Andy Semmel of the Paternship for a Secure America gives some suggestions on how the U.S. Government could ramp up its global efforts to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. His suggestions are entirely focused on improvements that could be made at the State Department.
This is not surprising, considering Semmel served for more than four years as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Nonproliferation at the State Department. Here's an address he gave in that capacity on the same issue to a National Strategy Forum in 2005.
Semmel gives detailed, constructive advice on how the Department could make some structural reorganizations that stand to greatly improve US action to counter nuclear proliferation. Here is an excerpt from Semmel's article, though I reccomend reading the whole thing.
“The State Department must change its cultural biases against multilateral diplomacy and transnational activities. State has a strong preference for service in the geographic bureaus and foreign country posts, but service in functional or transnational bureaus and international organizations is seen with disfavor. The Department doesn't staff the regional bureaus or foreign country missions with skills involved in nonproliferation and arms control negotiations, and prefers conducting our diplomacy through bilateral, rather than through multilateral channels or in international institutions. This attitude has been especially pronounced in recent years, but it has been a cultural attribute of the Department for years.
State's institutional culture makes it difficult to recruit Foreign Service Officers to serve in functional bureaus. Foreign Service Officers who serve repeated assignments in functional bureaus are generally not promoted as rapidly and frequently opt to terminate their careers early, thus depriving the Foreign Service and the United States government of the expertise and experience they have accumulated over the years.
To tackle these cultural biases directly would be very difficult and would take a long time to implement because they are part of the core make-up of the Department.
A potentially more rewarding option would involve a fundamental change in organizational structure, by creating a separate independent or semi-independent entity‚ inside or outside the Department ,that would be guaranteed a seat at the table in important decisions. A separate agency(modeled perhaps after the former Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA)) would work in tandem with the State Department but possibly report directly to the Secretary of State and the President, with inter-agency coordination managed by a senior member of the National Security Council. This type of re-structuring would elevate the role of the agency and its head above the Under Secretary or Assistant Secretary, could give the agency more clout in inter-agency and international negotiations, give more weight to multilateral diplomacy than it now has, and yield greater influence over its funding needs.
Of course, changing basic organizational structure‚ especially doing so frequently‚ is not without cost or challenges. There have been two major reorganizations in the structure and management of arms control and nonproliferation policy in the State Department in the past ten years. The next administration will want to weigh carefully the possible costs of undertaking a third major realignment, whatever its intrinsic merits, as it begins to organize itself.
A less risky option for improving the conduct of our nonproliferation and arms control diplomacy would involve organizational reforms. Several organizational and personnel changes could improve the conduct of our nonproliferation and arms control policy:
(1) More programmatic funding. Current spending for nonproliferation and arms control in the 150 NADR account is less than one percent of the Department's overall budget.
(2) The ISN (International Security and Nonproliferation) bureau needs authorization for additional permanent personnel so that it doesn't have to rely less on temporary or part time staff to manage key issue-areas.
(3) The FSI (Foreign Service Institute) should add more courses on multilateral diplomacy and on nonproliferation and arms control to its training curriculum.
(4) The Foreign Service should include assignment(s) in functional bureaus as a required part of the Foreign Service career path.
(5) The Department should consider resurrecting the Foreign Service Reserve Officer program, or something similar, to recruit specialists for skills difficult to fill, such as physical and natural scientists needed to tackle the complexities of nuclear, chemical and biological proliferation and arms control.
(6) Re-writing the mission statement of the Under-Secretary for Arms Control and International Security to place it on a par with the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs to strengthen the internal trade-offs involving the nonproliferation/arms control agenda.
