Via Jason Zengerle over at TNR, it looks like there’s a tempest brewing over Obama’s use of political appointees to fill ambassadorships. The first story cropped up about three weeks ago in The Washington Times:

The White House, unaware of historic norms, had been on track to give more than the usual 30 percent of ambassadorial jobs to political appointees until objections from career diplomats forced it to reconsider, administration officials say. . . .

The decision to uphold the historic ratio of 30 percent political appointees and 70 percent career diplomats came only after members of the Foreign Service protested to White House staff and Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl D. Mills, officials said.

“There was some question about how sacrosanct the 30 percent was,” the senior administration official said.

Although the 30-70 ratio is not official, “all administrations have adhered fairly closely to it in the last several decades,” said Steven B. Kashkett, acting president of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), the diplomats’ union.The U.S. has 175 ambassadorial posts.

Mr. Obama ran on a pledge to emphasize diplomacy and transparency but appeared to be well on his way to inflating the number of political appointees as ambassadors until the Foreign Service intervened.

“Why is ours the only profession where it’s considered acceptable to appoint someone without any experience?” Mr. Kashkett said. “Would you appoint someone to head a hospital without medical experience?”

Even if the White House respects the 30-70 ratio, “we still have concerns,” Mr. Kashkett said. “Thirty percent is not a comfortable number. We feel very strongly about the importance of appointing primarily professional diplomats as ambassadors.”

Dennis Jett, described in The Daily Beast as a “former diplomat” (by which I presume they meant that he’s a retired foreign service officer) added his voice earlier this week:

Despite the obvious damage, this corrupt exercise is repeated every four years—and there seems to be no hope that it is going to change under President Obama. The “system,” of course, is the awarding of plum ambassadorial postings to major campaign donors—cash for cachet. . . .

In his first six months, Obama forwarded to the Senate 58 nominations for ambassadors. Of those 32, or 55 percent of the total, were political appointees. In the same time period, his five predecessors made more nominations—an average of 67—but the number of those who were political was lower at 47 percent. . . .

The failed states and economic basket cases are left to the career officers. The industrialized democracies of Europe and Asia and the island nations of the Caribbean are the destinations of the political appointees.

Scott Horton over at Harper’s joins in:

The process cheapens our diplomatic relations and sends a bad message to the states to which these ambassadors are sent. And it’s getting cruder and greedier. A cynic studying the latest batch of nominees might conclude that the price of an ambassadorship has soared from roughly $200,000 under the Rovian regime to $500,000 under Rahm Emanuel. Under Barack Obama, the process of political payoff through ambassadorial appointments has matched and appears poised to exceed the already extremely abusive system that Karl Rove put in place under the Bush Administration. . . .

Political appointees are not per se objectionable. In fact, some of the most distinguished ambassadorial appointees in recent decades have been political appointees—not career diplomats. Think of Mike Mansfield, Walter Mondale, and Howard Baker, each serving ably in Japan, or Pamela Harriman and Felix Rohatyn, who served in France. Each of these appointees was a prominent figure on the Washington stage whose appointment added luster to Washington’s relationship with the nation to which he or she was sent. But the Obama political appointees are of a different caliber. What distinguishes them is not a career in public service or finance, much less foreign relations or foreign area expertise, but rather something far grubbier: raising substantial sums of money for the Obama campaign. . . .

The point here is not that any of these picks are unworthy individuals, but rather that the main criterion by which they seem to have been chosen is their fundraising savvy for Democratic causes. That creates the impression around the world that these posts are political trinkets, which seriously degrades the post and stands as a barrier to Obama’s efforts to reassert American leadership.

It’s clear that none of these nominees came out of the State Department.

