Diplomats Sound the Alarm as They Are Pushed Out in Droves

[Tom Servo]

Diplomats Sound the Alarm as They Are Pushed Out in Droves

By GARDINER HARRIS | NOV. 24, 2017

WASHINGTON — Of all the State Department employees who might have been vulnerable in the staff reductions that Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson has initiated as he reshapes the department, the one person who seemed least likely to be a target was the chief of security, Bill A. Miller.

Republicans pilloried Hillary Clinton for what they claimed was her inadequate attention to security as secretary of state in the months before the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. Congress even passed legislation mandating that the department’s top security official have unrestricted access to the secretary of state.

But in his first nine months in office, Mr. Tillerson turned down repeated and sometimes urgent requests from the department’s security staff to brief him, according to several former top officials in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Finally, Mr. Miller, the acting assistant secretary for diplomatic security, was forced to cite the law’s requirement that he be allowed to speak to Mr. Tillerson.

Mr. Miller got just five minutes with the secretary of state, the former officials said. Afterward, Mr. Miller, a career Foreign Service officer, was pushed out, joining a parade of dismissals and early retirements that has decimated the State Department’s senior ranks. Mr. Miller declined to comment.

The departures mark a new stage in the broken and increasingly contentious relationship between Mr. Tillerson and much of his department’s work force. By last spring, interviews at the time suggested, the guarded optimism that greeted his arrival had given way to concern among diplomats about his aloofness and lack of communication. By the summer, the secretary’s focus on efficiency and reorganization over policy provoked off-the-record anger.

Now the estrangement is in the open, as diplomats going out the door make their feelings known and members of Congress raise questions about the impact of their leaving.

[Tom Servo]

Makes you wonder what the real motive for all these cuts are. They say it's because the State Department is a bloated bureaucracy (and I'm sure it is), but you generally don't want to cut the most experienced and knowledgeable staff members unless you have someone competent to replace them. And then there's this:

His small cadre of aides have fired some diplomats and gotten others to resign by refusing them the assignments they wanted or taking away their duties altogether. Among those fired or sidelined were most of the top African-American and Latino diplomats, as well as many women, difficult losses in a department that has long struggled with diversity.

You have this giant vacuum now in the State Dept. because of these cuts, while few are getting filled (10 of the top 44 filled so far). Which means people in key areas of the world are just outright missing:

“The United States is at the center of every crisis around the world, and you simply cannot be effective if you don’t have assistant secretaries and ambassadors in place,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a retired career diplomat who was an under secretary of state for President George W. Bush. “It shows a disdain for diplomacy.”

One result is that there is no one in place with responsibilities for some key trouble spots.

Although the North Korean nuclear crisis is the Trump administration’s top priority, the administration has yet to nominate an assistant secretary for East Asia or an ambassador to South Korea, crucial positions to deal with the issue.

Hell, even the people who were happy to have Tillerson take the helm after the disasters of the Kerry and Clinton tenures are taken aback:

“Everyone who called me, I said: ‘Listen, guys, this is going to be great, and maybe he’ll finally get the department in shape,’” said Dana Shell Smith, the ambassador to Qatar, who recently resigned.

Since then, Ms. Smith has changed her mind.

“These people either do not believe the U.S. should be a world leader, or they’re utterly incompetent,” she said. “Either way, having so many vacancies in essential places is a disaster waiting to happen.”

So my questions are these: are these really the best cuts that could be made to trim the fat at the State Department? Is this part of a bigger plan to turn the US inward and to start ignoring international affairs, instead doing international diplomacy via 140-character presidential tweets? Or are these just sour grapes from career bureaucrats who are unhappy they're being forced out of cushy gigs?

[scott]

Mid-level bureaucrats at State have always overstated their importance. Many of those positions were not needed and nothing was accomplished when they were staffed anyway.

[Adam]

Pretty much every ambassadorship, back to and including Ben Franklin, is a patronage job: a cushy salary with an even cushier expense account, living in very nice digs, usually in the very nicest parts of town wherever they are, and bloated staffs, which are mostly patronage jobs themselves. And the arduous duties involve, almost exclusively, going to and/or throwing very fancy dinner parties for other patronage-jobbers with lots of champagne and caviar.

There's a pretty good reason that there aren't any embassies located in Compton, Watts, or the south side of Chicago.

The notable exception is the U.S. ambassadorship to the United Nations, which involves some actual work, but is best described as an exercise in futility.

These people are routinely tossed with the change of administration. And yes, most every administration takes months to staff them back up again with more patronage jobs. It's just a question of exactly how many favors that administration owes from its campaign as to how quickly these positions get filled up again.

Claiming that somehow "the best, brightest, most-experienced people" are getting the axe or are walking on their own is silly on its face.


Sure, there are career diplomats who work tirelessly for the United States. Almost all of them work in the big building on C Street, Northwest.

[Celeste Chalfonte]

Pretty much every ambassadorship, back to and including Ben Franklin, is a patronage job: a cushy salary with an even cushier expense account, living in very nice digs, usually in the very nicest parts of town wherever they are, and bloated staffs, which are mostly patronage jobs themselves. And the arduous duties involve, almost exclusively, going to and/or throwing very fancy dinner parties for other patronage-jobbers with lots of champagne and caviar.

There's a pretty good reason that there aren't any embassies located in Compton, Watts, or the south side of Chicago.

The notable exception is the U.S. ambassadorship to the United Nations, which involves some actual work, but is best described as an exercise in futility.

