Slate - How worried should we be about the military’s takeover of American foreign policy?

Isaac Chotiner at Slate ("a daily magazine on the web") interviewed a military scholar.

Money quote(s):

"The sort of substantive throughline is that we barely have a foreign policy. This gets closer to my book’s themes. We essentially have a military policy. The military policy is being carried out with reasonable consistency and coherence in a sort of technocratic sense.

But we don’t have much other than military policy because the State Department under Trump and Secretary Tillerson is all but paralyzed by a combination of hiring freezes, threatened budget cuts, lack of personnel in key positions, and the fact that the White House fairly consistently shuts them out of anything important. Much of the sort of traditional U.S. diplomacy is either on hold or has sort of pulled back."

This is certainly what one would understand from major media reporting; from the inside it's not quite so drastic although there is at least partial truths for each of these listed factors.

"I think there’s a really strong sense in the Defense Department that, in an ideal world, the State Department is a vital counterpart to the military. I think there’s an equally strong sense in the military at the moment that there is nobody home in the State Department, and that’s been to some extent true for the last decade or more but now dramatically exacerbated in the Trump–Tillerson era.

I think you will continue to hear people like Jim Mattis and the service chiefs say very strongly that diplomacy is important. Development is important. Our job, you know, we can’t do our job without those things. I think you’ll continue to hear that, but there’s only a limited degree to which the actors at the Pentagon have any ability to create that out of thin air or to get Donald Trump to create it."

The "nobody home in the State Department" seems more true nowadays due to the number of "acting" officials throughout the Department, but the interviewee conflates this lower-level rudderlessness with the previous Administrations focus on international irrelevancies.

"The oft-cited line that there are more members in the military marching bands than there are foreign service officers is in fact true, even though I always thought it had to be apocryphal. This was a huge issue in Afghanistan during the Obama years, that the constant promises of a civilian surge just never materialized because the personnel just weren’t there."

There simply is not and has never been deployment-ready diplomatic brigade sitting on a stateside base awaiting orders to go nation-build somewhere.  Sec. Powell tried to bake some surge-capacity into the cake with the Diplomatic Readiness Initiative (DRI) but increases in worldwide workload have eaten away at that for years.  And with the continuing hiring-freeze, hollowing-out, and possible 30 percent downsizing, it only gets worse going forward.

"It’s also important to remember that Mattis and Kelly have retired. They are civilians now. They are not active. McMaster is the exception. He is obviously still active-duty military, but I don’t quite get the fixation on oh my God the military has taken over."

USN&WR - DHS Seeks Sanctions on Countries that Refuse Deportees

Alan Neuhauser at U.S. News & World Report (" a multi-platform publisher of news and information") did a nice job of laying this out:

Money quote(s):

"immigration authorities have been forced to release people who are in the U.S. illegally because their home countries declined to issue the necessary travel documents for their return"

CAA commented on another article that was more specific but this one does a better job explaining the whys and hows.

"Lapan would not identify which nations are facing sanctions, but they are among a list of 12 so-called "recalcitrant countries" identified by DHS: Burma, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Guinea, Hong Kong, Iran, Laos, Morocco, South Sudan and Vietnam.

The letter from DHS could effectively suspend travel to the U.S. from the four designated countries. Section 243(d) of the Immigration and Nationality Act requires the State Department to stop granting travel visas in recalcitrant countries when it such a request to do so from the Homeland Security secretary."

CAA gathers there's quite a bit of back and forth between DOS and DHS as to precisely how each country's visa sanction will shape-up in practice, tailoring it to the circumstances.

"Countries can get removed from the list if they cooperate with U.S. efforts. Iraq, for example, was on a list of some 22 countries considered recalcitrant, but it was removed after high-level government negotiations led to an agreement to again begin accepting deported nationals, Lapan said."

It's unfortunate when you have to use a club like this to leverage another country into action, but if you get a record and a reputation for doing it from time to time, simply the threat will come to suffice as a motivator.  Inaction on the part of these countries was a product of their years of experience in us not acting.

Slate - The Blob Ate Donald Trump

Joshua Keating at Slate ("a daily magazine on the web") reassured the unsettled.

Money quote(s):

"Rex Tillerson’s ongoing reorganization of the State Department, seemingly purposely designed to sideline and scale back the work of career diplomats, is definitely a concerning shift that could have lasting impacts on U.S. diplomacy around the world. But in the absence of leadership, it appears American foreign policy can just kind of run itself for a while. I don’t know how long that can continue before it slips off the rails."

Politico - Tillerson looking to eliminate dozens of special envoy posts

Nahal Toosi at Politico ("We reach the most influential people in the country") did a nice piece of writing here.

Money quote(s):

"Tillerson notes that nearly 70 special envoy or similar positions exist at the department and that some have outlived their purpose. In many cases, Tillerson argues that existing State Department bureaus will be able to handle the same duties in a more efficient way."

Some of the special envoys duplicate offices or even U.S. ambassadors resident in other countries.

"Tillerson's attempts to reduce the number of special envoys has broad support within the State Department, where many diplomats nonetheless cringe at Trump's proposal to cut their budget by 30 percent. The general feeling is that the envoy positions have proliferated to the point where they are undermining existing State Department regional bureaus and other divisions that do similar work."

Yup.  And if eliminating those duplicative positions takes care of some of that 30 percent cut, it may save truly vital functions from getting the ax.

