State Department in 2025 Working Group ReportPDF versionAdvisory Committee on Transformational Diplomacy: Participating Members: Dr. Barry M. Blechman Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering The Honorable Newt Gingrich Table of Contents Executive Summary.. i Strategic Context.. 1
Recommendations. 5
Conclusion.. 45 Appendix I: List of Acronyms. 46 The State 2025 Working Group anticipates that the long-term future operating environment will be radically different. It will demand that the United States rely increasingly on the overseas presence, skilled personnel, knowledge assets, and policy insights of the Department of State to secure the interests of the American people. The scale and complexity of anticipated global challenges and opportunities will demand a Department that is significantly more robust, better resourced, and more strategically focused. Specifically, the Working Group concludes that the Department should:
These conclusions stem from two insights that emerged from the efforts of the Working Group. First, globalization and the growing strategic importance of preventing conflicts will increasingly demand that the United States be able to integrate and project its power and influence through effective diplomatic channels. Second, a wide range of factors will continue to challenge the Department’s influence internationally and within the interagency system. The result is that notwithstanding the continued preeminence of American power, the nation’s effective diplomatic power – its ability to influence events short of war – is at risk of becoming dangerously diluted. To address these findings, we offer the following high-level recommendations:
The Future Operating Environment – Emerging Characteristics Our analysis of the future environment in which U.S. diplomacy will have to operate was based on the Department’s Project Horizon initiative and the rigorously constructed scenarios that emerged from it. Central to that effort was the premise that it is not possible to know the most likely long-term future; strategic planning must therefore consider a range of possible futures. Based on the five Project Horizon scenarios, our review of a wide-range of additional studies, a series of scenario-based working sessions, interviews with public and private sector experts, and discussions with the diplomats of selected nations, four key common themes emerged regarding the likely characteristics of the future environment. 1. Shifting Dynamics of Competition and Conflict Many factors will converge to change fundamentally the ways in which nation states and other strategic actors compete for power and influence. These factors include both the anticipated intensifying and ‘flattening’ of global economic competition and its growing significance relative to traditional military competition. Science, engineering, and technology advances will become the preeminent drivers of comparative advantage in both domains. At the same time, the global competition for energy and other resources will continue to grow in strategic significance. The landscape is likely to be altered fundamentally by the rise of China and India as global powers, the emergence of a potentially stronger, more unified European Union, a growing Japan, and an unpredictable Russia. It also will feature ever more agile and adaptive adversaries, including global terror and criminal networks. Conflict is increasingly likely to be internal to, rather than between, states and the risks and threats from failing and failed states and ungoverned spaces are likely to grow. Finally, even as weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferate in kind and among nations, constraints on the use of conventional military power and therefore limits on its strategic value may grow. 2. Pervasive Challenges to Nation State Power and Influence While the primacy of the Westphalian system of nations will endure, challenges to it will become increasingly significant. These are likely to include more widespread fragmentation of nation states and the growing power and influence of non-state actors, including private sector actors, NGOs, religious organizations, ‘super-empowered’ individuals whose resources can exceed those of states, and a wide range of transnational networks – both licit and illicit. As new centers of authority emerge and evolve rapidly, the institutions of civil society continue to grow, and the participation of ‘publics’ in international relations expands, the effectiveness of traditional levers of nation-state power, including conventional military might and traditional state-to-state diplomacy, is likely to decline in relative terms. 3. Large-Scale Revolutions in Science, Engineering, and Technology Developments in science, engineering, and technology over the next quarter century will introduce an unprecedented degree of change in all areas of human life. Some experts suggest that there will be four-to-seven times as much new science in the next 25 years as there has been over the last 25 years. Technology will be an increasingly disruptive source of competitive advantage. The continuing revolutions in information and communications will be particularly significant and pervasive. The flattening of information hierarchies, the ubiquitous presence and availability of real-time information, and the proliferation of new and highly customizable media channels will complicate further the ability of states to communicate coherent, credible messages in the media. Speed of knowledge delivery and decision-making will become decisive in all areas of competition. In addition, revolutions in bioengineering, nanotechnology, and intelligent machines will have transformative effects on society. These developments will be complicated by widening divisions between generations and classes with regard to comfort with and access to technology. Advances in science and technology will penetrate all foreign policy domains and increasingly generate new ones. 4. Overwhelming Complexity, Operational Tempo, and Interdependence In the emerging environment, challenges and opportunities are likely to emerge with unprecedented complexities. The greater interlocking of issues will diminish the likelihood of finding solutions in any single discipline. In the context of still accelerating global information spread, communications, commerce and travel, as well as a diffusion of global media outlets, the consequences of events will spread globally with stunning speed and impact. Tactical decisions in one venue will have unexpected strategic implications in others. Global actors will operate at the speed of the network that supports them. Organizations that are inhibited by internal obstacles and bureaucratic structures will struggle to keep pace with the action around them, let alone be able to shape, direct, or restrain that action. There will be an increased blurring of the line separating domestic and foreign policy. Accelerating revolutions in globalized business and finance will make the flow of capital a more critical and potentially disruptive variable in national security calculations. All of these factors will emerge in the context of destabilizing demographic shifts, particularly the aging of the wealthiest countries and continuing population growth and urbanization in some of the poorest countries. The Long-Term Interests of the American People Despite these fundamental changes in the international environment, the core interests of the American people will endure and remain centered on security, global peace and stability, and economic prosperity. The desired future is well described in the Department of State/USAID Joint Mission Statement: “A more democratic, secure, and prosperous world composed of well-governed states that respond to the needs of their people, reduce widespread poverty, and act responsibly within the international system.”[1] Our study of the future suggests the American people’s interests will also include an open, connected, and vibrant world in which the United States continues to play a leading role in global political, economic, and cultural affairs; a world that increasingly operates according to transparent rules of good governance and conduct; and, a world in which states, multilateral organizations, and private sector individuals and organizations work together productively to address the highest-priority global issues, such as weapons proliferation, climate change, energy security, and global health. The Evolving Strategic Role of Diplomacy We anticipate that diplomacy will be a growing, decisive source of competitive advantage in the future. The strategic challenges and opportunities just described will require that the USG be able to join the various forms of power available to it into coherent, integrated strategies. There will be a much larger premium on the ability to partner with and leverage the resources of other nations and actors – notably wealthy individuals and corporations, NGOs, and multinational organizations. At the same time, international law and practice will become a highly attractive source of asymmetrical, normative power for both adversaries and competitors. In short, the USG must become more effective globally, integrated internally, and capable of partnering widely. These emerging requirements clarify the central role that the Department should play in securing America’s interests. Our work also confirmed that in the future, military strength will be necessary but not sufficient to secure American interests. The work of the American diplomat has always been complemented by the strength of the armed forces; it is in the combination of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ power – ‘smart power’ – that the nation’s interests are most effectively secured. We anticipate that this will continue to be true, although the balance between the strategic value of diplomatic capability and military strength is likely to shift toward the former. As armed conflict becomes