The Foreign Service Journal, March 2007

M A R C H 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 5 With the return of power- sharing to Washington as the Democrats exert control in Congress, the national media focused in February on the administration’s defense of its Fiscal Year 2008 budget re- quest presented early in the month. While the staggering cost of the war in Iraq attracted much attention, few noticed the short shrift given to diplomacy in the budget request. After months of soothing assurances about greater emphasis on diplomacy, one might have expected more. But the request for the State Department was amazingly modest. When inflation is reckoned in, State’s budget will essen- tially be flat for the third year in a row. Although there are some important sil- ver linings, with meaningful increases for security upgrades, the “secure bor- ders” elements of consular work, and additional IT infrastructure, core diplo- matic programs continue to be treated as anything but genuine priorities. The department does ask for 254 new posi- tions, yet these barely exceed the 240 it requested but did not receive in FY 06 and 07. It is also important to keep in mind that these are requested funding levels. Congress will likely grant con- siderably less. At USAID, things are even worse. Much worse. Right there in the widely distributed budget “summary and high- lights” document, in striking jux- taposition to a reference to the need for changes so the agency can “maxi- mize its ability to achieve” its highest goal, is the news that the requested operating ex- pense level “reflects a 15-per- cent cut” (sic) from two years ago. That means a lot fewer people. But hey, no problem, because there will be less work to do. In account after account the admin- istration makes huge reductions in its foreign assistance requests. For exam- ple, the key development assistance account, long the backbone of our efforts to promote sustainable long- term economic growth, got chopped by 31 percent from the actual appropriat- ed level of two years ago. At the macro level, the FY 08 budget request avoids looking disastrously lowmainly because it contains requests for major increases in two areas: to $3 billion for the Millennium Challenge Corporation and $4.15 billion for global HIV/AIDS prevention/treatment — and because it includes $4.5 billion in ForeignMilitary Financing in our aid totals. Given that domestic electoral politics has led both political parties to try to improve their budget discipline credentials, Congress can be expected to grant far less than asked for in both accounts — particu- larly for the MCC, where the political commitment is noticeably declining. After a couple of years of scrimping, another year of leanness (if not actual cuts) will exacerbate our already declin- ing ability to do what we need to do around the world. That is easily ratio- nalized by our political leaders, though no one frames the issue in terms of the shortsightedness of cutting investments in prevention but continuing to provide significant real increases for defense and homeland security. The other striking element of the budget request is its lack of the key, still missing ingredient necessary for the short-term success and long-term insti- tutionalization of Secretary Rice’s “transformational diplomacy” initiative. While virtually everything in the request’s narrative is cloaked in a TD justification, and the initiative serves as a convenient though ill-defined excuse to gut many foreign assistance accounts, only parts of it are being implemented. Well advanced is the “global repositioning” exercise, in which positions are being shifted from developed to key developing countries. The request also contains the first ten- tative steps in establishing the initial “American Presence Posts” in impor- tant non-capital cities. Singularly lacking, however, is a request for funded programs that will allow the repositioned diplomats to actually engage their host populations and promote democratic change, eco- nomic reform and growth, and pursue the other values-based agendas that the Secretary enumerated in her seminal speech on transformational diplomacy 13 months ago. If she doesn’t want more reporting, then what are the new people in these 300 repositioned posi- tions to do without such programs? The department’s failure to provide the tools necessary to do their jobs raises fundamental questions, despite the ample rhetoric, about how serious it is about implementing the core of the transformational diplomacy vision. P RESIDENT ’ S V IEWS 2008 Budget Aspirations: Diplomacy Jilted Yet Again B Y J. A NTHONY H OLMES J. Anthony Holmes is the president of the American Foreign Service Association.