The Foreign Service Journal, May 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2018 21 inward and focuses on the tactical and transactional, oblivious to opportunity for the transformational. Central to this effort, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney started the budget process by proposing to slash the State Department’s Fiscal Year 2018 budget by 31 percent. Then, in February 2018, he tabled State’s FY2019 budget with a new 23 percent cut from the FY2017 enacted levels. Although Congress signaled—and acted on—its opposition to the administration’s proposed budget for State, that posture alone will not displace a national security policy that sidelines diplo- macy. America today faces an international environment that is volatile, dangerous and complex. Its adversaries are aggressive and capable; nonstate actors are numerous and lethal; regional and transregional threats are growing more sinister; and ideologi- cal movements are increasingly pernicious and inimical to demo- cratic interests. A strong, capable State Department would bolster other instruments of national power and offer a broader spectrum in which to operate. Trump’s plan to boost defense spending while slashing State’s diplomatic capacity (resources and people through a 23 percent cut in the overall budget, with a 26 percent reduction in opera- tional funds) faces a problem. However much it is necessary, defense spending will take years to increase readiness (e.g., by producing more planes, ships and missiles). Moreover, it is ill- suited for pressing current challenges. Russian cyber-meddling, refugee flows, humanitarian crises, disease outbreaks, lagging exports and invest- ments, and trade disputes do not easily lend themselves to military solutions. Rather, they require active, preventative and long-term, front-line diplomatic engagement. Targeting Staff When Rex Tillerson arrived at State, employees welcomed him, hopeful his private-sector experience would help strengthen the department. These hopes were off the mark. Tillerson had a rocky tenure; he did not establish a close work- ing relationship with Trump, or with his 535-member board of directors (aka Con- gress), or with domestic constituencies and stakeholders. Unable to get his personnel choices past the White House, he had a very spare bench of confirmed under secretaries and assistant secretaries. And he appeared to have little trust in or time for the career professionals, disposing of many gracelessly. His chief of staff and deputy chief of staff were national security novices, more adept at micromanaging than leadership. Morale plunged, and the department was seemingly adrift, as amply chronicled in many academic, think-tank and media analyses. Secretary Tillerson initially resisted but then acquiesced in the 31 percent cut submitted by OMB for the FY18 budget. Though that budget went nowhere on the Hill, he demanded commen- surate workforce reductions, only grudgingly scaling them back even though State’s total staff numbers would barely amount to a rounding error at the federal level. State accounts for just 1 percent of executive branch civilian employees and only 1 percent of the federal budget (see chart on p. 20). The federal government spends nearly as much on Lockheed Martin as on State, according to a Feb. 16 Washington Post analysis. Tillerson also extended the president’s temporary hiring restrictions indefinitely and applied them even to eligible family members, disrupting operations at overseas posts and under- mining productivity and morale. He insisted his staff review all exemptions, prompting a blizzard of paperwork that elevated routine tasks to Secretarial level. Further, he pushed a “Redesign” (later rebranded “The Impact Initiative,” or TII) intended to reshape the State Department, hir- ing two outside consultancies to facilitate an ostensibly employee-