increasingly asymmetrical, the use of force becomes more challenging operationally and dramatically more complex politically. In a highly interconnected environment in which tactical decisions in one venue may have near real-time, unintended, strategic consequences in another, the effects created by the use of force are much more difficult to predict and calibrate. More important, the continuing proliferation of WMD, particularly to non-state actors, implies that virtually any conflict will have an increased potential to cause millions of casualties and substantial physical and economic damage that will last for long periods of time. It will therefore be imperative to prevent wars and terrorist attacks, not just to be able to prevail in conflicts or recover from them. The USG must seek to use all instruments of American power in an integrated fashion to shape conditions in the world with the goal of reducing to a minimum the number of occasions when the U.S. must use force. In addition, American military superiority will drive adversaries to non-military venues of competition. Nations will compete in new ways in demanding non-traditional, asymmetrical contexts. This development, and the proliferation of actors and new centers of authority, will demand that the USG have effective means of delivering maximum influence in any domain, symmetrical or asymmetrical, from a multilateral meeting to a single bilateral conversation, from a refugee camp to a corporate boardroom. The most effective, widely applicable, and least costly means of delivering power in this diversity of venues is through properly trained, experienced, and empowered diplomats supported by an anticipatory, strategically focused, well-managed organization. To be effective in securing the long-term interests of the American people, the Department must become significantly more robust in scale, better resourced, directed by long-term strategy, and increasingly capable in several broad areas. Specifically, the Department should:
To realize this vision of the Department of State, the State 2025 Working Group offers recommendations in the following areas:
Proactive and Preventive Shaping Capabilities Shaping the global operating environment is one of the Department’s most central, enduring, and unique responsibilities, and the driving intent of Transformational Diplomacy. Our study of the future suggests that the strategic importance for the nation of the Department’s capabilities in this area will increase dramatically in the 21st century as the complexity and cost of conflict rises and the scope of global challenges widens. Our research also makes clear that the growing fragmentation and intensity of competition for influence will demand both greatly strengthened and wholly new diplomatic capabilities. Creating favorable operating conditions will involve attracting others to a uniquely compelling and credible vision of the future. Doing so will require deep, sustained engagement on many levels based on enduring, transcultural values and a focus on areas of common interest. In a future environment characterized by higher degrees of complexity and the growing influence of non-state actors, the ability to influence emerging areas of international law, standards, and practices will be one of the core disciplines of this shaping capacity. It will require the ability to set in motion self-sustaining patterns of activity that will generate increasingly favorable conditions over time. Doing so will involve first understanding and then leveraging the interests and actions of a wide range of actors – from traditional nation states and multilateral organizations to non-state actors and activist ‘publics.’ As a result, the shaping capabilities of the future will center on highly engaged and collaborative diplomacy and demand true integration of the diverse instruments of national power. Our interviews suggested that the Department’s ability to focus on and deliver meaningful results in these long-term, strategic areas of engagement has declined significantly over time. Many factors, including organizational and resource issues addressed later in this report, have contributed to making the Department increasingly reactive, with its shaping efforts diluted across a span of insufficiently prioritized goals. For the Department to be effective in shaping the global operating environment over the next 20 years, it should re-invest in its capabilities in this area and increase the strategic focus it places on achieving these longer-term results. To this end, the State 2025 Working Group offers the following recommendations: Agency for Global Public Engagement Create within the Department a semi-autonomous agency for global public engagement. The purpose of this new organization would be to establish an integrated USG strategic focus, a critical mass of resources, clear accountability, and an institutional home for the full-range of Department, USAID, and – as appropriate – other USG public diplomacy assets and initiatives under a director reporting directly to the secretary of state. The strategic planning function for this organization would reside within the Office of Policy, Strategy, and Resource Planning proposed in this report. The organization would utilize the proposed common Department and USAID technology platform. It would have direct line authority over all Department public diplomacy personnel and provide leadership and coordination of USG-wide public diplomacy efforts to minimize duplication and ensure consistency of efforts. By concentrating public diplomacy expertise and strategic direction within one organization and emphasizing the capabilities of project management and program leadership, this organization would be operationally capable of delivering tangible results on a more consistent basis. Public diplomacy efforts will not be successful if they are diluted across a myriad of objectives. They also will fail if they do not include focus on all three levels of engagement: deep, sustained investment in cultural exchanges and programs focused on common values and mutual understanding; medium-term programs focused on ‘high-touch’ engagements in emerging areas of need (e.g., preventive health programs); and shorter-term programming related to media engagement and messaging. The intensity and complexity of the competition for influence will require that efforts be integrated and effective across these levels. This will be essential to ensuring that U.S. engagements with targeted global publics are credible and mutually reinforcing and that their effects are enduring. Doing so requires that the Department improve its ability to: integrate its message and programs across the organization to ensure consistency; tailor that message and programs to meet the unique operational requirements of the field; and ensure the concentration, strategic coherence, and accountability for results that only a self-standing organization can provide. Key Potential Components
Proactive Multilateral Leadership Strengthen the U.S. presence in multilateral institutions and develop longer-term, more proactive strategies for influencing their agendas. The Department should increase the presence of its personnel in multilateral organizations, expand their breadth of expertise and experience in how these organizations function, and develop longer-term strategies for influencing outcomes in these arenas. It should enhance U.S. representation in the African Union, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and other key, emerging organizations based on a comprehensive global analysis. Essential to the Department’s success will be a substantial rotational program that supports secondment of Department personnel to the staffs of these institutions for extended tours of duty. Similarly, the Department should articulate – and communicate to its staff – clear strategic priorities for U.S. engagement in these fora. The bipartisan Task Force on the United Nations noted in its 2005 report, American Interests and UN Reform, “Three generations of Americans have demonstrated not only a strong preference for sharing the costs, risks, and burdens of global leadership, but also an acute recognition that action in coordination and cooperation with others is often the only way to get the job done.”[2] The State 2025 Working Group endorses this viewpoint. Pressing global challenges must necessarily be addressed in multilateral settings. Securing the interests of the American people in those settings will require long-term strategic focus and sustained effort and investment. Key Potential Components
Anticipatory Coalition-Building Capacity Deepen the Department’s institutional ability to develop and effectively manage anticipatory coalitions, in particular by building an organizational capacity for conducting coalition planning exercises in key political and diplomatic areas, much as the Department of Defense (DOD) does in military domains. These efforts would facilitate joint-planning and joint-response strategies with both state and non-state actors. Potential areas for these exercises would include environmental or financial crisis response, stabilization and reconstruction efforts, and regional contingencies. In the future, the United States increasingly will be confronted with challenges and opportunities for which coordinated, multi-national/multi-actor responses will be essential for political, economic, resource, logistical, or public affairs reasons. As a result, it will be important not only to find areas of alignment with key partners, but also to have integrated strategies and plans in place to address these circumstances. In addition, these types of activities serve as invaluable confidence-building measures and seed important professional and personal relationships and networks at the working levels with key partners around the world. Key Potential Component
