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Turkey: A Look In From the Outside

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that the Turkish police had arrested two retired generals, the head of Ankara’s main business lobby and 21 others affiliated with an ultra-right wing group in a failed coup plot against the Turkish government.

Military takeovers in Turkey were part of the political landscape for years but, if I remember correctly, they were normally restricted to the highest ranks of the active duty Turkish armed forces. They were usually successful. They only occurred when actions by civilian politicians threatened to destroy the country and, as a consequence, they also had considerable popular support.

This week’s reported coup plot and the arrests made met none of those criteria.

That was then . . .

When I first visited Turkey in January 1979, the country was on the verge of collapse. The economy was in shambles. Gas lines were long, inflation was rampant, trading on the black market for dollars was ubiquitous, even coffee – that staple of all Turkish staples – was scarce. The migration of villagers from the plains and mountains of Anatolia to the slums of Istanbul in search of a better life had already begun and the country’s infrastructure and leaders couldn’t cope with the strains.

The political system was in chaos: caught between ultra right and extreme left – street fights and murders had become all too common place. Eighteen months later – when I was filling in for three weeks on the Turkish desk at the then US Information Agency, the military moved in and restored order ushering in – as it turned out – the beginning of a new and far more prosperous and stable era.

This is now. . .

Since then Turkey – and Turkish politics – have come a long way despite ups and downs, slips and slides. Yet, every so often the Turkish political system confronts a crisis as is happening again this summer. This latest crisis – in which the Constitutional Court has not only been asked to declare the ruling moderate Islamist party illegal and ban the government’s leaders from power but has also agreed to rule on this contentious issue - is unlike any this country has ever confronted. The Bloomberg report hints, at least, that the recent arrests may be the government’s response to its establishment challengers.

A changing Turkey

Yet, what is less understood is that the rules of the game – and some of the players themselves - have changed because over the past decades Turkish society itself has substantially changed. As a result, even banning the ruling party and its leaders will not, repeat not, eliminate moderate Islamists from the Turkish political scene.

When in the Course of human events...

by Cheryl Rofer

The Los Angeles Times has annotated the Declaration of Independence in today's mode, with hyperlinks.

Check it out. Even if you don't click on the links, it's worth reading again.

America's Unsuccessful War in Pakistan

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Pakistan is the world’s sixth largest country, with a population of nearly 168,000,000 people, most of them Muslims, which means there are multiple deeply held divergences in the interpretation and practice of Islam, although these chasms may disappear when outside force is applied—U.S. force included. To understand this dynamic, Americans might remember how bipartisanship crops up when external threats appear. So Americans should not be surprised that even relatively secular urban Pakistanis are not enthusiastic about American efforts to vigorously pursue or eradicate “Islamist insurgents” within their northern borderland. There is certainly a problem of law and order in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a problem that is acquiring urgency because the ferment is spilling out and into other parts of Pakistan. Terrorists have threatened Islamabad and Lahore as well as the ever volatile megacity of Karachi, for example. Above all, longstanding, largely tacit understandings about cultural autonomy and spheres of influence within and across national boundaries have been abused and violated by many players.

But employing the Pakistani Army to slaughter unruly tribals by the hundreds or thousands in order to pluck Osama bin laden, America’s Enemy Number One, out of his mountainous safe haven would appear, to most Pakistanis, like swatting a fly with an atom bomb: a strategy certain to do more harm than good. And Pakistan is jealous of its sovereignty.

“Half of all Pakistanis want their government to negotiate and not fight Al Qaeda, with less than a third saying military action by the Pakistani government is called for,” according to a recent poll by Terror Free Tomorrow. They'd prefer to negotiate with the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban, too. Some 73 per cent of those polled said that “the real purpose of [America's] war on terror is to weaken the Muslim world and dominate Pakistan.” Part of me wonders if a more effective Public Diplomacy effort might have led to less negativity. Part of me replies, "It's the policy, stupid."

