The Foreign Service Journal, April 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL 2018 15 TALKING POINTS The Ongoing Push to Slash State’s Budget … and the Pushback W ith its FY 2019 budget proposal, the administration is once again trying to push through large cuts of 30 percent to the State Department and USAID. No clear justification, or any justification, has been given for such drastic cuts. And once again, there are members of Congress and military leaders speak- ing out against the cuts and in support of strong budgets for diplomacy and development. On Feb. 11, a group of 151 retired three- and four-star officers from across all branches of the military sent a letter to congressional leaders urging that the y fight to fund the State Department. “As you and your colleagues look ahead to the federal budget for Fiscal Year 2019, the world has not grown any safer since many of us wrote a similar letter to you last year,” they note in this year’s letter. “Today’s crises do not have military solutions alone,” the letter says, “yet America’s essential civilian national security agencies—the State Department, USAID, Millennium Challenge Corpora- tion, Peace Corps and other development agencies—faced a significant cut last year. Many senior leadership positions remain unfilled, undercutting America’s global influence. “We call on you to ensure our nation also has the civilian resources necessary to protect our national security, compete against our adversaries, and create oppor- tunities around the world.”The letter was signed by, among others, former chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Special Operations. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, released a statement on Feb. 12 calling the proposed cuts “a gift t o countries like Russia and China who are already filling the void left by America’s diminishing role in the world.” Fortunately, he continued, “it is Con- gress—not the president—that has power of the purse, and I urge my colleagues to join me in ensuring that like last year, these draconian cuts are dead on arrival to Capitol Hill.” In a Feb. 23 article in The Hill , Ambas- sador (ret.) Ronald Neumann and Senior FSO (ret.) Alexander Karagiannis urged Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to “provide real answers.”The authors dispute State’s claim that the Foreign Service is not shrinking under Tillerson’s tenure. They point out that the department’s employment numbers include “low- level visa examiners” who, by regulation, cannot join the regular Foreign Service. “This is like saying that the Army has fired generals and replaced the numbers with privates, so the Army is still the same,” say Neumann and Karagiannis. The battle over funding appears poised to drag on for some time. Diplomats at Rex and I have been talking about this [his departure] for a long time. We got along actually quite well. But we disagreed on things. When you look at the Iran deal, I think it’s terrible. I guess he—it was O.K. I wanted to either break it or do something. And he felt a little bit differently. So we were not really thinking the same. With Mike, Mike Pompeo, we have a very similar thought process. I think it’s going to go very well. Rex is a very good man. I like Rex a lot. I really appreciate his commitment and his service. —President Donald Trump, speaking to the press onMarch 13 following his tweet announc- ing that Secretary of State Rex Tillersonwould be replaced by CIADirector Mike Pompeo. Contemporary Quote A mericans who work in international organizations are subject to a rather specialized affliction. They have to get used to reading every week or two that their organization is dead. I noticed this in the years I spent working on the United Nations; and when I arrived in Paris two years ago, I found the death of NATO was also being widely and prematurely reported. …The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been around long enough so that everybody thinks he knows about it. But the trouble is, what is known seems often to be badly out of date. .…All in all, it’s an exhilarating time for an American to be working in Europe, and in the North Atlantic Alliance. For NATO has not only moved, bag and baggage, fromParis to Brussels; NATO has also moved from peacekeeping to peacemaking, from the management of a cold war to the management of a continuous peace. —Ambassador Harlan Cleveland, “The Resurrection of NATO, ” April 1968 FSJ . 50 Years Ago The Resurrection of NATO