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Diplomacy I
Beyond Foreign Ministries
Barry Fulton (editor)
The views expressed in this report are those of the
author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position
of the U.S. government, the Department of Defense, or any of its agencies.
I am probably going to bring in some of my colleagues from that world I was in for the last seven years--Steve Case, Michael Bell, Andy Grove, a few other people like that--who really know what they're talking about ... to come in and find out what we can do.
--Secretary of State Colin Powell, January 25, 2001
Introduction
As the Communist Revolution ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Information Revolution reached the tipping point as corporations embraced the new technologies. The U. S. Department of State, while marking the end of the Cold War, continued to be guided by practices more fitting to an earlier age. Indeed, decision making has become more centralized, access more restricted, and information flow more inhibited.
This state of affairs has been documented by several studies, including Reinventing Diplomacy in the Information Age, Equipped for the Future: Managing U.S. Foreign Affairs in the 21st Century, and America's Overseas Presence in the 21st Century. In the first week of the Bush administration, former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci presented to Secretary of State Colin Powell a "resources-for-reform" proposal calling for the Department of State to undertake fundamental change, including upgrading information technology and adopting modern management practices. Cosponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the proposal, State Department Reform, represents a consensus among research institutions, scholars, and professionals that the time has come for action. "In short," the task force said, "renewal of America's foreign policy making and implementing machinery is an urgent national security priority.
The National Intelligence Council invited a group of scholars to look ahead and describe the security environment of 2015. Their discerning report, entitled Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future with Nongovernment Experts, was published in December 2000. The panel concluded that "diplomacy will be more complicated. Washington will have greater difficulty harnessing its power to achieve specific foreign policy goals: the U.S. Government will exercise a smaller and less powerful part of the overall economic and cultural influence of the United States abroad."
In July 2001 iMP: The Magazine on Information Impacts invited twenty-three American and British experts to examine the Global Trends study and imagine the state of diplomacy in 2015. How will it look? And how will we get there? Among the writers, broad agreement exists that diplomacy must change if it is to continue to be an effective element of statecraft in a world endangered by a panoply of destabilizing threats. They also agree that even as information technology wisely deployed is a necessary element of a new diplomacy, profound changes in its culture and practice will be required to restore its primacy by 2015. And practically everyone agrees that the public dimension of diplomacy increases in importance as the world's population becomes more engaged.
Beyond Foreign Ministries
Henry E. Catto, Jr. reminds us that there are certain core diplomatic practices that must be retained, but urges more attention to public diplomacy and an appreciation of "soft power" as a central element of international relations. Anthony C. E. Quainton posits that diplomats must assume the role of "change insurgents," thereby creating a state of dynamic turbulence that will lead to the internal reform of current diplomatic practices. Jeffrey R. Cooper explains the external forces that are driving changes in diplomacy: political revolution, economic revolution, and the information revolution.
Brian Hocking insists that we differentiate the mechanisms and processes of diplomacy to resolve the apparent paradox between expanding and contracting diplomatic requirements. Sheryl J. Brown and Margarita S. Studemeister describe the diffusion of diplomacy whereby academics, corporations, nongovernmental organizations, and others assume traditional diplomatic roles through the power of networking. Howard Cincotta writes that effecting the transition from the hierarchical, closed, and classified nature of modern diplomacy to the openness, flexibility, and speed of postmodern diplomacy is one of the chief challenges for the diplomatic community.
Beyond Old Borders
Donna Oglesby, pointing to the limits of military power in dealing with fragmenting states, persuasively calls for cultural dialogue as a necessary precondition for solving the emerging problems of the twenty-first century. Larry Seaquist writes that the diplomat of 2015 must be prepared to build peace in a world where local conflict and civilian warriors threaten the stability of communities and nations. Jody K. Olsen and Norman J. Peterson urge that technology be used to complement, but not replace, educational and cultural exchanges. Mark Leonard and Liz Noble suggest that traditional diplomacy needs to be broadened beyond foreign ministries to address increasingly important publics throughout the world. These five authors would agree that creating trust underpins diplomacy in 2015.
