US Foreign AID: Developmentally Disabled?

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Remember Senator Leahy calling USAID “a check-writing agency” in Ken Dilanian’s article in USA TODAY? Well, here is Ken Silverstein, the Washington Editor for Harper's Magazine in this month’s issue:

"Staff and budget cuts, which began in the 1980’s and accelerated under the Bush Administration, transformed USAID from an agency that ran its own development projects into a pass-through for taxpayer money to private companies and nonprofits, many of which seems to exist only to garner government contracts.”

Nothing more than a check-signing agency? A pass-through as in "transit"? Why not a water trough, given all the goats and cows that drink from it?

Ken Silverstein pens Developmentally Disabled: Why foreign aid to Afghanistan stays in America in the September issue of the magazine. It is a shocking catalog of what has been done in the name of development. And he’s only talking about Afghanistan, where $7.9 million billion has been allocated in the last 7 years and where he said “much of this money […] never made it to Afghanistan, largely because half of all USAID funds end up being spent on American companies.”

According to this piece, USAID hired a contractor in 2002 to conduct an assessment of Afghanistan’s infrastructure need, “essentially allowing the company to determine the need for projects on which it would later bid.” It seems that road building is a popular project in Afghanistan. Silverstein writes that 20% of USAID funding in the country is allocated to road building. So I went and look it up. Here is the lowdown: in FY2002 - FY2006 Obligations, roads accounted for 24% of the money in Afghanistan. But in FY2007 - FY2008, roads accounted for 30% of the total budget request – just $763 million and change. In fact, according to SIGAR's report to Congress, USAID is overseeing the Ring Road project, which is working to rehabilitate the Afghan roadway system. When completed, approximately 60% of Afghans will live within 50 km of the Ring Road. As of September 2008, more than 1,650 miles of road had been constructed or rehabilitated with support from USAID.

Of course, no one expects USAID employees to actually do the building of roads; it’s not an inherent government function. So the professional road builders were called in, just like the school builders were called in, as well as experts in power, alternative agriculture, democracy, rule of law, etc. etc. etc.

This will make you cringe as a taxpayer; cover your eyes if you don't want to get mad:

Some items Silverstein cited in this article would make any taxpayer cringe, understandably and may make you want to throw shoes at your computer monitor:

• The Kandahar-Kabul-Heart highway was a project originally estimated at $155 million. By the time it was completed, a year later than contracted, it cost $730 million.
• A nonprofit group contracted to build 60 schools and clinics completed nine and 19 months later, the company had “pulled all of its officials […] before USAID’s Office of Inspector General could audit the project.”
• Silverstein calls “Technical Assistance” a code for “near-mandatory consulting programs.” USAID consultants can earn up to $1,000 a day, and the total annual cost of one contract employee can reach $500,000.
• Tragicomic results: Silverstein says that experts sent did not bother to confer with counterparts on the ground. A company was contracted to rebuild Afghanistan’s agricultural economy including repair and upgrade of the irrigation canals in Helmand Province. Helmand, of course, is the world's largest opium-producing region, responsible for 42% of the world's total production. Silverstein concludes that “in effect, USAID helped finance a surge in the world’s heroin supply."

The last item is too funny; if only it does not make me want to bang my head on my newly painted wall and scream waaa!

And that’s not even the best part – Silverstein writes that “Many firms responsible for the problems in Afghanistan continue to win contracts” and that one company is actually is hiring for the position of “chief of party” for an anticipated USAID project. No language proficiency in Dari or Pashto, or experience in the region needed. But apparently the company had the good sense to require fluency in English. {Oh, holy mother of goat and all her fancy nephews!}Harper’s Online is only available to subscribers. You may read the issue highlights here (see page 2) or if you have a subscription to Harper’s you may access the full article here (see page 68).

As an aside - SIGAR told Congress in July it is examining how USAID provides oversight of contracts for Afghanistan reconstruction. Auditors are reviewing USAID’s current contract files as well as prior work done by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the USAID Office of the Inspector General (USAID OIG), and the Commission on Wartime Contracting concerning USAID contract oversight and project requirement issues. Its auditors are also reviewing the contracts that U.S. agencies have with one of the companies mentioned in Silverstein’s report. The audit, which is assessing the agencies’ oversight of the contractor as well as contractor performance, is scheduled for completion during the third quarter of 2009.Who has the cojones to clean this up?

I supposed if you follow the money, and you look under enough rocks you would eventually end up at the root cause of this problem. You might even be able to bring some of that money back and start reconstruction at home, you know. But I just don’t know who has the cojones to clean this up.

Would Secretary Clinton’s QDDR help do the job?

President Obama has recently signed Presidential Study Directive authorizing a U.S. government-wide review of global development policy. The review is co-chaired by National Security Advisor Gen. Jim Jones and the chairman of the National Economic Council Larry Summers according to this report. Review is not action, but it's a good place to start providing that they allow themselves to look at the brutal facts, the numbers game and who's feeding from this trough.

Updated: SIGAR info added.

