In Washington today, two worldviews on U.S. foreign policy are colliding. One view emphasizes facts, values, and consequences. The other believes in process, politeness, and accommodation. Consider, for instance, the following statement: Libya chairs the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. The values and fact-based advocates note immediately that Libya is a dictatorship with a history of terrorism, and they thus conclude that Libya cannot chair the commission with any moral standing or credibility. By contrast, the accommodation worldview contends that Libya won the vote in the United Nations and that contesting Libya’s moral and legitimate claim to the chair would be impolite and a violation of proper process. I am convinced that U.S. President George W. Bush and a vast majority of the American people share the view that stresses facts, values, and consequences. The media and intellectual elites, the State Department (as an institution), and the Foreign Service (as a culture) clearly favor the process, politeness, and accommodation position. In May 2001, when the United States was ambushed and voted off the U.N. Human Rights Commission for the first time since the commission’s inception in 1947, those people who focus on facts, values, and outcomes were justifiably outraged. But the State Department, admitting it was surprised, did nothing. Such passivity emboldened France to launch a campaign seeking to defeat U.S. foreign policy objectives articulated by Bush. The State Department needs to experience culture shock, a top-to-bottom transformation that will make it a more effective communicator of U.S. values around the world, place it more directly under the control of the president of the United States, and enable it to promote freedom and combat tyranny. Anything less is a disservice to this nation. Resisting Reform The February 2001 report of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century (known as the Hart-Rudman Commission) represents one of the most recent and credible efforts to reform the State Department. I worked with former U.S. President Bill Clinton to create the commission and then served on it when I left Congress. The commission’s report proved both authoritative and prescient: More than seven months prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the report warned of the threat of a major attack on U.S. soil that would cause heavy casualties. The bipartisan commission also recommended the creation of a National Homeland Security Agency with a cabinet-level director (a Department of Homeland Security now exists) and called for a transformation of the Defense Department (an effort that is well under way). Not under way, however, is the commission’s proposed reform of the State Department. “The Department of State, in particular, is a crippled institution, starved for resources by Congress because of its inadequacies, and thereby weakened further,” concluded the report. “Only if the State Department’s internal weaknesses are cured will it become an effective leader in the making and implementation of the nation’s foreign policy. Only then can it credibly seek significant funding increases from Congress. The department suffers in particular from an ineffective organizational structure in which regional and functional policies do not serve integrated goals, and in which sound management, accountability, and leadership are lacking.” [See section below titled “Unfinished Business” for the report’s recommendations on State Department reform.]
This language and all of the report’s recommendations were written during the Clinton administration. Current State Department officials are well aware of the commission’s report; in fact, the commission briefed current Secretary of State Colin Powell shortly after he assumed his post in 2001. Characteristically, however, the State Department dismissed the commission’s findings. The nonpartisan Foreign Affairs Council released a report in March 2003 explaining that the State Department resisted the Hart-Rudman recommendations because the drastic reorganization recommended by the commission is “too disruptive and distracts too much energy for ongoing operations.” In other words, the State Department is far too busy being ineffective to bother fixing its internal structures in order to become more effective. Out of Sync Only six days following my remarks, Bush made the following statement to a group of Iraqi Americans in Dearborn, Michigan: “I have confidence in the future of a free Iraq. The Iraqi people are fully capable of self-government.” He also told them that “You are living proof the Iraqi people love freedom and living proof the Iraqi people can flourish in democracy. People who live in Iraq deserve the same freedom that you and I enjoy here in America.” Contrast that vision with a recent classified report by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research titled “Iraq, the Middle East and Change: No Dominoes,” which was leaked in March 2003 to the Los