Walter R. Roberts argues that state broadcasting will continue as an element of public diplomacy in 2015, but believes the array of U.S. government services today is duplicative, expensive, and even counterproductive. Adam Clayton Powell III, celebrating the breadth and reach of the Internet, hints that state-sponsored broadcasting may become irrelevant. The Internet is the wild card in 2015, Robert Coonrod points out. He suggests that traditional government broadcasters will regard radio as a means to counter specific challenges or threats, but will abandon the practice of projecting their societies and cultures.
2015 and Beyond
Charles A. Schmitz, writing with savage wit, describes the diplomatic environment of 2015, enhanced by technology and constrained by politics. If this mind-stretching disquisition strikes you as far-fetched, Richard P. O'Neill goes out on a technological limb as he considers what 2015 may offer from three categories of predictive structure: the linear extrapolation, the missed discontinuity, and the breathless proclamation. And Steven Livingston shows how high-resolution public satellite imagery will further change the diplomatic landscape by introducing still another dimension of transparency in international relations.
Stephanie Smith Kinney calls for a new culture of diplomacy that puts as much primacy on action as it does on observation and reflection. John Hemery says that training diplomats for 2015 must reflect changes in the role of foreign ministries and give greater attention to interaction in cyberspace, public diplomacy, international financial markets, and results-oriented management. Wilson Dizard, Jr. asserts optimistically that the State Department is about to witness a dramatic upgrading of its information resources; the new agenda of diplomacy-from trade issues to human rights-he writes, is being increasingly shaped by the information revolution. Jamie F. Metzl, insisting that overclassification of information has become a national liability in the Information Age, calls for a new diplomacy that replaces an obsession with secrecy with a culture of openness.
As the revolution in military affairs moves ahead at the Pentagon, a counterpart revolution in diplomatic affairs must surely follow. Not just desktop Internet connections, but a bottom-to-top overhaul of the conduct of diplomacy. Not just in Foggy Bottom, but throughout the democratic world. If the vision of the year 2015 represented in this edition of iMP is on target, it is past time for the revolution to begin.
Released: July 23, 2001
iMP Magazine: http://www. cisp. org/imp/july_2001/07_editorial.htm
(c) 2001. Barry Fulton. All rights reserved.
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The End of Diplomacy?
When I left government in 1993, public diplomacy was thought to be on the periphery of foreign affairs. By 2015, it will be recognized as the core of the profession. As before, it will have embraced the latest technologies to expand its reach across the globe.
-Henry E. Catto, Jr.
From 1971 to 1993, Henry E. Catto, Jr. served several presidents in a distinguished career of government service, including posts as U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, and Great Britain, and director of the U.S. Information Agency. Ambassador Catto is the author of Ambassadors at Sea: The High and Low Adventures of a Diplomat (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998).
When the first telegram arrived on the desk of British foreign minister Lord Palmerston in the 1840s, he is said to have exclaimed, "My God, this is the end of diplomacy."
Palmerston's fears, quaint to our ears, nonetheless have contemporary resonance. During my tenure as the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, I recall the frustrations caused by George Bush the elder having Margaret Thatcher's phone number. He would call, and the first time I would know about it would be when some Whitehall type would say with a bit of a leer, "Quite a surprise your president sprang on Maggie yesterday!"
I would mutter something vague and change the subject, for the United States had no mechanism for informing ambassadors of high-level phone conversations. The British, on the other hand, routinely told my Washington counterpart what had gone on. (To avoid such embarrassments, I eventually worked out a system with the National Security Council officer who monitored summit conversations, whereby he would give me the gist of what went on.)
If the phone can rattle a diplomat's composure, the thought of what the e-world can do is indeed daunting. What impact, one may wonder, will the Information Revolution have on diplomacy? As the French would say, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose! There will be no substitute for diplomats meeting face to face, and there will be no excuse for not adopting the latest technology to amplify the voices of diplomacy. My experience as U.S. ambassador in San Salvador, Geneva, and London convinced me that, if anything, we must redouble our diplomatic efforts to communicate with allies and adversaries.
In a way, an embassy resembles a newspaper. A group of highly trained people endeavor to find out what's happening. They report and interpret what they learn. And they try to anticipate pitfalls. Clearly the audience for this reporting can't compare with that of a great metropolitan paper; the target is, after all, a handful of offices at State, Commerce, and other agencies. Still, the impact can be important, for the audience determines policy and allocates resources-and in the last analysis contributes to international security and prosperity.
