Research Fellow  Christopher Griffin

With any luck, fall 2007 will one day be regarded as the nadir of the State Department's fortunes. During September hearings, Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said progress there was based on a grass-roots rejection of al-Qaida, not a State-brokered compromise among Iraq's fractured political leadership. Less than a week later, Blackwater USA security contractors escorting State officials to the Baghdad Green Zone caused at least 17 Iraqi fatalities in a controversial firefight. Finally, when a handful of foreign service officers (FSOs) decried compulsory service in Iraq as a "potential death sentence" at a November town hall meeting, the department's eviscerated morale was revealed for the whole world to see.

The town hall kerfuffle has initiated a friendly-fire barrage from milbloggers, most of whom are unsympathetic to the State Department's plight. "Abu Muqawama" intones that "State has brought this one on themselves" by publicly complaining when soldiers--and many FSOs--are serving quietly and effectively in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Subsunk" at Blackfive pipes in that although both FSOs and military service members take an oath to obey the Constitution and serve the country, "it just appears that some folks place more weight on their oaths than others."

A few bloggers have been more empathetic. "Akinoluna," a female Marine supply sergeant who has daily contact with American diplomats while serving at a U.S. Embassy, observes that "State Department employees spend most of their careers overseas and many of those years [are] at ... hardship posts. ... I can't tell you how many times I've heard military people complaining about being outside of the United States, but I've never heard a foreign service officer say that. Usually they are complaining about being forced back to D.C. for a couple years."

Raising the level of debate, Matt Armstrong at MountainRunner lays the blame for the fiascoes on the failure of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's agenda of "transformational diplomacy": "Rice has not prepared her department for the mission she's suddenly demanded. We're now four years into Iraq, six years into Afghanistan, and her department still hasn't mobilized ... for war to the extent that even a few months ago Crocker had to go public with staffing problems. State/DynCorp have messed up policing. State permitted (some, like me, might say encouraged) their security escorts to take an overly aggressive posture because of screwed up priorities. And State hasn't intervened when American reconstruction contractors screw the Iraqi government."

The tempest in the milblogosphere has been matched by intensive navel-gazing on the part of diplomat bloggers. The State Department's official blog site, DipNote, has been a hub of contention on the matter, for although the postings generally represent official policy, the comment sections have provided FSOs a forum where they can vent and present all sides of the issue.

One of the most controversial DipNote postings has been an open letter from John Matel, a long-serving FSO who is leading a provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in Iraq. Advising his "vexed and overwrought colleagues" to "take a deep breath and calm down," he reminds FSOs that although he would just as well not have to babysit anyone who does not want to join his PRT, he suggests that his colleagues who are not willing to serve at the president's discretion might best "consider the type of job that does not require worldwide availability."

Matel's posting set off a chain of comments that ranged from denunciations of the "cowardice" of FSOs by one retired Army officer to accusations that Matel would have made a model fascist stooge. One of the most thoughtful observations was contributed by an FSO in Portugal, who criticizes the absence of proper training for FSOs, even after six years of war: "At the end of the day, taking FSOs with no Arabic language skills, no Middle Eastern experience, no job-specific skills (repairing electrical grids? water systems?), and especially no security training, and sending them to Iraq is foolish. Hundreds of FSOs are in Arabic training right now; job-specific training is lagging but underway. These people will probably do good work in Iraq when ready. Many of those being sent now, however, are just totems, sent for no other reason than to show that they are there."

In late November, Defense Secretary Robert Gates joined the fray when he challenged U.S. civilian agencies to undertake a greater share of the burden for post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction. Generously deflecting blame from his colleague Rice toward a decade of dystrophy, as the post-Cold War "peace dividend" was largely paid by the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the former U.S. Information Agency, he called for developing such civilian capacity as a sufficiently funded State Department and a readily deployable corps of civilians who can fill the technical jobs required to accomplish reconstruction operations.

Gates frames the problem perfectly. Just as many of the technical skills required for stabilization and reconstruction are not inculcated through military training, nor will they ever be native to even the best-trained diplomat. This is why the reserves and National Guard have been in such high demand in Iraq and Afghanistan, for they deliver civilian expertise in such fields as policing and civil engineering that neither the full-time soldier nor the statesman can be expected to master.

But even with the development of such a civilian capability, which the State Department's coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization hopes to develop into a several-thousand-strong deployable corps of civilian experts, State will still require a cultural shift to manage such missions. This is one point on which the debate on DipNote and other professional sources diverge: What makes the best foreign service officer? The master of memo writing and diplomatic communication? Or the manager who can oversee a range of reconstruction projects and extract performance from the civilians and soldiers under his watch? Both skill sets may be necessary, but the department does not have a tradition of training and promoting the latter.

The crisis in Foggy Bottom, as well as Gates' call for reform, has opened a window for reforming the State Department in preparation for what will likely remain a "Long War" against Islamist extremism. If this opportunity is embraced, then State has an opportunity to reverse its slide into interagency irrelevancy. If this opportunity is missed, State appears poised to continue disappointing its military counterparts and to fail to effect American foreign policy.

Christopher Griffin is a research fellow at AEI.