Angeles Times. As reported by that newspaper, the document stated that “liberal democracy would be difficult to achieve [in Iraq] . . . Electoral democracy, were it to emerge, could well be subject to exploitation by anti-American elements.” And according to an anonymous intelligence source interviewed by the newspaper, the thrust of the report argued that “this idea that you’re going to transform the Middle East and fundamentally alter its trajectory is not credible.” The Los Angeles Times has also reported that U.S. diplomats (insisting upon anonymity) “said they are profoundly worried about what they describe as the [Bush] administration’s arrogance or indifference to world public opinion, which they fear has wiped out, in less than two years, decades of effort to build goodwill toward the United States.” Meanwhile, as reported recently by National Review Online contributor Joel Mowbray, a Bush administration official believes the outgoing director of policy planning at the State Department, Richard Haass, has “made it his mission to loosen sanctions on Iran,” despite Bush’s designation of Iran as part of the “axis of evil.” Can anyone imagine a State Department more out of sync with Bush’s views and objectives? The president should demand a complete overhaul of the State Department so it is capable of executing his policy goals effectively and of redefining peace on his own terms. To this end, Bush should call for the equivalent of a Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act (which in 1986 mandated a comprehensive reform of the U.S. Department of Defense) applicable to the State Department. Failure to Communicate Moreover, the rise of a global anti-American network of activists and nations—including left-wing nongovernmental organizations, elite media, and most of the elite academics around the world (including in the United States)—further increases the country’s need for a comprehensive communication and information strategy. The British Broadcasting Corporation, according to some observers, was at least as hostile to the United States as Al Jazeera was during the entire Iraqi conflict. Today, the United States does not have a strategy, structure, or resource allocation capable of dealing with this sort of opposition. That must change if the United States is to gain sufficient popular appeal with ordinary people around the world, such that their governments will in turn support U.S. policies. The state-to-state diplomatic system of the past simply will not survive. The State Department must develop a new approach that considers the realities of the 24-hours-a-day global media. Such an information strategy must be implemented on a nonstop, worldwide basis, with some variations by region and country. The new systems and structures that this strategy requires will transform diplomacy permanently. As part of this strategy, the human cost of terrorism must be clear, vivid, and unforgettable for populations around the globe. U.S. authorities must initiate an ongoing campaign so that everyone who has suffered from torture or repression at the hands of dictators can tell their stories and bear witness; world opinion will therefore correctly condemn such atrocities. The new standard for the 21st century must be the absolute unacceptability of innocent people facing such cruelty. The impact and success of a new U.S. communication strategy should be measured continually on a country-by-country basis. An independent public affairs firm should report weekly on how U.S. messages are received in at least the world’s 50 largest countries. One can hardly overstate how poorly the United States communicates its message and values to the world: Large majorities in France, Germany, and South Korea opposed the U.S. perspective on Iraq—not to mention the 95 percent disapproval rate in Turkey. Without external professional help and guidance, internal efforts by the State Department will be a waste of time. Wherever possible, U.S. chambers of commerce should help explain and develop the rule of law, transparency and accountability in government, and free markets across the globe. And business advisory groups drawn from effective, internationally sophisticated corporations should advise the State Department on how to improve U.S. communication strategies. The president should receive a weekly report on U.S. successes and failures in communicating around the world from a special assistant for global communication, a new post with coordinating authority over the State Department, the Defense Department, and other agencies engaged in international communication efforts. Only by raising this critical challenge to the level of presidential concern will dramatic improvements ever materialize. And progress should be gauged with measurable improvements in public and elite understanding of U.S. values and positions around the world—not by how much money is spent on the communication program. Additionally, the U.S. government should commission a comprehensive study on the