Re-Stating Things Posted by Michael Signer

News today in WaPo that Secretary Rice is re-tasking the professional diplomats at the Department of State to hot problem areas like China, Lebanon, and Pakistan, rather than the ticking time bomb being watched over by the FSO's assigned to Berlin (relax, this is meant to be dryly put).

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that she will shift hundreds of Foreign Service positions from Europe and Washington to difficult assignments in the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere as part of a broad restructuring of the diplomatic corps that she has dubbed "transformational diplomacy."

The State Department's culture of deployment and ideas about career advancement must alter now that the Cold War is over and the United States is battling transnational threats of terrorism, drug smuggling and disease, Rice said in a speech at Georgetown University. "The greatest threats now emerge more within states than between them," she said. "The fundamental character of regimes now matters more than the international distribution of power." 

As part of the change in priorities, Rice announced that diplomats will not be promoted into the senior ranks unless they accept assignments in dangerous posts, gain expertise in at least two regions and are fluent in two foreign languages, citing Chinese, Urdu and Arabic as a few preferred examples.
 

I'm curious about readers' thoughts on this.  My instinct is to see it not only as a good thing, but as perhaps a little ripple stemming from the larger wave I've  written about recently -- a long-overdue recognition within the Administration that a defter, wiser touch, more Kennan than McNamara, is necessary in the complex world they have inherited.

At the risk of being irretrievably vulgar (to borrow John Cleese's phrase from A Fish Called Wanda), or blog-onanistic, I'm going to quote myself in an earlier post on this topic:   

The Department of Defense employs over 2 million active duty and civilian employees.  The State Department, boasts a measly 30,000 professionals.

And guess how many members are on State's hard-working and underappreciated Department of Policy Planning staff?  Less than twenty.
 

It's hard to tell whether their budgetary power stems from their prestige, or vice versa.  But neither helps when it comes to promoting diplomacy in in trouble areas during the vicissitudes of, say, American Congressional elections, when being "pro-defense" takes on the caricature of being "tough on crime" -- without thinking about what smart tough means.

Democrats afraid of being branded "weak on defense" embrace any and all military spending, and authority, at the expense of State -- the assumption being that if you support diplomacy, you don't support national security.

But this is just hogwash.  America's moral, political, and historical authority will only be strengthened if we manage our interests around the world in a more efficient, clear-eyed, and strong-handed way.

Toldja so. 

As a tidbit, it's worth looking at Secretary Rice's famous 2000 Foreign Affairs article, "The National Interest," where she argued precisely against the announced foreign policy of Wilsonian, idealistic democratization:

The belief that the United States is exercising power legitimately only when it is doing so on behalf of someone or something else was deeply rooted in Wilsonian thought, and there are strong echoes of it in the Clinton administration. To be sure, there is nothing wrong with doing something that benefits all humanity, but that is, in a sense, a second-order effect. America's pursuit of the national interest will create conditions that promote freedom, markets, and peace. Its pursuit of national interests after World War II led to a more prosperous and democratic world. This can happen again.

She obviously folded, post-9/11, with the neocons' internal pressure.  But the question is where her settling point is.  I'm tempted to look at this reorganization of State as a more subtle approach, squaring the "national interest" impulse with the more micro-steps occasioned by diplomacy.   But then again, Rice has moved around so much, it's hard to tell when she's going to stop.

Comments

[Andrew Albertson]

Rice literally is a compromise, her positions being an attempt to bridge the realists and neocons within the Republican foreign policy tent. "Transformational diplomacy", not unlike "a balance of power that favors freedom", is a phrase, not without subtantial importance designed to provide appropriate deference to each camp rather than any particular vision of her own.

That being said, this is a good move for State. The new world of threats to American interests, accurately describe as emanating more from within (weak) states than from the balance between them (great powers), allows for a more coherent, integrated foreign policy edifice. The move to pull AID in closer to the State fold also fits this new reality--as for that matter does the execution of each of these moves in seeming coordination with the upcoming publication of the Quadrennial Defense Review. In the new world of threats arising from states that are unable to meets the needs of their citizens, which in the end are more or less equivalent to the demands of the international community, a defense of our national interests demands above all a commitment to long-term investments designed to strengthen state capacities.

I worry about two things, however. First, the emphasis on transformational diplomacy in Asia, which I would assume has something to do with publically critiquing China for its human rights record while simulatanouesly torturing people. What exactly is that meant to accomplish? In the end, Condi's deal--relying on partnerships with regional powers, regardless of their respective human rights records, while simultaneously seeking transformation within countries rooted in moral suasion diplomacy--will proove (and has already been) Sisyphean.

Secondly, and perhaps more constructively, Condi's statement of the transformation seems to indicate a continued neglect of Africa. In a foreign policy in which threats from weak states are taken seriously, the presence of the State Department, and particularly its new reconstruction and stabilization capacities, need to be dramatically ramped up.

[Andrew Albertson]

By the way, I can't seem to find that Georgetown address that Condi apparently gave on Wednesday. Does anyone know of an audio or video version available somewhere?

[Timothy Riley]

No talks of increasing budgets for State or AID. The public seems to percieve movement on this front, but I haven't seen any. It is my understanding that Powell pushed through a minor increase in staffing in Aug '01, but that the budget and staffing positions have not increased measurably since. So I don't see this as an acknowledgement of the importance of diplomacy. I see this as a way of pulling AID into State, and consolidating budgets.
On the philosophy of pushing the Foreign Service into the hinterlands, I agree. I would, however, prefer to see these positions created, not shifted from equally important centers of international relations. It would seem that this move is in line with the administration's retreat from Europe, which does not bode well for consensus building in the future...

[J Thomas]

I've said this before elsewhere,but....

Rice made a speech. Maybe her ideas will get extended over the next 11 years. It might have some sort of long-term effect.

But it looks like the short-term effect will be that the diplomats which Bush etc don't like will get sent out to hardship posts where they have minimal influence.

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