The Foreign Service Journal, September 2018

32 SEPTEMBER 2018 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL a report by the Secretary of State’s Overseas Presence Advisory Panel, called for rapid action to improve training and professional development. Secretary of State Colin Powell (2001-2005), accustomed to the rigorous, systematic training provided to Army officers, was determined to create a “training float”—an excess of people over regular positions—of about 15 percent. His Diplomatic Readiness Initiative added some 2,000 employees to the Foreign Service between 2000 and 2004 for that purpose. And training, measured by student hours, did increase by about 25 percent. After 2004, however, the need for training gave way again, this time to staffing demands in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2008, a study by the Stimson Center and the American Academy of Diplomacy (an association of former career and non-career ambassadors and senior officials) found that the Foreign Service lacks “to a suf- ficient degree” such skills as “foreign language fluency; advanced area knowledge; leadership and management ability; negotiating and pre-crisis conflict mediation/resolution skills; public diplo- macy; foreign assistance; post-conflict/stabilization; job-specific functional expertise; strategic planning; program development, implementation and evaluation; and budgeting.”These shortfalls, the study found, “are largely a result of inadequate past opportuni- ties for training, especially career-long professional education.” Congress approved two more increases in the State Depart- ment’s Civil and Foreign Service workforce, a modest increase in 2008 and a surge from 2009 to 2013, the centerpiece of the Diplo- macy 3.0 initiative of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (2009- 2013). By 2015, State’s Foreign Service had grown by 40 percent, and its Civil Service by 45 percent, over 2002 levels. A third of the Foreign Service had fewer than five years’ experience. The department’s second QDDR, released in 2015, promised to invest in training, including “long-term training that develops expertise and fresh perspectives.” The department had on hand a blueprint for deep reform of professional development in a 2012 paper by AAD and the Stimson Center, “Forging a 21st-Century Diplomatic Service for the United States through Professional Education and Training.” Once again, the moment seemed righ t for establishment of a sustainable training float and the inte- gration of training and education into a Foreign Service career. Quick action might have led to progress, but once again the department let the moment pass unseized. Then a wildly hostile Trump administration slammed the window of opportunity shut. As reported in the December 2017 Foreign Service Journal , Ambassador Nancy McEldowney told The New York Times that in the early months of 2017, when she was still director of FSI, “My budget was cut. … I could not hire anyone, even when I had vacant positions. I could not transfer people within my organization or from elsewhere inside the State Depart- ment. …There was a political appointee sent out …who reviewed our training materials and objected when there was reference to American foreign policy under the Obama administration.” Clearly, FSI was not to be “elevated to the level of the war col- leges.” That 50-year old goal remains out of reach, and receding. Change Is Hard Why is change so difficult? Donald Warwick, a Harvard sociologist, published the book A Theory of Public Bureaucracy: Politics, Personality and Organization in the State Department in 1975. Time has only confirmed his findings. “Executive agencies,” Warwick wrote, “show the influence of organized interests, personal whims, political brokerage and sheer bureaucratic inertia.” State Department employees who resisted a Foreign Service-Civil Service merger, or officials in other agencies who resist State’s efforts to coordinate them, are highly intelligent people who strive to protect their positions and do their jobs to the very best of their abilities. As Warwick writes, they have “much the same motivation for security and self- esteem as the rest of the population.” In other words, do not blame the bureaucrats: they are people too. Their behavior is predictable and rational. It needs to be taken into account. Proposals for change based solely on considerations of organizational efficiency will have little effect, and managers who act on such proposals will likely fail. Bureaucratic behavior cannot explain 70 years of shortfall in training and professional development, however. The fault here lies with the department’s leadership, which always seems to find assignments other than training more important for its work- force. Perhaps the political leadership of the department, eager for accomplishment before the end of its term, has less interest in improving the long-range strength of the career services than in addressing the issues of the moment. The department has rarely had leaders willing to sacrifice short-term opportunities for ben- efits that will show up only in some future administration. History may be depressing, but it is also instructive. Change is difficult, but possible. Reforms must be well thought out and sup- ported by evidence. They must attend to the desire of members of the Foreign and Civil Services to carry out their missions, excel at their work and secure their futures. And they must be driven by a leadership that values the department as an institution, with a past and a future as long as the republic’s. Under those conditions, the report of the next blue-ribbon commission or departmental task force will find its audience and lead to action. n