The People Factor and the C Street Bailout

I would define the objective of transformational diplomacy this way: to work with our many partners around the world to build and sustain democratic, well-governed states that will respond to the needs of their people and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system… We must transform old diplomatic institutions to serve new diplomatic purposes, and we must empower our people to practice transformational diplomacy.- January 18, 2006

If this was a speed-dating scene, my elevator pitch would only be two words: people-person, period. Not only are we interested in responding to the needs of others, but also in “empowering our people.” And - we can do this and more with less.

Take this report slightly over a year after this silent earthquake came: CRS says that “Except for needed appropriations, Congressional involvement in the implementation of the transformational diplomacy proposal appears to some observers to have been minimal. Changes were made under existing authorities, and no legislation or new authority was requested from Congress.”

Doing more with less has been State’s mantra for over decades now, so - no one blinked; yup, not even I with my fake Revlon eyelashes. Perhaps there were other reasons why no new money or authority were needed in preparation to launching this pretty ship. But considering that State has had budget issues forever, I would be more inclined to believe that this was launched before all the wings were fully thought out and super glued in place.

State‘s FY 2008 budget finally asked for 254 new positions to “meet new realities in the international arena.” The FY 2009 budget request included funding for a Development Leadership Initiative (DLI) to significantly increase USAID’s permanent Foreign Service Officer (FSO) corps by 300, “strengthening the Agency’s capacity to effectively deliver U.S. foreign assistance on the ground.” But the guys over there at the Hill have a twisted sense of humor. They gave us a continuing resolution that runs through March 6, 2009 so we’re stuck in the FY2008 universe until then.

In the last couple of years we have seen quite a few advocates, besides Secretary Gates, who called attention to the smoldering fire burning the redheaded stepchild's hair. They all are perturbed at the sight and smell of smoke, and flame, and all that call for help which has also been called "whining" at times. I tell you, when your hair is burning, you may actually do more than whine. Anyhow, below are some of the folks with their silly ideas about hiring more people for our Foreign Service.

More People.

The next president should increase the number of Foreign Service Personnel serving in the Department of State by more than 1,000 and consider further expansions in other relevant civilian agencies.

CSIS: Implementing Smart Power: Setting an Agenda for National Security Reform

(2008)

Major Increase.

A major increase is needed in U.S. resources for non-military activities — where the ratio between military and non-military national security spending is now 17 to 1. This should include adding at least 6,600 Foreign Service officers for the State Department, 2000 for USAID, and recreating a separate "United States Information Agency-like" agency.

RAND: Integrating Instruments of Power and Influence: Lessons Learned and Best Practices

October 2008

46% Growth.

U.S. direct-hire staffing in the four categories above be increased over FY 2008 levels by 4,735 over the timeframe of 2010-2014, a growth of 46% above current levels in these categories (20% of total State/USAID staffing), to be accompanied by significant increases in training and in the number of locally employed staff overseas; the additional staff and related costs will rise to $2 billion annually by FY 2014.

AOD: Foreign Affairs Budget of the Future: Fixing a Hollow Service

(2008)

New Positions.

The Foreign Affairs Council estimates that the State Department needs an additional 900 positions beyond its current training complement. […] staffing became stretched when Congress did not provide the Administration-requested appropriations to fund additional generalist staffing positions in Fiscal Years 2006 and 2007. Some also believe increased staffing levels called for by the global repositioning of the Foreign Service and transferring personnel slots to an increasing number of hardship assignments will only aggravate the staffing situation further.

Congressional Research Service

(2007)

Invest in people.

The security of the United States depends on the capacity of its diplomats to carry out the nation’s business. The State Department must hire more than 1,000 additional diplomats—a 9.3 percent increase—so that it can fill positions at home and abroad while providing the education and development programs that twentyfirst-century representatives of the United States need to reach their potential. Professional education and development programs must be enhanced across the board. The State Department must also, where possible, make greater use of the foreign national component of its workforce at posts overseas.

CSIS: Embassy of the Future

(2007)

Imagine that. All have come out with the need for an expanded Foreign Service. Looking at these suggested numbers - a thousand here, six thousand there - against State’s “people requests” makes me feel like, you know -- State is not as great at being “people-persons” as people think.

