A "Next Generation" Department of State A Proposal for the Consolidation of the Management of Foreign Affairs.

• Author: Marks, Edward
• Position: Report

People have been talking about some basic reorganization of the State Department for nearly half a century. In this analysis, a former Ambassador and career FSO provides us with one model for improvement.--Ed.

A "Next Generation" Department of State (1) A Proposal for the Consolidation of the Management of Foreign Affairs

by Ambassador (ret.) Edward Marks

Preface

Everyone agrees that diplomacy and international affairs have changed dramatically in the past half-century, and the changes are continuing. One aspect of that change is the divergence between diplomacy and international affairs, terms, which were once close to synonyms. But they are no longer so as two major systemic changes have occurred. First, international relations used to concern essentially relations between governments, largely conducted by ministries of foreign affairs (except for occasionally breaks where ministries of war took over) by a process usually referred to as diplomacy. Increasingly, however, government-to-government relations involve the whole spectrum of government activities--now including inter alia education, environmental questions, human rights, the internet--and ministries of foreign affairs have great difficulty in holding on to even a minimal gatekeeper role. (They are more successful in some countries and less so in others, notably the U. S.).

The second big change has been the expansion of the players' list, as international organizations, global companies, NGOs, global criminal organizations, transnational terrorist organizations, and individuals have come into the international affairs arena. National governments may remain the biggest gorillas on the scene, but no longer are they alone.

This situation poses a major challenge to traditionally organized governments, in general, and to the United States in particular given its role in world. How to deal with this changed situation is a major topic of think tank activity these days, and reform proposals are abundant. This paper discusses one approach, proposing the creation of a "Next Generation Department of State".

First, however, there is a need to note an important caveat. The usual reaction to the proposal outlined below is immediate rejection on one of two grounds: it is nothing more than an imperial expansion of the State Department, and who in his right mind could believe that the Department of State could manage the challenge and tasks proposed.

But this proposal is not about folding a range of existing organizations and tasks into the present Department of State, a la the integration of USIA into State in the 1990s. Instead its purpose is to disassemble State and create a new department, organized on different principals. We may keep the name Department of State, for sentimental and historical reasons, but the Next Generation Department of State proposed here is a very different creature. The analogy is removing the hood ornament from an automobile and moving a whole new vehicle in under it. Think of the original Volkswagen Beetle--and the current VW Passant!

The Next Generation Department of State

In the very early days of the Obama Administration, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton enunciated her mantra of the Three Ds--Diplomacy, Development and Defense. In doing so she, pinpointed USAID's future role in and the future of development assistance writ large in the broader context of the conduct of American foreign affairs. To emphasize the importance of this approach and her--and presumably the Administration's--intention to move on this approach, Secretary of State Clinton announced on July 10, 2009 that "to get ahead of emerging threats and opportunities and to make the case effectively for OMB, the Congress, and the people of our country for the resources we need, today" the Department and USAID will," for the first time ever, conduct a Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review".

"The QDDR accomplishes two goals," a State Department official told The Cable on background. It "moves our present planning from [a] year-to-year, annual appropriations-driven process. And it lashes up our two pillars, diplomacy and development," which are currently "separated by two appropriations processes and separate bureaucracies."

Still unclear, however, is Secretary Clinton's vision of how wide a net she and the Administration intend to throw. After all, no matter how you define it, departments and agencies other than the Department of State practice much American diplomacy, and departments and agencies other than USAID pursue much economic development. In fact, at the moment twenty-seven or so agencies--in addition to those of the Department of Defense--have formal representation overseas: a veritable diaspora of bureaucracies.

In this situation there is no way to ensure that our message and actions are unified and consistent with overall foreign policy priorities and objectives. (2) Only in the White House and in the individual Country Teams of American Embassies are these diverse programs considered as a total package. Even then, limitations on presidential span of control and attention make any oversight sporadic and incomplete, and the de facto authority of the Chief of Mission within US Embassies is too limited to always ensure even tactical integration.

As a result, programs--from economic relations to development assistance, humanitarian relief, diplomatic presence, public broadcasting, migration, human rights, political-military engagement, arms control, and educational exchanges, science and technology and many others--are fractured and spread across many agencies and bureaus.

In addition, today's turbulent world confronts us with two contrasting categories of foreign affairs activities that present different management requirements: steady state and crisis response. Steady state operations are oriented toward conducting normal foreign relations activities not currently affected by crisis or serious conflict. Crisis response situations are episodic and require special attention during their occurrence. Both require close and even integrated management systems in the contemporary world but in both cases providing integrated management has been sporadic and ad hoc. The continuing occurrence of crises over the past two decades has led to an increased interest in the development of new institutional solutions, such as State's Coordinator for Stabilization and Reconstruction (S/CRS).

Secretary Clinton's commendable intention to manage the two Ds runs into an obvious limitation. She is the Secretary of State but the current Department of State was not designed and is not currently equipped to manage the increasingly diverse responsibilities of the United States government in a globalized world. Nevertheless, while the Department of State continues to occupy the center of the conduct of foreign affairs community, it is too narrowly focused on traditional diplomacy and does not exercise sufficient authority or possess sufficient resources to manage the full range of global affairs effectively. Specifically the Department of State, as presently constituted, does not encompass the necessary range of USG programs which, in fact, comprise those elements of inter-governmental concern which commonly referred to as diplomacy. Secondly, the Secretary of State does not have the use of a robust executive management and personnel structure which would enable him or her to effectively provide strategic leadership, oversight and coordination over the conduct of foreign affairs of the United States Government.

A Next Generation State Department

Obviously Secretary Clinton's vision fits into the concept of "Whole of Government", the current catchphrase for a better integrated, better-coordinated government. In pursuit of that objective, one of the changes proposed for a more effective "Whole of Government" in general and a more effective the U.S. national security system in particular is a Department of State capable of managing "Steady State" operations and of participating in "Crisis Response" situations more effectively. To achieve these two objectives, this paper proposes the consolidation of the majority of international programs in a 'Next Generation State Department" (a reinvented Department of State) which would be structured as a comprehensive, mission-oriented organization, have an effective executive management structure and process, and a new institutional culture based on a single system-wide personnel system combined with a comprehensive professional educational system.

This consolidation of civilian foreign affairs programs into a single department would replace the current Department of State and a plethora of other independent bureaucratic organizations. Implementation of this proposal requires either the creation of a wholly new department or the complete transformation of the current Department of State--a transformation so complete that it would be the equivalent of taking the hood ornament off an automobile and moving a new vehicle in under it.

The policy rationale for this proposal is twofold: first, that there is currently in the USG little capacity for making-trade-offs at the strategic or regional levels, and secondly that programs promoting soft power lack integration and coordination. A through assessment of this problem of the absence of effective cross-department executive authority was made in the report "Forging a New Shield" by the Project on National Security Reform, a congressionally mandated effort that involved a wide coalition of organizations and individuals. (3) Effective integration requires that "we must elevate and integrate the unique dimensions of development, diplomacy, and public diplomacy into a unified whole." (4)

The organizational objective of this unified whole would be to empower a "Secretary of State" authorized to coordinate the entire international relations mechanism abroad and thus be in a position to better...