American policymakers should pay attention to such disheartening poll results. Pakistan, as a semi-cooperative ally, is endlessly exasperating to American policy makers. Pakistan as a sullen ex-ally would be far worse, and all it would take to accomplish such a divorce is the capture and public parading of a few U.S. special forces operatives nabbed on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan. The furor over America's border-crossing bombs, called in to kill alleged insurgents who turned out to be Pakistan Border Corps troops, of whom 11 died, gives a tiny hint of the likely reaction. American popularity in Pakistan is at an all time low these days, while sympathy for Al Qaeda’s goals, if not the violence with which those goals are pursued, is rising. Thus, the secular elite that has been governing Pakistan since its inception is increasingly under siege. To stay in power the non-religious parties must maintain their nationalist if not their Islamist credentials. A popular way of criticizing Pervez Musharraf, George W. Bush’s increasingly marginalized ally in the “war against terror,” is to call him an American tool.

Hands Across the Border

Once upon a time India served as the juicy scapegoat for Pakistan’s nationalists, and not so long ago outside observers worried that India (or Pakistan) might inadvertently (or intentionally) lob a nuclear device across the border. To defend the brand new country against the threat of Indian irredentism is what the Pakistan army was created for. And why did Pakistan originally encourage the activities of violent Islamists who are now, in classic blowback fashion, threatening a form of Islamic revolution within Pakistan itself? Why, to weaken India on the cheap, by forcing New Delhi to deal with incessant insurgency in Muslim majority Kashmir.

But things may be changing on the Indian front. When asked the tired old question as to whether a “foreign hand” might be “fanning trouble in the tribal belt,” Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani replied “yes.” Yet India wasn’t named this time. The alleged culprits were “some foreigners from Central Asian States.” No doubt American policymakers would have preferred a Gilani diatribe against Arabs, as in Osama bin Laden, or Egyptians, as in Aymen Al Zawahri, but the latest series of talks between India and Pakistan seem to be achieving some degree of trust between the traditional enemies. The still wary neighbors are discussing peach and security, confidence building measures in Kashmir, economic ties, prisoner exchanges and anti-terrorism.

Better yet, from that point of view, a recent editorial in Dawn applauds the new sanity:

....detente between Indian and Pakistan will impact positively on global politics. With no signs of Islamabad winning the “war on terror” in the immediate future and the militants recognizing no borders, a wise strategy demands that India and Pakistan join hands in their security endeavour.

However, the Dawn editorial ends with a twist that may not please Washington:

In that context their agreement...to hold meetings of their anti-terrorism mechanism regularly is encouraging. It would also reduce Islamabad’s dependence on Washington in world politics.

Speaking of Washington, when asked about making Pakistan’s Dr. Strangelove, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, available for further interrogation from IAEA as a result of recently uncovered evidence that his one-man proliferation operation was even more generous than previously known, Gilani said, “the issue of Dr. Qadeer is over.” This will displease the Americans. So will Gilani’s present position on the Pakistani nuclear weapons program: “we are not a rogue state and are neither indulging in an arms race with any one” although “minimum deterrence will be maintained in this regard.

Desperately Seeking Bin Laden

Above all, the Americans are definitely not happy with Pakistan’s failure to nab Osama bin Laden or to permit American forces to nip over the border from Afghanistan to do the job for them.

Here's the Video

by Cheryl Rofer

via Barron YoungSmith and Kevin Drum.

But Kevin, Barron has it, well, not quite right.

It's not "largely irreversible." There are other possible ways to cool the Yongbyon reactor, as was pointed out not totally convincingly in the release of information about that Syrian building the Israelis targeted.

I know, we all like to think of those hyperboloid towers as emblematic of and essential to nuclear plants. But they just run cooling water through them to get rid of the excess heat a power plant produces. They're on coal plants as well, and sometimes industrial plants.

It would be more irreversible to fill the reactor vessel with concrete. That would be irreversible.

