Our Impromptu Diplomacy
CRITICISM of the foreign policy of the United States usually disregards the essential fact that the conduct of policy, from day to day, affects the relations between this and other countries as much as, if not even more than, the dramatized pronunciamentos of great statesmen and the publicized documentation of international conferences.
In the State Department offices in Washington, on the other side of the street from the White House, are assembled a number of bureaucrats who read messages and reports from all parts of the world and are required to formulate instant decisions to be cabled to ambassadors, ministers, and consuls, to commercial, naval, and military attaches, for more or less immediate action in some region outside the United States. These day-by-day decisions have the effect of precedents in the law court; they lay down a rule for conduct; and in time these precedents form a body which guides and often, but unfortunately not always, controls Secretaries of State and even Presidents in their conduct of policy.
These bureaucrats are now part of a permanent service which is continuous no matter how Presidents may change in the White House. Stanley Hornbeck, for instance, remains in the Far Eastern Division in the State Department no matter who may be Secretary of State or what may be his political complexion. Hardly known to the American people, perhaps even to members of Congress, this small, inadequately paid group of professionals constitutes as competent a staff for a foreign office as is to be found in England or France or Japan.
I
The difficulty is, however, that the State Department is not a foreign office. It is the office of the Secretary of State, who is not a responsible minister of government, but is in reality a secretary to the President, as are all our Cabinet officers. The President is not only the head of the government; he is the government. The result is that the conduct of our foreign policy is often taken out of the hands of the Secretary of State and is directly managed by the President. On occasion, Wilson and Hoover — and the same thing is now true of Roosevelt — set aside every precedent upon which our policy was based, and to which other countries had already accommodated their policies, because, functioning politically and without bureaucratic checks upon his personal volition and whim, the President commits himself and the country in situations which the trained diplomat would avoid altogether.
Unfortunately, the Secretary of State has no mandate from the American people. He is appointed to office by the President, and only the weight of his personal prestige or the President’s confidence in him makes him of importance. John Hay, Elihu Root, and Charles E. Hughes were able to strengthen the significance and independence of the State Department because of their personal prestige, but Mr. Wilson never reposed any confidence in William Jennings Bryan and little in Robert Lansing. Mr. Roosevelt placed two of his closest personal friends, Raymond Moley and William C. Bullitt, in the department as subordinates to Cordell Hull, and for a time Mr. Moley was a more significant political personality than his chief. When the determination of policy moves across the street to the White House, the conduct of policy is likely to take on confusing aspects.
An excellent yet most unfortunate illustration of this confusion in conduct was the Hoover-Laval conversation on debts. The question continues to plague the relations between France and the United States as to what, exactly, Mr. Hoover did say to M. Laval and what they did agree upon. Conflicting versions undoubtedly accelerated French public opinion in support of France’s repudiation of the last payment. Americans, on the other hand, insist that it made little difference what Mr. Hoover said to M. Laval, since debt cancellation is a question upon which Congress alone can pass final judgment.
Had Mr. Hoover not conversed privately with M. Laval, had the negotiations been handled orthodoxly by the bureaucrats of the State Department, this controversy might not have arisen to add venom to the estranged relations between the French and American peoples. For the bureaucrats would have seen to it that a record of the conversation was made. Had the representatives of the two countries reached a conclusion, each would have notified his own foreign office, and the cables on the subject, the inquiries and replies, together with some document such as an initialed memorandum or a protocol, would have constituted a record, duly numbered, filed, indexed, and available when needed.
Instead, there was only the recollection of two political officials — two men who knew they must stand before their constituencies for reelection and who might or might not have had convenient memories, depending upon their integrity and the immediate requirements of political realism. In these days of wireless telephones and quickwire cables and personal conversations, rigid bureaucracy has the advantage in the conduct of foreign policy, in that it impedes snap judgments and rapid-fire decisions when what is needed is slow and clear thinking in the interest, not of some immediate gain, but of the permanent improvement of our relations with other countries, while at the same time we preserve our rights and prestige.