My question is - are we going to see in 2009 that knight in shining armor who believe in the cause (call it smart power, not soft, good grief!) once more and who will come to the rescue with our very much needed C Street bailout? Or are we going to see somehoney who will make you take your folding chairs to the wood kitchen again? Stay tuned.

P.S. Who's not tired of the wood kitchen - that's where you got your hair burned in the first place, hmmm?

Reforming the State Department: A Look Back

Eight years ago as the new Bush administration came into office, an independent Task Force cosponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for Strategic and International Studies came out with a report on State Department Reform. The bipartisan group was led by Frank C. Carlucci, who was a former Foreign Service Officer, U.S. Secretary of Defense (1987-1989) and National Security Advisor (1987).

It is striking that some of the key issues addressed in this report have not really gone away. If I did not know that this was written in 2001, I’d think that this was written for the new president who will come into office in 75 days.

In its Memo to the President, the Task Force listed six problematic areas at the State Department - from long-term mismanagement to antiquated equipment, and dilapidated and insecure facilities. (Note: Thanks to Secretary Powell, State has gotten out of the Wang wilderness. On facilities, from 1999 to the end of calendar year 2005, State completed construction of 18 embassies and consulates at a cost of approximately $1.3 billion). But in 2008, one cannot help but marvel at this prescient perspective:

“These deficits are not only a disservice to the high-caliber men and women of the Foreign Service and the Civil Service who serve their country under the Department of State. They also handicap the ability of the United States to shape and respond to the opportunities and growing challenges of the 21st century. If this deterioration continues, our ability to use statecraft to avoid, manage, and resolve crises and to deter aggression will decline, increasing the likelihood that America will have to use military force to protect our interests abroad. In short, renewal of America’s foreign policy making and implementing machinery is an urgent national security
priority.”

In its Memo to the Secretary of State, the Task Force did not pull any punches. It called the Department’s HR practices dysfunctional, antiquated, inflexible, and lacking. It described how the department’s professional culture impaired not just the agency’s focus but also its effectiveness in dealing with Congress and other agencies. It pointed to the serious decline in morale at the Department of State. And it described a more complex world that we have now lived through in the last several years.

“Finally, not only has America’s foreign policy agenda become heavier, more interdisciplinary, and more complex, but it has to be exercised in an environment of growing threats. As societies abroad continue to experience radical social and economic change, they will become more unstable and at times less hospitable to Americans. And the danger posed by international terrorism is increasing. The last decade’s bombings against U.S. military and diplomatic facilities demonstrate that terrorist networks will become more global in reach, will wield greater destructive capacities, and will be more difficult to track and counter.”

“The Department of State’s human resource practices and administrative policies are dysfunctional.The department’s “up-and-out” promotion system is having the unintended effect of forcing qualified personnel out of the service. Its antiquated recruitment process is unable to meet the department’s workforce needs in both number and skills. The department’s lack of professional training opportunities for its personnel, its inattention to the family needs of its overseas personnel, and its inflexible grievance system have become major incentives
for employees to seek work elsewhere.”

“The Department of State is impaired by a professional culture that emphasizes confidentiality over public diplomacy and public affairs. The department’s professional culture remains predisposed to “information policing” rather than “information providing.” The former was perhaps essential during the Cold War—and recent security lapses at the department necessitate greater vigilance over its classified materials— but in the information age public diplomacy has become an ever more central dimension of statecraft. Likewise, on the home front, the State Department’s professional culture impairs its effectiveness at public affairs and its coordination not only with Congress, but also with other U.S. government agencies.”

Appendix to this report included a bibliography on Reports on State Department Reform (see page 36) and a summary of previous Reports on State Department Reform (see page 39). Which makes one wonder how many task forces must be convened to make these suggested reforms stick. The correct response, of course, is not more task forces, but the political will to make things right once more; the will to undertake needed changes not just from the Executive Branch, the Secretary of State, from Congress but also from the people who make this organization go.

While it is true that the dilapidated state of America’s foreign policy apparatus is a national security crisis that warrants the personal attention of the new president, I am also of the mind that if the State Department cannot negotiate itself out of this current crater, then perhaps we need to rewrite our playbook on winning friends and influencing people.