Not to sound cynical, but my initial reaction here was. . .you’re surprised?  That Obama has appointed some donors as Ambassadors?  Captain Renault, white courtesy phone please:

My intent here is not to defend the current system — which is flawed — nor to defend specific individuals named by Horton as examples of the donor-to-diplo racket (although, as Zengerle notes, the individuals he names have more going for them than merely their ability to bundle money).  Instead, I want to point out one small but inconvenient fact:  the arguments made by AFSA’s Kashkett (in the Times story), Jett, and Horton all contain a syllogism that would make Aristotle blush.

A substantial number of Obama’s ambassadorial nominees are political appointees (rather than foreign service officers).

Some of Obama’s appointees are major donors.

Therefore all of Obama’s political appointees are major donors.

Uh, no they’re not.  In fact, some of those appointed by the Obama Administration are foreign policy experts who have a long history of working on the countries and/or issues in question.

I don’t have the luxury of reviewing the entire list of Obama appointees, but permit me to name just three individuals who I happen to know personally.

Lee Feinstein is nominated to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Poland. Feinstein served in State as Deputy Director of Policy Planning during the Clinton Administration and has spent time at Brookings, Council on Foreign Relations, and Carnegie.

David Killion is nominated to serve as U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO. Killion also served in the Clinton Administration and more recently was a senior policy advisor on international institutions to the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Bonnie Jenkins is nominated to serve as Coordinator for Threat Reduction Programs, with the rank of Ambassador.  Jenkins was a senior program officer at the Ford Foundation and a Naval reservist who took leave from her duties at Ford to go on active duty.

Did these individuals give money to the Obama campaign?  I’m sure they did.  But they’re not major donors or bundlers.  I don’t know whether people with similarly impressive professional credentials and small checking accounts also received nominations at the start of the Bush and Clinton Administrations. I’m sure some did — but I’m guessing that they were fewer and further between.

Horton bemoans the lack of “prominent figure[s] on the national stage,” yet fails to acknowledge the inclusion of Jon Huntsman, the former Governor of Utah, to serve as U.S. Ambassador to China, and Tim Roemer, a former Congressman and member of the 9/11 Commission to serve as U.S. Ambassador to India.  (And one other thing, Mr. Horton — Pamela Harriman and Felix Rohatyn may have been prominent figures, but they also were major donors.)

To its credit, the Washington Times story does not make this assumption, noting elsewhere in the story that some of the political appointments are going/will go to Obama, Biden, and Clinton foreign policy advisors, and speculating that complaints from the foreign service were likely to prevent some of them from getting their posts (and by inference, not having an impact on appointments of the money men and women).

The foreign service does an outstanding (and largely unheralded) job of representing U.S. interests overseas.  Its members deserve not merely our respect but our admiration.  That’s why the list of Obama ambassadorial picks includes a number of distinguished members of the foreign service.

The reality here is that AFSA, which represents the interests of the foreign service, is worried that the foreign service is not getting its traditional share of the pie.  They said the same things eight years ago when Bush came to office and sixteen years ago when Clinton got elected. It’s a time-honored Washington ritual.

I am sure that other foreign service officerss of equal or greater talent will be nominated when all is said and done.  Some, to use Jett’s lovely turn of phrase, will go to “failed states and economic basket cases,”** but some won’t.

The reality is that AFSA (to its credit) is doing what any good union should do:  defend its members’ hard-won privileges.  They have every right to do that, but their arguments would be far more credible if they at least acknowledge that some of Obama’s nominees have credentials as good as members of the senior foreign service.

**I wonder how the governments of these supposed swamp pits will feel when they discover that foreign service officers named to be ambassadors don’t want to serve in their countries.  That’s not exactly diplomacy in action.

Related posts

• Transition Watch: Mona Sutphen
• The Panic over Political Appointments
• The Human Rights Secretary of State?
• The Bottleneck at State
• Loyalty v. Ideology (Reboot)

Inside the State Department, you can’t know who does what without a scorecard.  Every position/bureau has a one- to three-letter abbreviation — even the Secretary, whose office is called “S” inside the building.