It may be suggested that such an incident as the Hoover-Laval conversation might be avoided by a routine minuting of presidential conversations. That is easy in such a country as Japan, but not in the United States. It is a question of psychology. In Japan, for instance, if Mr. T. V. Soong were to visit the Premier, that official would probably discuss in advance with the Director of the Asiatic Division of the Japanese Foreign Office all questions pertinent to the visit. If it were suspected that a financial question would arise, a financial official would be called in. If the visit remained a mere formal, unproductive, social engagement, that would be noted in a minute circulated to interested parties. If, on the other hand, a transaction arose from the conversation, those directly charged with the particular business, as a permanent task, would be called in.
We do those things differently. Mr. Soong goes to Hyde Park and talks to the President. If the President wants to do so, he speaks about it to whomsoever he chooses. The Secretary of State may or may not be informed; he may be called on the telephone immediately, or he may hear of it months later at a dinner party. He may learn of it from an assistant who is closer to the President than he is. He may hear of it incidentally from Mr. Jesse Jones of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation after a loan has been engineered. He may or may not pass it down the line to the bureaucrat in charge of the particular issues raised during the visit. That official may first hear of it when a dispatch comes from China concerning it. Or the President may send a memorandum to the State Department. It is up to him to do as he wishes.
I have been steadily inquiring, without any other motive than to gather data for this article, whether, while China was negotiating the $50,000,000 credit for wheat and cotton, the officials of the State Department, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Commerce, who from day to day deal with all the policies and decisions involved in such a credit, were consulted by the officials of the R. F. C. So far as I can learn, there was no consultation in advance, and — although it would be difficult to prove this without access to all documents in all departments — there was no enthusiasm for the proposition among those whose opinions should have been given due weight before it was accepted.
I mention this one example because I happen to have familiarized myself with its details, but similar incidents could be related without end if government records were available to prove the point. It is not important whether the case cited is beneficial or harmful to the United States; the procedure is confusing, and leads to errors in judgment and conduct which are not easily rectified. And Mr. Roosevelt is not the first President to act on his own in international relations, without recourse to the State Department. It will some day be interesting to compare European archives with our own to see how often Mr. Wilson kept his Secretary of State in the dark.
II
According to the theory of our government, the President is quite within his rights. He is the executive authority. He alone is responsible to the people for the administration of the government. The Secretary of State is his representative rather than the nation’s. Thus, at London, Professor Moley conducted conversations, sent cables to the President, even reached a conclusion with regard to stabilization of currency, — ad referendum, be it noted, — independently not only of the Secretary of State, but of the entire American delegation to the conference. The fact that Professor Moley represented the President justified his conduct despite the actual presence of Mr. Hull in London.
In the old days only the State Department was interested in foreign affairs. Since the war, however, many governmental agencies have specific duties and interests in this field, and at times their purposes are at variance with policy as formally adhered to by the State Department. During the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover administrations, the Department of Commerce went far afield in the promotion of our foreign trade. Often officials of this department in the field found that the policy of the State Department interfered with trade promotion. They would appeal directly to Mr. Hoover, who while Secretary of Commerce, and later as President, supported trade promotion against the State Department’s duty of protecting rights, interests, and obligations. Recently, however, an agreement has been reached between the State and Commerce Departments determining the functions of each in the foreign field, precedence going to the State Department.
The R. F. C. to-day negotiates with China and Soviet Russia, and perhaps with other countries, to lend money to buy American goods without regard to the effect that such loans may have on national policy. The President now enjoys the right to organize a Foreign Bondholders Corporation which shall be charged with the task of negotiating for the amortization of foreign bonds held in this country. This corporation is to be appointed by the Federal Trade Commission and is to be subject to review only by Congress. It is true that neither the Corporation nor any of its subordinate bodies may represent itself as a ‘government agency’ in its negotiations with foreign governments, but what assurance can there be that foreign governments will not regard it as such? The State Department, which declines to become a collection agency, fearful undoubtedly of being accused of pursuing a dollar diplomacy, holds itself out of this picture, but it is impossible to believe that negotiations with South American and European governments for the settlement even of private debts can be conducted by a body proclaimed by the President without somehow affecting the general foreign policy of this country.
