I had a prof at Georgetown in the early ‘80s (Edward Luttwak) who was at least partly serious when he proposed to our class that the President should order the Army Corps of Engineers to dig a tunnel terminating in a large cavern under Foggy Bottom, fill the cavern with explosives, back-fill the tunnel, and light off the explosives at some point when the President was nowhere near the White House, but the entire State Dept. leadership was present at Foggy Bottom. He recognized - 35+ years ago - that the DoS was an anti-American organization within our government, that in the very best case was more interested in concluding treaties and agreements than in assuring that those treaties and agreements benefited the US.
Me, I subscribe to the notion shown in an old poster, in which you see a picture of a vicious large dog in a junk yard. The wisdom imparted was: “Diplomacy - the art of saying ‘Nice, Doggie!’ until you can find a rock.” That’s about right from my POV.
Heh.
I like the way Douglas Adams said it:
The history of every major civilization passes through three distinct and recognizable phases: survival, inquiry, and sophistication, also known as the "How", "Why", and "Where" phases. For example, the first phase may be characterized by the question, "How shall we eat?", the second by the question "Why do we eat?", and the third by the question, "Where shall we have lunch?"
The history of warfare is similarly divided, although here the phases are Retribution, Anticipation, and Diplomacy. Thus:
There was a time when the US State Dept. was an American institution. That time is almost beyond the reach of living memory.