State’s “T” Bureau: Where Restructuring Was “Easy” as Pie...

And Condi’s transformational diplomacy went kaplunk

Well, I guess the marching order was to “restructure” so they did. Nobody said it had to be coherent or needed an end state. “Just do it!” Like the ad campaign says. 400 employees were reportedly impacted – but heck -- you don’t have to agree with it, just move wherever they want you to move your desk, right? There were complaints that staff decisions were politically motivated – aw -- I mean, really!

Here is the 2005 on-the-record briefing on the Reorganization of the Bureaus to Better Address the Threat From Weapons and Mass Destruction and to Promote Democracy: “It had to be done right because it is absolutely essential, as part of what the Secretary calls transformational diplomacy, that we readjust the structure of the State Department bureaus in order to be able to best contribute to the national security agenda that has been set by the President.”

Sigh ;> A funny thing happened on the inkway to the history books.  The GAO
just came out with  its assessment of the restructuring of the Nonproliferation,
Arms Control, and Verification and Compliance bureaus in 2005.  Below is a
summary of its finding:

State cannot demonstrate that the 2005-2006 restructuring of its Nonproliferation, Arms Control, and Verification and Compliance bureaus achieved all of its objectives because it did not clearly define the objectives and lacked metrics to assess them. State’s objectives were to enable it to better focus on post -September 11 challenges; reduce bureaucratic inefficiencies and top-heavy management; and eliminate overlap. State sought to achieve its first objective by creating new offices and roles to address terrorism and counterproliferation issues.

To meet its second objective, State merged three bureaus having 30 offices and functions into two bureaus having 26 offices and functions and freed up staff slots for these new roles, but problems with workload mismatches persisted after the reorganization as State employees noted it left some offices overworked and some offices underworked. State cannot demonstrate that it met its third objective, reducing top-heavy management, as its goals were undefined. Although it reduced the number of senior executives from 27 to 20 and reduced office directorships, the overall number of higher-ranking employees increased from 91 to 100 and executive office staff increased from 44 to 50.

Moreover, concerns about mission overlap persist, in part because bureau roles remain undefined in the FAM. State’s reorganization addressed few of the key practices for organizational mergers and transformations that GAO developed in 2002. These practices are found to be at the center of successful mergers and transformations. As illustrated below, State generally addressed one key practice, partially addressed two, and did not address the remaining five. For example, State did not address establishing coherent mission and strategic goals because it did not define an end state with measurable goals, nor did it devise a means to gauge progress toward such goals or assess the results of actions taken. As a result, State lacks reasonable assurance that the reorganization achieved its objectives or that it can identify any lessons learned.

The GAO’s damning assessment of the reorganization process includes the following on State’s unsystematic approach and its contribution to staff and employee group concerns:

Instead of using the above [GAO identified] practices to plan, implement, and assess the results of the restructuring, State reorganized the bureaus unsystematically, contributing to staff and employee group criticisms of the process and suspicions that some staff decisions had been politically motivated. State officials told us that they spent most of their time in the months before September 2005 developing the organizational structure for the new bureau and little time planning to implement the reorganization. In the wake of the reorganization, some ISN staff stated they perceived morale within their bureau to be lower. According to State data, attrition rates rose to levels higher than the average for State’s civil service as a whole.

To implement the reorganization, the T human resource office furnished an informal implementation guide to the SMP at the panel’s request. This paper envisioned a reorganization directed by the Bureau of Human Resources and the T bureaus’ human resource office, while the SMP would serve as an advisory body that would recommend specific actions, such as decisions on acting directors, staffing levels, and other details for the new ISN offices. Instead, according to a senior T official, the SMP made its own implementing decisions and reduced HR’s and the T bureaus’ human resource office’s roles to ensuring that State followed all applicable legal and regulatory requirements.

State officials and employees expressed concerns about the SMP’s direction and conduct of the reorganization even before the panel made its first public announcement about the reorganization on September 28, 2005. While the Office of the Legal Advisor and HR stated that the SMP could direct the reorganization, some officials in HR and the T bureaus’ human resource office disagreed with this decision.38 According to T bureau officials, they were concerned that the panel’s members were not sufficiently knowledgeable about change and personnel management principles. On September 29, 2005—the day after the SMP sent out its summary of the reorganization procedures—a senior T bureaus’ official with human resource responsibilities sent an e-mail to the SMP stating that it was not following sound personnel management principles.39 The email also stated that the SMP had ignored or misinterpreted her office’s recommendations, advice, and suggestions to the extent that the office had been unable to contribute meaningfully to the reorganization process.

