The Foreign Service Journal, June 2017

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2017 37 State has ceded some turf to the military, but it’s not too late to regain it and rebalance the civilian-military equation in U.S. foreign affairs. Creeping Militarization of Foreign Policy or Creeping State Department Irrelevance? S ince the fall of the Berlin Wall we have seen a steady outpouring of books and articles lamenting the trend in Washington to see foreign policy through a military lens: Rosa Brooks’ How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything , Lorelei Kelly’s Unbalanced Security: The Divide between State and Defense, and Gordon Adams and Shoon Murray’s Mission Creep—The Militarization of U.S. Foreign Policy , among others. Why might one have this view? Is it that the Defense Depart- ment’s huge budget, personnel and other capabilities give it an advantage? Is it due to how the military is organized—with geographic combatant commands that have effective control over policy and activities across their areas of responsibility, BY LARRY BUT L ER Ambassador (ret.) Larry Butler served nearly 38 years in the Foreign Service in the Balkans, Scandinavia, South America and the Middle East. He was the deputy assistant secretary of State for Iraq during the 2007-2009 surge, the U.S. ambassador in Macedo- nia from 2002 to 2005 and acting chief of mission in the former Yugoslavia in 1996. An economic-coned officer, he found his call- ing in crisis prevention and management, which included a three-month Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe mission in Kosovo and a tour as principal deputy high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as three back-to-back tours as a foreign policy adviser with NATO, U.S. forces in Iraq and at the U.S. European Command in Germany. He also served as the latter’s civilian deputy to the commander. Since retiring from the Foreign Service he has worked in support of military training exercises, providing expertise on how to work with embassy country teams and international partners. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of the Department of State, the Department of Defense or the U.S. government. PERSPECTIVES ON DIPLOMACY AND DEFENSE whereas State’s regional bureaus are misaligned with military counterparts and assistant secretaries deal via turf-conscious bilateral ambassadors numbering up to 40 or more, and have little say over how USAID spends its money? Has Foggy Bottom lost relevance in the foreign affairs arena by emphasizing soft-power social agendas (e.g., the creation of special envoys for various religions, LGBTQ, the Holocaust, global A solely military response is not sufficient. We want to increasingly involve other elements of the U.S. govern- ment and the international community, recognizing that it is only through a combination of capabilities that we will achieve and sustain our strongest deterrence posture. —General Joseph Votel, Commander, U.S. Central Command, March 9, 2017