President Trump’s November 21 demand that Ukraine accept his peace plan by Thanksgiving Day, and the subsequent protests, meetings, reworkings, and announcements, have of course touched off a furor of reporting and commentary. The actual status of talks and peace plans remains a moving target. The moral essence of the process is much the same as it has been.
Largely unremarked in all this is the question of the role of the Department of State and the body of career US diplomats. This is no surprise, and not only due to the mass layoffs of State Department personnel and Trump’s own impulse driven policy management.
To be sure, Trump’s hard line on a 28-point plan that had, at the least, a lot of direct input from Russia, reflects his own idiosyncratic style. And true, this administration has made almost no use of the career diplomats generally. The nearly coincident timing of this exchange with a set of talks between the Secretary of the Army and Ukrainian – and now Russian – officials also speaks to this administration’s disjointed practices. But the absence of State Department career diplomats from Ukraine policy formation (there was a report that the US Charge d’Affaires in Kyiv got a shot at the Secretary of the Army’s proposals, likely as a review of already-constituted language) is not even news – amid all the commentary, one op ed notes the quiet at State.
That quiet is not news because no one believes that career diplomats have a role as policy framers. For decades, diplomacy has been mostly an auxiliary to America’s “real” actions. It’s an enabling function, facilitating agreements with allies over sanctions, stationing of forces, administering programs that make other countries more receptive to our influence, and the like.
This would not happen on the Defense Department’s turf. Why? Because everyone knows that the military has an expertise that no one else has, in armed force. Furthermore, because the military is so obviously central to security, their function has evolved to subsume many aspects of interstate relations, with diplomats all the more peripheral. Hence the Secretary of the Army’s role in today’s process.
Not unrelated to this, everyone knows that many major US ambassadorships, and quite a few lesser ones, go to political appointees. No specialized expertise needed, with State administrative details handled by career deputies. Indeed, a certain logic favors political appointees as better for the job, given their connections to Presidents and close advisors.
What does US foreign policy lose by this? In the execution of any given policy at any given time, it gains. But an underlying credibility of the United States erodes, as it has been for decades. Every foreign actor knows to follow American politics, and only to value the word of any representative to the extent they assess the capacities of the administration of the day.
Where some will decry “start up diplomacy” or “amateur hour” among Trump appointees, there is no non-political repository of expertise, which must rest on a body of professionals who know the deep purposes underpinning current views of national interest. This would be the natural domain of career diplomats, but as things stand no one recognizes this need, including them.
This too is no surprise, and not a secret. In 2017, Rex Tillerson commissioned a “listening tour” of State and AID, and the first recommendation of the study was for State to articulate a fundamental mission, a purpose for the institution. Which, per their survey, was simply missing. So the diplomats of the day have no nose for offering this perspective. Amb. James Jeffrey notes how diplomacy, the conduct of relations with other actors, has lost “pride of place” in foreign policy making. And Amb Charles Freeman noted in 2021 how no one could name our purpose in Afghanistan, which a latter day Kennan might have addressed, but none did.
Part of the problem is that our diplomats’ only training comprises a multi week orientation course, supplemented by topical module courses when upcoming postings call for them. As opposed to the multi-year drumming of mission and purpose into our military officers, current Foreign Service Officers guess at the purposes underlying their assigned tasks, with only their personal perspectives to guide them.
The shame of this is that America has a fundamental purpose, stated in the founding creed of the Declaration of Independence. “We hold” certain truths, in individual rights to live by “my” own lights, secured by governments as their own reason to be, legitimated by consent of the governed. In today’s discourse, these abstract, ambient truths are co-opted by partisan politics, checked-off as truisms. But, if someone could carry this moral bedrock, ambient guideline, and aspirational national beacon into real policy deliberations, they could leaven politically driven conduct, and maintain national coherence across administrations. They could give themselves institutional credibility in foreign policy and in public discourse overall, much as the military enjoys in matters of national security.
As noted, this observation does not really bear on our handling of the invasion of Ukraine and our response to it. But the flailing we have seen, regarding Ukraine, regarding Afghanistan, and in countless other issues, might find more orderly, more credible handling if we create a new career diplomatic service. Someone needs to carry our national reason for being, and these officers need to represent us across different administrations. A new formation of this service will have to reflect thoughtful consideration and deliberate planning, a challenge in itself. But America deserves, and needs, both.
Happy Thanksgiving to all.
Common Conviction 