Proactive Development of International Law and Practices Create a new office within the Office of the Legal Advisor to strengthen the Department’s institutional capacity to monitor and lead the development of international law and practice – particularly in emerging domains. Our study of the future suggests that the processes by which international law, standards, and practices are formed will represent a growing, critical domain of competition for power and influence among nation states and other actors. This includes both the evolution of ‘rule-sets’ in existing areas and – increasingly – in new, emerging domains (e.g., climate, genetics, and nanotechnology). The United States is well positioned to play a leadership role in these processes, and by doing so can gain significant, enduring strategic leverage for shaping the future operating environment. One interviewee made this point very cogently, saying, “The United States must be on the offense in forming international law.” Our work suggests that doing so will require that the Department build new capacities in this area, given the sheer scope of the global rule-forming processes that are now in motion. Many legal domains that were once primarily defined within national boundaries have become increasingly transnational (e.g., health, the environment, and labor). At the same time, many USG agencies that are predominantly oriented towards domestic issues are now active globally. Thus, the need for an integrated approach to managing these processes and supporting them with expertise in international negotiation is increasingly urgent. Therefore, we consider investment in this capability a high-priority for the Department. Key Potential Components
Strengthened and Integrated Tools of Economic Diplomacy Increase the focus on economic diplomacy and strengthen the Department’s institutional role in coordinating the development and execution of the nation’s global economic policy. This recommendation includes bolstering the Department’s core economic diplomacy capabilities, integrating selected USG instruments of economic influence, and institutionalizing the Department’s role in bringing forward-looking, strategic unity to global USG economic policy. In the future operating environment, the lines separating economic and financial issues from geopolitical and diplomatic concerns will become increasingly blurred. It will be imperative for the United States to bring the full weight of its economic and financial power to the development and execution of its foreign policy. Further, it will be important for the USG to understand fully the global political consequences of its international economic and financial decisions. Doing so will require that the Department play a central role in coordinating the nation’s international economic and financial policy. Key Potential Components
Science, Engineering, and Technology Engagement Expand the Department’s investment in Science, Engineering, and Technology (SET) expertise, presence, and global engagement. This recommendation includes ensuring a baseline of SET literacy among all appropriate Department personnel, increasing the presence overseas of personnel with significant SET expertise, and expanding the Department’s engagement within global SET networks through exchanges, assistance, and joint research activities addressing key global issues. The State 2025 Working Group also suggests that the roles of the Assistant Secretary for Oceans and International Environment and Scientific Affairs (OES) and the Science and Technology Advisor be brought more closely together. For example, if the Assistant Secretary for OES is a scientist, that person could serve simultaneously as the Science and Technology Advisor. Otherwise, the Science and Technology Advisor could become the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (PDAS) in OES. It is essential that this role be empowered to bring senior attention to the full range of SET challenges and opportunities facing the Department – including both ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ power issues. There is broad consensus that revolutions in science, engineering, and technology will transform virtually all areas of human life, including the full range of foreign policy issues. For the Department, a lack of expertise and presence in these domains represents a significant strategic blind spot. From the perspectives of economic competitiveness and national security, distributed awareness of these issues will be essential to effective, relevant diplomacy. In addition, as the Internet collapses the importance of time and geography as barriers to the sharing of information, SET advances will emerge from global collaborative efforts. The networks driving these advances will be important sources of influence and will spread core values of transparency, meritocracy, and rationality. Engagement and development of these SET networks already is becoming an increasingly competitive domain. For example, by one internal estimate, there are approximately 600 African students in SET domains pursuing advanced studies in the United States. By comparison, in China there are 10,000 African students in these disciplines and the Chinese government intends to increase that number by 4,000 each year. For all of these reasons, we believe that SET is a critically important domain for engagement by the Department. Key Potential Components
Decisive Country Transitioning Capabilities The State 2025 Working Group anticipates that demographic and other societal tensions are likely to continue to increase the pressures that result in the fracturing and failure of nation states. Developments of this kind will have growing strategic importance for the United States as increasing degrees of global interconnectedness make the consequences of instability both more dangerous and difficult to contain. It will be critical for the USG not only to have the ability to identify these destabilizing trends, but also the operational capacity to prevent or mitigate nation-state failures and internal conflicts. At the same time, likely constraints on available U.S. resources – and the importance of managing the perceptions of American engagement – will require that U.S. efforts in these areas be multilateral to the greatest possible extent. Burden-sharing with partners, both traditional and non-traditional, and capacity building will be key determinants of American success. Our interviews suggested that effective development assistance could become the most efficient means of achieving national objectives in this area. They also indicated that for development efforts to be truly effective, they should be tightly integrated with the nation’s foreign policy and country-specific diplomacy. The potential influence of development assistance in supporting the transition of countries towards stability and good governance can only be fully realized as part of an overarching, unified strategic framework. The fragmentation of foreign assistance across nearly twenty government agencies and entities leads to confusion in roles and responsibilities, a lack of prioritization, and conflicting or contradictory objectives – with a net result that is sometimes adverse for recipient countries.[3] The creation of the Office of the Director of Foreign Assistance is an important development in increasing USG-wide coherence in this area. Many interviews also reflected the broad concern that the Department still does not have sufficient stabilization and reconstruction capacities. It was recommended that the Department build and integrate the operational capability to respond rapidly to contingencies, support country transitions effectively, solve complex development problems, and create tangible results. The Department should be able to act swiftly in these circumstances, either pre-conflict to avert more costly or difficult circumstances, or post-conflict to maximize the benefits. The ability to influence decisively the transitions of states at various stages of development also demands a specific set of skilled and available human resources, rapid-response operational capacity, and flexible financial and human resources on the ground. The recommendations in this category are intended to strengthen the Department’s operational capacity to support the transition of fragile and failed states in close coordination with other USG departments and agencies, and – significantly – in partnership with other nations and multilateral organizations. Alignment of Diplomacy and Assistance Integrate the strategic planning offices and technology infrastructures of the Department and USAID, merge overlapping bureaus and functions, and co-locate related offices and personnel with the goal of bringing true strategic and operational alignment to the efforts of the Department and USAID. The intent of this recommendation is to preserve the important differences in perspective and operational flexibility resulting from autonomous development and diplomatic organizations, while maximizing the nation’s ability to advance broad strategic objectives and achieve tangible results on the ground. Key Potential Components
Integrated Reconstruction and Stabilization Planning and Execution Capacity Establish clear senior-level responsibility and interagency authority for the reconstruction and stabilization function and develop fully the Department’s planning and execution capacities in this area. This recommendation includes the requirement that the Department build the capacity to develop anticipatory response plans that integrate the resources of the agencies and departments of the USG, other nations, international organizations, and other non-state actors. In addition, the Department should develop both a standing and reserve cadre of reconstruction and stabilization professionals that can be deployed worldwide to prevent, mitigate, or respond to disasters and various forms of political, economic, and social instability. Our work suggests that these planning and operational capabilities should reside within the Department because of its specific state-building expertise, understanding of regional and national context, central interagency coordination role, and civilian status. The intention of this recommendation is to build upon the concepts and capabilities the Department has already articulated in creating the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (CRS). Key Potential Components
