further on State
follow ups
Twenty-four hours provides much time for feedback and for further details on topics covered in this column. Yesterday I discussed the changes underway for the State Department
https://cynthiawatson.substack.com/p/intentions-v-actions
Let me start with the latter on why the Secretary of State felt compelled to argue that actions involving his new underlings were not punitive. According to Realcleardefense.com, Secretary Rubio condemned the Department’s employees for putting internationalist ideology over U.S. national interest. He ordered not a single penny go towards anything other than advancing U.S. national interests, with the implication that a single, clearly articulated approach to advance those interests by means other than the ones the Department has been using for the past century.
Specifically, Rubio’s cable to all posts and the employees at Foggy Bottom demands dropping DEI policies (consistent with new orders throughout the federal government), stress mass migration concerns, demand energy dominance, and “end censorship of the American people”. These means will lead to a safer, stronger, and more prosperous America in alignment with President Trump’s vow the revitalize the country.
This guidance limits the ways and means FSOs can use to achieve their mission. The essence of a successful strategy is always, repeat always orchestrating the widest array of tools in a creative manner, often completely unconventional approach, to achieve the desired endstate.
If the Department must focus on the four matters discussed above, then those tools available are limited. An example would be if we are trying to undermine the Taliban’s credibility in the Islamic world by stressing its barbaric treatment of women as a excluded population precisely as we are limiting eliminating the values of equity and inclusion, not to mention diversity, in our argument to others. Afghanistan may not be a popular topic for Americans these days but represents perhaps the starkest difference between a society bent on advancing the interests of a segment (men) of its population versus advancing the standards for a society. Rubio’s cable is a constraint for the diplomatic corps, likely confusing the prioritization of U.S. domestic changes with national security issues abroad. Harder, though probably not impossible though the ending of DEI will probably reduce the number of women serving abroad, limiting their creative contributions to advancing those causes the Secretary cites.
It’s also hard to see the moves as supporting the careers of anyone other than white men. That doesn’t seem important perhaps in an era where the argument will be “the best person for the job” but race, gender, and experiences play into the image we project overseas as others watch us. Limiting any factors that would consider Asian American background, for example, paints a picture of our country that is vastly at odds with our professed constitutional guarantees of providing for the common defense and prosperity for all. That the first Cuban American Secretary issued this cable is fascinating but fully legal under any president’s prerogative, of course.
In short, Rubio needed some messaging to assuage concerns about how those operating differently in the past will be treated in the new administration. The interpretation by those the cable reached will, as I said, require actions rather than merely intentions to assure how we treat those we need to be most productive diplomats across the globe.
The second thing I want to cite is a response from a subscriber to yesterday’s column. Lest you think I only mention those of you who agree with me, a loyal, thoughtful reader sent me an an extended response which I excerpt for our dialogue.
“My military’s duties frequently took me into U.S. Embassies around the world working with Country Teams, CoS’s [Chiefs of Staffs], DATs [Defense Attaches] and other agencies with representation in the embassies…As you said, some of these locations are less than posh and some are downright dangerous for those working there as well as their families living in the area with school-age children…I was mostly impressed with the passion State Dept personnel displayed…I was, however, very often disappointed at the Country Team’s overall lack of understanding of the ‘blunt instrument’ that is the military. Often I found they had a pretty good understanding of the SDO [senior defense official] and/or DAT but other DOD “outsiders” who had legitimate missions requiring Embassy awareness, support, and often approval to operate in the country were seen as potential threats to the diplomatic mission vs. Force multipliers…I always wondered if career Foreign Service Officers received any texts re: DoD in their training. Many worker-level State Department folks…seemed clueless about how the DoD worked and trained…and did not seem inclined to learn…”
The author watched the Secretary’s remarks (I have only read them) which left him confident that Mr. Rubio’s grasp of the implication his cable has along with a generally positive thrust for State personnel. Particularly the author found Secretary Rubio’s goal of making the Department the focal point for diplomatic policy in the future most encouraging, starting the administration off with an exceptionally optimistic attitude.
