The Foreign Service Journal, February 2010

F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 9 agency had to depend on and manage nearly 40,000 security contractors to meet critical needs. In addition to operating in the Iraq and Afghanistan war zones, the State Department maintains missions in a growing number of other dangerous cities — such as Peshawar, Pakistan, and Sanaa, Yemen — some of which it would have previously vacated. It is much more difficult to provide secu- rity in these locations, and more re- sources are required for the effort. The GAO report recommends, among other things, that Sec. Clinton conduct a strategic review of the Bu- reau of Diplomatic Security. Assistant Secretary Boswell, who says the bu- reau is already actively participating in the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, has embraced that recommendation ( www.govexec. com ). Among several specific points, the GAO urges State to focus on balancing security safeguards with the need to conduct diplomacy in the field. Amb. Neumann and AFSA President John- son, in their testimony, both questioned the department’s current zero-toler- ance security standard. Amb. Neumann described the “po- tentially crippling problem” of putting people in a dangerous country and then keeping them from being usefully employed. “We have to have standards that allow for the use of judgment in weighing the risk of doing something against the gain to be derived from the action,” he explains. “The goal should be responsible risk management, not a zero-tolerance policy,” states Johnson. “A one-size- fits-all approach does not take into ac- count the dynamic nature of diplo- macy and the different situations on the ground.” 21st-Century Kowtowing? Once confirmed as Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton proba- bly hoped that the only fundraising she would have to do for the next several years would be on Capitol Hill for her department’s budget. But as Mark Landler and David Barboza report in the Jan. 3 New York Times ( www.ny times.com ) , she has spent the past year raising $61 million from corporate sources to finance the construction of a national pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010. Landler and Barboza report that the effort to build a U.S. pavilion in Shang- hai was near death at the end of the Bush administration. The near-collapse of the global economy, the proximity of the expo to the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and the general ambivalence of the StateDepartment had left U.S.A. Pavil- ion ( www.usapavilion2010.com ) , the nonprofit group in charge of the proj- ect, with little support or money. For the Chinese, the expo is a book- end to the Olympics. Shanghai is spending $45 billion (not million!) to transform the city, even more than Bei- jing spent preparing for the Games. Nearly 200 countries have signed on to take part, leaving only the United States and Andorra as potential no- shows. Under federal law, no public funds can be used for the project, and the Chinese government had already ad- vanced the Americans money to con- duct technical work for the pavilion. So when Sec. Clinton visited Beijing last February, she got an earful about how bad it would be if the United States did not have a presence at the fair, which runs fromMay through Oc- tober. Although Clinton, as a federal offi- cial, could not directly solicit private fi- nancial donations, State Department lawyers found a way for her to tap her well-established network of fundrais- ers, netting close to $54 million for the pavilion so far. With multimillion-dol- lar pledges in hand from Pepsi, Gen- eral Electric, Chevron and other companies, the United States is now on track to open a sleek, 60,000- square-foot facility this spring. Sec. Clinton is proud of her success in staving off a rupture in U.S.-Chinese relations. “I was dumbfounded that so little attention had been paid to it,” she said in an interview with the New York Times . “Everyone knows China is going to be an enormously powerful player in the 21st century. They have an expo, which is a kind of rite of pas- sage that countries like to do to show they have arrived. We’re not there? What does that say?” In a year during which Clinton has worked hard to prove herself a loyal member of the Obama team, the fundraising coup showcases her en- during political drawing power. Of course, some White House staff may interpret that success to mean that po- litical appointees who can raise mil- lions of dollars are more attractive candidates for top jobs at State than ca- reer diplomats. Foreign Affairs Budget: Getting It Right The momentum to significantly raise the profile of diplomacy and de- velopment in the national security triad appears undiminished as 2010 dawns. A record-breaking 247 members of Congress (58 senators and 189 repre- sentatives from across the political spectrum) have already signed biparti- san letters calling on President Obama to request a robust international affairs budget in Fiscal Year 2011, according C Y B E R N O T E S