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Tillerson's Shriveled State - Maybe It Just Doesn't Matter Any More

By Patricia H Kushlis

Last Sunday’s  New York Times lead editorial “The Shriveling State Department” excoriated Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for his deplorable management of this country’s oldest cabinet department, and his mishandling of its most senior career officers to the detriment of US foreign policy expertise – and in particular - his poor treatment of and regard for the US Foreign Service in general. The Times followed a few days later with a lengthy news report by Gardner Harris “Diplomats Sound the Alarm as they are pushed out in droves."

Convinced that the tiny Department was bloated before having even crossed its threshold last winter, Tillerson had already decided to cut the budget by 31% to $37.6 billion (or 14% of the military’s request) and reduce personnel by 2,000 by November 2018 – a reduction in force of about 8% according to David McKean, head of State’s Office of Policy and Planning from 2013-16, in a November 26 article in Politico Magazine.

How Tillerson came up with these numbers remains a mystery and how he plans to take a 31% budget cut but reduce staff by only 8% makes no sense for a department which relies largely upon staff expertise. Maybe he just expects that his flying solo management style and refusal to fill vacancies will make any number of staff look for greener pastures elsewhere as apparently happened when he headed Exxon.  And maybe he's right.  

He’s already been told by Senate Foreign Relations that the 31% budget cut is dead on arrival but then the question becomes whether he will simply refuse to spend the appropriation allocated by Congress or ultimately grudgingly acquiesce to Congressional demands.

Regardless, Tillerson began by summarily firing senior career officers at the very top of the agency upon arrival. At latest count, 100 senior officers have been fired or left voluntarily after seeing the handwriting on the wall. This has reduced the number to 388 – from 464 based on statistics from the American Foreign Service Association which the Politico article incorrectly identified as an alumni association. In fact, AFSA is the professional and labor organization of the Foreign Service to which both active duty and retired Foreign Service Officers and Foreign Service Specialists belong.  (Note:  I was a member for years before retirement and have retained my membership thereafter.)

Back to Tillerson: He is reportedly relying upon two staffers with sparse knowledge or expertise in foreign affairs or management to develop and oversee implementation of a major departmental reform with assistance from two private sector firms contracted to conduct a study of the department’s operations and make recommendations for change without much thought given to the companies’ abilities to do the job.

In August, Tillerson brought in Maliz Beams, as Counselor to the Department of State, as a consultant to implement the radical reform plan.  She abruptly quit after just three months on the job.  No explanations have been forthcoming.    

A “listening” questionnaire sent by email to a selection of staff earlier this year was supposed to provide career staff buy in. A small group of career employees sworn to secrecy regarding its implementation is another part. When the resulting product was first unveiled to the Hill, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who know far more about the State Department than Tillerson and his merry band of so called reform experts found laughable.

To Touch or Not to Touch

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I touched a man last week. A strange young man, no less. He’d asked a good question after a lecture.   I delivered my compliment while laying my hand on a jacketed shoulder, after which I went into apology mode: “Sorry,"  I said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I don’t mind,” he said, “but I can’t do it to you.”

My response? “Yes, you can.”  When I’ve done a great job, definitely give me a pat on the shoulder.  Or even a (not too hard) slap on the back.

And when mixed-gender teammates or committee members celebrate an unexpected victory, let them link arms in solidarity! What’s more natural?  Go, team!  Let them do a little cancan, too.

But, all you scumbags at a social event, don’t insinuate your arm around my waist or play kneesies under the table or stare pop-eyed at my chest when I’m trying to talk to you, although I usually minimize the latter by minimizing cleavage, the result of an amusing experiment I devised a few years ago. I baited the hook with a yumyum plunging neckline. Suddenly guys who’d ignored me before were buying me drinks. It was a hoot! It was also very boring.

Wolf whistles never frightened or flattered me, and it didn’t take me long to understand that the merest hint of a loutish ogle is nothing but diminishment. The so-called compliment that interrupts a job review, for example. What a beautiful smile you have! Such gorgeous blue eyes! Under that shower of sweet irrelevancies, I sensed immediately that I was no longer a hot prospect for a well paid professional position. I was bed bait, a one dimensional sex object. Did I call out the interviewer? Not then. But I would today.