Mr. Roosevelt, before he was inaugurated, held with regard to debts that ‘ the most convenient and effective contacts can be made through existing agencies and constituted channels of diplomatic intercourse.’ Those agencies are in the State Department — in the staff of specialists permanently stationed there and in the ambassadors and ministers in the field. To assist them are the experts attached to other governmental offices, also permanently employed bureaucrats. Yet at the London Conference, for instance, one noted the absence of some of the most able of these professionals and the presence of outsiders. If the government pays for the services of these men, why not utilize them on all occasions, as the British, French, and other governments do? The answer is that since Woodrow Wilson’s failure at Versailles it has become necessary to placate Congress, members of which serve on delegations in the hope that they will be able to swing their colleagues in support of any agreement which may be reached. The members of Congress take along their own secretaries, experts, and advisers, who may or may not know what it is all about.
For instance, the Department of Commerce has a bureau which specializes in such an item as silver. This bureau employs Herbert M. Bratter, whose pamphlets on the subject, published by the government, are accepted as authoritative by those who are unselfishly interested in the subject. These publications are constantly being quoted as the final word. Mr. Bratter was not sent to London as the silver expert of the American delegation, nor was his opposite number in the State Department, Mr. Stuart Fuller, there for that purpose. Yet silver was an important item at the conference — one of the most important.
The conduct of foreign policy, to be effective, must be centralized and expert. There are those who suggest that we ought to stay away from conferences, and that we ought to avoid negotiations with European nations because they tend to outsmart our representatives. This sense of inferiority is amusing when one considers that in all else we assume generally that we are more competent than anyone else. Actually, our difficulty lies in a general unwillingness to trust negotiations and the general conduct of policy to the bureaucratic experts who understand the business.
When Woodrow Wilson employed Colonel House’s experts rather than the men in his own State Department to assist him at Paris, he set an example which other Presidents have followed on occasion. It is impossible in this country for the bureaucrat to rise to the highest offices in his own department. The most pleasant and interesting ambassadorial and ministerial jobs go to political appointees; membership on significant commissions goes to outsiders; the principal assistant secretaryships in the department itself go to outsiders. The principals of the American delegation to the London Conference, consisting of six men, included not a single name which had been associated with the conduct of our foreign policy before the inauguration of President Roosevelt. The executive officer had not been in the State Department prior to March 4, although he had served a short term in the Wilson administration. Perhaps the ubiquity of outsiders explains why our delegation differs from nearly all others in that no explanation appears in the official lists to show exactly what office in the government the various persons hold.
In the matter of the organization of the State Department, the fact that men do not rise to the top in it because the highest places are most often filled by outsiders naturally serves to discourage those who make a career of the conduct of our foreign policy. Furthermore, it is an expensive business to put untrained men into positions which require the most expert knowledge not only of foreign relations but of the technique of international intercourse. Although Professor Moley has resigned from an Assistant Secretaryship to go into journalism, it is interesting to consider what happened to the State Department when he and Mr. Bullitt were appointed to it by the President. I estimate that between $40,000 and $50,000 was taken from the slender budget of the State Department to make room for them and their staff. This was done in a year when every man in the department took a 15 per cent pay cut and when more than fifty men were let out of foreign service for the sake of economy.
In the instance of Professor Moley, it was undoubtedly the President’s intention to use an Assistant Secretaryship as a peg, but Moley brought with him a staff who had to receive State Department appointments if their salaries were to be paid. To make room for them, several career men had to be let out of the department. Fortunately, this whole venture came to grief, but the process of utilizing the department’s budget for political appointments continues to check the rise of the permanent staff. In a word, the men who keep the wheels of international relations greased and smooth and running find themselves blocked for promotion by political appointments to the Assistant Secretaryships.
