Department Of State

The U.S. Department of State:

• implements the President’s foreign policy priorities
• served U.S. citizens abroad
• advances the economic, foreign policy, and national security interests of the United States.

Since the U.S. Founding, the Department of State has been the American gov- ernment’s designated tool of engagement with foreign governments and peoples throughout the world. Country names, borders, leaders, technology, and people have changed in the more than two centuries since the Founding, but the basics of diplomacy remain the same. Although the Department has also evolved throughout the years, at least in the modern era, there is one significant problem that the next President must address to be successful.

There are scores of fine diplomats who serve the President’s agenda, often helping to shape and interpret that agenda. At the same time, however, in all Administrations, there is a tug-of-war between Presidents and bureaucracies— and that resistance is much starker under conservative Presidents, due largely to the fact that large swaths of the State Department’s workforce are left-wing and predisposed to disagree with a conservative President’s policy agenda and vision.

It should not and cannot be this way: The American people need and deserve a diplomatic machine fully focused on the national interest as defined through the election of a President who sets the domestic and international agenda for the nation. The next Administration must take swift and decisive steps to reforge the department into a lean and functional diplomatic machine that serves the President and, thereby, the American people. Below is the basic but essential road- map for achieving these repairs.

HISTORY AND CONTEXT

Founded in 1789, the Department of State was one of the first Cabinet-level agencies in the new American government. The first Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, oversaw a small staff, diplomatic posts in London and Paris, and 10 con- sular posts.1 Today, the Department of State has almost 80,000 total employees (including 13,517 foreign service employees and 11,683 civil service employees) in 275 embassies, consulates, and other posts around the world.2

In theory, the State Department is the principal agency responsible for carrying out the President’s foreign policy and representing the United States in other nations and international organizations. To the extent consistent with presidential policy and federal law, the department also supports U.S. citizens and businesses in other nations and vets foreign nationals seeking temporary or permanent entrance to the United States. The State Department also provides humanitarian, security, and other assistance to non-U.S. populations in need, and otherwise advances and supports U.S. national interests abroad. Properly led, the State Department can be instrumental for communicating and implementing a foreign policy vision that best serves American citizens.

As the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century (the Hart–Rudman Commission) observed more than 20 years ago, the State Department is a “crip- pled institution” suffering from “an ineffective organizational structure in which regional and functional policies do not serve integrated goals, and in which sound management, accountability, and leadership are lacking.”3 Unfortunately, this critique remains accurate.

The State Department’s failures are not due to a lack of resources. As one expert has observed, the department “has significantly more at its disposal than was the case at the end of the Cold War, in the mid-1990s, and at the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.”4 A major source, if not the major source, of the State Department’s ineffectiveness lies in its institutional belief that it is an independent institution that knows what is best for the United States, sets its own foreign policy, and does not need direction from an elected President.

The next President can make the State Department more effective by providing a clear foreign policy vision, selecting political officials and career diplomats that will enthusiastically turn that vision into a policy agenda, and firmly supporting the State Department as it makes the necessary institutional adjustments.

POLITICAL LEADERSHIP AND BUREAUCRATIC LEADERSHIP AND SUPPORT

Focusing the State Department on the needs and goals of the next President will require the President’s handpicked political leadership—as well as foreign service and civil service personnel who share the President’s vision and policy agendas—to run the department. This can be done by taking these steps at the outset of the next Administration.

Exert Leverage During the Confirmation Process. Notwithstanding the challenges and slowness of the modern U.S. Senate confirmation process, the next President can exert leverage on the Senate if he or she is willing to place State Department appointees directly into those roles, pending confirmation. Doing so would both ensure that the department has immediate senior political leadership and would force the Senate to act on nominees’ appointments instead of being allowed to engage in dilatory tactics that cripple the State Department’s function- ality for weeks, months, or even years.

Assert Leadership in the Appointment Process. The next Administration should assert leadership over, and guidance to, the State Department by placing political appointees in positions that do not require Senate confirmation, including senior advisors, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretaries, and Deputy Assistant Sec- retaries. Given the department’s size, the next Administration should also increase the number of political appointees to manage it.

To the extent possible, all non-confirmed senior appointees should be selected by the President-elect’s transition team or the new President’s Office of Presiden- tial Personnel (depending on the timing of selection) and be in place the first day of the Administration. No one in a leadership position on the morning of January 20 should hold that position at the end of the day. These recommendations do not imply that foreign service and civil service officials should be excluded from key roles: It is hard to imagine a scenario in which they are not immediately relevant to the transition of power. The main suggestion here is that as many political appoin- tees as possible should be in place at the start of a new Administration.

Support and Train Political Appointees. The Secretary of State should use his or her office and its resources to ensure regular coordination among all political appointees, which should take the form of strategy meetings, trainings, and other events. The secretary should also take reasonable steps to ensure that the State Department’s political appointees are connected to other departments’ political appointees, which is critical for cross-agency effectiveness and morale. The sec- retary should capitalize on the more experienced political appointees by using them as the foundation for a mentorship program for less experienced political appointees. The interaction of political appointees must be routine and operational rather than incidental or occasional, and it must be treated as a crucial dimension for the next Administration’s success.

Maximize the Value of Career Officials. Career foreign service and civil service personnel can and must be leveraged for their expertise and commit- ment to the President’s mission. Indeed, the State Department has thousands of employees with unparalleled linguistic, cultural, policy, and administrative skills, and large numbers of them have been an enormous resource to the Secretaries of State under which they have served. The secretary must find a way to make clear to career officials that despite prior history and modes of operation, they need not be adversaries of a conservative President, Secretary of State, or the team of political appointees.

Reboot Ambassadors Worldwide. All ambassadors are required to submit letters of resignation at the start of a new Administration. Previous Republican Administrations have accepted the resignations of only the political ambassadors and allowed the foreign service ambassadors to retain their posts, sometimes for months or years into a new Administration.5 The next Administration must go further: It should both accept the resignations of all political ambassadors and quickly review and reassess all career ambassadors. This review should commence well before the new Administration’s first day.

Ambassadors in countries where U.S. policy or posture would substantially change under the new Administration, as well as any who have evinced hostility toward the incoming Administration or its agenda, should be recalled immediately. The priority should be to put in place new ambassadors who support the Presi- dent’s agenda among political appointees, foreign service officers, and civil service personnel, with no predetermined percentage among these categories. Political ambassadors with strong personal relationships with the President should be pri- oritized for key strategic posts such as Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United Nations, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).