"Some of the special envoy positions are mandated by law, making Tillerson's reorganization process tricky. At the same time, many of the positions are supported by outside advocacy groups who fear that their elimination will undermine efforts to highlight those particular issues."

The articles cites "international labor affairs; cyber issues; rights for the disabled; implementation of the Iran nuclear deal; global youth issues; and the Northern Ireland conflict" specifically as special envoy positions to be eliminated.

The Hill - 6 ways to know if State Department reform is real or fake

Joseph Cassidy writing at The Hill makes some excellent points.

Money quote(s):

"A real reform plan would mobilize the department to confront the dangers of the 21st century. It would remedy organizational weaknesses and inefficiencies. It would clarify State’s role in formulating foreign policy and define its relationship with other U.S. government agencies. It would provide a sense of purpose to State’s dedicated but downtrodden employees. "

That right there looks like an pretty fair mission statement for departmental reform.

"In recent administrations, the State Department’s structure has been more hourglass than pyramid. Senior officials and their staffer remoras have been over-abundant and have consumed a disproportionate amount of the department’s workload. Real reform would cut senior positions and reduce the number of staff officers who don’t originate work product."

&

"There is widespread agreement that the weedy proliferation of special envoys (not just those with that specific title, but also other powerful single-issue envoys outside State’s regional and functional bureau chains of command) must be pruned. Real reform will substantially reduce their number but also ensure that important responsibilities are incorporated into other parts of the department (double-hatting officials with a special envoy title, when its termination would be politically or diplomatically problematic).

Envoy proliferation has had two pernicious consequences — disempowering regional bureaus (which should rather be reinforced) by removing important diplomatic issues from their control and ensuring regional bureaus don’t in practice follow “special envoy” issues as closely. Real reform will mainstream as well as streamline."

This.  The dozens of special envoys and such duplicating and tromping over the responsibilities of existing embassies and missions is overkill.  Even granting the half-dozen or so (seven?) actually mandated by law, the idea of dual-hatting some of those back into the fold, onto the worthy-brows of the officials already charged with those countries, regions, or issues is one well worth exploiting.

(Gotta love the use of "remoras" to describe the spear-carriers and special assistants attending to extraneous special envoys.)

"Too many otherwise smart people believe diplomacy is something separate from other elements of national power, e.g., that the James Mattis does national defense, the Treasury Department does international finance and sanctions, the Commerce Department helps U.S. business abroad, the Department of Justice does international law and State carries messages back and forth to other governments like an Amazon delivery drone.

Diplomacy without foreign policy content is irrelevant, and there’s no such thing as short-term strategy. Real reform would reassert State’s role as lead strategist and coordinator of U.S. foreign policy, including the current actions of other cabinet agencies and America’s role in the world over the next several decades. "

You can bet that Sec. Mattis knows very well the many aspects of national powers, DIMEFILS and similar mnemonics outlining the instrumentalities and elements of implementing national strategies and grand strategies.  State is a logical place for interagency coordination of national strategy although the National Security Council staff seems to have inherited that mantel of late.

Read the whole thing.

Re-Branding DipNote

DipNote, the "U.S. DEPARTMENT of STATE OFFICIAL BLOG," is looking to re-name itself and, towards that end, has solicited in-house suggestions.

Suggestions are due by tomorrow, Friday, November 30, 2012.

Security Decisions, part the second

This earlier post discussed the application of security standards to existing buildings in terms of some of the limitations that reality imposed.  That is, that along with prohibitive expense, the practicality of such endeavors rests firmly somewhere in the range between Extremely Difficult and Bliddy Impossible.

Diplomacy, like politics, is an art of the possible.  Diplomatic security must matrix both the imperative to provide security, to protect, with the need to carry out  the diplomatic mission itself.  Sometimes that means that the security situation is so dire that the diplomatic mission must be abandoned; other times the diplomatic mission will be considered so imperative that security measures take a backseat.  Or are adapted to fit the situation.  Thus we have active and ongoing diplomatic missions, and have for years, in countries where we would otherwise have shuttered our embassies and evacuated our staff.  E.g., Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Libya might be considered a reasonable addition to that list.

States are responsible, under the Vienna Conventions and customary international law, for providing the protection necessary to secure those diplomatic and consular facilities which it has accepted within its territory.  Not being an area expert on Libya specifically or the Mahgreb generally (but not being completely ignorant of those regions either), the question of just how much control the new, post-Qhadafi, central government of Libya has beyond the city limits of Tripoli seems fairly relevent with respect to how much the U.S. should have relied upon them to provide adequate security to our facilities in Benghazi.

Just what the purpose of the U.S. mission in Benghazi was is still very much an open question, the opening of an “American Corner” notwithstanding.  But its purpose(s) were (was?) of sufficient importance to the accomplishing of the larger goals of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya that:

- It was established in the first place (to the accompaniment of whatever security waivers and exceptions may have been necessary to do so); and

- It remained upon until it was destroyed; and

- Amb. Stevens believed it necessary to travel there on as inauspicious a date as the 11^th anniversary of 9/11.

Now, CAA is going to pull back the gauzy veil that obscures some of the nuts-and-bolts of actual diplomacy with some observations and caveats.

