The State Department debate rages on … and on

By Christian Brose

My earlier post on the State Department has kicked up quite an interesting debate in the comments section, and I’d like to add a few further points.

1. As commenter ule99 correctly points out, a program for mid-career entry into the diplomatic corps should not be limited to military officers. And that was not the case with the proposed initiative back in 2005-06. It was also designed to attract mid-career professionals from the private sector, and NGOS, and the like — people with experience managing money and people, implementing programs, measuring results effectively, not to mention working overseas with important and high-demand languages skills. The goal wasn’t to "militarize" diplomacy, but to expand and deepen its talent pool.

2. As Nick points out, the debate over State’s future is very analogous to the one raging in the military over "to COIN or not to COIN." The Gian Gentiles of the civilian debate insist that nation-building, stabilization and reconstruction operations, and improved "jointness" with the military and USAID shouldn’t trump good old-fashioned state-to-state diplomacy, and it might not even be something diplomats should be doing at all. The John Nagls, on the other hand, insist that the primary game for civilians not just in the future, but right now, is increasingly those weak and poorly governed places — the "hardship posts" — where there isn’t always an effective state with which to conduct traditional diplomacy. So the goal should be to help local actors build capacity.

Of course, as in the military debate, the answer here is not either/or, but both. In short, the goal is "full spectrum" diplomacy: on the one end, working traditionally with successful states to solve global problems while, on the other end, leading "whole of government" efforts to support indigenous actors in developing countries to build effective states that can exercise the full responsibilities of sovereignty, both internal and external.

Like the military with conventional warfare, the State Department does traditional diplomacy well, and if anything, will need to do a lot more of it, with significantly more people, as more countries rise to great power. Everyone likes to quote the fact that we have more members of military bands than we do Foreign Service officers. Well, here’s another: Despite Secretary Rice’s best efforts to change this, State still has roughly as many diplomats in Germany as in India — a country with about 12 times the population.

3. My own experience is that most people now joining State and AID expect and want to serve in places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Liberia, etc. They’re used to working in "networks of networks" with lots of individual responsibility. This is very encouraging. But State remains an extremely hierarchical, process-oriented organization that still more closely resembles GM in the 1950s than, say, Google today. This is stifling to the kinds of improvisation and initiative that we increasingly need and that, on the military side, COIN demands of even junior officers. So how do we change this?

Here’s a thought: Most of the post-9/11 efforts to reform our national security institutions largely focused on Washington — what boxes to add or subtract from the organizational chart, and how to redraw the lines between them. But where a "whole of government" approach arguably matters most is in the field. And there, Iraq may be instructive.

What Amb. Crocker and Gen. Petraeus created was a model for an integrated, results-based country team that unified all of our tools of national power to help Iraqis build an increasingly decent, capable state that can provide security and essential services for its people. Responsibility was decentralized, from Washington to Baghdad, and from Baghdad to the provinces. U.S. civilians were empowered and moved out of the capital on Provincial Reconstruction Teams where they could assess local needs and support Iraqi state-building. And they were able to summon and integrate all of the tools of our national power to do so. Or to put it another way, to generate "smart power."

Now, Iraq is clearly an exceptional case, but how it differs from, say, a Sudan, or a Mexico, or a Yemen, or even a less fragile and better functioning state like Ghana is more that of scale than of kind. The challenges and circumstances of developing countries like these are unique, but the goal is the same: state-building. And the U.S. approach should be similar too: joint country teams led by civilians, invested with far greater responsibility relative to Washington, supporting local partners, and aligning whatever U.S. tools are needed to help build state capacity: development programs, military assistance, legal training, police support, trade agreements, whatever.

This isn’t to say that diplomats should be performing these functions themselves. But State should be leading the interagency effort in these countries. And too often now it is not — in part because of lack of resources, but also in large part because much of the organization still does not see that as its role. And by organization, I mean the prevailing views of people in the middle and upper ranks who shape the culture and the incentives of State.

A final thought: I was talking a year or so ago with a senior Foreign Service officer — a real high-flier. And he made a really interesting point. He said that a failing of the State Department is that it channels its best and the brightest into important policy jobs, but it never requires them to spend a year or two in HR — in jobs designed to improve the organization. Now, one can argue that this isn’t the best use of our most talented diplomats, but in part that’s the problem. Just as Gen. Petraeus has taken a hands-on approach to get capable COIN commanders promoted to good jobs, wouldn’t it be a good idea to require the Ryan Crockers of State to spend at least some time during their careers working to shape their institution more in their own image?

You may lose their skills temporarily, but what you’ll likely gain in the long-term, institutionally, is arguably even more valuable.