UPDATED: Condi Outlines New State Dept. Skill Requirements
Yesterday Secretary of State Rice discussed the 21st century “skill set” for US Foreign Service officers. (This link is to the Washington Post’s coverage.) These “new” skill requirements are (1) common sense, (2) critical to any sustained diplomatic effort but (3) especially critical when pursuing a reformationist foreign policy.
The lede:
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that she will shift hundreds of Foreign Service positions from Europe and Washington to difficult assignments in the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere as part of a broad restructuring of the diplomatic corps that she has dubbed “transformational diplomacy.”
The State Department’s culture of deployment and ideas about career advancement must alter now that the Cold War is over and the United States is battling transnational threats of terrorism, drug smuggling and disease, Rice said in a speech at Georgetown University. “The greatest threats now emerge more within states than between them,” she said. “The fundamental character of regimes now matters more than the international distribution of power.”
As part of the change in priorities, Rice announced that diplomats will not be promoted into the senior ranks unless they accept assignments in dangerous posts, gain expertise in at least two regions and are fluent in two foreign languages, citing Chinese, Urdu and Arabic as a few preferred examples.
Rice noted that the United States has nearly as many State Department personnel in Germany — which has 82 million people — as in India, with 1 billion people. As a first step, 100 jobs in Europe and Washington will be immediately shifted to expanded embassies in countries such as India, China and Lebanon. Many of these diplomats had been scheduled to rotate into coveted posts in European capitals this summer, and the sudden change in assignment has caused some distress, State Department officials said.
Officials said that ultimately as many as one-third of the 6,400 Foreign Service positions could be affected in the coming years.
Separately, today Rice plans to unveil a restructuring of U.S. foreign assistance, including announcing the nomination of Randall L. Tobias as the new administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Officials said Rice plans to elevate the USAID post, giving Tobias — a former Eli Lilly chief executive who now heads the administration’s global AIDS relief program — an office and a planning staff in the State Department. Rice will designate Tobias as having a rank equivalent of deputy secretary of state.
Although the move stops short of merging USAID with State, it is intended to draw the agency closer into the department’s fold, the officials said. Additionally, the new director will be given broader authority over a range of foreign assistance accounts now managed by separate entities. “Effectively, this will allow a single person to have visibility into these various accounts,” a State official said.
Ah, but here’s the Beltway critique (as in, I must protect my rice bowl so I’ll scream partisanship):
Anticipating such a change, some outside the government have warned that it could result in a greater politicization of foreign assistance. “We’re concerned that the same priority won’t be given to long-term development as resources are siphoned to support shorter-term diplomatic or military objectives,” said Jim Bishop, a senior officer of InterAction, the largest coalition of non-governmental U.S. aid groups.
Pish. This is prattle to give Nancy Pelosi a soundbite. The skills Dr. Rice wants to emphasize focus on the long-term.
Rice wants to increase diplomatic presence and person to person contact, which ultimately leads to more useful (and more granular) political intelligence.
Example:
Under the plan outlined yesterday, Rice will expand the U.S. presence by encouraging the spread of new one-person diplomatic outposts, now located in a few cities such as Alexandria, Egypt, and Medan, Indonesia. “There are nearly 200 cities worldwide with over 1 million people in which the United States has no formal diplomatic presence,” Rice said. “This is where the action is today.”
What do I mean by a “reformationist” policy? In Rice’s case, a “democratic development and democracy expanding” policy.
UPDATE: I added this as an “editorial note” to a comment on this post. I think I’ll post it as an update. (see comment 23.)
Last year I received several emails from readers regarding Rice’s new personnel requirements and other reforms at State (at least one of the readers worked at State, and as I recall one identified himself as working at USAID or having worked for USAID). The three-piece suit diplomat isn’t quite history– there will always be state dinners. But that isn’t where the action is. It may be where the “reaction” is, but it isn’t pro-active diplomacy. Rice wants to build a pro-active State Department, one that listens and sees beyond the confines of foreign capitals
UPDATE 2: Please read the rules on comments. There are words (typical spambot patois and DailyKos-type obscenities) that the moderation routine automatically eliminates (they don’t even make it to the moderation file). Over three links will get a comment axed (though occasionally comments with more links do slip through).
