Editor’s note:  Somehow the original version of this post disappeared — apparently I overwrote the Big Three post on top of it.  Apologies to those subscribers who saw it already — you can stop reading now.

Apparently yet another media outlet is trying to play up the Obama-Clinton rivalry:

Preparing for her new role as secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton is moving to surround herself with a cast of die-hard loyalists and veterans of her husband’s administration to help her cope with world crises and backstage Washington power plays.

For her team of foreign policy experts, the nation’s third female secretary of state is expected to draw heavily from the staff of the first, Madeleine Albright, who was an early supporter of Clinton’s unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

And to deal with internal Obama administration affairs, State Department bureaucratic politics and media pressures, the former first lady appears set to tap current Senate aides and former White House “Hillaryland” stalwarts, whose reputation for insularity and staunch protectiveness has already set off anxiety among career foreign service officers. . . .

The prospect of their imminent arrival in Foggy Bottom has been a hot topic of nervous corridor conversation among many in the professional diplomatic corps who fear they will be frozen out of positions of influence.

Okay folks, this is ridiculous.  Here’s a list of the people identified in the story as “Hillaryland stalwarts.”  I’m excluding those identified as candidates for her personal staff (which means people working in the office of the Secretary), since any Secretary of State brings such folks with him/her:

• James Steinberg (supported Obama during the primaries)
• Andrew Shapiro
• Lee Feinstein
• Doug Hattaway
• James Rubin
• Suzy George
• Wendy Sherman
• Michael Sheehan
• Rand Beers (former foreign service officer)
• Robert Einhorn
• Robert Gelbard (former foreign service officer)
• Daniel Kurtzer
• Dennis Ross
• Toni Verstandig
• Michael Guest (former foreign service officer)

I know a few of these folks personally, and know all by Verstandig by reputation.  All, with the exception of Ross (who served both Bush I and Clinton) and perhaps Gelbard are at the very least left-of-center.  Most are dyed in the wool progressives.

Let me be clear here.  When word first surfaced that Hillary was being considered as Secretary of State, I reported on what I was hearing within the Obama camp:  unhappiness and fear that those who supported Obama during the primaries would be frozen out of the State Department.  Some remain concerned, but most do not — they see the choice of Steinberg, for example, as evidence that Hillary will put together a team that is not only from her “camp.”

More importantly, every single one of the folks on the above list supported Obama in the general.  It’s not like we’re talking about rampant disloyalty to the President-elect.

There are two other problems with the story.  First, Matthew Lee, the reporter, has selectively picked from the transition team lists those known to have supported Clinton from the primary.  Someone else could just as easily have picked those known to have supported Obama.  I’m guessing it’s even possible to pick those who supported Edwards, Richardson, Biden, and Dodd.  Breathlessly reporting that some Hillary supporters just might get jobs working for her is not exactly presenting a full picture.

Second, word that some foreign service officers are anxious that they will not have senior positions in a Clinton State Department also is nonsense.  Several senior posts, including the Undersecretary for Political Affairs and the Undersecretary for Management, usually go to career FSOs.  Yes, as Life after Jerusalem notes, only one Secretary of State came fromt he ranks of the foreign service (Eagleberger), and very few have risen to the rank of Deputy Secretary:

[P}olitical appointees hurt morale. Most of us serve knowing that no matter how good we are, we can't expect to attain the highest positions in the Department unless we win the lottery. Only one Secretary of State has been a career Foreign Service Officer (points if you know who), and many of the Under Secretaries, Assistant Secretaries, and the Ambassadors at the nicest posts are political appointees. Which sends a strong message that the rank and file don't measure up.

And the truth is we do measure up. We serve, year after year, advancing the President's foreign policy to the best of our abilities agenda regardless of who occupies the White House. Because we are professionals. And just like professional soldiers, we should be able to expect that the majority of our leaders have gotten where they are by succeeding on the same path we are walking, not by the size of their checkbook or the happenstance of their birth.

LAJ is right in saying that we would never have a general who is a political appointee, and that we should have a more professional diplomatic corps.  But I have to disagree with her argument that most senior people got their position as a result of their wallet or birth.  Although that may be true about political Ambassadors, it’s not an accurate portray of senior people at State, many of whom have been among the most talented and capable people I’ve ever met (including some of the list above).

