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WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced yesterday that she plans to dramatically restructure the US diplomatic presence around the world, redeploying hundreds of diplomats from Europe and Washington to developing countries including China, India, Lebanon, and Nigeria over the next five years.
Rice said the State Department would make a ''down payment" on the new strategy by moving 100 diplomats this year to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East as a first step toward achieving her larger vision of a State Department that is able to meet the needs of the 21st century.
Rice's speech was part of an effort this week to unveil her strategy for ''transformational diplomacy," creating a new kind of diplomatic corps that can do hands-on work with foreign citizens -- as they are doing now in Iraq and Afghanistan -- to help transform developing countries into democracies and to fight terrorism.
Rice portrayed the changes as a move away from the outdated vestiges of the Cold War.
''We have nearly the same number of State Department personnel in Germany, a country of 82 million people, that we have in India, a country of 1 billion people," Rice told an audience of students and professors at Georgetown University. ''We must begin to lay the diplomatic foundations to secure a future of freedom for all people."
State Department officials were unable to say exactly how many diplomats Europe will lose, but described the shift as a significant restructuring over time.
There are about 6,400 ''generalist" foreign officers deployed around the world, a third of whom currently serve in Washington.
One senior State Department official who briefed reporters yesterday likened the strategy to the Pentagon's plan to shift up to 70,000 troops in the coming years out of Cold War-era bases in Germany, Japan, and South Korea to smaller bases around the world where they can better respond to new threats.
''We are not adequately staffed," he said, adding that the State Department needed to move people ''into more critical strategic areas so that we have more of a presence."
The official, who spoke on condition that he not be identified, said the new posts would probably be concentrated in emerging powers such as China and India and places where US engagement could have a major impact on the development of democratic governments, in particular, Africa and the Middle East.
In addition to the staff redeployment, Rice said yesterday that she would authorize more one-person posts in key cities where the United States has no diplomatic presence.
The United States currently has at least two such missions, in Alexandria, Egypt, and Medan, Indonesia.
The State Department will also set up ''virtual posts," where foreign citizens can visit a website and chat online with US diplomats, Rice said.
''This digital meeting room enables foreign citizens, young people most of all, to engage online with American diplomats who could be hundreds of miles away," Rice said, adding that Internet diplomacy would be a cost-effective way to expand US presence in a country.
She said that the State Department would now require all foreign service officers to serve at least one hardship post to advance their careers, and that she seeks to change not only the location of foreign services officers, but also their skills.
She said she would ensure that more diplomats know how to run aid and democracy-assistance programs in foreign countries, not simply analyze the political situation there.
''These are challenging jobs in critical countries like Iraq and Afghanistan and Sudan and Angola; countries where we're working with foreign citizens in difficult conditions to maintain security and fight poverty and make democratic reforms," Rice said. ''To succeed in these kinds of posts, we will train our diplomats not only as expert analysts of policy, but as first-rate administrators of programs, capable of helping foreign citizens to strengthen the rule of law, to start businesses, to improve health, and to reform education."
Rice also echoed the familiar call for more diplomats who speak Farsi, Chinese, and Arabic.
Rice and President Bush recently launched a major foreign language initiative aimed at training more military, intelligence, and diplomatic officials to be fluent in ''critical languages."
Last year Rice told members of Congress that she would consider beefing up the US diplomatic presence in emerging powers, especially China.
She made the pledge during a hearing on State Department appropriations, when questioned about why the department had reduced its presence in China.
''China [is] the largest consumer of grain in the world, the largest producer of steel in the world, the most number of cellphones in the world, the most Internet connections in the world. More people take the SAT in English in China than in the United States," US Representative Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican, told Rice at the time. Yet the United States has ''only six consulates or missions in China; no city under 10 million covered."
''I will take the comment about China, and let me put that into the hopper as we look at the sizes of all of our embassies," she told the congressman. |