These people are routinely tossed with the change of administration. And yes, most every administration takes months to staff them back up again with more patronage jobs. It's just a question of exactly how many favors that administration owes from its campaign as to how quickly these positions get filled up again.

Claiming that somehow "the best, brightest, most-experienced people" are getting the axe or are walking on their own is silly on its face.


Sure, there are career diplomats who work tirelessly for the United States. Almost all of them work in the big building on C Street, Northwest.

I assume you mean the State Department.

I see that a former ambassador was quoted, but it doesn't appear the actual positions discussed in the article are patronage jobs (which you're correct, the appointed diplomatic jobs are). While it could be a serious faux pas to fail to appoint an ambassador to an important ally (or, conversely, one that seems to be wavering in its allegiance), the job itself is largely ceremonial.

If critical civil-service jobs at State are going unfilled, however, or if those professional diplomatic staff feel they're at risk of termination for doing their jobs correctly, that's a problem. The main one they mention is the security chief. The claim that Tillerson wouldn't meet with him is cause for concern.

[Newman]

There is much less here than meets the printed page, Tom.

Makes you wonder what the real motive for all these cuts are. They say it's because the State Department is a bloated bureaucracy (and I'm sure it is), but you generally don't want to cut the most experienced and knowledgeable staff members unless you have someone competent to replace them.

If you want to reduce "bloat," replacing bureaucrats won't do it. So it's a question of value, "the most experienced and knowledgeable," which make a person irreplaceable. That's a question we can't answer with this report. Scott above suggests we should be extremely skeptical of the self-evaluations by disgruntled employees and co-workers.

And meanwhile I noticed this, which you quoted:

His small cadre of aides have fired some diplomats and gotten others to resign by refusing them the assignments they wanted....

It's a hard stretch to say not getting the corner office, so to speak, is about irreplaceable knowledge and experience. I, for one, haven't forgotten State employees refusing en masse to be assigned to Mid-East posts like Iraq because they were afraid. Or so they said, though they'd agreed to the possibility of such assignments as a condition of their employment.

And the sentence that immediately follows in this excerpt doesn't talk about "knowledge and experience" at all, but about "diversity":

Among those fired or sidelined were most of the top African-American and Latino diplomats, as well as many women, difficult losses in a department that has long struggled with diversity.

This is an editorial, not a report, and must be carefully read as such. For example, in the first snippet just above, the phrase "small cadre of aides" is not neutral. And sentences presented as statements of fact (e.g. "One result is that there is no one in place with responsibilities for some key trouble spots.") are not supported here. (The writers seems to back up his statement noting that that no new ambassador to South Korea is in place. But in the absence of that person, are the mid-level staff worthless? Cf. posts here by Adam and Celeste.)

This appears to be an op-ed piece slamming Tillerson and glorifying bureaucrats, who might also be, one speculates, the sources of many "leaks" to this media outlet, and are quite likely to be aligned with the political disposition of this outlet, judging from surveys of political donations.

This appears to be a report in the New York Times.

[scott]

There is much less here than meets the printed page, Tom.


If you want to reduce "bloat," replacing bureaucrats won't do it. So it's a question of value, "the most experienced and knowledgeable," which make a person irreplaceable. That's a question we can't answer with this report. Scott above suggests we should be extremely skeptical of the self-evaluations by disgruntled employees and co-workers.

And meanwhile I noticed this, which you quoted:

His small cadre of aides have fired some diplomats and gotten others to resign by refusing them the assignments they wanted....

It's a hard stretch to say not getting the corner office, so to speak, is about irreplaceable knowledge and experience. I, for one, haven't forgotten State employees refusing en masse to be assigned to Mid-East posts like Iraq because they were afraid. Or so they said, though they'd agreed to the possibility of such assignments as a condition of their employment.

And the sentence that immediately follows in this excerpt doesn't talk about "knowledge and experience" at all, but about "diversity":

Among those fired or sidelined were most of the top African-American and Latino diplomats, as well as many women, difficult losses in a department that has long struggled with diversity.

This is an editorial, not a report, and must be carefully read as such. For example, in the first snippet just above, the phrase "small cadre of aides" is not neutral. And sentences presented as statements of fact (e.g. "One result is that there is no one in place with responsibilities for some key trouble spots.") are not supported here. (The writers seems to back up his statement noting that that no new ambassador to South Korea is in place. But in the absence of that person, are the mid-level staff worthless? Cf. posts here by Adam and Celeste.)

This appears to be an op-ed piece slamming Tillerson and glorifying bureaucrats, who might also be, one speculates, the sources of many "leaks" to this media outlet, and are quite likely to be aligned with the political disposition of this outlet, judging from surveys of political donations.

This appears to be a report in the New York Times.

Very good points. I'd like to add that "the most experienced and knowledgeable" are never the best when the current paradigm is not working. A whole lot of union workers at Ford may know everything there is to know about a fuel-injected 5.0 engine. That doesn't make them even minimally competent to build a Tesla or a Mazda Rotary.

[Lady Marva]

Afterward, Mr. Miller, a career Foreign Service officer, was pushed out

How? Pretty gursh durn hard to "push out" a civil service employee. Would take years to do.

[Tom Servo]

How? Pretty gursh durn hard to "push out" a civil service employee. Would take years to do.

Aww, you're such a sweet innocent child. You push them out the same way you push anyone else out without firing them outright: you make their lives so fucking miserable that they quit of their own accord. I had a boss who was a master of walking right up to that line of inappropriate demands and then inching back just enough to stay on the right side of the law. He could get people to quit in weeks because of the misery he could invoke.