We need to stop acting like victims and stop re-running the common refrains: We “don’t have a constituency,” “Congress doesn’t like us,” “the Seventh Floor doesn’t care,” and “nothing’s changed and nothing will.” We are the redheaded stepchild, with hair burning wildly; if we can’t get the folks responsible for us to fetch a bucket of water to put out the fire, why then, of course, we need to fetch our own bucket ourselves.

We need our smartest and our brightest to come forward now (not later, after retirement) and say here are the things that needs fixing and here’s how we’re going to fix them; here’s why we need your help and here’s what you will get in return, and here are the consequences for our inaction. But this is Colonel Boyd’s to be or to do moment, the proverbial fork on the road. So...who will come forward? Anybody there?

The sad part is, I can very well imagine us in 2020, looking back at this point and adding a few more dozen reports to the bibliography of reforming the State Department.

Secretary Gates’ Pay-Back Efforts

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons - Government Printing Office, 1978

Last Wednesday, my favorite State Department cheerleader delivered the First Dean Acheson Lecture at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. Secretary Gates spoke eloquently of Acheson, who is considered by many as the clearest thinking, most effective Secretary of State of the twentieth century.

I particularly like his line about the need for our national security toolbox to be well-equipped with more than just hammers; because really, we can’t afford to view the world as a mass of nail heads just waiting for a pummel. An excerpt from that lecture:

My support for larger budgets for the Department of State has received a good deal of favorable commentary. In truth, it is simply an act of reciprocity nearly 60 years overdue. Between 1945 and 1947, the defense budget dropped from over $90 billion a year to between $10 and $11 billion. President Truman hoped to cut it further, to between $6 and $7 billion. As David Halberstam describes in his book, The Coldest Winter, Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, who replaced James Forrestal and was nearly as unstable emotionally, wanted to run for president in 1952 on a platform of holding down defense spending. And so the Secretary of Defense, of all people, was a strong advocate of even more draconian reductions in the military budget. According to Halberstam, it was Secretary of State Dean Acheson in 1950, who, seeking a way to deal with the Communist threat in Europe and elsewhere, championed increased defense spending and, indeed, surreptitiously organized the campaign to make it happen. So, just call my efforts pay-back time.

Acheson could relate to the bureaucratic challenge at hand. He once compared his fellow assistant secretaries to “barons in a feudal system.” Since then, and especially since September 11th, we have made enormous strides in improving coordination and cooperation within our national security apparatus. The list of accomplishments is long. But so is the list of obstacles.

We must overcome them. The security of the American people will increasingly depend on our ability to head off the next insurgency or arrest the collapse of another failing state. These are the things we must be able to do as a nation, as an alliance, and as an international coalition. As Dean Acheson did so brilliantly, we must be prepared to change old ways of doing business and create new institutions – both nationally and internationally – to deal with the long-term challenges we face abroad. And our own national security toolbox must be well-equipped with more than just hammers.

There is no way to predict the future, nor can we foretell the effect that decisions we will make today will have a decade or two from now. But I believe that one thing is clear from history: When America is willing to lead; when we meet our commitments and stand with our allies, even in times of trouble; when we make the necessary institutional changes; when we make the necessary sacrifices; when we take the necessary risks to uphold and defend both our values and our interests – then great and good things can happen for our country and for the world. Dean Acheson believed this. And so do I.

I have nothing against this piece. But am I the only one who thinks it’s weird that a Secretary of Defense has delivered the first lecture named after a Secretary of State?

You can read Secretary Gates entire speech here.

Transformational Thingy: Some Modesty Is In Order

[…] Recent U.S. military engagements abroad remind us that there are limits to the uses of various levers of power and influence in many places and circumstances. Only so much can be accomplished by outsiders in any intervention, regardless of how welcome their presence may be at the outset and even when their engagement is perceived as productive and benevolent.

In particular, many years’ experience regarding efforts to shape other societies (much less remake them) has demonstrated that the capacity of outsiders to transform societies is almost always limited, even when there is a high level of human and financial capital, a sophisticated knowledge of the nature of the society in question, and a high degree of cultural and political sensitivity. Political change is almost always a lengthy process, social change even more so, and cultural change (if it can be effected at all) a matter of decades, if not centuries. Such considerations argue for a high degree of selectivity before any intervention takes place. Among the key considerations: Is the outcome worth the investment? Are we willing to stay the course? Are U.S. interests so compelling that the intervention will be politically sustainable at home over time?