international press coverage of the United States leading up to and during the war in Iraq. The study should encompass state-owned media in the Arab world to determine if those outlets are a major contributing source of anti-American hostility. Private media organizations attacking the United States represent a different phenomenon from state-owned media attacking the United States. The latter is a government-sponsored act of hostility and should be dealt with accordingly. Ultimately, a revamped and effective communication strategy is necessary because the United States should actively stand for and promote its values around the globe. Every person deserves safety, health, prosperity, and freedom. The United States supports the core values of constitutional liberty, the right to private property, free speech (including a free press), independent judiciaries, free markets, free elections, transparency and accountability in government, the equality of women and of opportunities for women, racial equality, and the free exercise of religious beliefs. Without these values, it is hard to imagine a world in which U.S. safety can be secured. We should not confuse respect for others with acceptance of their values if they violate these principles. Culture Shock Ambassador Silberman’s theme of loyalty to the president of the United States must resonate throughout the State Department’s transformation. Bush’s thoughts expressed aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, provide a clear signal. “Commitment to liberty is America’s tradition—declared at our founding; affirmed in Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms; asserted in the Truman Doctrine and in Ronald Reagan’s challenge to an evil empire. We are committed to freedom in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in a peaceful Palestine. The advance of freedom is the surest strategy to undermine the appeal of terror in the world. Where freedom takes hold, hatred gives way to hope. When freedom takes hold, men and women turn to the peaceful pursuit of a better life. American values and American interests lead in the same direction: We stand for human liberty.” The United States of America cannot help develop a vibrant world of entrepreneurial progress—where countries grow in safety, health, prosperity, and freedom for all—with a diplomatic bureaucracy of red tape and excuses. We must have effective and reliable policy instruments beyond the Defense Department, and that can only occur with a serious and long overdue transformation of the State Department. Without bold and dramatic changes at the State Department, the United States will soon find itself on the defensive everywhere, except militarily. In the long run, that is a dangerous and unacceptable position for the world’s leading democracy. Foreign Disservice At the same time, a new Foreign Service officer (FSO) education program must dramatically expand the requirements for learning new doctrines and new capabilities. The Foreign Service of the future must have a clear vision of understanding the world and of how to best report back to the United States, while effectively and aggressively representing American values to the world. An appropriate training program would highlight the strategies the U.S. government is following both to make the United States safer and to increase security, health, prosperity, and freedom worldwide. This emphasis would help FSOs strengthen U.S. ties with populations around the globe. Such an effort will require a Foreign Service that is at least 40 percent larger so that its personnel can take on career-enriching assignments outside of their traditional duties. It also requires the development of continuing education so FSOs can absorb new lessons about diplomacy and communication, learn new strategies and new skills, and continue to develop throughout their careers. FSOs must learn to work in a new and integrated interagency system with accountability and transparency, such that U.S. military capabilities can be coordinated with civilian and nongovernmental U.S. activities overseas. In the age of mass communication and democratization, the doctrine of a 21st-century State Department must include a more aggressive and effective representation for the United States around the world. FSOs should master this doctrine and should be measured against it. Finally, FSOs should take on a one-year assignment outside the State Department after their sixth year of service and a two-year tour outside the department after their 14th year of service. Officers with significant experience outside the State Department tend to display greater realism and sophistication compared to those who have rarely ventured beyond the department’s closed culture. —N.G. Unfinished Business
Continued: Reaction from former policy makers
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Newt Gingrich served as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a member of the Defense Policy Board, which advises the Pentagon.
