The Foreign Service Journal, February 2013

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | FEBRUARY 2013 13 50 Years Ago T he world of watertight sovereign nations speaking to each other only through ambassadors and foreign ministers has all but vanished in a generation. Today’s major problems, the problems with which governments are responsible for dealing—war or peace, national and individual survival, prosperity, abundance, scarcity or glut—transcend the ability of any one government to cope with alone. Yet we are trying to cope with them with jerry-built adaptations of 19th-cen- tury or earlier methods while groping for better ones, without fully realizing even that we are groping, let alone what we are groping for. — From“Beyond Diplomacy” (part of a periodic series, “Is the Service Ready for the Sixties?”) by Theodore C. Achilles; FSJ , February 1963. 5. The department should develop minimum security standards for occupancy of temporary facilities in high-risk, high-threat environments, and seek greater flexibility for the use of Bureau of Overseas Buildings Opera- tions sources of funding so that they can be rapidly made available for security upgrades at such facilities. 6. Before opening or reopening critical-threat or high-risk, high-threat posts, the department should establish a multibureau support cell, residing in the regional bureau. The sup- port cell should work to expedite the approval and funding for establishing and operating the post, implementing physical security measures, staffing of security and management personnel, and providing equipment, continuing as conditions at the post require. 7. The Nairobi and Dar es Salaam Accountabilty Review Boards’ report of January 1999 called for collocation of newly constructed State Department and other government agencies’ facili- ties. All State Department and other government agencies’ facilities should be collocated when they are in the same metropolitan area, unless a waiver has been approved. 8. The Secretary should require an action plan from DS, OBO and other relevant offices on the use of fire as a weapon against diplomatic facilities, including immediate steps to deal with urgent issues. The report should also include reviews of fire safety and crisis management training for all employees and dependents, safe-haven standards and fire safety equipment, and recom- mendations to facilitate survival in smoke and fire situations. 9. Tripwires are too often treated only as indicators of threat rather than an essential trigger mechanism for serious risk management decisions and actions. The department should revise its guidance to posts and require key offices to perform in-depth status checks of post tripwires. 10. Recalling the recommendations of the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam ARBs, the State Department must work with Congress to restore the Capital Security Cost Sharing Program at its full capac- ity, adjusted for inflation to approxi- mately $2.2 billion in Fiscal Year 2015, including an up-to-10-year program addressing that need, prioritized for construction of new facilities in high risk, high threat areas. It should also work with Congress to expand utiliza- tion of Overseas Contingency Opera- tions funding to respond to emerging security threats and vulnerabilities and operational requirements in high-risk, high-threat posts. 11. The board supports the State Department’s initiative to request additional Marines and expand the Marine Security Guard Program, as well as corresponding requirements for staffing and funding. The board also recommends that the State Department and [Department of Defense] identify additional flexible MSG structures and request further resources for the department and DOD to provide more capabilities and capacities at higher risk posts. 12. The board strongly endorses the department’s request for increased DS personnel for high- and critical- threat posts and for additional Mobile Security Deployment teams, as well as an increase in DS domestic staffing in support of such action. The war has been fought in a very incorrect manner. It didn’t improve the situation, but it worsened it. … The world needs us more than we need them. —Abdul Karim Khurram, chief of staff to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, speaking about the U.S. presence in Afghanistan; Jan. 8 Washington Post .