And any country can throw the inspectors out, any time. They're just people, not even armed.

But I hate to seem to be coming out on the side of John Bolton.

It's a good thing that this was done, in both practical and symbolic ways. Perhaps even more important that the North Koreans encouraged recording of the event. I've been looking forward to posting the video.

And hey! How about some positive coverage for the Los Alamos National Laboratory? They've been working on the disablement for some time now, the real stuff that can make this irreversible. Even wearing suits in hot summer weather -- that's really a sacrifice for Los Alamos scientists. (6/30 - I see that Jeffrey now says that that's not Kevin Veal in the suit. I don't know Kevin and I don't know who it is in the suit.)

Inang Bayan’s New Clothes – A Book Review Essay

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Shhh. This delightful children’s book may – or may not - be off-limits to Americans. So let’s pretend you didn’t hear about it from me. But it’s a best seller in the Philippines.

I first learned about Inang Bayan’s New Clothes from one of the few informative articles I’ve come across of late in State the State Department’s in-house magazine so I sent out feelers to see if I could obtain a copy.

Don’t ask how I got it but I did.

That’s best kept part of my “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy – because of an outdated law known as Smith-Mundt that restricts Americans’ access to learning what our taxpayers’ dollars are supporting overseas. Thanks to the Internet, however, you can at least see American Ambassador Kristie Kenney on the US Embassy’s webpage reading from the book to a group of Filipino girls in 2006 when it first appeared. It then took over a year for the story to appear in State – but better late than never.

Suffice it to say that I’ll bet you never dreamed that US government money would help finance a story about two Filipino girls – Feliza and Nurhana, one Christian and the other Muslim – who live in Mindanao, work in a dress shop after school and despite their families’ religious differences are best of friends.

The purpose of this book is to promote inter-communal understanding – and it is clearly aimed at Filipino girls. It is full of pretty clothes, lovely pictures, and paper dolls to dress. In so doing, it shows the multi-ethnic heritage of Filipinos and it also depicts how it is possible – two girls at a time - to play a part in overcoming the devastating religious cleavage that has bedeviled the southern-most part of the archipelago for years. The name Inang Bayan means the Philippine Motherland or Spirit. It dates back - at least - to the early 1900s. Inang Bayan is also known as the "first muse" of Philippine poets.

In short, this little paperback book with cut-outable inserts is a winner.

Its authors – Tony Perez and Agnes Caballa - are veteran Filipino public diplomacy staff at the US Embassy in Manila and its illustrator is Frances Alcaraz, a illustrator and Ateneo de Manila University professor. Perez is an award winning author in his own right and Caballa is a television script writer, lyricist and stage director, as well as co-editor of the magazine Muslim Life in the Philippines. The book was published by Anvil, a major Filipino publishing house, and its publication and production was financed by the U.S. government. Inang Bayan’s New Clothes is, apparently, still in print – or perhaps back in print because it is so popular. But don't expect to find it on Amazon. The text is in both Cebuano (the language of Mindanao) and English.

Now you might ask why the US government would invest in a children’s book of this sort. It’s not, after all, about promoting the US image abroad. But in the event you’ve forgotten, in 2002 the US sent a small number of troops to the Philippines to help the Philippine armed forces cope with Mindanao-based Muslim insurgents including those with ties to Al Qaeda. As far as I can tell, the insurgents as well as Philippine and US troops are still there and the government’s long-standing insurgency problem has yet to be resolved for numerous reasons.

Yet Inang Bayan’s New Clothes is, at the very least, a tiny – delightful - step in the right direction.

Head’s Up! More US Visa Problems Loom on the Horizon

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Last year the problem was passports. Looks like, if the June 23, 2008 Wall Street Journal story “Security Changes Are Likely to Create Visa Backlog” is right, visas – at least for citizens from as many as 27 countries - could be next.