Debating U.S. Diplomacy
Gingrich believes the State Department is led by career Foreign Service officers (FSOs) who are disloyal to the point of engaging in a “deliberate and systematic effort to undermine” the president’s foreign policy. He accuses the department of having a culture that “props up dictators, coddles the corrupt, and ignores secret police forces.” He also blames State for increased anti-Americanism because the department abdicates “values and principles in favor of accommodation and passivity.” Such distortions of reality discredit the criticism rather than its target. Throughout my public career, I worked in or with every department of the U.S. government. Without qualification, the men and women of the State Department are the most uniformly excellent, dedicated, and hard-working civil servants I encountered. They are devoted and talented proponents of the best American values: democracy, tolerance, human rights, and free markets against dictators, corrupt officials, and negative forces around the globe. They bend over backward to follow every U.S. president’s leadership, even when they disagree with specific policies. The career staff relishes the challenge of innovation. Gingrich fails to appreciate the State Department’s dual mandate: It must advocate U.S. foreign policy abroad as well as convey other countries’ views to the president. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and his State Department have been faithful apostles of U.S. President George W. Bush’s policies. Gingrich might consider whether declining support abroad for U.S. policies belongs at the doorstep of the White House, not the State Department. It was President Bush who withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, the International Criminal Court, and other international conventions, with virtually no consultation. What little international support President Bush’s Iraq policy gained came from Powell’s efforts to secure backing for U.N. weapons inspections. The State Department’s true problems bear little relation to Gingrich’s broadside. “Clientitis” (taking on the perspectives of the countries to which FSOs are posted) is cause for concern, but that is the reason behind the mandatory three-year rotation system. FSOs are often placed in unchallenging positions early in their careers, trapped by a rigid promotion structure that can penalize them if they advance too quickly early on and then limit their long-term opportunities. Some of Gingrich’s suggestions are on the mark. The Foreign Service is understaffed and overworked, and needs to be substantially larger. He creatively recommends assignments outside the department to broaden officers’ perspectives. The State Department also needs a modern global communication strategy, which could result if the U. S. Information Agency were better integrated within the department. Gingrich is also right to highlight the department’s ineffective organizational structure in which “regional and functional policies do not serve integrated goals.” The layering of regional bureaus, along with functional bureaus that cut across these same regional lines, leads to a slow and contorted decision-making process for the secretary of state—not to mention a badly divided building that is often unable to speak with one voice in the interagency process. The recommendations for reform by the Hart-Rudman Commission, to which Gingrich points, have much merit. Other suggestions seem odd, though. Gingrich proposes significant financial bonuses for FSOs for language proficiency, but almost all staffers already undergo grueling language training and possess strong language capabilities for the nations in which they serve. It is the political appointees to ambassadorial posts (sometimes earned through large donations to presidential campaign coffers) who often lack the most rudimentary knowledge of the language, history, and culture of the countries to which they are posted. Meanwhile, the State Department’s career officers risk their lives daily in some of the world’s most dangerous spots to support their president and their country. I close with two recollections. In 1995, Bob Frasure, a respected senior State Department official, stayed with me at our ambassadorial residence in Brussels only a few days before he died while trying to bring peace to Bosnia. And back in Washington, I later joined the somber delegation, led by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, to receive the American flag-draped caskets of the State Department officials killed by terrorist attacks in their posts in Africa. That is the State Department I know.
Gingrich sees disloyalty in a leaked report (by whom? —probably not the State Department!) by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research that stated that “liberal democracy would be difficult to achieve” in Iraq and that “electoral democracy, were it to emerge, could well be subject to exploitation by anti-American elements.” He finds this view at odds with Bush’s public statement that “the Iraqi people are fully capable of self-government.” Why does an explanation that something will be difficult contradict a statement that something is possible? It is obvious now that if the report Gingrich cites had received more attention when the occupation of Iraq was planned, the United States would be in a better position to ensure the Iraqi people the opportunity to demonstrate their capacity for self-government. The author’s implication that intelligence reports should be tailored to support policy is shocking. The practice of tailoring intelligence reports to please a political leader is precisely why Soviet leaders before Mikhail Gorbachev persisted in self-defeating policies, despite all their intelligence assets. No, Gingrich’s analysis is all wrong, though some of his concrete suggestions are helpful. No diplomatic service can sell a policy if it is a turkey. And since the secretary of state and his department are clearly doing their best to support the president, are we not justified in suspecting that Gingrich’s real target is President Bush?
