Parents in the diplomatic service have to answer the same questions that other mommies and daddies do, but their answers are of necessity more complicated. Children aren't the only ones flummoxed by what diplomats do; many an American Foreign Service Officer working for the State Department has experienced the bemused looks of neighbors and family back home. "State" department sounds like you work in Harrisburg, Tallahassee, or any other American state capital bureaucracy. What you're doing in Tallinn or Algiers, they have no idea.
But now, thanks to the increasingly subordinate role performed by American diplomats vis-a-vis the US military (see my blast when General David Petraeus insisted on referring to the US Ambassador to Iraq as his "diplomatic wingman"), we have a new wrinkle on the concept of diplomats-as-enablers. The January 18, 2008 Washington Times ("State Doubles Military Advisers," by Nicholas Kralev) tells us that diplomats are much in demand in the burgeoning US military:
The State Department is doubling the number of resident diplomatic advisers that it sends to the offices of the nation's top military commanders at home and overseas — a move encouraged by the Pentagon as its uniformed leaders take on larger public roles abroad.
The diplomats also help to "deliver the foreigners," as one official put it, whenever advice or assistance is needed from allies or other countries. Sometimes, they simply offer their counsel on foreign affairs, ensuring that the commander is familiar with current U.S. policy before making public remarks.
It's good that seasoned diplomats advise generals on current US foreign policy. After all, they have to do the same thing when US presidents persist in sending fat cat campaign donors abroad as political appointee ambassadors, in recognition of their generosity. But it's the preamble of the article that hits the core problem: "a move encouraged by the Pentagon as its uniformed leaders take on larger public roles abroad" (emphasis added).
"Delivering the foreigners" for four star (and more junior) generals is increasingly the lot of American diplomats. Increasingly, the US military is taking on "roles and responsibilities" (to use a good Pentagon term) that are very far from basic soldiering. You need a website to bring the Muslims around to the American Way? The Pentagon has it. How about development projects, to win hearts and minds? We got that too: the Special Operations Command excels in "public safety, agriculture, finance, economy, and support of dislocated civilian operations."
In the recent "stand up" of the Pentagon's newest regional combatant command, AFRICOM, the US military proceeded to reinvent the diplomatic and development wheels that the State Department and USAID have had in Africa ever since President John F. Kennedy determined that the United States would have a "universal" presence in every one of the newly-independent African countries that started appearing during his tenure. A USAID veteran told me of his particular experience:
I've had conversations during 2007 with university colleagues whose brains are being picked by the Africa command folks on this side of the Atlantic. The content of these DOD-university dialogues is often incredibly basic. As a consequence, the new partnership crowds out long-established relationships that USAID and USDA [Agriculture Department] had/have with the university agriculture community. The Administration has duplicated USAID with MCC [Millenium Challenge Corporation], and now the Pentagon will do so again with the Africa Command's emphasis on civilian topics.
Meanwhile, USAID's well-planned agriculture projects in Africa limp along with stagnant funding.
"Delivering the foreigners," if it means into the hands of the military, is a rather sterile exercise for American diplomats, who should have other fish to fry: figuring out what to do to help the next administration rebuild the bridges burned by the Bush Administration should be a major sub rosa priority. The monochrome militaristic Bush/Cheney-imposed view of the world will expire, especially if the Democratic candidate takes the White House in the November election.
It's time for American diplomats to think seriously about "delivering the foreigners" for concerted action on non-military priorities like climate change, sustainable development, and stabilization of international financial flows. The "Iraq Era," like the "Vietnam Era" before it, will pass. Acting as "wingmen" to generals is poor practice, and will atrophy the real diplomatic skills needed to represent the United States to sovereign governments, in that majority of the world's nations that are not under US military occupation.