What is the current state of United States diplomacy?
This week on the News and Information Study Group, our participatory YouTube Live Show, we are reading Reimagining China and Asia by Ambassador Charles W. Freeman, Jr.
Ambassador Freeman says:
The Trump administration has replaced previously complacent American assumptions of global supremacy with a whining narrative of victimization by exploitative foreigners. U.S. dominance of the international state system is expiring– a process accelerated by the new administration’s determination to unilaterally disarm U.S. diplomacy. This raises the question of what, if anything, will replace U.S. and Western leadership of global governance.
Before we can ask the question of who shall replace “U.S. and Western leadership of global governance,” another pressing question is what is the current state of American diplomacy? Is the current administration really determined to “unilaterally disarm U.S. diplomacy[?]” In asking people about diplomacy recently, it seems to me that most of the Americans that I’m around don’t have a lot of information or knowledge about our current State Department or even know where to look.
The question I want to ask is: what is the current state of diplomacy in the United States?
How are we doing?
When foreign diplomats don’t even know where their messages are supposed to go, what is the point of having a State Department? This would seem to be a very severe problem, but there are many who would argue that all is well at the State Department.
Is this just hype?
We keep hearing about how in trouble the State Department is, but there are also writers who would like to defend the Trump State Department.
Here is Secretary of State Tillerson on this:
Throughout my career I have never believed, nor have I ever experienced that the level of funding devoted to a goal is the most important factor in achieving it. Our budget will never determine our ability to be effective. Our people will. My colleagues at the State Department and USAID are a deep source of inspiration and their patriotism, professionalism and willingness to make sacrifices for country are our greatest resource. I’m confident the U.S. State Department and USAID will continue to deliver results for the American people.
Secretary Tillerson testifying at House Foreign Affairs Committee. June 14, 2017.
Tillerson here is perhaps suggesting that people get anxious when budgets are cut, that it’s the people who make the most difference: no matter how much we cut the budget, effectiveness depends on the people. This is a very popular management argument, but is there any evidence for it? If I had an effective restaurant with ten employees that normally had a certain number of customers, could I double the number of customers in an afternoon and would it still be effective? Would people still get their soup hot? Could you triple the number of customers for that shift and would it still be effective? It seems like Secretary Tillerson has forgot Emerson’s Universal Law of Compensation: “Nothing is got for nothing.” There is a reason that not all organizations need only one employee.
Here is Omari Faulkner writing for the Federalist:
Again he says that “the power of cultural diplomacy comes from people, not government funding.” What is he getting at?
Missions should be driven by their end goal, with funding decisions developed to meet that goal, not the other way around. We have created an entitled environment where we expect funding to increase without evaluating our progress, regardless of whether we are reaching our mission. We need to hold our leaders to a fundamental question: are we accomplishing the set mission?
Why President Trump’s State Department Budget Cuts Are Inspiring from The Federalist.
He says that missions should be driven by their end goal and that our funding must be in relation to that end goal. Again that is different from Tillerson’s: “I have never believed, nor have I ever experienced that the level of funding devoted to a goal is the most important factor in achieving it.” I would ask Mr. Faulkner and Secretary Tillerson an even more fundamental question: have you comprehensively studied how the State Department works as a system? The State Department could then answer with this:
The difficulty with a listening report though is that it is not a comprehensive study into how the organization works. It is asking people how they think it should work or how they think it works. Isn’t this just more of the waste that they say they are removing? Here are some of the questions from the LISTENING REPORT Appendix B:
First off can anyone say what the benefit of a word cloud is? In this case it is some kind of aggregation of what everyone thinks the mission of the organization ought to be. Diplomacy is a service, where in the report do they ask any of those being served how the organization is currently doing? Just because a consultancy interviews 300 employees and submits a survey that less than half the employees fill out does not mean that the management is in touch with how the system is currently performing. It would seem that in order to know how a service is doing that one would want to study how satisfied those receiving the service are.
“What should the department stop doing?” is a question that could be disastrous if management actually acted on it. What is stopping any employee from using that to get someone they don’t like fired? What makes an answer to that question actually useful instead of arbitrary?
An example of an approach that gets knowledge of how the system is currently performing:
We want to gain knowledge of a system. What might we do differently? One thing is not to just make an employee survey, but study those who use the service. The Vanguard Method, for example, not only studies how people use a system, but how the system provides the service. The basis for it is a variation on the Deming Cycle: check, plan, do:
If we are not looking at a specifically tactical level as to how we are currently performing, do we really know what is going on? That includes going to the place of work and studying how the system is currently performing from the perspective of the people who it is serving. Again Mr. Faulkner’s criteria: “We have created an entitled environment where we expect funding to increase without evaluating our progress, regardless of whether we are reaching our mission.” Couldn’t we say the same thing about a decrease? If we have foreign diplomats sending messages to Jared Kushner because they can’t get through Tillerson’s front office we can know with absolute certainty that the mission is failing because of Trump Administration leadership.
