Joe Biden, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, held a hearing last week on an important topic in American foreign policy. In Biden's words the hearing was called to explore the following question:
“In expanding the role of our armed forces, have we diminished our civilian capabilities – our diplomatic and development assistance institutions‚ and have we done so in a way that undermines our national security?”
The hearing sought to voice some of the most experienced witnesses of this phenomenon: the Deputy Secretary of State, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, a former committee staffer, and a gaggle of experienced voices from the NGO/think tank sector.
In his opening remarks Biden laid out the reasoning behind the hearing:
“There has been a migration of functions and authorities from U.S. civilian agencies to the Department of Defense. Between 2002 and 2005, the share of U.S. official development assistance channeled through the Pentagon budget surged from 5.6 percent in 2002 to 21.7 percent in 2005, rising to $5.5 billion. Much of this increase has gone towards activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it still points to an expanding military role in what were traditionally civilian programs.
I share the concern that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently raised. `The military,’ he said, `has become more involved in a range of activities that in the past were perceived to be the exclusive province of civilian agencies and organizationsThis has led to concernabout what's seen as a creeping `militarization’of America's foreign policy. This is not an entirely unreasonable sentiment.”
Biden said the expanding role of the military on US foreign policy is problematic for several reasons: “First, the increasing dominance of the military in our foreign policy may inadvertently limit our options , when the military is the most readily available option, it is more likely to be used, whether or not it is the best choice…
…Finally, militaries are good at winning wars and training armies. But, in my view, we do not want soldiers training lawyers or setting up court systems. Or instructing health-care workers on HIV/AIDS prevention? Or running a micro-finance program? Out of necessity, our men and women in uniform have gotten very good at this. But it is not their primary mission; war-fighting is.”
Biden laid out a series of questions related to this phenomenon that the hearing sought to explore. He then turned it over to Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte (also a former Ambassador to Iraq). Negroponte spoke primarily to Biden's question on the status of interagency coordination. “By law,” Biden said, “the State Department plays the primary role in overseeing foreign assistance activities. In practice, the Department of Defense is taking on more and more responsibility for traditionally foreign assistance programs. How can we ensure that State plays its proper and necessary role?”
In his testimony, Negroponte echoed both Biden's and Gates’ assessments of the problem: “The mission to stabilize and reconstruct a nation is one that civilians must lead. But for too long, we have not had sufficient numbers of trained, prepared, and supported civilians who could provide that leadership. As a result, over the past 20 years, over the course of 17 significant stabilization and reconstruction missions in which the United States has been involved, too much of the effort has been borne by our men and women in uniform.”
But Negroponte defended the Defense Department, saying it has taken the appropriate amount of control in foreign assistance operations:
“As we work to increase civilian capacity to perform the diplomatic and development missions demanded by our national security strategy, we are grateful and better off for the Defense Department's contribution of expertise, personnel, and resources in support of our work.
Our nation is safer and stronger when our lead national security agencies are united in purpose. DoD's contribution is not only meeting military requirements, but directly advancing the goal of our diplomacy: a world of democratic, well-governed states that respond to the needs of their people and act responsibly in the international system.”
The Committee also sought the insight of a former colleague–Mary Locke, a retired Senior Professional Staff member for the Committee. Locke discussed an oversight report that she and her colleagues on the committee drafted in 2006 at the request of the Committee's Ranking Member, Senator Lugar. The report was based on the drafters’ travels to US embassies throughout Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East with the aim of examining the relationship between the State Department and the Defense Department.
Although the report is widely acknowledged within government, Locke read the report's key conclusions for those at the hearing:
1) The number of military personnel and Defense Department activities in non-combat countries is increasing significantly. Left unclear, blurred lines of authority between the State Department and the Defense Department could lead to interagency turf wars that undermine the effectiveness of the overall U.S. effort against terrorism. It is in the embassies rather than in Washington where interagency differences on strategies, tactics and divisions of labor are increasingly adjudicated. The leadership qualities of the ambassador are a determinative factor in striking a prudent U.S. military posture in our embassies.
2) While finding, capturing, and eliminating individual terrorists and their support networks is an imperative in the campaign against terror, it is repairing and building alliances, pursuing resolutions to regional conflicts, fostering democracy and development, and defusing religious extremism worldwide that will overcome the terrorist threat in the long-term. It has traditionally been the military's mission to take direct action against U.S. adversaries while the civilian agencies' mission has been to pursue non-coercive measures through diplomacy, international information programming, and foreign and economic assistance.
As a result of inadequate funding for civilian programs, however, U.S. defense agencies are increasingly being granted authority and funding to fill perceived gaps. Such bleeding of civilian responsibilities overseas from civilian to military agencies risks weakening the Secretary of State's primacy in setting the agenda for U.S. relations with foreign countries and the Secretary of Defense's focus on war fighting.”
On the budget disparity between Defense and State, Locke pointed out that blame shouldn't be placed entirely, as some claim, on the Bush Adminstration's narrow focus on the “war on terror”:
“[In a past report issued in November] we found that during the Bush administration's tenure up until that time, the Congress had denied some $7.6 billion that the President requested in his regular foreign aid budget. With this track record on the foreign affairs 150 budget account, it should not be a shockingly unexpected development when the executive branch turns to the defense 050 account as an alternative, a budget that is larger by a factor of at least twelve.”
In other words, when Congress denies President's request for foreign assistance funds placed in the “150 budget account” (which funds the breadth of the State Department's activities) the President then logically tries to channels funding for that purpose through the more ample Defense Department budget. Hence, Congress's appropriations have in part promoted the shift of foreign assistance responsibilities towards the better-funded Defense Department.
There is such rich testimony in this hearing I couldn't possibly cover it all here. I’ll leave you with Mary Locke's final point, as it relates closely with the subject of this blog:
“This Committee should carry out vigorous oversight on the issue of the role of the military in foreign policy. It is as important to listen to our ambassadors to get a handle on this issue as to officials in headquarters. Studies, hearings such as this, and appropriate legislative and budget decisions will go a long way toward keeping the right balance struck.”
