July 29, 2025 • 25 mins
Please welcome Dan Spokojny, the founder of FP21, a research and advisory group focused on reforming the State Department's conduct of U.S. foreign policy.
Dan started on the hill, working on congressional policy, then as a diplomat for the State Department.
Since then, he formed FP21 to help the State Department improve its organization and processes.
This is part II of a two-part episode, so let's get started.
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You can learn more about FP21 here: https://www.fp21.org/
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We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations.
To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail.com, or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www.civilaffairsassoc.org
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome to the ONE CA podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines.
ONE CA is a product of the CivilAffairs Association and brings
in people who are current or former military diplomats,
development officers, and field agents to discuss their
experiences on ground with a partner nation's people and
leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone
interested in working the last three feet of Foreign Relations.
(00:24):
To contact the show, e-mail us at ca.podcasting@gmail.com or
look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at
www.dubbacivilaffairsassociorg. I'll have those in the show
notes. Please welcome Dan Spekashni,
founder of FP21A research and advising group focused on
reforming how the State Department conducts US foreign
(00:46):
policy. Dan started on the Hill working
congressional policy, then was adiplomat for the State
Department. Since then, he formed FP 21 to
help the State Department improve its organizational
processes. This is Part 2 of A2, part
series. If you missed the first half,
check out last week's episode. Otherwise, enjoy.
(01:08):
I think the NSC has grown far too large and is being asked to
play a role with it, which it's kind of really struggle to play.
And by the way, there happens tobe no congressional oversight of
the NSC, no appointments. So it's really an abdication of
congressional responsibility to leave our foreign policy to be
created by the Executive Office of the President.
That's kind of a strange set up.You know, my favorite theory
(01:29):
about why this is happening is because there's a long history
of presidents who are frustratedwith the State Department's
ability to really define actionable foreign policy and
execute it to get the job done. I could throw a lot of quotes at
you. JFK called the State Department
a bowl of Jelly. Nixon called diplomats a bunch
of eunuchs. Richard Holbrooke wrote this
(01:50):
famous article in the first issue of Foreign Policy
magazine. He called the State Department
the machine that fails. So this is bipartisan, getting
worse over time and continuing to this day.
And there's an interesting political partisan effect here
if the president doesn't feel like they have good control over
their agency. Democrats and Republicans
(02:11):
actually take different approaches.
Democrats add layers. They don't want to get in
trouble with the workforce, so they appoint special envoys.
They create new commissions. They create new.
Advisors and reduce risk by spreading it through layers.
That's right. And it's a response to not
feeling like they have enough control over what's happening in
this bureaucracy across town. Republicans, on the other hand,
(02:34):
try to thin layers. They do reductions in forces.
They try to cut out bureaus and offices.
They try to centralized control among fewer people rather than
spreading the peanut butter in amillion different places.
But it comes from the same placeof frustration that this
organization is being given a task and isn't executing it
satisfactorily. There's a million people to
(02:55):
blame about why American diplomacy hasn't gone well.
And all those answers are right.But I want to keep State
Department accountable and say, well, actually the State
Department has agency here and it needs to do a better job of
creating effective strategy processes, executing its goals,
demonstrating to the president of both parties, we understand
(03:17):
your goals, we understand your mission.
We're going to get the job done no matter what.
We're going to run through wallsto get this done.
Like the last administration hada heavy State Department and a
sea presence and a very different way of looking at
policy and practice. And now this new administration
been DoD heavy and my concern isthat the foreign policy agencies
(03:37):
have become politicized and as when the.
Administration or another? Comes in or out, it actually
harms everyone because. Both sides are weakened.
It's less able to. Cooperate.
Yeah, that's right. Let me say something positive
about the State Department. One of the coolest features of
diplomacy is what's called chiefof mission authority.
So in the embassies, the ambassador has chief of mission
(04:01):
authority, so they're responsible for every American
government official in country, and they organize all those
activities in what's called the country team.
The defense attache serves underthe ambassador, and those
meeting rooms can be some of thebest places in government.
The ambassador really has control, understanding,
knowledge, coordination across what's happening within.
(04:24):
Their little. World that they own within this
country to really do what needs to be done.
But The thing is, policy isn't made in the country team.
The country team is kind of the last step.
They can inform what's happeningin the National Security Council
or in the bureaus and hallways and offices departments of
Washington, DC, but they don't control it.
(04:45):
So there is this model, this coordinating model that's really
great, that really works. That could be some sort of
lesson from which to build if wewere to bring it back to DC.
Like an Iran policy country teamstyle meeting where you have an
ambassador that's the Iran lead that brings in people at his
level that would work on the policy level issues, something
(05:06):
like that, that's. Exactly right.
And some will say, well, that's the national security process,
Dan, Yes. But when something gets to the
NSC, it's at such a high level, you're getting assistant
secretaries, under secretaries, cabinet secretaries.
It's not the day-to-day work of,OK, what are we actually doing
in the field? Big picture strategy stuff.
(05:28):
And it tends to create a very top down process.
Well, we know best. Here's what you all need to do
to get the job done. So there may be ways to kind of
replicate this model at lower levels in the bureaucracy.
