The Foreign Service Journal, January 2013

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY 2013 31 rapidly reconstituted. But our diplomatic and development capabilities were not, in spite of the best efforts of successive Secretaries of State. This neglect came in spite of the fact that the diplomatic shield was our nation’s first and most consistently used tool throughout the five decades of the Cold War. As a conse- quence, by 2008 the Department of State and USAID were seri- ously hobbled by a human capital crisis: a 15-percent vacancy rate in existing positions, a total lack of training positions, and an even more difficult situation in USAID. In response, the American Academy of Diplomacy, sup- ported by the Stimson Center and funded by the Una Chap- man Cox Foundation, published A Foreign Affairs Budget for the Future that analyzed the crisis and made several recom- mendations. The FAB report was well received by both the Bush and Obama administrations and Congress. Over the past four years, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has made important, if uneven, progress in dealing with these human resource problems. State Department staff- ing has grown approximately 17 percent and USAID staffing by more than 30 percent. Meanwhile, dramatic changes in the foreign and domestic environments in which the foreign affairs agencies operate are now under way. Globalization is becoming ever more compli- In Walter Lippmann’s apt metaphor, diplomatic and development personnel constitute the “Shield of the Republic.” The better the shield, the less often the sword is required.