This story which I found in the WSJ print edition is based on a May 22, 2008 General Accountability Office (GAO) report to Congress entitled “State Department Should Plan for Potentially Significant Staffing and Facilities Shortfalls Caused by Changes in the Visa Waiver Program.”

Where have all the plans and planners gone?

The bottom line is that State hasn’t done the planning - because the Department of Homeland Security hasn’t yet produced the plans upon which State’s planning should be based. So how can State begin to gear up for an increased work load in posts abroad when it doesn’t know what to gear up for? Yet if GAO can come up with estimates for a worst case scenario, State should be able to do so too. And if the worst case scenario turns out to be the ticket, expect a huge visa backlog at US Consulates in Western Europe, New Zealand and Australia as well as three Asian countries beginning as soon as January 12, 2009.

The Worst Case Scenario

Actually, according to the GAO, if the Visa Waiver Program were eliminated (the bureaucratic worst case scenario), State Department staff would need to be increased by about 540 new Foreign Service Officers ($185-201 million annually) and 1,350 local Foreign Service national staff ($168 million to $190 million annually) as well as additional management and support positions ($447 million to $486 million annually). Now State is already 1,000-2,000 Foreign Service positions short and I have to question how it would increase and train staff all that quickly. So much - by the way - for Condi’s transformational diplomacy because all of these new positions would be in wealthy countries.

The good news is that visa fees should off-set these additional staffing costs. The bad news is that State says it would need about 45 new facilities which the GAO estimates would cost approximately $3.8 billion to $5.7 billion. Given the cookie-cutter fortress Embassy design now in vogue, I have to wonder where these facilities would be built and how the average would-be tourist could even access them for a visa interview – but that’s another question for another post.

I’m not going to go into more of the details now, but if you’re among the curious here’s the link to the 58 page GAO report on the potential impact of ESTA (the Electronic System for Travel Authorization) that is making this potential mess possible. The travelers from countries most likely to be hit the worst are those that are already part of the Visa Waiver Program: much of Western Europe, Japan, Brunei and Singapore. Needless to say this is all part of increased border control laws enacted in the wake of 9/11 and the terrorist bombings in Europe.

Most likely scenario

But what if DHS comes up with something in between elimination of the Visa Waiver Program and the system that exists now? DHS can and does, after all, refuse people admittance at the border – and presumably would continue to do so. Yet the most likely scenario is to allow people from VWP countries to apply for visas voluntarily at US Consulates abroad. This includes electronic screening from a US data base of suspects - and we know how reliable that is). Otherwise, intending visitors take their chances with a potentially unpleasant DHS experience at the border. How many intending visitors would choose that option is an open question.

According to GAO, however, neither State nor DHS has “attempted to estimate demand” and State has not “attempted to estimate additional resources that would be needed to manage demand, and what additional visa fees would be received.”

Hmmm, and all of this is supposed to go into effect January 12, 2009? Although DHS – with its inimitable lack of foresight and planning - plans to jump the gun and “launch the program in August.” Whatever that means. (Registration, according to the WSJ, however, will be mandatory in January.)

Even with the weak dollar, one has to wonder whether tourist travel to the US is really worth it. One doesn’t have to wonder, however, why America’s reputation abroad is at an all time low.

Cleaning Up the Shenanigans and Reinstituting The Golden Rule

By Patricia H. Kushlis

A year ago, the little known U.S. Office of the Special Counsel, created to protect whistle-blowers, ruled against the State Department in a civil service hiring case in which the OSC charged that the Department had clearly violated the Prohibited Personnel Practices law. The term used in the OSC press release announcing the decision referred to State Department “shenanigans.” The Department was ordered to cut them out.

But has it?