So you're really from soup to nuts, creating coordination
across instruments of national security, power projection,
rather than just waiting until the crisis throws up.
(05:50):
OK, now we've got to figure out what to do here.
Let's bring the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State
together. That's not really like a
coordinating meeting. That's something else.
And that's always painful because then they make these
broad statements. We're going to do this, this and
this, and everyone's got to racearound and try to figure out how
to publish it. I get it to build these cross
agency cells that actually create those options that make a
difference. Yeah, there's a lot of
(06:11):
complexity here. I mean, you need to get into,
well, who has authorizing authority within these
coordinating groups? Are the budget processes
aligned? So the group comes up with a
brilliant idea and they take it back and their budget people
say, yeah, cool, we'll get it ina couple of years when the
budget cycle rolls back around. So, you know, really enable more
cross functional coordinated instrument of decision making is
(06:34):
going to require a lot of attention, but it's necessary
because the old model is not working.
The status quo is not sufficientand it's dangerous for us.
Right. So beyond fixing the FSI
building doctrine, maybe changing the focus, build out
either strategy or enabling policy, is there anything else
(06:55):
that you see as something worth chasing after to build a better
State Department? So to conceptualize FP21's work,
we've thought about a very simplified version of the policy
process in foreign policy. It has five stages.
Recognizing this is a simplifiedmodel.
First stage is information collection, knowledge
management. Second stage is you do analysis
(07:18):
of that information. Third stage, you make decisions,
you create strategy. Fourth stage, you think about
how to monitor, evaluate, and learn from that strategy as it's
being implemented in the field. How do we adapt and pay
attention to what's working and what's not?
In the final stages, you feed the learning from the
penultimate stage back into the workforce.
(07:39):
How do we promote the right people who are actually good at
the job? How do we train the new
techniques that we've learned along the way or pivot away from
the old technique? We recruit the right people with
the right skills for the next time around and then the policy
kind of starts over. So at each of these stages we've
tried to think of what would it take to create a more holistic,
more effective policy process. We are really focused on an
(08:02):
evidence based decision making process.
So in the first stage, for instance, the Department of
State is really nothing if not aknowledge producing institution.
All of decision making has to come from the knowledge that
people have in their heads or written down in their cables
about how the world is working and what they think is going to
change it. And yet there's really no good
(08:23):
centralized system of sharing information in their bureaus.
At the State Department. People literally file a lot of
their information in their Microsoft Windows folders, which
is a horrible method for sharinginformation.
I thought cables were supposed to do that?
Yes, but cables are really aboutthe field talking back to the
bureaus and the Bureau was giving instructions to the
(08:45):
field. So it tends to be a little bit
more formulaic. OK, there's what are we seeing
in these countries and then DC telling the field, here's what
we're going to do about it. But that's a tiny, tiny little
slice of the work of diplomacy. There's all of these strategy
discussions and policy decisionsand talking points and meeting
memos. There's a huge memorandum
(09:07):
infrastructure at the State Department run by the executive
secretariat, which doesn't appear in the official cable
process and is not searchable. And by the way, the cable
archives, which should be the easiest thing in the world to
search, are essentially unmanageable.
You can't dig in. That seems to be where your
lessons learned would be. It should be is in the within
the cables. And nobody can find their old
(09:27):
cables. It's just not something that's
really done at the State Department because it's like
1990 Fives version of Yahoo search engine where you're
turning up a bunch of junk rather than 2025 version.
Actually, the same person that you're speaking to has appeared
8 times. Here's what they've said, here's
how their position is evolved. There should be a really
exciting knowledge platform on analysis, on decision making, on
(09:52):
learning. There's all these modern
techniques that are really standard that just haven't been
integrated into the State Department structure in
workforce management, which is kind of a hot topic with the
Trump administration talking about really wanting to focus
more on merit. There are best practices.
And the State Department is justkind of behind, still holding
(10:13):
tightly to this idea what foreign policy is an art form.
And we'll identify our own artists and don't try to control
us, don't try to give us any doctrine.
So they've missed the boat, I think on a lot of advancements
that are really standard practice in other places.
This is the type of conversationthat we try to generate and the
type of research that we try to advance it up between 21.
(10:33):
It sounds very similar to what was her name, Linda.
Thomas Greenfield, Yeah, LTG He.Was a down to business kind of
young lady when I met her, she was cool.
It was one of those where she came to Afghanistan.
You got 5 minutes, you get 5 minutes to ask question.
And so we talked about the growth of the State Department
where she sees growing and she was all about wedding out people
(10:54):
that were quickly hired in that weren't fitting well, that
weren't doing the job right and get them out of the State
Department so she can grow proper professionals.
I would imagine that she would be supportive of something like
this because she had a sense of process.
And I think it's because she hada personnel background.
Yeah. So when I look at your five
(11:15):
piece pattern, it's a forensics pattern.
This is what a legal person would do to build a case or to
research a crime scenario. This is what anyone who's
starting to open a market would go after.
And then, of course, feeding that back into the start of your
research. At the end, it's just quality
maintenance and management. So it makes a lot of sense.