UPDATE 3: The comments on this post have been informative. I’ll be writing about Rice’s “re-orientation” in an upcoming newspaper column. I’m not sure when. I was a big fan of Diplomad and the Daily Demarche. I’ve thought about soliticing a weekly or biweekly “diplomatic post” (pun intended) from FSOs, State Dept economists, or USAID personnel. If this interests any of the recent commenters, please write me via Creators Syndicate (there’s a link on the www.austinbay.net homepage).
I guess simply abolishing the “Department of Other Countries” was too much to hope for.
Comment by Tom Dunson — 1/19/2006 @ 7:45 am
Every international organization has this problem — people want to live in the nicest cities (especially when they don’t have to shoulder the cost of living there themselves), not in the cities where the organization most needs them. Miss Rice is responding like any good manager would, promising to reward those who do the most necessary jobs.
Comment by sammler — 1/19/2006 @ 7:47 am
I wonder if this means that our ambassador to Saudi Arabia will be allowed to speak Arabic.
Comment by John Davies — 1/19/2006 @ 7:55 am
But, but, but … it’s HOT in New Dehli in the summer, and they don’t have Starbucks, and WAHHHHHH!
Comment by RKV — 1/19/2006 @ 7:57 am
Oh, oh. Will this unleash a reactionary Foreign Service undercurrent that suggests a Condi departure watch is in order?
Comment by sbw — 1/19/2006 @ 8:05 am
Oh, oh. Will this unleash a reactionary Foreign Service undercurrent that suggests a Condi departure watch is in order?
Comment by sbw — 1/19/2006 @ 8:05 am
Contrary to Jim Bishop, politicized aid is exactly what we need. We shouldn’t be giving developmental aid to authoritarian regimes because all it does is prop them up. For example, in Ethiopia where there recently was a huge crackdown on the opposition, World Bank donors are with-holding some $400 million in aid but right now the only steps we’ve taken is to stop selling them Humvees. This, even though it is very well-known that the once reformist Meles government has backslided greatly into a corporatist authoritarian state, built on a network of well-connected businesses and NGOs that keep it in power. All of the aid money is distributed to these pro-government NGOs and, imagine this, disappears! It’s a similar story everywhere else. Give aid to those who reform…
Comment by Robert Mayer — 1/19/2006 @ 8:12 am
I love Condi! State definitely needs transformation and she’s just the lady to do it. Gaining control of foreign aid is key. Now can we stop paying Egypt when all they do is bad mouth us in their government-run media? Now she needs to increase emphasis on public diplomacy: Voice of America, etc. We need to get the US message out via any medium & language (esp. Farsi!) to influence public opinion, working right past foreign governments. The message: we’ve been saving Muslims since the mid-1990s. We want you to be free. I initially misread your post: “these requirements are (1) common sense” What, foreign service officers need common sense now? That would be a revolution! Maybe then they would represent America’s inerests to other countries, rather than vice versa.
Comment by Dr Ken — 1/19/2006 @ 8:23 am
I expect Condi to leave soon, sometime around 2009, in fact. B-)
Comment by TM Lutas — 1/19/2006 @ 8:27 am
[…] January 19, 2006 Oh ho Condi’s fighting back against the State Department. Posted by Ian S. in Generalat 9:42 am | […]
Pingback by Inoperable Terran » Oh ho — 1/19/2006 @ 8:42 am
This is a major improvement in focus and scope. Condi is acting like a manager, and a good one. And how does our local news ‘organ’, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, present us this news? With three column inches, expressing concern over the coming exodus of ‘diplomats’ from cushy Europe to all those hideous non-Starbuck, non-wifi backwaters. Nothing about the best part of the change: the rewards for learning languages. I expect an exodus of liberals from the State Department, in search of a more coddled life.