Capabilities for Engaging Non-Traditional Actors We anticipate that in 2025, non-state actors – both traditional and non-traditional – will become more influential in international affairs relative to traditional state institutions. These actors will include multi-national corporations, transnational networks, NGOs, terrorist organizations, religious groups, and highly empowered individuals. Our interviews and working sessions with diplomats of selected nations yielded a clear consensus: for diplomatic institutions to be effective in creating tangible results on the ground in the future, they will require a strengthened institutional ability to engage non-traditional interlocutors. To do so, diplomats must understand these actors’ motivations and interests, how they engage and influence others, their strengths and weaknesses, and how, when appropriate, to partner with them effectively. In some cases, interaction with these non-state actors can be achieved directly by state diplomatic institutions; in other cases, such as when dealing with illegal or terrorist organizations, it may be necessary to obtain such insight through third parties. American diplomats have always interacted with non-state actors. Our study suggests that the importance of this interaction will increase significantly in the future. More specifically, we found that to be effective in engaging and influencing these actors, the Department will need to become much more systematic and innovative in its approaches. Thus, the recommendations in this area are intended to strengthen the Department’s ability to engage non-state actors strategically, influence the emerging patterns of activity through which they operate, and leverage the growing resources and capabilities at their disposal. Social Network Engagement Capability Develop a globally integrated solution for capturing, aggregating, analyzing, and using the Department’s unique knowledge of influential individuals, their interests, and their networked relationships. This solution would consist of both a new business process for capturing and reporting contact information and the application of advances in social network theory and technology to create analytically useful visual representations of this critical knowledge. Under this solution, diplomatic personnel would enter pre-set categories of information regarding the individuals with whom they interact in addition to their current narrative reports. This information would be aggregated on a global basis and made available for analysis in both Washington and the field. Analyzing this information using the principles of social network science will enable the Department to identify the global network of influencers for a given issue and understand where the best potential sources of leverage are within that network. The insight provided by this solution would support diplomacy, development, and public engagement by helping to prioritize among the many potential areas of action to target those likely to have the greatest effect. This recommendation builds on what our interviews suggested is one of the most valuable and long-standing knowledge assets of the Department: its insight into the specific people and groups that most influence developments in a given country. Knowledge of these networks and relationships is an intrinsic part of the work of the Department and its diplomats, but historically this information and insight has, at best, been imperfectly captured and shared. To be effective in the 21st century, the Department should not only do a better job of capturing these data, but also of managing and analyzing them. The proposed solution is intended to update a core strength of the Department to maximize its strategic value in the 21st century. Currently, biographical information is captured, but nowhere is it being integrated and made available for unified analysis. In addition, the invaluable relationship information accumulated by FSOs during a given tour rarely is transmitted comprehensively to their successors. In a world where influence itself is increasingly scarce and in which knowledge of networks is essential, the pervasive loss of vitally important information is something that the Department can no longer afford. In addition to its analytic applications, the proposed solution would provide a highly practical means for improving the transmission of this knowledge from one officer to the next, expanding the Department’s representational outreach, and enhancing our ability to identify promising future leaders. Key Potential Components
Public-Private Partnership and NGO Engagement Capability The Department and USAID should create a greatly strengthened institutional means to understand, engage, and partner creatively with private sector and NGO actors. Among the diverse range of emerging non-state actors, those most likely to grow in influence and to have increasing degrees of strategic alignment with the long-term objectives of the Department and USAID are private companies and individuals and the NGO community. Our interviews suggested that unofficial resources increasingly will dwarf official government resources in the future; the growing number of corporations among the wealthiest entities in the world is one indication of this trend. Another example is the Gates Foundation, which currently boasts an annual global health budget greater than that of the World Health Organization. Our working sessions made clear that it will be critical for the Department to improve its ability to channel the energy and resources of the private sector in support of its objectives in the many areas where there is clear alignment of interests. We also found that NGOs will be increasingly effective actors in countries and issue areas where political realities might inhibit the efficacy of formal USG programs and activities. Foreign affairs agencies, particularly the Department and USAID, will need to maintain close relationships with NGOs and leverage their programs and activities to advance common goals and objectives. In addition, new organizational hybrids will emerge in which government entities at various levels will join with NGOs, academia, and industry to share burdens, bridge domains, and connect constituencies. At the same time, there may well be a broad challenge to the USG as mounting resource constraints intersect with ever-rising mission demands and citizen expectations. The operational burden that these dynamics create will require that the Department find ‘force-multipliers’ across the spectrum of its activities. We therefore see a significant strategic opportunity to create new institutional means for aligning the actions of non-state actors in support of shared goals. Key Potential Components
Capacity to Integrate USG Global Affairs Activities Based on our study of the future, we anticipate an operating environment in which the complex, multi-disciplinary challenges and opportunities facing the USG will proliferate while the resources available to respond to these events may be significantly constrained. The nation’s adversaries and competitors will take advantage of the high operational tempo and relative instantaneous movement of information to exploit any seams among USG organizations. These circumstances will demand a high degree of strategic integration across the government at the global, regional, and country levels. They also will require the ability to prioritize among multiple pressing issues. Thus, the USG requires a means for establishing prioritized strategic goals across agencies and for having visibility into the interagency resources being spent to address these goals. The NSC is the entity responsible for interagency policy coordination. Our research suggests that while the NSC plays this role effectively for the most urgent issues of the day, it is less able to guide both long-term strategic coordination and the unity of effort required for less immediately pressing areas. The pace and complexity of world affairs and the USG’s role in them simply have outgrown the NSC’s capabilities, particularly as the NSC is necessarily dominated by the president’s priorities, goals, and calendar. Therefore, we believe that the Department should play a much greater role in integrating the USG’s strategy in global affairs. The Department is uniquely responsible for the broad range of U.S. national interests globally and is already accountable to the president for ensuring that all USG efforts overseas support American foreign policy objectives. At the country level, the Department, working through the U.S. ambassador and the country team, has long been responsible for creating strategic unity among the many agencies present in its missions. As the number and activities of these agencies has grown, creating this unity has become both more difficult and more important. Our interviews also suggested that, at the regional level, there is a growing need for greater strategic integration, and that this role has fallen by default to DOD and its combatant commanders (COCOM). The recommendations in this category are intended to institutionalize the Department’s ability to integrate all the USG’s instruments of power in support of the NSC and to serve effectively as the lead foreign affairs agency. Global Affairs Strategic Plan and Budget Take the lead, working closely with the NSC and OMB, in coordinating the periodic development of a Global Affairs Strategic Plan and presenting a related and integrated annual Global Affairs Budget. The development of such a plan would allow the NSC to move beyond simply using the National Security Strategy (NSS) as general guidance to monitoring the performance of the executive branch against its strategic and performance goals. Over time, the development, updating, and monitoring of this longer-term plan would contribute significantly to the strategic coherence of USG efforts and investments globally. It would create close collaboration on key strategic issues, highlight vulnerable gaps and seams, and foster a culture of unity across the government. The Integrated Global Affairs Budget would fill a significant gap identified by many interviewees: the lack of a unified view of what the USG is spending to accomplish its objectives globally is a major obstacle to meaningful strategic integration. First, this absence makes it extremely difficult to identify and eliminate areas of overlap, redundancy, and cases where efforts are at cross-purposes. Second, it limits the ability of the government to ensure the application of sufficiently concentrated resources against highest priority objectives. The NSC, by requiring the Department to present this budget, would immediately increase significantly the orientation toward meaningful integration of effort among executive branch agencies. Key Potential Components
