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The Layalina Review

VOL. V NO. 2, January 02-January 15, 2009

Reshaping the State Department

James Kitfield discusses the need for an enlarged Department of State at Global Security. With Secretary-designate Hillary Clinton in control, several scholars have been evaluating what a new DoS could look like, as well as its concomitant effect on public diplomacy.

Kitfield notes that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has consistently highlighted "the absurdity of a superpower having more people playing in military bands than serving as diplomats." Indeed, the US spends 16 times more on military programs than on diplomacy according to Kitfield.

Gates argues that the Foreign Service has been "systematically starved of resources for a quarter of a century or more." Thus, while the Pentagon is boosting US ground forces by 90,000, the State Department has failed to win congressional support for an additional 1,150 Foreign Service officers. Chester Crocker, professor of strategic studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, claims that the State Department is "woefully underfunded and understaffed," following the post-Cold War "hollowing out" of US diplomatic capacity.

As a result, Kitfield warns of an acute imbalance between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ power in the formulation of US foreign policy. Crocker states, "A lot of people in Washington think foreign policy is a contact sport where you get what you want with military muscle, and diplomacy is about limp-wristed diplomats pushing cookies at embassy socials."

For Crocker, ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ powers are misnomers, what really matters is ‘smart’ power, a combination of "brains, muscles, and dollars."

President of the American Foreign Service Association, John Naland, supports Crocker’s conclusions. Naland contends, "So we’re really facing a crisis in human capital," in which President-elect Barack Obama and incoming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, "have their work cut out for them." Kitfield surmises that Clinton should focus on "building development, reconstruction, and stabilization capacity."

On his Mountain Runner blog, Matt Armstrong compares the Departments of State and Defense and highlights the need to align areas of responsibility between the two departments. In addition, Armstrong suggests increasing the power of regional bureaus, with an undersecretary at the head of each – a position Armstrong terms "super ambassador." Armstrong believes this shift would lead to more regionally-focused activities, overcoming the "often too granular country level."

Armstrong’s hopes for a regional approach to State Department work appear to be reflected in President-elect Obama’s wish for "chief emissaries to world hot spots," writes Marc Ambinder on his Atlantic blog. Though Obama’s transition team refuses to comment, Ambinder speculates that Dennis Ross will be put in charge of Iran, Richard Holbrooke will head up Southwest Asia, and Richard Haass will deal with the Middle East.

Finally, Mitchell Polman at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy discusses the Brooking’s Institution’s recent report on a possible USA-World Trust. Polman is supportive of the Trust’s financial element, "[putting] the "public" into public diplomacy," through empowering non-foreign policy professionals to create public diplomacy programs.

Polman concludes that the Trust, operating outside of DoS direction, "would help unleash the creative spirits of Americans and foreigners alike to come up with innovative ways to build ties between the American people and the rest of the world.