehl

© National Security Studies Quarterly Volume VII, Issue 1 (Winter 2001).

ON 1 OCTOBER 1999, THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE ABSORBED THE

formerly independent United States Information Agency (USIA),

concluding a consolidation of the foreign affairs agencies agreed upon

by both the Clinton administration and Congress. The consolidation also

brought the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) into the De-

partment of State and brought the Agency for International Development

(AID) under closer State Department control.1 Unfortunately for the Depart-

ment of State and for the foreign policy interests of the United States, the

consolidation missed a unique opportunity to reform the “host” agency itself.

There is no one close to the foreign policy process who can fail to recog-

nize the Department of State is a troubled cabinet agency. Indeed the depart-

ment that often talks about “failed “ or “failing” states is a failed—or at least

failing—cabinet department. Starved for resources for a generation and an-

nually expected to “do more with less,” the department’s failings are all too

evident. Problems include an antiquated and over-centralized financial ac-

counting system; three incompatible e-mail systems and serious weaknesses

across the cyberspace spectrum; little serious training or emphasis on man-

agement and planning; very serious morale, retention, and recruitment prob-

lems; appalling security lapses; decreased relevance in the interagency pro-

cess, especially in economic and political-military matters; a culture fixated

on process rather than product; and a reputation for both arrogance and du-

plicity on Capitol Hill which belies the reality that the Department of State

loses on nearly every issue—and without much of a fight. Is it as bad

as all that? Ask any Foreign Service officer.2

With a new administration there is another, perhaps ephemeral,

chance for a real reorganization of these vital foreign affairs functions.

The Department of State did not fail in one year, nor in one administra-

tion, and it will require at least one four year term to make the Depart-

ment of State relevant again to U.S. interests and goals. There needs to

be a “quick fix” and a longer-term structural change. First, some imme-

diate readjustments to the previous consolidation are necessary.

QUICK FIXES

The consolidation of foreign policy bureaucracies in the Clinton admin-

istration suffered a range of short-comings due to a variety of reasons,

ranging from bureaucratic politics to the vagaries of personalities. These

problems, embodied specifically in the incorporation of ACDA and USIA

into the department and the conduct of U.S. diplomacy in the former So-

viet Union, require immediate attention.

When ACDA and USIA were folded into the Department of State,

the institutional legacy of each agency took wildly different paths.

In an effort to mollify critics in the arms control community and in Con-

gress, ACDA’s successor within the Department of State became in-

stantly over-staffed and bureaucratically bloated. To remedy this ineffi-

ciency, Congress should eliminate one or two bureaus—and their as-

sociated assistant secretaries—of the four currently under the aegis of the

under secretary of state for arms control.

In contrast to ACDA’s fate, the relics of USIA were scattered about the

Department of State in an effort to diminish the former agency’s clout

while swallowing its resource base. Thanks to congressional interven-

tion, the department could not complete a full-scale raid on public di-

plomacy resources. Still, the damage was done. Public diplomacy strate-

gies, and especially international information programs, in the Depart-

ment of State suffer from a lack of institutional clout and influence. To

resolve these problems, Congress should ease the organizational chal-

lenges presented by a department spokesman, nominally an assistant

secretary, who works directly for the secretary of state. The Bureau of

Public Affairs rarely has been “managed” at all by its assistant secretary

due to the more compelling duties of department spokesman.

The quick fix here is to separate the functions of department spokes-

man and assistant secretary of state for public affairs. The spokesman,

equivalent to an under secretary, should work directly for the secre-

tary of state but coordinate the department’s public statements

closely with the under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs.

There should be an assistant secretary for public affairs who would

actually oversee the Bureau of Public Affairs and report to the under

secretary. The Bureau of Public Affairs, after some legislative fixes to

strike archaic provisions of the Smith-Mundt Act3 barring use of

foreign targeted material in the United States, would be enriched

immeasurably by joining with the overseas public information effort in

a single bureau producing information material for use domestically

and internationally.4

With the departure from office of a deputy secretary whose overriding

interest was the former Soviet Union, the bureaucratic anomaly of

an Office of the Newly Independent States reporting directly to the

deputy secretary, with the status of a bureau, should cease. The logical

outcome should be the assignment of the European and Caucasian

states of the former-Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to the Bureau of

European Affairs and the Central Asian states to the Bureau of South

Asian Affairs—renamed the Bureau of Central and Southern Asian Af-

fairs.