To put it another way, we shouldn’t confuse loyalty with ideology.  Support for Clinton in the primaries does not translate into opposition to Obama, un-progressive views, or the inability to do their jobs.  Both the press and the foreign service (and, frankly those of us who supported Obama in the primaries) need to stop whining and give the Secretary-designate the benefit of the doubt.

UPDATE:  Before the original post disappeared, Life after Jerusalem did post a comment (which now appears at the bottom of the Big Three post), and I want to reproduce it here:

I didn’t mean to imply that all politically appointed senior people within the Department are not talented and capable. The Assistant Secretary in my bureau, for example, is very talented and capable and is also a political appointee. Lots of the senior political appointees are. But particularly among political appointee ambassadors, there are a lot who lack qualifications beyond knowing (or having contributed to) the President.

The folks in the list above don’t fall into that category. They are a talented and experienced bunch who I have confidence will serve the Secretary and the Department well. And I recognize the need for some political appointees. It is natural for a new Secretary to want to have advisors she already trusts and can depend on. But I guess I think the practice could be scaled back. In much the same way as real diversity can be achieved not by lowering standards but by casting a wider net, more of the senior postions could be filled by the rank and file of the Department if only our leaders would notice the talent base that is here.

Oh, but I will say that if there are anxious conversations in the cooridors about Clinton’s selections and of people being “frozen out” of influential positions, I haven’t heard them.

Related posts

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During her years as First Lady, Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton was a fierce champion of human rights, speaking out about a variety of abuses, with a particular focus on women’s rights.  Here, for example is an excerpt from the speech she gave in 1998 at the White House commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Everyone here today, however, knows how far we still have to go to ensure that the circle of human dignity embraces all citizens. Whether it’s young girls being sold into prostitution in Thailand, women who are victims of violence in their own homes here in this country or elsewhere, boys being used as human shields in Uganda, those recovering from the ravages of the Yugoslav conflict, or those arrested in China for political activity; we have to recognize the depth of injustice and human suffering that still exists around us. . . .

When we celebrate today the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we do have much to be thankful for. And many of us are living in societies and democracies that have gone such a far distance in the last 50 years to honor and protect human rights.

But let us not forget the hundreds of millions of people who are still at risk, the 100 million children who live in the streets, the 160 million children who are not even in primary school, those who are denied freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom to express an opinion, who have no choice that they can make to determine the course of their own lives.

This is not a marginal issue. Human rights goes to the very center of what we in the United States believe politics and democracy should be about.  And so today we celebrate the progress, but we also challenge ourselves to continue to seek out opportunities, wherever possible, to do all that we can to eliminate the continuing scourge of human rights abuses, wherever they may be found.

Should Hillary continue to frame human rights as going to “the very center” of America’s self-conception, she could be the perfect messenger for the new Administration, explaining to the world that we no longer will ignore the very principles at home that we so ardently championed abroad.

In addition (and perhaps as importantly), she could help bring about a sea change in the way the State Department itself looks at human rights.  Within “the building,” there is considerable bureaucratic ambivalence (and not infrequently hostility) toward human rights issues.  There are two reasons for this.

First, the dominant role played by the regional bureaus, in terms of policy means that country teams often regard human rights as a nuisance that gets in the way of things like trade, military cooperation, narcotics interdiction, and anti-terrorism.  During my time at State, I witnessed (and participated in) dozens of fights over whether to consider human rights when adopting a specific policy (say, trade with China, military assistance to Uzbekistan, or the war on drugs in Colombia).  Although we would win our share of the battles, we never were able to get past the general perception that human rights should only be talked about when dealing with countries that were not our friends or allies.

Second, the dominant role played by the regional bureaus also has an impact on career decisions.  If you’re a young foreign service officer working on the China desk, and your next step up the latter depends on a positive evaluation from your boss, the head of the China desk, and s/he thinks human rights should not get in the way of good relations with China, what position are you going to take?  There certainly is little incentive to buck your boss.

