Creeping Irrelevance at Foggy Bottom

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Creeping Irrelevance at Foggy BottomAuthor(s): Robert PringleSource: Foreign Policy, No. 29 (Winter, 1977-1978), pp. 128-139Published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLCStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1148535 .

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CREEPING IRRELEVANCE AT FOGGY BOTTOM

by Robert Pringle

An official British study group recently recommended abolishing Her Majesty's diplomatic service. The Central Policy Review Staff, headed by Sir Kenneth Berrill, argued that in today's increasingly technical world, significant business between nations can best be conducted by skilled home-based specialists from regular government depart- ments. As global interdependence increases, the border between "foreign" and "domestic" issues is vanishing. Jet aircraft and the communications revolution have made it possible for technocrats to deal directly with each other on such complex issues as international trade, nuclear energy, and law of the sea. There is, so the report implied, no more need for the old-fashioned generalist diplomat, trained (or born) to understand and negotiate with foreigners, but rarely the possessor of any single technical skill.

The 442-page report has been hotly criticized in Britain as extreme to the point of absurdity and its relevance to other countries (particularly to superpowers like the United States) is debatable. The British, beset by endemic economic crisis, are still struggling to shed an apparatus conceived to run an empire that no longer exists. Being human, Her Majesty's diplomats have ably resisted the inevitable, maintaining to this day such palpably overblown establishments as a 570-man embassy in Washington. Ex- cess, it may be argued, in this case prompted overreaction. Nevertheless, foreign ministries around the world shuddered at the implica- tions of the report. Many were created in

ROBERT PRINGLE, on leave from the Foreign Service, is a Rockefeller Foundation fellow at the Carnegie Endowment.

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the image of Britannic precedent and have been imitating it ever since.

Overdrawn as it may be, the report sug- gests serious issues which also underlie the malaise now afflicting the U.S. foreign affairs agencies. The problem is most acute among the 3,500 Foreign Service officers- the American equivalent of Britain's diplomatic service-who work for the Depart- ment of State.

A Bureaucratic Midget

The State Department has never had it easy, for reasons well known. These include chronic bad relations with Congress, the traumatic scars left by the McCarthy era, which bred a tradition of timidity, and a host of image problems created by the striped-pants diplomatic cliche. State has produced its share of martyrs-John Stew- art Service and the others who told it like it was about China and were crucified for their pains-but very few popular heroes. Most serious, State lacks bureaucratic mus- cle. Although Secretary of State Cyrus Vance is most senior of cabinet members, and is charged (in theory) with responsibility for the coordination of all foreign policy activities, he presides over a bureaucratic midget. State is the smallest cabinet-level agency in town with a budget of only $1.06 billion in Fiscal Year 1976, compared to $128 billion for Health, Education, and Welfare, $90 billion for Defense, or an estimated $8 to $10 billion for the "intelligence community" including the Central Intelligence Agency.

These traditional problems have been joined by a host of new ones. Most obvious is an appalling personnel logjam. Tradi- tionally, State was able to attract the best young college graduates through a highly competitive annual examination. But for a variety of reasons, the appeal of a Foreign Service career is no longer what it once was. Bright graduates not already alienated by Vietnam and CIA antics are appalled by slow promotions and shrinking job oppor-

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tunities at State, except in such unglamorous specialities as consular work-issuing visas and protecting Americans abroad-and embassy administration. Moreover, those in- terested in significant, fast-moving careers abroad now have many alternatives, thanks largely to the growth of multinational business. American banks alone now employ more officers in their international divisions than the entire U.S. Foreign Service.

Part of the problem is simple attrition. Thanks to progressive post-Vietnam disin- volvement in Indochina and repeated econ- omy moves, the U.S. diplomatic service has shrunk from more than 3,700 officers 10 years ago to approximately 3,500 today. Meanwhile, however, recruitment and promotion have continued. The result is an acute oversupply of middle- and senior-level officers. Last summer, more than 60 (or nearly 10 per cent) of the diplomats in the two highest grade levels were walking the corridors in Washington, assigned to make- work details of various kinds. The problem is particularly embarrassing because, thanks to generous recent federal pay raises, they are making up to $47,500 each. "It is a mir- acle that this thing hasn't generated a major scandal," one corridor-walker observed.

