Functional discrepancy: syncing geographies of bureaucracies
Functional discrepancy: syncing geographies of bureaucracies
Unnecessary bureaucratic friction that is "normal" in US foreign affairs
A longstanding, often overlooked discrepancy exists between the State Department and the Defense Department in how they divide the world for their respective bureaucracies. Years of accomodation may be normalized, but it can hinder effective foreign policy in today’s complex environment.
Earlier this week, I criticized the Commission on the National Defense Strategy framing around the need to be better in the information space. My critique was justified even if their take is commonly held, repeatedly declared, and never leading to change.1
In the spirit of balance, the commission offered a recommendation I support as presented.
The Commission also recommends that the Department of State, USAID, and DoD review their differing ways of dividing the world into regions and commands and align their respective areas of responsibility to improve coordination across the departments and make it easier for other nations to engage the United States.
I’ve long advocated for the harmonization of the State Department’s and Defense Department’s organization around geography. So let me drag something out of the past. I don’t recall if it was something on my blog or a presentation I gave, or possibly both, but I was asked to write a memo on this back in 2010.
…efforts at reform [at the State Department] are hindered by an institutional structure rooted in a 19th-century view of the world. The days of traditional diplomacy conducted behind closed doors are over. The democratization of information and means of destruction makes a kid with a keyboard potentially more dangerous than an F-22. Addressing poverty, pandemics, resource security, and terrorism requires multilateral and dynamic partnerships with governments and publics. But the State Department has yet to adapt to the new context of global engagement. The diverse threats that confront the U.S. and our allies cannot be managed through a country-centric approach. For State to be effective and relevant, it needs to evolve and become both a Department of State and Non-State.
Currently, State’s structure impedes its efforts to develop coherent responses to pressing threats. The vesting of authority in U.S. embassies too often complicates interagency and pan-regional coordination and inhibits the effective request for and distribution of resources. No less significant, the structure also implicitly empowers the Defense Department’s regionally focused combatant commands, like Central Command, as alternatives to the State Department. Compounded by years of managerial neglect, and a lack of long-term vision, strategic planning, and budgeting, the State Department requires high-level patches and workarounds to do its job adequately…
Foggy Bottom’s regional bureaus are, on their face, like the Defense Department’s combatant commands... If Defense were to mimic State’s structure, it would be akin to making European Command subservient to individual U.S. military bases in Europe.
Now, I have not seriously looked at this issue for many years. I suspect, though, that since the commission believe it important enough to mention, it remains an issue without substantive change since my memo was published fourteen years ago.
Of course, the discrepancy and its byproducts did not manifest fourteen or even twenty years ago. This has been an enduring problem hindering timely and effective interagency collaboration. The failure to make an impactful change despite the known and unnecessary challenges for so long returns us to the same challenge of leadership raised in my earlier post.
The commission included USAID in their analysis, but I didn’t and won’t because I don’t know enough about that agency. As far as the State Department and the Defense Department, there are two basic elements at work here. First, the State Department sees the world through a country-level lens while the Defense Department looks at regions. The difference is largely driven by the way the US, and thus the State Department, views and empowers ambassadors. Second, the lack of alignment between the State Department’s regional bureaus and the Defense Department combatant commands.
Again, from my short analysis from 2010:
The geographic breakdowns of the State Department and the Defense Department must also be synchronized to facilitate greater government coordination. State’s six regional bureaus – Western Hemisphere, European and Eurasian, Near Eastern, African, South and Central Asian, and East Asian and Pacific – only loosely align with the seven combatant commands (the Pentagon splits the Western Hemisphere into two commands).
There are a few, but significant, differences. For example, the State Department includes North Africa in its Near East Bureau, while Central Command, which covers the Middle East, includes only Egypt among North African countries (Libya, Algeria, and Morocco, among others, fall under the African Command). Another difference: the Near East Bureau’s eastern border is Iran, and thus does not include Afghanistan, Pakistan, or the other -stans, which fall under the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs; all those countries fall under Centcom in the Defense Department.
I recommended elevating the regional bureau leadership from assistant secretaries to undersecretaries and moving them out from under the Under Secretary for Political Affairs and working directly with the Secretary of State. I also argued they should not be political appointees but experienced career officers.
The pushback I received from senior career foreign service officers at the time generally fell into two categories. First, the assistant secretaries are viewed above their title, and as undersecretaries some argued, by their interagency partners. That may be true, but that selective compensation (not all assistant secretaries get elevated that way) hints at broader leadership and staffing problem. Second, increasing the direct reports to the Secretary would unnecessarily burden the Secretary of State. Let’s unpack that second objection.
The second argument against elevating geographic bureaucs to the level of the functional bureaus, at I’ve understood it, revolves around a point that hasn’t been openly discussed. The issue is obvious when you see it: the Secretary of Defense is hired as a manager of a large enterprise while the Secretary of State is not. Historically, the Secretary of State has been the second chief diplomat, behind the President, making any serious managerial role interference.
