The Foreign Service Journal, December 2008

both the civilian and military sides, the economic logic strongly suggests focusing on the latter. Each addi- tional $100 million in the defense budget produces a smaller incremen- tal contribution to national security than the equivalent amount invested in diplomacy or development. After decades of nearly flat bud- gets, increased effectiveness cannot be achieved solely by tinkering with the agencies and their organizational charts. We need to spend more on diplomacy. To do so will require strong leadership from the administration and Congress, especially as the impact of the current financial crisis becomes clearer. Going forward, political leaders must resist the temptation to slash funding for diplomacy and development as a way to find savings: the money spent on building civilian capacity is a tiny fraction of the overall budget and one of the only investments we make to prevent crises and their attendant costs. Human resources are uniquely important: the number of people “on the case” with the right skill sets determines how effectively the U.S. government can manage relations with the rest of the world. Crisis Response … and Its Limits So far, the focus of reform has fallen disproportionate- ly on crisis response. One remedy was the recent cre- ation of a Civilian Reserve Corps, based in the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruc- tion and Stabilization. This corps will have members from various federal agencies with key skills for post-con- flict reconstruction who can be sent at a moment’s notice wherever needed. These experts would be used as “surge capacity” to help deal with the emergency needs of (hopefully temporarily) destabilized regions. The focus on crisis response is an understandable F O C U S D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 31 The focus of reform has fallen disproportionately on crisis response.