This is how diplomacy dies. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. With empty offices on a midweek aft
This is so sad when I think of Hillary and John Kerry working around the clock to built up out policies world wide. Dangerous also--and Republicans are letting it happen!
Present at the Destruction: How Rex Tillerson Is Wrecking the State Department
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/29/how-rex-tillerson-destroying-state-department-215319
I worked in Foggy Bottom for 6 years. Ive never seen anything like this.
By Max Bergmann
June 29, 2017
The deconstruction of the State Department is well underway.
I recently returned to Foggy Bottom for the first time since January 20 to attend the departure of a former colleague and career midlevel officialsomething that had sadly become routine. In my six years at State as a political appointee, under the Obama administration, I had gone to countless of these events. They usually followed a similar pattern: slightly awkward, but endearing formalities, a sense of melancholy at the loss of a valued teammate. But, in the end, a rather jovial celebration of a colleagues work. These events usually petered out quickly, since there is work to do. At the State Department, the unspoken mantra is: The mission goes on, and no one is irreplaceable. But this event did not follow that pattern. It felt more like a funeral, not for the departing colleague, but for the dying organization they were leaving behind.
As I made the rounds and spoke with usually buttoned-up career officials, some who I knew well, some who I didn't, from a cross section of offices covering various regions and functions, no one held back. To a person, I heard that the State Department was in chaos, a disaster, terrible, the leadership totally incompetent. This reflected what I had been hearing the past few months from friends still inside the department, but hearing it in rapid fire made my stomach churn. As I walked through the halls once stalked by diplomatic giants like Dean Acheson and James Baker, the deconstruction was literally visible. Furniture from now-closed offices crowded the hallways. Dropping in on one of my old offices, I expected to see a former colleaguea career senior foreign service officerbut was stunned to find out she had been abruptly forced into retirement and had departed the previous week. This office, once bustling, had just one person present, keeping on the lights.
This is how diplomacy dies. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. With empty offices on a midweek afternoon.
When Rex Tillerson was announced as secretary of state, there was a general feeling of excitement and relief in the department. After eight years of high-profile, jet-setting secretaries, the building was genuinely looking forward to having someone experienced in corporate management. Like all large, sprawling organizations, the State Departments structure is in perpetual need of an organizational rethink. That was what was hoped for, but that is not what is happening. Tillerson is not reorganizing, hes downsizing.
While the lack of senior political appointees has gotten a lot of attention, less attention has been paid to the hollowing out of the career workforce, who actually run the department day to day. Tillerson has canceled the incoming class of foreign service officers. This as if the Navy told all of its incoming Naval Academy officers they werent needed. Senior officers have been unceremoniously pushed out. Many saw the writing on the wall and just retired, and many others are now awaiting buyout offers. He has dismissed States equivalent of an officer reserveretired FSOs, who are often called upon to fill States many short-term staffing gaps, have been sent home despite no one to replace them. Office managers are now told three people must depart before they can make one hire. And now Bloomberg reports that Tillerson is blocking all lateral transfers within the department, preventing staffers from moving to another office even if it has an opening. Managers cant fill openings; employees feel trapped.
Despite all this, career foreign and civil service officers are all still working incredibly hard representing the United States internationally. Theyre still doing us proud. But how do you manage multimillion-dollar programs with no people? Who do you send to international meetings and summits? Maybe, my former colleagues are discovering, you just cant implement that program or show up to that meeting. Tillersons actions amount to a geostrategic own-goal, weakening America by preventing America from showing up.
States growing policy irrelevance and Tillersons total aversion to the experts in his midst is prompting the departments rising stars to search for the exits. The private sector and the Pentagon are vacuuming them up. This is inflicting long-term damage to the viability of the American diplomacyand things were already tough. State has been operating under an austerity budget for the past six years since the 2011 Budget Control Act. Therefore, when Tillerson cuts, he is largely cutting into bone, not fat. The next administration wont simply be able to flip a switch and reverse the damage. It takes years to recruit and develop diplomatic talent. What Vietnam did to hollow out our military, Tillerson is doing to State.
What we now know is that the building is being run by a tiny clique of ideologues who know nothing about the department but have insulated themselves from the people who do. Tillerson and his isolated and inexperienced cadres are going about reorganizing the department based on little more than gut feeling. They are going about it with vigor. And there is little Congress can seemingly dothough lawmakers control the purse strings, its hard to stop an agency from destroying itself..
.........................
orangecrush
(19,512 posts)Is doing handsprings.
BarbD
(1,192 posts)Difficult and now practically impossible to build back up.
enough
(13,256 posts)diplomats getting in the way of their agenda.
Martin Eden
(12,863 posts)[link:|