Posted on 04/24/2003 2:08:15 PM PDT by FairOpinion
Gingrich has been critical of the State Department recently, which was picked up by the media. Gingrich was on H&C yesterday, and said that he commissioned the Hart-Rudman commission in the 90s, and that commission also came up with the conclusion that there are problems in the State Department, so this is not new with Powell. The media seems to have ignored this part, and even the White House was said to be unhappy about it.
Here are some excerpts from that report:
The Department of State is a crippled institution that is starved for resources by Congress because of its inadequacies and is thereby weakened further. The department suffers in particular from an ineffective organizational structure in which regional and functional goals compete, and in which sound management, accountability, and leadership are lacking.
The State Department’s own effort to cover all the various aspects of national security policy—economic, transnational, regional, security—has produced an exceedingly complex organizational structure. Developing a distinct “State” point of view is now extremely difficult and this, in turn, has reduced the department’s ability to exercise any leadership.
Over the past decade, the impulse to create individual functional bureaus was useful substantively and politically; e.g., in the cases of human rights, democracy, law enforcement, refugees, political-military affairs, and nonproliferation. The problem is that overall organizational efficiency and effectiveness have been lost in the process.
More fundamentally, the State Department’s present organizational structure works at cross-purposes with its Foreign Service culture. The Foreign Service thinks in terms of countries, and therein lies its invaluable expertise. But the most senior officials have functional responsibilities. The department’s matrix organization makes it unclear who is responsible for policies with both regional and functional elements. The department rarely speaks with one voice, thus reducing its influence and credibility in its interactions with the Congress and in its representation abroad.
As a result of these many deficiencies, confidence in the department is at an all-time low. A spiral of decay has unfolded over many years in which the Congress, reacting to inefficiencies within the department, has consistently underfunded the nation’s needs in the areas of representation overseas and foreign assistance. That underfunding, in turn, has deepened the State Department’s inadequacies. This spiral must be reversed.
his Commission believes that the Secretary of State should be primarily responsible for the making and implementation of foreign policy, under the direction of the President. The State Department needs to be fundamentally restructured so that responsibility and accountability are clearly established, regional and functional activities are closely integrated, foreign assistance programs are centrally planned and implemented, and strategic planning is emphasized and linked to the allocation of resources. While we believe that our NSC and State Department recommendations make maximal sense when taken together, the reform of the State Department must be pursued whether or not the President adopts the Commission’s recommendations with respect to the NSC Advisor and staff.
The President should propose to the Congress a plan to reorganize the State Department, creating five Under Secretaries, with responsibility for overseeing the regions of Africa, Asia, Europe, Inter-America, and Near East/South Asia, and redefining the responsibilities of the Under Secretary for Global Affairs. These new Under Secretaries would operate in conjunction with the existing Under Secretary for Management.
(Excerpt) Read more at nssg.gov ...
I am posting this, because I read some feedback from "senior White House Official" that the White House is taking this as a criticism of Bush, when in fact, Newt is pointing out problems that existed way before this administration, they are just becoming more obvious today.
(IF you go to the link for the report, the info starts on page 65 & specific State Dept detail starts on page 70, OF THE DOCUMENT (when you pick pages), which are not the same as the pages listed on the document TOC, because the Exec. summary is not included.)
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