Post-Trexit: A Blueprint for Restoring Foreign Policy & the State Department After Trump is Gone
If one thing is clear, this administration is hell-bent on wrecking and marginalizing this nation's oldest cabinet-level agency, the Department of State. From Joe McCarthy to Jesse Helms to today's Breitbart-inspired "nationalists," the xenophobic far-right has always had it out for foreign engagement and those who carry out diplomacy. Forget about trying to talk reason to them. Though there have been glimmers of principled objection out of Congress, don't expect its craven GOP members to stand in the way of the Trump wrecking ball. The latest news from the House is that State's budget will now "only" be cut by 14 percent, half that proposed by the White House. This is what constitutes cojones in Congress these days.
London bookies have been laying the odds for an early Trump departure from office at 55 percent. But that was before the latest torrent of Collusion revelations. I'm wagering the odds are now higher. Whether the Gang That Can't Rule Straight is run out of town within months or after the 2020 elections, it's not too soon to plan the Restoration - in this case, of responsible foreign policy.
The Trump/Tillerson debasement of the State Department comes on the heels of eight years of Obama/Clinton marginalizing the department through patronage bloat, dilution of mission and concentration of foreign policy making in the White House. And, of course, all administrations sell around a full third of (the most important) ambassadorships to campaign contributors. Under Trump/Tillerson, the nation's foreign ministry is a ghost ship aimlessly meandering through perilous seas (see: Trump's Zombie Ship of State), with senior positions glaringly unfilled and little contact between SecState Tillerson and the career bureaucracy.
"They really want to blow this place up," a department official told The Atlantic's Julia Ioffe. "I don't think this administration thinks the State Department needs to exist. They think Jared [Kushner] can do everything. It's reminiscent of the developing countries where I've served. The family rules everything, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs knows nothing."
Perhaps no other politician today so closely channels McCarthy as Congressman Steve King, the firebrand Trump loyalist who has urged the president to “purge Leftists from the executive branch before disloyal, illegal and treasonist (sic) acts sink us.” He added, “People there need to be rooted out.”
We've been through this kind of damage before with Sen. Joe McCarthy's fantasy-based anti-communist purges of the State Department during the 1950s. "Joseph McCarthy attacked and partly destroyed the State Department... and another demagogue could undoubtedly do it again," John Franklin Campbell said presciently 46 years ago in his brilliant book, Foreign Affairs Fudge Factory. John Paton Davies, one of the Foreign Service's best China hands purged at the peak of his career in the McCarthy witch-hunts, later said, "The violence and subtlety of the purge and intimidation left the Foreign Service demoralized and intellectually cowed. With some doughty exceptions, it became a body of conformists... and many cautious mediocrities rose to the top of the Service." We soon paid a grave price for this void of expertise in Vietnam.
So, depending on just how much longer America's national political psychosis plays out, we can count on seeing much more damage and neglect inflicted on the State Department and, by extension, our foreign policy. And at least until Trump is dumped, there is little that can be done to stop it. Therefore, it is incumbent upon those who truly care about the nation's foreign policy to begin planning for the reconstruction.
Here is where I could throw out 10,000 words of painfully thought-out, jargon-laden analysis on the demi-monde of Beltway bureaucratics accompanied by dozens of turgid passages of narcolepsy-inducing "recommendations." But I am not going to do that. Beltway wonks do this all the time. And, more often than not, their "studies" have all the impact of a coffee table book on Nepalese tapestries. Rather, I shall offer up several of the more thoughtful studies that have already been done, highlighting key points worth serious consideration for the future.
But first, let's start with a bad one.
The administration paid a Tillerson pal from the Boy Scouts $1 million to come up with recommendations for restructuring State and USAID. The management firm, Insigniam, actually did a pretty decent job of surveying employees on key issues. But lacking grounding in how the federal government functions, much less State and USAID, they mostly miss the mark. Most glaring perhaps is their claim that the Department lacks a mission. Oh really? Following is from the last Quadrennial Diplomacy & Development Review
(2015):
Promote:
The security of the United States, its citizens, and U.S. allies and partners;
A strong, innovative, and growing U.S. economy in an open and transparent international economic system that promotes opportunity and prosperity;
Respect for universal values at home and around the world; and a rules-based international order advanced by U.S. leadership that promotes peace, security, the rule of law, the open exchange of ideas and commerce, and opportunity through effective cooperation and burden sharing to meet global challenges.
