The Foreign Service Journal, March 2006

ernance specialists, public affairs officers, contractors, project man- agers and linguists, and were intended to provide a base for a larger governance presence man- aged by a USAID contractor, the Research Triangle Institute. But without an established civilian structure to draw from, the teams took over eight months to reach full staffing and even then struggled until the end of the CPA mandate in mid-2004 to place the right people in the right places. At the close of the CPA era, the Embassy Baghdad country team decided to maintain these teams in each of the provinces under the same three headquarters. After the handover of authority to the Interim Iraqi Government, the teams were to change from direct involvement in governing to supporting the IIG in a vari- ety of capacities. At times, the PRTs would be a kind of shadow administration that could improve the reach of the new government into the provinces; at other times, they would put a civilian face on the U.S. military occu- pation. They also constituted a direct link to the embassy, which was rightly seen as one of the most powerful insti- tutions in the country. The provincial teams also provid- ed Baghdad and Washington with valuable reporting and public affairs outreach, as well as the development of key regional contacts. A further advance occurred recently as part of the new “clear, hold, build” strategy, in which PRTs would be established quickly in towns that had recently been wrested from insurgents in order to main- tain stability there. But the biggest boost to micro-posts occurred as this article was going to press, when Secretary Rice, in her Jan. 18 speech at Georgetown University, stated: “To advance transformational diplomacy, we must change our diplomatic posture. ... Transformational diplomacy requires us to move our diplomatic presence out of for- eign capitals and to spread it more widely across coun- tries. ... There are nearly 200 cities worldwide with over one million people in which the United States has no diplomatic presence. This is where the action is today and this is where we must be.” The Secretary suggested the development of “American Presence Posts” to fur- ther this objective. Institutionalizing Micro-Posts Micro-posts would serve a num- ber of key functions. First, they would facilitate the establishment of key contacts with local and regional host country officials whose cooperation and trust are central to pursuing U.S. interests. Second, they would help put a face on U.S. policies and allow for wide- ranging public diplomacy pro- grams that have been identified as one of the most seriously lagging of our efforts in the war on terror. Third, they would provide a platform for other agencies (primarily law enforcement, foreign assistance and homeland security) to perform their work. Fourth, they would allow for reporting on key regions and the development of biographic and political profiles. Fifth, micro-posts in some places would put a civilian face on an otherwise purely military U.S. presence. There are a number of good country candidates for establishing micro-posts: • Indonesia, a country with one quarter of the world’s Muslim population but where the U.S. has only one full- fledged consulate outside Jakarta (in Surabaya); • Brazil, where the consulate in Porto Alegre that cov- ered the entire south of the country was closed in the mid-1990s, and a presence in the dicey tri-border area has never been established; • India, whose three consulates are oriented primari- ly to travel and commercial issues; • The states of the former Soviet Union, none of which have consulates; • Yemen, which has only an embassy; • The Philippines, with only a consular agent outside Manila; and • China, where before the Second World War we had twice as many consulates as we do now, including Urumugi and Xiamen (Amoy). This list doesn’t take into account Africa, which Barnett considers the heart of the “gap” in the new inter- national environment. Such a paradigm shift, when taken with the open- ended missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, will require some fundamental changes in the nature of the Foreign Service. Certainly it will require personnel who are more F O C U S M A R C H 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 53 Such a paradigm shift, when taken with the open-ended missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, will require some fundamental changes.