Yesterday’s New York Times had a fascinating article called “Civilians Reassert Themselves in U.S. Foreign Policy.” Here are a few key quotes:
In the nearly eight years since the 9/11 attacks, the foreign policy of the United States has often appeared to be an exclusively military affair, if not always conducted by men with guns then practiced by civilians not shy in reminding their foes that they had force at their disposal. The diplomats, for the most part, watched from afar.
As a result, America’s engagement with dangerous parts of the world in that time became largely militarized — good at projecting force but sometimes, it seemed, missing opportunities that might have been better exploited by an earlier and more vigorous use of people without guns. Not just in Afghanistan, but in Iran, North Korea and the Middle East as well…
The reassertion by civilian leaders is being led by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has promised to restore the State Department’s centrality in the making of foreign policy. In the first six years of the Bush presidency, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld dominated the administration’s interactions with the world, pushing aside Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Likewise, in places like the Balkans and Iraq, the military began undertaking activities once reserved for diplomats, like overseeing reconstruction and development projects. Mrs. Clinton says she not only wants to take back those former responsibilities, but to restore diplomacy’s primary role in resolving crises. One of the centerpieces of that effort would be Iran, which the West fears is rapidly developing the capacity to build nuclear weapons.
I think it’s great that people are beginning to notice. For those of you who haven’t, read my piece on The Militarization of U.S. Foreign Policy, one of the first posts on this blog. At the end of it I asked a few questions and, as I had zero readers at the time to answer them, I’ll ask again here.
So what do we do? The budget is set by the House of Representatives, each of which has to run for reelection every two years. Do we create a diplomatic-industrial complex to increase our civilian spending? Would a Civilian Reserve Corp mobilize voters across the country? Does someone just need to sit down and explain all of this to each of the four hundred, thirty five members of the House?
Maybe it turns out that the answer was just to elect a new President who shared this priority. As always, I’d love to hear what you think.
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I agree that the civilian corps needs to be more active with US presence throughout the world. The military has great intentions with their Civil Affairs corps but the majority of soldiers are not given enough training to effectively oversee reconstruction and development projects. In Iraq Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) are ran by the State Department and are attempting to make a real impact on rebuilding. I think it’s a good concept, but a lot of people in the civilian corps have little honest incentive to take the positions. Because of security issues, some only want to stay within the security of US bases rather than interacting in the local population. Additionally, ideologically it is tough to mesh civilian and military goals when in a combat environment. I suppose before increasing spending on diplomatic spending, I would like to see a modification in training the civilian corps to be more prepared for adverse security situations and working with the military or increase the retraining of military personnel to more accurately act as diplomats when needed.