The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021 33 As State ideally seeks to repair years of inadequate bud- gets, atrophying staff levels and marginalization in the policy process, it should increase the number of State officers detailed to Congress. State might also consider linking congressional details to assignments in the Bureau of Legislative Affairs (H). And, yes, we should encourage substantive congressional visits abroad to get a direct feel for nuclear and related foreign policy issues, rather than the superficial whirlwind CODELS that sometimes occur. Congress is the indispensable partner of the executive branch, and both should benefit from focused congressio- nal travel—whether it be to NATO to discuss concerns of this nuclear alliance, or key capitals such as Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul, Moscow, London, Paris, Berlin, New Delhi and Islamabad, to discuss their views on nuclear issues. Add to this list visits to the United Nations in New York to get a sense of the challenges faced by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and to Geneva to examine how we might reanimate the Conference on Disarmament. Vienna showcases both the extraordinary range of nuclear nonproliferation, safety, security and peaceful use activities carried out by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, as well as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. State should seek ways to invigorate and support the bipartisan National Security Working Group, the successor to the Sen- ate Arms Control Observer Group, which could make regular visits to the site(s) of any future nuclear arms negotiations for briefings by the U.S. team—an investment in securing ultimate Senate support for any future treaty. Each president, of course, decides how he or she wants to employ the National Security Council. Whether an activist or a coordinating model is chosen by President-elect Joe Biden, State should seek to detail as many officers as possible to the NSC Arms Control and related directorates. A new national security adviser might also consider whether, to ensure bet- ter policy coordination, the now-separate arms control, and defense directorates should be combined, as they were prior to the Obama administration. Both the NSC and State benefit from the interchange. Career arms control experts can burnish technical and foreign policy skills with an enhanced appre- ciation for the domestic context of arms control, and hone negotiating skills with the always-demanding interagency community. And while we are talking about State details, the Department of Energy is as relevant as the Pentagon in the nuclear arena. In making such details, State should ensure that the detailees have positions waiting for them when they complete those assignments. State’s Arms Control Bureaucracy The arms control bureaucracy at Foggy Bottom has gone through a number of reorganizations since the demise of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in 1999. Each left scar tissue, so management might be loath to undertake a new one. But the beginning of a new administration should be a time to at least review structure and process, as well as policy. Here, too, Congress will take an interest (witness its hold on the Bureau of Cyberspace Security and Emerging Technolo- gies, which the Trump administration proposed to add to the “T” family headed by the under secretary for arms control and international security). Given the comingling of nuclear issues in the nonprolif- eration and arms control spheres, are there redundancies in the Bureaus of International Security and Nonproliferation (ISN) and Arms Control, Verification and Compliance (AVC) that might be streamlined? Might these two bureaus even be reconfigured along other functional lines, rather than the cur- rent division between arms control and nonproliferation? One such reconfiguration could be grouping multilateral regimes together in one bureau, with another to house strategic and emerging security issues. Before actually undertaking any new reorganization, however, priority should be placed on reviving AVC, whose role and staff were particularly diminished during the Trump administration. The State Department has been fortunate in having a wealth of nuclear experts over the years, but the cadre of experienced practitioners has thinned out since the heyday of nuclear negotiations. In particular, the Foreign Service has to rebuild its greatly diminished nuclear expert ranks. A number of FS (and civil servants) were pushed out during the Trump administration or left in dismay over its policies. Over time, the number of FS slots in the “T” family has dwindled. Are there redundancies in the Bureaus of International Security and Nonproliferation (ISN) and Arms Control, Verification and Compliance (AVC) that might be streamlined?