PRESIDENT-ELECT Barack Obama's transition team and Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton are reportedly planning to enhance the funding, staffing, and missions of the State Department. These changes are needed in part to cope with the global economic crash and specific conflicts in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, and Central Asia. But the proposals also reflect a new emphasis. Americans voted last month for a different kind of foreign policy, one that is oriented more toward diplomatic conflict resolution and less toward military force.

Clinton should have little trouble getting more funding for new hires at the State Department and the US Agency for International Development. Some money for expansion is already in the pipeline. A supplemental war funding bill that became law in June provides money for Foreign Service hiring. The State Department has requested funding for 1,500 positions; most of that money would go to fill positions otherwise lost to attrition, but a portion would pay for about 160 new positions.

Clinton will no doubt seek more money for more new posts. In this pursuit, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates can be a crucial ally. He has strongly supported a greater role for foreign service officers in nation-building missions. Gates is right about the need for diplomats and development specialists to take up missions that should not fall to the uniformed military.

On the merits, Clinton has a strong case to make that global economic developments are more than ever intertwined with geopolitics, and therefore the State Department should have a major role in discussions with other countries on economic policy. At present, for example, the Treasury Department manages the so-called "strategic economic dialogue" with China. Given that China has accumulated a surplus of nearly $2 trillion while the United States is drowning in debt, that dialogue does have strategic overtones. The State Department should have a seat at the table when US and Chinese officials discuss China's pursuit of energy resources in places like Sudan, Burma, or Iran.

In wishing to appoint special envoys to pursue peace agreements between Israel and the Palestinians, or between India and Pakistan, Clinton is wisely reviving a practice that lapsed during the Bush administration. Obama is likely to be tied up for some time in efforts to revive the domestic economy. And Clinton's own responsibilities as secretary will preclude the kind of immersion in specific knotty conflicts that a qualified special envoy is best suited to manage. If Bush had tasked the right special envoy with the forging of Mideast peace, a grand bargain with Iran, or resolution of the Kashmir conflict, the nation's security might be less tenuous than it is today.




The Boston Globe, December 26, 2008