"... Foreign Service promotion panels still tend to penalize those who are rash enough to seek experience outside the admittedly stagnant mainstream, ... ."

Much of this talent might be employable elsewhere in the government. Unfortunate- ly, the career Foreign Service, which under present practice administers its own personnel system, has not moved nearly fast or far enough to develop regular interchanges with academia, other agencies, or private business. Exhortations to the contrary notwithstand- ing, Foreign Service promotion panels still tend to penalize those who are rash enough to seek experience outside the admittedly

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stagnant mainstream-State Department or embassy assignment. Training activities, which might soak up excess personnel and simultaneously improve quality, are simi- larly underdeveloped. Foreign Service officers spend an average of only 6 per cent of their time in middle- or upper-level career train-

ing, compared to 11 per cent for an average military officer.

The situation will certainly get worse in the months ahead, for at least two reasons. Until recently, all Foreign Service officers were subject to mandatory retirement at age 60, 10 years earlier than the norm for other civilian government agencies. A recent federal court decision in a case brought by a retired diplomat ruled this provision dis- criminatory and opened the way for other

forcibly retired officers under 70 to apply for reinstatement. Simultaneously, the De-

partment of State is under heavy pressure to recruit more minority members by "lateral entry," bypassing the traditional com- bination of written and oral examinations.

No one has charged State with discrim- ination. Unfortunately, a Foreign Service career is simply not very attractive to most talented young blacks who are much in de- mand and can certainly make more money elsewhere. But whatever the cause, the fact remains that affirmative action programs are now threatening to force-feed a large dose of blacks, hispanic Americans, and women into State's already clogged personnel system.

Traditionally, the Foreign Service was a

system apart, nourished by a sense of elit- ism. Foreign Service people looked forward to spending most of their lives abroad and

regarded Washington as purgatory. They loved the perquisites of overseas living and willingly accepted hardships ranging from dysentery to bossy ambassadors' wives. "Worldwide availability," which means that you must move cheerfully wherever and whenever the department so ordains, has been one of the most rigid tenets of the system. But several new factors are rending the fabric of this once comfortable subculture.

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Most significant is the problem of the work- ing wife. More young diplomats than ever before are married to women with careers of their own and, in an inflationary era, often depend upon their spouses' income. The wives are increasingly unwilling to sacrifice their own careers in order to follow their husbands overseas.

Until now, many such hidden costs in- herent in a Foreign Service career have been cushioned by government-provided housing abroad, subsidized medical care, and allowances for extra expenses often associated with schooling abroad. But the Treasury Department, backed by sympathetic members of Congress, is now proposing to treat all such allowances as taxable income. The result could make it impossible to recruit anyone but the independently wealthy for service abroad. A likely compromise-making only some portion of the allowances taxable-would still sharply reduce the appeal and practicality of foreign service.

Such problems could be endured or over- come, as in the past, were it not that the diplomats themselves are nagged by suspi- cions that-as the British report so intem- perately asserts-the art of diplomacy may be of waning relevance to the conduct of international affairs. There is more to this malaise than the self-doubt that seems to afflict most Americans at present.

A senior Foreign Service officer who recently completed tours at two large Euro- pean embassies noted that he spent most of his time setting up appointments for visiting delegations from Washington. "There is no need for high-powered, broad- gauged individuals to do that kind of thing," he concluded. On his return to Washington, he found that State often plays only a marginal role compared to such bureaucratic giants as Defense, Treasury, or even Agriculture, and that even within State, the key decision-makers, at the rank of deputy assistant secretary and above, are increasingly non-Foreign Service personnel. They are often young bureaucrats with pre-

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vious experience on Capitol Hill or in other

agencies, professional Washington operators who are not remotely attracted by what they regard as frivolous and insignificant service abroad.

Some ambitious and talented Foreign Ser- vice personnel are beginning to accept this ethic, and even to resist transfer abroad. However, to the service in general, the trend is deeply discouraging. The American For- eign Service Association recently praised Carter for doing better than his predecessors at appointing career officers to ambassador- ships, but complained that only one-quarter of top-level Washington jobs at State are filled by "professionals," compared to two- thirds a year ago.

Advice Not Taken

Whatever her problems, no one would argue that the Empress Dowager of Foggy Bottom has lacked for attending physicians. The foreign affairs community has been the subject of at least 65 major studies since 1951. Legions of involved scholars and con- cerned bureaucrats have poured out thou- sands of pages and tended to arrive at re- markably similar conclusions.

