Updated Nov. 26, 2007

A small but growing number of voices are criticizing the State Department and Foreign Service for not “stepping up to the plate” in Iraq. Some, including people who urged the 2003 invasion, clearly seek to shift blame for failures by other actors. However, other critics appear to have no such malicious agenda, but rather base their criticisms on wildly inflated estimations of the capacities of civilian agencies to operate in combat zones such as Iraq. Comparisons between the military and the State Department are often made with complete disregard for the facts relating to scale: budgets, personnel and capacity for war-zone service. AFSA provides the following facts in an effort to set the record straight:

Baseline Facts about the Foreign Service

The huge disparities between the State Department and the Defense Department in operating budgets are widely known. Ambassador (ret.) Chas W. Freeman Jr., in his article “Can American Leadership Be Restored?” in the November Foreign Service Journal, estimates that the total budget in Fiscal Year 2007 for defense-related activities was $935 billion. In contrast, the 2007 budget for international affairs was $30 billion — only $5 billion of which was for State and USAID operating expenses (with the rest going for foreign assistance, peacekeeping and other such outlays).

The State Department Foreign Service is made up of approximately 11,500 people. Of them, 6,500 are Foreign Service officers while 5,000 are Foreign Service specialists (for example, Diplomatic Security agents). There are another 1,500 or so Foreign Service members at USAID, the Foreign Commercial Service, the Foreign Agricultural Service and the International Broadcasting Bureau. Because it is where most of the criticism is aimed, this article will focus on the State Department Foreign Service component.

Let’s put the size of the State Department Foreign Service in perspective. The U.S. active-duty military is 119 times larger than the Foreign Service. The total uniformed military (active and reserve) is 217 times larger. A typical U.S. Army division is larger than the entire Foreign Service. The military has more uniformed personnel in Mississippi than the State Department has diplomats worldwide. The military has more full colonels/Navy captains than the State Department has diplomats. The military has more band members than the State Department has diplomats. The Defense Department has almost as many lawyers as the State Department has diplomats.

The key point — especially for observers who think in terms of the myriad capabilities of our nation’s large military — is that the Foreign Service has a relatively small corps of officers.

A Forward-Deployed Force

Moreover, in contrast to the military, the vast majority of Foreign Service members are forward-deployed (hence the word “foreign” in Foreign Service). Today, in a time of armed conflict, 21 percent of the active-duty military (290,000 out of 1,373,000) is stationed abroad (ashore or afloat). That compares to 68 percent of the Foreign Service currently stationed abroad at 167 U.S. embassies and 100 consulates and other missions.

There is nothing new about this high percentage of Foreign Service forward deployment. The percentages are the same as they were two decades ago when I joined. Thus, the typical Foreign Service member serves two-thirds of his or her career abroad. Over a 30-year career, that adds up to 20 years spent stationed overseas.

Where are these overseas Foreign Service members? Nearly 60 percent are at posts categorized by the U.S. government as “hardship” due to difficult living conditions (for example, violent crime, harsh climate, social isolation, unhealthy air and/or terrorist threats). Of those hardship posts, half are rated at or above the 15-percent differential level which constitutes great hardship. Thus, unlike the old stereotype seeing most Foreign Service members serving in comfortable Western European capitals, only one-third of overseas posts are non-hardship. Moreover, the majority of people at such posts are decompressing after serving at a hardship post, and they are doing important work.

Again, the contrast with the military is instructive. As previously mentioned, 79 percent of the active-duty military is stationed stateside (including 36,000 personnel in Hawaii). Of those serving abroad, there are more U.S. military personnel serving in the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan than the State Department has diplomats worldwide.

The military does have a greater percentage of its personnel serving in unaccompanied tours than the Foreign Service. I have not found solid statistics on this point, but subtracting those stationed at accompanied postings in Western Europe, Japan and South Korea, it appears that around 11 percent of the military is serving in unaccompanied tours. But the Foreign Service is catching up. Since 2001, the number of unaccompanied and limited-accompanied Foreign Service positions has quadrupled to 700 (representing 6.1 percent of the Foreign Service) at two dozen danger-pay posts including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. This represents a dramatic change for Foreign Service members, who previously had fewer than 200 unaccompanied or limited-accompanied slots to fill at a few posts such as Bogotá and Beirut.

