The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2003

L ooking back to the time just after the Soviet Union broke up, most observers now realize that it was naive to think that the U.S. government could open diplomatic missions in 15 newly-created coun- tries without a budget increase. But it was surely folly to try to manage that expansion, plus all the turmoil in the rest of the world in that decade, while cutting State Department budgets. Despite protests from some of us, that’s exactly what Congress and the administration advocated in the mid- 1990s, when spending on internation- al affairs in real terms was cut year after year. Tragically, it took the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania to reverse this short-sighted trend, but the damage was done. Hiring had stopped, generalists and specialists headed for the exits, and a personnel gap opened that will persist for years. As the Bush administration came into office in 2001, “the dilapi- dated state of America’s foreign policy apparatus [was] a national security cri- sis,” according to a Council on Foreign Relations study at the time. To his credit, Secretary of State Colin Powell was moving to repair that apparatus even before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But now that we are on a war footing against terrorism, it is more urgent than ever to beef up our diplomatic capabilities just as we are beefing up our military and our homeland defense forces. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which I chair, has dedicated a significant portion of its efforts during 2003 to this goal. In April, during consideration of the FY 2004 budget resolution, I worked with other senators to restore a $1.15 billion cut by the Senate Budget Committee in the president’s request for the 150 Account, which funds the State Department and international affairs programs. I offered an amendment on the Senate floor to fully fund President Bush’s international affairs budget. In this era of deficits, plenty of other budget accounts were cut, and their supporters were likewise trying to restore funding. My amendment was among the few that succeeded. The Senate put back the $1.15 billion, and the full Congress approved that budget, a show of confidence in Secretary Powell and a sign that Congress is paying more attention to foreign policy. We can no longer afford to con- duct diplomacy on a shoestring. To win the war on terrorism, we must assign our diplomatic assets the same strategic importance we give our mil- itary assets. I use the phrase “win the war on terrorism” deliberately. Few doubted that our troops could defeat the Iraqi army, and they did so con- vincingly. That was an important bat- tlefield conquest, but it is only a mid- dle chapter in the story. We are already faced there with important questions about whether we can limit anti-American reactions in Iraq and in the region. Can we enlist help from our friends and allies in reconstruct- ing Iraq? Can we work with the United Nations and with NATO to quickly bring security and stability there, and then success in political reorganization? Can we deal with the other sources of tension in the Middle East? We can only claim a complete vic- tory in Iraq if we can achieve those goals, and that success can’t be achieved solely with military forces and smart weapons, no matter how superbly trained and designed. Victory requires a robust and engaged foreign policy, one that is creative and capable of leveraging America’s eco- nomic and political strength. Similarly, winning the larger war on global terrorism will require more than military force. We will need to continue rallying all countries against al-Qaida, gaining cooperation from local law enforcement agencies on every continent to hunt down and arrest terrorist cells wherever they are. We must help Islamic countries Strengthen Diplomacy for the War on Terror B Y S EN . R ICHARD G. L UGAR J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 13 S PEAKING O UT It’s time to stop nickel-and-diming our diplomatic corps, because this spending is cost-effective in the war on terror.