Comment by Insufficiently Sensitive — 1/19/2006 @ 8:44 am
The FS guys I’m familiar with would be all-too-happy to see these changes made…
Comment by Boxing Alcibiades — 1/19/2006 @ 8:52 am
she is going to move the “alger hissites” the “scowcroftians” and the “larry wilkersonesque” fifth column within the DoS from their insulated cushy jobs - where they undermine the polisies of our ELECTED decision makers - to the outposts on the boundaries between the West and the rest. good riddance.
Comment by reliapundit — 1/19/2006 @ 8:55 am
“’We’re concerned that the same priority won’t be given to long-term development as resources are siphoned to support shorter-term diplomatic or military objectives,…’†“Pish. This is prattle…” Don’t overrate the usefulness of a long term view. Our long term view did not forsee France or Germany’s unwillingness to help us at the UN. What good did foreign aid do in North Korea except feed the army that is preparing to nuke us?
Comment by acronym — 1/19/2006 @ 9:00 am
“Many of these diplomats had been scheduled to rotate into coveted posts in European capitals this summer, and the sudden change in assignment has caused some distress” Is the state department a government agency of a nation at war or is it a day camp?
Comment by acronym — 1/19/2006 @ 9:03 am
“Will this unleash a reactionary Foreign Service undercurrent that suggests a Condi departure watch is in order?” Quite likely. Will it have legs? Wait and see.
Comment by kcom — 1/19/2006 @ 9:07 am
Good luck to Condi on this one. WTF exactly does she think will fill these roles? Let’s see…you speak Farsi and Arabic and have a choice between being the lone American (read: target) living in a tertiary city in, say, Yemen or in super luxurious corporate housing working for Exxon Mobile in Dubai. Even allowing for a high degree of idealism, the folks with this sort of skill set are likely to end up working at the Agency, which promotes faster, provides more generous benefits while overseas, and does a much better job in looking after your spouse’s career. The issues facing State that Condi is trying to address are just one more symptom of the broader problem the government faces while trying to recruit highly skilled people with a pay scale geared towards hiring file clerks.
Comment by jphart — 1/19/2006 @ 9:10 am
That has got to be one of the most cunning ways to purge a Federal bureaucracy I have ever seen. You make all the hard case, trouble making, slackers work in dangerous positions, alone. Where they have no one but themselves to rise or fall on.
Comment by Trent Telenko — 1/19/2006 @ 9:25 am
27 years in the Foreign Service, every single one of which was in a third-world country, leaves me zero sympathy with FSOs who spend an entire career in western Europe. Interestingly enough, I always found staff morale higher in posts like Kinshasa than in Paris (during my annual pass through Europe). Rice has it right. This is long overdue. F
Comment by FSO(r) — 1/19/2006 @ 9:29 am
I’m having trouble posting so this is a test.
Comment by M. Simon — 1/19/2006 @ 9:29 am
I can almost hear the response of long-term DoS folks now; “We actually need to send these young employees to these difficult spots where things are not nearly so nuanced as in say Paris or London or Berlin…where, of course, we senior staffers need to be in place.” I love it…….Go Condi! Duke
Comment by Duke of DeLand — 1/19/2006 @ 9:31 am
As a former State Dept. officer, I can only applaud Rice’s steps. The princple, however, is going to take some work to actually get accomplished. Having worked in Saudi Arabia–yes, I speak Arabic–and New Delhi, I do know that it’s hard to staff those places. But for different reasons. Saudi Arabia is simply harsh, particularly if the officer has a family. Due to security concerns, tours of duty are now one year; that’s bad anyway you look at it. Oh, and the tours are unaccompanied: no family members permitted. But even with two or three year tours available, officers have to consider their families, whether it’s a wife having to deal with a confining society, a husband who has little prrospect for a job on the local economy, or children who are forced to live in a stiflinig environment. And in this time of two-worker families, choosing whose career is going to be advanced introduces its own problems. How do you compensate the non-State employee half of the equation for giving up years on the job? Congress sure doesn’t want to pay the non-working spouses! And it is a fact that there are too few State officers with fluency in Arabic. In my last tour in Riyadh (2001-2003), probably 25% of the officers could speak Arabic at all, never mind fluently. Getting bodies into the positions was considered more important than having language-capable bodies in the job, especially since the latter simply didn’t exist. New Delhi has its own problems. While it’s very “family friendly,” especially for those with young kids, it gets harder as kids get older. The local “American High School” isn’t really great. That matters as you look to get your kids into good universities. The place is intrinsically unhealthy, with everything from polio to leprosy widely available on the streets. It’s unclean and prone to instant outbreaks of violence. It’s safe if you want to live inside a walled embassy compound, but not quite so safe otherwise. For John Davies: You labor under a typical Saudi-bashing misapprehension. American ambassadors in Riyadh have spoken Arabic but most don’t for a particular reason: The Saudis don’t want career ambassadors who have to work through the channels of the State bureaucracy. They want political ambassadors who can pick up the phone and call the President–of whatever party–directly. Since political ambassadors rarely have any language skills (consider the pool, after all), they probably don’t speak Arabic. You’ll see the same thing in nearly all countries with political ambassadors: Germany, Russia, Japan, etc. Ed Note: Excellent comment. In my opinion, in this dicey cntury, administrations must take linguistic and cultural skills into account when selecting “political ambassadors.”