I now understand that outside investigators are looking into allegations that current and past senior officials in the Department’s Division of Human Resources (HR) have tampered with the results of Foreign Service promotion panels (apparently State has been dodging requests from Congress for such an investigation for several years). If so, this is likely to be just one more example of the Department’s continuing mismanagement of its single most precious resource: its cadre of highly skilled professional diplomats who represent America’s interests abroad. But the Department’s administrative record over the past several years – from last year’s breakdown in passport services and its highly publicized and needlessly embarrassing approach to Iraq assignments to the disastrous Embassy Baghdad construction project – makes this oldest and once-upon-a time flagship department of the U.S. government resemble a decaying hulk.

Has something gone wrong with State’s corporate culture? How and why have things been allowed to spin so far out of control? And what will it take to repair the listing Ship of State?

Let’s begin with Human Resources: HR knows how to look after its own.

In my two previous posts on Foreign Service Ambassadorial assignments, I stressed that Human Resources has done outstandingly well in taking care of its own – especially in contrast with its handling of State’s war zone vets. What is particularly striking is that not one Ambassadorial assignment has been made for any career officer who has served in either Afghanistan or Iraq and HR. What is also striking is that proportionally more Ambassadorial assignments have gone to individuals serving in HR or who had recently served in HR than those who have served in either Afghanistan or Iraq. Since far more senior officers have served in both of these large posts since 2001 (in the case of Afghanistan) and 2003 (in the case of Iraq) than in HR, something is wrong with this picture.

Here’s how I reached my conclusions.

I compared the nominees who had had recent (previous one to two tours) in HR* to those with recent Iraq** and/or Afghanistan experience.*** In my first post, I did not count Afghanistan veterans – although they appear to have fared far worse than Iraq vets. I did, however, count Afghanistan service in my second post. In my first post, I also included two officers who had served TDY in Iraq and two others who had served on the Iraq desk because I assumed, in the latter case, the desk officers had traveled frequently in and out of the country at the time – dangerous duty in and of itself.

I relied on publicly available data from the following websites: State, the White House and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Since not all of the information on the three sites agreed 100 percent, I cross-checked the nominees biographies among those three websites. State may quibble around the margins, but the fact remains the trend is obvious, overwhelming and, frankly, appalling.

I suspect – but do not have the figures to prove – that the pool of eligible senior officers in Iraq and Afghanistan combined is several times greater than the number of eligible officers in HR at any given moment. First, because there are so many people of all grades including the Senior Foreign Service - assigned to those two posts. And second because Iraq and Afghanistan positions turn over annually due to the high personal danger whereas a far larger percentage of jobs in HR would normally turn over every two-three years.

Scandal Ridden State

Over the past 18 months, the State Department has been rocked by administrative and personnel scandals. The first to break concerned its cavalier attitude towards personnel returning from war zones with PTSD – a story that first appeared in USA Today May 2007 but only after Iraq vet Rachel Schneller went public due to lack of departmental support for help overcoming her trauma. Schneller, by the way, just received the American Foreign Service Association’s constructive dissent award for her efforts in battling the Department on behalf of others returning with similar afflictions. Then came the denouement of Inspector General Howard “Cookie” Krongard who “resigned” in disgrace in December 2007 but not before 20 of his 27 investigators had quit and two had gone to Waxman’s oversight Committee on the Hill to ask for an investigation.

This was followed by the dismissal of the head of Diplomatic Security over the Blackwater contracting affair and the resignation of General Williams who had overseen the disastrous Embassy Baghdad construction effort. Thankfully, Henrietta Fore – the Under Secretary for Management who had overall responsibility for all these problems – was kicked upstairs. Unfortunately, she also went off to head USAID, an agency with major problems of its own. Finally, there was the March retirement of Consular Affairs Bureau chief Maura Harty who had reined over last spring and summer’s passport issuance (or actually non-issuance) fiasco and the far more serious alleged used of passport data to perpetrate credit card fraud.

To Top It Off: Visas for Sex?

Our Nuclear Future

by CKR

John McCain wants to build 45 nuclear plants by 2030. Barack Obama says nuclear is worth considering. Even James Lovelock, associated with the Gaia hypothesis that says the earth is one big living organism, says we need nuclear power.