Realistically, these remedies may be all that could be accomplished in

the course of a year or two by any new administration. Even these rela-

tively minor adjustments, in some cases, would require formal congres-

sional approval; in all cases, they should have congressional input and

cooperation. These measures are just the beginning, however. The next

two stages of the process will be far more difficult and more challenging

to both the new administration and the entrenched bureaucracy of the

Department of State. The Congress too must re-think some basic as-

sumptions.

LONGER-TERM REFORM

The next two steps in the process of transforming the Department of

State from a failing cabinet department into one which serves effec-

tively the foreign affairs interests of the United States will require a dra-

matic change in thinking by the foreign policy establishment, the Con-

gress, and the rank-and-file foreign service and civil service employees

of the department. The two steps are essential and must be linked to make

the transformation work.5

Step one requires the Congress and other stakeholders to recognize

the Department of State is just as much a national security instrument

as is the U.S. military and the U.S. intelligence community.6 This means

that to increase national security there must be an increase in foreign

affairs funding along with defense funding and intelligence funding. The

three components are interlinked like three horses in a troika. Imagine a

Russian troika with two thoroughbreds and a mule hitched to a sleigh

and you will have some idea of the rough ride by funding two compo-

nents of national security adequately while starving the third—the foreign

affairs budget. Whether this new thinking results in the foreign affairs

account being moved into a national security appropriation or remaining

as the existing State, Justice, Commerce appropriation is a congres-

sional decision. What must occur, however, is an agreement between

the White House and the Congress to bring foreign affairs into alignment

with defense and intelligence. Without a robust foreign affairs budget,

the diplomatic resources simply are not there to use. This results, as evi-

denced all too frequently in recent years, in looking to the military to

solve nearly every problem. The common phrase in military circles is

“if your only tool is a hammer, then every problem becomes a nail.” Con-

gress and the administration must work together to provide policy

makers with other tools so that diplomacy can defuse issues before the

military hammer becomes the only option available to the United States.

This is not only more humane, it is also much more cost effective.

Exercising a real capability for preventive diplomatic solutions,

even while linking dispute resolution to sizeable economic assistance,

costs but a small fraction of the traditional multilateral military peace-

keeping solution. If the Department of State had been able to assemble a

more impressive diplomatic arsenal coupled with the promise of substan-

tial economic aid, even a recalcitrant Yugoslavia might have been eased

into a more benign role in both Bosnia and Kosovo. That is not to

argue that the military option would not have been used. It might have

come to that. But because U.S. diplomatic options were so weak they

were given neither the time nor the principal focus of the administration.

There was, from the outset of U.S involvement in each crisis, a sense

of the inevitability of the military option.

If the Congress and the new administration can agree on the premise

that foreign affairs is integral to national security, then a realistic bud-

get to refurbish the infrastructure, reward employees, and modernize the

means to conduct foreign policy can be put into place over the course of

two to four years. Too often, the major stakeholders in foreign

policy—members of Congress and their staffs, as well as members of

the public and the press—have been drawn to believe in an old-fashioned

and never accurate stereotype of diplomats and diplomatic life. Ask the

vice consul in Mumbai, or the cultural affairs officer in Lagos, or the

economic officer in Tashkent how many black tie dinners and garden

parties they attend and how often they or their families have been ill

because of bad water, bad air, or unsanitary conditions—the answer

will not encourage young Americans to join the Foreign Service. The

stakeholders, with a realistic picture of what diplomacy is all about, will

be less reluctant to make the investment in diplomacy as a lower cost,

longer-term tool so that the military tool may be used less frequently and

only when other means have not been successful. A military solution

should never be the substitute for an under-funded or non-existent diplo-

matic solution.

In practical terms this will mean restoring the foreign affairs appro-

priation to roughly the same level within the federal budget that it had

in 1961, that is 4% of the federal budget or a nearly four-fold increase

from the present level of 1% of the budget.7 The increased funding ini-

tially should be sufficient to provide the security enhancements and re-

store infrastructure for overseas operations so sorely needed. A rela-

tively small portion of these funds also should go to eliminate U.S. ar-

rears in payments to the United Nations (UN) and for UN operations,

like peacekeeping, which have prior U.S. commitments. There is also a

need to increase targeted assistance to friends and potential friends

abroad to enhance U.S. interests. Without a safe, secure diplomatic

work environment, restoration of America’s reputation as a reliable

member of the international community, and sufficient funds to reward

friends and assist potential friends in the developing world, the task of cre-

ating a peaceful world environment for the development of civil societ-

ies and market economies will be made more difficult and, in the end,

more expensive in both blood and fortune. A small investment in diplo-

macy now can prevent the kinds of future world crises that can cost the

United States and its citizens dearly down the road.