Some ISN employees and AFSA officials also criticized the SMP’s decisions after it publicly announced its reorganization procedures and named acting office directors in September 2005. Eleven ISN employees wrote a memorandum to the Undersecretary for Management and the Director General of the Foreign Service in October 2005, stating that morale was poor within the new ISN bureau. ⁴⁰ Moreover, these employees stated that the SMP’s selections for acting office directors (which resulted in passing over several experienced officials for these positions) reinforced their doubts about the impartiality of the process, as did the lack of career officials or representatives from the T bureaus’ human resource office, HR, and the Office of the Legal Advisor. They also expressed concern about other aspects of the process, such as the requirement to express workforce preferences without first having concrete position and office mission descriptions, position grades, or the names of permanent office directors or deputies. The employees asked the Undersecretary for Management and the Director General of the Foreign Service to suspend the reorganization until a comprehensive staffing plan had been developed and add career civil service or FSOs and HR staff to the SMP, among other actions. AFSA expressed similar concerns in a November 2005 letter to the Secretary of State and noted that the reorganization could result in the potential downgrade or elimination of Foreign Service-designated positions. It also requested, among other things, that State form an independent panel to review all proposed reorganization decisions related to Equal Employment Opportunity concerns and allegations of prohibited personnel practices. In response to these concerns, State named a career official to the SMP, and included representatives of the HR bureau and the Office of the Legal Advisor in the SMP’s discussions, and agreed to have HR review the position descriptions of the acting office directors and prepare new position descriptions where necessary.

The lack of confidence in the reorganization may have adversely affected staff morale and may have contributed to increased ISN civil service attrition rates that immediately followed the reorganization, according to current and former State officials and documents. Twelve percent of ISN’s full-time civil service employees retired or otherwise left the bureau in fiscal 2006, the highest level for the bureau and its predecessors from fiscal year 2004 to fiscal year 2008. In contrast, State’s overall civil service attrition rate during the same period averaged about 8 percent.

Wouldn’t you want to know who former Secretary of State Rice appointed to that Senior Management Panel (SMP) tasked with restructuring these bureaus? I think the GAO should start naming names; it is, after all, an agency tasked with providing accountability reports.

Back in 2006, Dean Rust, a 35-year veteran of Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and State (who was acting deputy director of the office that dealt with nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and International Atomic Energy Agency matters) did write about this one in Reorganization Run Amok, a must read if you want an excellent background on this restructuring effort.

My jaded brain assumes that exceptionally talented individuals must now be sharing their restructuring and reorganization talents from some corner offices earning VPs or directorship salaries. Fabulous, really! And no consequences for the mess left behind.

Still, considering that Gonzo did manage to find a job after leaving a higgledy-piggledy DOJ, I am convinced now more than ever that if there is ever a place where second chances can be a lucrative gig (and it might as well be in the bill of rights) -- that is the United States of America. [According to Texas Tech Provost Bob Smith, Gonzales' $100,000 paycheck is on-par with the amount paid to other university employees who are high performers with significant experience or expertise. Someone with a national presence and a long list of accomplishments would be hired at the full professor level," Smith said.]

This is when I get fire ants in my pants -- because really -- where else but in the USA can radioactive blokes “re-invent” themselves time after time, counting on the public’s short memory and apathy, and rise again to wreck havoc once every few years -- all in the name of serving the public like you and me? PS: No offense to the real public servants who gets restructured and realigned and reinvented and rightsized under whatever ice cream flavor is hot.

Related Items:

• GAO-09-738: STATE DEPARTMENT Key Transformation Practices Could Have Helped in Restructuring Arms Control and Nonproliferation Bureaus | July 2009 | PDF
  
  
  
  


• On-the-Record Briefing: Reorganization of the Bureaus to Better Address the Threat from Weapons and Mass Destruction and to Promote Democracy | 2005 | PDF

ProPublica on The Foreign Service's 'Half-Baked' Fiasco

Alexandra Andrews of ProPublica (January 13, 2009 4:20 pm EST) on The Foreign Service’s ‘Half-Baked’ Fiasco:

As Hillary Clinton inches closer [1] to a new role as secretary of state, she’s set to inherit a troubled Foreign Service program initiated by her predecessor. The current issue of Foreign Service Journal takes a look at the initiative, a key component of Sec. Condoleezza Rice's Transformational Democracy initiative, and concludes that its track record falls somewhere short of transformational [2] (PDF).

The Global Repositioning Program, started in 2005, was devised in order to address the disparity between the Foreign Service’s presence in developed and developing nations: Before the program was initiated, there was one Foreign Service officer in Germany for every 200,000 people, compared with one for every 25 million in India, and every 40 million in China.

The program planned to transfer hundreds of Foreign Service jobs to emerging nations, mostly from positions in Washington, D.C., and Europe. Experts widely agree that a greater Foreign Service presence in emerging nations is crucial, but the State Department’s decision not to request additional funds to realize that goal was a "critical flaw," reports the Journal.

Instead, a secretive group of ten senior staff members implemented a net-zero approach to repositioning existing resources: Eliminate a position here, create one there. But a simple-sounding process turned out to be anything but that. For one thing, the new positions were costlier, often requiring the elimination of two or three positions in the U.S. In addition, Foreign Service offices receiving new employees were given little warning or resources for extra office space, housing, vehicles, administration staff, etc. to support the new officer. Meanwhile, the offices losing staff saw no equivalent reduction in their workload.

