State Department Reform Posted by David Shorr

Many thanks to Mark Goldberg at UN Dispatch for helping foster discussion a favorite topic: how to remedy the weakened state of our civilian international affairs agencies. The latest catalyst was an expression of despair by public diplomacy expert and blogger Matt Armstrong, who asked whether the State Department's weaknesses demand that we scrap its entire set-up and rebuild from the ground up. In response, Spencer Ackerman then offers thoughts about the nature, difficulty, and history of bureaucratic reform, with reference to Goldwater-Nichols.

I'd like to add some points about the 'why' of reform -- what should reform give us? This being a favorite topic, I might need to do a little recycling, first from a December 2008 Foreign Service Journal piece I wrote with Derek Chollet and Vikram Singh:

Every international problem confronting the United States includes more variables than ever before. This is an age of stakeholder proliferation — from the private sector and powerful NGOs to rising powers, and from criminal and terrorist networks to workers in the globa supply chain. To have any chance of shaping world events, Washingtonmust be alert to this panoply of actors and engaged at many levels in the intricate dynamics that determine political trends and policy decisions around the globe.

Accordingly, the essential aim of any effort to strengthen the U.S. civilian agencies must be to extend America’s lines of communication and cooperation to reach those on whom future peace and prosperity hinge. In the same way that globalizing trends have broken down international barriers for information and business, the United States must break down communication barriers to understand others’ concerns, by expanding ties further beyond the confines of officialdom in national capitals, and by responding more diligently and creatively to emerging problems. We won’t be able to do this without more effective — and better resourced — civilian agencies. Just as we need to invest in education and science to ensure that the American work force can compete and thrive in the globalizing world, wemust likewise transform our government to be competitive in the effort to sustain America’s global power in the 21st century.

So it's about influence, and relearning how it works in a networked world. It's about engagement, and clueing into how the world looks to others. And as Secretary Clinton pointed out in her CFR speech, it's also about multitasking, which she described as dealing with "the urgent, the important, and long-term all at once" -- and I in turn, on this blog, parsed as the full set of:

high-stakes crises (global recession, Iraq-Afghan Wars, Iran-DPRK nukes), but  also key precursors for progress (Middle East peace, stable Pakistan-Sudan, Kyoto follow-on, CTBT ratification), and long-term investments (great power relations, improved global living standards, modernized multilateralism).

This is what I see at stake in any reform effort. There's a huge amount of absolutely crucial work to be done, so apart from any need for reform, there's an urgent need to boost the level of financial and human resources. And ultimately, when the dust reform settles, we should find ourselves with purpose-driven agencies to tackle all these challenges. The Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review may be a good place to start.

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Really we should thank to Mark Goldberg.He has more than 29 years of international experience in strategic planning, managing, designing and implementing telecommunications carrier networks. His background includes heading the Network Services organization for one of Canada's largest long distance companies, developing the network architecture for competition in Canada, design of the US Government Voice Network, creating the business plan for Canada's Information Highway initiative, and helping international entrepreneurs launch traditional and enhanced telecommunications services.

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