By Patricia H. Kushlis
Why is it that Democratic administrations – in particular - think that shrinking the federal government means forcing agencies including small, highly effective ones with excellent track records like the USTR (Office of the US Trade Representative), into large, lumbering ones like the Commerce Department?
You’d think people would have learned from the ill-fated consolidation of the US Information Agency and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency into the State Department and almost eviscerating the US Agency for Development under President Clinton that this is a really bad idea. Aside from Monica Lewinsky, the consolidation of the foreign affairs agencies into State was by far the worst decision Clinton made during his entire presidency.
True, it wasn’t just the Clinton administration that acted alone. Republican connivance was there front and center, too. Without isolationist Jesse Helms as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee spurring, or perhaps goading, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on – in fact, forcing her to choose between USIA and a Chemical Weapons Treaty – this fiasco wouldn’t have happened.
In the end, consolidation is a questionable money-saving device and it certainly won’t make the USTR – the agency responsible for negotiating our international trade agreements - more effective by cramming it into the behemoth Commerce bureaucracy – likely the opposite on both accounts.
Consolidation is expensive, time-consuming and disruptive
First, the process of consolidation itself is expensive, time consuming and disruptive. Second, it creates a knowledge deficit that will not be easily filled because professionals who excel working in small, nimble environments will leave. The USTR staff I’ve met and heard speak at conferences over the years were and are excellent, experienced international economists who can and will find jobs in the private sector or at one of the international banks or funds. Or those who are close enough to retirement will find an island in the sun, pronto.
Attrition at USIA was huge after the merger with State 12 years ago: the two cultures were night and day and the pachyderm, as expected, rolled over the mouse. If I remember correctly a good 25% of the very experienced staff was gone within two years. The State Department made a travesty of public diplomacy expertise from day one – so it’s no wonder.
As a consequence, the US government lacks a nimble, coordinated agency designed to improve America’s image abroad. Instead, the current operation resembles a pair of torn jeans with a few shiny new colorful patches sewn on and a strong Pentagon tilt. Because State was so ineffective after 9/11, most public diplomacy funds went to the can-do Pentagon.
But here’s one little problem: selling America abroad works far better when this country’s interface with foreigners is undertaken by civilians and our tanks, uniforms and battleships are kept in mothballs - or at least over the horizon.
Yes, Madeleine, it was a huge mistake
Even Madeleine Albright, a chief proponent of the ill-fated consolidation has been heard to question whether the whole consolidation affair wasn’t a mistake.
Yes, Madeleine. It was. Hindsight is often better than foresight. History is not dead and the US still needs a flexible governmental organization along USIA’s lines to tend this country’s image throughout much of the troubled world.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration - which in my view has done a lot right otherwise - needs to shift into reverse before it’s too late on this latest ill-thought-through proposal. Small is often more effective. The National Security Council, for instance, is small. Doesn’t mean it should be broken up and made parts of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the State Department.
Please. Leave USTR alone. This proposal should be dead on arrival.