Sounds pretty good to me. Not only that, but it's pretty much what we've been doing since World War II; it won us the Cold War and has been the foundation of relative peace and prosperity for seven decades.
It gets better. With no concrete justification, Insigniam adopts whole cloth a fevered night dream of the Bannon Sturmabteilung set: move all consular, refugee, population and migration functions out of State and into that model of bureaucratic coherence and efficiency, the Department of Homeland Security. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.
This study, available only via bootleg samizdat copies, is a non-starter. Read fellow ex-FSO Eric Terzuolo's masterful summation in The Hill, "Suspense kills morale — get those Trump/Tillerson State cuts over with."
Think of what USAID could've done with that million bucks in Africa.
In planning for the reconstruction, we would be wise to draw upon more serious works done by some knowledgeable and qualified people. One needs to take a top-down approach. Let's start with the White House.
National Security Strategy
Since 1986, each administration has formulated a "National Security Strategy" laying out the broad parameters of national security policy. The last NSS, done under Obama in 2015, is 30 pages and covers four broad categories: Security, Values, Prosperity and International Order. Sub-categories cover the waterfront, ranging from regional issues to strengthening civil society. Foreign, defense and intelligence policies key off of the NSS. (The current White House website exhibits no NSS yet, only a 12-paragraph regressive screed on "America First Foreign Policy.")
Quadrennial Diplomacy & Development Review
Say what you will about Hillary Clinton and her stewardship, she brought much needed strategic planning to the State Department with the QDDR. Yes, legions of career folks whine about the countless hours they were forced to devote putting together this groaner. But, despite its kitchen-sink coverage and some pie-in-the-sky goals, the QDDR forced an over-extended, distracted organization to focus on its mission and brass tacks modalities for realizing it. The last one, done in 2015, addressed combating extremism to building the workforce to promoting innovation. More focus and precision could be applied in post-Trump reconstruction QDDR's.
American Diplomacy at Risk (AAD)
The American Academy of Diplomacy invested great time and effort in a very thoughtful paper on the shortcomings and proposed reforms at the State Department, "American Diplomacy at Risk," two years ago. It laments the politicization of diplomacy and calls for adherence to the Foreign Service Act of 1980, which aimed to reinforce professionalism in State's functions. Unfortunately, it appeared to have all the impact of a coffee table book on Nepalese tapestries. Nonetheless, it's an excellent, if somewhat dated, piece, well worth dusting off when the time comes to put Humpty-Dumpty back together.
Heritage Foundation Report
In a refreshing departure from its recent trend in churning out polemical screeds, the Heritage Foundation last year produced, "How to Make the State Department More Effective at Implementing U.S. Foreign Policy." While rebutting assertions by State that it is under-resourced, Heritage also makes a solid case for re-establishing lines of authority, reducing the operational role of the NSC, curtailing the use of special envoys, halting the selling of ambassadorships and cutting back bloat. This paper from the conservative side deserves close study in any effort to rebuild our foreign policy apparatus.
Lessons from the Military
I wrote an essay not long ago titled, "What the Foreign Service Can Learn from the U.S. Military." I drew heavily from Thomas Ricks' outstanding book, The Generals. Among the lessons State can learn from our military are not rewarding mediocrities and incompetents while also making sure to encourage innovators; foster openness to bureaucratic change; keep a clear mission and develop an esprit de corps; maintain transparency and equal treatment in the personnel system. The Foreign Service is modeled after the military in many ways. When rebuilding the State Department, planners should go back to the drawing board to ensure those who man the front lines of diplomacy are recruited and managed according to a special discipline, one that not only attracts the best but retains them.
Finally, the time to constitute a shadow bipartisan council of wise men and women to plan for rebuilding and reforming U.S. diplomacy is now. A university or respected think tank would be the ideal host for such a project. Doing so will save valuable time for when sanity returns to governance.