The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2020 13 LETTERS-PLUS IN RESPONSE TO MAY SPEAKING OUT, “THE DIPLOMAT AND THE STATE” I agree wholeheartedly with many of Christoper W. Smith’s suggestions for improving the profession of diplo- macy, including acquiring expertise, expanding training and research, and creating standardized doctrine. For such changes to be more than superficial, however, his comparison with the military profession should be pushed further to highlight two fundamental dif- ferences between the State and Defense systems: the concentration of agency and control over the mission. Only by understanding the root structural challenges within State will we be able to make changes with a real, long-term impact. Agency and Control First, at the most basic level, State and Defense have an inverse concentration of agency. In military affairs, actual events are carried out by soldiers on the ground, who are empowered to act within the rules of engagement. When U.S. troops come under attack, they don’t draft, clear and submit an action memo back to Washing- ton for approval before firing back. Many critical decisions are made in Washington, of course, but their success or failure depends entirely on those at the front lines. The entire Defense structure is essentially oriented toward supporting the field. Thus, Samuel Huntington’s defi- nition of the military profession as the “management of violence” will resonate with even the rawest recruit. Not so with the State Department. Here, Mr. Smith’s definition of the diplo- matic profession as “the management of The Management of Power or generalizing them into vague plati- tudes beyond all hope of stirring an international audience. We need more FSOs empowered to practice diplomacy, more of the time. Second, State’s mission is to manage national power to advance U.S. interests abroad—yet most national power is out- side its control. Military force, sanctions, tariffs, market access and so on all belong to other agencies and departments. Even the coordination of these levers has been reassigned to the National Security Council, leaving State with foreign aid, visas, name-and-shame reporting and good old-fashioned persuasion. State can often feel adrift, desiring that “premier role in U.S. foreign policy” yet eating a much smaller slice of the pie. To truly take the lead in U.S. foreign policy— i.e., to influence the levers of national power outside its direct control—State must convince the rest of the U.S. govern- ment to listen. Our diplomatic influence abroad depends on the success of our diplomacy at home. Critical Recommendations To sum up, most American diplomats do not actively engage in diplomacy defined as “the management of power,” but instead support the few who do. Of these principals, many come from out- side the State Department, and even they BY JAREK BUSS power” has no relationship to the imme- diate lived existence of an A-100 gradu- ate, and will not for, perhaps, 15 years or more. The actual art of diplomacy— managing national power to advance U.S. interests abroad—is practiced by only a select few, many of whom are political appointees from outside the diplomatic corps. The rest of the department exists, more or less, to support these principals, whether they be a chief of mission or a deputy assistant secretary. Ironically, State is oriented inward. True, the Bureau of Consular Affairs could be the happy exception, where “boots on the ground” do the work of issuing visas, visiting prisoners or putting American citizens on planes, all with support fromWashington. But this out- lier only accentuates the fact that most of those we call “diplomats” are something more complex: a collection of facilities managers, reporters, visa adjudicators and speechwriters. Each provides essen- tial support to the department’s mis- sion. But how is each managing national power? Often, the answer is unclear or, at best, tangential. This reverse dynamic—State has few agents but massive support staff, while Defense’s power is relatively more dif- fuse—is all the more interesting given that Defense spends most of its time and effort in preparation for operations. State, in contrast, engages in global diplomatic operations every day, around the clock. State is always in action, yet our cur- rent culture sometimes makes us hesitant to do anything without 10 layers of Wash- ington approval, slowing our responses