Caveat #1:  CAA doesn’t know what the purpose of the Benghazi mission (beyond what little can be found at the embassy website) was because it is not now nor has it ever been part of my professional portfolio.  If there’s some especially classified aspect to that mission, as a professional matter CAA has had no need-to-know.  So I don’t know.

Caveat #2:  As someone who’s held a top secret clearance since before he could legally drink hard liquer, CAA realized decades ago that the possession of certain secrets meant that forever after, with respect to some fields of endeavor, even my guesses could be considered to be classified information.  So there are quite a fews things about which, due to the meandering nature of what I laughingly describe as my “career path,” CAA does not speculate aloud.  And CAA certainly does not do so in public fora such as the internet.

Observation #1:  Technically, there are a few clearcut categories of U.S. diplomatic facilities located overseas:  embassies, consulates general, and consulates. 

(But real life is never that neat and clearly delineated.)

Observation #2:  Since the breakup of Yugoslavia (if not before) and U.S. intervention in the Balkans, the State Department came up with things called “U.S. Liaison Offices” (or “USLO”).  These were kinda/sorta consulates, in that they often performed the sorts of services usually associated with U.S. consulates, but were generally not intended as permanent facilities.  USLOs sometimes get upgraded into more-or-less permanent posts and become consulates or consulates general; other times they are eventually closed.  The U.S. has continued using this model in places like Iraq.

Observation #3:  Once upon a time, CAA used to go TDY from the U.S. and participate in surveys of various U.S. diplomatic facilities.  Never mind what kind of surveys:  the point is that my teams would visit every U.S. diplomatic office in a particular country.  Off the top of my head I did that in eight or nine countries around Africa and the Middle East.  In some of the countries where we had a largish diplomatic presence, we might have “official” Americans scattered in penny-parcels across a vast landscape, all of them falling under the authority of the chief of mission (i.e., the U.S. ambassador) and all of the going about the legitimate business of foreign affairs, international development, or military assistance (to list just three examples).

So I don’t find it especially mysterious or troubling that the U.S. had an official office-building in Benghazi that wasn’t formally flagged as a consulate (or consulate general) under a U.S. consul (or consul general).

Security Decisions, part the first

Before I wrote my "Foreign Service Family" post, I jotted down a list of possible topics to address concerning matters which I believed must arise from the Benghazi 9/11 attacks and their aftermath.

The topics were:  “Haste to Narrative,” “Calendar,” “War On Terror,” “Free Speech,” “Video,” “Intelligence Failure,” and “Security Decisions.”

Over the following weeks, most of these themes were addressed, in one fashion or another, by other bloggers, pundits, and commentators all around the blogosphere and in professional print and online media (to say nothing of TV and radio bloviators, bloviatrices, and bloviatrics).  Among others, I would direct you to We Meant Well, Diplopundit, DiploMad, and Life After Jerusalem.

Longtime friend and colleague TSB at The Skeptical Bureaucrat has covered topics relating to actual matters of security quite well.  Specifically, I commend for your reading the following:  "Did I Miss Much While I Was Gone?,""About That Non-Standard, Un-Fortress, Not-A-Consulate In Benghazi," "A Futile Exchange of Letters On Benghazi, But A Bit Of News About The ARB,""How Many Fortress Embassies?,""Benghazi - Not The Worst Place On The Planet,""A Couple Thoughts About the Benghazi Hearing," and "I Love the Smell Of Dip Notes In the Morning."

A great deal of confusion, unintentional if not otherwise, has cascaded from the events of last month.  Among those are the somewhat existential questions relating to the U.S. facility in Benghazi which was attacked and ultimately destroyed.  More than one TV talking head (but I repeat myself in a redundancy) called Benghazi an “embassy.”  An honest mistake, and one which is perfectly understandable given the miserably low levels of education and sophistication evident in today’s media “personalities.”

The U.S. Embassy in Libya is located in Tripoli.  A history of that mission may be found here.

There are no public links for the Benghazi facility but an article at the AmEmb Tripoli page calls it a “mission.”

I know:  what’s the difference?

Well, take it from me that there are a range of security standards and protection measures that apply to State Dept. facilities overseas.  While most are not actually classified, the standards and other regulatory documents themselves are not available for public dissemination.

Within the State Dept., there are two sets of documents which serve as regulations for how things are done.  They are the Foreign Affairs Manual(s) or “FAM” and the Foreign Affairs Handbook(s).  Essentially, the FAM sets out the regulations and the FAH explains in greater detail how to implement those regulations. 

Matters pertaining to diplomatic security are covered in the “12 FAM."

The specific handbook explaining physical security standards for overseas diplomatic facilities is 12 FAH 5.  Its contents aren’t for public dissemination but if you’re a State Dept. reader you already knew that or can research it on your own.

As TSB has pointed out, the procedures for obtaining waivers to security standards are explained in 12 FAM 315.

The point of all this errata is that several somebodies at various levels across more than one bureau (within State Dept.) had to go on record at various times to accomplish such things as deciding to have a DOS facility in Benghazi in the first place and then to sign-off as to what security standards were appropriate to that type of facility.

As as to “type,” that includes not just its purpose but whether its an existing facility (which it apparently was) or whether State built it “to code” (i.e., the highest possible security standards).

Reality rears its ugly head with regards to existing buildings.  There’s only so much that can be done to make a building more robust and attack-resistant.  And there are lots of ways to attack a facility, with there being to guarantees of absolute security no matter what you do to prepare.