Opposition to an active managerial role by the Secretary of State, notably for operational functions, has been a historic problem and was the primary cause of fragmenting and separating the informational element of policy from the State Department in 1953. The view that a managerial role was a distraction to the Secretary of State’s foreign policy role was reiterated in 1957 when the Secretary of State rejected the President’s request to reintegrate the flailing information function into the Department. In recent decades, this seems evident in the State Department’s two Deputy Secretaries of State to manage the department. Admitedly, I don’t know enough about the division of labor there, but I always wondered how these positions align with the Under Secretary for Management.
A serious reassessment of the organizational chart of department that will help move the department toward a 21st Century foreign ministry is necessary. It could be worse. If we compare the situation today with the last major overhaul, we’re still ahead of the game.
In April 1944, a scathing review of the State Department and the need for reform appeared in the academic journal The American Political Scient Review. The authors were Walter Laves and Francis O. Wilcox, both had been well positioned for years to see the department in operation and both would go on to have substantial careers in foreign affairs. Normally, I share parts of the first two paragraphs of their paper, but sharing the first three paragraphs in their entirety makes their opening even more applicable to the present. Unfortunately, it’s arguable that little editing is necessary to adapt this opening for a review written today.
For many years there has been widespread discussion of the need for reorganizing the Department of State. Students, publicists, members of Congress, and members of the Department itself have repeatedly pointed out that the Department has not been geared up to performing the functions required of the foreign office of a great twentieth-century world power.
The chief criticisms of the Department have been four: (1) that there was lacking a basic pattern of sound administrative organization, (2) that the type of personnel found both at home and abroad was inadequate for the job required in foreign affairs today, (3) that the Department was too far removed from the public and from Congress, and (4) that it was not prepared to provide leadership for, and maintain the necessary relations with, other federal agencies. As nearly every aspect of our life has come to be related to events and activities in other countries, the scope and subject-matter of the State Department's responsibilities have vastly expanded. Yet during the last three decades, when the importance of foreign relations has particularly increased, the operating structure of the Department has not been adequately reorganized. Some new functions have been undertaken, but this has resulted more from chance accretion of responsibilities to existing persons or offices than from rational planning and assignment of tasks.
Great as the need for reorganization was before the United States entered the present war, it became increasingly serious as the responsibilities of global and total war devolved upon the federal government. The political tasks of the war program which fell to the State Department were difficult enough: to establish and stay on good terms with our Allies, to win more friends, and to weaken the enemy. But in addition the Department had the function of guiding a number of new agencies engaged in foreign activities.
In February 1944, just before this was published, the State Department began a substantial reorganization in two-parts. At the time, there was no need for Congressional action. The Secretary of State issued a Departmental Order, likely mostly written by the Under Secretary (then there was only one undersecretary), Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., who had previously been chairman of US Steel.
What did the reorganization fix? Laves and Wilcox tell us that the “Department’s organizational chart reminded one somehow of the curious contours of the Department building itself.” This was a dig at the State, War, and Navy Building, now known as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House. One reporter at the time described the building like this: “If you’re ever looking out of the window in this building, and you see a man on the street shudder when he looks toward it, you can bet your life that man is an architect.” The State Department didn’t move to the “New State Building,” previously known as the “New War Building” since the War Department had previously decamped to there before moving onward to the Pentagon, until January 1947, after George Marshall was sworn in as Secretary of State. The New State Building is no longer “new” and is now called the Harry S. Truman Building.
Back to the department at the time. It is easy to see why the “curious contours” were an apt analogy for the department’s organization chart which grew haphazardly over time. One assistant secretary’s portfolio included finance, aviation, Canada, Greenland, the Passport Division, the Division of International Conferences, and the Translating Bureau. Another assistant secretary was responsible for matters related to fisheries while also chairing the department’s Political Planning committee. Duplication, uncertainty, conflict, friction, and diffused responsibility was common. Economic affairs were handled by seven ranking officials while some divisions reported to two or more leaders. Division of International Communications reported to three different assistant secretaries.
The second part of the reorganization came in December 1944 with Stettinius as the Secretary of State. Further adjustments were made. For this readership, the key change was elevating the public information function from an administrative function to a new Assistant Secretary for Public and Cultural Relations.2
It took nearly half the century to update the State Department in the 20th Century. We’re just shy of a quarter through the 21st Century, so we have two decades to be better. (You take whatever solace you can when discussing the State Department, right?)
More Cowbell
For something completely different, here’s a palate cleanser. This is a “cow parade” I rode past a couple of years ago while I still lived in Switzerland. In a couple of weekends, it’ll be time for the same cow parade as they move them from their mountain meadows to the lowlands. It’s safe for work but watch your volume, the cow bells are loud. If you want “more cowbell,” you’ll get it here.
That their suggestion is fundamentally identical to recommendations made over many years, something I’ve labeled the “bring back USIA” genre, should have raised further questions around why change hasn’t happened.