In addition, this has created a widespread perception that service in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor can be a career killer.  DRL has two knicknames:  “DRooL” and “the NGO inside the building.”  To say the least, neither of these is exactly an incentive to serve there.

This certainly is understandable.  If you want to move up the ladder, the last place you want to be is in a bureau that constantly bucks the system.  During my time in DRL, we struggled to get talented junior foreign service officers to serve (which is not to say we weren’t successful), and we saw senior foreign service officers who had served (or were serving) in DRL get passed over for the Senior Foreign Service.

Just to be clear, this does not mean that there aren’t talented and dedicated foreign service officers in DRL, or that there aren’t foreign service officers working in other bureaus (and overseas) who have pushed their offices to oppose human rights abuses.  Both exist, and both should be commended.  It also does not mean that there aren’t those who serve in DRL who go on to serve in significant positions — Mona Sutphen, Obama’s new deputy chief-of-staff, is one such example.  But overall, recruiting and keeping talented FSOs is far harder than it should be.

Clinton should think seriously about significantly expanding the size and budget of DRL.  It is sorely understaffed and in need of significant additional resources to do its job, which has only been made much harder by the policies of the Bush Administration.  Doing so also would send a strong signal to the rest of the building that DRL can and should play an important role in policy decisions.

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• Loyalty v. Ideology (Reboot)
• Human Rights Day
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Although much of the coverage of Obama’s new White House team has focused on the fact that most of the appointees so far have considerable Hill experience.  As Ezra Klein noted yesterday, “This is not an administration that will lack the cell phone numbers of key congressional players.”

Klein goes on to note an outlier among the Hill vets:  Mona Sutphen, who was named one of two White House Deputy Chiefs of Staff:

Sutphen is a slightly odder case — she’s a former foreign service office who has been a manager at Sandy Berger’s consultancy and recently co-authored The Next American Century: How the U.S. Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise.

I’m actually rather excited about this appointment.  Suthpen is one of the smartest, most able thinkers on foreign policy out there, representing a new generation whose defining years were not the Cold War or 9/11, but rather the Clinton Administration (h/t Yglesias):

The Next American Century represents, in many ways, a distillation of the Obama worldview:  America as a central player but not necessarily the dominant one.  As I’ve noted elsewhere,

[A]n Obama administration is likely to pursue a foreign policy based on sound strategic principles and coherent tactics.  Realism [will] trump ideology, and principles [will] trump interests. Call it pragmatic idealism, if you must apply a label.

In addition, an Obama administration will repair America’s disastrously dysfunctional foreign policy apparatus:  providing the State Department with the resources it needs; streamlining foreign assistance; reestablishing a robust and proactive public diplomacy; and clarifying the overlapping roles of State, NSC, Defense, and Homeland Security.  It will emphasize both innovation and results, rewarding creativity and encouraging critical thinking.

As far as I know, there’s never been a former (or current) foreign service officer who has served as White House Deputy Chief of Staff.  And since Midwest already has violated my Sorkintorium, I’ll note that no major character on The West Wing focused on foreign policy — that’s just not the way it was done back then (or in the Bush White House for that matter).

Unfortunately, it also points to the sad reality of a foreign service career in this day and age — talented mid-level officers are far more likely to leave for greener pastures than stick around for twenty years trying to get an Ambassadorship.  Had Sutphen stayed at State, she would be, most likely, a Deputy Chief of Mission somewhere, on the cusp of finding out whether she had been accepted into the Senior Foreign Service.

To put it bluntly, which would you rather be at a similar point in your career:  DCM in the Kyrgyz Republic or Deputy Chief of Staff to the most exciting political figure in thirty years?

One other note:  Sutphen once served in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), my old stomping grounds (we did not overlap).  Given the fact that, under both Clinton and Bush, DRL was viewed as a career-killer by many foreign service officers, I have to say I’m pretty happy to see someone’s career not whither and die because she cared/cares about human rights.

If, as expected, Gregory Craig is named White House Counsel, Obama will have two State Department veterans in key positions.  For all the talk about the Capitol Hill veterans dominating, it’s worthwhile to note that no previous administration had put foreign policy experts in key positions outside the NSC apparatus.