TSB explained this quite well.

Some of it can be boiled-down to just two bullet-points, PowerPoint-style.

- Ultimately, the host government is responsible for protecting diplomatic facilities within its sovereign territory.  Blather about embassies and consulates being “sovereign U.S. soil” are so much b.s.  Under treaty and customary international law, embassies are “inviolable.”  They are not extraterritorial.

- Security measures, whether they are physical, electronic, active, passive, or armed, can only provide a measure degree of safety in terms of delaying an attacker until host government forces can restore order.  If the host government doesn’t have effective control of the location in question, than some hard decisions need to be made about whether to have a diplomatic facility there in the first place.

Foreign Service Family

The latest figures I’ve seen show State Dept. as having 16,631 Civil Service (i.e., GS or “General Schedule” and Senior Executive Service or SES) employees, 44,764 Locally-Engaged Staff (i.e., what used to be called “Foreign Service Nationals,”) who are predominantly foreign nationals but also FS family members employed at our missions overseas, and only 13,636 Foreign Service staff members, including both Foreign Service Specialists (FSS) and “Generalists.”

The Foreign Service is a very small corps, overall.  It’s been said, truthfully, in this and other fora that there are more Army bandsmen than U.S. diplomats, more military lawyers in the Pentagon, &tc.

Looked at through the other end of the telescope, it’s also something of a very large extended family.  We’re pretty spread out, it’s true, but we get our orientation, language, and professional training in the same place, through the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) at Arlington Hall.  Then we work in widely dispersed locations around the world or across the country, oftentimes living in the same buildings or on the same residential compounds with our co-workers (with your kids going to the same schools) before winging back to D.C. to work at “Main State” in Foggy Bottom (near the GWU campus) or one of the various State Annex facilities scattered around Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

After awhile, the “degrees of separation” narrow down pretty far, so that if you don’t know someone in the Foreign Service personally, from having worked or trained with them, chances are pretty good that someone you have worked or trained with has worked or trained with them.  Or your spouse has.

So when something like Benghazi happens, where a senior foreign service officer/ambassador like Chris Stevens is killed, along with a long-time Information Management Officer (IMO) like Sean Smith and two of our contract employees, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, it hits home.  It’s like four of your fellow citizens in small hometown were suddenly murdered.

There’s a sudden and visceral impact, something like hearing of casualties from another military unit within the same division.  You might not have known them yourself, but you know you’ve walked the same hallways, sat in the same classrooms, and have similar missions facing similar dangers.

Another of those factoids that comes up from time to time is how there have been more ambassadors killed in the line of duty, since World War II, than general officers or admirals.  That remains true.

(One columnist or commenter, I forget where, voiced the criticism that if, in a decade of warfare, not a single general has been killed, our senior military leaders are leading from too far behind.)

Much of Main State emptied out, apparently, in order to be bused to Andrews AFB for attendance at a sort of ceremonial or memorial reception of the four caskets containing our fallen diplomats.   It was pretty well-attended, by all accounts, although marred somewhat by the behavior of those who simply had, in contravention of their instructions, to raise their arms in a sort of fascist salute as they took cell phone pictures.

(And don’t quibble with about whether our two ex-SEAL colleagues count as diplomats.  If they were part of our diplomatic mission in Libya, that’s good enough for me.)

re: "What do you do with a "problem" like Peter Van Buren? Take away his badge, escort him out, bar the door, throw away the key and ...."

Domani Spero at Diplopundit (" one of the best niche blogs for Foreign Service folks ") considered Mr. Van Buren's situation last October.

Money quote(s):

"Mr. Van Buren was escorted out of the State Department on Monday and barred from returning while officials there decide what to do next with him. Our own source said that Mr. Van Buren has been placed on administrative leave for the next couple of weeks. Admin leave is like “we’ll pay you so we don’t have to see you.” I supposed that’s until they can find the citation in the FAM that would fit this “problem.” Mr. Van Buren’s current assignment reportedly had also been curtailed. If true, that means they just took away his desk and chair, too. So even if he is allowed to return after his admin leave, he won’t actually have a job to return to."

&

"Mr. Van Buren’s book is highly critical of the State Department’s work in Iraq, the accompanying blog, just as critical. Not sure if the punishment is for the book, the blog, or for both. No one would speak on the record. The suspension letter did not cite the book, but did cite as one of the author’s faults, “an unwillingness to comply with Department rules and regulations regarding writing and speaking on matters of official concern.”

This is the first time, as far as memory goes, that the State Department had actually yanked somebody’s clearance over “publishing articles and blog posts on such matters without submitting them to the Department for review.” Whereas, in the past, I was aware of the shock factor in threatening bloggers with this in-house version of the “nuclear” option, this is the first time where somebody actually pushed the red button. And in a very public way. "

&

"(A)lthough Mr. Van Buren is the first ever blogger escorted out of the building, he was only the latest casualty in the tigers can bite you escapades inside the State Department. Some FS bloggers have been unable to get suitable ongoing assignments – or even normal responses to their bid lists. As one recently told me, “these officers have not asked for extraordinary favors: just regular, humdrum postings that fall comfortably within the bidding rules, that are not heavily bid or bid on by superstars, and for which they are completely competent. ….they have heard only silence.”