Regional Planning, Presence, and Execution Strengthen the Department’s regional interagency coordination role and presence by leading the development of government-wide regional strategic plans and expanding its senior-level diplomatic visibility. This will require increasing the planning capacity of the regional bureaus both in Washington and the field and creating a new senior level position at each regional Combatant Command that would serve as the COCOM’s senior civilian deputy and be responsible for diplomatic interaction and for leading interagency planning for the Department at the regional level. Our interviews yielded two opposing insights regarding regions. First, some argued that regions are fundamentally arbitrary constructs that reflect neither clear lines of sovereignty nor culture or civilization. At the same time, regions have become a centrally important and – most argue – necessary organizing constructs, not just for government, but also for most global private sector organizations. Notwithstanding their organizational utility, regional constructs create fundamental strategic challenges – particularly for national security organizations – in the form of the seams between regions that are susceptible to exploitation by adversaries, who understand very well where the USG’s ability to coordinate effectively is most limited. Within the Department, the regional bureaus have evolved to be the clearly preeminent centers of power. However, many interviewees argued that this preeminence in Washington is not matched in the field, where DOD’s regional combatant commanders have come to be perceived by states and other actors as the most influential USG regional representative. It is argued that the resources that COCOM’s control, their presence and frequent travel throughout the region, and even the symbolic impact of their aircraft and accompanying contingent of uniformed service members, all combine to place them in a perceived position of preeminence. It also has been suggested that the strategic unity at the regional level created by the combatant commanders across the military services is not matched by a corresponding degree of unity among the civilian agencies active in the regions. In fact, some suggested that the combatant commanders not only find themselves having to coordinate among civilian agencies in the region, but also among the U.S. ambassadors in a given region. These findings, and our expectation of a future environment in which interagency strategic unity at all levels and clear civilian leadership of U.S. diplomatic activities will be critical to American success, clearly suggest the need for strengthened civilian interagency leadership and presence at the regional level. The Department is the only USG entity that can play this indispensable role. Key Potential Components
Ambassadorial Authorities and Planning Responsibilities Analyze and strengthen ambassadors’ formal authority over all executive branch human and financial resources expended in each country. This recommendation includes clarifying the ambassador’s responsibility for leading the professional evaluation of all USG personnel under his/her authority, and requiring and training ambassadors to lead the development of truly unified interagency engagement plans for their missions. The complex and intensely competitive future operating environment will demand the strategic integration of USG resources at the global, regional, and country levels. It will be increasingly critical that the USG maximize prioritized concentration of time and resources, reduce duplication of effort, and minimize vulnerabilities in the seams between agencies. Historically, this integration has been most successfully achieved by the ambassador at the country level. However, our interviews suggested that the degree of actual strategic integration varies widely among missions. As the number of USG agencies active overseas and the extent of their activities grow, the challenge of creating country-level unity of effort will increase. Depending on the orientation, management skills, and stature of each individual ambassador, meeting this challenge will be more or less difficult. The following proposals are intended to foster greater integration of USG investments in all countries. The goal is to increase the ability of the president and the secretary to create specific desired outcomes in each country through their ambassadors. Key Potential Components
Optimized Global Deployment and Presence There was clear consensus across our expert interviews and scenario working sessions that the physical presence of U.S. diplomats around the globe will be a growing, valuable asset in securing the interests of the American people. Being present at the right time, in the right place, and with the right personnel will continue to be the prerequisite for wielding meaningful influence in the world. Significant and valuable efforts are already underway to retool the Department’s presence for the demands of the future, including both the global repositioning initiative and the ambitious program to build new embassies.[4] Nonetheless, in considering the potential characteristics of the longer-term future operating environment, there are several additional requirements. Our work suggests that the global competition for influence will be increasingly intense, involve a much wider range of relevant actors, and occur in a much greater diversity of venues. Among nation states, national capitals are likely to be of less importance as competing economic centers become more central to American interests. All of this will occur in the context of a world in which the massive proliferation of media and communication channels – and the flood of transitory virtual interactions – paradoxically will increase the value of direct contacts and personal relationships. In addition, the likely growth in the number of extremely challenging diplomatic environments, more closely resembling that of Nigeria than Germany, will require wholly new security and recruitment models. Taken together, these developments indicate that in the future there is likely to be significantly more diplomatic ground for the Department to cover. Also, the sheer pace of change and the growing uncertainty and complexity of the environment will demand that the Department be able to modify very rapidly both the location and composition of its presence. The recommendations in this area are intended to move the Department to a size and competence adequate to meet the new global challenges, provide the flexibility necessary for critical training and rotations, improve the Department’s capacity to deploy integrated teams on short notice for time-limited assignments, and assess and adjust its physical footprint overseas on a more dynamic and flexible basis. Baseline Critical Mass Increase the number of Foreign Service and Civil Service staff by 100 percent over the next ten years in order to ensure a diplomatic presence sufficient to meet the rapidly expanding global challenges and opportunities of the future operating environment. Increase USAID’s deployable staff resources by 100 percent over the next three years. Key Potential Components
New Models of Physical Presence and Rapid Adaptability Build a portfolio of physical and virtual presence models that would include both several constructs currently under development and new models for rapid and time-limited deployment. Our recommendations in this area have been largely informed by the more detailed analysis of these models being conducted in the CSIS “Embassy of the Future” project. In particular, we agree that the Department should enhance the ability of diplomats to operate outside the embassy and institutionalize an analytical process for continually refining the U.S. presence globally and within each country individually, based on emerging requirements. The future operating environment will demand that the Department be capable of engaging traditional, emerging, and wholly new actors regardless of their location and in varying security environments. The great breadth of circumstances and locations requiring diplomatic presence and the pace of change among them suggest that even a significantly larger Department will not be able to cover the necessary ground effectively without an innovative and flexible set of deployment options. The development of techniques and strategies to manage risk also will be important. Key Potential Components