You can find Sutphen’s bio (h/t Ambinder) below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

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You may not have heard, but the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen was attacked today, apparently by a group known as Islamic Jihad in Yemen.  Reports differ as to whether they are affiliated with al Qaeda.

At least sixteen people — six Yemeni police officers, six of the attackers, and four civilians died as a result of the attack.  None of the Americans or foreign nationals working at the embassy were harmed, but this does represent the second time that the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa has come under attack.  In March, the Yemeni branch of al Qaeda fired mortars, missing the Embassy and instead hitting a nearby girls’ school.

Here’s what the embassy spokesman said after the attack:

The first explosion happened about 9:15 a.m. Wednesday (0615 GMT/2.15 am ET) and was followed by several secondary blasts, said U.S. Embassy spokesman Ryan Gliha. . . . Gliha was at the embassy at the time of the attack and said he felt the compound shake.

“We were all ordered to assume what we call a duck-and-cover position which is a position where we guard ourselves and bodies from potential debris,” Gliha told CNN.  “From that vantage point, I can’t tell you much after that except we did feel several explosions after the main explosion that shook the ground.”

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said during his daily briefing today that the attack had the goal of breaching the Embassy’s walls.  Jeff Stein at Spy Talk notes that, given the number of people involved, at least one former intelligence agent thinks that the purpose may have been not to kill those working there but to take hostages, along the lines of what happened in Iran in 1979:

It seems like the team was large enough to do more than just blow something up. Tactically it would have been interesting: Think Tehran-like embassy takeover, in the middle of a presidential election, hostages being executed on live TV.  It would have to be a resolved by an assault, which the Yemenis are not trained to do.

As I’ve said before, I have long believed that Americans fail to understand or appreciate the heroism and courage of our foreign service officers.  The same goes for the foreign nationals who serve so ably in every American post.  As McCormack noted in his briefing today,

People understand, as we’ve seen today, that American personnel serving overseas serve in some dangerous places or places that have the potential to be dangerous. We’ve seen that borne out once again today. But we manage that risk. And we’re not going to take any steps or do anything that we think unduly puts any of our personnel or their family at risk.

Unfortunately, attacks like these will only make our diplomats’ jobs even harder.  After every such incident, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security finds ways to make it harder for terrorists to attack.  That’s a good thing — no one wants to endanger unduly our diplomats — but it also creates a new problem:  it cuts off our diplomats even further from the countries they’re covering.  The reality is that nothing will make our embassies completely safe.

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Yesterday, Condoleezza Rice delivered a keynote speech at the annual conference of something called the White House Initiative on National Historically Black Colleges and Universities.   Here’s what she had to say.

I have lamented that I can go into a meeting at the Department of State — and as a matter fact I can go into a whole day of meetings at the Department of State — and actually rarely see somebody who looks like me. And that is just not acceptable. . . . Because when I go around the world I want to see black Americans involved in the promotion and development of our foreign policy. I want to see a Foreign Service that looks as if black Americans are part of this great country.

She’s right.  Off the top of my head, I can think of three African-American foreign service officers I’ve dealt with over the years.  That’s ridiculous.

I could offer a long explanation of why diversity in the foreign service is important, but Life after Jerusalem already has done a better job than I could do:

As an American Indian, I am painfully aware that there are only 35 American Indians in all of the Department of State. So when Secretary Rice says she can go through a whole day and see few people who look like her, I get it. I see none. And I don’t believe, and I doubt she does, that the reason for this is that “white administrators refuse to hire them.” I do think there are plenty of qualified African Americans and American Indians out there who just don’t know that the State Department is an option. I certainly didn’t, and never even considered it until my partner joined.

What I think she is saying, and I agree, is that we need to make a conscious effort to reach out to other communities. No one is saying to hire blacks or Indians for their color. But maybe we could recruit a little better at traditionally black or Indian universities to let them know of the opportunities at State. Because the Foreign Service SHOULD look like America. The Foreign Service has been accused of being “pale, male and Yale.” We should send men and women of all hues, religions, sexual orientations, etc., abroad to represent us because that is what America is.

I would only add that by looking more like America, a more diverse foreign service also would look more like the world.  Many folks around the world have no idea that the United States is anything other than white and black.

