Seeker Blog

Condi Rice’s speech at the Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service is essential reading - she is launching much overdue State reforms. Excerpt from the speech:

To advance transformational diplomacy, we are and we must change our diplomatic posture. In the 21st century, emerging nations like India and China and Brazil and Egypt and Indonesia and South Africa are increasingly shaping the course of history. At the same time, the new front lines of our diplomacy are appearing more clearly, in transitional countries of Africa and of Latin America and of the Middle East. Our current global posture does not really reflect that fact. For instance, we have nearly the same number of State Department personnel in Germany, a country of 82 million people that we have in India, a country of one billion people. It is clear today that America must begin to reposition our diplomatic forces around the world, so over the next few years the United States will begin to shift several hundred of our diplomatic positions to new critical posts for the 21st century. We will begin this year with a down payment of moving 100 positions from Europe and, yes, from here in Washington, D.C., to countries like China and India and Nigeria and Lebanon, where additional staffing will make an essential difference.

We are making these changes by shifting existing resources to meet our new priorities, but we are also eager to work more closely with Congress to enhance our global strategy with new resources and new positions.

We will also put new emphasis on our regional and transnational strategies. In the 21st century, geographic regions are growing ever more integrated economically, politically and culturally. This creates new opportunities but it also presents new challenges, especially from transnational threats like terrorism and weapons proliferation and drug smuggling and trafficking in persons and disease.

Building regional partnerships is one foundation today of our counterterrorism strategy. We are empowering countries that have the will to fight terror but need help with the means. And we are joining with key regional countries like Indonesia and Nigeria and Morocco and Pakistan, working together not only to take the fight to the enemy but also to combat the ideology of hatred that uses terror as a weapon.

We will use a regional approach to tackle disease as well. Rather than station many experts in every embassy, we will now deploy small, agile transnational networks of our diplomats. These rapid response teams will monitor and combat the spread of pandemics across entire continents. We are adopting a more regional strategy in our public diplomacy as well.

Ralph Peters writes “Her message was revolutionary and essential. As a result, she may go down in history as the SecState most hated by Foggy Bottom bureaucrats“. Here’s Peters’ summary [not a substitute for reading the speech]:

* Diplomats can no longer build careers by hiding behind desks in comfy capitals. They’ll have to accept dangerous assignments and serve in hardship posts; develop regional expertise in at least two areas; and speak at least two relevant foreign languages (French waiters need not apply). That ain’t going to make Rice popular with diplos accustomed to rotating between Rome and Northwest D.C. on their way to ambassadorships. Yet, it’s vital if we’re going to convert our failed, 19th-century- model State Department into a useful tool for the 21st century.

* Ouch! Condi really put Paris and Berlin in their places — pointedly noting that “we have nearly the same number of State Department personnel in Germany, a country of 82 million people, that we have in India, a country of 1 billion people.” Cancel that order for the big schnitzel, Mr. Ambassador. You’re going to be eating some development vindaloo. (Delicious, too, that la Rice smacked down Old Europe just as Jacques Chirac threatened to hurl nukes at terrorists to prove that France remains relevant.)

* Crucially, Condi named China, India, South Africa and Brazil as countries of the future while declaring that an initial 100 diplomatic slots would migrate from Europe immediately to countries that actually matter. More reassignments will follow, with even Moscow demoted to the international enlisted ranks — while Indonesia gets promoted (Double ouch!).

* Cutlass Condi intends to chop off the heads (or at least the careers) of those who wimp out on the dangerous missions and nasty assignments. This is essential. In working with State reps over the years, I met many who knew how to formulate tidy “non-papers”—but only a few who had the guts to go out and get dirty. I encountered some fine ambassadors and staffers, but too many resembled Chinese court eunuchs (one guy in Moscow even looked the part).

* Our SecState proposed a range of other innovative initiatives, from lone-gun outposts in major cities that lack a U.S. presence, through mobile diplomatic teams that would become the pin-striped equivalent of Army Rangers, to “Virtual Presence Posts” to harness the power of information technology. Not every program will succeed — but Condi’s trying everything she can to bring our Euro-trash diplomacy back from the dead.

* State Department officials are going to have to become true team players — the biggest challenge of all for that bunch. Rice speaks of “transformational diplomacy,” recognizing that cooperation between government agencies is vital to securing global advantages. But it’s going to be a bitter experience for an ambassador to have to listen to a DEA agent or to a Marine colonel who actually knows what’s going on outside the embassy compound.

* State’s capabilities to direct “stabilization operations” — as in Iraq — will be enhanced. Frankly, this may not work, given the lack of serious management expertise and the calcified arrogance within the department. Any hope of success will depend on promoting new blood fast.

They’ll never admit it publicly, but the Bushies realize how badly Ambassador Paul Bremer botched his Iraq mission (meanwhile, new-author Bremer’s been revising history in the finest Soviet tradition). The fact is that only our military has ever run successful occupations. Diplomats talk, soldiers do. That probably won’t change.

IN her breakthrough speech, Condi whacked the foreign service over the head with a hammer, while presenting the pain as a love-bite. But none can fail to recognize her message that she “got it,” that her experience in government convinced her that our blind adherence to European diplomatic norms has been utterly dysfunctional in dealing both with emerging threats and global opportunities.

If Rice can implement even half of the changes she proposed before an irate diplomat shoots her for canceling his assignment to Vienna, her effort may become State’s equivalent of the Army’s crucial Root Reforms of a century ago (diplomatic practices are more than a hundred years out of date). And the truth is that a functional State Department is essential to America’s role in the world.

The key will be the people. Can the department attract new recruits with courage and a spirit of adventure, in place of the fishbelly-white twits it’s always favored? Perhaps, instead of fishing in theory-poisoned backwaters such as Georgetown, State should poach military officers from the Pentagon, men and women accustomed to getting things done? (While we’re at it, how about a physical-fitness test for diplomats? And no, lifting a wine glass doesn’t count.)

The Rice Reforms may not have made headlines last week, but they could become one of the most important legacies of the Bush administration. American diplomacy has to race to catch up with the opportunities exploding in New Delhi, Beijing and Brasilia. Condi just fired the starter pistol.

The careerists at Foggy Bottom will erect bureaucratic barricades and try to wait the secretary out. They may succeed. But every American ought to hope that Condi Rice succeeds in breaking their rice bowls.