Most of the increase in funding should go where it will have the most

immediate, as well as the most long-lasting, positive impact. It should go

to preserve and enhance the Department of State’s most precious re-

source—its people. One small glimmer of light in the current department

has been the renaming of the Bureau of Personnel to the Bureau of Hu-

man Resources. That is precisely what the people constitute—the

most important resource of the department. The private sector long

ago realized people are the key to success. Most of government has

more recently come to this realization. Perhaps the Department of

Defense is the best role model in this regard. The Department of Defense

not only talks about “the Quality of our Forces”—it backs up these

words with actions.8 Quality has been achieved only at great expense

and effort. It has required the creation of institutions and procedures

honed over more than two decades to develop a high level of effective-

ness and efficiency in the U.S. armed forces.

Key Defense Department priorities have been to attract highly mo-

tivated and skilled people, to retain highly skilled people in sufficient

numbers, to develop leadership skills and other institutional, on-the-job

and self-study types of training at each level of leadership, and to pro-

vide these motivated, skilled, and well trained people with technologi-

cally superior equipment and facilities. This unquestionably has worked

for the U.S. military and it has been vital to operational success. The

Department of State should have a similar set of priorities for its people

to ensure it own operational success in diplomacy.

The prevailing attitude in the Department of State has long been one

almost haughtily averse to training. The conventional wisdom is that di-

plomacy is an art, not a science. Accordingly, it is reasoned, there is no

formula to follow. The Foreign Service attracts the best and the bright-

est the United States has to offer and they have all the intellectual tools

they need. That intelligence need only be combined with experience in

the field and in Washington and it will result in a highly professional diplo-

matic service. Unfortunately, these assumptions are no longer valid, if

they ever were. Diplomacy has a body of knowledge, a history of what

works and what does not, and a code of practices and procedures that

must be passed on generation to generation in a more formal way than is

now the case. There is a formula to follow so long as flexibility is not

sacrificed to formula. As for the best and the brightest, evidence suggests

they are now choosing multinationals, banks, and dot.coms, rarely the

Foreign Service. The Department of State cannot offer a competitive sal-

ary and benefits package or the promise of rapid advancement for

the highly talented and motivated. Granted, money and advancement

are not everything. Still, the Foreign Service offers neither physical safety

in the age of terrorism, nor status and respect in the age of bureaucracy’s

association with incompetence. Most critically, however, the Foreign Ser-

vice struggles to offer even relevance as modern technology offers direct

methods of communication, the military’s regional commanders-in-

chief (CINCs) exert tremendous influence, and the process of global-

ization changes the international environment. The Department of

State must re-think the way it deals with its people or, in the case of re-

cruitment, potential people. Just as education should not end with a di-

ploma, education and training in the Department of State must be an on-

going effort from day one to—and through—retirement. The Depart-

ment of State and U.S. diplomacy already have paid a high price for not

wisely investing in people. The Department of State must follow the

Defense Department model of loyalty down as well as loyalty up, and

genuine investment in people, their training, and their equipment lest our

diplomatic capacities continue to erode as an increasingly dispirited

and cynical Foreign Service struggles to do more and more with less and

less.

A relatively small investment in state of the art communications to

enable all parts of the Department of State to interact with each other

in real time across a wide bandwidth is an investment that will pay great

dividends. Just as with the Defense Department, high quality, well-

trained and well motivated people need the best equipment to do the

best job. Video conferencing, compatible e-mail systems, and full band-

width Internet access at home and abroad are not luxuries in today’s

global political, economic, cultural, and information societies; they are

the price of doing business effectively. All this quality recruitment,

motivation, training, and equipment will cost money just as it has in the

U.S. military.

If reform at the Department of State were just a question of money,

however, it would be a relatively simple solution indeed. Money will

go a long way in bringing the Department of State’s infrastructure

and personnel policies up to standard. But that will not be enough.