Moreover, consider these facts. Around 40 percent of the 7,800 overseas Foreign Service positions come up for reassignment each year (including all 700 one-year unaccompanied positions and a mixture of two-year greater-hardship posts and three-year lesser-hardship and non-hardship posts). That means that, in any given annual assignment cycle, almost one quarter of all overseas Foreign Service jobs to be filled are at unaccompanied or limited-accompanied danger pay posts.

But what about the toughest duty assignments:  Iraq and Afghanistan.  The Department of State says that over 1,500 Foreign Service members have served, or are serving, in Iraq.  Perhaps another 300 have served, or are serving, in Afghanistan.  Over 300 more have volunteered to rotate into those two countries next summer.  Thus, the percentage of our nation’s diplomats with war-zone service is approaching 20 percent.

I have not found comparable military statistics. Presumably, at least for the Army and Marine Corps, it is over two-thirds with many troops serving two or more tours. But again, unlike the military, which maintains 79 percent of its active members stateside, the Foreign Service has worldwide staffing responsibilities that necessitate posting the majority of its members in the 188 countries besides Iraq. Thus, of the 80 percent of Foreign Service members who have not (yet) served in Iraq, most are now at, or have recently returned from, a hardship assignment.

There are currently approximately 200 Foreign Service positions at Embassy Baghdad and another 70 or so at the 25 Provincial Reconstruction Teams. Compared to the U.S. military presence in Iraq, those numbers look small. Of course, the U.S. civilian presence in Iraq includes a range of other types of employees. But if press reports are accurate that around 1,000 U.S. citizens work at Embassy Baghdad, then the Foreign Service positions constitute about 20 percent of that total. Turning to the PRTs, which comprise up to 600 members, the Foreign Service component is 10 to 15 percent.

There are good reasons for those ratios. As Secretary Rice has repeatedly explained in public statements, no country’s diplomatic corps has people with many of the skills now needed in Iraq: oil and gas engineers, electrical grid managers, urban planners, city managers and transportation planners. If any U.S. defense planner in 2003 thought that the State Department and other civilian federal agencies had such people on staff in large numbers (Arabic-speaking or not) ready to rebuild Iraq, they were wrong. Obviously, if they wanted to do so, the president and Congress could staff up civilian agencies to take responsibility for stabilization and reconstruction. But they have not done so.

Here are some other points to consider. While some Foreign Service members in Iraq are engaged in support activities that do not require them to leave the International Zone, many do travel in the “Red Zone” — working out of Embassy Baghdad, serving at one of the pre-surge PRTs, or serving at one of the 10 new PRTs embedded in Brigade Combat Teams. Also, most Foreign Service members serve one-year tours in Iraq with only a relative few going for shorter temporary-duty assignments. A small but growing number of Foreign Service members have served more than one tour in Iraq. None, except perhaps for Diplomatic Security Special Agents, are permitted to carry a weapon.

Foreign Service members receive very little preparation before deploying to Iraq -- less than two-weeks of special training to serve in a combat zone. Contrast that to their predecessors 40 years ago who received four to six months of training before deploying to South Vietnam in the CORDS program. While Foreign Service volunteers in Iraq do receive added pay and other incentives (but not tax-free income like the military enjoys), surveys show that most Foreign Service volunteers in Iraq have been motivated by patriotism and a professional desire to try to advance the Administration’s top foreign policy objective.

Update

From 2003 through 2007, every one of the over 2,000 career Foreign Service members who stepped up to the plate to serve at the large and growing U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the expanding Provincial Reconstruction Teams around the country did so as a volunteer.  That proud tradition continues as Foreign Service members recently stepped forward to fill the 252 positions coming open at the U.S. Mission in Iraq in summer 2008.