President Bill Clinton is said to have had more than a hundred conversations with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. They did not, however, let it go at that; they met and met often, for only by "pressing the flesh," as President Lyndon Johnson used to say, do diplomats get the feel of their colleagues or clients. President Bush surely found out the importance of person-to-person diplomacy on his first trip to Europe in June 2001.
The same approach is vital at less exalted levels of diplomacy. When I was ambassador to El Salvador, I became friendly with Foreign Minister Mauricio Borgonovo. Frequently, in the late afternoon, I would go to the foreign ministry to have a dollop of Scotch with Mauricio to feel him out on supporting the United States at something such as a UN vote or just to schmooze about the world, the flesh, and the devil. We could tell not only by our words to each other but also by expressions, gestures, and voice tone the importance of the matter at hand; it was the essence of personal diplomacy. (To my great regret, Borgonovo was kidnapped from his home and murdered by communist rebels shortly after my tour ended.)
Serving one's country as ambassador is not only exchanging views with other officials. Even more important is communicating with those who feel estranged from government.
For example, when serving in El Salvador, I learned that Duke Ellington and his orchestra were to tour several South American countries. An inquiry by the embassy's public affairs officer found that Ellington's schedule permitted a Central America stop, and we signed him up. I bludgeoned Washington into providing $3,500. The American business community underwrote the difference. We were in business.
The theatre was standing room only on concert night. That the brochure showed a caricature of pianist Ellington blowing a horn proved no serious detriment beyond a red face or two. The concert left us all hoarse from shouting our approval, as those great musicians left no doubt that they were world-class talents.
Duke stayed with us and kindly agreed to play a bit afterward at the house for a reception. It turned into a jam session as the maestro, his son Mercer, and several other musicians played and partook of spirituous beverages until the small hours. As I escorted the orchestra to the bus at about 2:30 a.m., one of the members looked up, saw the bright tropical crescent moon, and, thunderstruck exclaimed, "My God, we're so far south, the moon is upside down!"
The next morning the group had to leave fairly early, so I got up and went to check on Duke. Hearing no sound, I opened the door and found our guest still fast asleep. Slow to awaken, he finally propped himself up, opened a rheumy eye, and said, "Ambassador, baby, you're a doll." Throughout the brief visit, Duke and Mercer-indeed, all the troupe-comported themselves like diplomats and left us feeling not only proud but also that we had been in the presence of greatness. And I came to understand ever more clearly that the American ambassador represents the American people to the people of the world.
My embassy continued to delight me. Our employees proved bright and imaginative, and I learned that, contrary to the prejudices of many noncareer ambassadors, the career service was willing and eager to serve the administration that was in power. Nixon loathed the Foreign Service, viewing it as a fifth column that planned to frustrate his objectives. I decided that he was mistaken, a conclusion that subsequent experience proved sound.
My next diplomatic stop was in Geneva as ambassador to the European office of the United Nations. I had barely completed my introductory meetings in Geneva when my all too brief tour was cut short by Gerald Ford's defeat. As I was preparing to depart, the reality of a desk groaning with accumulated mail was eased by a box from James Catto & Co., Scotch Whiskey Blenders and Exporters. An enclosed note read, "Dear Mr. Catto: I heard you speak on the BBC 'Today' program last week and enjoyed your quip about Henry Kissinger and offering to carry his parcels. Since our excellent Scotch whiskey bears your famous name, we though it might be appropriate to send you a little Christmas cheer with our best wishes. Sincerely, J. R. Wray, Managing Director."
Two weeks previously, BBC radio had done a farewell profile of Kissinger, and as one of the interviewees, I had recounted the tale of the secretary and his purchases in Egypt. My dad had always served Catto's at home, and receiving some of that velvety beverage brightened the day. Never underestimate the power of the media. Ignore it, and your country's views will seldom go beyond the foreign ministry.