The article includes points with which we agree, in some cases wholeheartedly: a significant increase in the size of the Foreign Service (Gingrich’s recommendation of 40 percent may be high—20 percent is probably closer to the mark), assignments outside the State Department (for example, to local governments or business firms) in the 6th and 14th years of service, improving cross-cultural communication, perfecting the interagency system, and more autonomy for ambassadors. We energetically support these worthy goals. Some of the Hart-Rudman recommendations have been implemented. For instance, Powell has initiated organizational changes that link strategic planning and resources. Other recommendations—particularly a single, integrated foreign affairs budget—would have real resonance in America’s organizations. Indeed, some of the Gingrich and Hart-Rudman proposals have been attempted in the past but always with too little money, too few people, and too much resistance from the U.S. Congress. Gingrich’s analysis falls seriously short in two areas. First, he blurs the foreign policy process and public diplomacy, basically ignoring the former. Diplomats overseas must report to the State Department on political, economic, social, and other developments in their countries of assignment that touch upon the U.S. national interest. These officers, and particularly ambassadors, are also responsible for recommending policies they believe will serve the interests of the United States. Their Washington counterparts must synthesize the information and policy views and recommend how best to proceed. Decisions are made at various levels; the key ones flow to the secretary of state and the president. Instructions go back to ambassadors, and policy is implemented. This process is ongoing. It is also job one and should not be confused with public diplomacy, as important as that is. Second, Gingrich veers (inadvertently, we hope) into territory that nearly puts him in the company of those who destroyed the “China Hands” in the 1940s by accusing them of “losing China,” demanded loyalty oaths in the 1950s, and supported McCarthyism in both decades. Gingrich says he wants to place the State Department “more directly under the control of the president of the United States” because the agency is engaging in a “deliberate and systematic effort to undermine Bush’s foreign policy.” The accusation is false. The world is a difficult and complicated place that does not always respond as the United States desires. Danger to the United States lurks everywhere, and the responsibility of officers at home and abroad is to offer their leaders full and frank information based upon decades of training and experience. Gingrich does not seem to understand the foreign policymaking process, and he wrongly equates different assessments with disloyalty. Calls for “reform” should not be a front for destruction. Powell has made historic progress—resources, training, structure, and even the department’s culture are in dramatically better shape than they were just two years ago.
Gingrich quotes a newspaper report on a leaked classified document produced by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research on the difficulties of creating liberal democracy in Iraq. The document, he notes, is inconsistent with the president’s vision of a democratic Iraq. I suppose some might think that civil servants and Foreign Service officers ought to alter their intelligence reports and research findings to fit a president’s worldview, but I doubt they would be the “vast majority of the American people.” State Department professionals are paid to call them as they see them. When Gingrich moves beyond his desire to politicize the department, he makes some good points—notably, about the need for the State Department to adopt a better communication strategy. But he seems not to understand the limits of his case. Good policy will indeed be weakened if it is poorly communicated; but lousy policy will not improve simply because it is communicated well. In Gingrich’s world, the problem cannot be, as some diplomats fear, that “the [Bush] administration’s arrogance or indifference to world public opinion . . . has wiped out . . . decades of effort to build goodwill toward the United States.” To Gingrich, this perspective is only evidence of a State Department “out of sync with Bush’s views and objectives.” Most important is the extent to which Gingrich’s views reflect those held by senior officials in the Defense Department and the White House. It is no secret that the secretary of state has been out of sync with others in the Bush administration on important issues. Moreover, the administration’s national security policy has a heavier-than-usual moral tone that goes beyond the rhetorical enthusiasm that simplified complex and diverse threats into an “axis of evil.” This tone exemplifies the administration’s disdain for negotiation and compromise with states whose regimes are reprehensible and whose actions are repugnant to American values. It leads some in the administration to argue that nothing short of regime change is appropriate for confronting these states. It makes interest in diplomatic solutions appear hollow or even cynical in light of the United States’ extraordinary capacity to project force. It undervalues one of the principal instruments of U.S. foreign policy, the one wielded by the State Department: diplomacy. And worse, it equates negotiation with appeasement and characterizes those who advocate such a course as proposing the U.S. government submit to blackmail. If Gingrich’s argument wins out, the United States is in trouble. The range of options considered legitimate will narrow. Healthy debate will be suppressed out of a warped sense of loyalty and a misunderstanding of the role of ideology in the formation of policy. At a time when the United States is truly vulnerable, the nation cannot afford to distort the foreign policymaking process by suppressing information from the field or critical analysis at home.