There are six undersecretaries, each of which also has a single letter abbreviation:  Political Affairs (P); Management (M); Democracy and Global Affairs (G); Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs (R); Arms Control and International Security (T); and Economic Affairs (E).  These are the most senior positions in State other than the Secretary and two Deputy Secretaries, and each supervises somewhere between six and fifteen bureaus and offices.  Think of the undersecretaries as the government equivalent of a business with Vice Presidents who oversee a number of offices.

So why am I telling you all this?  Because nearly six weeks into the Administration (and four months since the Obama transition team started work), four of the six positions — G, R, E, and T — all remain unfilled.

So what’s going on?  Part of it  is the most stringent vetting ever undertaken by an Administration.  Part of it is the fact that the recent contretemps over Daschle, Geitner, et. al. has slowed down the process even further.

Another factor is that the leading candidate for E, Lael Brainard, was just announced as Undersecretary of Treasury for International Affairs.  What I’m hearing is that given the financial crisis and the fact that no one under Geithner had yet been appointed, the Administration is recruiting talent originally slotted to take positions in other departments.

Although the Brainard “transfer” clarifies the delay on E, it doesn’t explain G, R, or T.  And from what I hear, all the Assistant Secretary positions — even those whose vetting is finished — are being held up as a result of the four vacancies.

In case you’re wondering about the other two Undersecretary Positions — Political Affairs and Management — they are both filled by career foreign service officers who were originally appointed by the Bush Administration.  That’s normal — career FSOs serve specific terms (two, sometimes three years), even in senior positions (though they still serve at the pleasure of the President and still must be confirmed by the Senate).

That means that the current score is career FSO positions 2, political appointments 0.  The Administration needs to get its act together to resolve this, either by finding appropriate political appointees or naming talented FSOs to fill the slots.  Although these vacancies may not be as critical as the positions at Treasury, it’s awfully hard to steer the ship if you’ve only got a captain and two mates.

Related posts

• The Panic over Political Appointments
• The Human Rights Secretary of State?
• Loyalty v. Ideology (Reboot)
• Whoopsie
• Upstairs Downstairs

Another brief take on a recent story:  last week, Carolyn O’Hara at Madame Secretary reported that a shuffle of offices on the seventh floor has caused some grumbling in the foreign service:

Bill Burns, State’s widely admired No. 3, has been bumped from his offices to make way for Jacob Lew, one of Hillary’s two new deputies, sources say. Lew, who was director of the OMB in the Clinton White House, has been tasked with getting State more cash.

Proximity to the Secretary is everything on the 7th floor of the State Department building, and we hear that the much-respected Burns, the under secretary for political affairs (or “P”), and his staff have been bumped from the relatively central office suite normally reserved for P and unceremoniously reassigned to the less-desirable “G” suites down the hall.

The folks in the G offices (normally for the under secretary for global affairs) are apparently being bumped even farther down the hall to the “R” offices, normally occupied by the under secretary for public diplomacy. Where the R folks are going is anyone’s guess, but it’s presumably the far-from-coveted 6th floor — hardly a good message to send about the importance of public diplomacy under a new administration.

We hear rank-and-file foreign service officers (FSOs) are none too happy with the move, which is considered a slight to Burns, a career diplomat who is the highest-ranking FSO in the country.

First of all, the foreign service — or at least those FSOs whining to O’Hara — need to get over themselves.  Yes, proximity is power, and yes it’s nice to be close.  But it’s far more important to have the ability to influence power than it is to have the office next to it.  There are plenty of Undersecretaries over the years who have had seventh floor suites and first floor access.  Burns will be no more or less influential because he’s moved down the hall.

I’ve heard a few things along these lines (and my sources largely confirm O’Hara’s report), some contradictory.  One is that R will move into the space now occupied by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, (DRL) one of two Bureaus still on the 7th Floor (the other is the Bureau of Oceans, Science and Environment, or OES).  DRL will then move out of the building to space in the Red Cross building two blocks away.  I presume that OES will face a similar fate, but I’ve not heard that for sure.