Another key part of the plan – one-person posts in areas outside national capitals – hit a snag when they were designated as consulates, a term that carries a host of complicated legal issues. Only two of these positions have actually been put in place. A separate plan for virtual posts, monitored mainly through online communication, was dismissed by one officer as, "A joke. A Web site, nothing more."

What the Journal describes as the "half-baked" program has sapped resources at a Foreign Service already hobbled by a cash crunch: The president of the American Foreign Service Association told Congress in July: "Unfunded mandates include 324 positions in Iraq, 150 in Afghanistan, 40 in the office to coordinate reconstruction efforts, [and] 100+ training positions to increase the number of Arabic speakers." Contrast that with the $1 billion the U.S. has doled out for State Department security contractors [3] in Iraq.

It remains to be seen what the incoming secretary of state will do with the program, but its critics don’t expect it to last. They’ve called it "just the latest bumper sticker in a slogan-rich political environment, doomed to pass into oblivion once the administration ends."

We’ll soon find out.

~ ~ ~


Here are some of my prior posts related to transformational diplomacy:

• 2009: Putting the Diplomacy House in Order
• Global Repositioning Review – A Shocker!
• The People Factor and the C Street Bailout
• On Keeping Friends Close, and Enemies Closer
• Transformational Diplomacy: Headache in the Details
• The Challenge of Transforming Organizations

2009: Putting the Diplomacy House in Order

(Or Why Diplomacy Needs More Than a Penny)

The trials and tribulations of 2009 will be mainly on the home front. My Chinese crystal ball says that the new year of the Ox is a good time to settle domestic affairs and put our house in order. I think Ambassador Holmes' piece in Foreign Affairs is a step in the right direction; can’t go forward unless we dare to look back.

In the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador J. Anthony Holmes, the Cyrus Vance Fellow in Diplomatic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations who was previously President of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) and U.S. Ambassador to Burkina Faso pens Where Are the Civilians? How to Rebuild the U.S. Foreign Service.

The title begs the follow up questions of “Who broke it?” And “Why was it broken?” Ambassador Holmes points out that DOD's 2008 budget was over 24 times as large as the combined budgets of the State Department and USAID ($750 billion compared with $31 billion). And here is something that I did not know: The number of lawyers at the DOD is larger than the entire U.S. diplomatic corps.

Holy goat!

He catalogs “Condi’s False Hope” from transformational diplomacy to the creation and staffing of the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization which was created in 2004 and “had fewer than ten employees in mid-2008 to accomplish what Rice described as a vital component of her vision of a new diplomacy.”

He talks about "Green Zone Blues" and the politicization of the Foreign Service. Here’s the nugget that made me throw my new pair of Manolo Blahnik at my sullen, multi-system tee-vee:

"In fact, the Bush administration had effectively engineered the dispute in an effort to publicly embarrass the diplomatic corps. By demanding that FSOs take on the unprecedented, open-ended, and fundamentally impossible challenge of nation building under fire without adequate training or funding, the White House was continuing a myopic tradition of shortchanging the civilian institutions of foreign policy while lavishing resources on the military. Furthermore, the Bush administration's general efforts to stifle dissent and to reward those serving in Iraq with promotions and choice assignments has led to the unmistakable politicization of the Foreign Service."

Ah well, it’s not a pretty picture (unless you were politicized up) but deserves a good reading by FS professionals; most especially by the incoming administration who has the opportunity to apply the appropriate remedy not just Band-Aid solution to this problem. It’s the year of the Ox; it’s a good time to put this house in order.

Related Item:

Where Are the Civilians? How to Rebuild the U.S. Foreign Service
From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2009

Global Repositioning Review – A Shocker!

Last month (11/24/08), the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at State released an Interim Review of the Global Repositioning Program and posted it online. Below is the unclassified summary of a full report, which receives limited official distribution. If you really want to see the full report, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests may be made at http://oig.state.gov/foia/. I think I’ll pass …

The Secretary of State’s Global Repositioning Program (GRP) was designed to increase U.S. diplomatic engagement with a number of high-priority countries around the world. It is an integral part of her overarching strategy of transformational diplomacy.

In general, the new positions are being used effectively. However, their effectiveness is limited by a lack of resources to support their work, including travel and representation funds and locally employed staff. As expected, the shift has reduced the ability of those posts and offices that lost positions to accomplish necessary work, including outreach and voluntary reporting (italics mine). If repositioning becomes regularized, it can be done in a way that takes greater account of the Department’s strategic planning mechanisms and involves prioritizing of posts in terms of overall U.S. interests, and assessments of relative workload. This should be done largely through additional rather than repositioned personnel.

This interim review of the implementation of the GRP makes the following findings:

→ Post leadership is critical.

→ GRP positions should be used flexibly to achieve transformational diplomacy goals.

→ Resource support for the GRP positions is insufficient.

→ American presence posts need a home office in the Department.

→ Virtual presence posts are a useful way of structuring outreach, but there is confusion about what they are.