Public perception of nuclear power has been unfavorable since some time after I got inspired by the idea of power too cheap to meter. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl had something to do with that, but anything that is associated with mushroom clouds and an element named for the god of the underworld via the outermost planet is going to face an uphill battle.

Several people have been urging me to write something in response to McCain’s proposal. The more I’ve thought about what to write, the more it has all seemed one big ball of wax, with strings and fuel rods embedded. So I can pull at whatever string or fuel rod and see what comes out.

Jane Harman provides a place to start (thanks, J.!). The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is obsolete. That’s a lousy place to start, actually, but let’s consider that an editor at the Wall Street Journal provided that headline, which is consistent with the rightwing allergy to treaties, and move on to what Harman actually says.

The NPT guarantees the nuclear fuel cycle to its signatories, which are all the countries of the world but four, and those four developed the nuclear fuel cycle anyway. Having the nuclear fuel cycle allows a country to build nuclear weapons with the addition of only a few bells and whistles.

So we need to internationalize the fuel cycle, with heavy safeguards by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

A more promising approach might be to create an international consortium of fuel centers that provide enrichment and reprocessing of nuclear fuel, and end-to-end oversight of nuclear resources. Driven by market demand, private companies could operate facilities with IAEA oversight, and participating states would agree not to engage in independent enriching and reprocessing. Material would be purchased from the international market, thereby creating supply assurance for nations who fear being denied fuel.

I can quibble with Harman’s exact wording, but overall she’s got it right.

A private company is building a uranium enrichment facility in Eunice, New Mexico. This could be a place to start internationalizing the fuel cycle. We’ve got to do more than just talk about it. Another private facility in one country, supplying that country’s needs alone, is business as usual. And if we’re serious about both proliferation and increasing energy sources, we’ve got to start now.

McCain, of course, is for business as usual. Harman doesn’t mention Eunice or Mohamed ElBaradei’s call for internationalizing the fuel cycle, which came before President Bush’s call for the GNEP, which she mentions and gets wrong. What is wrong with GNEP is not that Bush is “as a research and development initiative,” but rather that he put this US-centric initiative out as a competitor to ElBaradei’s initiative. And, yes, all us Amurricans know that our country is totally reliable and fair, but others might just have a different viewpoint.

That’s just one point relating to McCain’s 45 nuclear plants by 2030. Other questions abound. What about the waste? (I do think that Yucca Mountain is the answer to that one, but it’s the first question others come up with.) What about reactor safety? Is uranium available for fuel? Could a company break ground by 2030 if they applied today, given the permitting process? Will anyone want a reactor in their neighborhood? Does the construction capacity exist, or can it be developed, to build these plants?

And you can probably think of others. To be continued.

The Numbers, Please

by Cheryl Rofer

The $4 per gallon number has gotten people’s attention, but there’s more to petroleum than that. President Bush now wants to drill in lots of places that have been put aside within the United States, but that is a very long-range solution, if it’s a solution at all.

And one may wonder how much US influence on the Iraqi Oil Ministry has led to this. Certainly Iraq would like to take advantage of record oil prices, but more oil on the market would tend to lower those prices.

I’ve been wondering about a number of claims about petroleum prices. The only way to begin to resolve my questions is to look at some numbers, which I haven’t seen done anywhere in the media. Not surprising for a bunch that thinks water can be a fuel.

It’s not clear to me that any of the claims can really be verified. There are too many possible variables, and too much uncertainty in all of them. Qualitatively, I suspect that there is a war-fear premium on petroleum as long as Bush and Cheney are in office, which may amount to 25% of the current price. Speculation seems to be part of it too, but it is an easy excuse for the oil producers to use. And there does seem to be an increasing demand.