To cite one example, one of the things that made Harold Hongju Koh such an effective Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor is that other governments had a very hard time suggesting to him that the United States was racist. The Chinese, in particular, just hated the fact that they had to go toe-to-toe with an Asian American.

Like LAJ, I’m not suggesting that we should appoint people just because they are a certain gender, skin color, or sexual orientation.  Harold was A/S because he was the single most effective human rights advocate ever to hold the job, not because he happened not to be white.  By celebrating all that is American, we also demonstrate to the world much that is great about America.

Hat tip:  Life after Jerusalem

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In my three years as a political appointee in the Clinton Administration, I often butted heads with foreign service officers over a variety of issues.  Let’s just say that desk officers didn’t necessarily share my Bureau’s belief that human rights should be a central tenet of U.S. foreign policy.  To be fair, they didn’t necessarily disdain such issues, they just thought other things like American economic interests should also be taken into account.

So I’m not completely uncritical of the foreign service.  There’s a lot that could be done to improve it.  But even when I disagreed with FSOs, I always felt that they were worthy of my respect.  Most Americans have no idea that our diplomats often work in harrowing conditions, risking their lives in order to advance American interests and serve their country.

In that context, I wanted to draw attention to a letter that will come out tomorrow from a group of former foreign service officers** known as Foreign Policy Professionals for Obama:

We are a diverse group of over 200 former Foreign Service officers. Each of us has had extensive experience in implementing the international affairs and national security policies of both Republican and Democratic administrations. We have first hand knowledge of the grave multiple challenges of the Cold War, a period of peril but one in which the United States wore with honor the mantle of leadership. In cooperation with other democracies, and dialog with countries that were not, our nation found solutions to problems which seemed intractable. Senator Obama can place our nation again in that position of trust, credibility and respect.

With him, we call for a return to the successful reliance on bipartisan cooperation at home and close coordination on the use of active diplomacy with our friends and allies abroad, to face the challenges posed by those who are neither. We have watched with profound regret the frequent, costly failures of the current administration to apply these fundamental principles.

We, the undersigned, are firmly convinced that new American leadership is critical at this juncture in world history. We urge Americans, regardless of party affiliation, to select as our next president Senator Barack Obama, a leader with courage, intelligence, energy, a fresh perspective and a focus on the future. We believe based on our long foreign policy experience that he has the qualities needed to restore American leadership, credibility and respect in the world, the persona to make bipartisanship a possibility once again, and the judgment and vision to set our nation on the path to a better future.

As far as I know, FSOs are not overwhelmingly Republican or Democratic (if anyone knows differently, please diabuse me).  As public servants, they understand that their job is to implement, not interpret, a given President’s foreign policy.  But if you asked most, they would tell you that they prefer Presidents who build consensus at home and abroad.  That is, after all, the nature of diplomacy.

With that in mind, take a second look at the following sentences:

[W]e call for a return to the successful reliance on bipartisan cooperation at home and close coordination on the use of active diplomacy with our friends and allies abroad, to face the challenges posed by those who are neither. We have watched with profound regret the frequent, costly failures of the current administration to apply these fundamental principles.

In the world of diplomacy, that’s about as close to a smackdown as you’re ever going to see.  To call out a current President for his foreign policy blunders is just not done.  Usually, people who want to do that resign first.

I want to emphasize again that these are former officers, so the analogy isn’t perfect.  But I wouldn’t be surprised if a large majority of current FSOs share the sentiments expressed in this letter.  Just as U.S. troops currently deployed abroad have donated more money to Obama than McCain by a 6:1 margin, I would bet good money that FSOs currently serving overseas have similar giving patterns.

If I’m right, that marks an enormous sea change in less than eight years.  Most folks have forgotten now, but when Colin Powell arrived at the State Department in 2001, he was welcomed as a hero:

When Colin L. Powell took charge in Foggy Bottom last month, the new secretary of state delivered a rousing speech to his staff, promising an ambitious and expensive agenda for modernizing a department that has long complained it is strapped for cash.  The hundreds of employees who were present applauded and cheered.

