State Needs Reorganization, Rubio’s Plan Isn’t It

Cole Donovan is an associate director at the Federation of American Scientists. He previously had international S&T roles in the Biden White House, State Department, and Office of Space Commerce.

On May 29, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a Congressional Notification to Congress outlining his proposed changes to the U.S. Department of State as part of President Trump’s chaotic redesign of the U.S. government. This planned reorganization of state alienates foreign diplomats, further undermines foreign assistance, and leaves the State less capable.

There are major issues with the Secretary’s proposal. To foreign partners, the redesign looks like a manifestation of the United States’ worst instincts, focused primarily on telling others how to run their countries while emphasizing our supreme military and economic power. Humanitarians are justifiably shocked at the wholesale demolition of foreign assistance mechanisms, whose remnants are being shifted to regional offices with neither the manpower nor contracting experience to responsibly manage those funds. Anyone familiar with the work necessary to effectively manage the myriad issues State has to tackle is likely to notice the demolition of coordinating mechanisms throughout the Department, which served bureau leadership by sorting through the multitude of disparate and disconnected issues that they might encounter in a single meeting with a foreign principal.

While many of these changes are set to diminish how State functions, there is positive potential in a reorganization designed with the long-term prospects of US diplomacy, rather than the short-term whims of an administration, in mind. The status quo, as well as the general operating model of the Department for the last several decades, is not ideal. The desire for improvement is such that some of Rubio’s changes may well be welcomed, including by officers serving in offices whose responsibilities are being merged or consolidated. 

Over time, the Government has added numerous offices and functions to State with the intent to signal that specific issues are important to the sitting government. Consider State’s technical offices. In addition to an Office of Science and Technology Cooperation (which dates back to the Cold War), you also had an Office of the Science and Technology Advisor to the Secretary of State (established in the early 2000s), a Special Envoy for Critical and Emerging Technology, and a Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy (established under Secretary Blinken). 

Which of these offices manages the International Science and Technology Center? That would be the Office of Cooperative Threat Reduction in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation (created in 2005 out of the merger of two other offices). If I were to ask a foreign service officer from one of those four organizations about the Center, I’d likely receive a blank stare (inevitably followed by a flurry of activity as that officer attempts to make sure they are as involved in the Center as they can possibly be). They wouldn’t need to worry for long, though. Soon that officer will rotate to their next assignment and the cycle can begin anew.

Retooling diplomacy for the long haul

That rotational churn creates other issues for American diplomacy. Foreign Service Officers rotate through two-year assignments, making frequent moves and retraining a constant part of their careers. A foreign service officer spends their first six months of a rotation learning how to do their new job and an additional four to five months trying to do the best job that they can. The next five are devoted to finding their next assignment, and the next few are spent trying to maximize their performance reviews before they begin preparations for their next job. One of my deputy directors on the EU desk once told me that he didn’t realize when he joined the government that he would spend the rest of his life searching for a job. This incentivizes managers to wait for foreign service rotations to avoid challenging performance management conversations, creating the risk that poor performers or toxic managers may be able to survive the next promotion cycle. 

Increasing the assignment term to five years (so that American diplomats can demonstrate a similar level of competence in a particular job as their counterparts in other foreign ministries and focus on delivering longer-term results) would be a good place to start. This is particularly important for officers working on issues that have inherently long lead times, like managing U.S. interests related to the EU or China’s seven- and five-year legislative program cycles, respectively. At the very least, it would help the Department spend its language training and relocation dollars more effectively. 

Politicizing the workforce, as this Administration is doing, through actions like Schedule Policy/Career and its free response questions as part of the hiring process, inherently cuts against this capability. If this administration fires its experienced workforce, particularly those performing newly-relocated statutory responsibilities, the Administration will deprive consolidated offices of the experience and expertise necessary to maximize their productivity. The real value lost through consolidating isn’t the name of the office, but pushing out the people who deeply understand the history, context, and nuance of diplomatic interactions. These are not skills that can be easily or responsibly replicated by AI tools. As interesting as a large language model might be, it is less likely to proactively identify key points that might be missing from a foreign partner’s remarks or isolate bloviating on behalf of one’s own government from that person’s in-private, in-person ability to get things done.

Long Timelines Versus Short Headlines

The biggest problem that any reorganization of State needs to address is the fundamental misalignment between what the Department is good at doing with the jobs that it is assigned by its political leadership. As the government’s foreign ministry, State works best when assisting other agencies in accomplishing their objectives overseas or advocating on behalf of U.S. interests in particular domains, like intellectual property or agricultural regulations. Some bureaucratic tension between offices with similar missions is even helpful, allowing the Department to predict tension between promoting and protecting American interests.