Comment by John Burgess — 1/19/2006 @ 9:34 am
The requirements Sec. Rice mentioned for advancement into the Senior Foreign Service: “As part of the change in priorities, Rice announced that diplomats will not be promoted into the senior ranks unless they accept assignments in dangerous posts, gain expertise in at least two regions and are fluent in two foreign languages, citing Chinese, Urdu and Arabic as a few preferred examples.” are not news to people in the State Dept., this has been announced and publicized internally for approximately the last year, since at least last Spring. They amount to a sort of “soft pressure” on ambitious FSOs seeking the higher ranks to take the more difficult, less comfortable assignments and encourage greater language proficiency. Most of us, I think, see these reforms as a good thing. ED NOTE: Last year I received several emails from readers regarding Rice’s new personnel requirements and other reforms at State (at least one of the readers worked at State, and as I recall one identified himself as working at USAID or having worked for USAID). The three-piece suit diplomat isn’t quite history– there will always be state dinners. But that isn’t where the action is. It may be where the “reaction” is, but it isn’t pro-active diplomacy. Rice wants to build a pro-active State Department, one that listens and sees beyond the confines of foreign capitals.
Comment by Consul-At-Arms — 1/19/2006 @ 9:37 am
Let me try again. We are learning that drugs do not cause what we call addiction. What does cause it? A genetic predispostion combined with severe trauma. So we are punishing the traumatized. The whole drug prohibition scheme is corrupt, top to bottom. When the facts come out - science is providing more every day - it will severely hurt this country. And yet one of the pillars of our foreing policy is drug prohibition.
Comment by M. Simon — 1/19/2006 @ 9:46 am
Boy you know the hand wrining, whining and harping are going to explode over the next few weeks over at State. For demanding that FSO’s actually do something productive, Condi will be villified by the leftist element that has been sitting on its ass at State and feeding the press with juicy Bush-Bashing leaks. Expect some big new explosive front page NYTimes articles the sooner this policy shift comes into being. Don’t expect career beauracrats to take this lightly, they’ve “paid their dues” and “deserve” a cushy 10-3 job in London, Madrid, and Paris, how dare Condi take away their plum cushy and utterly un-productive jobs.
Comment by Gabriel Chapman — 1/19/2006 @ 9:56 am
What happens when an irresistible force hits an immovable object?
Comment by pete — 1/19/2006 @ 9:59 am
The very people most inclined to oppose Ms. Rice are the ones most likely to quit State in light of the drying up of plumb assignments. Her plans are so self-evidently appropriate to the current geostrategic situation that arguing against them on any logical basis would be futile (for the next twenty years are so…by 2050 when France is majority-Muslim a greater European presence may again be necessary.
Comment by Jonathan — 1/19/2006 @ 10:03 am
Condi Shaking Up State Austin Bay points out the upcoming changes at State from a speech Condi Rice gave the other day Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that she will shift hundreds of Foreign Service positions from Europe and Washington to difficult…
Trackback by The Great Satan — 1/19/2006 @ 10:04 am
Yes! Fix the State Department - in the Veterinary sense.