Madeleine Albright was not a popular figure at State.  Many FSOs viewed her as remote, unsympathetic to their plight, and uninterested in the nuts and bolts of Department management.  A number of security snafus during her time there — which in turn led to some draconian new security measures — didn’t help matters.  (Just to be clear, I served under Albright and did not share all of these concerns.  But then again, I wasn’t a foreign service officer)  So when Powell came on board, he inherited a building ready for and willing to change.

But in the aftermath of September 11 — and particularly after the invasion of Iraq — not much new money came State’s way.  Modernizing diplomacy took a back seat to going to war.  The near-blank check given to DOD didn’t help; neither did the money poured into the new Department of Homeland Security.  But perhaps the greatest problem was that Powell ended up outside the decisionmaking process, frozen out by Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other key decisionmakers.

Few presidencies have ever demonstrated the contempt for the State Department, its employees, and its role that the Bush Administration does.  Only Nixon was worse.  Ironically, since the Eisenhower years, only two Secretaries of State have had a genuinely close working relationship with their President: Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice.

Powell (and Rice, to be fair) did devote some time to management issues, and as a result, the building has become a better place to work.  The Department has solved some of its computer issues; adjusted staffing at key posts to reflect the realities of the post-Cold War era (fewer FSOs in Germany and more in India, for example); and changed some of the outdated guidelines concerning FSO advancement.

But morale continues to sag, in large part because these largely cosmetic reforms cannot paper over Foggy Bottom’s profound unhappiness with the direction of U.S. foreign policy.  And as I have noted elsewhere, the post-Kenya/Tanzania/9-11 security-first mentality has made it far more difficult for FSOs stationed overseas to do their jobs.

The fundamental question, then, is will a President Obama (and his Secretary of State) pay enough attention (and devote the necessary resources) to fixing what ails Foggy Bottom?  Because if he doesn’t, he’s going to find it almost impossible to achieve his ambitious foreign policy goals.

Big honkin’ Tip of the Hat to Gerald Loftus at Avuncular American for pointing me to this story.  If don’t yet read his blog, check it out.

**Full disclosure:  I am not a signatory to the letter, as I’m not a former foreign service officer.  That said, I strongly agree with its sentiments and would be happy to sign it.

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I have long believed that Americans fail to understand or appreciate the heroism and courage of our foreign service officers (FSOs).  Spending three years in the bowels of the State Department only reinforced that conviction.

If you ever enter the State Department via its main (C Street) entrance, you should look for large green marble plaques at each end of the lobby.  Each lists those American diplomats who have lost their lives in the service of their country.  As then-Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead noted in 1988,

In the State Department lobby, just inside the C Street entrance, there are two large plaques, where the names of ambassadors and others who have died while serving their country are inscribed. It is a grim list, but a proud list, too; a list of those who defended peace and freedom to the very end.

Much to my surprise, there is no page on the State Department website that reproduces the list or provides brief biographical information.

That’s a tragedy, because each of these individuals deserve greater recognition. But equally sad, the plaques include only Americans who have died — foreign nationals, such as those killed in the 1998 Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, are not honored (at least not there).  That also is a fundamental — and almost criminal — oversight.

But the purpose of my post today is not merely to recognize the courage and heroism of those who have given their lives in the pursuit of American foreign policy, but also to ask whether Americans recognize the risks that diplomats must take to promote and protect American interests.

Most Americans think of our diplomats — if they think of them at all — as glamorous Cary Grant types, wearing black tie, attending parties, and sipping martinis.  Certainly such representation duties are a part of a foreign service officer’s job, but only on rare occasions.  Most of a typical FSO’s work involves tracking developments on the ground and then reporting back to Washington.

These days, that job is much harder, in large part because of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security’s fortress mentality — particularly their demand that FSOs work and live inside supposedly impregnable walls, often miles from a city center.

I fear that this emphasis on security at all costs has had a deeply corrosive impact on America’s ability to understand and interact with the world.  But it also makes it harder and harder for the average foreign service officer to do their jobs.

Part of the problem is that our government does not think of diplomats the way it thinks of members of the military:  as people who are willing to take certain risks to protect American interests.  Instead, FSOs are treated like museum pieces that must be kept behind multiple layers of protection.