→ There should be more coordination with the U.S. Agency for International Development in the GRP and transformational diplomacy processes.

→ The Department needs more funds for programs in priority transformational diplomacy countries, particularly if the U.S. Agency for International Development is not present.

→ The Department should undertake a concerted effort to achieve the Secretary of State’s goal that diplomats should spend less time behind their desks and more time getting out and around their host country.

→ OIG, in its inspections of posts and bureaus over the past five years, has generally not found an excess of staff that could be cut without impairing U.S. interests.

→ While the GRP has eased the workload problem in some key posts, it has exacerbated the situation in others.

→ Guidance should be given to losing posts as to what functions they can cut.

→ Given tight staffing and shortages of resources, future GRP efforts should be well prepared through a rigorous business plan.

Anyone actually surprised by any of these? I'm sorry if you're shocked to your socks.



Related Item:
OIG Report ISP-I-09-09:
Interim Review of the Global Repositioning Program (PDF)

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?

On Keeping Friends Close, and Enemies Closer

Over the weekend, two old hands from the State Department made a case why we should talk to our enemies. Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns was the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (“P”), the Department of State’s third ranking official and the highest-ranking American career diplomat, until his retirement this past April. He is now a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. In Newsweek, he writes:

“In each of the three presidential debates, McCain belittled Obama as naive for arguing that America should be willing to negotiate with such adversaries. In the vice presidential debate, Sarah Palin went even further, accusing Obama of "bad judgment … that is dangerous," an ironic charge given her own very modest foreign-policy credentials.

I lived this issue for 27 years as a career diplomat, serving both Republican and Democratic administrations. Maybe that's why I've been struggling to find the real wisdom and logic in this Republican assault against Obama. I'll bet that a poll of senior diplomats who have served presidents from Carter to Bush would reveal an overwhelming majority who agree with the following position: of course we should talk to difficult adversaries—when it is in our interest and at a time of our choosing.”

He points out to Israel's Yitzhak Rabin, who defended his discussions with PLO’s Yasir Arafat by declaring, "You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with very unsavory enemies."

Why should the United States approach the world any differently now? Especially now? As Americans learned all too dramatically on 9/11 and again during the financial crisis this autumn, we inhabit a rapidly integrating planet where dangers can strike at any time and from great distances. And when others—China, India, Brazil—are rising to share power in the world with us, America needs to spend more time, not less, talking and listening to friends and foes alike.

Simply put, we need all the friends we can get. And we need to think more creatively about how to blunt the power of opponents through smart diplomacy, not just the force of arms.

You can read the entire text here.

Meanwhile, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Ambassador Richard N. Haass, who had served previously as director of policy planning for the Department of State, and where he was a principal adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell also penned a thoughtful and pragmatic piece for the incoming president. In “The World That Awaits,” Ambassador Haass warns that “An Iran with nuclear weapons or the capacity to produce them quickly would place the Middle East on a hair trigger and lead several Arab states to embark on nuclear programs of their own.”

He proposes a realistic way forward based on collaboration:

“I would suggest that we work with the Europeans, Russia and China to cobble together a new diplomatic package to present to the Iranians. Ideally, Iran would be persuaded to give up its independent enrichment capability or, if it refused, to consider accepting clear limits on enrichment and intrusive inspections so that the threat is clearly bounded. We should be prepared to have face-to-face talks with the Iranians, without preconditions. In general, it is wiser to see negotiations not as a reward but as a tool of national security.”

I am heartened to see his counsel on the current efforts involving democracy and world transformation:

One area, however, where you would be wise to put some distance between yourself and "43" involves democracy. America does not have the ability to transform the world. Nor do we have the luxury. We need to focus more on what countries do than on what they are. This is not an argument for ignoring human rights or setting aside our interest in promoting democracy. But we should go slow and focus on building its prerequisites—the checks and balances of civil society and constitutionalism—and not rush elections or impose political change through force."

You can read the whole piece here.

All this talk about talking to our enemies made me think of Sun Tzu (孫子 or 孫武), the famous 6th century BC Chinese military strategist and author of Sun Tzu, The Art of War: “It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”

Is this great knowing possible if we don't conduct an open, and healthy discussion about our collective vision of a new, revitalized America? Is it possible if we engage with our enemies only at a point of a gun?

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

Transformational Diplomacy: Headache in the Details

I have written previously about the Belarus dustup here. In the last 12 hours, Minsk has kicked up some more dust with the expulsion of 10 additional U.S. diplomats, leaving the U.S. Embassy in Minsk with a remaining staff of five officers. "The foreign ministry gave us a list of 10 diplomats who are considered persona non grata and should leave the country in the space of 72 hours," Jonathan Moore, the chargé d'affaires in Minsk, told journalists at a briefing.” Now, the host government is not even asking “nicely” anymore. It gave the Embassy a list and told the diplomats basically to “get lost” in three days. You can read the WaPo coverage here and the VOA piece here.