Assignment issues, blogger disappearances and PVB’s case undoubtedly will bring a big chill to the FS blogosphere. Don’t be shocked if folks go back to the 50′s and start hiding their journals under their pillows, as was quaintly suggested elsewhere."

CAA has not, to date, suffered any noticeable adverse career impact due to blogging.

"I think it must be said that the State Department handled the book clearance badly. Somebody should have owned up to the snafu instead of gunning after the author. The 30-day timeline for clearing the book lapsed. It was not the author’s fault regardless of whether or not the person responsible for clearance had a meltdown, a baby, was sick or was on vacation. But State like any old and cumbersome bureaucracy is loath to admit to its own mistakes. They cleared Condi’s book within the 30-day timeline, yet Mr. Van Buren’s book was not afforded the same courtesy. The State Department, in short, broke its own clearance procedure. And when Mr. Van Buren published the book as allowed under its own regulations in the Foreign Affairs Manual (FAM), a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State accused him of “unauthorized disclosures of classified information,” and asked his publisher for redactions six days before the book hit the stores. Can you imagine them doing that to Secretary Rice’s book? Nope. Big fry, small fry; are there different rules?"

Different spanks for different ranks. It's sort of like the Air Force that way.

"(G)iven the potential fallout from a book about reconstruction in what has always been an unpopular, contentious war, and given how much money we’re spending on reconstruction projects over in Iraq, somebody higher than a Deputy Assistant Secretary should have read the book, cleared his/her calendar and spoke privately with the author. Instead of sending the tigers with sharp teeth. I have not meet Mr. Van Buren in person, and he may be far from cutesy and cuddly, but he has written a vivid, engaging account of our reconstruction debacle in Iraq seasoned with absurdities, great and small. To dismiss him as nothing but a disgruntled employee is just plain brainless. Public opinion is already against the Iraq war. Add to that the rest of the domestic headaches that the American taxpayers have been suffering in the last several years. And what do you get? A public relation disaster, with the State Department as the big, bad growling tiger in a starring role. It does not help that State appears to be acting like a big, bad growling tiger trying to eat an angry mouse. "

Overkill much?

"(S)omebody from the Seventh Floor should have attempted to speak with him. He, after all, spent 23 years with the State Department and cared enough to write the Iraq Experience down in a book. With his name on it. Not even the folks interviewed by USIP were willing to put their names down in that Oral History Project. But no one bothered to speak with him. A DAS alleging his disclosure of classified info did eventually write to him, albeit belatedly, and not really to listen to what he had to say.

It’s as if the State Department is proud of all its smart people except for those with the guts to speak up, or write a critical book. Or are they only proud of our smart diplomats when they dissent in private, in a channel that the American public never ever gets to hear, and that which the organization is free to ignore? The guy who talks too much not only gets a good hearing in my book, he or she should be afforded an opportunity to contribute in fixing the problems that he cites. No, we do not shoot the messengers in our book. Most especially if they are bearing bad news. But that’s us. Unfortunately, that is often the case in the bureaucracy, the State Department perhaps more so than most. A dead messenger is a good messenger, no news is good news. "

BTW, the "Seventh Floor" is the part of Main State where all the under secretaries, deputy secretaries, and the secstate have their offices.

10/28

re: "The Scourge of Clientitis"

CAROLINE GLICK re-posted a Jerusalem Post article at Big Peace.

Money quote(s):

"For many years, observers of the US State Department on both sides of the American political spectrum have agreed that State Department officials suffer from a malady referred to as "clientitis." Clientitis is generally defined as a state of mind in which representatives of an organization confuse their roles.

Rather than advance the cause of their organization to outside organizations, they represent the interests of outside organizations to their own organizations."

As Ms. Glick correctly observed, the accusation of "clientitis" is not exactly new.

CAA was just a young(er) junior FSO, still in orientation, the first time he heard the story of the "Schultz test."

("Twenty years ago, the then Secretary of State George Schultz used to welcome the Reagan administration’s ambassadorial appointments to his office and invite each chap to identify his country on the map. The guy who’d just landed the embassy in Chad would invariably point to Chad. ‘No,’ Schultz would say, ‘this is your country’ — and point to the United States." - Mark Steyn via Ed Driscoll.com)

That's a very good point to make to new FSOs. In intelligence work, the caution is to "don't fall in love with your source." In other words, keep your objectivity and remember who you work for.

The hazard is especially pernicious because part of a diplomat's job is to serve as a conduit for communication from the client (or target).

"Diplomats who speak to foreign government officials on a daily basis often simply ignore the context in which these foreigners operate. They become friends with their interlocutors and forget that the latter are also agents of their governments tasked with promoting foreign interests in their dealings with US diplomats."

It can happen. Part of the context in which a diplomat operates is that the whole point of face-to-face diplomacy is establishing personal connections and relationships with foreigners, official or otherwise.

"Since the scourge of clientitis among diplomats is widely recognized, governments are often able to consider its impact on diplomats when they weigh the credibility or wisdom of recommendations presented by their professional diplomats.

LESS WELL recognized and therefore largely unconsidered is how clientitis has negatively impacted the positions of military commanders.

Clientitis first became prevalent in the US Armed Forces and the IDF in the 1990s. In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, the Clinton administration began transforming in earnest the US armed forces' role from war fighting to nation building."

