The Foreign Service Journal, January 2009

24 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 9 An important element Sec. Rice introduced as part of the initiative was the plan to create American Presence Posts — one-officer posts outside capital cities in priority countries. In making requests for new GRP positions, the missions, through the bureaus, were told to include requests for new APPs. This wasn’t actually a new con- cept. “One-officer consulates were once staffed by diplomats in areas of the globe that took weeks to reach by boat,” says FSO Tom Daniels. “Support was minimal and conditions often rustic. Communication with locals and representation of U.S. interests were the keys to suc- cess. Sounds like old-style diplomacy in a modern era to me.” APPs had been introduced in France in the 1990s, in- cluding posts in Lille, Rennes, Toulouse and Bordeaux, in part to compensate for the elimination of consulates there. Egypt had one APP in Alexandria, and Canada opened an APP in Winnipeg in 2001. The U.S. office in Medan, In- donesia, sometimes held up as an example of a successful new APP, was a consulate before it was shut down in the mid-1990s, only to be reopened as a consulate during Sec. Powell’s tenure. It is now a two-officer post. Eight APPs were created during the past decade—all before the GRP. APP Lyon officer Harry Sullivan — who bid on that post after his job in the economic section of Embassy Paris was cut under the GRP — says that “We cannot fully en- gage the French from Paris only, so I am out of my office and away fromLyon at least 50 percent of the time. There is a great thirst for knowledge about the U.S. that would otherwise be unmet.” While the establishment of new APPs sounds logical in terms of expanding U.S. diplomatic coverage in an in- creasingly globalized world, it has often turned out to be unrealistic. A great example of big thinking, it was not matched by big — or even minimal — resource support. In addition, security concerns in many countries create al- most insurmountable barriers to opening single-person of- fices. For the APP exercise under the GRP, cities were selected without regard to the financial, administrative, legal and security elements of the equation. In fact, real- ities on the ground have dictated that most of the APPs not be created. The India mission, for example, had recommended up to 10 APPs under the GRP exercise. But due to complications in international law and a shortage of funds, none have been established. A new U.S. consulate in Hyderabad, inaugu- rated in October 2008, was the first new U.S. post established in India since 1947 (when the country’s pop- ulation was only about 350 million). This consulate was not established under the program, but the princi- pal officer there is in a GRP position. APP jobs were heavily bid because they were seen as new and exciting, involving lots of independence and re- sponsibility, and were considered a priority because the mandate came from the Secretary. But the actual job for just about every officer assigned to an APP position has not delivered on the promises. Almost all APP officers ar- rived in their country of assignment only to discover that they would not be moving to the designated city or open- ing that office at all. In a few cases, they found that not only was the post not going to be created, but they could not even visit their designated city because there were no available travel funds. The experience so far points to five key barriers to the establishment of APPs: • Security constraints and requirements are significant. • There is no provision for such facilities in the Vienna Convention or any other international agreement. Under international law, APPs are actually consulates, so the rules for opening a consulate apply —making creation of a new outpost vastly more complicated than simply dispatching one good FSO with a laptop to the selected city. The es- tablishment of consulates poses numerous legal issues, falls under congressional oversight and poses reciprocity issues with the host countries. • U.S. law does not allow an APP to be created in a city where the U.S. already has a consular agent. • Additional funding for the U.S. missions charged with opening new APPs — including the facilities, security and support staff — has been almost entirely absent. • Ground rules were not established for the APP pro- gram, and there is no central office in the State Depart- ment in charge of them, so each post had to figure out how to set up — or not set up — its designated posts. F O C U S No bureau or embassy wants to lose FSOs, especially during a time when demands are increasing, staffing is already short and budgets are tight.