We Need A Bigger State Department

I would have thought that the cable shoutcasts would have been all over yesterday's New York Times story about Hillary Clinton seeking to increase the role of the State Department. I figured they would read it strictly in the terms of personality politics and despair over how Hillary is "taking over the government" and somehow impinging on Obama's authority. I guess the Blagojevich report and the shiny object known as Caroline Kennedy must have mollified them, because there was nary a peep.

And that's a good thing, because an expanded State Department with a bigger budget and a greater balance with the Defense Department is pretty much what I voted for - more diplomacy and less state-sponsored killing.

Mrs. Clinton is recruiting Jacob J. Lew, the budget director under President Bill Clinton, as one of two deputies, according to people close to the Obama transition team. Mr. Lew’s focus, they said, will be on increasing the share of financing that goes to the diplomatic corps. He and James B. Steinberg, a deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration, are to be Mrs. Clinton’s chief lieutenants [...]

The incoming administration is also likely to name several envoys, officials said, reviving a practice of the Clinton administration, when Richard C. Holbrooke, Dennis Ross and other diplomats played a central role in mediating disputes in the Balkans and the Middle East [...]

The steps seem intended to strengthen the role of diplomacy after a long stretch, particularly under Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in which the Pentagon, the vice president’s office and even the intelligence agencies held considerable sway over American foreign policy.

I can quibble with the names of those envoys, but having people committed solely to finding peaceful solutions in global trouble spots is change I can believe in. The last eight years have seen very little use of focused envoys in this regard, and the one (sort of) exception, Christopher Hill in North Korea, has had among the best diplomatic results of Bush's tenure. In addition, allowing State Department officials to do civilian-type work, like reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, instead of the Defense Department, makes perfect sense.

Keeping this kind of expanded portfolio requires a bigger budget and expert management, and so the inclusion of former OMB director Jacob Lew to insure that budget increases and that the State Department bureaucracy is reorganized, and James Steinberg, who called for withdrawal from Iraq very early, as a top lieutenant, is very powerful and encouraging.

I'm less enthused by Clinton pushing for a role for State in the global economic crisis, however.

Mrs. Clinton’s push for a more vigorous economic team, one of her advisers said, stems from her conviction that the State Department needs to play a part in the recovery from the global financial crisis. Economic issues also underpin some of the most important diplomatic relationships, notably with China.

In recent years, the Treasury Department, led by Henry M. Paulson Jr., has dominated policy toward China. Mr. Paulson leads a “strategic economic dialogue” with China that involves several agencies. It is not yet clear who will pick up that role in the Obama administration, although Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is frequently mentioned as a possibility.

There certainly is a role to play for State in China policy, but I'd prefer that we decentralize power and focus these federal agencies on their core missions rather than carving out new jobs for themselves.

Overall, a larger, more robust State Department sends the signal to the world that we are out of the empire business and are instead interested in rebuilding relationships with allies and use multilateral institutions to foster conflict resolution instead of bombs and tanks. This got lost during a campaign that was focused on economic issues, which was probably to the liking of Democrats who habitually shy away from foreign policy. But Clinton's role at State can signal a new direction, where Democrats actually articulate principles in dealing with the world, and act on them. Obama was willing to hint at this during the campaign, but it got swamped by the recession. I think a major diplomatic initiative early in the term could really change the tone.