Frida Berrigan, a Senior Program Associate at the New America Foundation's Arms and Security Initiative, authored a scathing endictment of the military buildup that occurred during George W. Bush's presidency.
In the section called "The Pentagon as Diplomat," Berrigan argues:
” the White House's foreign policy agenda has increasingly been directed through the military. With a military budget more than 30 times that of all State Department operations and non-military foreign aid put together, the Pentagon has marched into State's two traditional strongholds — diplomacy and development — duplicating or replacing much of its work, often by refocusing Washington's diplomacy around military-to-military, rather than diplomat-to-diplomat, relations.
She relates: "Since the late eighteenth century, the U.S. ambassador in any country has been considered the president's personal representative, responsible for ensuring that foreign policy goals are met. As one ambassador explained; “The rule is: if you’re in country, you work for the ambassador. If you don't work for the ambassador, you don't get country clearance.”
In the Bush era, the Pentagon has overturned this model. According to a 2006 Congressional report by Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), Embassies as Command Posts in the Anti-Terror Campaign, civilian personnel in many embassies now feel occupied by, outnumbered by, and subordinated to military personnel. They see themselves as the second team when it comes to decision-making."
Given the last post on this blog, it's interesting to note that Berrigan quotes Defense Secretary Gates as saying there are “only about 6,600 professional Foreign Service officers — less than the manning for one aircraft carrier strike group,” while adding “don't get me wrong, I’ll be asking for yet more money for Defense next year.”
Berrigan notes that “another ambassador lamented that his foreign counterparts are “following the money” and developing relationships with U.S. military personnel rather than cultivating contacts with their State Department counterparts.”
Berrigan concludes this section by describing a recent phenomenon in which Defense encourages “interagnecy cooperation,” between itself and other government agencies as a way to insert a military component into activities where it didn’ t traditionally or doesn't necessarily belong.
According to Berrigan: "The Pentagon has generally followed this pattern globally since 2001. But what does [interagency] “cooperation” mean when one entity dwarfs all others in personnel, resources, and access to decision-makers, while increasingly controlling the very definition of the “threats” to be dealt with.”