The Washington Post reports that Belarusian President Lukashenko, a former collective farm manager who has been in power since 1994, has been accused of smothering opposition groups' freedoms of speech and assembly, prompting some to call Belarus the "last dictatorship in Europe." The report also informs us that Washington imposed sanctions on the state oil company, Belneftekhim, which U.S. officials say is personally controlled by Lukashenko. The company accounts for about one-third of Belarus's foreign currency earnings. All that, plus he threw opposition leader Alexander Kozulin in jail for a 5 1/2 -year sentence for organizing demonstrations after the 2006 presidential election so Lukashenko and 30 other senior Belarusan officials were also barred from traveling to the United States and the European Union.

By every stretch of the Western imagination, it looks like Belarus is a country in need of transformation. The objective of transformational diplomacy is 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. Obviously here is one prime candidate that needs real help, and this is what I don’t get about this bold initiative …. pray somebody explain this to me – we give our diplomats a new task, to work with coalitions and partners to build and sustain democratic, well governed states … but since our diplomats on the ground are subject to the “hospitality” of the host government at every place they are located, how are they going to do their job unless their presence (and work) is tolerated by the host government? I’m using the term “hospitality” in the broadest sense here – as in they have the power to let you stay or kick you out of the country.

From the Congressional Research Service Report last year:

"Transformational diplomacy is about the nature of political regimes in other countries, and it promotes the United States “working with partners to build and sustain democratic, well-governed, responsible states that will respond to the needs of their people. The views of other nations then become important as to whether sovereign governments accept this agenda of the United States. For instance, will other governments take issue with Secretary Rice’s January 2006 speech on transformational diplomacy in which she stated that U.S. diplomats will be “helping foreign citizens to promote democracy building, fight corruption, start businesses, improve healthcare, and reform education?” Will other governments allow the expansion of U.S. representation to American Presence Posts around their countries? And how receptive will people in other countries be to the new U.S. initiatives?"

Generally speaking, what nation worth its salt would not resist interference from any outside force seeking to actively change its internal systems? If some country, let’s say China or Russia, sends their diplomats to Washington D.C. or Chicago or L.A. with the objective of changing our American system to become more like theirs because they are convinced this would bring a new world order, would we not resist and kick them all out in one swoop? You bet we would!

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that we need a new diplomatic approach in confronting the challenges of the 21^st century, but as usual, the devil is in the details and right now, the details are giving me a bad headache.

Developing Strategic Leaders for the 21st Century: The Foreign Service

A couple of months ago, Jeffrey McClausland published a Strategic Studies Institute publication (funded by the U.S. War College) entitled Developing Strategic Leaders for the 21^st Century. He makes the case that our “new security environment requires better qualified civilian leaders to think in different patterns in order to accomplished daunting tasks.” He further writes that, “If America is to meet the multiple challenges of the 21^st century, it is crucial that we developed a system that places the right people in the right places in government at the right moment. The nation critically needs civilian policymakers who can manage change and deal with the here and now.”

The development of our people must include, according to this study, “the recruitment of quality personnel, experiential learning through a series of positions of increasing responsibility, training for specific tasks or missions, and continuous education that considers both policy and process. Consequently, it requires people who are not only substantively qualified and knowledgeable regarding policy issues but also possess the leadership abilities to direct large complex organizations.”

McClausland’s study provides a historical overview of the recruitment, retention and staff development in the last twenty years and examines the three primary agencies in the crafting of foreign and defense policies: the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. The study then outlines required changes to existing personnel management systems and development programs for all three agencies. I listed below McClausland’s eight recommended changes relevant to the Foreign Service but encourage you to read the entire report. You can find the summary and the link to the full document in my Thought Forum List under State: Future Challenges.

-» First, a successful Foreign Service requires officers who are consistently building new knowledge and skills. The State Department requires a 10-15 percent increase in personnel to allow for that proportion of the overall service to be in training or education at any given moment. This number must be rigorously fenced off solely for these purposes to allow for adequate training and development. Failure to do so will result in personnel being simply absorbed into ongoing operational efforts.

-» Second, expanding requirements and the pressing need to maintain a surge capacity require more flexibility for admission to the Foreign Service. Horizontal entry and exit should be considered whereby those with a particular background or linguistic skill could enter laterally at grades far above entry level. Furthermore, greater allowances should be made for career FSOs to take a leave of absence for personal reasons and subsequently return to duty.

-» Third, any use of “blindfolding” for selection to the Foreign Service should be ended, and overall recruiting practices reviewed.

-» Fourth, the Alternative Examination Program should be broadened to include those in the military (both active and reserve) or who complete graduate degrees in areas of particular need.

-» Fifth, control of the FSI should be passed from the Undersecretary of Management and placed directly under the Deputy Secretary. This shift would give FSI greater prominence, underscore the importance of FSO development, and allow the department leadership to better control course offerings and selection policies.

-» Sixth, opportunities for development assignments at think tanks, congressional staffs, military war colleges, etc., should be actively sought as part the department’s overall development programs.

