Call in the Civilians

Amid the roiling controversy over U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, one fact often gets lost: The soldiers are only half the picture. It will take both combat troops and civilians to tackle what the Army's new counterinsurgency manual sees as objective No. 1: "foster[ing] development of effective governance by a legitimate government." Such a task entails ensuring personal security, public participation, and social and cultural acceptance of the regime. The Afghan government is going to need a lot of help on its way there -- help from expert civilian advisors. Yet those civilians are nowhere to be found.

Call it Washington's blind spot. Since the September 11 attacks, the United States has suffered from a myopia that sees military expansion as paramount and civilian support as an afterthought. As a result, the State Department's ranks have been depleted and overstretched to the core. And the civilian half of warfare has suffered.

Just think back to a few years ago in Iraq. In 2004, the Pentagon brass realized that guns alone wouldn't bring security, but there weren't enough civilians at the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to get the state-building job done. The Defense Department has about 2.3 million uniformed service members and more than 800,000 civilians. The State Department and USAID combined have about 8,000 Foreign Service officers. The Defense Department had to fill 350 civilian positions in Iraq and is preparing to fill 300 in Afghanistan.

Those two perilous countries are just the beginning. Some U.S. embassies are as much as 30 percent understaffed. Things are so bad that the State Department has had to hire 2,300 family members to fill positions overseas.

Up until today, the situation has continued to deteriorate, even as the military promotes stability operations -- capabilities like "strengthening governance and the rule of law" and "fostering economic stability and development" -- as a mission of equal importance to combat operations. Trouble is, these really aren't tasks for soldiers. But the civilians are missing in action, so the Army has to step in.

Development and diplomacy, like defense, are clearly defined and specialized fields. No one would task a USAID agricultural economist with helping develop Afghanistan's or Iraq's internal defense strategy. But with the current deficit of Foreign Service officers (FSOs) at the State Department and USAID, the government routinely tasks U.S. special operations forces with implementing development and public diplomacy tasks. One exasperated officer asked me, "How am I, as a military professional, supposed to know what's best for the development of this country? That's USAID's job." But there is no USAID officer in the area, so she soldiers on.

Worldwide, the State Department and USAID need about 5,000 new FSOs to conduct core and public diplomacy, oversee foreign assistance, and manage stabilization missions. The State Department has been hiring about 700 new officers a year, a rate that barely beats attrition in the rapidly graying Foreign Service. USAID is 75 percent smaller than it was a generation ago, and despite bringing in 300 officers a year, it is still not meeting the global demand for development specialists.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's two immediate predecessors tried to get funding for more FSOs from Congress. Colin Powell, for example, increased the Foreign Service by about 1,000 people a year. But most of these newbies went to consular and diplomatic security positions, not core and public diplomacy jobs. Condoleezza Rice asked Congress for 1,100 more FSOs annually, but she got considerably fewer. Still, it's a question of scale; Congress and the administration need to open the taps and hire thousands, not hundreds.

These personnel shortages reduce the United States' ability to project what Clinton calls "smart power." Absent civilians place an unfair burden on the U.S. military and present the wrong image of America to the world: that of a country which implements foreign policy with a bayonet. In the end, the sorry state of State reduces the effectiveness of U.S. efforts to promote international security and make the country and the world less secure.

The Afghan people won't stand for long any force that they view as an occupier. Time to move quickly and fill the ranks of the civilian brigades who can fight the other half of the war.

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ROSEANN

10:19 PM ET

October 26, 2009

Why is this photo of Hillary

Why is this photo of Hillary Clinton used? If the implication is that she is asleep on the job this is an insult to her and unfair. It is unreasonable and wrong to think that she can overcome years of State's problems in 9 months.

Change the photo.

REPLY

ASANTE

12:42 AM ET

October 27, 2009

Where is all the money

The wealthy and US companies' taxes should be raised to finance US ongoing mission in Afghanistan. The leaders (rich) much take responsibility and lead. Besides, they went to war in the first place.

CHRIS_T

2:44 AM ET

oh oh I know the answer: me

oh oh I know the answer: me please....maybe because our Defense Dept budget is more than twenty times the bloated Pentagon budget?

Is that what the Founding Fathers wanted?

KUNINO

2:47 AM ET

A Pentagon triumph

Current and recent national arguments about US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan show that the dominant component of national association with foreign nations has become the duty of generals rather than ambassadors. And the punditocracy has accepted this almost blindly: where are the thinkpieces about the function of diplomacy today in major trouble spots where the military can be brought into play?

This has been going on for some time with the public not giving a damn: the US started making deadly military attacks on an ally, Pakistan, at least three years ago; the Pakistani government has objected vigorously; the attacks continue. Some way to treat an ally.

Whatever were the problems of the Department of State five years ago, appointing Dr Rice as the secretary after she'd displayed years of submissiveness to SecDef Ruimsfeld was more or less to abandon the department officially.

CKESTENBAUM@BKINTERNATIONAL.NET

1:49 PM ET

Ambassadors

Right. Yet Obama just appointed a General to be Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. His qualification? He flew fighters from an airbase there in 1990-91 and was later liaison to a Saudi Air Force unit. Oh, and he worked for several US Defense Contractors selling FMS weapons to the Saudis. What a horrible selection and what a terrible message to send to the Saudis about what is the core of our relationship and who runs the show in Washington and at the Embassy in Riyadh. As Yogi once said, If I was dead, I would be turning over in my grave now Of all the possible people to send to Saudi Arabia...! Here we have total role reversal, not only do we no longer have civilians running the Pentagon, now we have military running the Embassies.