The President is wholly within his rights in this matter of appointing politicians or the friends of politicians to be Assistant Secretary and Assistant to the Secretary. It takes a very strong Secretary to tell a very weak President that he will not have a nonpolitical, technical department loaded down with political individuals of doubtful merit. Rather does a Secretary wait for these folk to make fools of themselves, to learn that there is more labor than fame in the conduct of foreign policy and that the newspapers find ’jumping’ State Department officials legitimate sport. In time, most of the non-career men resign from ennui, or there is a political change and they go away. The cost of their presence is often reflected in the inability of the department to hold on to a career man, who, anticipating promotion in due course and not getting it because there is no room at the top, looks for some job that will pay for the education of his children.
III
The personnel of the State Department divides itself into officers in the foreign service and those who are permanently stationed in Washington. A more satisfactory distinction would be between career men and political appointees. There has, in recent years, been a constant increase in the utilization of career officers in the higher places, but it must be remembered that the increase is the more apparent because it is not many years since politicians regarded the State Department as free ground for their exploitation.
In the field, a list compiled during September showed that of fifty-five ambassadors and ministers thirty were career men, while only twenty-five were political appointees. Both Hoover and Roosevelt have recognized the value of the career man in actual transactions, but the ‘plums,’ nevertheless, still go to the politicians. The ambassadorial posts in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, and Sweden have been given to politicians for no good reason one can discover except that it has always been so.
To prevent political appointees from getting America into difficulties, an unusually competent counselor is stationed at the more important centres; the counselor really is in charge of the embassy. It makes very little difference, except socially, who the American Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s happens to be as long as Ray Atherton is the Counselor of the Embassy, but such a foreign service officer should be rising in rank, as he would in England or France or Japan, gaining a legation or an embassy in his own right. The twenty-five political appointees clog the wheels of promotion.
Furthermore, we have a system of losing good men after they have reached a legation because the higher offices are really within the province of presidential appointments and therefore are not promotions within the department. For instance, the present Undersecretary, William Phillips, retired from service in 1929; Sumner Welles, who won acclaim for the first phase of his handling of the Cuban situation, retired in 1922; John V. A. MacMurray, formerly our Minister to China and now to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, retired in 1929. Whatever may be the public explanation for the retirement of competent foreign service officers, when one gets a close-up of the situation it is discovered that there is no work for them to do; no further promotions are possible after they have reached a certain station.
In other countries, service is continuous in the higher ranks until the age of retirement is reached. Often men have to be placed on reserve lists to await appointment to an actual post, but even while they are thus inactive they are consulted when questions arise with regard to which they have had special experience. This continuity of service is of particular importance for the very obvious reason that experience is not to be purchased, but is achieved by actual travail in a particular field. Under our system, experience is often neglected in the interest of political expediency.
For instance, when Mr. MacMurray retired from his post at Peking, he went to Johns Hopkins University and for several years was unavailable for government service. His British contemporary, Sir Miles Lampson, however, remained at his post in China, from which he is now retiring to become High Commissioner in Egypt. All of Mr. MacMurray’s Japanese and French contemporaries are still in service, one of the Japanese, Mr. Shigemitsu, being the present Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs in Tokyo. Mr. MacMurray’s return to the service of his government, like that of Mr. Phillips and Mr. Welles, is incidental to Mr. Roosevelt’s election and is not a matter of service routine. Had the incoming President been another, it is quite likely that these gentlemen of exceptional gifts would still be unavailable in the field which can best absorb their talents and experience.
IV
Although the average American understands the value of experience and training and seniority in the army and navy, he assumes too often that the foreign service involves only the ability to drink tea and to wear striped trousers. But the foreign service involves more than the filing of dispatches and the presentation of notes. To it belongs, above all, the duty of representation. In time of peace it is the medium for friendly social intercourse, concerning itself with the amenities of foreign relationships. The foreign service officer has to have a knowledge of the routine of his own office and of all foreign offices as well; he must know the ‘book of etiquette’ of every country; he should have a working acquaintance with some language other than his own; his personal, social conduct should be such that he has direct access to the individuals whose decisions affect the course of international relationships.
Those gentle young men, carefully groomed, soft spoken, who accompanied Secretary Hull to London, — assisted by Ray Atherton, who seems always to be there, — did more to soften the force of President Roosevelt’s message, which the British felt had torpedoed the conference, than all the other members of the commission combined. They know how to pour oil on troubled waters, even if they do not know how to get themselves elected to a state assembly.