The supposed precedents of Germany and Japan in the late 1940s must be seen for what they really were: the refashioning of highly homogeneous societies that were already technologically advanced and in which the overwhelming mass of the population was committed to rejecting the previous regime and to achieving social balance and freedom from conflict. Few, if any, of these factors apply in the cases being considered here. Nor did they apply in most earlier efforts to undertake nation-building in non-Westernized societies, whether by European colonial powers or by the United States, from the Philippine Insurrection of 1899–1902 through the Balkans to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Indeed, the widespread use of the term nation-building in the United States (as opposed to the more accurate British term state-building) illustrates a fundamental lack of sensitivity to the nature and perhaps even intractability of the challenges we face. In parts of the world where intervention is most likely, the term nation has not lost its 19th-century connotation of “tribe” or “distinct people.” Attitudes toward other “nations” within the same country are likely to be hostile and marked by zero-sum thinking. One need only look at Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Sudan for confirmation. In all of them, the international community’s goal has not been to reinforce one ethnic group at the expense of all the others. Rather, the goal of any intervention should be to help build a viable state in which the people, whatever their sense of nationhood, can feel at home.

Finally, a reasoned and pragmatic perspective about transforming societies outside our own. I don't know about you but I feel like the adults have finally spoken here, don't you? This study was started in 2006, two years late but its timely release hopefully would be useful to the incoming administration. I can't complain too much about timing, I just hope that the entire report gets a good reading by folks who actually do read.

“Some modesty is in order,” the report says. Indeed. Bring it on.

The excerpt above came from the report, "Integrating Instruments of Power and Influence: Lessons Learned and Best Practices," prepared by a high-level panel of 67 U.S. and European senior practitioners from both civilian and military posts. The report draws lessons both for the U.S. government and NATO from experience in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Backgrounder: The report reflects a joint effort of the American Academy of Diplomacy and the RAND Corporation, growing out of a decade's worth of experience, principally gained by the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the European Union, in military interventions abroad and their aftermath. The project brought together senior practitioners from a wide variety of institutions and disciplines (including U.S., allied, coalition, and United Nations military leaders, U.S. and European diplomats, and representatives of private-sector and nongovernmental organizations) to determine what people who were actually involved in operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan have learned about “getting the job done.” This report is a compilation, a synthesis, and an analysis of lessons learned and best practices regarding the integration of civilian and military intervention across the full spectrum of activities from the time before military intervention takes place through to post-conflict nation-building. It provides guidance for the U.S. and international institutions regarding critical areas of foreign policy and national security in the 21st century.

A bit long but a must read.

Source: Rand Corporation
Integrating Instruments of Power and Influence: Lessons Learned and Best Practices
(109 pages)
Download PDF file – 1.4 MB

Reliance on Soft Power: Reforming Public Diplomacy

Earlier this week, Ambassador Elizabeth Bagley, the Vice Chairman of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy gave a testimony before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs’ (Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia) on Reliance on Soft Power: Reforming the Public Diplomacy Bureaucracy.

This is part of what she said in her opening statement: “[The] Commission reviewed the extensive recent literature on U.S. public diplomacy and determined that few if any observers had ever sought to “look under the hood” and study the impact of internal human resources practices and structures on our Nation’s efforts to communicate with foreign publics. We decided to explore this basket of issues, our thinking being that, in the final analysis, people are the key to the success of our Nation’s public diplomacy. Over a one-year period, the Commission met with scores of State Department officials and outside experts on PD human resources issues and we learned a great deal in the process.

In sum […], we found that the State Department:

• recruits smart people, but not necessarily the right people, for the PD career track,
• tests candidates on the wrong knowledge sets,
• trains its officers in the wrong skills, and
• evaluates those officers mostly on the wrong tasks.

In terms of personnel structures:

• State has a PD bureaucracy in Washington that hasn’t been critically examined since the 1999 merger and that may or may not be functioning optimally,
• its overseas public affairs officers are spending the majority of their time administering rather than communicating with foreign publics, and
• meaningful integration of public diplomacy into State Department decision-making and staffing remains elusive.

In short, Mr. Chairman, we’re not “getting the people part right.”

Big ouch! This is bad -- not the bad, bad kind, but the bad, good kind; that is, it’s good that this is out in the open; though some folks may get bitey reading this.

