New York Times veteran columnist Nicholas Kristof weighed in this weekend on what he calls a “cancer in American foreign policy.” He lists the symptoms:
“1) The United States has more musicians in its military bands than it has diplomats.
2) This year alone, the United States Army will add about 7,000 soldiers to its total; that's more people than in the entire American Foreign Service.
3) More than 1,000 American diplomatic positions are vacant because the Foreign Service is so short-staffed, but a myopic Congress is refusing to finance even modest new hiring. Some 1,100 could be hired for the cost of a single C-17 military cargo plane.
In short, the United States is hugely overinvesting in military tools and underinvesting in diplomatic tools. The result is a lopsided foreign policy that antagonizes the rest of the world and is ineffective in tackling many modern problems.”
On the US counterterrorism strategy Kristof argues: “Our intuitive approach to fighting terrorists and insurgents is to blow things up. But one of the most cost-effective counterterrorism methods in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan may be to build things up, like schooling and microfinance. Girls' education sometimes gets more bang for the buck than a missile.”
He cites a recent RAND Corporation report studying the dissolution of terrorist organizations. "There is no battlefield solution to terrorism. Military force usually has the opposite effect from what is intended."”
If Kristof's argument up to here sounds totally obvious and necessary to you, consider another viewpoint. Brian Darling, director of Senate Relations for the conservative Heritage Foundation, had this critique of Senator Barack Obama's foreign policy platform:
"He clearly leans toward the diplomacy side in world affairs. Foreign aid, agriculture aid, using federal tax dollars to buy a country's affections is one element of diplomacy. But I hope he realizes that having a strong military is another form of diplomacy."
I am not quire sure what Darling means by this–a strong military as a form of diplomacy. Here's one image that comes to mind: this strong military invites a group of foreign dignitaries to the State Department for a diplomatic reception. At the bottom of the invitation, instead of saying “Respondez s’il Vous Plait,” it says, “Be there, or else we’ll kick your butt to smithereens!!”
Or maybe, if a strong military were a form of diplomacy, instead of building bombs and warheads, it could invest billions of dollars to develop a device that would automatically produce the optimal outcome for all parties involved in a given international negotiation . It could be called the “Stealth Consensus Builder 2000” (I hereby call patent rights!).
In practice, our strong military and our diplomatic corps collaborate frequently and successfully. But I think Kristof–and many others–would agree that they are hardly interchangeable. Kristof's point is exactly the opposite: too often our strong military has been deployed in place of diplomatic efforts.
What does Kristof suggest as a first step toward recovery? “Let's agree that diplomats should be every bit as much of an American priority as musicians in military bands.” It's no Stealth Consensus Builder, but I’ll take it.