Not all offices are as successful, like the recently-formed Special Envoy for Critical and Emerging Technology. The intent of this office was to address the increasing relevance of emerging technology issues in global competition. Among the many activities that the office proposed included the creation of an alliance of like-minded countries on quantum science and technology. There was just one problem: another office at the State Department already organized such a partnership with the White House National Quantum Coordination Office. That group held their first meeting almost a year before the Special Envoy had even been named, leading to an extended back and forth between the White House and competing offices at State on how to manage a new political demand signal that had just been answered

Such follies are a likely predictor of what will happen with Secretary Rubio’s new Bureau of Emerging Threats. It’s not clear exactly what value-add this bureau will provide the U.S. government, especially given the numerous offices throughout the government dealing with dangerous critical and emerging technologies, especially within the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community (let alone those that already exist within the Department). This can cause problems. 

In 2011, Secretary Clinton created the Bureau of Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) given a broad recognition of energy policy’s relevance to international stability and achieving the United State’s broader international objectives. A 2016 OIG Inspection found that the Bureau had great relationships with the rest of the Government–just not the Department of Energy (DOE) with which it most needed to work. The OIG reported numerous problems in ENR reported by foreign service officers in Embassies as well as their DOE colleagues, including competing missions, inadequate communication and coordination, and difficulty promulgating a single U.S. energy message to foreign governments. Similar dynamics are captured in the 2015 documentary “The Diplomat”, which described the struggles between the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan with other parts of the U.S. government, each of which thought itself primarily responsible for Afghan and Pakistan Policy.

Invariably, if new offices struggle to identify opportunities in their defined mission space, they begin to move into areas long-occupied by others (or they discover that other offices have already been working in their assumed domains all along and may even have statutory responsibilities in that space), including in other government agencies. Knowing the lay of the land should be essential before starting any reorganization of State aimed at the long-term viability of the diplomatic apparatus of the United States. 

Any future attempt to reorganize the Department should ask itself the following questions before creating any new body, including the appointment of a new special representative:

1. Does another government agency or office have the legislative mandate and capability to do this work?
2. Is this work distributed across many agencies who are in tension with one another, where the Department could negotiate a consolidated U.S. position on the subject (and perhaps in doing so help expedite the resolution of domestic policy disputes)?
3. Is it better if a foreign policy expert speaks to this subject, or should the face that the United States presents to the world be a recognized expert speaking from a position of authority elsewhere in the government? ie; should negotiations on nuclear enrichment be carried out primarily through State or the Department of Energy?
4. Is there another coordinating body on the subject in the U.S. government?
5. What are people in this bureau or office going to do when they show up on the job? Who are they likely to clash with?
6. Can this body follow through with any promises that it might make to foreign governments?
7. Are the people who State expects to share their resources willing to provide them to this new body, and for what purposes?
8. What will the organization’s primary leverage be in achieving whatever goals it sets out to accomplish on behalf of a given administration?

When a new body forms and doesn’t have a clear mission, the answer is usually to schedule as many meetings with foreign governments as possible and try to bend the arms of other government agencies to come forward with major commitments. It drains time and resources available to other government agencies, making it harder for them to accomplish their domestic missions. U.S. efforts are placed in stark relief against those of our allies and competitors, alike. 

Well-resourced offices that create value, like PEPFAR, have clearly made substantial progress in their respective domains and moved the needle on important global issues. This makes the loss of bureaus like Education and Cultural Affairs, which ran the Fulbright program and numerous visitor programs that exposed foreign audiences to the best elements of America’s people and culture, all the more tragic. When a bureau lacks resources, it is often forced to try to trip up international competitors in order to accomplish a goal, or coax foreign partners to use resources that the U.S. government does not have. Such efforts are usually transparent to foreign partners, who do not always appreciate being caught between the United States and one of its many foreign policy objectives. They may question why the richest and most powerful country in the world isn’t willing to put its own resources behind the effort.

I cannot predict what the State Department will actually look like in 10 months given the current chaos, let alone at the end of this government’s term. Other government bodies–particularly the NSC and other White House Policy Councils–would also do well to embrace these recommendations. What I can say is that future governments will need to do a much better job aligning the resources of the Department with its ability to execute its lofty goals–all of which are critical for ensuring the future of American security.