Some past and present diplomats are upset that the State Department has removed the flags of all the countries and territories in which the United States has diplomatic relations, replacing them with American flags. “It’s so much worse than ‘America First,’” former peace processer Aaron David Miller quipped.
Miller’s objection is ignorant on multiple levels. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Deputy Chris Landau are correct that the primary job of the State Department is to represent the U.S. Other flags can be decorations, but the fact that Miller and other diplomats see them as more highlights a problem the same diplomats are at pains to deny. Secretary of State George Shultz famously would ask ambassador-nominees to find their country on a globe, and woe to anyone who did not point to the U.S.
Rubio and Landau should go further, though. Consider the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry in Kyiv. Entering the robust, marble building is akin to entering the State Department. Security officers ensure guests have appointments and then have them wait until protocol officers or other diplomats can receive them. In the meantime, guests can tour an exhibit of Ukrainian drones and other weaponry that features prominently in the war against Russia.
To see military ordnance or models in a foreign ministry might strike Americans such as Miller as somehow antagonistic to diplomacy. American diplomats see themselves as a culture apart. Time spent abroad can lead to detachment from the society they represent. Even within the State Department, a cultural chasm exists between foreign service officers and the Department’s civil service employees. While pundits and press embrace the honor of diplomats who resign, they seldom ask why there appears to be such a trend toward a single party among those who do.
Ukrainians understand that their diplomats are part of not only a whole-of-government approach but also a whole-of-society approach. Perhaps it is time for Rubio and Landau to take lessons from Ukraine’s foreign minister and use the spacious State Department lobby not to display flags — a single American flag should suffice — but rather American weaponry, maybe even an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. What better way could there be to signal the idea of “Speak softly, but carry a big stick”?
Alternatively, as President Donald Trump seeks to promote American industry, why not make the State Department lobby a rotating display of industrial might and goods? Rather than other nations’ flags, Rubio could direct every U.S. state, Puerto Rico, and Guam to prepare a one-week display to change every Sunday throughout the year.
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The Pentagon need not display the flags of other NATO members or countries with which it has status of forces agreements. The Commerce Department does not need to display the flags of countries with which the U.S. has free trade associations, so the idea that the State Department should fly other flags is at best arbitrary.
Symbolism matters and can shape an institution’s culture. Freedom from institutional groupthink should be celebrated, not devolve into knee-jerk partisan criticism.
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.