&

"Since September 11, 2011, the US military has vastly expanded its nation building roles around the world. US military commanders are promoted more for prowess in acting as diplomats-in-uniform than for their capacity to train and employ soldiers to kill and defeat the enemy. Commanders deployed to train the al-Qaida-infested Yemeni or Afghan militaries; liaise with the Hizbullah-dominated Lebanese Armed Forces; or train the Iranian-penetrated Iraqi military have little personal incentive to warn against these missions.

So, too, in working with their local counterparts on a daily basis, like their State Department colleagues, these US military officers have a marked tendency to ignore the broader context in which their local colleagues operate. And so, like their civilian colleagues at the US embassies in these countries, military commanders have a tendency to become the representatives of their foreign counterparts to the Pentagon and to Congress."

Again, concomitant with their "diplomats-in-uniform" role, military commanders working with local colleagues are supposed to serve as conduits for information, and communication, between those local colleagues and their own governments.

(Of course, that shouldn't be their sole function.)

"THE IDEA that governments gain leverage over other governments by assisting them is not a new one. And it is certainly true. However, in all cases, the leverage gained by assisting foreign governments owes entirely to the other governments' understanding that such assistance can and will be ended if they fail to meet certain benchmarks of behavior that are dictated from the outset.

Once a government's threat of aid cut-off to another government is removed or is no longer credible, then the leverage the provision of aid afforded that government is lost."

Ayup. Just like negotiating a treaty or other agreement: if you're not willing to walk away from the table, then you're a hostage, not a diplomat.

"Proof that a state's ability to leverage its foreign aid owes entirely to the credibility of a threat to cut off that aid came earlier this month in the aftermath of UNESCO's decision to grant full state membership to "Palestine." Due to US law, the Obama administration had no choice but to cut off all US funding to UNESCO in response to the move. As a consequence, the PLO's bid to gain full membership in other UN institutions has floundered.

Not wishing to suffer UNESCO's fate, no other UN institutions are willing to repeat UNESCO's action. And so the Palestinians' great victory at UNESCO has become a Pyrrhic one. "

The U.S. doesn't pay for as much of the UN as the average American citizen probably thinks (75-100 percent?), but it's still a very significant amount, somewhere between 20-30 percent. The threatened withholding of which would certainly tend to focus the attention of UN staffers whose salaries are paid from member countries' assessments.

"(B)ecause the law is not subject to interpretation, US leverage over the UN actually increased in the aftermath of the UNESCO vote. Recognizing that actions have consequences, other UN agencies have buried plans of granting membership to "Palestine.""

Bureaucracies can learn. (Just like mules.)

"Governments must give due consideration to the positions of their professional diplomats and military commanders as well as to those of allied countries when they weigh various policy options. But while doing so, legislators and policymakers must also take into account the built-in biases influencing the judgment of these professionals. Clientitis is a serious impediment to good judgment. And it is found wherever professionals are charged with building relationships, rather than achieving concrete goals."

That's true as far as it goes, but policymakers and other elected/appointed officials would do well not wholly discount the counsel of their on-the-ground representatives.

11/23

re: "State Spreads Obama Book Plague Worldwide"

Jack Cashill at American Thinker (" a daily internet publication devoted to the thoughtful exploration of issues of importance to Americans ") noted a State Department procurement.

Money quote(s):

"(W)e learn that out State Department will be spending $70,000 we don't have to stock "key libraries" around the world with copies of Barack Obama's books, most notably his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father.

There are problems with this scenario beyond the fact that we will have to borrow the money from the People's Republic to pay for them. For one, Obama gets a cut out of that action. This has to violate some law, if not lots of them."

Not being an attorney, CAA can't comment on the legality of the thing.

CAA would note having seen, as the Washington Times article described, copies of one or another of the president's books being given as gratuities (i.e., gifts).

That sort of thing makes me cringe at least as much as hearing otherwise sober and thoughtful diplomats blather on about global warming, &tc.

10/26

re: "Is the United States a Militaristic Imperialists Nation?"

TOWNIE 76 at OP-FOR examined the continued usefulness of regional combatant commands.

Money quote(s):

"Several weeks ago, Tom Dispatch published an extended article on the shadow war in Africa. In part it questioned why the United States military has divided the world into six fiefdoms or Combatant Commands."

Note to State Dept. readers: don't click on any of the Tom Dispatch links since you'll just get one of those scary "wikileaks" warning notices.

"The short answer is they are a continuation of our division of the world during World War II into Theaters of War. In fact they are often referred to as Theaters by today’s military. But that is not the sole reason. The United States being the dominate Western partner in our Cold War against global communism required the ability to establish priorities for the employment of our military. Lastly, today’s Combatant Commands and the defined power of the Commander[1], is an outgrowth of the debacle that was Grenada and Lebanon in the early 80’s. In the case of Grenada it was each service Chief adding their forces to the mix resulting in a Cluster Firetruck. In the case of Lebanon it was the failure of United State European Command to accept responsibility of the bombing in Beirut that left countless Marines dead. As a result in the Goldwater-Nichols Act the power of the services over operational matters was severely constrained and the Combatant Commanders were ultimately responsible for determining which military capabilities were required for a specific operation."

Townie76 noted three consequences of the above, including these two:

"(T)he Combatant Commanders have become de Facto Pro Counsels (sic) for their respective Regional Commands. In many cases they are the representatives of the United States Government who have the most exposure in their particular Theater. As such Military Power has become the dominat (sic) element of the United States National Power (Diplomatic, Informational, Military, Economic.)