Another rumor is that all Assistant Secretaries will have offices on the seventh floor.  That doesn’t make sense, in part because there are too many A/S positions to fit them all there and in part because separating bureau leaders from their troops seems like a bad idea.

If it turns out that the seventh floor becomes Undersecretaryland, I’m not that concerned.  What worries me a lot more is the decision to move DRL out of the building.  For far too long, DRL has been regarded as the “NGO inside the building,” particularly by the regional bureaus.  To exile DRL to a building whose owner is an NGO would send a signal to the rest of the Department that it no longer matters.   And given the dramatic decline of DRL during the Bush Administration (who wants to hear about human rights in an administration dedicated to violating them?), this could mean complete obscurity.

Now it’s very possible that all of these moves are a product not of politics but of the incredibly slow renovation of the Department that has been underway for almost a decade.  One of the reasons DRL has to move is that its corner of the building is slated to be renovated next.  If this is a temporary relocation, then I don’t think that it’s a concern.  But if the renovation is used as a pretext for exile, then there are serious problems. (And for the record, a similar argument could be made about OES, given the priority the Administration has given to addressing climate change.)

What I hear is that David Kramer, who was the last Bush-era Assistant Secretary for DRL, was under tremendous pressure to relocate — pressure coming not just from the building, but also from those parts of his own bureau already outside the building (mainly that part of DRL responsible for producing the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices).  Kramer’s decision to cave agree to the move was one of the last decisions of his tenure, and has seriously damaged morale in the bureau.

When I was at State, one of my responsibilities was to manage what is known as press guidance — the talking points produced each day for the spokesman.  I learned early on that press guidance was policy — that if you got the spokesman to say something, then it was the official policy of the U.S. government.  We thus became far more aggressive in our efforts to play a role in press guidance, and were able to change a number of statements that otherwise would not have taken human rights issues into consideration.

I raise that now because office space also is policy.  Those working at State call themselves “the building,” demonstrating just how seriously location is taken — and the degree to which those laboring at one of a dozen annexes are regarded as second-class citizens.  The reality is that not everybody can be on the seventh floor, or even in the main building, but Hillary needs to be careful that her (or more likely her advisors’) decisions about who sits where does not end up having a very real impact on policy.

Related posts

• The Panic over Political Appointments
• The Other Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
• The Human Rights Secretary of State?
• The Bottleneck at State
• Loyalty v. Ideology (Reboot)

When I was at the State Department, I had the opportunity to work closely with a terrific group of foreign service officers who were memberw of Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies, who were fighting to get recognition for same sex spouses.

Although benefits were a big part of what they were fighting for, an equally important issue was how their spouses were treated overseas.  The reality is that unlike a number of European countries, American gay and lesbian spouses do not enjoy the same status overseas as their heterosexual colleagues.  That means, among other things, that they do not have the rights, privileges, and protection that other spouses do.  As former Ambassador Michael Guest put it back in 2007 when he resigned from the foreign service over the treatment of his partner, the foreign service (and by extension the U.S. Government) forced him to choose

between obligations to my partner, who is my family, and service to my country,” which he called “a shame for this institution and our country.

Back when I was in the Clinton Administration, gay spouses did not have even the most basic rights and privileges.  To its credit, the Bush Administration changed some of the rules — permitting partners/spouses to attend security and other introductory seminars — but not much more.

Yesterday, GLIFAA released to the press a copy of a letter sent last week to incoming Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton:

We, the undersigned and representing the diversity of the foreign affairs agencies. . .are troubled that our families are not all treated equally and with the same respect.  We are concerned that access to the federal health care insurance program is denied to same-sex partners of employees serving in Third World countries with substandard medical care.

