by Alberto M. Fernandez
The Department of State is long overdue for a serious re-evaluation
Much of the recent media coverage of the
new Trump administration has an air of hysteria about it. The barbarians
are seemingly at the door and are actually taking over, the lights are
going out over America and being replaced by darkness. This hyperbole
seems to extend across the board, including speculation about the future
course of U.S. foreign policy and the running of the Department of
State.
The coverage on State has included some
naïve (or intentionally ill-informed) pieces on the incoming
Administration demanding political appointee ambassadors leave no later
than Inauguration Day and on the Trump transition team requesting
details about programs and personnel related to Countering Violent
Extremism or gender issues.[1]
Most of this has been presented in ways that seem to be both alarmist
and often ignorant of the way government actually works and how incoming
administrations function.
Unnamed Foreign Service officers have done
themselves no favors by coming across in various media as either
delicate hothouse flowers with easily hurt feelings or as monolithically
liberal Democrats.[2] This seems to be a skewed caricature of the Foreign Service I once knew.[3]
One of the more balanced and expansive
pieces on the future state of American diplomacy under President Trump
appeared in Politico on January 18, 2016.[4]
Even though this article was better sourced than others, it also began
with an alarmist spin that a Trump restructuring of the State Department
to focus more on counterterrorism "could dramatically reduce the time
and resources devoted to climate change, promoting democracy abroad and
other programs seen as liberal priorities."
I have no crystal-ball insight on what the
Trump Administration actually intends to do, but a rethink at State
could be a very good idea, and most of the ideas mentioned in the
Politico piece are actually commonsensical. The Department of State is
long overdue for a serious re-evaluation – something that was talked
about but not actually done under President Obama's two appointees,
Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. Both of these failed presidential
candidates often seemed to be more concerned about making the grand
gestures, the big ambition, rather than focusing on making the
Department more efficient and focused, given budget and political
realities.
The general thrust of the possible changes
includes a stronger focus on counterterrorism, beefing up State's
intelligence function (INR) and rightsizing its refugee (PRM) function,
cutting back on special envoys, and on those "liberal priorities."
The idea seems to be to focus on fewer
things, but on the more important ones, and this is something that
should be welcomed by hardworking, overstretched American diplomats
often tasked in the past by Washington with the latest trendy
progressive enthusiasm. I recall one senior career official working on
Africa complaining to me in 2014 about a heavy handed, politicized
overemphasis on promoting a liberal advocacy agenda on the continent
which distracted from political priorities involving war and peace. The
fact that the Department is tasked to do too much that is marginal to
the core work of diplomacy has only underscored State's bureaucratic
disadvantage over larger, better-staffed and -funded entities like the
Defense Department.
As for climate change, this is something
that both Secretary Kerry and President Obama highlighted, of course,
but that actually involved very few people and offices in the
Department. Indeed, some in my time saw this top-down focus on climate
change as somewhat of a distraction from the immediate work of
traditional diplomacy involving bilateral relations and the usual
political and security challenges we faced worldwide. Senior officials
involved in areas in the world that were on fire would nervously look at
each other while Kerry waxed lyrical about rising seas.
Also very much in play is a greater focus on the challenge of radical Islam.[5]
This is also overdue, as the ideological dimension of Salafi-jihadism
and its Islamist supremacist rivals has often been ignored by government
(not just at State), and particularly by the Obama administration.
The outgoing president's reticence in
speaking about this has too often filtered down into the ranks, into a
culture of political correctness and inertia seemingly aimed more at
pleasing progressive constituencies rather than influencing foreign
Muslim audiences. Several contacts once told me that using words like
"jihad" and "jihadism" was frowned upon, if not actually banned, in
2015-2016 in my old office at State that dealt with the jihadis'
propaganda challenge.
The larger question perhaps is whether
State can learn to "do ideology" – not just Islamism and jihadism – in a
smart and effective way that makes sense given the skillsets and budget
available at Foggy Bottom. Recognizing the ideological dimension of the
problem and seeking to address it is a step in the right direction but
it is also easy to be crude and clumsy in such a delicate task.
There are, of course, many actual Arab
Muslims who clearly see that there is an ideological conflict going on
in the Muslim world, and MEMRI has documented and translated their brave
ongoing struggle for years.[6] This should have been obvious to government long ago.
The Politico piece seems to imply that the
Trump people may also have a low view of Public Diplomacy (PD),
described in the article as "promoting U.S. arts and culture" or
"promoting the arts and minority groups." This is not actually all that
PD does, but is an accurate description of what is sometimes highlighted
by the political leadership PD has often been afflicted with.
Certainly, a long hard look at the work of USG broadcasting and the "PD
Bureaus" at State (ECA, IIP, PA) is overdue, even though this represents
a very small part of the Department's overall budget. There is no lack
of studies going back years on how to "reform" Public Diplomacy. But
finding and honing "the hard edge" of PD is a must in an age in which
governments like Russia and terrorists like the Islamic State (ISIS)
effectively and creatively use propaganda to advance their interests.[7]
Some liberal internationalists have
expressed concern that a Rex Tillerson-led State Department may not
stand up enough for human rights (the same crowd, of course, has been
rather silent on human rights abuses in Cuba, incredibly portrayed as an
Obama administration "accomplishment").[8]
Concern about human rights has also motivated criticism by non-liberal
Republicans like Senator Marco Rubio at Tillerson's confirmation
hearings.
But even here – without a wholesale
discarding of human rights advocacy – a careful, pragmatic rethink may
be in order. There is a lot in this field which sometimes seems to be
bureaucratic and reactive, without an adequate regard for overall U.S.
interests. For example, banning, on human rights grounds, the sale of
dual use items – like civilian helicopters – may make the advocacy
community feel better, but can hurt American business and jobs and does
little good if the country in question can get similar items from China
or France or Brazil. And combating the ideological scourge of
Salafi-jihadism is also very much a blow for human rights and a service
to mankind.
It is entirely possible that a new
leadership at State may not be able to implement an ambitious reform
agenda at the first federal agency created by George Washington in 1789.
They may not be up to the challenge, or an entrenched bureaucracy may
stifle change. And change itself can be done badly or be
counterproductive. Or a whole range of long neglected short-fused crises
may consume all the energies of the new foreign policy team. However, a
refit at the State Department is very much an endeavor worth trying, to
make it more efficient and more focused on core issues, on national
interests and imminent threats, rather than seeking to remake the world
in the image of the Acela corridor elite.
*Alberto Fernandez is Vice-President of MEMRI.
[1] CNN.com, December 24, 2016.
[2] Afsa.org/notes-new-administration, accessed January 23, 2017.
[3] Dailycaller.com, January 16, 2017.
[4] Politico.com, January 18, 2017.
[5] MEMRI TV Clip No. 5845, Egyptian
Researcher Tareq Abu Al-Saad: Official Islamic Institutions Throughout
Arab And Islamic World Create Fertile Ground For Extremism, ISIS Does
The Harvesting, December 8, 2016.
[6] See MEMRI Reform Project.
[7] Providencemag.com, September 7, 2016.
[8] LAtimes.com, January 12, 2017.
Alberto M. Fernandez is Vice-President of MEMRI.
Source: https://www.memri.org/reports/making-us-state-department-great-again-why-trump-refit-could-be-good-news
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Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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