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. 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. Thus a 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 credit 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, and the officials of other governments soon discern the true relationship between him and the President. If a President is close to his Secretary, confides in him, and relies heavily on him, a Secretary has a chance to be a great Secretary. In our system, the President and the Secretary have mutual obligations. One, clearly, is a Secretary's duty to keep the President promptly and fully informed so that he can handle major issues and crises in the nation's foreign relations with as much freedom of Presidential choice as each situation allows. The President's corresponding obligation is to make his decisions in a clear and reasoned wayproviding as part of the decision itself the priority it is to receive-so the Secretary can carry on from where the President leaves off. A President should, of course, support his own decisions so strongly that action can follow from them. Another obligation is scarcely less important. It is a Secretary's duty to assert his own position and exercise his proper interest across the whole contemporary front of foreign relations. The shoes are big: it is his duty to fill them if he can. The correlative obligation is that the President should be careful not to ask other officers to handle independently tasks which fall within the jurisdiction of the Secretary of State. And he should be cautious about overruling the Secretary on matters that have been entrusted to him, for if other Cabinet officers find that they habitually can get satisfaction at the White House when they have lost out with the Secretary, the Secretary will not long be able to fulfill his responsibilities. A Secretary's role requires that he be able to see the President whenever he believes he needs to-and see him alone when he wants to. The Secretary and the President need unhurried private occasions for frank talk about the more puzzling problems of foreign policy. All of this depends on a President's confidence in his Secretary and a conviction that the Secretary can help him more than others in contending with the issues he sees ahead." IV. The Secretary and the Department This device of inviting argument between conflicting interests—which we can call the "foulup factor" in our equation of performance * needs some careful examination because there is, I think, a discernible and constantly increasing tendency to try to expand the intent of the system to the point where mere curiosity on the part of someone cr some agency, and not a "need to know" can be used as a ticket of admission to the merry-go-round of "concurrences". This doctrine, unless carefully and boldly policed, can become so fertile a spawner of committees as to blanket the whole executive branch with an embalmed atmosphere. Robert A. Lovett, Statement before the Senate Subcommittee on At the heart of a Secretary of State's dilemma is his Department. The Department's growth would dismay even Mr. Parkinson. On the eve of our entry into World War II the Department employed less than 6,200 at home and overseas. Today, over 24,000 are on the rolls (roughly 7,000 serving in the United States, and 17,000 abroadincluding about 10,000 foreign nationals recruited locally). The Department's burden of business is enormous. It operates some 274 posts abroad-embassies, legations, special missions, and consular offices. Its daily volume of telegraphic traffic includes about 1,500 incoming and 1,500 outgoing cables, carrying more than 400,000 words. In the vast new State building a Secretary sits amidst 2 Under Secretaries and 2 Deputy Under Secretaries, 13 Assistant Secretaries or their equivalent in charge of 13 Bureaus, over 30 Deputy Assistant Secretaries, more than 60 area and other Office Directors, and over 90 Country Desk Officers, together with assorted advisers and special assistants, counselors and inspector generals, and emissaries from the agencies that lie only partly within the Secretary's jurisdiction. As things are, the Country Desk Officer stands 7 or 8 levels down in the Department. Above him are: Deputy Office Director Office Director Deputy Assistant Secretary Assistant Secretary Deputy Under Secretary for Political Affairs Under Secretary for Political Affairs Under Secretary The Secretary In practice, no doubt, most business does not have to run the entire gauntlet. But, Secretary Rusk told the subcommittee: I would say that inside of the Department our principal problem is layering. To illustrate his point Secretary Rusk gave this example: * when I read a telegram coming in in the morning, it poses a very specific question, and the moment I read it I know myself what the answer must be. But that telegram goes on its appointed course into the Bureau, and through the office and down to the desk. If it doesn't go down there, somebody feels that he is being deprived of his participation in a matter of his responsibility. Then it goes from the action officer back up through the Department to me a week or 10 days later, and if it isn't the answer that I knew had to be the answer, then I change it at that point, having taken into account the advice that came from below. But usually it is the answer that everybody would know has to be the answer. To tie this unwieldy organization together, and relate it to AID, USIA, Defense, CIA, to the rest of the Government and to other governments, there are committees, boards, commissions and task forces permanent, ad hoc, large, small, formal, informal, high-level, working level, intra-agency, inter-agency, and now inter-governmental. As Ambassador David Bruce told the subcommittee: If you want to see anybody in Defense or State, or any other department I know of, they seem to be perpetually off in committee meetings. In the cold war the ability to act and react quickly is one of our most powerful weapons. A prompt move can dispose of a crisis right off the bat. But if officials are occupied in following routines, respecting petty procedures, chasing around for one "concurrence" after another, and spending hours in committee meetings until every last voice is heard, then the opportunity to act in time is lost. A stale product is the natural offspring of bureaucracy. The objective is clear and hard-hitting policies-but, as the old proverb goes, "the more cooks the worse pottage." The Department is at once a burden and a source of strength to the Secretary. How can he turn it into less of a burden and more of an asset? How can the Department be made more manageable and therefore more of a help to the Secretary and to the President? Robert Lovett, in his testimony to the predecessor subcommittee in 1960, put his finger on the problem: *** the position of the individual in Government is being constantly downgraded. *** Committees cannot effectively replace the decisionmaking power of the individual who takes the oath of office; nor can committees provide the essential qualities of leadership. *** The authority of the individual executive must be restored * A Secretary could obtain more help from his Department by applying the Lovett philosophy-placing responsibility and authority in the hands of individuals, expecting them to use it, and holding them accountable for their use of it. The need is for a determined effort in State to consolidate overlapping functions, reduce layering, trim unnecessary staff, kill committees, and make clear assignments of responsibility. In his testimony to the subcommittee, Secretary Rusk was stimulating on this point. Referring to the regional bureaus, he spoke of the possibility of an experiment to eliminate the Office level, upgrade the Desk Officer, and strengthen the position of the Assistant Secretary. If the regional Office level could be abolished, a major layer in the Department hierarchy would be excised. This step would enable Desk Officers to report directly to regional Assistant Secretaries. A Desk Officer could be given greater responsibility for handling country problems, on the basis of general guidance. In this event, a Desk Officer should be the equal of an Ambassador in experience and judgment. As Secretary Rusk said: It seems to me that the man in Washington who spends all of his time brooding about a country like Brazil ought to be a man comparable in competence to the man who is Ambassador to Brazil. If this were the situation, Assistant Secretaries could be freed to become what they were intended to be-assistants to the Secretary. They could take on more of the cross-cutting, ad hoc, and crisis problems within their sphere of responsibility. It should be possible to eliminate excessive layering above the level of Assistant Secretary by appropriate understandings of the division of work among the top officers. If results of this sort should flow from the Secretary's suggestions, these would help materially to meet Robert Lovett's standard |