I cannot, however, let him escape without comment on the following two sentences: “Key to transforming the State Department’s culture is the adoption of the right vision—President Bush’s vision. We can no longer accept a culture that props up dictators, coddles the corrupt, and ignores secret police forces.” Heavens! Does he mean Saudi Arabia and Pakistan? Or perhaps the Muslim khanates of Central Asia? The State Department—for which I worked as a Foreign Service reserve officer in three embassies—is dying from two chest wounds. First, the department is burdened with a moribund bureaucracy and a culture that is impoverished in both financial and educational terms. Diplomats are outnumbered by administrative and support staff in their own embassies and they generally are not versed in historical, cultural, or linguistic knowledge appropriate to the specific country to which they are posted. This problem can be fixed by focusing on education and information rather than military procurement, and by adopting open-source intelligence collection and analysis. Such reforms would rationalize the national security budget, which will be $500 billion per year by 2009, and resurrect U.S. diplomacy. The second wound, one that Gingrich must think makes him ripe to replace Colin Powell when the latter comes to his senses and escapes his indenture to the Bush team, is inflicted from above. If President Bush has a global strategy, it is somewhere between evangelical fiction and a comic book. This administration is disconnected from reality. It has started a six-front world war that will last 100 years, instead of winning the war on terrorism, which could have been resolved with six years of smart spending of no more than $100 billion per year. The State Department requires reform, but much more important—and an area where Gingrich might do great service—is the urgently needed internationalization of education, both of U.S. presidents and of the public. As Thomas Jefferson said, “[a] Nation’s best defense is an educated citizenry.” Right now, the United States is defenseless.
Gingrich argues that the president of the United States should more directly control the U.S. State Department. This argument presumes that the person whom the president chooses to run the department, the secretary of state, is rendered incapable of asserting authority over a rogue Foreign Service upon entering the department’s lobby. The view also assumes past secretaries of state such as George Shultz and James Baker were unable to execute the foreign policies of U.S. presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Yet not one of them makes such a claim in his memoirs. Gingrich cites a recent internal State Department memo on the bleak prospects for democracy in Iraq as proof of his earlier McCarthyite charge that department employees are engaged in a “deliberate and systematic effort to undermine Bush’s foreign policy.” It should be obvious to Gingrich that the analysis was offered to inform policy, not to set it. Gingrich claims he wants a corps of trained and linguistically skilled diplomats, but they do not appear to be in his personnel plan. He seems to prefer an organization that is replaced in its entirety each time a new administration comes to power. Such an approach wouldn’t do much for continuity in U.S. foreign policy. However, that approach would certainly satisfy Gingrich’s demand for employees who do not speak up, but simply nod vigorously. AFSA applauds Gingrich’s arguments for a Foreign Service that is more multilingual, better trained, and more knowledgeable about the work of nongovernmental organizations and the private sector. However, AFSA laments that his epiphany has come so late. Had the scales been lifted from his eyes while Gingrich was still the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, he might have used his influence to restore funding to a starving State Department, which at one point in the mid-1990s could not even replace retiring Foreign Service employees. Some 700 positions in critical countries could not be filled because there were simply too few employees available. Language classes and other training were deferred to prevent more positions from going unfilled. The Bush administration has dramatically reversed this situation. The Foreign Service is being fundamentally transformed—much along the lines Gingrich suggests—by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.