-» Seventh, critical problems exist with respect to pay, allowances, and retirements. FSOs serving in Iraq and Afghanistan pay taxes while serving abroad, unlike uniformed military, and effectively take a pay cut during these assignments. Foreign Service retirement is capped, and, unlike the military or other government agencies, State Department retirees cannot accept another government position without forfeiting a significant portion of their retirement pay. These compensation issues must be addressed.

-» Finally, the Hart-Rudman Commission made one final internal recommendation for the State Department in 2001 that still deserves consideration. The report recommended changing the Foreign Service’s name to the United States Diplomatic Corps. Some might argue that this is superficial rhetoric mongering, but it could have a significantly beneficial impact. It would serve as a reminder that this group of people do not serve foreign interests but are rather central to U.S. national security. Such a change would further rationalize the value of diverse assignments in regional bureaus, abroad in an embassy, and in the functional components of the organization. This change might help to better depict a career pattern for young people considering diplomatic service as a possible profession. Finally, it would also serve to emphasize that the traditional mission of the State Department to provide national representation abroad has dramatically changed, as revealed in the recent report The Embassy of the Future. This report observes that diplomats of the future will need traits and skills that are different from those of diplomats a decade ago and even those hired today. A change in organizational culture is required, as the “new diplomat must be an active force in advancing U.S. interests, not just a gatherer and transmitter of information.”

A note on the author: Jeffrey McClausland graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1972 and was commissioned in field artillery. He is also a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. He holds both a Masters and Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. He was appointed Visiting Professor of International Law and Diplomacy at the Penn State Dickinson School of Law in January 2007.

I think these recommendations deserve real consideration. Funding will always be an issue, of course, but Congress must realize sooner or later that we usually get what we pay for (just as long as they won't scream their heads off when thing fall apart in the international arena). I do think that the State leadership and the WH must do more to get the needed resources for our country's arm in "soft power" (with 273 days left in office, I doubt anything would happen, but one can dream). The fact is - we can globally reposition the "red-headed stepchild" all we want, but that's not going to be enough nor would it make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things.

Transforming the Foreign Service into an effective diplomatic service prepared for the challenges of the new century does not come cheap; the strategy of shuffling human and fiscal resources to keep the tab down is not going to work because well, it's like a ship, you see - you can't save it, much less transform it, if you only plug the leak in one place but not the leaks in the rest of the vessel. By the time you get to pick a new color, a new engine or a new captain, that ship would be long under water.

Staffing the Foreign Service

A recent Federal Times report indicates that State has about 3,000 mid career Foreign Service generalist officers — grades FS-03 to FS-01 — and needs about 3,800. The Department is reportedly asking Congress for enough money to hire about 700 Foreign Service officers in fiscal year 2009. That’s not even a quarter of our cumulative staffing deficit but hey, there must be a good reason for a good round number like that – let’s see:

A) 700 is the Secretary’s favorite number

B) 700 is the reverse of Bond 007 (our expeditionary force, get it?)

C) 700 from Remington Model 700 – the Foreign Service version

D) 700 is the max word for the Meaning of Life

E) All of the above

But seriously -- the same report quoted Linda Taglialatela, State’s deputy assistant secretary for human resources as saying that, “About 19 percent of Foreign Service employees today are “stretching” to do jobs above their pay grade […] and that “When State relies on employees working above their pay grades, embassies and consulates aren’t running at peak efficiency. Most of them are very bright and capable, and they can do 70 percent of the job,” Taglialatela said. “But they need more supervision, they need more time, more direction; and they can’t hit the ground running like a more senior person would be able to.” Amen to that (when the stretch assignment works, it's fantastic; but when it does not work, it's a train wreck with the next person having to deal with morale issues and the % of the job that did not get done).

So from decades of underfunding and downsizing, here is the law of unintended consequences playing out now. Even if Congress approves the FY09 funding request, this is not going to ease the pain in Foreign Service posts worldwide in the immediate future. Writing for the Foreign Service Journal, FSO Mark Johnsen in One Hand Clapping: The Sound of Staffing the Foreign Service writes:

Developing a trained, professional force takes time —
an average of 10 years of experience and training to
reach mid-level proficiency. Even if the hiring of
entry-level officers were doubled or tripled tomorrow,
it will take as long as it takes the average Foreign
Service officer to advance to senior ranks —between
20 and 30 years — to raise staffing by a third at all
levels of the Foreign Service.

This is clear as night and day, even if we’re going to start hiring fast and furious, tomorrow, the mid-career staffing deficit is not going away very soon. Which means – we’ll see more mid-level Foreign Service officers holding, no - juggling the demands of 2-3 other jobs at a given post. The result is either we’ll have a spike in officer burnout or things are going to fall into the cracks. This is just not sustainable.

Mark Johnsen writes that the "actual shortfall for Foreign Service staffing was not 700 positions — the number commonly accepted at the time as the deficit and the target for the subsequent Diplomatic Readiness Initiative. Because of the additional, cumulative deficits that were never addressed... it was actually more like 2,000 to 3,500 positions." Although I must admit that 700 is better than 0, in the whole system scheme of things, I'm not sure how much of an impact this would have to our diplomatic readiness in the 21^st century.