Twelve years later, I had the pleasure to return to diplomatic life, this time appointed by the senior George Bush to the Court of St. James's. On one memorable occasion, I discovered that the British press had headlined an offhand remark by President Bush at a NATO gathering in 1989 as a rebuke to Prime Minister Thatcher. I clipped a representative collection of headlines and put in a call to the president. Shortly after we rang off, he called Mrs. Thatcher personally and assured her he had no such thing in mind. His call in turn enabled the prime minister smartly to slap down rival Neil Kinnock during parliamentary debate as she recounted the president's assurance that his comments were in no way aimed at the British and certainly not at her. The incident illustrated what a political ambassador can accomplish in the Information Age. Without that personal rapport, it would have been impossible.
The unrecognized practitioners of American diplomacy are the visa officers who spend endless days making decisions about who will visit the United States. Indeed, the great bane of all ambassadors abroad is visas. Human beings, I found, have three innate drives: money, sex, and a U.S. visa. So compelling is the attraction of our country that if we opened the gates, there would indeed be a "giant sucking sound" as virtually the whole world moved to the United States. As it is, entry is rationed and the embassies decide pretty much who gets to come to live or visit (subject to Congress's laws, of course).
I always tried to stay out of the business of the consular section, the issuers of visas; their job was hard enough without my meddling, as evidenced by the endless lines of applicants snaking around our building every day. Sometimes, however, circumstances dictated otherwise-as personal appeals from senators, kings, and politicians required personal adjudication. It is a role for which technology cannot substitute.
How will this change by the year 2015? Ambassadors will call on their peers-ad nauseum-and learn who is useful and who is not; they will be summoned to the Foreign Office and scolded or cajoled; they will see to it that the lost passports are replaced, that trade imbalances are addressed, and that the Department of State is kept well informed.
But above all, they will engage in public diplomacy. In an age of spreading democracy, communicating with the public will be more important than ever. This will mean that the job the now defunct United States Information Agency (USIA) did-and did well-must be carried on at an intensified level.
Indeed, I left London early to head USIA. The relationship between USIA and the State Department was a bit like that of stepsisters, with the former having the glass slipper but the latter having carriage, house, and mother.
There was hardly a day without a reminder that government-to-government diplomacy is no substitute for public diplomacy. For example, I readily acceded to a request for a visit by the young post-Cold War Bulgarian prime minister Philip Dmitrov. In Washington for an informal visit, he wanted to come by my office to thank the American people for having brought him under an international visitor grant to this country. Bulgaria was then under the apparently endless communist yoke; the firsthand experience of freedom changed his life and his story moved me. As he left he paused at the door; clearly he had something else to say. "Would it be possible," he wondered, "to ask a favor? As a student, I was greatly influenced by the Federalist Papers of 1887-88. Do you suppose USIA could have them translated into Bulgarian?" Swallowing the large lump in my throat, I said I would do my best.
Sharing the word of American aims, problems, and reliability will be paramount. The use of our "soft power," that is, the cultural primacy of the nation, will loom ever larger. Exchanges of all sorts, especially person-to-person, will continue to be a more influential tool than a nuclear weapon. The invisible potential of the English language will be stressed. The press, local and American, will have to be wooed ardently, for the press will have ever more influence on where our interests are most vigorously pursued.
All of the above suggests that desk-bound ambassadors will fall well short of the mark. They will need to speak the resident language, a talent without which no real communication is possible. (Fortunately, English is the first or second language of almost a hundred countries.) They will have to have a "wanderlust" and know every corner of the country. The most recent U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, Philip Lader, showed the way by walking across the island, practicing people-to-people diplomacy in a highly unusual but effective way.
Finally, the Foreign Service will need more than ever the guidance and help of that corps of unsung and knowledgeable heroes, national employees, who can educate our diplomats on host-country mores and oddities. Every country (definitely including us) has its peculiarities, and it takes a native of the country to interpret them to the visitor.
The face of diplomacy in 2015 will be different from today, even as the faces of its practitioners will be different. New skills will be developed and new methods found. But beneath it all, tomorrow's diplomat must have the same basic aptitude that he or she has always needed: knowledge, sophistication, enthusiasm, and a taste for hard work under trying circumstances. And within this new world of cyber-diplomacy, I have no doubt that diplomacy will not only succeed, but will expand its reach.
