Resignation is not a strategy
A quick response to an article in the Financial Times
I deliberately avoid pieces that declare the death of something. For one, the obituary is usually premature; if you can interview someone involved in the current form of something, it is not dead. For another, just because it is being transformed, it does not mean we have lost our agency to change, reverse, or modify that course.
Today, the Financial Times published this piece:
RIP the US state department. America’s diplomats used to have global sway. Now they are besieged by their own president. The Financial Times (12 mins.)
I do not blame the Financial Times for its millennial-coded “RIP State Department” headline, but I do have quibbles with those interviewed eager to offer their libations. They share a certain schadenfreude with those who critique the current state of affairs and declare hallowed institutions dead without offering ideas for change.
Past warnings do not merit sanctimony: the State Department is not dead, should not be dead, and cannot remain in its current weakened state. I hold no pretense that its previous iteration can be revived, but it would be foolish not to seek a better future, including strategically increasing headcount and budget.
Former officials and “foreign policy thinkers” cited in the piece make three cumulative claims:
the State Department needed serious reforms in order to adapt to the current global environment;
the current administration enacted reforms quickly, including reductions in force and growing politicization of career positions; and
a future Democratic administration is unlikely to want to restore the State Department to its previous state.
All three are pretty unobjectionable claims, as I have summarized them, even if not quite amounting to the death of the department. However, all three, as presented in the article, have serious deficits that should encourage a future administration to spend some political capital to reinvest in the diplomatic toolkit.
Long overdue reforms
The article concedes the trite proposal that “[d]epartment insiders acknowledge state was due a rethink.” Others have applied the same statement to USAID, the Education Department, NOAA, Social Security, or any number of government bodies and policies.1 However, the question at hand is not whether State should iterate to adapt to the times but rather to be hollowed out to make way for personal vendettas, corruption, and poorly-evidenced processes.
Reform requires a thoughtful assessment of what worked and what didn’t, and, more importantly, a candid understanding of the circumstances you are trying to adapt the institution to. There are solid ideas for the former, all ignored, but frankly, not that clear of a picture for the latter.2 Instead, the baby was thrown out with the bathwater and “insiders” are wondering if, maybe, the baby could have been due for a rethink.
Speed
Aside from valid complaints about the substance of the ongoing changes at State, the article also has an interesting observation on the speed:
“There is something to the argument that state was long overdue consolidation and modernisation,” says Jacob Shapiro, the John Foster Dulles professor in international affairs at Princeton University. But, he adds, “it feels like it was done very quickly, without a lot of analysis of the consequences for US diplomacy”.
Again, I do not disagree per se with Professor Shapiro’s point, but presumably, the fact that it was done “very quickly” is secondary to absence of analysis. Sure, thoughtful assessments take time, but if the goal is to adapt to the times then the study cannot take so long that the times have changed yet again. In government, speed should be counted as a virtue — the hollowing of the capacity to represent Americans abroad should not.
Misidentifying the problem as speed closes the door on the kind of restoration of diplomatic capacity that will be much needed in 2029. Responsiveness addresses both voter concerns about a government that has at times become too glacial and the demands generated by growing competition and global challenges.
No dreams
The article concludes with half-baked defeatism: “foreign policy thinkers” conclude that there is little political capital to return to American hegemony (as if that were solely dependent on whether swing voters felt like being the sole guarantor of global public goods) and therefore that “restoring” the State Department is unlikely.
“One strategist” (so courageous as to remain nameless) even concedes that the reforms were apt.3 However, strategy requires a clear-sighted desired end-state and deliberate paths to get there, not a feeble retroactive justification.
A better strategy would be to ask the right questions about what a fit-for-purpose State Department would look like and how to expend political capital to make that happen.
Americans may be wary of hiring thousands of civil servants or Foreign Service officers to create new capacity within the department, especially with skyrocketing national debt. However, they are also generally supportive of the kinds of global engagement that require a robust diplomatic corps: preventing conflict, strengthening ties to allies, and promoting free trade, among others.
Your friendly neighborhood State Department
If the State Department is not a vehicle to maintain power in a bygone era, then it should be reframed as a tool to solve problems, especially the ones it already handles.
Americans are traveling internationally more than ever. They may be eager for the State Department to invest in more staff that keeps them safe and aware of risks while abroad, unlike in recent cases.
It can also take on affordability, a top issue for voters. Already, the Department has been setting up monitoring and coordination mechanisms for critical minerals. Coordinating government demand signals, price floors, and subsidy schemes with partners and allies will require investments but can promote price predictability for suppliers and, downstream, for consumers.
The Department is also crucial in combating drug and human trafficking by coordinating with other governments, which it gets little credit for. The same applies to conflict prevention or climate cooperation.
Diplomacy should be treated as the means, not the end, and the end should be concrete. “Make America Safer, Stronger, and More Prosperous” means nothing. Protecting people while they travel, cutting costs, and fighting drug and human trafficking are known voter priorities that the Department helps tackle. With that framing, the appropriate reforms, reorgs, and budget restructures can more easily fall into place.
Anti-resignation
Unfortunately, nostalgia paralyzes the imagination needed to make these changes possible: if return is impossible, then why not leave lackluster solutions in place?
Nostalgia also limits the possibility to imagine the difference between restoring and returning, ironically preventing us from seeking out what has worked well in the past while avoiding its mistakes.
Treating political capital as a scarce resource, especially in foreign affairs, underestimates both how easy change can be and the rewards for effectiveness. Today’s changes at the State Department show how little political capital is required to make a major change. With a sharper strategic vision, speed can be leveraged to create momentum, and delivering a few effective results reduces the cost of initial congressional approval, with opportunities to iterate thereafter.
Peace Corps was first founded by executive order using existing appropriations and then established by Congress, the inverse of today’s agency demolitions but a model worth copying.
A new generation of “strategists” must have far more ambition to reimagine our institutions without conceding that their ongoing destruction is somehow partially warranted by vague notions of the “new order.”
Institutional death does not come from reckless change; it comes when we stop imagining that the institution can serve its purpose. The State Department, much like USAID and the rest of the foreign policy apparatus, can still deliver for people if we choose to build strategies for their potential.
Even Sri Lankan fertilizers get the same treatment: Foreign Policy.
A review of some State Department reform proposals:
Congressional Oversight of the State Department: Review of Selected Organizational Reform Efforts. Congressional Research Service (2021)
American Diplomacy at Risk. Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (2015)
A U.S. Diplomatic Service for the 21st Century. Belfer Center (2020)
Revitalizing the State Department and American Diplomacy. CFR (2020)
The Embassy of the Future. CSIS (2007)
Congressional Commission to Reform the State Department. fp21 (2024) — Unfortunately this Commission seems to have stalled, but there were interesting bits and pieces in a reauth bill this year.
The quote here is worth it:
”Indeed, one strategist argues that a Democratic administration should take advantage of Trump’s ‘very badly motivated’ reforms to rethink the department and adjust it to the needs of a world where leaders routinely WhatsApp each other.”
The strategist was not so bold as to claim they Signal each other.