Second, the Department of Defense regional division of the world differs from the Department of State regional division of the world. Thus the Department of State Regional Director for Near East must coordinate diplomatic activities in two Combatant Commanders Areas of Responsibility (Africa Command and Central Command). More importantly, while attempted with Africa Command, there is generally no high ranking member of the Foreign Service within the Headquarters of the Regional Combatant Commands. The only presence in the Regional Combatant Commands is the Political Advisor who is a Senior Member of the Foreign Service but from my experience has little influence inside the State Department."

The morphing of military commanders into imperial proconsuls is a criticism that's been leveled before, going back many years. Combatant commanders used to be called commanders-in-chief until the point was made, forcibly, that under the Constitution there is only one commander-in-chief.

Political advisors, despite their relatively high rank within the Foreign Service (i.e., flag or general officer equivalents) encumber positions which are, not surprisingly, advisory. They exist within the combatant command's headquarters, without bringing any non-DoD resources to the table other than their own expertise, as staff officers.

(This is not meant as a criticism, only to realistically define their role.)

"The question that should be debated not only by the military but also by an informed citizenry is the organization of the Regional Combatant Commands making the United States imperialistic in the execution of its foreign policy?

I have believed for a long time that there is a need for a new National Security Act for the 21^st Century.[2] Among the provision I would like to see is the common alignment of Regions across the entire federal government. While there may be arguments for different divisions it seems that a whole government approach would benefit from all the players reading off the same script. I think it also time to consider rather than having the Department of Defense Combatant Commanders being the lead that perhaps it is time of the Department of State to take the lead."

7/29

re: "Darwinian Tourism Still Thrives In Egypt"

DMartyr at The Jawa Report ("Sand people: get it?") accounted for two American tourists who went missing in Egypt.

Money quote(s):

"Many parts of the world are not a safe place for foreigners. We, living in America, tend to take security for granted. Travel the world, enjoy your life. Just use a little common sense."

Many places in the world are no more dangerous than your home town. The dangers in those places, however, will often take forms different from the hazards you routinely avoid in your everyday life.

Of course, some places are way more dangerous than your home town.

Americans planning overseas travel would do well always and everywhere to take a lot at the Country Specific Information that the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs takes such pains to compile and update.

2/3

re: "Abu Muqawama: State, USAID Must Learn From Afghanistan Errors"

Andrew Exum wrote an article for WPR ("World Politics Review") that anyone in a position of leadership at State Dept. really ought to read.

Money quote(s):

"No one escapes criticism in Chandrasekaran's narrative, this columnist included, but the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Marine Corps come under especially heavy fire.

The reaction from the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. military as a whole has been to add the book and its criticisms to the list of lessons that need to be learned from the disastrous U.S. experience in Afghanistan. The State Department and USAID, by contrast, have reacted angrily to Chandrasekaran's account, blaming the messenger rather than looking into what they might learn from the message."

&

"Since at least the First Gulf War, American society has raised the U.S. military onto a pedestal, constantly praising the military, even when its performance has been, by objective standards, not terribly great. Is it any wonder U.S. military leaders feel they have room for introspection and self-criticism?

The State Department rarely garners similar praise from the American people or its elected leaders. Republican congressmen on Capitol Hill talk a big game on national security and vow never to cut the military's budget, while at the same time threatening to slash the International Affairs budget by 20 percent. U.S. military officers and troops are held up as the best of what America has to offer, while diplomats . . . well, few Americans are quite sure of what diplomats even do.

That's a pity because, despite bungling the admittedly challenging Afghanistan mission, the State Department has a pretty good story to tell about itself." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

It's one of those perennial delusion of the American body politic: that foreign aid and diplomacy (State and USAID) are where all the money goes, when quite the reverse is true.

(This is not to say that the dollar amounts aren't large, from any individual citizen's perspective. It's certainly more than I'll ever have in my wallet or bank account. Even my Swiss and Caymen accounts. But they amount to rounding errors in the context of the federal budget as a whole.)

"One of the illicit delights of reading the WikiLeaks cables has been to discover what wonderful diplomats the United States has in its service. The reports written by U.S. ambassadors and their subordinates are knowledgeable, literate, pithy and often amusing. They confirm, in a larger sample size, my anecdotal experiences visiting embassies around the globe. I remember, for example, spending an afternoon with the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh in 2010 and being blown away by the competence and professionalism of the staff. Many foreign service officers were on their third tours in the country, and even the newest officer -- charged with running the motor pool, of all things -- spoke fluent classical Arabic as well as several dialects."

CAA has not, of course, actually read anything at the Wikileaks site. That's still a no-no.

But CAA did read a few of the articles which were written about those State cables which were leaked, and they tended to echo Mr. Exum's impression: well-written, insightful, and honest; telling "truth to power" as it were.

And as for the motor pool officer.... it's helpful, in foreign countries, if the guy in charge of the motor pool's drivers and mechanics can actually speak their language. That tends to help with little things like telling them what you want them to do.