My last years in government went quickly but sadly. I loved USIA. Often people asked my favorite job, assuming it would be the Court of St. James's. Not so. USIA's scope and variety and the quality of its people made it totally beguiling. When I left government in 1993, public diplomacy was thought to be on the periphery of foreign affairs. By 2015, it will be recognized as the core of the profession. As before, it will have embraced the latest technologies to expand its reach across the globe.
Lord Palmerston need not have worried about the end of diplomacy.
Released: July 23, 2001
iMP Magazine: http://www. cisp. org/imp/july_2001/07_01catto.htm
(c) 2001. Henry E. Catto, Jr. All rights reserved.
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Creating Change Insurgents at State
New metrics are sorely needed if the Foreign Service is to raise a generation of change insurgents, willing to take on the challenges of a world which is evolving rapidly, not only in terms of technology but also in terms of the overall foreign affairs agenda.
-Anthony C. E. Quainton
Anthony C. E. Quainton is president and chief executive officer of the National Policy Association. He served thirty-eight years in the United States Foreign Service and was director general of the Foreign Service and director of personnel from December 1995 to August 1997.
In an article entitled, "Your Job is Change," former Labor Secretary
Robert Reich described the new environment of constant change in the
workplace.1 He suggested
that the concept of change agent was a thing of the past, and that what
was now needed were "change insurgents," committed to doing things "faster,
cheaper, and better." Instead of focusing on linear, incremental improvements,
Reich called for a new strategy based on organizational readiness and
the capacity to adapt to change. He made his radical analysis in a corporate
context, but it has equal relevance for highly bureaucratized government
institutions, even for such venerable change-resistant organizations
as the Department of State, where change agents have been few and far
between and change insurgents unknown. Indeed in the Department of State,
whose core competency is diplomacy, adherence to tradition, secrecy,
and caution are institutional values. Change is the enemy of both policy
and bureaucratic coherence, continuity, and consistency.
This attitude is all well and good when it comes to managing the ambiguities of foreign crises, where impetuosity and a proclivity for risk-taking are often prescriptions for disaster. But, the qualities are stultifying in institutional management. The State Department is an agency in desperate need of reform, as recent reports and studies by the Stimson Center, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies have made abundantly clear. These reports point to the need for the department to 1) reorganize its structure to deal with the rapidly changing agenda of global politics (i.e., to focus on the functional rather than the geographic issues confronting American diplomacy); 2) revolutionize its use of technology in terms both of hardware and software to bring diplomacy fully into the information age; 3) reform its decision-making processes so as to devolve authority and encourage creativity and openness; and 4) revise its personnel policies in ways that reward creativity and encourage innovation.
Reich's prescription for change and his rules for becoming a successful change insurgent are not all relevant to the Department of State, of course, but a surprising number are. At the heart of Reich's thesis is the concept of "new blood," the constant infusion of new talent and ideas to create a state of dynamic turbulence within an institution. This is, in fact, very difficult for government-the military and foreign services, in particular, but also any department that operates on entry-level recruitment and a system of carefully regulated promotion over a twenty-to-thirty-year career. In government, positions of leadership and responsibility are typically based on criteria that reward loyalty, consistency, and an ability to play by the rules. Organizations like the Department of State do not want dissenters, individuals who ask tough questions and who in effect make colleagues and policymakers uncomfortable. No one in such a hierarchical system wants to be branded a troublemaker, someone who doesn't take orders well or challenges received organizational wisdom. That is not the path to the top.
At the core of the State Department's problem is an outdated concept of career, which presupposes that officers want and will be committed to the stability and security that comes with lifelong employment in the institution. Fewer and fewer young Americans now enter government (or the private sector) with that expectation. That being the case, the challenge for recruiters today, trying to build a Foreign Service that will be able to deal with the world of 2015, is to identify candidates who can meet the immediate operational needs of the department and who, over the next fifteen years, will be flexible and able to adapt to a world of increasing ambiguity and change. Unfortunately, the current system denies examiners adequate information about a candidate's skills, knowledge, or past performance. Thus the department cannot know whether it is hiring individuals who have either the skills or the openness to shape twenty-first-century diplomacy.