We question the logic of leaving same-sex partners to fend for themselves during an emergency evacuation of a high danger post. We are embarrassed when the Department will reimburse a variety of moving expenses, including the cost of transporting a pet, when an employee is assigned overseas, but will not do the same for a same-sex partner.

We are saddened that individual and community safety are put at risk because full language instruction is not available to same-sex partners. We are uncomfortable that same-sex partners receive less compensation and fewer benefits for performing exactly the same job inside the mission as an opposite-sex spouse, that is, when same-sex partners are given a chance to work.

An order from your office designating same-sex partners as Eligible Family Members (EFMs) could remedy many of the inequalities that these families face. Other remedies will require coordination between the Executive and Legislative branches.

Madam Secretary, we believe that no colleague of ours is a second-class colleague, and no colleague’s family is a second-class family. Given your commitment to protecting the safety and promoting the welfare of all Foreign Service families, we ask for your full consideration of our concerns and we hope that a dialogue aimed at ending this unequal treatment can be started.

This is what I mean by the other don’t ask don’t tell.  It’s not as discriminatory as what happens in the military:  gays and lesbians no longer are drummed out of the foreign service as a result of their sexual orientation.  But they are asked to pretend that they are not second-class citizens.

To put it another way, they’re being told “don’t tell us we’re not treating you fairly and we won’t ask why that’s a problem.”

That’s ridiculous, and shameful.  As the GLIFAA letter notes, there’s a simple solution here:  designate partners as Eligible Family Members, which would “give” them the rights and privileges (and protection) enjoyed by all other family members. (Of course the notion that the government has the ability to “give” fundamental human rights to people is, in itself, offensive, but we’ll set that aside for the moment.)

You want to know how ridiculous this is?  If a foreign service officer is married to the love of her life, and her spouse brings into the marriage a daughter, and the foreign service officer adopts that daughter, the daughter is an Eligible Family Member, but her own birth mother is not.

During Hillary’s confirmation hearing, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) asked her about this issue:

FEINGOLD:  What would you do as secretary of state to address these concerns? Will you support changes to existing personnel policy in order to ensure that LGBT staff at State and USAID receive equal benefits and support?

CLINTON: Senator, this issue was brought to my attention during the transition. I’ve asked to have more briefing on it because I think that we should take a hard look at the existing policy. As I understand it, but don’t hold me to it because I don’t have the full briefing material, but my understanding is other nations have moved to extend that partnership benefit. And we will come back to you to inform you of decisions we make going forward.

This is both good news and bad news.  It’s good news because Secretary Clinton demonstrated a willingness to “take a hard look” at the issue.  It’s bad news because she did not promise to change policy.  That is a politicians’ caution — perhaps understandable given her husband’s experiences — but this isn’t 1992.  Public attitudes about and understanding of these issues has changed significantly:  although there remains no consensus on marriage, most Americans support both civil unions and partner benefits.

So why didn’t Clinton commit?  I can only speculate.  First, the federal bureaucracy may be hesitant to allow State to take the lead on this.  I think that’s ridiculous — given the fact that one part of the government (the military) already has a separate discriminatory policy, I don’t see why another part of the government having a separate progressive policy should be a problem.

Second, some folks at State may nervous about “granting” full rights and privileges to same sex spouses because they’re afraid of how some countries — particularly the Vatican, most African states, and Muslim-majority states — may react.  You could call it the Anglican church precedent:  rock the boat and you create problems.  That’s a fallacy, of course — it hasn’t been the case for other countries that have given same-sex spouses full rights and benefits — and it’s allowing diplomacy to mask discrimination.

Lest you think that these are a minor issues, remember this:  until the Clinton Administration, one of the questions on the security clearance questionnaire was whether you had ever engaged in “homosexual activity.”  Some very talented people over the years have been excluded from the foreign service or drummed out simply because they were gay. Don’t forget that the red hunts of the 1950s were also used to fire gay foreign service officers because they were viewed as somehow more “susceptible” to recruitment.