Major shortcomings frequently identified include weak and inconsistent internal management, ineffective performance in defense and economic policy-making, and inadequate long-term planning and assessment capability. The Foreign Service personnel system has repeatedly been criticized as unduly hier- archical and inflexible.

The most significant thing about the endless stream of studies is that little serious effort has been made to implement them and virtually none have resulted in major change at State. One major exception was the mid- 1950s reform, named for a commission headed by Henry Wriston, which integrated Washington-based State Department personnel with the regular, still exclusive diplomatic corps. "Wristonization" was ill-conceived at the time, and its memory has con- ditioned many conservative Foreign Service

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officers to resist any change that might en- tail the further erosion of their special stat- us.

The Carter administration has inherited the most massive study to date-the 1975 report of the "Commission on the Organi- zation of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy," chaired by retired Am- bassador Robert D. Murphy.

The Murphy Commission took a different tack from its predecessors. It concluded that it was futile to keep on exhorting State to "take charge" of foreign policy in an age when significant foreign problems (such as energy policy) are increasingly in- tertwined with domestic concerns. Only the president can resolve major interagency dis- putes on such "intermestic" issues, it argued. State should concentrate on what it can realistically do, and then do it well. It defined this role as that of "advocate" in two senses: making sure that the interests of friendly foreign powers are not overlooked in the hurly-burly of Washington decision- making and, perhaps more important, ar- ticulating the broader national interest as opposed to the often competing and sometimes parochial concerns of agencies like Commerce, Defense, or Agriculture. The commission further proposed steps to sharp- en functional (especially economic and political-military) skills to enable State officers to deal with counterparts in Treasury and Defense. It urged the creation of a top-level Foreign Affairs Executive Service, which would interchange officers among State, the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense, and others, thereby broadening domestic oppor- tunities for the Foreign Service.

The kind of revitalization suggested by the Murphy Commission will require prog- ress on two fronts. The traditional diplomatic skills of understanding and negoti- ating with foreigners are still vital and need to be strengthened. Traditional foreign policy expertise must be more effectively brought to bear in the maelstrom of Washington decision-making.

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Within the Foreign Service there has been an endless debate about the traditional skills, particularly over the virtues of geographic area specialists versus generalists. Today it is accepted that foreign area expertise, including knowledge of exotic languages, alien cultures, and the history and politics of remote countries, is the one vital skill on which the State Department holds a natural monopoly. That the skill is vital should have been proven for all time by the course of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, a tragedy based on total misunderstanding of a unique revolution. In general, State has strong and sometimes outstanding skills for certain major culture areas-China, the Soviet Union, and the Arab world. But area knowledge is often weak for other countries of the Third World, where geographic and lin- guistic fragmentation make it difficult to be- come genuinely expert without extremely narrow and arduous specialization. Unfor- tunately, Vietnam was such a country.

Other factors continue to inhibit the Foreign Service from performing as well as it should in its most natural avocation. When all is said and done, it is still dan- gerous to be too understanding of foreigners. The ethos of the service still prefers the well-rounded generalist. As recently as 1973, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, angered by what he regarded as the parochialism displayed at a meeting of officers from U.S. embassies in Latin America, instituted a "Global Outlook Policy" (better known as GLOP), prohibiting his subordinates from serving more than two out of three tours in any one area of the world. (The policy has subsequently been greatly watered down, although it remains officially in effect.) This lingering suspicion of area expertise should be exorcized, and the department should raise its traditional skills to the highest possible level, supplementing them whenever necessary by interchange with academia.

Perhaps the most obvious, unique char- acteristic of the Foreign Service is the embassy-a permanent, overseas establishment

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staffed by resident, cross-cultural, political and economic analysts (which is what good diplomats are). Especially in the larger and more complex Third World countries, visiting delegations are no substitute for such on-the-ground expertise. But embassies are rarely used as effectively as they might be.

Except under abnormal circumstances such as Vietnam, Foreign Service officers

spend most of their time abroad passively observing and analyzing foreign behavior in

great detail. According to traditional practice, American policies, made in Washing- ton, are to be implemented, not subjected to meddlesome examination in the field. Nev- ertheless, ambassadors, if they choose, can move toward a more systematically activist role. They can use their political and economic sections as a combined policy section, to monitor and evaluate American programs, as well as those of U.S.-supported multi- lateral activities such as U.N. agencies and the World Bank.