To start, I’d just like to get a sense of what the numbers are and how the various nations stack up. To that end, I’ve collected some of the numbers in a spreadsheet (Download petroleum_2008.xls), for those of you who want to look at or play with them. What I’ve collected is not exhaustive, and it may be somewhat incorrect, for various reasons. I don’t want to get into arguments just now about the accuracy of the data in detail. That comes later, if at all.

The Foreign Service and the Military

By Patricia H. Kushlis

A friend clued me into an oped in the Sunday, June 15 Washington Post by James DeHart, a Foreign Service Officer soon to be assigned to an Afghanistan provincial reconstruction team after a year as a Fellow at Georgetown University. I don’t know DeHart and I wish him well on his onward assignment but I also wonder why he is spending the year at Georgetown and not learning (or improving his) Dari, Pashto or whatever other local language is spoken in the region to which he is being assigned and knowledge of Afghan culture at the Department’s own Foreign Service Institute or why he agreed to a PRT assignment in the first place.

Could the answer to my second question be contained in his observation that State Department assignments to war zones are fast tracks up the career ladder and that as war zone vets “rise up the chain and (presumably) gain a bigger say in future personnel decisions, the practitioners of more ‘traditional” diplomacy’” may find themselves second class citizens?

I’m not sure I buy that argument. At least until I see the statistics. I would love to see the numbers that demonstrate that Iraq and Afghanistan State Department veterans are, in fact, getting promoted faster than their peers. If someone can point or e-mail them to me – I’d be delighted. Since this is becoming an increasingly divisive issue in the Foreign Service - based from what I can tell primarily on corridor gossip – a systematic, fact-based, transparent study should be an imperative. But maybe I've just missed it.

I think it is true – or it should be the case – that the vets do, or did, get a nice assignment after a year in Iraq or Afghanistan and an attractive pay package while serving there to boot. This is what they were promised. It is also what has kept the State Department from introducing a policy of forced assignments. But from what I’ve seen with respect to recent Ambassadorial postings, a senior assignment in Human Resources appears to be an easier way thus far to make Ambassador than braving the desert sands in Iraq – or particularly Afghanistan.

Saluting vs thinking

If DeHart, however, really thinks the State Department will place more weight on the “ability to salute” rather than a “liberal arts education” in its recruitment of future diplomats – and this will, therefore, be the cause of a more militarized US diplomatic corps and perhaps approach to foreign policy, I think he needs to think again. The US military has – in my Foreign Service memory – always been one of State’s recruiting grounds.

State also, however, recruits from the Peace Corps, academia, the media, the legal profession, business and an occasional natural scientist. The Foreign Service written exam – with its wide ranging questions – set a high liberal arts entry bar. My own entering class in the Vietnam War era included several former military officers. But they also had liberal arts degrees and knew how to think critically. So, by the way, did others.

That being said, DeHart raises a number of thought-provoking questions that the next administration needs to consider – in particular his concern about the militarization of the service although he sees the problem far differently than I do. Let’s face it George Bush’s approach to foreign policy remains that of leading with guns and steel – regardless of whether tanks and the bombers are the most appropriate way of dealing with problems overseas.

State’s red-haired step-child’s role in this “militarization” game is a given and hard to swallow for those of us who think there are usually other, less costly and more effective approaches, but it also may change. Hopefully, a new president with a different foreign policy team and mindset will rethink the fundamentals as well as reinvigorate USAID and staff it with experts in “nation-building” as opposed to contracting the task out and assigning State Department officers and the military to perform functions for which they are unqualified and unsuited.

An even more insidious problem

Yet I fail to understand why DeHart fails to mention a far more insidious problem. Namely, the mushrooming of Foreign Service Officers assigned as advisors (POLADS) to and students at various US military institutions. There have always been a few – and that’s been good because both parts of government need to understand how the other works and thinks - but the POLAD expansion, I think, has happened just over the past year. What makes it even more questionable, however, is that it is also occurring despite the fact the Department is one-two thousand officers short and is intentionally leaving most posts (except Iraq, Afghanistan and passport services) and the Department itself understaffed.