Further Leverage Locally Engaged Staff Strengthen and expand the scale of the Department’s Locally Engaged Staff (LES), while further leveraging the LES’ knowledge base in order to advance American interests overseas in a cost-effective manner. This recommendation is intended to improve the Department’s ability in the future to understand and engage host country networks by enhancing an already invaluable organizational asset. It includes expanding the use of LES in engagement-related and analytic roles, optimizing their diversity in each country, offering them greater training opportunities, and refining the models by which they are funded. Given that the LES structure is highly country-specific with different missions exhibiting vastly different characteristics and requirements, the following recommendations should be applied on a highly customized basis. In every environment – from traditionally friendly to openly hostile – maximizing the Department’s knowledge of and access to host-country social networks will be increasingly critical in determining the effectiveness of its diplomatic efforts. In cases where LES are nationals of the host country, they potentially are uniquely positioned to support the Department’s efforts in this regard. In less permissive environments overseas, utilization of LES could serve to lessen the Department’s exposure to risk. Moreover, amid resource constraints, hiring LES may prove to be a cost-effective approach to building a critical mass of presence in some countries. Key Potential Components
Streamlined Organizational Design In the future environment, challenges and opportunities are likely to emerge with unprecedented, inherent complexity and speed. Global organizations that are hindered by internal obstacles and outdated bureaucratic structures will struggle to keep up with the pace of the action around them, let alone be able to shape that action in the U.S. interest. Many of the capabilities that we recommend the Department develop will only be effective if supported by an agile, adaptive, streamlined organization. In both interviews and working sessions, the Department’s organizational structure and culture frequently were criticized for a number of enduring weaknesses: a fragmented and inefficient bureaucratic structure that contributes to a culture of process over results-based management, a persistent difficulty in linking policy objectives to resource requirements, an institutional aversion to performance measures and management, and an excessively reactive orientation at the expense of sufficient focus on longer-term planning. The recommendations in this section are intended to accelerate decision-making; strengthen accountability in the Department; unify and elevate policy, strategy and resource planning; strengthen the role of the ambassador; and improve the distribution of decision-making authority. Rationalized Organizational Structure Rationalize the Department’s organizational structure to accelerate decision-making by improving the secretary’s span of control, reducing decision-making layers, and giving greater power to senior officials. This includes steps to flatten the organization and drive more decision-making authority downwards. We also recommend consolidating selected bureaus and offices to reduce the number of people reporting directly to the secretary. This recommendation is determined by the extremely high operational tempo expected of the future environment and the wide range of highly agile competitors and adversaries. In this environment, large organizations burdened with legacy structures will simply not be effective. In particular, the growing flood of complex information requires that organizational structures be designed to allow senior officials to focus meaningfully on key external and internal issues. Over the years, the piecemeal add-ons of bureaus, offices, and other functions to the Department have had the effect of shrinking the responsibility and diluting the authority of senior officials. Specific recommendations regarding which bureaus should be consolidated go beyond this Working Group’s mandate. Instead, we offer targets for the degree of consolidation and propose that the Department initiate a thorough analysis led by the deputy secretary. Key Potential Components
The span of control within embassies can also be improved by clarifying the decision-making layers. In the embassies, the first layer includes the ambassador and the DCM. The second layer includes the section chiefs and department/agency leaders, and the third layer includes the action officers.
Unified Policy, Strategy, and Resource Planning Create a new planning office directly under the deputy secretary that integrates policy, strategy and resource planning across the Department, USAID, and the proposed new global public engagement organization. The intent of this recommendation is to improve the coherence of planning and performance management within the Department, better enable the Department to integrate interagency planning and execution, and to create capacity for more forward looking and innovative strategy development. Our study of the future made clear the need for the Department to strengthen its ability to shape the future operating environment. Our interviews and working sessions clearly indicated that in order to do so, the Department should become much better able to link strategic foresight to policy development and align long-term investments accordingly. Doing so requires not just integrating the planning function, but also elevating it to a senior level in the Department. This is essential for ensuring that accountability for resources and results is taken seriously throughout the organization. To be effective on this longer-term basis, the Department also should improve its ability to measure performance over time and adjust its efforts accordingly. Finally, for the Department to lead an integrated USG global affairs enterprise effectively, it should establish strong planning linkages to its interagency partners. All of these requirements clearly point to the need for an integrated, senior-level office of policy, strategy, and resource planning. Key Potential Components
New Ambassadorial Requirements and Training Update the process through which the Department identifies and vets ambassadorial candidates to ensure that they have the necessary skills, experience, and expertise to meet the growing challenges of the position. This recommendation includes updating the ambassadorial skills/experience model to reflect the increasingly multi-disciplinary managerial complexity of the role; specifying and enforcing new skill and experience requirements and selection criteria; improving training; and making more limited use of non-career ambassadors, with a target of no more than 10 percent non-professionals in ambassadorial posts. The increasing complexity of effectively managing an American embassy in the future will require ambassadors who are seasoned managers possessing deep experience interacting with a diverse range of organizations and individuals. They will require literacy in a remarkable diversity of policy, business, and technical domains. They will need to be highly capable leaders of complex country teams and able to serve as effective interlocutors with a wide range of state and non-state actors. They should be effective communicators and adept at ensuring effective coordination and communication between the mission and Washington. Finally, the ambassadors of the future should be trained, empowered, and willing to take the necessary risks to ensure that U.S. strategic objectives are met. In short, the role of an ambassador in 2025 will be extremely demanding professionally and of fundamental importance to the effectiveness of the Department in all of its activities. Key Potential Components
Distributed Decision-Making Clarify the existing legal and bureaucratic structures and incentives governing the activities of deployed personnel to enable greater autonomy of action while strengthening accountability through more precise definition of individual goals. For the Department to be effective in the future operating environment, it must maximize the ability and inclination of its deployed personnel to make independent decisions that are consistent with the strategic objectives of the mission and the Department. This ability is essential to creating the degree of organizational agility that will be necessary in the future. In addition, the Department increasingly will seek to field experienced professionals, not necessarily brought up through the career ranks, who will expect to be empowered with a high degree of autonomy within clear rules of engagement and strategic priorities. To retain these people, the Department must find ways to grant the highest possible degree of decision-making authority without sacrificing necessary degrees of control. This issue is also extremely important from the perspective of those with whom Department personnel must interact. Our interviews suggested that for diplomats to establish and retain credibility with their interlocutors, they must be perceived as being ‘able to deliver’ – that is, able to make certain levels of decisions independently that will be reliably supported by their organization. If Department staff lack this credibility, their interlocutors will either seek to engage ‘further up the chain’ or with other actors. Key Potential Components
Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) Create an institution-wide method for systematically identifying, assessing, responding to, and monitoring risks on an integrated basis in accordance with private sector best practices. Given the breadth of likely challenges, the high operational tempo, and the sheer dynamic uncertainty of the future operating environment, the ability to manage effectively the full range of risks will be essential to the long-term effectiveness of the Department. This ability involves developing an integrated comprehensive risk management system to ensure that finite resources are allocated properly, critical risks are identified and responded to, and that a consistent approach to risk is uniformly applied across the organization. At present, the Department manages risk on a highly fragmented basis and lacks a common approach to doing so across the organization. The development of an enterprise-wide program will help minimize the occurrence of, and damage from, internal and external threats to the Department, improving the institution’s resilience and enabling better allocation of resources. An effective ERM program would include identifying, assessing, and prioritizing risks; addressing and mitigating those risks that are most important; and monitoring and reporting risk on a consistent basis. Key Potential Components