What else do we know?
There has been no lack of evidence from the side of those who claim the defense department is not functioning:
If you look at the Department of State website, it is still overwhelmingly true as of December, 2017:
Is State Department bureaucracy on the rise?
One example officials pointed to was Tillerson’s front office sitting on memos that would unlock $79 million for the department’s Global Engagement Center to counter Islamic State messaging and narrative. Bureaucratic rules required that Tillerson simply write and sign two memos — one for $19 million from Congress and one for $60 million through the Defense Department — saying State needed the funds. But he hasn’t, leaving some career officials at a loss.
“The memos have been written and rewritten ad nauseum, sometimes with conflicting guidance from the seventh floor,” one official briefed on the program vented to FP, referring to the department floor Tillerson and his staff occupy. “And it just sits there.”
From Foreign Policy Magazine: How the Trump Administration broke the State Department.
“$79 million for the department’s Global Engagement Center to counter Islamic State messaging and narrative” would seem like it is really important. I would imagine that it probably could save lives. Is this problem a combination of a leadership vacuum and micromanagement? Indeed in the LISTENING REPORT it was said:
“Our leaders do not understand our mission and our capabilities…I fear a reorganization to save costs without understanding the functions we currently carry out and expertise that we provide.”
This is confirmed by the mass employee exodus:
The US has lost more than half its career ambassadors and a significant proportion of other senior diplomats since Donald Trump took office, the head of the foreign service association has said.
Barbara Stephenson, a former ambassador to Panama and charge d’affaires in London, said that the top ranks of US diplomacy were being “depleted at dizzying speed”, and the state department was under “mounting threats”.
From Top ranks of US diplomacy ‘depleted at dizzying speed’ under Trump in the Guardian.
Barbara Stephenson is also President of the American Foreign Service Journal. She not only speaks of attrition, but how attrition shall prevent us from being able to pursue our diplomatic mission:
Were the U.S. military to face such a decapitation of its leadership ranks, I would expect a public outcry. Like the military, the Foreign Service recruits officers at entry level and grows them into seasoned leaders over decades. The talent being shown the door now is not only our top talent, but also talent that cannot be replicated overnight. The rapid loss of so many senior officers has a serious, immediate, and tangible effect on the capacity of the United States to shape world events.
From Time to Ask Why in December 2017 Foreign Service Journal
If you remain curious about how deep this goes, there is much that has still not been said. There is a considerable amount of evidence that the State Department is not functioning very well, but I will leave it here:
“Morale has never been lower,” said Tom Countryman, who retired in January after a diplomatic career serving under six presidents.
In the past, politically charged issues, such as the U.S. invasion of Iraq, created moral dilemmas for some diplomats, he said, but this is a problem of a different magnitude.
[Mr.] Countryman said he has been approached for advice by younger members of the diplomatic corps, many of whom are deeply disheartened. “My advice was to do your best to stay and serve the American people until it becomes truly unbearable for you in a moral sense,” he said. “I sought to encourage them by reminding them that no administration lasts forever.”
From Foreign Policy Magazine: How the Trump Administration broke the State Department.
Additional Research:
We did not have time to put every link we found within, but here are most of the articles that did not make it in. If there is anything we left out, we would be glad to do anything to improve this article.
If you would like to remix this article or submit a related article, email us at info@instamarch.org.
- The Trump Administration Is Making War on Diplomacy by The New York Times.
- U.S. Diplomat’s Resignation Signals Wider Exodus From State Department by Foreign Policy Magazine.
- U.S. diplomats say they’re without mission and Trump budget would gut State Department by PBS NewsHour.
- State Department Withholds Employee Survey Results From Public from Government Executive.
- Tillerson disputes reports of low morale in State Department from the Los Angeles Times.
- Morale Takes a Nosedive at State Department by Foreign Policy Magazine.
- The C-SPAN video library of Rex Tillerson’s speeches as Secretary of State.
- For the good of America, Trump needs to learn the art of diplomacy from The Washington Post
- Report: U.S. ‘Quietly Pursuing Direct Diplomacy with North Korea’ from Breitbart.
- State Department’s plan for staff cuts causing new worry in Congress.
- 5 Places Where U.S. Diplomats Are Desperately Needed from Time Magazine.
- American diplomacy is not dead
