The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2009

J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 15 While the 2010 figures will not be final until congressional appropriations action is completed in the fall, the pres- ident’s budget as sent to Congress in April provided for comparable in- creases for that year. So far, so good. However, the congressional budget res- olution (S. Con. Res. 13) agreed to at the end of April posited cuts in inter- national affairs funding from the ad- ministration’s request, leaving the size of the FY 2010 increases in funding and personnel in doubt. This raises an obvious point: the Secretary must not let pressing policy matters limit her personal efforts to ob- tain needed resources. This responsi- bility cannot be delegated. 2. Simplify the Department’s Structure Actions taken since Jan. 20 to meet this goal are less promising. There has long been a penchant for proliferating senior officials at State. Some are in the normal chain of command: assistant secretaries, under secretaries and, cur- rently, even a second Deputy Secretary of State. Then there are various other supernumeraries, such as (but not lim- ited to) special envoys, special repre- sentatives, ambassadors-at-large and coordinators of all stripes. Such appointments may be neces- sary to attract high-powered individu- als; it is hard to imagine George Mitchell or RichardHolbrooke accept- ing assistant secretary positions. But they come at a cost to the role of assis- tant secretaries in the affected geo- graphic bureaus. They also make line positions less attractive to talented in- dividuals, whether career or political. And there is a real risk that the “spe- cials” — or, as New York Times colum- nist Thomas L. Friedman has called them, “Super Sub-Secretaries of State” — will cut off the Secretary from ex- pertise in the bureaucracy. Or consider the newly activated po- sition of Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, created by Congress a decade ago but not es- tablished until this spring. This gives the Secretary an excuse to ignore re- source issues (as all recent ones except Shultz and Powell have done) andmin- imizes the roles of the USAID Admin- istrator (who loses oversight of foreign assistance resources), the under secre- tary for management and the assistant secretary for resource management. Arguably, it also diminishes the impor- tance of the under secretary for politi- cal affairs, who has now been down- graded from the department’s third- ranking position to number four. Admittedly, many support the cre- ation of the second deputy position, a view that is heavily reliant upon the reputation of Jacob Lew, the highly re- garded budget and legislative affairs professional now in the job. He is likely to be a real asset, but at the cost of dis- locations in State’s hierarchy. Once created, new offices and bu- reaus are very difficult to abolish, even when their time of relevance has passed. In short, the Secretary uses such special-purpose functionaries at her or his peril. This problem is exac- erbated by tardiness in nominating new line officials who need Senate confir- mation. It has apparently seemed eas- ier to appoint “specials” not needing confirmation, a trend that may cause problems with Congress, and one that makes the problems suggested here even more pressing. 3. Rationalize State’s Mission and Functions It is vital for Sec. Clinton to reclaim natural State functions from other de- partments and agencies while handing off those that do not fit. If the depart- ment is to be effective, there must be greater clarity about what it should do. Nationbuilding activities that have migrated to DOD as a consequence of the Iraq War and State’s lack of re- sources should be returned home, as discussed in the report previously cited. China policy must be defined more broadly than as trade-related, and pri- mary responsibility for it brought back to Foggy Bottom from Treasury. Cer- tain operational responsibilities should be retrieved from the National Security Council staff. And, while this will be muchmore difficult to accomplish, visa functions — shared with the Depart- ment of Homeland Security since the panic after 9/11 — should be reunified in State. At the same time, some functions (e.g., international narcotics matters) might logically be located elsewhere. And some reconstruction and stabiliza- tion operations currently assigned to State would fit more appropriately within USAID, since they are heavily development-related. Finally, rational- ization of the intelligence world could be a major help, not just to State but more generally. 4. Review Recruitment, Training and Assignments Most observers agree that State and USAID have maintained high levels of competence among the Foreign Serv- ice personnel they recruit. However, an argument can be made that, espe- cially at State, there should be more aggressive recruitment for specific sub- ject-matter expertise, as opposed to broad academic knowledge. How new recruits are trained and then assigned once on board is more questionable. Clearly, more hard-lan- S P E A K I N G O U T