President Richard Nixon disliked the State Department. He saw diplomats as effete, liberal, and antagonistic to his agenda. He was not wrong. Many diplomats were blue bloods, often sons of missionaries or prominent officials who grew up immersed in foreign cultures and fluent in their languages. Through the early 20th century, at least, many drew no salaries but financed their postings with old money.
Nixon, in contrast, was born to a poor Quaker family. His rise in government was hardscrabble. Arguably, he had a chip on his shoulder. Certainly, his work on the Alger Hiss spy case cultivated his contempt against the State Department; the feelings were often mutual.
SHADOW OF DOUBT: ARE TRUMP CANDIDATES CHANGING THEIR ELECTION DENIAL TUNE HEADING INTO 2024?
National security adviser Henry Kissinger was more nuanced. He saw the State Department as too independent and scattershot. The Foreign Service did not think tactically, and too many diplomats prioritized bilateral ties to the detriment of broader strategy. To demonstrate expertise, other officers presented superiors with so many options that they paralyzed an already distracted leadership. Many area experts also succumbed to localitis, prioritizing apologia for local faults and biases over the strategic interests of the United States.
When Nixon, in frustration, said he hoped to “ruin the Foreign Service” before leaving office, Kissinger interceded with Machiavellian cynicism. He promoted the National Security Council as a more agile mechanism to make policy and subsequently argued that the State Department as an institution was not the problem, but rather its leadership was. Kissinger neither liked nor respected William Rogers, Nixon’s largely forgotten first-term secretary of state. Kissinger argued that Rogers, like the diplomats he supervised, saw himself as independent and not beholden to the White House. Nixon ultimately took the bait and appointed Kissinger to lead Foggy Bottom in his second term while Kissinger simultaneously retained control over the National Security Council.
As Kissinger sought to reform the Foreign Service, he declared war on localitis, an emphasis that George Shultz would later continue. Clientitis was long a problem at the State Department, but it grew worse after the 1949 Hoover Commission created the current structure of geographic bureaus. Rather than having people spend years or even a decade in a country with ad hoc assignments when openings arose, Kissinger instituted regular rotations of two or perhaps three years at most. Diplomats existed to execute his strategies. As intelligent men (and women), they could perform their jobs anywhere. Rotations would broaden their expertise and protect against the tendency to inflate the needs of the country in which they served with the interests of the United States. Ambassadors might continue to prioritize their relationships with foreign leaders, but at least forcing their exit might mitigate the phenomenon.
In theory, this made sense, but in reality, it also degraded expertise. French, Spanish, and Swahili might be easy languages to master, but Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Persian, and Korean are another story entirely. Cultural nuance also matters. Why, for example, if it might take years to understand the personalities and nuances of New York and Chicago politics, would the State Department believe grasping Beijing, Beirut, or Baghdad would be any more attainable, all the more so when language and security become impediments? Diplomats then miss nuance or become overly reliant on local interlocutors passed from officer to officer.
Too often, today’s Foreign Service officers become victims of their own biases. Consider Korea. Even with a fluency most American diplomats lack, it can take three years to understand the interpersonal connections, family dynamics, and school relationships at the heart of Seoul politics. The U.S. Embassy to Korea compensates by inviting academics to speak, often privileging those who mirror its own analytical biases.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The embassy is not alone: The State Department’s Near Eastern Affairs bureau is notorious for its political biases. The insubordination, leaking, if not open rebellions that both the Bush and Trump administrations faced from senior diplomats often boiled down to resistance to inputs from different experts that contradicted inherited if meritless biases and analysis.
The problem is never linguistic skill or cultural expertise; instead, the problem the State Department faces is judgment and wisdom. Rather than fix the problem, Kissinger partially misdiagnosed it, handicapping American diplomacy for subsequent generations.
Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.