08:54 am
Beyond November: Lora Lumpe
The Connect U.S. Fund has launched a new two-year initiative to help shape debate during the upcoming Presidential transition. As part of this effort, they’ve asked leading thinkers and advocates to talk about what should be the top two or three foreign policy priorities for the next President. They’ve also kindly allowed us to cross-post the responses here.
Today, we’ll hear from Lora Lumpe. The series will then resume next week and appear weekly from now to the convention. Thanks again to Heather Hamilton and Eric Schwartz over at the Connect U.S. Fund for making the cross-postings happen.
One of the most urgent foreign policy priorities for the next administration is to take on the MIPC.
That’s not a new South American Maoist group. Nor is it a fast spreading virus from Asia. It’s President/General Eisenhower’s Military-Industrial-Complex, 50 years later and fully integrated into the political life of the nation.
Why would the next President want to touch that, you ask?! Well, because there is near unanimity among America’s foreign policy thinkers of both parties that we have got to build up the atrophied non-military components of U.S. foreign policy-namely diplomacy and development. The U.S. Global Leadership Campaign (which includes not only the development and humanitarian biggies, but also Boeing and LockMar), Secretary Gates, Chairman Mullen, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden and Ranking Republican Dick Lugar all agree.
I work for a Quaker lobby group, and we are definitely down with that! We are all about preventing deadly conflict, and in fact we have had two full time lobbyists wandering the halls of Capitol Hill for the past 5 years trying to sell the idea that it’s cheaper-and better policy-to have adequate numbers of superbly trained diplomats and a cadre of technically skilled development specialists than it is to have wars.
Nevertheless, according to the State Department’s own recent estimate, there are still more than 1,500 diplomatic positions currently unfilled, and a vacancy rate of more than 13% in our embassies around the world. At the same time, the DOD has issued directives and is moving forward with plans to enable it to carry out even more development functions, as a hedge against the (quite likely) inability of State Department to garner adequate resources from Congress to do the development jobs that need doing.*
But, as long as politics are in play, Members of Congress-9 times out of 10-are going to respond to pressures to give the Pentagon pretty much whatever it wants, in order to maintain bases, manufacturing jobs, etc. in state or in district. They face zero negative political impact if they vote against funding State Department “bureaucrats” or “wasteful and inefficient” development programs.
Until the development and diplomatic community disperse across the country and can create political pressure (ie, jobs) in 435 Congressional districts-or at least in a dozen or so states-they will always be at a disadvantage when it comes time for Congress to vote on
the annual appropriations bills.
Relatedly, when I lobby on the Hill, I very often meet with military legislative aides who are “Fellows” on loan from one of the military services. One such, an Air Force Fellow, told me that the USAF alone had 41 Fellows on the Hill this year, so there are probably nearly 200 in all. These folks will return to the Pentagon and work “Leg. Affairs”-and do so with great savvy and with loads of personal connections. The result-of both the Fellows’ training and the dispersed jobs and military bases is that the DOD is the most effective lobby in town, bar none.
In the State Department, by comparison, Legislative Affairs is viewed as somewhere near the seventh circle, middle ring of the Inferno. While there are a few offices and individuals who are quite effective at using the media and/or Hill contacts, in general State Department is woeful at advocating and advancing its legislative goals.
The next President needs to direct the State Department to study the Pentagon’s skillful approach, but he is also going to have to expend a good deal of political capital to persuade folks on Capitol Hill that they should ignore pork barrel prerogatives in favor of the good of the nation and the world and fully fund the diplomatic and development corps that everyone agrees we have let go to seed.
The second imperative for the next administration, in order for the republic to have a healthy-or healthier-foreign policy, is for the admin to encourage Congress to take back more power. While it may seem paradoxical-even unlikely-that the admin should or would urge the Congress to exercise its prerogatives more fully, it is imperative that Congress get back into the practice of oversight.
During the past decade, you can count on half of one hand the Committees of Congress-House or Senate-that engaged in oversight of U.S. foreign policy. Instead, the body has largely become a rubberstamp-especially for the military aspects of foreign policy-which, as outlined below, encompass many previously civilian-led functions, like development, democracy-building, etc.
The breakdown in oversight is related to the extreme partisan politics that has befallen the Capitol, but also to the infatuation that the U.S. public and policy world have with all things military. The “can do” attitude of the military is mythologized, while billions in waste, fraud, and abuse are overlooked and the Pentagon is given more and more authorities with little or no examination of costs, benefits, or counterproductive repercussions.
Most Congressional committees gutted their investigations staffs in the late 1990s, as inquiries like Iran-Contra, BICC and others were considered pesky and partisan. Oversight became, if not a dirty word at least a forgotten art, and external groups, like the Project on Government Oversight, now hold seminars for congressional staff who are
interested in learning how to do oversight….
While difficult to enact these changes, it will be impossible to revitalize America’s foreign policy tool kit without taking on these deeply rooted institutional and political problems.
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*DOD Directive 3000.05 of 28 November 2005 states that some of the DOD’s core tasks, as part of its new “stability operations” mandate” include:
4.3.1. Rebuild indigenous institutions including various types of security forces, correctional facilities, and judicial systems necessary to secure and stabilize the environment;
4.3.2. Revive or rebuild the private sector, including encouraging citizen-driven, bottom-up economic activity and constructing necessary infrastructure; and
4.3.3. Develop representative governmental institutions.”
As FCNL’s Legislative Representative for Conventional Weapons, Lora Lumpe lobbies and campaigns for more responsible U.S. arms export policies—including a ban on U.S. use and export of cluster bombs and anti-personnel landmines. She coordinates the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines on behalf of FCNL and represents FCNL on the steering committee of the global campaign to achieve a universal Arms Trade Treaty.
Before joining FCNL’s staff in September 2007, Lora served for six years as a consultant for Amnesty International USA. She also worked as a consultant in recent years for the Open Society Institute, Small Arms Survey, the United Nations, AFSC, Swiss Government, and numerous other organizations.
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