(11:39):
And I'm a little surprised that there isn't more writing on
these things like information collection.
I mean, we mentioned that the cables are a mess, but the memo
system should also be somehow canonized so that it makes sense
and not just disappear someone'scomputer crashes.
Yeah, it's a little bit better than just disappear if the
(12:00):
computer crashes, but it's not searchable for other officers
around the building. Memo writing and analysis is a
great example. Intelligence Community Directive
2O3 Analytic Standards is intelligence analytical guidance
for all analysts. Memo writers.
Must be a style guide. It's more than a style guide.
It's it's tradecraft. It's here's how you write a
(12:21):
memo. There's a graph in there that
says if something is highly probable, that's 80 to 90%
likely to happen. If you say something is
possible, that's 30 to 40%. There's rigorous coded
tradecraft, as the intelligence community calls it, for how to
write analytical memos. This is sent over to the State
Department in vast intelligence reservoirs.
(12:45):
And there's no similar guidance for cable writing, digestion of
this information. There's no training on it.
What does it mean that somethingis 50% confident in our
conclusion? Policymakers aren't ever really
asked to digest what that actually means and how to
operationalize that in a policy setting.
Does FSI teach memo writing or standardization?
(13:05):
You've got to have there's got to be a style guide.
At least it's State Department for writing.
You would be pretty surprised. Yes there's a style guide.
It's Times New Roman size 14, double spaced.
Here's your headings. There are a lot of informal
guides. I remember when I was in
Pakistan, the DCM of Mission Islamabad, Dick Hoagland had his
(13:28):
famous style guide of don't use passive voice, make clear
declarative statements. But I think that there was a 2
hour memo writing class when I joined a 100 as a foreign
service officer. And then it's kind of like good
luck. Are you writing these memos for
accuracy? Are you writing them because you
want them to be widely read and they should be entertaining?
(13:49):
Do you want to use journalistic ethics of citing your sources?
Or do you want to use narrative storytelling and tell a
wonderful story whether or not it's true?
Because you're trying to come a point, there's not a style guide
that speaks to real tradecraft for it.
So I think you lose a lot of thepotential.
It's exactly the type of thing that State Department should
have. Here's how to communicate your
(14:11):
knowledge back to Washington. Or here's how to create a policy
memo. As you say, not a ball and chain
that's going to say here's how you pour your coffee, but clear
precepts. To make it easier for people to
figure out what they're good at,what they're not.
Exactly. On this point, if you don't know
what you're trying to accomplish, merit becomes kind
of disconnected from success. So you start distorting the
(14:35):
incentives of the workforce. Well, my job to get ahead isn't
to necessarily solve problems orcreate solutions.
Maybe it's to keep my head down.Maybe it's to kiss my boss's
butt. Maybe it's to be popular.
So you start to create these really biasing incentives within
organizations that don't do a good job of setting clear
(14:58):
standards for what effectivenesslooks like.
And I think that that's what's happened at the State
Department. I always thought of state as is
all relational. If you had a good relationship
with your boss, they'll be put in contact with other people
with other opportunities. You'll get those better
handshakes and then you go off to better posts.
Versus people who may be really good at their job but are
(15:19):
socially awkward or just not a fit for their boss, actually
kind of suffer in their tours orin their careers.
Yeah, It's often not popular to say, hey, this policy is a
terrible idea, we need to do something different.
That's not a winning strategy toget promoted to the State
Department. But that is kind of the voice
that you want sometimes within your infrastructure to say this
(15:40):
is going to fail and I know it, and we need to do something
different. And everybody listen to me.
That's not rewarded right now, and that's a real shame.
How come INR is such a wild horse in the intelligence world
then? Because they're the only ones
that said no, Iraq is a flu. We don't agree with the
findings. It would have been horrible if
they were wrong. But this time they were right.
(16:02):
So they get to look home, their hair and look good.
Yeah. Are there practices different
than the rest of State Department?
Because they do seem to have a lot of respect in the
intelligence. Community yeah, and are his
beloved at State Department and elsewhere.
I think that analysts serving across the river, as you know,
some office complex somewhere who don't get illy interaction
(16:25):
with policy makers are really put at a disadvantage.
They don't understand the conversation in the same way
they don't have direct conversational access to the
people in the field who are implementing the policies.
So they have a harder time, I think, connecting their work to
the stream of what's actually happening.
(16:46):
And it's easier for them to kindof like go down rabbit holes
that may not be so interesting for policy makers.
The analysts at INR are just down the hall from many policy
makers and they get to really interact often on a daily basis
with the people who are thinkingabout these questions.
And I think it creates a much healthier conversation both for
the policy makers and the analysts when actual
(17:08):
forward-looking policy questionsare being stress tested against
the intelligence analyst expert whose job it is to read the
Intel stream. So I think that they benefit
from their position within the bureaucracy.
I wonder if that could be codified within State Department
as a reform to build that ability to walk down the hall
and pick your analytical work, whether you're working sanctions
(17:30):
or on proliferation or whatever,and be able to go down the hall
to someone and ask those questions compared to what
policy you're working on and then take it back.