The next step, simultaneous with the infusion of additional funds, must be

a radical restructuring of the organization of the department and its in-

ternal policies and procedures. What is suggested here is nothing less than

a transformation of the department’s corporate culture.9

Step two calls for a simplification and a leveling of the organizational

structure of the department. Without going into elaborate details, this

step envisages: six regional divisions of the world corresponding a bit

more closely to the Defense Department’s regional CINCs; a di-

vision for multi-regional affairs including the United Nations and other

international organizations and the “global” bureaus; specialized bu-

reaus like the existing Consular Affairs, Educational and Cultural Af-

fairs, Legal, Congressional Relations, Administration, Diplomatic

Security, and so forth, which might remain largely intact while other

functions could be subsumed within regional bureaus. This would pro-

vide a long awaited opportunity to cut back on the number of bureaus

(as well as assistant secretaries and their equivalents), rationalize the

geographic diplomatic units with those of military commands, and re-

balance the relative influence and resources within the regional bureaus

and between regional and functional bureaus.

One innovation might be the physical relocation of some regional

deputy assistant secretaries and some key staff to co-locate with a regional

CINC outside the Washington, DC, area. The territory assigned to the

CINCs and the six regional bureaus of the Department of State should

be adjusted so they more closely match. Situating a State Department

policy cell with the CINC will provide greater interaction between the

department and the regional CINCs than currently takes place through a

single State Department political advisor assigned as a member of the

CINC’s staff. It will simultaneously assist in the necessary decentraliza-

tion of decision making within the Department of State. In the informa-

tion age, a CINC-based State Department cell could provide real time

value-added policy input directly to the most senior levels of the depart-

ment, horizontally to the CINC, and through the CINC to the Joint Staff.

This reorganization will require decentralized financial and adminis-

trative authority and responsibility, devolving it to the various bureaus

in Washington and especially to the overseas missions. A whole range of

procurement, grant making, and travel processing should be shifted

to the bureaus and overseas missions without reference to central author-

ity. The Department of State must realize that over-centralization for

purposes of control stifles creativity, dampens initiative, and pulls ef-

ficiency down to the lowest common denominator. Decentralization will

empower employees and free staff and time for training. The current

culture builds an unnecessary and destructive “us versus them” wall

between the “policy wonks” and the “admin types.” Recent suggestions

to create a second deputy secretary of state for management to join the

current deputy secretary (for policy) would only compound this mutual

alienation. Staffing throughout the department should be consistent with

the goal that at least 20% of each bureau’s complement should be un-

dergoing some form of short-term or long-term training or educational

development at any given time. Training must be mandatory and be

tied directly to advancement. Some additional consolidation of

foreign affairs functions remains to be done. The Foreign Commercial

Service, now lodged in the Department of Commerce and the Foreign

Agricultural Service now a part of the Agriculture Department would

be better able to complement the work of the Department of State by

being incorporated with other economic functions of the department.

These Foreign Service officers, who now find themselves stranded in

larger non-foreign affairs agencies in which they have little influence,

would make an immediate contribution to new thinking at State.

Finally, planning, especially planning on an interagency basis, must

be required of all offices of the Department of State. Too often, bril-

liant papers and plans are crafted by, for, and of the Department of State

without ever being seen, much less contributed to, by any other part of

the U.S. government. These papers are part of the endless paper chase

within Foggy Bottom, which, in the end, means nothing, influences noth-

ing and drains away the energies and talents of department staff. In order

to be meaningful and influential, planning must be integrated into ev-

ery part of the Department, planners must not be separated from policy

and all stakeholders in the outcome must be integral to the planning pro-

cess. If the Department of Defense and the U.S. military have been criti-

cized for over-planning, this error is preferable to under-planning. Plan-

ning, like training, must be made a high priority for the department.

Advancement in the service must be contingent on specific training re-

quirements at every level of leadership. This training must include plan-

ning and interagency coordination as requirements for advancement to

mid-level and senior positions. Will this new organization and

funding guarantee a more stable and peaceful world? Will it eliminate

poverty and injustice, rogue states and terrorism, would-be dictators,

and errors of judgment? Unfortunately, the answer is “no.” As long

as there is a human equation in international relations the world will

not always be as we would wish.

What a reinvigorated Department of State can do, however, is to manage

the one constant in the world—change.