To recruit change agents, or Reich's change insurgents, the department will have to reinvent its entire approach to job security, making clear to applicants that it does not expect that most will have more than an initial eight-to-ten-year career. It will have to spell out the reality that officers will face competition from a constant infusion of new talent at all levels, but it will also have to provide assurances that successful candidates will be encouraged to deepen their foreign affairs skills through training and assignments outside the Department of State and even the U.S. government.
Today talent enters either at the bottom, where it can be molded to institutional values, or at the top through political appointments. There is virtually no midlevel entry in the current system. New officers are not expected to be change agents, but rather conformists to an established culture, which will reward them with secure retirement at the end of their career.
Occasionally a political appointee arrives from the private sector or academia with the expectation of being a change agent, even a change insurgent. But the short term of presidential appointments (usually three years or less) and the department's corporate culture quickly erode any initial enthusiasm for change and reform. To those aspiring change agents, the unofficial message of the department appears to be "If you see a spark of genius, suffocate it."
To break this mindset, and eventually the bureaucratic crockery that goes with it, the department must pry open the Foreign Service, creating a personnel system that by 2015 will be truly permeable. This change implies a willingness to encourage officers to leave the service after eight to ten years, with the understanding and commitment that they can come back at more senior nonpolitical levels on the basis of experience learned and performance demonstrated. For this to happen, the Foreign Service must cease to think of itself in military terms. When the modern Foreign Service was created in 1945, it was modeled on the U.S. Navy, with rank in person and an up-or-out promotion system. That system persists today, but it does not fit the requirements of a society based on professional agility and job mobility.
Its origins notwithstanding, the Foreign Service has not, in recent years, looked like a military service, in terms of either internal discipline or career leadership. In the navy, it is inconceivable that the commander of a carrier battle group would be a political appointee. Nor is there any place for noncareer officers at any level of command. But, Foreign Service officers, wedded to the idea that they are keepers of a diplomatic holy grail, would like all command positions to be reserved for themselves. As a result of a long-standing predisposition of presidents of both political parties to appoint ambassadors from outside the Foreign Service, and of the State Department itself to appoint Civil Service employees to many Foreign Service positions, this concept has severely eroded. There is already a far greater fungibility of talent in the State Department than most professionals would like.
More important, the range of relevant foreign affairs work experience that exists outside the Foreign Service is such that movement between the private sector, civil society, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and other foreign affairs related entities is now more feasible than ever before. Unfortunately, under present circumstances, movement is possible in only one direction: from the government to the private sector. The challenge now is to broaden the use of existing talent to enhance U.S. diplomacy and increase the likelihood that change insurgents will enter government service. In a world that is evolving rapidly, the constant infusion of talent from organizations that are internationally engaged is essential if government is to escape from the sterile conservatism of an entrenched mandarinate.
A concomitant to bringing in new blood, is enriching the existing blood supply. In Washington bureaucratic terms that means creating positive incentives for career officers to take positions in other workplaces and other cultures. At one level this can be as simple as insisting that career officers on the way to the top be required to serve in another agency of government. More controversially, officers could be urged to spend several years outside of government altogether: in the private sector, on Capitol Hill, or in an international NGO. The assignment would not be for a brief excursion, but rather would involve substantive integration into the work of that outside organization. To be sure, some officers might never return, preferring the pay, agenda, or culture of the new employer. On the other hand, many would return if they could be assured of promotion and acceptance by the colleagues they had left behind. When they did return, they would be vastly better equipped to manage the new emerging "democratic" foreign affairs agenda, in which civil society outsiders seek, and are increasingly likely to obtain, a greater role in the shaping of American foreign policy.
One of Reich's principal focuses is technology and how organizations keep up with it. He sees a natural alliance between technical "geeks" and salespeople, whom he identifies as the two groups most able to assess technological developments and customer demands. In the Foreign Service these two areas fall within the competence of the information management specialists and the public diplomacy generalists. The first are often disdained by their officer colleagues for their perceived narrow-mindedness and technical myopia. The second, Secretary Powell's admonitions notwithstanding, are very much second-class citizens in the officer corps, where their work is seen as that of soft propaganda rather than hard policy analysis.
