The Foreign Service Journal, December 2016

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2016 59 gies for each of those regions. A second principle we followed was this: You have to think you are a global power. That is one of the reasons why the For- eign Service is so important: so you have people of professional quality who cover the globe. That’s why, when I hear the idea that we are going to pivot to Asia or something like that, I say it does not sound right to me. We need a global diplomacy. We have to be there, everywhere. Of course, you shift your focus a little bit depending on where the action is. JEG: You have written that you very consciously set about finding time in your schedule to think about where you were going and what you needed to do. That seems to be one of the short- comings that we have had in Washington throughout the years. People usually do not do that. They let the urgent drive out the important. Is there any way you can encourage people to think a bit more instead of frenetically traveling around the world? GS: In the State Department you have a group of people whose job is to think: the Policy Planning staff. I always felt—and this goes way back to my time in other Cabinet positions, and for that matter in business—that you tend to be inundated with tac- tical problems. Stuff is happening all the time and you are deal- ing with it. So I developed the idea that at least twice a week—in prime time, not the end of the day when you are tired—I take, say, three-quarters of an hour or so and tell my secretary: If my wife calls or the president calls, put them through; otherwise, no calls. I tell myself not to look at my inbox; instead, I go sit in a comfortable chair with a pad and a pencil, take a deep breath, and ask myself: “What am I doing here? What are our strategic objectives and how are we doing?” Reflecting on that has helped me quite a lot, I think. A lot of this goes back to the process of governance, which has gotten way out of kilter because there is too much White House and National Security Council staff, and not enough consultation with Cabinet people. But there are other problems, too. These days, if you take the job of assistant secretary of State for something or other, you get presented with a stack of paper an inch thick that you need an accountant and a lawyer to help you fill out. Then the Senate takes its time before holding a hear- ing. And after all that, they may never vote on your nomination. At the end of the 113th Congress, there were 133 nominees who had been reported out favorably but not voted on, so they had to flop over to the next Congress. That is not the way you recruit A-players. JEG: I’d like to wind up with a couple of questions about how Secretaries of State relate to Congress. How do you see the relationship? What is the responsibility of the Secretary in terms of selling the president’s policies to Congress? And does that process work, or can it be improved? GS: Different people do it different ways, but you have to spend a lot of time with members of Congress. For one thing, they have good ideas. So if you listen to them, you might just learn something. As you remember, Jim, we had congressional observers come over to Geneva for our negotiations with the Soviet Union. We got the INF Treaty ratified as a result, some- thing many people thought was impossible. But we did it. We did not take Congress for granted. We had brought all the negotiating records back and stored them in a secure room. We had one of the negotiators there all the time to answer questions, and we not only gave formal testimony, but held a lot of informal meetings. There was a lot of opposition, but in the end the treaty was ratified 93 to 5. So our efforts to cultivate Capitol Hill paid off, and we learned from it. If you develop trust, you develop the ability to have frank conversations, and that helps. JEG: This reminds me that you have compared diplomacy to gardening: keeping down the weeds and cultivating relationships. If you plant a garden and go away for six months, what have you got when you come back? Weeds. Diplomacy is kind of like that. You go around and talk to people, you develop a relationship of trust and confidence, and then if something comes up, you have that base to work from.