Comment by Walter E. Wallis — 1/19/2006 @ 11:25 am
Other than minor trade-issues and consular-duties for American citizens, why do we have massive Foreign Service installation in friendly Western countries? We need them in the former “Third World” and in the developing “Tiger”-nations. If the pampered strippie-pants set will not do the job, then recruit fresh blood from SOCOM and the Special Forces. THey have language and cultural skills to match meaningful-contacts with the newly-emerging eleites; and the have a viseral understand of the failure-costs of “diplomacy”.
Comment by Ted B. — 1/19/2006 @ 12:14 pm
Those who wish to undermine an administration from within the State Dept can now be isolated to a one-person post in the boonies? The mere possibility of this should be enough to help keep frivolous underminers in line.
Comment by ras — 1/19/2006 @ 12:20 pm
The complaint that you mention as ‘partisanship’ and Acronym calls ‘Don’t overrate the usefulness of a long term view’ has another component–that ‘long term view’ is not necessarily ours. Or put in another way, foreign aid is given for a reason that is worthwhile to the nation, the giver thinks; the aid is an entitlement to do what we want, the recipient organization thinks. Bravo for Secretary Rice.
Comment by Chap — 1/19/2006 @ 12:49 pm
The New State Department Condi’s plans for the State Department are shaping up. What are her changes? Condi intends shift the diplomatic corps away from Europe and the developed world and towards India, China, and the Mideast. Expect to hear a gnashing of teeth coming from…
Trackback by Jeff the Baptist — 1/19/2006 @ 1:32 pm
Foreign aid is politics. Give it to Sharon and it saves. Give it to Mugabe and it kills. Oh yeah, and pounding the podium with his fist shouting “Death to America” should be a deal-breaker for any dictator looking for a handout.
Comment by Laika's Last Woof — 1/19/2006 @ 1:50 pm
John Burgess- I may be mistaken, but I’m not the only one: U.S. ambassadors, current and former, are forever gleaning their primary information from the ever-growing ranks of Saudi princes (at least 6,000 at last count), who dominate the government and elite business class. That is in large part because many Saudi princes speak English, while U.S. ambassadors, at the direct behest of the House of Saud, do not speak Arabic. (New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman reported last October that King Fahd had persuaded former U.S. president Ronald Reagan in 1988 to withdraw his recently appointed Arabic-speaking ambassador, Hume Horan, and that “ever since then, we’ve been sending non-Arabic-speaking ambassadors to Riyadh — mostly presidential cronies who knew exactly how to penetrate the White House but didn’t have a clue how to penetrate Saudi Arabia.”) http://www.mattwelch.com/NatPostSave/SaudiShills.htm
Comment by John Davies — 1/19/2006 @ 2:03 pm
Some point out that it will be difficult to recruit qualified people for these important jobs, especially at pay rates lower than those in the private sector. Well, yes, but it is already difficult now. But that doesn’t justify continuing post supposedly more “qualified” people at cushy jobs in fashionable European capitals, where we don’t need them. If they decide to quit rather than be transferred to somewhere less cushy, why is that a problem? In fact, maybe that is Condi’s way of cleaning house of these effete parasites. That technique is often used in the private sector. Sure, you can still work for us, so long as you move here and do that—we don’t need you where you are anymore. Oh, you’re quitting instead? So sorry. Best of luck to you. Next. At the very least, the salaries and expense accounts of worthless nabobs loitering in the courts of Europe could be used to hire someone useful elsewhere.