But even after that terrible practice stopped, diplomatic security found other ways to make the lives of gays and lesbians miserable.  I’ll never forget a meeting I had during my time at State when a foreign service officer told how diplomatic security gave him a choice:  forget about a foreign service career or out himself to his parents, who did not know he was gay.  Another was actually outed to his parents by diplomatic security.

Here’s hoping that Secretary Clinton does the right thing, and does it quickly.

Then we can turn to the bigger problem in that other agency.

Related posts

• The Human Rights Secretary of State?
• Upstairs Downstairs
• Transition Watch: Mona Sutphen
• The Panic over Political Appointments
• The Bottleneck at State

So the hot topic around Washington these days, at least in the foreign policy community is. . .

Israel/Gaza?  Uh-uh.

Russia/Ukraine pipeline issues?  Nope.

Hillary’s confirmation?  Well, that’s getting a lot of attention, but even that isn’t at the top of the list.

No, story number one with a bullet is Laura Rozen’s post that many Obamanistas in the foreign policy community are not happy with the transition:

[S]ome Obama campaign foreign policy volunteer advisors – many of whom put in long hours for no pay, taking career risks no doubt in part with the hope that should the long-shot junior Senator win, their hard work might eventually be rewarded – are finding themselves on the outside looking in, and not sure where they should knock.

In conversations over the past couple weeks, sources have told The Cable that something has definitely changed about their relationship to Obamaland since the campaign ended. The transition’s inner circle has become excessively secretive, closed, and far from transparent with them about the process for appointing people to jobs.

I’m not surprised — after all, this is what I wrote two months ago:

[I]t’s already pretty clear that Obama foreign policy types, particularly those who chose to support him back when he was far from a sure thing, are not at all happy with [the choice of Hillary as SecState]. . . .

They are wondering why they stuck their neck out twenty months ago only to see Hillary’s supporters get the plum foreign policy jobs.  At the time, they supported Obama not to get a job (after all, Hillary looked like a near-lock then) but because they sincerely believed that Obama represented a new and fresh approach.  Most knew that they were taking a big chance — after all, they had been warned of the consequences were they not to support Hillary. (And again, I believe that most of those who supported Hillary did so because they thought she was the best person for the job.)

My friends would be less than human if they did not want some reward for the chance they took.  Now, they feel, their payoff is to see the key jobs at State go to those who played it safe.  Although it’s true that Hillary might appoint some Obama loyalists to her team, most of my friends don’t think that’s going to happen.

So at least to me, Rozen’s report is not that surprising.  That said, I’m sympathetic with those of my colleagues who feel like they’re not being heard or “rewarded.”  I was on one of the foreign policy teams and I haven’t heard anything back either.  And I think there is some truth to the suggestion in Rozen’s story that the nature of email communication has limited the type of networking that in the past has given those advising the campaign a leg up.

But come on, people.  It’s not even the middle of January.  No transition in history has started appointing positions below Undersecretary in January.  And unlike past transitions, this one has focused not just on personnel, but also on fixing what everyone regards as a broken system.  Since those recommendations just went to Secretary-Designate Clinton in the past week or two, it’s awfully hard for people to get appointments for positions that may be eliminated in a reorganization.

In addition, I’m guessing that the foreign policy transition process probably wasn’t helped by the fact that two of those managing it — Mona Sutphen and Susan Rice — received early appointments that may have had an impact on personnel review.  In particular, Sutphen’s appointment to one of the Deputy White House Chief of Staff jobs may really have created a bottleneck.  As the email quoted in full by Rozen notes, she originally was going to coordinate personnel side of the foreign policy transition:

Please also feel free to copy Mona Sutphen who will be tracking your applications at:  [redacted], with any resumes and materials you submit in the official channel.

Furthermore, while the process has not been transparent, that’s typical, not unusual — both the Clinton and the Bush process were just as opaque.  There are good reasons for that:  you don’t want people to know who the other candidates for a given job are, and you want to make sure that the process is designed in a way to limit favortism, not reward it.