My former boss would simply ask, “Do we have the right people on the bus?” Unfortunately, more than a few would answer “no,” but would argue the Rumsfieldian view that "you go to war with the staff you have, not the staff you might want or wish to have at a later time." And then you just chug along, over the EER humps and everything else.

"On recruitment, very simply, the Department of State makes no special effort to recruit individuals into the public diplomacy (or “PD”) career track who would bring into the Foreign Service experience or skills specifically relevant to the work of communicating with and influencing foreign publics. No serious presidential or Congressional campaign, or private-sector company, would hire communications personnel who have no background in communications, but to a large degree, that is exactly what the United States Government is doing."

In fairness to the State Department, the agency makes no special effort to recruit folks into the PD track or any other track based on experience or skills relevant to the work in the other four career tracks (political, economics, management, consular). I do think that State prides itself with growing its own people which has its merits. But whereas in the past we have the luxury of time to grow and teach new graduates on how the world works, in this new universe of constant change, we don’t have that luxury. Why spend two years training an Arabic speaker, if you can hire somebody who already speaks Arabic, or Chinese, or Urdu?

"Turning to the Foreign Service examination process, we found that the Foreign Service Officer Test and Oral Assessment do not specifically test for public diplomacy instincts and communication skills. Since we neither recruit for, nor test for, these skills, it is thus possible for candidates to enter the PD career track – and, for that matter, the other four Foreign Service career tracks – without having any documented proficiency in core PD-related skills. This is problematic. The Commission believes we need to modify the exam – particularly the Oral Assessment – to include more substantive PD content."

Actually, not just core PD-related skills but other skills as well. The thing that’s inherently problematic in the process is applicants for entry level jobs in all the career tracks have to select their cone/track during the application stage. I have seen some officers with minimal interpersonal skills ending up as Consular Officers, or folks with no stage presence ending up as communicators in chief. How that happened? Blind spots. What we think we know and how we think we are, or where we are good at, does not always reflect as clearly when we peer into the looking glass of real life. Exacerbating this is the fact that switching cone is as fun as having a root canal.

"In terms of public diplomacy training, though there have clearly been some improvements in recent years, a number of conspicuous, and serious, blind-spots persist. For one, we make virtually no effort to train our PD officers in either the science of persuasive communication or the nuts and bolts of how to craft and run sophisticated message campaigns. The Commission believes we need to rectify this. We would like to see more substantive PD offerings at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute, including a rigorous nine-month course analogous to the highly regarded one currently offered to economic officers."

We have some missions where entry level officers on their first tour are sent out to perform public outreach in print/online media, tv, and radio with close to no training. Well, actually as I’ve heard it told, one boss saw it fit to work with the PD officer to give one batch of officers some training, including apparently “murder boards,” but after that outreach program received an award, the next batch of officers got zero guidance (short term goals are terribly popular in some parts of this universe) but the public outreach nonetheless continued. I can understand why an officer, even a smart one who’s never been on television would lose sleep and sweat bullets over this one. Public diplomacy is not the area where you want to throw your staff members into the water to see who sinks or floats! Good grief! If we don’t send a soldier to war without training them how to shot, we definitely should not send any of our officers to fight the war of ideas without "weapons" training. In a war zone, bullets are fired and spent and you die, in this other war, ideas, even the unkind ones have the tendency to live on and thrive. Seriously, if our officers have to be effective warriors of ideas, we cannot afford to let them simply wing it -- no matter how smart they may be.

"With respect to the State Department’s employee evaluation report (or “EER”) form, the essential problem is that it lacks a section specifically devoted to PD outreach, and thus contains no inherent requirement that State Department employees actually engage in such outreach. Until it does, PD officers overseas will continue to spend the overwhelming majority of their time behind their desks administering, rather than out directly engaging foreign publics. The Commission wants to see outreach built into the EER form and we also want to see at least one substantive PD communication task built into the work requirements of every PD officer in the field."

Drat! Don’t get me started on this one. The EER is supposedly a performance evaluation report but in reality, it is performance negotiation document that flies back and forth between the ratee, the rating officer and the reviewing officer. I’ve seen folks negotiate to remove a damning line; negotiate to insert a favorable line, rating officers fluffing the accomplishments of protégées, and I’ve also seen rating officers who worked hard and long on an accurate evaluation of performance. But it takes all kinds to make the world go round, even this one. Suffice to say that EER time sucks a lot of energy, and endless milliseconds out of human existence. If you read, Chris Argyris’ “Some Causes of Organizational Effectiveness Within the State Department,” from the 1960’s, you’ll be surprised how things have changed, and have not really changed (sorry, can’t provide a link; you’d have to hunt this paper down at the Bunche Library in Main State).