Because I think that would be a very positive for State
Department. Yeah, I think so.
Creating connectivity between intelligence analysts who have
rigorous analytical approaches and policy makers who have never
(17:53):
been given rigorous analytical approaches is going to make both
sides better. Particularly, I think it's going
to make the policy makers better.
I think we do a real disservice to our policy makers by calling
them as something different thananalysts, as if their job isn't
an analytical job. I think it's really worth
digging into what do we really expect the differences between
an intelligence officer and a policy maker, other than the
(18:17):
political stuff, of course. You know, you've got to have
politics. You have to have a connection to
the president who's thinking about the reelection and public
opinion. That's that's really important
in our democracy. I would like our policy makers
to be trained more like intelligence analysts.
That's a good structure to go with and also it would help you
with your decision making because intelligence has a very
strong decision making structure.
(18:37):
That's exactly right. And they have accountability
processes, They've got red teaming, they've got almost like
a peer review process. It's not a consensus process,
but it's a peer review process which is different, where people
can kind of look over your shoulder and say, show me the
evidence upon which this conclusion is based.
It seems like your analytical finding here is flawed.
Not I completely disagree with you and your idea is dumb, but
(19:00):
let's go to the evidence. You're allowed to have a
divergent opinion and it's celebrated but just defended on
the evidence. There's not that same
expectation of policy makers. Policy memos don't often include
references or rarely include citations to evidence or
intelligence, which is, I think,strange.
All right. There anything else on your
research and evidence based foreign policy you want to
(19:22):
discuss? Yeah, just one broader point on
politicization. I think it's really important to
talk about the importance of having career professionals at
some level in the bureaucracy. And it's an administration's
choice, the extent to which theywant to rely on their political
appointees versus their career folks.
(19:42):
But the career folks really needto differentiate themselves, I
believe and say here's our particular value add.
It's not just years of experience, what we've been
doing it longer. It's we've got techniques, we've
got trade craft, we've got doctrine.
I have a particular set of skills which is going to be
different than everybody else onthe outside.
(20:03):
Right now, I don't quite think we have that.
I think that when writers and think tanks are doing research
and putting out new policies on China, they can slip very easily
into the State Department bureaucracy as mid to upper
level political appointees because they kind of do the same
sort of stuff that the career folks do.
So I think we really need to carefully think about.
(20:26):
What is the underlying work thatwe need professional,
nonpartisan career foreign policy professionals to do?
What's their differentiated value add?
And how do we build a system that really supports them,
recognizing that a president should always have their
political authority, of course. But it's also an opportunity to
start growing that type of professionalism that's needed.
(20:48):
It does differentiate a political appointee versus a
career ambassador, career foreign service officer.
Have you had a lot of reach intothe State Department?
Yeah, we tend to have a lot of mid level folks reach out to us
and say, oh, I'm working on knowledge management or I'm
working at FSI and the new Provost's office and I've been
reading your work and I'm reallyinterested, let's chat.
(21:10):
I've got an opportunity to maybetweak this process or reform
this process and I want a thought partner.
So that's usually where we do our best work.
Somebody is just looking for a thought partner and we can
support them to ask the right questions and bring the
resources towards the right problem.
It's quiet kind of behind the scenes sort of work, of which
there's almost no other institution doing that for the
(21:32):
Department of State today. That can be kind of an outside
objective voice that's not trying to win a contract or get
appointed to a job. That's just, hey, we want the
best for you. Ask some questions.
So we've got wide connectivity throughout the State Department
at the mid levels. We've had real good connectivity
with this congressional Commission.
So Congress is kind of on this and they've talked to us a
(21:54):
number of times to say, OK, how can we align this work to get
something done. There's a new effort in Congress
try to reauthorize the State Department.
It would be the first major reauthorization of State
Department in 40 years. We've chatted with them.
That's an exciting opportunity to really rethink how diplomacy
does its work and how it fits into this national security
process. So when these types of meta
(22:17):
reform issues come up, we often have really great conversations.
If somebody wants to figure out,well, how do we reposition our
China policy, don't ask us, I have no idea.
But for the little niche of process organization, decision
making, we love to chat about that stuff.
So we've tried to be helpful andfound a lot of engagement on
those types of questions. How to train and position
(22:38):
diplomats so that they're successful in those
negotiations. That's us.
You're there. Yeah.
Have you considered writing Ghost Doctrine?
Yes, quite frankly, I would loveto.
We're not resourced for it. Right, it's a lot of work.
It's a lot of work. Yeah.
And I've thought better them do it than us.
Why not just write the doctrine that will build the doctrinal
(23:00):
office? So you guys take this on.
I thought that would be a reallygreat task for the FFRDC on
something like how to negotiate the end of a civil war.
Why don't you guys convene a group of retired ambassadors and
some special envoys and policy makers and military folks and
intelligence folks and bring everybody in a room and write
the doctrine and can kind of nudge you in the right direction
(23:23):
rather than us having to write the doctrine.
If we had the money, if any of your listeners, you know, have a
few $1,000,000 and want to rebuild American diplomacy, I
think it'd be a great investmentin the future of our country.
