The Foreign Service Journal, November 2011

N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 23 ance in these two basic areas over the last two years. It then concludes with a few personal comments on developments over the past few months. Resources for Staffing and Training Between the end of the Cold War 20 years ago and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, foreign affairs agencies lost roughly 30 percent of their human and financial resources —even as they staffed 23 new embassies created by the collapse of the Soviet and Yugoslav empires. Similarly, in the decade following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America, the State Department and USAID faced an unprecedented expan- sion in the demands placed upon them. Hundreds, then thousands of additional diplomats and development pro- fessionals were urgently needed to staff posts in Iraq and Afghanistan, promote peace and stability in other vital re- gions, fight against terrorism and other transnational threats, manage diplomatic relations and promote a host of American interests all over the world. An increase of 1,069 State positions during the tenure of Secretary of State Colin Powell (2001-2005) was more than absorbed by the civilian surges in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sec. Rice’s first three years (2005-2007) were characterized by inaction on staffing, leaving the five for- eign affairs agencies with huge deficits in the human re- sources needed to do what was asked of them in the post-9/11 landscape. In her final year, Sec. Rice did propose a robust budget package for Fiscal Year 2009 seeking about 1,000 new po- sitions for State and 500 for USAID. Though she won ap- proval from the Office of Management and Budget for these increases, given that the FY 2009 request was a “lame duck” budget for the Bush administration it did not appear at the time that the proposal would prosper on Capitol Hill. Consequently, in October 2008, the American Academy of Diplomacy, supported by the Stimson Center, produced a landmark “bottom-up” analysis of resources needed to ac- complish foreign affairs missions. The “Foreign Affairs Budget for the Future” (FAB) called for 4,735 additional positions over 2008 levels — 3,485 new positions at the State Department and 1,250 positions for USAID. These numbers included a training complement of 15 percent of core staffing to permit essential professional education and interagency developmental assignments. The FAB report’s recommendations were endorsed by eight former Secretaries of State. In a bipartisan statement, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger, Warren Christopher, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice wrote, in part: “Avoid- ing one war or defusing one major crisis would save many times [the cost of the staffing] increase. Not providing re- sources for civilians to carry their share of the load will in- crease the strains on our already badly overstretched military, which has been asked repeatedly to divert per- sonnel to deal with issues from nation-building to agricul- tural development.” In the fall of 2008, the Academy lobbied for the FAB recommendations for increased personnel with the au- thorizers and appropriators in both houses of Congress and with both presidential campaigns. The reception was very positive. Later that fall, the Academy was contacted by a senior international affairs adviser to then-Senator Barack Obama for a briefing on the FAB. This individual informed the Academy representatives that the views of the Obama campaign regarding foreign affairs staffing paralleled the recommendations laid out in that document. We re- sponded that the FACwould strongly support any requests to Congress for added resources for the foreign affairs agencies. Furthermore, we suggested to our interlocutor that the incoming Obama administration should support Sec. Rice’s robust FY 2009 budget request on a bipartisan basis, to get a “running start” on the drive for additional re- sources. This effort succeeded, and the FY 2009 appro- priations bill added 992 new Foreign Service positions at State and 300 at USAID. Diplomacy 3.0 Sec. Clinton quickly pledged to employ a “smart power” strategy harnessing the tools of diplomacy and development assistance and seeking the human and financial resources needed to do that. She named this approach “Diplomacy 3.0: Diplomacy, Development and Defense.” Using 2008 as the baseline, Secretary Clinton’s strategy sought a 25- percent increase in Foreign Service staffing at State by FY 2013 (an increase of 2,997 positions) and a doubling of USAID staffing by FY 2012 (an increase of 1,200 positions) —both close to the numbers called for in the 2008 FAB re- port. The Obama administration submitted a FY 2010 budget request that added 764 Foreign Service positions at State and 350 positions at USAID. C OVER S TORY