The United States of America enters the twenty-first century as the

most dominant power of this or any earlier age. The country’s military

and economic power is unrivaled. But because we know change is ever

present, we must now devote a real effort to rebuild U.S. diplomatic

readiness and to care for our complex bilateral and multilateral rela-

tions. Every dominant world power throughout history has made the

same mistake—it assumed that the status quo would last forever. When

change came, and those that the great power dominated determined

themselves to dominate, the great power was unprepared or unwilling

to use diplomatic tools to manage change and relied on military might

in a vain attempt to cling to power. The vision of a transformed Depart-

ment of State presented in this article, with the diplomatic tools nec-

essary to manage change and rebuild relationships within the world com-

munity—a kind of Vision 2010 for diplomacy—will cost money, take

enormous effort, and require the dedicated commitment of all in-

volved. To continue to muddle along, however, is no longer a vi-

able alternative.

ENDNOTES

1. For the details of the reorganization

plan see Reorganization Plan and

Report (revised March 1999) Sub-

mitted Pursuant to Section 1601 of

the Foreign Affairs Reform and Re-

structuring Act of 1998 as Con-

tained in Public Law 105-277.

2. See findings based upon interviews

with Foreign Service officers, in

Stephanie Smith Kinney , “Develop-

ing Diplomats for 2010: If Not Now,

When?,” American Diplomacy Vol.

V, No. 3, (Summer 2000): 16. The

author concludes there is broad

agreement that neither the Depart-

ment nor the Foreign Service is

“ready to meet the challenges to

American diplomacy.”

3. Commonly known as the Smith-

Mundt Act, the United States Infor-

mation and Educational Exchange

Act of 1948, as amended, 22 U.S.C.

1431, prohibits the dissemination of

informational materials produced for

overseas use in the United States or

to U.S. citizens and residents. Sec-

tion 208 of the USIA Authorization

Act, FY 1986 and 1987, U.S.C.

1461-1a, “The Zorinsky Amend-

ment” adds to these prohibitions.

Some exceptions to the general pro-

hibitions have been made by Con-

gress over the years for films, publi-

cations, and materials, the domestic

distribution of which Congress de-

termined to be in the national inter-

est. In the age of the Internet, the 24/

7 news cycle, and satellite television,

these prohibitions on domestic dis-

semination based on irrational fears

of the creation of an American gov-

ernment propaganda agency have

long outlived whatever usefulness

they may have had.

4. Two minor fixes should be undertaken

immediately to transfer the oversees

American speakers’ program from

the Office of International Informa-

tion Programs to the Bureau of Edu-

cational and Cultural affairs (ECA)

given the program’s Fulbright-Hayes

origins and to reorganize the ECA

Bureau along geographic lines to

enable it to interact better with the

true power centers of the department.

5. It is not the purpose of this article to

lay out a detailed blueprint for all of

the reforms needed, but rather to

raise consciousness about some of

the more obvious changes so-long

overdue, and to suggest directions for

those changes.

6. Ambassador William C. Harrop “The

Infrastructure of American Diplo-

macy,” American Diplomacy, Sep-

tember 2000. The article makes an

excellent case for the inclusion of the

Department of State in the national

security realm of the federal budget

and pointedly notes the “hollowing

out” of U.S. diplomatic readiness.

7. See The Budget in Brief For Fiscal

Year 2001, Released by the U.S.

Department of State, 7 February

2000.

8. One need only peruse a publication

such as Joint Vision 2020 to under-

stand the Department of Defense’s

commitment of resources to ensure

quality in the armed forces. Office

of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs

of Staff, Director for Strategic Plans

and Policy, J5; Strategy Division,

Joint Vision 2020, US Government

Printing Office, Washington DC,

June 2000, or http://www.dtic.mil/

jv2020/jvpub2.htm.

9. This is not the first call for a basic

reform of the Department of State

and its way of doing business.

Among the more recent of more than

two dozen such studies are: The

Henry L. Stimson Center, Equipped

for the Future, October 1998; The

Center for Strategic and Interna-

tional Studies, Reinventing Diplo-

macy in the Information Age, Octo-

ber 1998: and U.S. Department of

State, America’s Overseas Presence

in the 21st Century, November 1999.

William P. Kiehl is a member of the Senior Foreign Service with the Department of State. He is

currently Diplomat in Residence at the Center for Strategic Leadership, U. S. Army War College

and a Senior Fellow of the Peacekeeping Institute. The writer’s views are his own and do not necessarily

reflect those of the institutions with which he is affiliated.