New Skills, Experience, and Incentives The first and primary strength of the Department mentioned by nearly all interviewees was the remarkable talent of its people. The insight of American diplomats and their ability to translate that insight into practical policy solutions and successful diplomatic outcomes will be even more relevant in 2025 than currently. While these traditional skills and capabilities will remain important, there will be new areas of expertise and capacity that will be essential and should be cultivated continuously through both targeted recruitment and training. Our interviews also suggested strongly that the Department needs to become more action- and outcome-oriented and better able to respond quickly to diverse issues. Diplomats’ flexibility and agility of thought will be critical, as will their ability to frame the work of diplomacy in outcome-based and measurable terms. The recommendations in this category are intended to strengthen the Department's ability to recruit, train, and retain staff and leverage external expertise in support of its critical missions in ways that are consistent with and support the recommendations of the Department’s Diplomat-of-the-Future project. Expanded Areas of Expertise Prioritize training to expand areas of professional expertise for staff at all levels. This recommendation includes increased training in emerging high-priority skill and knowledge areas, growing the institutionalized capacity for engagement with external actors in both public and private sectors, and a concerted focus on mentoring and coaching skills for staff at the mid-levels. Given the range of actors with whom Department personnel will have to interact, the breadth of issues on which they should be conversant, the high operational tempo, and the need to demonstrate the Department’s value-added through outcome achievement, the Department will require an expanded capacity to both recruit and train staff and leverage external expertise in support of its critical missions. The Department cannot – and should not – become the master of all domains. It therefore should improve its ability to identify where expertise lies both inside and outside of the USG so that it can access that knowledge and fuse it into real solutions on the ground. The Department should be not only sufficiently open and transparent to encourage engagement from external actors, but also ensure that diplomats actively seek, develop, and exploit these opportunities and view them as critical to professional success. Key Potential Components
Updated Models of Incentives, Accountability, Fluidity, and Access Refine the Department’s human resources models in order to reflect better the employment environment of the future. For it to continue to have the world-class personnel that it will require to be effective in the future, the Department requires more resilient and flexible systems for hiring and accessing staff resources. To the extent that the Department maintains unrealistic obstacles to entry and is seen as an insular organization, it risks losing potential staff with the skills, experience, and expertise that will be essential to its effectiveness. Therefore, this recommendation includes creating a system with strengthened accountability and rewards for performance, more accessible to individuals with diverse experience and expertise, supportive of flexible career patterns and excursion tours, and better able to access the skills and capabilities of a wide range of potential staff at various levels of experience. Key Potential Components
21st Century Diplomatic Technology Nothing emerged with more clarity from our study of the future than the stunning extent to which advances in technology will continue to transform the global competition for influence. For knowledge-based organizations, such as the Department, these transformations will be of central strategic importance. Among the fundamental determinants of the success of the Department in the future will be the speed and effectiveness with which it can acquire, analyze, and respond to the global flow of information. There was a consensus that given the nature of its mission and the evolving environment, the Department in 2025 should be at the cutting edge in all its core technology domains. Doing so will demand not just investment in technology, but also ensuring that those investments are focused on supporting specific strategic priorities. Our work suggests several primary dimensions in which the Department should dramatically improve its technology capacity. First, the Department should improve its ability to capture information from, and deliver information to, the field in real-time and on a highly distributed, secure basis. Second, the Department should become much more capable of translating its remarkable knowledge assets – and those of its interagency partners – into synthesized, prioritized, highly usable forms to support senior decision-makers who are increasingly inundated by an information overload. The third broad area in which the Department should ensure its technological capacity is in the intense global battle of information, perceptions, and ideas. Lastly, the Department should bring operational unity to its management of technology. Without integrated, enterprise-wide technology platforms and a unified, forward-looking approach to technology investment, the Department will not be able to keep up with the accelerating technological pace of the world. Our recommendations in this area are intended to strengthen the Department’s capabilities in all of these dimensions as well as in its core technology management capacity. In this last regard, we endorse the more detailed recommendations of the Information Technology Working Group. Knowledge Management Build a unified 21st century real-time knowledge management and presentation capability comparable to the ‘knowledge wall’ construct implemented by DOD at one of its major commands. The intent of this solution is to support improved decision-making by senior officials in Washington and the field through the aggregation of prioritized information in highly usable forms by leveraging advances in data fusion and visualization. The exclusive access to and control of knowledge on the part of large institutions is on the wane. As a result, knowledge no longer equals power in the same ways that it once did. Every day, knowledge and information become both harder to control and increasingly available to individuals and organizations everywhere. We anticipate that this process will continue into the longer-term future. In this environment, the speed of insight – which involves synthesizing information on a real-time, strategically prioritized basis – is the decisive factor. One of the most universally acknowledged strengths of the Department is the ability of its people to provide critical insight into foreign policy issues, political and economic developments, and strategic context. Yet, the knowledge that informs this insight is only imperfectly captured in disaggregated cables and reports. If the Department is to ensure the continued relevance of this core strength in the future, it should leverage technology to improve its ability to aggregate its remarkable knowledge assets in ways that better enable insight at all levels of the organization – particularly for senior decision makers. Our interviews and working sessions made clear the extent to which senior decision-makers in the Department will be utterly inundated by information that they simply do not have the ability to sift and process effectively. As this trend is likely to increase exponentially, knowledge management represents a fundamental strategic challenge. To meet this challenge, the Department should first identify the integrated sets or ‘packages’ of information most critical to decision-makers. For example, for the president, the daily brief is the central information package. The secretary and all other senior Department officials currently receive comparable sets of information most critical to them. The means and speed with which they receive this information and the extent to which it reflects the latest and best possible insight from the field should be enhanced significantly for the Department to be effective in the future. To ensure that its unparalleled knowledge assets support senior-level decisions more consistently and on a more timely basis, the Department should develop a means for identifying and continuously refining the integrated sets of information needed by its senior officials and then should build a unified, enterprise-wide knowledge management solution that generates highly useable views of this information in real-time. Key Potential Components
Department of State Research and Development Council Create a small staff to drive the Research & Development prioritization efforts Department-wide and to coordinate with other USG R&D entities, particularly in the defense, intelligence, and homeland security communities and the private sector. In a future environment in which technology will be central to organizational effectiveness and will evolve with stunning speed, it is essential that the Department establish an institutional means for identifying, prioritizing, and meeting its technology requirements and that it do so on a highly anticipatory basis. To the extent that the Department can pursue its own targeted R&D efforts and leverage others to develop successful technology-based platforms, it will have a decisive competitive advantage in the highly competitive future diplomatic environment. This recommendation is intended to improve the Department’s ability to leverage advances in science and technology in support of its missions on a highly anticipatory basis. Key Potential Components
