American diplomats chafe at both President Donald Trump’s disrespect toward the professional foreign service and the closure of several U.S. embassies. While they have a point, neither money nor staff size equates with effectiveness.
The current State Department is a relatively new phenomenon. The State Department began in 1789 with just two overseas posts, London and Paris. As the United States became an industrial power in the late 19th century, America’s diplomatic footprint expanded rapidly. By 1870, the State Department had three dozen embassies. It added five embassies by 1900, with just the secretary of state and 90 U.S.-based employees overseeing all the diplomatic and consular missions.
The modern foreign service is just over a century old, with the 1924 Rogers Act standardizing the diplomatic corps, with employees rising through the ranks and rotating between posts. Only in the second half of the 20th century did the department grow rapidly, reaching its peak under President Joe Biden with 276 posts across 174 countries. The bureaucracy peaked at 26,000 Americans, and nearly twice as many local employees.
Ironically, most of those serving abroad, especially in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa, seldom experience the countries in which they serve. After Iran-backed groups perfected kidnapping and suicide bombings in the 1980s, embassy security officers whose job it was to keep diplomats safe took a zero-risk approach that saw diplomats locked embassy walls. It was the equivalent of preventing fatal car crashes by forbidding riding in cars. When ambassadors or political officers ventured outside, they were essentially sealed in bulletproof SUVs or separated from ordinary citizens by gun-wielding, tactical armor-wearing guards.
While ambassadors still carry an air of authority, few have the knowledge or granularity of local events that the National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute, or the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees workers do, simply because these organizations manage risk better.
I recently visited UNHCR operations in Ukraine and Libya, for example. While UNHCR has its main Ukraine office in Kyiv, it has employees stationed in almost every major city of policy concern. UNHCR staff live in Lviv, Kharkiv, Dniepro, Zaporizhzhia, and Odesa. The staff rented their own apartments, commuted to work, and shopped in Ukrainian grocery stores. Protection officers, UNHCR’s equivalent of the State Department’s Regional Security Officers, would inform them of any specific threats. In Ukraine’s case, that meant every missile launch with Signal updates about their trajectories and expected targets. The local staff knew almost every politician and had a finger on the pulse of society.
U.S. diplomats, meanwhile, were forbidden to go to Kharkiv, Dniepro, and Zaporizhzhia, even though these are arguably the cities that will determine whether Ukraine wins or loses. In Libya, the same pattern repeated: There was a headquarters in the capital Tripoli, but offices in Benghazi, with active staff in Al-Kufra, Ajdabiya, and Sabha. In Lebanon, UNHCR had a main office in Beirut, but foreign staff worked under bare-bones conditions in at least four other cities around the country. While, in theory, each might be the target of violence, UNHCR chooses to manage that risk rather than eliminate it. UNHCR employees have died in air strikes and violence, but the rate of these tragedies is less than those of American diplomats locked in embassies.
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Not only newspapers and wire services, but also cable news shows and cellphones make the State Department’s 20th-century footprint irrelevant. No one needs a diplomat to cable about a meeting with a French minister when anyone in Washington can call the guy directly. Any news channel can likewise cover the latest from Sweden better than the embassy.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio may cut staff, but that alone is not reform. Instead, he should free diplomats from the oppression of a security regime that will not let them do their jobs. The State Department must learn what UNHCR did: Eliminating risk means failure. Managing it leads to success.
Michael Rubin is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum, a distinguished fellow at India’s Usanas Foundation and a contributor to Beltway Confidential.