31 ADMINISTRATION OF NATIONAL SECURITY THE SECRETARY OF STATE I. Introduction It is not surprising that the departments often find a President's way of doing business unsettling or that Presidents sometimes view the departments almost as adversaries. A continuing dilemma, demanding a subtle appreciation on all sides of the needs of a President and the departments, is how to manage the Government so that Presidential business is transacted to his satisfaction, and so that the normal run of business, also vital to the national interest, can be transacted in a fashion suited to the needs of large scale organization. Initial staff report, Basic Issues, Subcommittee on National Security The administration of national security is a vast and complex undertaking, full of enduring dilemmas which manifest themselves differently in every administration, depending on the operating style of the President and his key associates. The predecessor Subcommittee on National Policy Machinery concentrated on the problems at the end of the Eisenhower Administration when its patterns of staffing and operations had given rise to certain characteristic difficulties. The Kennedy Administration tried to avoid highly institutionalized procedures, preferring a flexible, informal approach that fitted President Kennedy's way of working. Like all administrations it took some time for its mode of operation to become set. Now the Nation has entered a new transition period with the Johnson Administration. The tragedy of November 22, 1963, emphasized the importance of continuity. The new President made clear that he would carry on the broad lines of national policy inherited from his predecessor. He showed that he would rely heavily on the staffs already brought together. The Government carried on well. But when a new President takes charge, many things have to change. We cannot expect the Johnson Administration to continue meeting substantive problems in exactly the same fashion as the Kennedy Administration, or to handle emerging administrative problems in the way the Kennedy Administration might have done, or to maintain the same officials indefinitely in their places. President Johnson was right and needed to emphasize continuityespecially in policy-during the early days of the transition. But the President and his Secretary of State-should be free to adopt their own work methods and to select their own subordinates in order to meet their own needs and their own styles of decision and action. Inevitably, they will want to employ some new assistants and some new methods. This is as it should be. While this is taking place, it seems timely to look at a question which each new administration has to answer: How can a Secretary of State and his Department best help the President? II. The Dilemma of the Secretary of State For I want you to know that I look upon the Department of State, under the President, as the central force in the framing and execution of the foreign policy of this country. *** I shall look to this Department for initiative in proposal, energy in action, and frankness in advice. President Lyndon B. Johnson, remarks to officers of the Department of State, December 5, 1963 A Secretary of State's duties are extremely heavy. He is a senior personal adviser to the President, both in private talks and at working sessions of the President's inner councils. The importance of this role has increased greatly with the new position of the United States in world affairs and the coming of the cold war; the role has been complicated by the large place of military factors in the conduct of American foreign policy and the emergence of the Secretary of Defense as an important adviser on national security affairs-but with a necessarily different focus and responsibility. The Secretary of State is the only Cabinet officer primarily charged with looking at our nation as a whole in its relations to the outside world, and his perspective is needed in all major decisions of national security planning and policy. The Secretary of State is also our ranking diplomat in dealing with foreign governments. As such, he stands at the intersection of affairs: advocate of American policies to other governments, and official channel of suggestions and protests about American policies from other governments the hurricane over cancellation of SKYBOLT, the feathers that flew in the "chicken war" of 1963, and so on. Thus a Secretary is put in the awkward position of transmitting bad news and interpreting "the foreign point of view" to the President, to other agencies and to the Congress. A Secretary of State must often feel that he has the makings of an unwelcome visitor. At the same time, a Secretary serves as an administration spokesman on American foreign policy to the Congress, to the country, and abroad. Furthermore, he is chief of the State Department and of the Foreign Service, and like other department heads, he is responsible to the President and accountable to the Congress. Finally, he is "Mr. Coordinator"-the superintendent, for the President, of most major activities affecting our relations with other countries. These roles can reinforce each other. At the White House his advice and counsel gain weight because he speaks for his Department, bringing its knowledge, experience, and expertise to bear on questions of concern to the President. His public statements and guidance to the Department and other agencies carry force because he is so often with the President. The Secretary's roles can also be antagonistic. If he becomes too much a spokesman for the Department and the President comes to feel that he has been "captured" by the bureaucrats, the Secretary's redit as a Presidential adviser may be strained. But if the Secretary spends too much time at the White House or on the road as negotiator for the President-his direction of the Department may be impaired. A Secretary cannot escape his dilemma. To abandon his Department in order to spend time in the White House an idea once seriously entertained by a recent Secretarywould cloud his title as adviser to the President. The Secretary's comparative advantage as an adviser lies in the fact that he is much more than just another White House assistant. He is the head of a great department with a history and traditions stretching back almost 175 years. In the councils of the President a Secretary ought to be the Department. However, to absorb himself in running the Department is no solution. No Secretary could afford to spend most of his time on departmental management while others advise the President on the critical issues of the cold war. And if he did, he would soon lose his effectiveness as personal adviser-as well as his real authority in the Department and his influence on Capitol Hill. The modern Secretary of State is thus adviser, negotiator, reporter of trouble, spokesman, manager, and coordinator. This is all too much. Yet somehow he must handle it. He cannot just take any one piece of his job. He has to do the best he can with all his several duties. None can be sacrificed-or wholly delegated to others. As a result some duties are bound to be shortchanged. Some things that need doing, by him, will be left to others or left undone, for they will not have sufficient priority to crowd other things off his schedule. A Secretary of State lives with his dilemma, performing his multiple duties as skillfully and as wisely as he can. But the dimensions of the job are becoming more than man-sized, and ways to ease his burdens are badly needed for the country's sake as well as his own. To fortify a Secretary in the discharge of his duties, three conditions seem to be of cardinal importance: One: He needs to enjoy the unusual respect and support of the President. Two: He needs to have the assistance of a strong, well-staffed, well-run Department. Three: He needs to have relations with Congress which reinforce him as foreign policy leader. III. The President and the Secretary A President may, and will, listen to whom he wishes. But his relationship with the Secretary of State will not prosper if the latter is not accepted as his principal adviser and executive agent in foreign affairs, and the trusted confidant of all his thoughts and plans relating to them. Dean Acheson in The Secretary of State, issued by The American Assembly (1960) The attitude of a President toward his Secretary of State determines whether he can do the job a President needs done. A Secretary's subordinates within the Department, his Cabinet colleagues, Congress, |