I do not mean to make light of the very serious threats that our diplomatic outposts face or the risks taken by those, foreign national and American alike, who choose to work in them.  But is the greater security really worth the negative impact on American interests?  And by wrapping our foreign service officers in a false cocoon of security, aren’t we isolating them from the very people with whom they should be meeting?

Reversing this trend is not going to be easy.  Were a President or Secretary of State to instruct Diplomatic Security to stop building isolated citadels, sooner or later, terrorists (or an angry mob, as happened in Pakistan in 1979) would attack an embassy or consulate and kill Americans (and foreign nationals, lest we forget).  That will result in months of finger-pointing, accusations and counter-accusations, and Congressional hearings on why we failed to protect our diplomats.

But chances are that another catastrophic attack will occur regardless of whether we decide to move our diplomats out of the fortresses and back into city centers.  I didn’t check the Googles, but if memory serves me, there have been serious attacks on American diplomatic outposts in Serbia and Turkey in recent months.  Chances are that there are more I don’t remember, and that DS has succeeded in preventing a few as well.

In the end, we need to ask ourselves which is worse:  putting our foreign service officers at greater risk so that they can do their jobs, or turning them into diplo-hermits, so isolated that they cannot really understand or appreciate what is happening on the ground?

The time has come to recognize the courage of our foreign service officers.  I have had the honor to know many FSOs, and without exception have found them to be deeply dedicated to their work and their country.  They are nothing like the right wing stereotype, which paints them as disconnected East Coast elitists who share noting with the average American.  In fact, most are themselves average Americans whose profession just happens to be promoting American foreign policy rather than building cars or writing code.

But the time also has come for Diplomatic Security to stop forcing American diplomats to hide behind blast-proof walls and let them interact once again with the local populace.  Representing the United States means being seen by individuals who haven’t had to go through three layers of security — people whose assumptions about and stereotypes of Americans are only reinforced by such measures.  Yes, that will put FSOs at greater risk, but that is the nature of service to our country, whether it be in the armed forces or the diplomatic corps.

I think that most FSOs would agree with me, but I doubt their political masters (or DS for that matter) will ever have the guts to make the changes necessary.

Related posts

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• Twenty Questions for the Debate Tonight

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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. . .America’s entry into the age of terror began when truck bombs destroyed part of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.  It was the first major attack by al Qaeda on the United States, killing at least 212 people and injuring somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 more.  Among the dead were 44 individuals working at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi — 12 Americans and 32 foreign nationals. (Diplopundit has a list of those killed and injured.)

During my years at Freedom House, I was a frequent visitor to both embassies.  A few of the people I worked with either died or were injured that day.  I hope you’ll join me in remembering them and honoring their service.

During my travels to Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania, I was a frequent guest in the home of Kiki Munshi, who then served as the USIS public affairs officer Dar.  It was that residence, which I remember as a lovely beachfront idyll far away from the hustle and bustle of downtown Dar, that subsequently became the temporary U.S. embassy — not because it was large, but rather because it was remote enough to be secure.

It was also ten years ago today that American foreign policy changed irrevocably — and not just because the Clinton Administration started to focus on al Qaeda.  The embassy bombings had a second and equally important impact:  they marked the day that U.S. Embassies turned into remote fortresses, and that the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) began to dictate how our diplomats interacted with the world.

That is not to say that Embassies weren’t built like bunkers before that day, or that previous attacks had not had an impact.  But after the Dar and Nairobi bombings, DS pushed for new embassy construction to focus on isolation from rather than proximity to the local populace.

That change, which virtually guaranteed the isolation of our diplomats, has had almost as much to do with America’s increasing isolation as the Bush Administration’s bad policy decisions.  Our foreign policy professionals don’t walk around foreign capitals anymore.  The nearly simultaneous destruction of our public diplomacy capacities also hasn’t helped.

One other thing strikes me about this day.  Can you imagine the tenth anniversary of 9/11 passing without notice?  But that is exactly what is happening today.  Is that because Americans have no appreciation of the foreign service, or because the vast majority of casualties were not Americans?  Either way, that too is a tragedy and disgrace.

I’ll have more tomorrow on the how the bombings have changed the foreign service.

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