Such activism tends to produce cries of

outrage from other agencies, but it could help restore to the Foreign Service the relevance that it is losing. (It should be noted that ambassadors are already charged by law with "supervising" the activities of other U.S. agencies-except the military-in their countries. As is well known, this mandate has usually remained in the realm of polite fiction.)

Glaring Needs

The failure of the Service to perform more effectively in Washington is partly a matter of inadequate experience. A much more vig- orous, outward-looking policy of interchange with other government agencies and with private business would provide a par- tial cure. Those who seek such experience or training outside the mainstream should be rewarded, not penalized. Recruitment and training should be conducted with Wash- ington requirements in view. The Foreign Service provides some degree of training for any junior officer headed for the most

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insignificant overseas post. But it does virtually nothing to provide its Washington assignees with adequate knowledge of complex "intermestic" issues such as energy, food assistance, or the proper role of multinational corporations.

There is a glaring need for better technology as well as better training. Thanks to an electronic network that is funded largely by another agency, information pours from embassies to Washington in staggering profusion. Last year, the State message center handled about one million cables, and the number (which does not include documents addressed to other foreign affairs agencies) increases at an annual rate of about 15 per cent. But having information and using it are two different matters. As things stand, the State Department has failed to develop more than a rudimentary data retrieval and processing system, and in general less use is made of computer technology than in any modern department store.

".. . affirmative action programs are now threatening to force-feed a large dose of blacks, hispanic Americans, and women into State's already clogged personnel system."

Even with an adequate data retrieval system, skilled analysis would be necessary to sift and evaluate the ever increasing flow of information and get it to the officials who can use it. But State's own analytic capability, concentrated in the Bureau of In-

telligence and Research, still operates with antiquated manual filing systems and has been heavily cut back in recent years, to the point where one analyst is sometimes re- sponsible for several major countries. (The Central Intelligence Agency has a larger pool of analysts, but has also suffered from recent reductions and no small measure of identity crisis.)

Both in Washington and abroad, the

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kind of change that is needed would re-

quire the Foreign Service to opt for more

openness in its dealings with other branches of government, including the Congress, and with the public. If diplomats want greater experience beyond the career service, they should welcome, not resist, the recruitment of some talented outsiders by lateral entry at mid-career levels. (For years the trend has been in the other direction.) Such a policy may be abused, of course, by using it to confer political favors, but there is no alter- native that does not carry the greater risk of

stagnation. It would be a logical first step to follow the Murphy Commission's recom- mendation and merge the executive personnel systems of all foreign affairs agencies.

The Carter administration has an unusual

opportunity to initiate such reforms at State, in accordance with the president's own cam-

paign rhetoric. The administration has al-

ready established a task force on national security affairs, part of the government-wide reorganization effort being conducted by the Office of Management and Budget. The task force is headed by none other than the chief researcher of the Murphy Commission, Pe- ter Szanton. At State itself, a new management team headed by Deputy Undersecre- tary Benjamin H. Read is currently preoccu- pied with solving the immediate personnel crisis, but should eventually be able to co-

operate effectively with Carter's reorganizers in implementing broad institutional reforms.

Considerable formal reorganization and some legislation might be required to achieve the broader, more open Foreign Service ad- vocated here, although State's existing dual

personnel system, including both Foreign Service and regular Civil Service personnel, allows considerable latitude for change within present legal and organizational confines. Congressional opposition to such change- especially when (as in the case of computer technology) it would require expenditure- has been a critical barrier in the past. But experts on Capitol Hill judge that because of the replacement of certain key subcom-

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mittee chairmen, notably John Rooney of New York and Wayne Hayes of Ohio, Con- gress might now be surprisingly receptive to a well-thought-out reform effort.

Past experience proves that regardless of how structures may be altered, reform at State is likely to abort unless the Foreign Service itself welcomes and does not sabo- tage it. Although the idea of a more open, outward-looking service is by no means accepted by all officers, the current personnel crisis dramatizes the need for change. Thus, despite the shadow of creeping irrelevance, there is hope for the future.

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Documents

Creeping Irrelevance at Foggy Bottom