It is true that there is no specific box for PD outreach in the EER form, but the promotion precepts list public outreach as a subset under Communication and Foreign Language Skills. The form is also used by all officers not just PD officers. However, should the PD outreach becomes a primary or secondary requirement for all officers, then I see the need to tweak the form. Alas, I see a need to tweak more than the EER form.

"Finally, a few words about the integration of public diplomacy officers into State Department staffing. The stated goal of the 1999 merger of the USIA into the State Department was to integrate PD considerations, and PD personnel, more fully into the “mainstream” of State Department planning and policymaking. The Commission has found that this integration remains largely elusive, and, concomitantly, that PD officers continue to be significantly under-represented in the ranks of the Department’s senior management. As we put it in the report, “The PD career track is no longer ‘separate,’ but it certainly is not yet ‘equal.’” If the Department is to attract and retain first-rate PD officers, then it needs to demonstrate that these officers will be regarded as capable of holding senior Department positions."

I don’t have the stats for this but my bare understanding was that when USIA was folded into State in 1999, a considerable number of old hands left. If true, I deduce that some mid-level officers in 1999 who would have been in the Senior Foreign Service now are no longer working for State. Public Diplomacy, the first fifth generalist cone also did not come into being until USIA was abolished in October 1, 1999. If I remember correctly, the average time between promotions is 7 years. Even if State hired PD officers in 1999, and I don't know offhand if it did, that leave us with mid-level folks anywhere between the FS01-FS03 ranks. Add to that the mid-level staffing deficits that State has been experiencing and you get to the country of "no longer separate but not yet equal" that the report is talking about.

I actually would really like to revised the report's last line above: If the Department is to attract and retain first-rate PD officers, then it needs to demonstrate that career Foreign Service Public Diplomacy officers not political appointees or Fifth Avenue marketing hacks, will be regarded as capable of holding senior Department positions. And State could start the broom in its Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Bureau (“R”) as a brilliant example.

I’m still hunting for the copy of the full 2008 report but you can read the full text of Ambassador Bagley’s testimony here. Gotta run, have to feed a screaming baby and hamster.

Meeting the Deployment Challenge in the Foreign Service

I just read FSO Marjorie Phillips' piece on meeting the deployment challenge in the Foreign Service. The paper was written last year as a strategy research project for the U.S. Army War College and talks about the challenges of FS staffing in this era of stabilization and reconstruction.

She writes that "the current administration has designated the Department of State as the lead agency in coordinating U.S. government efforts in stabilization and reconstruction. In order to complete this mission, the Department will need to deploy personnel into areas of severe hardship and potential military conflict, as we do today in our embassies and provincial reconstruction teams in Iraq and Afghanistan. In order to fill the jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Department has put in place some compensation, promotion and assignment incentives. Still, it remains a struggle, both in hardship and non-hardship posts, to fill the positions with qualified personnel."

In the later part of her piece she emphasized that "no number of incentives will change the fact that the Department is not resourced to meet the current global staffing requirements. The problem is not that Foreign Service officers are not willing to accept challenging assignments, rather that there simply are not enough Foreign Service officers to do the jobs. Furthermore, the increasing recognition of the role of the State Department in reconstruction and stabilization requires an additional number of Department personnel be available for immediate deployment on these assignments. If the worldwide patterns of instability continue, and all indications are that they will, it is critical that the State Department be equipped to fill its positions."

The paper is brief (about 20 pages) and I wished the 12 suggestions included were more fully delineated. Still, I think this piece helps a bit more in understanding the resource requirement and funding realities that has hounded the State Department for many years now.

Ms. Phillips was most recently overseas as Management Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait (2006) , and was to assume the position as State Department Administrative Liaison to the CIA in June of last year. If you want to read the entire paper, click the link below; the document is hosted online in pdf format by the Defense Technical Information Center:

Foreign Service: Meeting the Deployment Challenge
Marjorie Phillips (2007)