To be clear, I would love it if my friends and contacts on the transition teams were to tell me I was a lock for a job.  But then they not only would be disingenuous, they also would exceed their authority.

And the notion that Hillary and Biden loyalists are getting all the good jobs simply isn’t true.  Most of the rumors reported by both Rozen and WaPo’s Al Kamen include Obama loyalists, Hillary supporters, and those who did not take sides in the primary.

The very idea of a scorecard is nothing more than the latest media version of the supposed Hillary-Barack throwdown.  Folks seem to forget that in the general, everybody worked for Obama.  For example, I know several people who were part of team whose members got up each morning at 4:00 am to put together a summary of that day’s big foreign policy stories.  Some were Obama supporters and some were Hillary supporters.  Do the former now think the latter somehow worked less or got up later?

This story is in some ways an extension of the media’s obsession with the NYT’s story this summer about Obam’s supposedly huge foreign policy team (more than 300!).  The problem is that the original piece was predicated on the belief that Obama had created something new and different.  Here’s what I said at the time (apologies in advance for quoting at length):

I have absolutely no illusions about this.  We are not Barack Obama’s “mini State Department,” as the Times claims.  In fact, one of the main purposes of these teams is… to keep us out of the way of the people actually making the decisions.

You see, every four years, every presidential campaign is inundated with officeseekerwannabes, some idealistic, some not so much.  There are newbies who have never before been involved in a campaign, worker bees who have served in mid-level policy positions in previous administrations, and Prominent People who don’t have much time but want to help where they can.  All of them have some sort of expertise on a given issue.  All of them want the candidate to win.  And almost all of them know that if you want a job in the next administration, you have to put in your time.

So what is a campaign to do?  You can’t have three hundred people advising a candidate, no matter what the Times may think.  If a campaign is smart (and that certainly is true of the Obama campaign) they do what any sensible organization does:  they form committees.  Except they call them “foreign policy advisory teams,” invite all the officeseekerwannabes to join, and then (for the most part)… ignore them.

Am I being cynical here?  A little.  But my disdain is for the Times’s breathless reporting, not the process.

Here’s the thing.  Four years ago, I co-coordinated one of these groups for the Kerry campaign.  I was one of two people who designated roles, set deadlines, assigned responsibility for drafting, and held conference calls.  Lots and lots of conference calls.  It was our job to get stuff done when the campaign needed it.  I wrote two of the five “core” position papers as well as a few smaller ones and the relevant sections of the platform and the debate prep book.

I’m not trying to brag — I just want to give you a feel for what was (and is) involved.  There were plenty of other people who did even more.

Did we have any influence on the Kerry campaign?  I have no idea.  I know that the people managing foreign policy for Kerry — Rand Beers, Dan Feldman, and Susan Rice, among others — did a good job of making us feel like we were being heard — just like I was trying to do with the people on my team.  But I never actually heard a talking point I wrote come out of Kerry’s mouth.

Our team had 50 people on it.  There were 20 teams.  Now think about that for a moment.  Do the math.

So why weren’t there reporters covering the number of people on the Kerry team four years ago?

Oh.  Wait.  There.  Were.  Took me five minutes on the Google to find the stories.  Except back then, we were called a “mini-NSC” instead of a “mini-State:”

“I’ve put together for Kerry a small group of mostly younger foreign policy advisers, a sort of mini-NSC,” says [Dan] Feldman, 36. Feldman says he helped pick the group by the expertise of its members to mirror the various directorates within the National Security Council, including experts on areas like the Middle East or Africa and on topics such as counter-terrorism or weapons of mass destruction.  “We have a weekly conference call, write position papers, and do opposition research on the Bush administration,” says Feldman.

Nice going Times.  You just ran a front-page story that is virtually the same as one reported by you and others four years ago.

