The State Department Needs Restructuring
But not along the lines that the leaked Trump memo proposes!
Secretary of State called the leaked memo about the State Department’s restructuring ‘fake news.’ I hope that’s true because the ideas outlined in that memo would be disastrous for American national interests. We cannot compete effectively with China worldwide without an effective State Department that is present in as many places as feasible. Even if your only focus is security, we need diplomats to negotiate new basing rights for our soldiers, to persuade countries not to give China such basing rights, and more generally to compete and counter Chinese influence around the world.
That said, the State Department would benefit from reform, just not the ones allegedly proposed by the current administration. I have some ideas. Four years ago, in The American Purpose, I published":
“Dressing for Dinner: We can’t reclaim our place at the head of the table if we’re dragging our grandfathers’ State Department behind us.”
Most of the ideas from that piece four years ago are still relevant today.
Check out the piece here.
For those who haven't seen it, here is a link to the draft Executive Order on the Strategic Reform and Reorganization of the U.S. Department of State. It reads like a flight from merit and foreign policy reality and toward appointing as many loyal, but incompetent political hacks as possible. Some USG sources note, however, that the Executive Order, when it comes out (possibly on April 22), will not look much like this draft. One can always hope. https://shoeone.blogspot.com/2025/04/executive-order-on-strategic-reform-and.html
Could not agree more ... my major concern is the the militarization of US foreign policy has been a disaster and this needs to end. Unfortunately, it all comes down to money. When the Defense Department wields a $800+ billion budget vs a $59B State Department Budget ... we know who will call the shots in foreign policy.
As Will Durant points out in Volume 4, The Renaissance, in his magnum opus study, The Story of Civilization, that it took more than a revival of antiquity to make the Renaissance; it took money ... "Money is the root of all civilization." (p. 68).
Likewise, it will take money to civilianize and civilize US foreign policy ... "to pay a Michelangelo or a Titian to transmute wealth into beauty, and perfume a fortune with the breath of art." (id.) or in this case to transmute the wealth of our nation into a viable foreign policy for the advancement of American interests in a "new era of great power politics."