The Foreign Service Journal, April 2006

A P R I L 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 15 A s presently organized, the State Department’s adminis- trative support system gener- ally works well. But there is one major exception: it is ill-suited to the opening of new embassies. In some ways, that weakness is an understandable aspect of the depart- ment’s emphasis on managing estab- lished overseas missions. To make the wheels turn efficiently (most of the time, anyway) management offi- cers and their staffs deal routinely with myriad program and administra- tive demands from Washington: requests for detailed information from the regional bureaus, budgeting and financial reports for the Bureau of Resource Management, overseas school grants and reports, facility and housing requests/waivers for the Overseas Building Operations Bur- eau, and classification and compensa- tion requirements for locally en- gaged staff. An extensive network of management and program offices in Washington ably backs up post man- agement sections in carrying out those duties. When it comes to opening new diplomatic missions, however, the time has come for the department to revamp its approach. Consider the following examples of how the cur- rent system operates, drawn from my own experience as a manage- ment officer. Luanda: A Decade Wasted The United States maintained a consulate general in Luanda during the Portuguese colonial era in Angola, closing it in 1975 with the coming to power of the communist regime of Agostinho Neto. The fall of the Soviet Union and other communist govern- ments in Eastern Europe between 1989 and 1991 soon brought the winds of change to Africa, as well. In 1990 the United Nations sent a repre- sentative to Luanda to prepare the way for the country’s first free elec- tions, and Washington opened a liai- son office there the next year. In many ways, USLOLuanda was a success story, paving the way for the establishment of a full-fledged emb- assy in 1993. But as the post’s admin- istrative officer from September 1992 to August 1994, I can attest to the fact that State was ill-prepared for the task of setting up the mission. We did not have the tools to do our jobs efficient- ly. The result was poor morale and designation of Luanda as a “hard-to- fill” post. I remember Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jeff Davidow, in one of my pre-assign- ment briefings, stating that the plan was to open a “medium-size” embassy in Luanda with a staff of 40-50 Americans from State and other agen- cies. The rejection of national election results by our client at the time, Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA rebel group, result- ed in civil war, putting those plans on hold. Halloween 1992 is a memo- rable date for those of us serving in Luanda then, marking the start of armed hostilities lasting nearly three years. The government of Angola cleared Luanda of rebels by early 1993, and Washington established full diplomat- ic relations in April of that year. How- ever, we were nowhere near ready to support “normal” embassy operations. In fact, regular State cable communi- cations were not established until 1995, and e-mail was not available until the late 1990s. A major disconnect came in the area of real property. At Washington’s direction, our mission attempted to acquire a site for a chancery, but land tenure in Angola was so uncertain that efforts to accomplish a secure pur- Opening Embassies: A New Approach Needed B Y J OSEPH S CHREIBER S PEAKING O UT Setting up New Embassy Teams to open and develop new diplomatic missions would cut across bureaucratic lines and get the job done efficiently.