Diplomacy Without Diplomats?

George F. Kennan

From Foreign Affairs, September/ October 1997

Summary:  America could have had a foreign service second to none. But Washington could not accept any such rigorously selective and nonpolitical corps. And with the diffusion of authority around the globe, many entities from outside the diplomatic world are busy representing their nations abroad, for better or worse.

George F. Kennan was a career officer in the U.S. Foreign Service from 1926 to 1953, retiring as Ambassador to the Soviet Union. He has been Professor, then Professor, Emeritus, at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Application of this principle to a democratic society would always present difficulties, since it is plainly incompatible with the diffusion of authority that democratic rule usually requires. The incompatibility was bound to be particularly acute for the United States, where the diffusion of political power is extensive even in comparison with other democracies. For example, because of the constitutional requirement that treaties be ratified by the Senate, the chief executive has never been able to negotiate the text of a treaty without confessing that the other party could not rely on the wording unless and until it had passed muster in the Senate.

As the American political system matured and the powers of individual states, courts, and even municipal and local authorities gained acceptance, it gradually became clear that the federal government could not often speak for the country as a whole without consultation, and sometimes even negotiation, not only with Congress but with a host of other authorities or players. Entities with which accommodations had to be reached even came to include some private enterprises. The extreme diffusion of authority at home was bound to place limitations on the representation of America's interests by its ambassadors and other envoys abroad.

Furthermore, in theory, all desiderata of foreign governments affecting the interests of one or more domestic authorities were supposed to be channeled through the Department of State. But it has gradually been borne in upon everyone familiar with the foreign affairs process that of all the government departments and agencies in Washington, the State Department has the least developed domestic political constituency -- a situation that leaves it largely helpless in its relations with the rest of the official community. And such support as may exist here and there for the foreign service (always seen as unashamedly elitist) is even weaker than that for the State Department.

This situation has been compounded by the tendency in recent years of the White House to concentrate in its immediate military and security entourage, including the office of national security adviser, the power of action in a number of major aspects of foreign policy -- particularly those involving political-military relations with other great powers and international organizations -- that in earlier ages would normally have involved, in the first instance, the Department of State. It has been here, in these major matters, that American diplomacy has perhaps come closest to earlier models in which the power to speak for a country was associated with the power to act for it.

But this centralization of authority for a narrow range of diplomatic problems has had the effect of decentralizing authority for the remainder of the great spectrum of America's dealings with the outside world. Not only has the State Department been largely deprived of its traditional role as the spokesman for and coordinator of foreign policy, but hundreds of other areas of international relations have been abandoned to the desires and whims of the numerous forces on the Washington scene. These forces include, beyond the other departments and agencies of the federal government, the various congressional committees, with their huge staffs, and the swarms of special interests that fasten on the latter like bees on a flower. It is in this turgid sea of constantly changing parochial and competing domestic interests that the foreign envoy in Washington now has to search for responses to her or his efforts to treat with the U.S. government subjects of interest to both parties.

This state of affairs invites -- and in some instances compels -- the foreign ambassador and ambassadorial staff stationed in Washington to take their problems directly to other departments and agencies, bypassing the State Department entirely. It also encourages those American departments and agencies to set up offices in foreign capitals to advance their own narrow interests -- a possibility of which they seem only too happy to take advantage. Endowed as they are with superior clout in Washington, they have even successfully demanded that room be found for such offices in the official ambassadorial premises abroad and that their personnel share fully in the privileges and immunities that the host government traditionally extended to regular accredited diplomatic staff. As a result, regular State Department personnel in U.S. diplomatic missions abroad now account for only some 30 percent of the total official presence at these missions; the remaining 70 percent come from other agencies.

THE NATIONAL INTEREST

What all this means in practice can perhaps best be understood by a glance at an American embassy in a major foreign capital.

Heading the diplomatic mission is always the chief of mission, normally the ambassador or, in his absence, the charge d'affaires. The principal concern that the ambassador, as the personal representative of the president, must have at heart is of course the promotion of the national interest of the United States. But what constitutes the national interest varies with time and circumstance. Essentially, considering the president's preeminence in policymaking, it is what the present occupant of the Oval Office thinks it is and can gain acceptance for among the public and the government establishment. But that there is such a thing as the national interest, and that it should lie at the heart of national policies and discussions, cannot be denied. And it is the ambassador at a foreign capital who stands as its leading protagonist, protector, and promoter in the country where he serves.

The ambassador's immediate duty, however, is largely confined to the bilateral relationship between the U.S. government and the country in question. He nurtures and influences that relationship in the service of both the American national interest and world peace.