The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2003

lift themselves out of the poverty that breeds the foot soldiers of extremism. We must work with friends to find ways to rehabilitate the failed states that harbor terrorists. Most funda- mentally, we need to change the polit- ical and economic environment so that al-Qaida’s message no longer strikes a favorable chord in the Muslim world. All this will require a sustained diplomatic commitment over many years. Five Campaigns To achieve victory in the war on terrorism, we must dedicate ourselves to five foreign policy campaigns. The first campaign is boosting investments in our diplomats and in their security, increasing our foreign assistance and strengthening our diplomatic capabil- ities. It’s time to stop nickel-and-dim- ing our diplomatic corps, because this spending is cost-effective in the war on terror. If we can prevent the bombing of an embassy, secure more allied assistance for expensive peace- keeping operations, or keep more ter- rorists from reaching our shores, the extra funding will have paid for itself many times over. The second campaign is to expand and perfect our non-proliferation activities. I believe that we can build on the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which is dedicated to safeguarding and elimi- nating nuclear, biological, and chemi- cal weapons in the former Soviet Union. The program, which is essen- tial for keeping these weapons out of terrorist hands, currently is limited to Russia and the former Soviet states. We must apply its successful methods to additional countries, eliminate the red tape that hampers emergency non-proliferation missions, and encourage fulfillment of the $10 bil- lion in pledges toward weapons dis- mantlement programs that we have received from our G-8 partners. Third, we need to expand trade by eliminating political and economic restrictions and pushing ahead with trade agreements. Free trade is nec- essary to create the international transparency and economic growth that will dampen terrorist recruitment and political resentment. Fourth, we must repair our frayed alliances and establish new ones. We simply cannot win the terrorism war alone, any more than we can win the drug war, or the war against AIDS and other deadly diseases. The final campaign involves addressing underdevelopment along a broad front, with special attention to building democracy, assuring security and diversity of energy supplies, and protecting the environment. These are all necessary to help reverse anti- American attitudes and stop the cre- ation of new terrorist cells. Ensuring Adequate Funding The responsibility for waging these campaigns falls heavily on the State Department. Yet diplomatic funding receives only about seven cents for every defense dollar in the U.S. bud- get. Annual foreign policy funding remains, in real terms, 32 percent below its peak in 1985. In May, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously passed a State Department author- ization bill and reported it to the entire Senate. The committee increased funding for the State Department above the amount requested by the Bush administration. This increase included two important additions that directly affect diplomats on the job: • $312 million for embassy con- struction, which will enable the department to break ground on an additional three embassy compounds next year. Despite the stepped-up spending on security during the past four years, the GAO says that more than 200 posts still don’t meet all the basic security criteria, and at current rates it will take more than 20 years to finish the planned replacement pro- gram. We should cut that time in half. Our diplomats are truly on the front lines of the war on terrorism and we must give them the necessary protec- tion. • $8 million to increase the caps on hardship and danger pay for State Department employees. This will enable the department to boost the danger pay differential at 10 posts from 25 percent to 35 percent, and to raise the hardship differential at 21 posts from 25 percent to 30-35 per- cent. Staffing shortfalls are occurring at many of our most important mis- sions — some 60 percent of State’s overseas workforce is in hardship posts, where the vacancy rate aver- ages 12.6 percent, versus “only” 8.4 percent at non-hardship posts. Report after report has shown that despite the dedication of our envoys overseas, staffing problems are com- promising diplomatic readiness and our ability to meet foreign policy objectives. Moreover, to bolster the non-mili- tary side of the war on terrorism, we added $30 million to the president’s request for outreach to the Islamic world, including public diplomacy efforts such as Arab-language TV and Fulbright exchanges. In all, we added approximately $400 million, or about 4 percent, to the administration's original budget request. That’s still not enough, in my view, and we have to help it survive the leg- islative meat-grinder. But it’s a start, one I want to build on. The Foreign Relations Committee will continue with hearings to review a host of State Department programs that have suf- fered from congressional neglect in S P E A K I N G O U T 14 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 3