“Our foreign policy does not always take into account the impact on the host countries”.
Senator John Kerry as the next Secretary of State will need to focus on changes at the Foggy Bottom headquarters in Washington DC. At the top of the list is the redundancy--overlapping job descriptions—which needs to be streamlined. The constant rotations of Foreign Service officers should be considered, followed by an overhaul of the Employee Evaluation Review (EER) system for promotions, in which peers take part in the preparation and approval process. Above all the State Department needs to change how we deal with the host countries. We need to be more consistent—to win back friends--not just be a provider of aid.
The State Department needs to deliver on its promises. We need to understand that our form of democracy may not take hold everywhere, so we need to listen to what the countries want to achieve—and work with them. The State Department culture emanates from the Foreign Service Institute training center, which needs a greater diversity of instructors and experts from the private sector, with management and business skills, to enhance embassy operations.
While serving as U.S. ambassador, I had a management officer who I believed was qualified to be my deputy chief of mission. The request was denied by the State Department. Most deputies come from the political cone, which seem to get more exposure at the State Department. Narrow guidelines do not allow highly capable, multifaceted officers to move from one cone to another. The management officer had a financial background, knowledge of embassy operations, excellent reporting and people skills, and had saved the government over $1 million--but that was not good enough to give him a chance to advance to the top--and benefit from his leadership.
The lack of cross-breeding between the political, management, public affairs, economic, consular, and security cones needs to change. The narrow structure does not prepare candidates for the wide range of challenges, and business decisions they will face in operating an embassy, especially in today’s complex environment. State Department officers spend from one to three years in their positions, before rotating to new assignments. In Washington I had three country desk officers, during my three and a half years of service. This rotation process is a common practice at the other government agencies that embassies have to deal with, which leads to an inefficient way to carry out our foreign policy. Each time a new person arrived on the scene, we wasted time bringing them up to speed. In my Washington consultations and interagency meetings, I would first ask who would be there the next time we met, so I would know if any action would be forthcoming. In one interagency meeting there had been a fifty percent turnover in less than a ninety day period. We were hampered by the different levels of experience, for the same job role, trying to move issues forward. Our embassy also lost time reviewing issues previously covered, with the new Foggy Bottom interlocutors.
The State Department needs to focus more on attracting potential top-caliber Foreign Service officers from the private sector. We need to weed out people who add little to the bottom line, but are protected by the ‘tenure’ system. At the same time we cannot run lean at our embassies—especially at the smaller missions--which in many cases are not right-sized. Much of the work performed is by the local hired staff--the backbone of the embassy--that receives little credit, and is underpaid for what is expected of them.
Our embassies are the first line of defense, for the security and well-being of the United States, so we need to know what is going on outside of our borders. As such, some of the host countries are in strategic locations, while others are in more dangerous, conflict areas. All of our embassies however, must operate in a more secure environment. At the same time, we need to have nominated ambassadors and other agency leaders vetted and confirmed more timely--not held up by senators for political, or other self-serving reasons. Our overseas posts are important to carry out our foreign policy, the nation’s security, host country bilateral relations and information gathering.
We are living in the most crucial time in modern history, since the Cold War. Then we could see our enemy, which is no longer the case. Today’s enemy has no name, no face, no uniform, and not even a standing army. It is a theological movement that has been around for over a thousand years. Islamist extremists want to rule under Sharia law, which would take us back to the twelfth century, when Islam controlled much of North Africa and the Middle East.
Africa is the second largest continent with over one billion people, of which almost half are of the Muslim faith. Since the early 1990’s Islamist extremists have taken root in the Horn of Africa and Sahel region. Al-Qaeda and affiliates have training camps in a number of African countries. In 1996 Ambassador Prudence Bushnell, concerned about terrorist threats at the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, sent cables to the State Department regarding the lack of proper security at the embassy. The cables went unheeded. An official at the department felt the ambassador was overreacting on these security concerns. A security team was sent to inspect the embassy and reported that it met their standards for a medium-threat facility. General Anthony Zinni visited the embassy in early 1998 and reported there were significant risks, and that the embassy would be an easy target for terrorists. The State Department felt no security upgrades were necessary. The U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam was no better protected from any potential terrorist attacks.
