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August 14, 2005

State Sanity II

Dave Schuler and Mark Safranski have written on the State Department reforms I noted last week. Both are worth reading.

I think it's fair to say that we need to significantly alter the State Department's institutional biases, or reassess the role of the State Department. For example, letting the State Department handle only relations with nations that are already free, while creating a new agency or international body designed to work with non-free countries. As it is, State simply doesn't have the mentality to deal with reality in really tough places, without simply accepting those conditions as "the way it is". State careers between rampant realism and rampant idealism, without ever looking at how the US is or is not served in the long run by how State implements US foreign policy.

And that's a shame, and I'm glad to see the administration addressing it. I hope the reforms work.

Posted by jeff at August 14, 2005 5:25 PM

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