Representation is a specialized talent. The ability to avoid irritants, to say strong things gently so that no personal antagonism arises from the conversation, the gift of being friendly without becoming familiar, the man-ofthe-world air which acclimates a person in any group, the capacity to listen and to remember — few political water carriers enjoy these gifts. One need only travel across the Atlantic and the Pacific with career and non-career men to realize the really tremendous difference between them. On one such trip I listened to an argument between two Americans concerning a noncareer man. A New York business man insisted that the gentleman in question was smart and would show the Europeans where they got off. A woman from California, however, made the very interesting point that we had no desire to show the Europeans where they got off—what we wanted to know was how we could all get on together.
And that is the crux of representation — to get on with the other fellows; to know how, and to be so constituted by temperament and training that, it is possible to do it. Europeans and Asiatics never send representatives to Washington who cannot get on with Americans. They are most careful to know our likes and dislikes, our characteristics, so that their representation will not be a failure. The story is told of a Japanese special envoy, who came to this country for a short time, that on going out to dinner on his first evening here he put on a hunting cap. His colleagues advised him to change to an opera hat. He had purchased the hunting cap because that was the fashion here some twenty years ago. He wanted to be just right.
The details of conduct are often laughed at by Americans who do not fulfill the adage, ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do.’ In London some of the representatives declined to wear evening clothes because they did not like to change. It is difficult for Americans to understand the effect that clothes have upon politics; yet we should not like to see an admiral in shorts or General Pershing at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in a golf suit.
Quite apart from the duty of representation is the need for accurate and continuously current knowledge of international politics. A butcher might be sent to Poland or an insurance agent to Austria on the assumption that anyone will do in those small countries, yet upon Poland and Austria to-day hinges the fate of Europe. The future of Germany will be determined in Poland and Austria, and upon the course of the next year of German history depends the peace of Europe. For, if there is soon to be another European war, the struggle between Germany and Austria and Germany and Poland will be the beginning of it. And we do not desire a war in Europe because it may completely upset our own recovery programme.
I cite this, not to get off the subject of this paper, but to indicate how important it is to have even in small posts men who know, men who devote their lives to the single task of keeping themselves informed with regard to world economics and politics. There are a few outsiders like Henry Morgenthau who are always gazing at the picture, but the politician projected into diplomacy is often at a loss to understand what it is all about. His secretaries have to watch his every step to keep him out of mischief, and his counselor does all the work. Why not give the counselor the job in the first place?
V
By various acts of Congress and by executive orders the foreign service has been improved so that even minor consular officers in Central America no longer resemble O. Henry characters. But whereas the army and navy are organized on a wholly nonpolitical basis, many changes have still to be made to free the State Department from the cancer of party politics.
In the Register of the State Department appear two short paragraphs which are highly significant: —
The President is charged under the Constitution with the responsibility of conducting the foreign relations of the United States.
The Secretary of State is his adviser in such matters and acts as the agent through whom he issues his instructions to the Foreign Service which forms the field force through which the necessary contacts with foreign governments are established and maintained.
It becomes perfectly obvious from these excerpts that continuity of purpose and personnel is inherently difficult, since it is possible for the President to change everything at a moment’s notice. Yet, whatever improvements are made must be within the structure of the American Constitution. It is not impossible to envisage an organization of the State Department which will eliminate the dangers of whimsical activities on the part of the President, which will make available for continuous employment experienced and talented men, and at the same time reduce to a minimum the use of foreign representation for political preferment. Some steps can be taken by executive order, and it is likely that routines once inaugurated will become, by habit and precedent, permanent. Other matters will require the attention of Congress. A few constructive suggestions in this connection may be worth noting: —
1. The foreign relations of the United States, of whatever nature, should be concentrated in the State Department. When questions are raised which are the proper concern of other departments of the government, the officers of the other departments should act as advisers to the State Department, which alone should be charged with the task of negotiation. For instance, if the R. F. C. wants to lend money to a foreign country, or to an American banking group to be loaned to a foreign country, the R. F. C. should function through the State Department and not independently of it.