Who knows, somebody might be enthusiastic and decide is it
possible for civil affairs people to get involved in it?
We love working with folks from related spaces.
(23:44):
We've written with intelligence officials and military officials
to really think about how to break down the divides between
good military work and good diplomatic work.
So yeah, folks are interested inperhaps brainstorming together
or writing something together. We're all ears.
We would love that. Is there any last comments that
you want to give about FP 21 where you're going?
(24:05):
I do want to say about foreign policy in general, just think it
needs to be said. People who go work in government
service care deeply. I know I'm probably preaching to
the choir here, but I don't think it can be said enough
these days. They care.
They want to do good for the country.
They want to do good for the world.
They just want to be given the resources in the direction of
how to accomplish these objectives.
(24:27):
And I think that we can better help government to accomplish
its objectives, to better help the rest of us if we put our
minds to it. So I remain a major supporter in
diplomacy. The importance of our foreign
policy in an administration's right to shift that foreign
policy and shape it in their ownimage, to advance their own
preferences, can come a conversation that can be really
(24:48):
productive, that can set us on abetter path a few generations.
To come. Well, fantastic.
I appreciate you coming on. Thanks for having me on and
thanks for doing the work that you do to have more of these
conversations. It's it's a real joy to chat
with you about it. Thanks for listening.
If you get a chance, please likeand subscribe and rate the show
on your favorite podcast platform.
Also, if you're interested in coming on the show or hosting an
(25:11):
episode, e-mail us at ca.podcasting@gmail.com.
I'll have the e-mail and CA Association website in the show
notes. And now, most importantly, to
those currently out in the field, working with a partner,
nation's people or leadership toforward US relations, thank you
all for what you're doing. This is Jack, your host Tay
(25:32):
tuned for more great eisodes. 1 California podcast.
Welcome to the ONE CA podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines.
ONE CA is a product of the CivilAffairs Association and brings
in people who are current or former military diplomats,
development officers, and field agents to discuss their
experiences on ground with a partner nation's people and
leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone
interested in working the last three feet of Foreign Relations.
(00:24):
To contact the show, e-mail us at ca.podcasting@gmail.com or
look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at
www.dubbacivilaffairsassociorg. I'll have those in the show
notes. Please welcome Dan Spekashni,
founder of FP21A research and advising group focused on
reforming how the State Department conducts US foreign
(00:46):
policy. Dan started on the Hill working
congressional policy, then was adiplomat for the State
Department. Since then, he formed FP 21 to
help the State Department improve its organizational
processes. This is Part 2 of A2, part
series. If you missed the first half,
check out last week's episode. Otherwise, enjoy.
(01:08):
I think the NSC has grown far too large and is being asked to
play a role with it, which it's kind of really struggle to play.
And by the way, there happens tobe no congressional oversight of
the NSC, no appointments. So it's really an abdication of
congressional responsibility to leave our foreign policy to be
created by the Executive Office of the President.
That's kind of a strange set up.You know, my favorite theory
(01:29):
about why this is happening is because there's a long history
of presidents who are frustratedwith the State Department's
ability to really define actionable foreign policy and
execute it to get the job done. I could throw a lot of quotes at
you. JFK called the State Department
a bowl of Jelly. Nixon called diplomats a bunch
of eunuchs. Richard Holbrooke wrote this
(01:50):
famous article in the first issue of Foreign Policy
magazine. He called the State Department
the machine that fails. So this is bipartisan, getting
worse over time and continuing to this day.
And there's an interesting political partisan effect here
if the president doesn't feel like they have good control over
their agency. Democrats and Republicans
(02:11):
actually take different approaches.
Democrats add layers. They don't want to get in
trouble with the workforce, so they appoint special envoys.
They create new commissions. They create new.
Advisors and reduce risk by spreading it through layers.
That's right. And it's a response to not
feeling like they have enough control over what's happening in
this bureaucracy across town. Republicans, on the other hand,
(02:34):
try to thin layers. They do reductions in forces.
They try to cut out bureaus and offices.
They try to centralized control among fewer people rather than
spreading the peanut butter in amillion different places.
But it comes from the same placeof frustration that this
organization is being given a task and isn't executing it
satisfactorily. There's a million people to
(02:55):
blame about why American diplomacy hasn't gone well.
And all those answers are right.But I want to keep State
Department accountable and say, well, actually the State
Department has agency here and it needs to do a better job of
creating effective strategy processes, executing its goals,
demonstrating to the president of both parties, we understand
(03:17):
your goals, we understand your mission.
We're going to get the job done no matter what.
We're going to run through wallsto get this done.
Like the last administration hada heavy State Department and a
sea presence and a very different way of looking at
policy and practice. And now this new administration
been DoD heavy and my concern isthat the foreign policy agencies
(03:37):
have become politicized and as when the.
Administration or another? Comes in or out, it actually
harms everyone because. Both sides are weakened.
It's less able to. Cooperate.
Yeah, that's right. Let me say something positive
about the State Department. One of the coolest features of
diplomacy is what's called chiefof mission authority.