I certainly was encouraged that there was much agreement in the letters in response to my article “Rogue State Department” (a title created not by me but by the editors, and about which I protested as I did the subtitle in the sidebar, “Foreign Disservice,” but to no avail) with respect to the need for reforms in the State Department. I have but a few clarifications. First, Stuart Eizenstat writes, “Gingrich fails to appreciate the State Department’s dual mandate: It must advocate U.S. foreign policy abroad as well as convey other countries’ views to the president.” I do not believe a dual mandate should exist at the department. I want to make a distinction between representing another country’s views and accurately reporting those views. The State Department should represent only the United States and our values to the world. Our strategy must be to communicate those values effectively. Where the values of other nations conflict with our own interests and values, we should make the conflict clear so that we are predictable to other countries, so they know where we stand. The State Department should never act on behalf of any other country’s interests where they do not coincide with our own. Eizenstat goes on to say, “It was President Bush who withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, the International Criminal Court, and other international conventions, with virtually no consultation. What little international support President Bush’s Iraq policy gained came from Powell’s efforts to secure backing for U.N. weapons inspections.” He is perfectly within his right as a former U.S. undersecretary of state to disagree with the president. I, on the other hand, agree with the president on all of these issues. Perhaps that is why Eizenstat believes in the existence of a dual mandate. Jack F. Matlock suggests that Bush is my real target. I have consistently supported the president and his stated objectives and cited examples in my article. Several letters claimed that I accused the Foreign Service of disloyalty. This charge is simply groundless. I do not believe Foreign Service officers are any less courageous or patriotic than those who serve in U.S. military or intelligence services. In fact, I called for a 40 percent increase in Foreign Service personnel. What strikes me is that no one claimed I was accusing the U.S. military of being disloyal when I joined with my colleagues Sam Nunn, Dick Cheney, Gary Hart, Bill Whitehurst, and others to begin transforming the Defense Department and create the Military Reform Caucus. In 1986, after five years of arguing with bureaucrats and dealing with fierce opposition by senior members of the military, we passed the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act. Despite ongoing military reforms, no one argues that joint operations and transformation have not worked or did not work in Iraq or Afghanistan or that those who advocated change were attacking the administration. No such comprehensive reform has taken place in the State Department. I believe that in order to have an effective instrument of diplomacy to meet our security needs and the realities of the 21st century, we must have the courage to transform the State Department. Trying to obfuscate problems by defending popular figures who are not under attack will only dangerously prolong badly needed reforms. Reproduced with permission from FOREIGN POLICY #138 (September/October 2003), www.foreignpolicy.com, Copyright 2003, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.WANT TO KNOW MORE? Newt Gingrich’s controversial speech “Transforming the State Department” (April 22, 2003) can be found on the Web site of the American Enterprise Institute. Coverage and commentary on the speech’s aftermath includes “Familiar Blast, Then Unfamiliar Silence” (Washington Post, April 26, 2003) by Edward Walsh and Juliet Eilperin, “Gingrich Takes Swipe at State Department” (USA Today, April 22, 2003) by Barbara Slavin, and “Mideast Road Trap” (Washington Times, May 6, 2003) by Frank J. Gaffney Jr. For an early call for comprehensive reforms, see Laurence H. Silberman’s “Toward Presidential Control of the State Department” (Foreign Affairs, Spring 1979). For a worm’s-eye view of life in the State Department, see “Too at Home Abroad” (The Washington Monthly, September 1991) by a Foreign Service officer writing under the pseudonym of Harry Crosby. Strobe Talbott offers an alternative view of how the State Department should adapt to new global realities in “Globalization and Diplomacy: A Practitioner’s Perspective” (Foreign Policy, Fall 1997). For an example of a call for large-scale reforms in another U.S. cabinet department, see then presidential candidate George W. Bush’s speech on Defense Department reform, “A Period of Consequences” (September 23, 1999), delivered at the Citadel. For perspectives on how the United States and other Western nations should transform their global communication efforts, see Mark Leonard’s “Diplomacy by Other Means” (Foreign Policy, September/October 2002). Also visit the Public Diplomacy Web site, sponsored by the United States Information Agency Alumni Association and the Public Diplomacy Council. For links to relevant Web sites, access to the FP Archive, and a comprehensive index of related Foreign Policy articles, go to or the archival section of this website at www.americandiplomacy.org. |
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