The President should voluntarily forgo his undoubted right to treat with foreign representatives directly. If, however, it is expedient for him to discuss questions directly with a head of a state, as Mr. Hoover did with Mr. MacDonald at Rapidan, the entire situation should, in advance, be considered by the experts of the State Department, who should, if at all possible, be present. For instance, it cannot be forgotten that Professor Moley and Mr. James Warburg, who had had no previous experience in international negotiations, were constantly called in when Mr. Roosevelt was discussing the agenda of the London Conference with cabinet officers of European and Asiatic countries. The names of experienced officers of the State Department do not appear in the published lists of those who were present at the White House meetings. Similar incidents, as has already been pointed out, occurred during Mr. Hoover’s administration; these occurrences are not cited, therefore, in particular criticism of Mr. Roosevelt.
A protocol of such conversations should be made, for under our system the Presidents change comparatively often, but their work goes on. A yes or a no may become important after the President leaves office or even after he is dead. The lack of a record may plague the relations between two countries for many years to come. It is not too much to ask that a stenographer be called in to take down immediately the President’s recollection of the conversation. The French are adepts at keeping dossiers, and to them the dossier is always right. The record of a conversation is likely to be more accurate than any man’s memory five or ten years hence, or than hearsay and rumor, which are so often factors in these affairs when they are loosely managed.
2. Under our system, it is obvious that the Secretary of State is bound to be a political appointee, a member of the President’s political party. It is also understandable that one assistant secretary might be of the same political party, to assist the President and the Secretary of State in the handling of Congress. Beyond that, all the administrative officers of the State Department should be career men, officers who have grown up in the work, who have been in the field and have seen service in Washington, and who know what makes the wheels go round in international intercourse.
In addition to ensuring a more efficient personnel, this provision would open positions into which a larger number of career men could advance. It would make it more possible to continue capable men in service after they had ceased to be active in actual representation. It would eliminate to a very large extent the confusion which attended our representation at such a body as the London Conference.
3. The senior foreign service officer in a country should unqualifiedly be the senior American official there. I have witnessed quarrels between admirals, generals, judges of extraterritorial courts, consul-generals, as to who took precedence. President Coolidge, I believe, once issued an executive order on the subject because one such quarrel proved embarrassing not only to the Americans in a certain country, but to everybody else there.
Since representation is the business of the State Department, no other official of the government should be able to claim precedence or even the right to express an opinion independently of the foreign service official. This rule should be strictly adhered to. During the past sixteen years I have often witnessed instances of the chaotic conduct of policy when American officials abroad disagreed.
4. All posts of representation should be closed to other than career men except, possibly, a few very ornamental ones like the ambassadorships in London, Paris, Berlin, and Rome. Even those posts should not be available for political preferment; but it sometimes does occur that for some special reason it is advisable to send a particular person to a foreign capital, as, for instance, when the British sent Lord Reading to Washington. Surely no South American or Asiatic posts, where immediate action may be necessary, should be open to other than career men.
It must be noted that most career men now start in the Foreign Service School in Washington, that many attend special language schools, and that all, by the time they reach high posts, have had a wide experience in the consular and diplomatic service. In this field specialized training is as essential to efficient service as it is in the army or navy. No person without such experience ought to be appointed to direct men who have had this training. No organization can be effectively managed if the top man is not himself familiar with the work to be done. Surely it is no advantage to the United States, even if it does add plums to political parties, to have manufacturers and merchants and retired publicists represent this country abroad.
Such improvements in the service as those suggested here would make it possible for the United States to be represented as competently as is any country. For better or for worse, our foreign relations grow more important each year. They grow more complicated. They enter into more fields of national and international economic and political life. The time has come to treat the service which handles them as seriously as the army and navy are treated. In some respects our representation abroad is even more important than the army and navy, for it functions all the time, in war and in peace, and if it functions successfully we may stay out of war and enjoy a more prosperous peace. The time has come to end the practice of regarding the State Department as an adjunct of political patronage.