The distance between leering and the look of love needs light years for measurement.

A hug is not a hug either. Take the exuberant bear hug of long lost friends. See the eyes lit up!  Hear the exuberant cries! This embrace bears absolutely no relation to the repellent office power grab that lasts too long and has the woman wondering how on earth she’ll escape without creating a scene—or losing a job. The hot flab under the suit! The sandpaper jowls! The beard tickle. Ugh!

There’s an easy solution to the abusive hug scenario. Men, for the most part, shake hands in public. Let’s jettison the air kisses for professional women at business meetings. Ditto the all-encompassing arm wrap from male acquaintances encountered at a party.   Trust to a warm firm handshake lit up by a delighted-to-see-or-meet-you smile.

Still, there are plenty of moments that demand physical closeness. When the need’s for comfort and a shoulder to cry on, who worries about male or female? And what kind of idiot rebuffs a gentle, consoling pat on the hand that comes from the “wrong” sex? All of us need generous doses of physical closeness, and anyone with a functioning brain knows the difference between appropriate and inappropriate touching. So let’s not go overboard. Let’s not repel the intimacy we need in the course of insulating ourselves from predation.

Males especially need to face the fact that, for lo! these eons of impunity, they have pretended not to notice their colleagues’ abusive behavior. Defying the wolf pack may be tough on those who like being one of the boys, but it’s time for men to speak out. Hey, bro, that’s not the way to go!

As for those still addicted to grabbing pussy and pinching bottoms, the days when the hottie could be trusted to grin-and-bear-it are coming to an end. Expect to see hands slapped away. Expect audible protests. Expect targets to be increasingly immune to character assassination. Expect lost jobs and stained reputations. Not the lady’s.

I once got painfully pinched during a festival in Lahore, Pakistan. Almost automatically, I turned, protested in Urdu and punched the jerk,  striking a blow not only for myself, but for all Western women in Pakistan: we were universally disrespected as “loose.” After that came a moment of terror. The other men in the crowd—how would they behave?

Like gentlemen, as it turned out. They apologized to me. They turned on my molester.

Would I have received the same sympathy from American men? More likely, I’d have been advised to suck it up. Or, worse, been told to take it as a compliment.

Meanwhile, according to Vice President Pence and others of his religious ilk, the solution to the problem of sexual harassment and abuse at work is to segregate men from women, whether to prevent women from being mauled and or—the real motive, I suspect—to protect men from “false” charges. That system might work for the beneficiaries of patriarchy, but it would cripple the ability of women to compete in a “man’s world.”

What’s to be done? For the time being, since too many males in our society have been raised to manhandle any female they can get their paws on, there’s safety in numbers. Public shaming. Public blaming. Above all, swelling the “me-too,” chorus. Bill Clinton toughed it out. Donald Trump became President. Roy Moore may or may not win his election, but he will never be sworn into the Senate. That’s progress.

Jobs Axed, Voters Saw Red

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Here's the DNC  homework assignment:  Take a closer look at the factors that drove a once solidly Democratic labor force to vote in ways that seem to be self-defeating.  Feel your way in, too.  Empathize.  Then and only then will you understand why so many white workers trended toward Trump and have a chance to reverse the flow.

Details vary from area to area, so generalizations are difficult, but you have to start somewhere. Try this: the latest issue of the non-ideological bimonthly High Country News (“for People Who Care about the West”), which treks deep into the Idaho mountains to see what’s happening in the world of forest workers. I’m not talking about armed militias here. I’m talking about ordinary guys whose jobs have disappeared thanks to the intersection of powerful external forces. The title of the article is “The Changing Face of Woods Work.”

I’m tempted to summarize, but the story is too complex for glibness or easy answers. You’ll have to do your own wrestling with it.

HCN is real journalism, reliably researched, well-written, worth dipping into from time to time even if you don’t live in the West.