And yet, if an alliance between technology and public diplomacy is to develop, powerful signals must come from the very top. Information technology is still buried far down in the administrative structure of the department, and public diplomacy is proclaimed by its new under-secretary-designate to be merely a matter of "branding" and marketing. But unless the secretary, in his self-appointed role of CEO of the State Department, repeatedly seeks out the opinions of these two groups with a view to finding out what sells and why, and through what set of innovative technical programs, the voice of the change insurgent is unlikely to be heard.
For the system to get the message that change is valued, the entire system of promotion and rewards must be reworked. All of this presupposes a change in what Reich calls "metrics," the way that an organization keeps score to measure performance. The contemporary State Department uses an elaborate system of annual written evaluations, which in turn are reviewed by teams of peers as the basis for promotion. It is universally acknowledged that ratings are grossly inflated. An elaborate series of precepts guides the drafters of ratings and the deliberations of the promotion boards, with everything from equal employment opportunity sensitivity to security consciousness being factored into the equation. Nowhere is a clear and preeminent value put on the capacity to effect change or even to identify the need for it. Rather, value is given to other important but vague qualities such as leadership, management, loyalty, and integrity. In this system, there is no reward for rocking the boat.
In part, the system reflects the fact that success is hard to quantify in the world of diplomacy. The world is ambiguous, gray rather than black or white. Change is often incremental. America's friends and adversaries judge it by change at the margins, in the nuances and subtleties of public statements. While often seeming to call for change in America's policies, in fact our allies and adversaries alike seem content with continuity. Officers are therefore rewarded for their communication skills, for their ability to project an image of a safe and sane America, for their coolness under fire, and for their ability to analyze ambiguous situations and implement complex regulations. Because there is no financial bottom line for the Department of State, virtuous behavior is often preferred to hard results.
Having served as the senior career officer in the State Department's Inspector General's office, as well as the assistant secretary in the Bureau of Personnel, I have been struck by the deficiencies of the evaluation system. New metrics are sorely needed if the Foreign Service is to raise a generation of change insurgents, willing to take on the challenges of a world that is evolving rapidly, not only in terms of technology but also in terms of the overall foreign affairs agenda.
Of course, measuring creativity and innovation in an institution that is averse to change is no easy matter. What will be required is not more energetic use of the "dissent channel," the officially sanctioned but ineffectual, means for an officer to get alternative ideas into the policy hopper, but rather a rating system that gives special recognition to officers who are identified as change insurgents. This will be easiest in the administrative area, where financial savings and operational simplicity relate directly to the department's budget, but it is also necessary in the substantive arena, where not only the presentation of alternative policy options but also new techniques for presenting established policies, needs to be encouraged. Promotion board precepts must then be dramatically simplified to focus on those change-related qualities that the department wishes to assess in choosing officers for advancement.
Unfortunately, these ideas run up against profound institutional resistance. Administrative officers can be successful change insurgents only if the system of rule and regulation making is overhauled. Bright, cost-saving ideas are of no use if the rule makers and the lawyers, not to speak of the array of governmental watchdogs (the Office of the Inspector General, the General Accounting Office, Congress itself), stand in the way, forcing creative ideas back into a strict regulatory framework.
Similarly, substantive innovation often runs up against politicians' proclivity to avoid risk. In many ways, America is a risk-averse society, perhaps nowhere so clearly as in the foreign affairs arena. Yet the president and the secretary desperately need new ideas and will continue to need them in the years ahead. They must send out the word that they want the professionals under them, in the civil and Foreign services, to be creative and to promote change. This is not to advocate professional debate on the front pages of The New York Times, but rather a lively discussion of alternatives within the administration itself. Loyalty and discretion will, of course, continue to be important, but the constant message to employees must be the same as Robert Reich's: "Your job is change." If all this is done by 2015, reforms will have taken hold, and change insurgents will be the norm. Slow-moving, hidebound dinosaur diplomats will be creatures of the past.
Released: July 23, 2001
iMP Magazine: http://www. cisp. org/imp/july_2001/07_01quainton.htm
(c) 2001. Anthony C. E. Quainton. All rights reserved.
Endnote
1. Robert B. Reich, "Your Job is Change," Fast Company, 39 (2000): 140. Available online at: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/39/jobischange.html.
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CONTINUE TO PART TWO
CONTINUE TO PART THREE
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