Comment by johann climacus — 1/19/2006 @ 2:20 pm
Another former FSO (DoS) here, and also applauding the proposed changes. While John Burgess makes some solid points about families and spouses, it seems to me that those challenges are largely orthogonal to the problems. Paraphrasing another commenter, is this a profession, or are taxpayers subsidizing nice lifestyles for a subset? I was a single person who lost bids on postings because someone else “needed” to go there for spousal or child-related reasons. That’s *at least* as great a disincentive for ambitious and truly interested unencumbered FSOs as the school and family challenges are for the others. And, I think we all know that families at many posts live far beyond the lifestyle their income would support in the States (maids, nannies, gardeners, and don’t forget the cooks). For hardship posts, boarding school elsewhere is often an option. (Don’t know how current my info is, but it was certainly still true 20 and even 10 years ago.) My casual observations and understanding (working in international development now) of the private sector and opportunities to live grandly as an expat oil lord or corporate suit have shrunk enormously over the past couple of decades, accompanying the growth of local capacity to fill those posts far more cheaply (with perhaps some sensitivity to appearances as well). My concern would be the challenge of revolutionizing State *and* USAID at the same time. Given Sec’y Rice’s smarts and strategic abilities, I suspect it will be quite interesting to see what happens.
Comment by beachrat — 1/19/2006 @ 7:47 pm
Action plan for State Austin Bay has a terrific piece on Condoleeza Rice’s plans for the State Department.Under the plan outlined yesterday, Rice will expand the U.S. presence by encouraging the spread of new one-person diplomatic outposts, now located in a few cities such…
Trackback by GZ Expat, Part II — 1/19/2006 @ 7:49 pm
It may be that we have to pay more money to get people with the language skills to go to some of these places. I see no problem at all with that.
Comment by Bostonian — 1/19/2006 @ 8:01 pm
For John Davies: Friedman got that one wrong, and I’ve told him so. Horan certainly was an Arabic speaker. He was asked to leave the KSA not because he spoke Arabic, but because he got caught crosswise in a State SNAFU. He received a cable telling him to make clear official US displeasure at something the Saudis had done (I don’t recall exactly what, but think it was acquiring Chinese missiles). He did as ordered and pitched an official bitch to the king. Then State had second thoughts and send a cable saying, “Don’t do it.” Too late… he pissed the king off and State wasn’t going to stand behind him. The USG thought the Saudis overreacted, so the President didn’t name a successor for over two years. During that time, David Welch, now the Ass’t Sect’y for NEA, was charge d’affairs (acting ambassador). David’s Arabic is excellent, too. These two, however, were the last career officers to hold the post. One can note, too, that the Saudis were not terribly well disposed toward Horan to begin with. He was Iranian by birth and that gave the Saudis the whim-whams. For Beachrat: I certainly sympathize with those caught in the grinder of “tandem assignments” wherein two posts get eaten up when only one of the married officers is truly competent. That’s another problem that needs addressing. I am not saying that State officers need to be treated more favorably. I’m saying that given the opportunity to work for mediocre pay in crap countries, well-qualified officers can find a better deal outside State. It’s simply a fact of life that State cannot offer life-long careers as it once did. Modern life is too different from what it was 30, even 20 years ago. Modern family dynamics–even including non-traditional families–is simply a fact of life and unless it’s taken into account, State can’t recruit and retain good officers. There are too many better options out there.
Comment by John Burgess — 1/20/2006 @ 6:30 am
A Change of Culture at Foggy Bottom? Via Austin Bay, the Washington Post reports that the State Department’s personnel system has gotten the memo that the Cold War is over, and that a new war has started:
Trackback by OneFreeKorea — 1/20/2006 @ 2:57 pm
great article and thanks for shring your thoughts. I’ve been following your columns for a while Doctor
Comment by Internal Medicine Doctor — 1/21/2006 @ 5:22 am
Interesting thought. What about in-sourcing. That is, some jobs in embassies could be handled over the internet with people with proper language skills living in the US. This widens the pool of possible employees and shrinks the in foreign country support costs. Security and family issues would be bypassed. The US military is doing this with some functions.
Comment by Rob — 1/21/2006 @ 1:56 pm
Who do we talk to to get Diplomad involved in implementing this change? And who do we talk to to get him blogging again? ED NOTE: Diplomad is welcome here anytime. That being said, I’d like to start a weekly or biweekly “diplomatic exchange” on this site, with readers (FSOs, State Dept economists, developmental aid experts, etc.) highlighting a specific subject area. If “specific subject area” sounds vague, it is vague with intent. Good diplomacy avoids crises. I’d like to explore how the Crises of 2020 can be thwarted or mitigated by savvy and common sense in 2006.
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