"Unfortunately, the State Department is not very good at telling its story to either the U.S. Congress or the American people. When people effectively stand up for the budget of the State Department and make the case for a larger International Affairs budget, it is too often either U.S. military officers or conservative, "pro-military" defense intellectuals. The State Department and its foreign service officers deserve some of the blame here. I recently finished John Lewis Gaddis’ biography of George F. Kennan, and Kennan’s life is a reminder that those Americans who are most knowledgeable about other cultures can often be the most contemptuous and ignorant of U.S. domestic political culture. Foreign service officers who do not hesitate to spend endless afternoons drinking chai with Central Asian warlords somehow can't, by and large, stomach the occasional coffee with a junior congressman from Nebraska." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

State has gotten better, having taken a leaf from the DoD and individual uniformed services books and established a permanent liaison presence on Capitol Hill itself, for both houses of Congress. Those folks work daily to increase Congresional awareness of what State (and the Foreign Service) have to offer them in terms that they understand, such as helping members of Congress in providing constituent services (to use a consular example).

So I'm not sure what Mr. Exum means in terms of avoiding coffee with congressmen. For FSOs abroad, generally the last thing visiting CODELs want to do is talk with U.S. diplomats so when they're abroad finding facts. They can talk to State Dept. people when they're in Washington, by gum!

"The result is that the State Department as an organization constantly feels that it is under pressure and underappreciated by its appropriators. We should not wonder, then, why such an organization fails to be introspective or critical of itself. That shortchanges both America and the State Department"

&

"A military can defend -- or learn from -- its performance during a war, but diplomats and aid workers can rarely demonstrate how their efforts toward conflict-prevention preclude a need for the military to get involved in the first place. And the efforts of diplomats and aid workers rarely benefit the economies of congressional districts in the same way military bases or the arms industry does.

Nonetheless, if the State Department and USAID are ever going to have the confidence to be as self-critical as the U.S. military, they have to better sell their efforts to the American people and its representatives in Washington."

It's like Al Pacino said in The Recruit: "Our failures are known. Our successes...are not." When a country doesn't fall apart, collapse into civil war, or things don't otherwise get worse; was that because the U.S. was effective in that country or would it have happened anyways. It's always hard to prove a negative.

That being said, as a consular manager, CAA likes to take whatever opportunities he can to garner a little American good will for the State Department, for the Foreign Service, and of course for the dedicated and wonderful people who make up what used to be called the Consular Service.

How to do that? Well, in terms of Congress itself and congress members specifically, be timely and appropriately respectful in responding to congressional inquiries. This should be a given, of course, but it should at least be mentioned.

Some parts of the federal government think that stonewalling or otherwise blowing off questions or requests from the people who vote on their agency's budgets is a good idea. I've never gotten that impression about State, but let's not slack off on this.

Have an office SOP (standard operating procedure) for responding to congressional inquiries which includes things like setting a suspense date when they're received, some simple process for recording and tracking each inquiry's progress, an easily understood scheme for assigning individual responsibility for researching and then drafting a response, and some form of review process by a manager.

CAA likes for the staff under his supervision to have as much "ownership" of their caseload as is practical. So if an inquiry has to do with a particular employees caseload or portfolio, such as a visa case that they handled themselves, then CAA would always have that FSO research and draft the response.

For one thing, every FSO should know how to correctly write an official letter to a congressmen using the correct protocol and forms of address. This is pretty basic stuff, but there's nothing like doing it to gain familiarity and a level of professional comfort.

For another thing, CAA believes in empowering subordinates. This goes along with owning your portfolio or caseload. Supervisors and leaders should set goals, set standards, and then get the Hell out of the way and not micro-manage if they can avoid it. Sometimes being a leader means butting back into a particular case, but if your staff is properly trained (and HR didn't send you an idiot), this shouldn't happen all that often.

Proper formats for responses, including standard language (i.e., boilerplate) should be standardized and readily available for FSO (or local staff) to consult or plagiarize.

And CAA's FSO staff could put their own signature block on their responses if they wanted, or CAA would put his; however the FSO was most comfortable. In some cases, it will be wiser to put a more senior person's name on it, but when that happens it's best to explain to your FSOs why you made that decision.

An example is when an inquiry may be controversial and you want to divert any lightning bolts from Mount Olympus away from your junior officers.

(If you're the leader, providing top cover to your followers is just part of why they pay you the big bucks, after all.)

CAA also likes to respond to congressional inquiries in the medium by which they are received. If an inquiry comes in electronically, then by email shall it be answered; but with a hard copy to follow by mail.

In fact, CAA used to send an electronic copy of his office's responses as email attachments even when the inquiry itself arrived in hard copy, just to let the congressional offices know that a response to their question was on its way, with a sneak preview so they weren't being held in suspense or anything.

CAA once dated a congressional staffer who had as a major part of her responsibilities the logging and tracking of correspondence her congress member's office received, much of which fell under the heading of congressional inquiries that were relayed to individual agencies.

(This was a few years before meeting Mrs. CAA, but that's not really germane.)

The point is that the handling of such matters is a core function of any congressional office. So FSOs would be wise to bear that in mind.

The further point is that good congressmen know how to field requests and questions by their constituents, and like good players of America's pastime, they know how to field the balls that come their way.

So FSOs need to do the same, and with the same understanding of their importance. They really do come from the people who pay our salaries and they are routed to us by the people who set those salaries.

(There are other ways FSOs can implement outreach to congress or the U.S. citizens, but that'll have to wait for another post on another day.)

7/25