The world knows what happened on August 7, 1998, with the terrorist bombings of both embassies and the tragic loss of 224 lives. The State Department did not take these warnings seriously. Our intelligence sources were naive in their belief that sub-Saharan Africa did not have a well-organized al-Qaeda network. The State Department also had not instituted recommendations by the Advisory Panel on Overseas Security in 1985, which included security measures at embassies such as setbacks, upgrades to facilities, and new construction for at-risk missions.
The study also called for a new Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) to oversee security at our overseas operations. A Regional Security Officer (RSO) would oversee the embassy security staff, including hiring local guards and surveillance detection teams; interfacing with police and military authorities. Obviously the DSS mandated precautions did not protect the U.S. embassies attacked in 1998, or the recent attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. We should have learned a lesson from the earlier terrorist attacks on our U.S. embassy in Beirut in April 1983; followed by the October 1983 attacks on two military barracks housing U.S. and French troops; the December 1983 attack on a three-story wing at the U.S. embassy in Kuwait City.
Budget cuts mandated by Congress have affected our embassy programs and operations around the world. However the terrorist attacks and threat of attacks gave rise to an increased budget for the DSS, and over eight hundred new security positions were created, which should have provided a more secure environment for these missions. During the most trying times from 2001 to 2005, we saw more than one thousand new positions assigned to Afghanistan and Iraq, yet there was still a shortage of more than one thousand positions at our embassies around the world.
The State Department cut such basic programs as the distribution of books and providing libraries, and pushed the “electronic highway” concept to replace the physical experience of touching, feeling, and reading a book or even the social experience of visiting a library. In the less developed African countries, computers and dependable power were not readily available. Without books, students in these countries would not have a chance to learn. The savings mandated by Congress to eliminate the USIA libraries and reference centers amounted to $9.1 million annually, a minuscule amount to keep open the main highway of knowledge.
Part of the problem with our foreign policy is that we will not engage with people we consider our enemy, and in a number of cases have used our military might to resolve political and ideological differences. Fighting doesn’t always provide for a long-lasting, peaceful outcome. Engaging with the countries is better than having CIA operatives or military troops on the ground, as they are often perceived as destabilizers, invaders, occupiers, or infidels. Al-Qaeda has been working hard to gain a foothold in every African country that has a significant Muslim population, and to destabilize Western interests.
In dealing with our foreign policy, we should not give up our long-established democratic principles and tenets of freedom, but we need to work within the framework of understanding other cultures. It will be difficult for democracy, based on America’s model, to gain traction in the destitute conditions of many of these countries. Poverty’s companion is hopelessness and a susceptibility to reach out to anyone who is willing to help. Islamist extremists and al-Qaeda are willing to fill this void of hope for them.
The State Department needs to ask whether we have done enough to reduce poverty by offering job creation solutions, health care, and secular education--and hope for the future. Has our aid and debt relief helped to reduce the potential for terrorism? We need to understand the thousands of years of history, with the many different ethnic and tribal cultures; the impact of European traders, missionaries, and colonialists. We need to be sensitive to the inequities created by power struggles, interethnic conflicts, and thoughtless partitions of historical ancestral lands.
Even though it has been over fifty years since independence for many of these countries, it may take another fifty years before democracy takes hold. If the United States insists on placing too many democracy-related conditions on economic assistance programs, after years of either ignoring or interfering with the internal affairs of these countries, we will lose any influence we have left in these countries. To gain respect and effect change, our form of democracy, alien in this part of the world, must become a secondary issue. As the United States fully engages the continent, we will have a greater chance of leaving a positive footprint, and guide these countries onto the path of freedom and prosperity, eradicating poverty, reducing the impact of disease, and diminishing the influence of the Islamist extremists in their quest to create a Pan-Islamic caliphate.