Secure Mobile Information and Communication Tools Provide all of the Department’s deployed personnel with robust, secure, and mobile information technology tools to maximize their ability to communicate and access knowledge from the field. It is clear from our study of the future that Department personnel increasingly will operate in a dispersed manner as opportunities and threats emerge far from the traditional centers of power where the Department’s fixed facilities presently exist. Given the extent to which we expect real-time knowledge capture and distribution to be a key source of diplomatic advantage, it will be essential that all of the United States’ diplomatic personnel be able to provide and receive rich information securely, regardless of their location. Key Potential Components
Communications and Media Monitoring and Response Capabilities Strengthen the capacity to monitor, analyze, and respond in real-time to events and trends in the global media environment, building on the Rapid Response Unit in the Bureau of Public Affairs. The rise of civil society and widening participation of ‘publics’ in international relations, the proliferation of both traditional and non-traditional media outlets, and the expanding prevalence of Internet-based social networking will create an operating environment in which influencing perceptions will be extremely challenging and require high degrees of strategic and technical sophistication. For the Department, it will require both a global capacity to monitor and respond to events and trends broadly, as well as a local capacity to identify key target audiences and their primary sources of information. Key Potential Components
Unified Policy-Level Leadership Fully empower and make accountable the Chief Information Officer (CIO) position to ensure that technology, information, and knowledge management are managed on an enterprise-wide basis and as a significant policy issue. For the Department to be effective in a technology intensive future, it must be supported by a technology management structure that reflects best practices for large organizations. In particular, it should have common core platforms and solutions across the entire organization, including USAID, and should manage its entire portfolio of technology investments on an enterprise level. The fragmentation of platforms and solutions represents a tremendous obstacle to information sharing, interoperability of systems, and cost efficiency. This recommendation is intended to support the findings of the Information Technology Working Group project in this area. Key Potential Components
Strengthened Legislative Interface and Financial Flexibility Across our interviews and working sessions, there was broad consensus that the future will place significant new demands on U.S. diplomacy as the interests of the American people become increasingly global in scope. Military power will be necessary, but not sufficient to secure these interests. Given the importance of proactive shaping capabilities to prevent conflict, the need for robust country transitioning capabilities to mitigate the impact of those conflicts and crises that do occur, and the proliferation of actors competing for influence in non-military domains, the USG will require a much larger and better resourced Department of State. Ironically, among the most universally emphasized themes from our interviews and working sessions was the Department’s persistent lack of sufficient resources and financial flexibility. Its ability to secure resources was singled out as one of its critical weaknesses. The recommendations in this category are intended to strengthen the Department’s ability to secure the greater, longer-term, and more flexible resource streams that it requires to achieve its global missions and carry out the recommendations of this Working Group. DOS-Congressional Interface Significantly strengthen the Department’s ability to engage and communicate with Congress. We propose the Department do so by conducting regular outreach events, expanding staff rotations on the Hill, developing a detailed long-term strategy for building constituencies on Capitol Hill based in part on established best practices in this area, and expanding the Legislative Affairs staff significantly. The intent of this recommendation is to initiate a long-term effort to build and maintain congressional support for the Department in what is likely to be an increasingly resource-constrained environment. The conceptual starting point of the recommendation is a very straightforward business case: the instruments of diplomacy and conflict prevention are dramatically less costly than the instruments and conduct of war. Key Potential Components
Increased Discretionary Funding Work with Congress to secure increased levels of discretionary funding for ambassadors and greater reprogramming flexibility in Washington. There was broad consensus among interviewees that the Department lacks the financial flexibility, both in Washington and in the field, to respond quickly to unforeseen challenges and opportunities. Our analysis of the future suggests an increasingly dynamic and unpredictable environment in which the types of circumstances requiring this flexibility will become more prevalent. We also found that perceptions of the ambassador’s credibility, and that of his or her team, are weakened by the current lack of such flexibility. The widely acknowledged inability of the Department to step up to any opportunity involving an unbudgeted financial commitment has the effect of preventing such opportunities from being surfaced by others or sought out by the country team. A similar logic applies in Washington, where in the interagency community the Department is widely considered relatively unable to move funds quickly to respond to unforeseen circumstances. This recommendation is intend to improve modestly the Department’s financial flexibility in both Washington and the field. Key Potential Components
Integrated Institutional Engagement Our findings suggest that in the future it will be essential for the USG to be institutionally able to engage key countries and supranational entities on an integrated national basis. As non-state actors and global publics become increasingly influential in international affairs, the Department must be able to design comprehensive, long-term relationship models that leverage all potential levels of connectivity, including state-to-state, private sector, and civil society engagement. For example, the United States’ important relationships with the European Union, Russia, and Japan are very well-suited to this type of full-spectrum engagement. In addition, across all of the components of our work, there was a clear consensus that the manner in which the anticipated rise of China and India proceeds will affect significantly the nature of the global future operating environment. Interestingly, looking across the Project Horizon scenarios, the strategic importance of these countries persists even in scenarios where their rise has been derailed. The potential resulting regional instability and shocks to the global financial system would require different but still significant engagement on the part of the United States. For these reasons and many others, immediate, deep, institutional engagement with these countries is a clear strategic imperative. Therefore, these growing powers also would be natural potential pilot countries for the type of engagement outlined here. The State 2025 Working Group recommends that the Department develop an Integrated Institutional Engagement model incorporating many of the capabilities described in our recommendations above and apply it as a pilot for one or two of the nations or entities mentioned above, building on the strategic dialogues that are already underway. This model would consist of three levels of activity:
The Department of State 2025 Working Group concludes that the future operating environment will demand that the Department of State play a much larger and more effective role in America’s national security. Doing so will require both significant increases in human and financial resources and the transformation of the organization on many levels. We believe that not undertaking this needed, comprehensive strengthening of the Department would be extremely shortsighted given the range of potential future circumstances that the country is so clearly facing. Without a Department of proper scale and capacity, the ability of the USG to secure the long-term interests of the American people will be in serious jeopardy. Our recommendations are intended to identify a number of the highest priority areas for investment and effort. Taken as a whole, their implementation would result in a major improvement in the Department’s ability to accomplish its mission. These recommendations are to a large degree mutually reinforcing and interdependent, and each will require a critical mass of staff and funding. To the extent that these recommendations are implemented in an overly piecemeal fashion, they are likely to fail. Therefore, we recommend the formation of implementation task forces led by senior Department personnel and including external subject matter experts. The State 2025 Working Group is willing to serve as an advisory board for these task forces to help ensure that the future requirements we have identified are not lost to the tyranny of the present in implementation; however, detailed definition of these proposed solutions will require the input and ownership of the Department personnel directly involved in each area.
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