Almost with certainty, 2019 would be a more challenging time than where we are now. Ten years from now, there will be approximately 7.5 billion people in the world. The countries with the highest population growth rate are either in the Middle East or are listed as developing nations. Robert Kaplan writing for the Atlantic Monthly describes our "map of the future:"

"a cartography in three dimensions... [with] overlapping sediments of group and other identities atop the merely two-dimensional color markings of city-states and the remaining nations, themselves confused in places by shadowy tentacles, hovering overhead, indicating the power of drug cartels, mafias, and private security agencies. Instead of borders, there would be moving "centers" of power, as in the Middle Ages. ...To this protean cartographic hologram one must add other factors, such as migrations of populations, explosions of birth rates, vectors of disease. Henceforward the map of the world will never be static. This future map—in a sense, the "Last Map"—will be an ever-mutating representation of chaos."

He wrote this in 1994; we'd be hard pressed not to recognize that this is where we are living now. Imagine then years from now, with all this and the reality of diminishing resources hitting us. More than ever, now and in the future, we need seasoned diplomats who knows how to negotiate, engage, influence and build partnerships in this interconnected, chaotic world; because as long as they are working, the guns will be silent, and the world in a perpetual war would not be a sitting in our doorsteps.

So, I would hazard a prediction that the 7th Floor must already know but Congress may not: Unless the Foreign Service is funded fully now to address the cumulative staffing deficits we currently have, transformational diplomacy would be nothing more than a footnote in the history books and we'd be ill-equipped to confront the challenges of our future map.

The Challenge of Transforming Organizations

In genetics, transformation means the modification of a cell by the uptake and incorporation of exogenous DNA, an act that changes the form or character or substance of something. Of course, unless it produces heritable change, it's not even considered true transformation.

This is a metaphor that I think fits well with organizational transformation, an initiative that so many seek but so few accomplished successfully. This is not your normal "let's change the way we do things here," this is transformation as fundamental change -- to the core of what we are, how we do things and where we will be in the future:

"a permanent rekindling of individual creativity and responsibility, a lasting transformation of an organization's internal and external relationships, an honest-to-God change in human behavior on the job. It is not incremental change. Its realizable goal is a discontinuous shift in organizational capability -- a resocialization so thorough that employees feel they are working for a different organization …"

(Changing the Way We Change, Harvard Business Review).

Slightly over two years ago, in a speech at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Secretary Rice outlined her vision for changes in U.S. diplomacy that she referred to as "transformational diplomacy" to meet this 21st Century world (January 18, 2006 Speech). The new diplomacy elevates democracy-promotion activities inside countries. In a testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary Rice states that the objective of transformational diplomacy is: "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."

Six months after she delivered that speech, the State Department came out with the 2006 Report to Employees Advancing Transformational Diplomacy. Not once during this time have I heard a personal public address to the employees and their family members focusing on this initiative or what it means to them. Sure there were cables, but what is it they say about the spoken words? "Words matter," as has been so repeated during this campaign season. And that is true anywhere, whether at work or in politics, but most especially, in times of great chaos and challenges.

Transformational initiatives have a tendency of arriving from the "top-down," on a late Friday afternoon. Surgeons have to prep patients before the surgery, why should transformation efforts be any different? And yet, such is the case, especially in hierarchical organizations. And here lies the inherent problem – the top-down approach tends to lay down the burden of change on a few people. As such, the number of people at every level who makes the commitment and offer creative contributions, and those who invest their passions on such an enterprise, is quite small.

And yet, for such an initiative to work, we need the involvement of the widest number of people possible who can - not only make this work, but also have the power to make this change effort stick. The problem is, as Bob Waterman writes in The Renewal Factor, "We are so busy grandstanding with crisp decisions that we don't take time to involve those who have to make the decisions work.

Specific to the State Department, the Congressional Research Service last year reported:

"There have also been important criticisms of specific aspects of the transformational diplomacy plan and how it is being carried out. Observers believe that many of the criticisms could have been avoided if there had been greater transparency as well as inclusion of diplomats, Congress, and other stakeholders in the planning stages."

As John Kotter writes in The Heart of Change, "People change what they do less because they are given analysis that shifts their thinking than because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings." The Foreign Service has some of the best and the brightest men and women this country has to offer. Most if not all, have their ears on the ground and recognizes the realities that require a revitalized diplomacy as a primary tool of foreign policy.

So, the challenge to the State leadership is this - how seriously does it want transformational diplomacy to work and take roots beyond the next 10 months, and beyond the front pages of the news rags. If serious enough, then it has to do a better job at understanding what people are feeling, and its needs to address the employees' anxieties and distrust as one of the primary components of this necessary journey.

And oh yes, I think it would also be helpful if it starts delivering messages directly to the employees instead of the news media first.