9:56 AM ET

FSO App Process

While understanding that the Foreign Service Officer application process should be challenging in order to appropriately vet potential candidates, I'd like to know how State expects to hire more officers by making the application process MORE opaque?

1:42 PM ET

Nation Building

I was a FSO for 24 years (Foreign Commercial Service Officer). I seerved in Baghdad, Jakarta, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi... What Capps and this article miss are several key issues...
Most State, AID and civilian FSOs are not trained for or prepared to spend entire careers in war zones doing dangerous nation building. One cannot have a career with a family and do that. Capps should ask all the civilians who have served on PRTs in Mosul and Baqouba and Jalalabad and Kandahar whether they were able to do much with the level of military and security protection they required to avoid being blown up or having their heads cut off. Or the complexities of the rebuilding effort on short tours.

To recruit enough specialists to make a difference State/AID would have to double in size, and as one comment offered, it is harder to get into State than ever, and the skills being valued are NOT the engineering and infrastructure requirements Capps knows is needed. However...
He says there are 800,000 civlians in the Reserve, and they have every skill needed, from dams to water treatment plants to lawyers and doctors and farmers, and they are trained and armed to fight. What we need to do is organize the Reserve into a more focused nation building and civilian skill process, leave the hardest fighting to professional career soldiers and turn the reserves into the kind of hybrid unit everyone knows is what is needed. Large numbers of skilled fighters with all sorts of organized civilian skills and a new sense of mission. We do not need to remake State Dept. or the Special Ops Groups or the 82nd Airborn.We need to remake the Army Reserve!

GRANT

2:26 PM ET

I would actually like to work

I would actually like to work for Foreign Service, but when I look at the positions they always seem to want specialists with former experience and a command of languages that less than 1% of the U.S population speaks. How is a graduating poli sci major to find a job with those requirements? Besides, it's a common belief that the military pays much more.

HERESY

6:48 PM ET

FSO application process

I passed the FSOT with flying colors, but I don't have a background that involves multiple languages or a resume full of internships. This is mostly because I had to pay for my own college education. I did have four years as an intelligence analyst in the army, a bachelor's in history with a poli sci minor, and a willingness to work in war zones. I have to question who exactly the state department is looking for. Someone with experience dealing with hostility and adversity, or someone who hasn't been outside an academic or corporate environment in their adult lives?

MOTWOR

10:45 PM ET

reply to Heresy

Well, if you passed the FSOT with flying colors you probably are the sort of person that the Department of State is looking for. From looking at the recruitment page, language skills don't give an applicant an advantage until after the oral assessment - ie helping people who pass the exams rank high on the registers. Quite honestly, there aren't that many people who have strong competency in a critical language (that's why they are critical). Many of those that do, might not do well on the test. So the Department is not exactly overrun with speakers of Dari and Urdu. I think you'll also find people with a variety of backgrounds - including a number of ex-military.

With all that said, is there a subjective aspect to the test (particularly the oral assessment) - of course there is. The good news is that at the moment the Department is hiring lots of people (in comparison with hiring at other times - not in comparison with other employers). If you are interested in the FS and don't get selected - take the test again.

WALKTHEWALK

10:54 PM ET

Let's not forget why USAID was destroyed

Not mentioned in the story is that USAID was basically destroyed by the Bush administration. (See, State of Denial). Partly so that any of its tasks could be privatised --if they thought Blackwater could also negotiate chances are they would have considered privatizing State (and if we ever get Cheyney's notes we may find that).

Neither Powell nor Rice tried to aggressively build up USAID. Nor were either the army corps of engineers nor Seabees built up, for they would be naturals at the rebuild as part of their task is to get the basics working in combat conditions. But for that matter I don't recall any general or admiral asking for those funds (nor Congress or asking why not).

The commenters are correct on the perhaps overly stringent selection via paper qualifications for FSO's. As with CIA, the emphasis seems to be less on the person that can slang his way through a bazaar than the person who has qualified to take the GRE's in arabic. What they really should recuit are cultural anthropologists, economics and sociology specialists. Might get more active diplomacy, and better intelligence.

This is a long term need not only in Afghanistan but elsewhere. Part of the reason China has stolen the march on us, besides it's willingness to deal with dictators (See FP article) is that it's willing to do infrastructure, and not necessarily on the cost plus no bid basis our contractors now seem to find de rigeur. (However, in the best colonialist tradition, Chinese infrastructure projects tend to serve it's raw materials extraction and transportation needs, not the needs to develop the internal economies of the African and other countries.)

There are many, many youths with farm and agronomy experience, as well as building trades experience. We have many more that would get the training if someone would hire them. They just culturally are not the FSO mold--not well heeled WASPS, with roman numerals after their names. On the other hand most FSO's don't do well at laying sewage pipe and conduit.
So maybe some of the hiring officers need to be taken out to do some mine clearing work and thereby become educated as to what all the paper qualifications mean in the very real world where real skills and abilities are needed.

10:59 PM ET

On ambassadors

Readers shouldn't be shocked at the ambassador who was a general. The shocker at any embassy is when they get an ambassador who actually knows the country, and has a genuine interest in it and knowledge of the language.
Most ambassadors are political appointees. Some are good, many are mediocre (at being ambassador), some are execrable to the point of being the stuff of humorous legend.
But rarely, rarely, are they career foreign service officers or those with any but the most commercial contact with the country to which they are appointed. Campaign contributions and the ability to privately fund ambassadorial functions are the main qualifications.

Counterinsurgency is at least 50 percent civilian. So where have all the Foreign Service officers gone?

BY RON CAPPS | OCTOBER 26, 2009

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