Over-militarized and out of control

By PHK

You get what you pay for.

Just one of the many out-of-control things that have occurred over the six years of the Bush Administration and its compliant and complacent Republican majority Congress is the increasing militarization of American Embassies abroad. It’s ironic that the report that discloses this problem was written by the Republican staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – but then their boss, outgoing Committee Chair Senator Richard Lugar is far more of a foreign policy realist than the right-wing, smash‘em - bash’em, might-makes-right zealots in the White House and the Committee often stresses preference for diplomacy over the not necessarily productive "military solution" to foreign affairs problems.

Just wish the study had been conducted and reported on a year or more ago.

The flip-side of this problem is probably also reflected in the apparent inability of the State Department to find enough qualified professional staff among its ranks willing and able to serve at our ever less secure fortress Embassy in the Emerald City on the Tigris. Foggy Bottom’s Green Zone staffing difficulties were reported in the Washington Times last week by the paper’s State Department correspondent Nick Kralev. I suspect he’s got the thrust of the story right despite objections to the contrary from the Director General of the Foreign Service. From what I’ve seen, Nick’s too careful a reporter and too plugged in at State to go off on unsubstantiated tangents.

Once upon a time, the US had a career diplomatic service that was primarily composed of professionals who worked for the Department of State. Civilian embassy professionals also came from the U.S Information Agency, the U.S Agency for International Development, the Commerce Department and the Central Intelligence Agency among others. There still is a professional Foreign Service, but its ranks were thinned during the 1990s. Those cadres have only partially been rebuilt since 9/11 and that happened during Colin Powell’s tenure as Secretary of State. Condoleezza Rice has done nothing except shift positions and people from one country to another in reality exchanging one gap for another in a widely publicized and oversold game of musical chairs begun last spring.

Until Rumsfeld, all Embassy staff reported to the Ambassador who reported to the Secretary of State and on occasion to the president. Everyone, bar none – including CIA station chiefs and military attaches as far as I remember – reported to the U.S. Ambassador although there were ways dissent could be registered and separate agencies retained much budgetary and personnel control over their own operations.

During the Vietnam War, a substantial number of State Department, USIA and USAID Foreign Service Officers also served in CORDS, the provincial reconstruction teams located in the towns and villages throughout the south. But then there were far more Foreign Service Officers in the 1960s available to participate in such teams than in Iraq now.

Throughout the years, public diplomacy was handled by people like PLS and me: our training and our mission was to explain and put into context American policies and American society for foreigners who did not necessarily know us like the backs-of-their hands. American Cultural Centers, Binational Centers and USIS Libraries were often our institutional mainstays.

True, for all of my career and most of Pat’s, we worked for the U.S. Information Agency, a separately funded and staffed US governmental institution, but USIA always took policy direction from the State Department. Public diplomacy officers did not freelance and they were normally trained in the language and culture of the country in which they served.

As you may already know, PLS is a South Asia language and area specialist – she went there first as a Fulbrighter then later as a Foreign Service Officer. She spent much of her career working in India or Pakistan – although she has also served in Indonesia, Nigeria, the Dominican Republic and been a freelance reporter in the Soviet Union. My background is southeast Europe (Greece in particular), the Soviet Union, Finland, Thailand and the Philippines.

Never once in more than 27 years in the Foreign Service including in countries with large U.S. military contingents do I remember a military that thought it should become the Embassy’s public face in the ways New York Times reporter Mark Mazzetti describes are happening now.

“The Pentagon has the money and calls the shots” – Andrew Bacevich

I understand the military’s frustrations with the paucity of State Department public diplomacy and other Embassy support abroad. But let’s get this straight: The Pentagon and the US military have mushroomed under the Bush administration. Further, under Rumsfeld, the military has taken on more and more functions previously handled by various civilian agencies that have been annihilated, decapitated or reduced - at least in comparison - to skeletons of their former selves. This is particularly true in terms of public diplomacy, or in US military parlance, public information.

State has turned into ever more the pygmy in comparison with the five-cornered behemoth on the Potomac while the smashing of the once coherent civilian public diplomacy effort under the previously nimble USIA continues to be an unmitigated disaster.

It is no wonder then that the military complains that U.S. Embassies have been “reduced to a skeleton crew of civilians” and robustly barges in to fill the vacuum. There are, however, a number of tasks that our civilian foreign affairs agencies can do far more cost- effectively, more credibly, more professionally and less obtrusively abroad.

For this to happen, however, a fundamental shift in mind-set and US policies must come first in which diplomacy – not tanks - plays a far more central role. This is a primary recommendation of the Iraq Study Group and a major reason why I support much of its report.

To do this effectively, the U.S. will need to rebuild its tattered professional civilian foreign affairs institutions and staffs that have been left to wither on the vine. This needs to begin now.

Meanwhile, the US military is calling for ever expanded budgets and larger enlistment quotas because the tasks assigned have the existing structure vastly over-stretched and under severe strain. Not to mention those contemplated and sometimes unsavory assignments for which it is being asked to prepare.

I wonder though how much of this would be necessary if the administration tried diplomacy for a change.

Comments

[PLS]

The shift-'em-around posting strategy for foreign service officers is paralled by the Bush approach to crises in Iraq: pull US troops out of one place to extinguish a flare up in another place, leaving unprotected a city/neighborhood/province that's inevitably set alit again once the US contingent is gone. Then, of course, US troops have to return and repacify the abandoned position, leaving the most recently pacified site to rekindle, etc., etc., ad nauseaum.

[Ken Larson]

There are good points in your article. I would like to supplement them with some information:

I am a 2 tour Vietnam Veteran who recently retired after 36 years of working in the Defense Industrial Complex on many of the weapons systems being used by our forces as we speak.

If you are interested in a view of the inside of the Pentagon procurement process from Vietnam to Iraq please check the posting at my blog entitled, “Odyssey of Armaments”

http://www.rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com

The Pentagon is a giant, incredibly complex establishment, budgeted in excess of $500B per year. The Rumsfelds, the Administrations and the Congressmen come and go but the real machinery of policy and procurement keeps grinding away, presenting the politicos who arrive with detail and alternatives slanted to perpetuate itself.

How can any newcomer, be he a President, a Congressman or even the new Sec. Def.Mr. Gates, understand such complexity, particularly if heretofore he has not had the clearance to get the full details?

Answer- he can’t. Therefore he accepts the alternatives provided by the career establishment that never goes away and he hopes he makes the right choices. Or he is influenced by a lobbyist or two representing companies in his district or special interest groups.

From a practical standpoint, policy and war decisions are made far below the levels of the talking heads who take the heat or the credit for the results.

This situation is unfortunate but it is absolute fact. Take it from one who has been to war and worked in the establishment.

This giant policy making and war machine will eventually come apart and have to be put back together to operate smaller, leaner and on less fuel. But that won’t happen until it hits a brick wall at high speed.

We will then have to run a Volkswagen instead of a Caddy and get along somehow. We better start practicing now and get off our high horse. Our golden aura in the world is beginning to dull from arrogance.