Yet despite all of this, some folks continue to think that the sheer number of Obama’s foreign policy advisors is the problem.  Take Jason Zengerle over at TNR, for example:

I think there’s one explanation for their being left out in the cold that Laura Rozen–who recorded their discontent–ignores: Obama may have had more foreign policy advisors during the campaign than he now has foreign policy jobs to fill. . . .Now, obviously, the real State Department–not to mention the Pentagon and the NSC–employ more than 300 people. (Here’s the ‘Plum Book’ list of State Department jobs that can be filled via political appointments.) But I don’t know how many of Obama’s foreign policy advisors would want to leave their tenured professorships to be, say, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oceans.

There are several problems here.  To begin with, there are more than 300 jobs on the Plum Book list Zengerle cites (11 pages, roughly 50-60 jobs listed per page).  Some are designated for “career incumbents” (meaning foreign service officers) and others, such as most of the ambassadorships, will go to senior FSOs even though they technically are political appointees.  But even if you take out those, there are at least 350 to 400 jobs there.  And that doesn’t even include the jobs in NSC, Defense and DHS, not to mention the fact that Obama has pledged that Ambassadorships will go to talented experts rather than wealthy donors — and not all of those are going to be career FSOs.

Perhaps most importantly, there are a lot more political jobs at State today than there were sixteen years ago when Clinton had just as large (if not larger) team.  And I don’t remember any of those folks going wanting.  Think I’m wrong?  Here’s my list of some of State Department political appointments that are new since Clinton first took office (some created under Clinton and some under Bush):

• Deputy Secretary for Administration;
• Undersecretary for Global Affairs;
• Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs;
• Undersecretary for Arms Control;
• A handful of Assistant Secretaries and Deputy Assistant Secretaries (some of which have gone and will continue to go to senior foreign service officers);
• Numerous Ambassadors at Large, Special Representatives, and Coordinators (for example, Religious Freedom, War Crimes Issues, and Afghanistan);
• All the new Iraq and Afghanistan positions (the Iraq “desk” now takes up a huge chunk of the second floor at Foggy Bottom);
• New positions mandated by the White House, Secretary of State, or Congress (for example, trafficking in persons, PEPFAR, conflict response and stabililty).

It’s likely that any reorganization will lead to the elimination of some of these jobs, as well as a few that predate the Clinton Administration.  But it’s equally likely that any such effort also will create new positions.  For example, one rumor going around the building is that the various undersecretaries will have more resources and responsibilities, which probably means more staff positions.  In fact, if you listen to the foreign service gossip, those positions are being created in order to find more jobs for those aspiring to a political appointment.

There’s one other thing Zengerle gets wrong:  almost every single one of the people who volunteered for the Obama campaign would be delighted to be Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oceans — because that would mean they got offered a job in the Obama Administration.

The bottom line?  It’s way, way, way too early to panic.  I suggest everyone take a deep breath and stop worrying about whether they’re going to get the job they want — or, in their more frantic moments, whether they’re going to get any job at all.

At least that’s what I’m telling myself.

P.S.  Thanks for your patience while I coped with life.  It’s good to be back.

Related posts

• Loyalty v. Ideology (Reboot)
• Transition Watch: Anger in the Ranks
• The True Experience Test
• The Transition
• The Human Rights Secretary of State?

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

• The Panic over Political Appointments
• Transition Watch: Anger in the Ranks
• The Human Rights Secretary of State?
• The Fake Controversy over Samantha Power
• The Bottleneck at State

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.

Related posts

• Transition Watch: Mona Sutphen
• The Panic over Political Appointments
• The Other Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
• The Bottleneck at State
• Some Thoughts on Obama’s Speech

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 »

Related posts

• The Human Rights Secretary of State?
• The Panic over Political Appointments
• The Other Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
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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.

Related posts

• The Decline of American Power, Iraq Edition, Part 356
• Ten Years Ago Today. . .
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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.

Related posts

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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.

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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.

————————-
*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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