So in the embassies, the ambassador has chief of mission
(04:01):
authority, so they're responsible for every American
government official in country, and they organize all those
activities in what's called the country team.
The defense attache serves underthe ambassador, and those
meeting rooms can be some of thebest places in government.
The ambassador really has control, understanding,
knowledge, coordination across what's happening within.
(04:24):
Their little. World that they own within this
country to really do what needs to be done.
But The thing is, policy isn't made in the country team.
The country team is kind of the last step.
They can inform what's happeningin the National Security Council
or in the bureaus and hallways and offices departments of
Washington, DC, but they don't control it.
(04:45):
So there is this model, this coordinating model that's really
great, that really works. That could be some sort of
lesson from which to build if wewere to bring it back to DC.
Like an Iran policy country teamstyle meeting where you have an
ambassador that's the Iran lead that brings in people at his
level that would work on the policy level issues, something
(05:06):
like that, that's. Exactly right.
And some will say, well, that's the national security process,
Dan, Yes. But when something gets to the
NSC, it's at such a high level, you're getting assistant
secretaries, under secretaries, cabinet secretaries.
It's not the day-to-day work of,OK, what are we actually doing
in the field? Big picture strategy stuff.
(05:28):
And it tends to create a very top down process.
Well, we know best. Here's what you all need to do
to get the job done. So there may be ways to kind of
replicate this model at lower levels in the bureaucracy.
So you're really from soup to nuts, creating coordination
across instruments of national security, power projection,
rather than just waiting until the crisis throws up.
(05:50):
OK, now we've got to figure out what to do here.
Let's bring the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State
together. That's not really like a
coordinating meeting. That's something else.
And that's always painful because then they make these
broad statements. We're going to do this, this and
this, and everyone's got to racearound and try to figure out how
to publish it. I get it to build these cross
agency cells that actually create those options that make a
difference. Yeah, there's a lot of
(06:11):
complexity here. I mean, you need to get into,
well, who has authorizing authority within these
coordinating groups? Are the budget processes
aligned? So the group comes up with a
brilliant idea and they take it back and their budget people
say, yeah, cool, we'll get it ina couple of years when the
budget cycle rolls back around. So, you know, really enable more
cross functional coordinated instrument of decision making is
(06:34):
going to require a lot of attention, but it's necessary
because the old model is not working.
The status quo is not sufficientand it's dangerous for us.
Right. So beyond fixing the FSI
building doctrine, maybe changing the focus, build out
either strategy or enabling policy, is there anything else
(06:55):
that you see as something worth chasing after to build a better
State Department? So to conceptualize FP21's work,
we've thought about a very simplified version of the policy
process in foreign policy. It has five stages.
Recognizing this is a simplifiedmodel.
First stage is information collection, knowledge
management. Second stage is you do analysis
(07:18):
of that information. Third stage, you make decisions,
you create strategy. Fourth stage, you think about
how to monitor, evaluate, and learn from that strategy as it's
being implemented in the field. How do we adapt and pay
attention to what's working and what's not?
In the final stages, you feed the learning from the
penultimate stage back into the workforce.
(07:39):
How do we promote the right people who are actually good at
the job? How do we train the new
techniques that we've learned along the way or pivot away from
the old technique? We recruit the right people with
the right skills for the next time around and then the policy
kind of starts over. So at each of these stages we've
tried to think of what would it take to create a more holistic,
more effective policy process. We are really focused on an
(08:02):
evidence based decision making process.
So in the first stage, for instance, the Department of
State is really nothing if not aknowledge producing institution.
All of decision making has to come from the knowledge that
people have in their heads or written down in their cables
about how the world is working and what they think is going to
change it. And yet there's really no good
(08:23):
centralized system of sharing information in their bureaus.
At the State Department. People literally file a lot of
their information in their Microsoft Windows folders, which
is a horrible method for sharinginformation.
I thought cables were supposed to do that?
Yes, but cables are really aboutthe field talking back to the
bureaus and the Bureau was giving instructions to the
(08:45):
field. So it tends to be a little bit
more formulaic. OK, there's what are we seeing
in these countries and then DC telling the field, here's what
we're going to do about it. But that's a tiny, tiny little
slice of the work of diplomacy. There's all of these strategy
discussions and policy decisionsand talking points and meeting
memos. There's a huge memorandum
(09:07):
infrastructure at the State Department run by the executive
secretariat, which doesn't appear in the official cable
process and is not searchable. And by the way, the cable
archives, which should be the easiest thing in the world to
search, are essentially unmanageable.
You can't dig in. That seems to be where your
lessons learned would be. It should be is in the within
the cables. And nobody can find their old
(09:27):
cables. It's just not something that's
really done at the State Department because it's like
1990 Fives version of Yahoo search engine where you're
turning up a bunch of junk rather than 2025 version.
Actually, the same person that you're speaking to has appeared
8 times. Here's what they've said, here's
how their position is evolved. There should be a really
exciting knowledge platform on analysis, on decision making, on
(09:52):
learning. There's all these modern
techniques that are really standard that just haven't been
integrated into the State Department structure in
workforce management, which is kind of a hot topic with the
Trump administration talking about really wanting to focus
more on merit. There are best practices.