I encourage precisely these responses to anything I say or quote. I offer two thoughts to the excellent summation. Secretary Rubio’s hope to center State as the focal point of foreign policy will depend on President Trump’s management preference, specifically via the National Security Council. I cannot think of an administration in the post-1945 period where the chief diplomat did not anticipate the same sort of recrafting of State’s centrality yet we still see the policy decisions rarely made in Foggy Bottom. The Department tends to implement rather than coordinate or dominate decision-making. Instead, as I noted yesterday, the Department carries out U.S. diplomatic goals as established by the White House, often through NSC activities. How the incoming National Security Advisor, former Congressman Michael Waltz, views the Council—operational versus advisory to the president, top down versus collaborative with the cabinet secretaries, or a host of other organizational models—will be every bit as important as anything Secretary Rubio may desire. Henry Kissinger was only de jure Secretary of State for the second Nixon term yet as the National Security Advisor under a hub-and-spoke, secretive model, Kissinger left the initial Secretary of State, William Rogers, embarrassed and shut out of decision-making for almost all topics, especially the significant ones. Kissinger-rather than the Secretary or even Nixon-won the Nobel Prize for negotiating with Hanoi to end U.S. ground troops in Vietnam.
Second, the author makes an invaluable point about State personnel being unaware of many DoD capabilities. This results, I suspect, not only from the protective sense of bureaucratic turf as a much being a considerably smaller agency watching the vast resources of the defense community. State must deliver to stay alive, even if that sadly doesn’t understand how to effectively use partnership with others. But the author is absolutely correct that strategy is not an individual or single agency sport but a coordinated activity.
And, the small size of the Foreign Service partially explains why ignorance about others persists. According to the Foreign Service Association, the State Department had 13,910 officers in Fiscal Year 2019 (most recent numbers I found), with an additional 1700 in the U.S. Agency for International Development, 279 in the Foreign Commercial Section, 200 in the Foreign Agricultural Service, and 25 in the Agency for Global Media. The aggregate 15,600 Foreign Service personnel, augmented by a small number of non-FSOs and “local hires” for drivers, administration, etc., represent the United States in 276 posts around the world.
By comparison, active duty U.S. military personnel in 2023 numbered 168,000 in a comparable number of countries.
One of the greatest complaints from the Foreign Service I have ever known is that they wish they had more time for professional education, learning about the rest of the national security community, and grasping the interplay between various tools of statecraft. The National War College began in 1946 to be a part of that overall expansion of understanding our own capacities and limitations within the emerging Cold War security community, State being a major player from the beginning.
But we the public don’t want to pay for more FSOs (remember my point yesterday that they are the smallest cabinet agency by far) so they are stretched extremely thin and the agency has no professional education of its own. This is partially why FSOs tend to be so highly educated and experienced when hired. That is not an alibi for not knowing what the author above found but it is reality. By comparison, the military officer serving a comparable twenty year (the retirement cut off for anyone in uniform) career would have had at least junior level professional military education, if not also senior level, plus likely other educational opportunities. Or, let’s remember the National War College is one of nine institutions offering a master’s degree in national security education in one form or another; State has none of its own once the Senior Seminar, a small cadre program, closed a generation ago. Arguably, our distaste for paying for anything “foreign” is cutting our noses off to spite our faces but it’s as American as is watching college football.
These are two points I wanted to expound on to give us a fuller understanding of the issues in yesterday’s column. Please send me any thoughts, challenges, queries or rebuttals as I welcome them.
Thank you for your time today. If this is valuable, please feel free to circulate. Thank you to the paid subscribers who make this possible. It’s less than a dollar a week for a year’s subscription.
Be well and be safe. FIN
“Map Showing Number of ‘Active Duty’ Serving Troops Overseas”, brilliant maps.com, 24 November 2024, retrieved at https://afsa.org/foreign-service-numbers
Julie Nutter, “Where We Stand”, afsa.org, 2019, retrieved at https://afsa.org/foreign-service-numbers
Philip Wegmann, “Exclusive: Rubio Outlines ‘Sweeping Change’ in Cable to U.S. Diplomats Worldwide”, RealClearPolitics.com, 21 January 2025, retrieved at https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2025/01/21/rubio_outlines_sweeping_change_cable_us_diplomats_worldwide_152229.html