A thoughtful Op-Ed appears today on the website for Foreign Affairs magazine. Authored by Joaquin Castro, How to Bring American Diplomacy Back From the Brink is an excellent summary of how the Department of State has been damaged by the Trump administration:
Trump has not only abdicated the United States’ global leadership role but waged war on his own State Department. His administration has repeatedly proposed draconian budget cuts to diplomacy and development assistance, attacked career diplomats and civil servants, and pushed many of the most experienced officials out the door. As a result, the State Department is increasingly run by unqualified donors and political sycophants.
Yet the systematic destruction of our diplomatic capability did not begin with Trump:
The demotion of diplomacy did not begin under the Trump administration. U.S. foreign policy has become militarized over generations, resulting in a Defense Department budget that is 30 times the size of the State Department’s. As Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, has noted, the United States employs more military grocery store workers than it does Foreign Service officers.
It’s the age-old human tendency to prefer contingent (after the fact) actions rather than preventive actions. Military “solutions” are the go-to, knee-jerk reaction for perceived threats (see: Vietnam, Iraq 1, Iraq 2, etc.). Preventive actions tend to not get noticed, because when they work...nothing happens. And yet, so many of the best things that government does can reduce the probability of undesired outcomes. A robust food safety approach makes it much less likely that I will die of food poisoning. Vaccines prevent disease. Seat belts and air bags reduce the injuries and deaths from automobile accidents. And diplomacy can prevent wars. Or create a global, unified approach to addressing climate change. Or reduce the impact of a pandemic.
Diplomacy is not well understood by the vast majority of Americans — most people think it involves tuxedoed men (generally “male, pale and Yale”) standing around at cocktail parties murmuring to one another about esoteric subjects. As the wife of a retired Foreign Service Officer and the mother of a current mid-level officer, I can assure you that is not what diplomacy is all about. And while the Foreign Service is certainly more diverse today than it was in the past, we also need to work on approaches to finding, training and supporting US diplomats that reflect the entire country.
We as a species are facing issues that do not recognize political borders. The pandemic is only one example — obviously climate change is another. Without some hard work on developing non-military solutions, I fear we will end up with evermore constant wars.
Castro proposes a major rebuilding of our support of Foreign Service Officers and their families, and a rethinking of our approach to diplomacy as we and the rest of the world face difficult situations in the years ahead:
Congress should start by writing a new Foreign Service Act that reimagines diplomacy for this new era of shared global challenges.
The current Foreign Service Act has clauses that simply do not make sense — for example, retirement at age 65 is mandatory. Perhaps that made sense in the 1930’s but it certainly does not now.
Under the Biden-Harris administration, we can begin the work to rebuild the Department of State and make it better than before.