And the State Department is justkind of behind, still holding
(10:13):
tightly to this idea what foreign policy is an art form.
And we'll identify our own artists and don't try to control
us, don't try to give us any doctrine.
So they've missed the boat, I think on a lot of advancements
that are really standard practice in other places.
This is the type of conversationthat we try to generate and the
type of research that we try to advance it up between 21.
(10:33):
It sounds very similar to what was her name, Linda.
Thomas Greenfield, Yeah, LTG He.Was a down to business kind of
young lady when I met her, she was cool.
It was one of those where she came to Afghanistan.
You got 5 minutes, you get 5 minutes to ask question.
And so we talked about the growth of the State Department
where she sees growing and she was all about wedding out people
(10:54):
that were quickly hired in that weren't fitting well, that
weren't doing the job right and get them out of the State
Department so she can grow proper professionals.
I would imagine that she would be supportive of something like
this because she had a sense of process.
And I think it's because she hada personnel background.
Yeah. So when I look at your five
(11:15):
piece pattern, it's a forensics pattern.
This is what a legal person would do to build a case or to
research a crime scenario. This is what anyone who's
starting to open a market would go after.
And then, of course, feeding that back into the start of your
research. At the end, it's just quality
maintenance and management. So it makes a lot of sense.
(11:39):
And I'm a little surprised that there isn't more writing on
these things like information collection.
I mean, we mentioned that the cables are a mess, but the memo
system should also be somehow canonized so that it makes sense
and not just disappear someone'scomputer crashes.
Yeah, it's a little bit better than just disappear if the
(12:00):
computer crashes, but it's not searchable for other officers
around the building. Memo writing and analysis is a
great example. Intelligence Community Directive
2O3 Analytic Standards is intelligence analytical guidance
for all analysts. Memo writers.
Must be a style guide. It's more than a style guide.
It's it's tradecraft. It's here's how you write a
(12:21):
memo. There's a graph in there that
says if something is highly probable, that's 80 to 90%
likely to happen. If you say something is
possible, that's 30 to 40%. There's rigorous coded
tradecraft, as the intelligence community calls it, for how to
write analytical memos. This is sent over to the State
Department in vast intelligence reservoirs.
(12:45):
And there's no similar guidance for cable writing, digestion of
this information. There's no training on it.
What does it mean that somethingis 50% confident in our
conclusion? Policymakers aren't ever really
asked to digest what that actually means and how to
operationalize that in a policy setting.
Does FSI teach memo writing or standardization?
(13:05):
You've got to have there's got to be a style guide.
At least it's State Department for writing.
You would be pretty surprised. Yes there's a style guide.
It's Times New Roman size 14, double spaced.
Here's your headings. There are a lot of informal
guides. I remember when I was in
Pakistan, the DCM of Mission Islamabad, Dick Hoagland had his
(13:28):
famous style guide of don't use passive voice, make clear
declarative statements. But I think that there was a 2
hour memo writing class when I joined a 100 as a foreign
service officer. And then it's kind of like good
luck. Are you writing these memos for
accuracy? Are you writing them because you
want them to be widely read and they should be entertaining?
(13:49):
Do you want to use journalistic ethics of citing your sources?
Or do you want to use narrative storytelling and tell a
wonderful story whether or not it's true?
Because you're trying to come a point, there's not a style guide
that speaks to real tradecraft for it.
So I think you lose a lot of thepotential.
It's exactly the type of thing that State Department should
have. Here's how to communicate your
(14:11):
knowledge back to Washington. Or here's how to create a policy
memo. As you say, not a ball and chain
that's going to say here's how you pour your coffee, but clear
precepts. To make it easier for people to
figure out what they're good at,what they're not.
Exactly. On this point, if you don't know
what you're trying to accomplish, merit becomes kind
of disconnected from success. So you start distorting the
(14:35):
incentives of the workforce. Well, my job to get ahead isn't
to necessarily solve problems orcreate solutions.
Maybe it's to keep my head down.Maybe it's to kiss my boss's
butt. Maybe it's to be popular.
So you start to create these really biasing incentives within
organizations that don't do a good job of setting clear
(14:58):
standards for what effectivenesslooks like.
And I think that that's what's happened at the State
Department. I always thought of state as is
all relational. If you had a good relationship
with your boss, they'll be put in contact with other people
with other opportunities. You'll get those better
handshakes and then you go off to better posts.
Versus people who may be really good at their job but are
(15:19):
socially awkward or just not a fit for their boss, actually
kind of suffer in their tours orin their careers.
Yeah, It's often not popular to say, hey, this policy is a
terrible idea, we need to do something different.
That's not a winning strategy toget promoted to the State
Department. But that is kind of the voice
that you want sometimes within your infrastructure to say this
(15:40):
is going to fail and I know it, and we need to do something
different. And everybody listen to me.
That's not rewarded right now, and that's a real shame.
How come INR is such a wild horse in the intelligence world
then? Because they're the only ones
that said no, Iraq is a flu. We don't agree with the
findings. It would have been horrible if
they were wrong. But this time they were right.
(16:02):
So they get to look home, their hair and look good.
Yeah. Are there practices different
than the rest of State Department?
Because they do seem to have a lot of respect in the
intelligence. Community yeah, and are his
beloved at State Department and elsewhere.
I think that analysts serving across the river, as you know,
some office complex somewhere who don't get illy interaction
(16:25):
with policy makers are really put at a disadvantage.
They don't understand the conversation in the same way
they don't have direct conversational access to the
people in the field who are implementing the policies.
So they have a harder time, I think, connecting their work to
the stream of what's actually happening.
(16:46):
And it's easier for them to kindof like go down rabbit holes
that may not be so interesting for policy makers.
The analysts at INR are just down the hall from many policy
makers and they get to really interact often on a daily basis
with the people who are thinkingabout these questions.
And I think it creates a much healthier conversation both for
the policy makers and the analysts when actual
(17:08):
forward-looking policy questionsare being stress tested against
the intelligence analyst expert whose job it is to read the
Intel stream. So I think that they benefit
from their position within the bureaucracy.
I wonder if that could be codified within State Department
as a reform to build that ability to walk down the hall
and pick your analytical work, whether you're working sanctions
(17:30):
or on proliferation or whatever,and be able to go down the hall
to someone and ask those questions compared to what
policy you're working on and then take it back.
Because I think that would be a very positive for State
Department. Yeah, I think so.
Creating connectivity between intelligence analysts who have
rigorous analytical approaches and policy makers who have never
(17:53):
been given rigorous analytical approaches is going to make both
sides better. Particularly, I think it's going
to make the policy makers better.
I think we do a real disservice to our policy makers by calling
them as something different thananalysts, as if their job isn't
an analytical job. I think it's really worth
digging into what do we really expect the differences between
an intelligence officer and a policy maker, other than the
(18:17):
political stuff, of course. You know, you've got to have
politics. You have to have a connection to
the president who's thinking about the reelection and public
opinion. That's that's really important
in our democracy. I would like our policy makers
to be trained more like intelligence analysts.
That's a good structure to go with and also it would help you
with your decision making because intelligence has a very
strong decision making structure.
(18:37):
That's exactly right. And they have accountability
processes, They've got red teaming, they've got almost like
a peer review process. It's not a consensus process,
but it's a peer review process which is different, where people
can kind of look over your shoulder and say, show me the
evidence upon which this conclusion is based.
It seems like your analytical finding here is flawed.
Not I completely disagree with you and your idea is dumb, but
(19:00):
let's go to the evidence. You're allowed to have a
divergent opinion and it's celebrated but just defended on
the evidence. There's not that same
expectation of policy makers. Policy memos don't often include
references or rarely include citations to evidence or
intelligence, which is, I think,strange.
All right. There anything else on your
research and evidence based foreign policy you want to
(19:22):
discuss? Yeah, just one broader point on
politicization. I think it's really important to
talk about the importance of having career professionals at
some level in the bureaucracy. And it's an administration's
choice, the extent to which theywant to rely on their political
appointees versus their career folks.
(19:42):
But the career folks really needto differentiate themselves, I
believe and say here's our particular value add.
It's not just years of experience, what we've been
doing it longer. It's we've got techniques, we've
got trade craft, we've got doctrine.
I have a particular set of skills which is going to be
different than everybody else onthe outside.
(20:03):
Right now, I don't quite think we have that.
I think that when writers and think tanks are doing research
and putting out new policies on China, they can slip very easily
into the State Department bureaucracy as mid to upper
level political appointees because they kind of do the same
sort of stuff that the career folks do.
So I think we really need to carefully think about.
(20:26):
What is the underlying work thatwe need professional,
nonpartisan career foreign policy professionals to do?
What's their differentiated value add?
And how do we build a system that really supports them,
recognizing that a president should always have their
political authority, of course. But it's also an opportunity to
start growing that type of professionalism that's needed.
(20:48):
It does differentiate a political appointee versus a
career ambassador, career foreign service officer.
Have you had a lot of reach intothe State Department?
Yeah, we tend to have a lot of mid level folks reach out to us
and say, oh, I'm working on knowledge management or I'm
working at FSI and the new Provost's office and I've been
reading your work and I'm reallyinterested, let's chat.
(21:10):
I've got an opportunity to maybetweak this process or reform
this process and I want a thought partner.
So that's usually where we do our best work.
Somebody is just looking for a thought partner and we can
support them to ask the right questions and bring the
resources towards the right problem.
It's quiet kind of behind the scenes sort of work, of which
there's almost no other institution doing that for the
(21:32):
Department of State today. That can be kind of an outside
objective voice that's not trying to win a contract or get
appointed to a job. That's just, hey, we want the
best for you. Ask some questions.
So we've got wide connectivity throughout the State Department
at the mid levels. We've had real good connectivity
with this congressional Commission.
So Congress is kind of on this and they've talked to us a
(21:54):
number of times to say, OK, how can we align this work to get
something done. There's a new effort in Congress
try to reauthorize the State Department.
It would be the first major reauthorization of State
Department in 40 years. We've chatted with them.
That's an exciting opportunity to really rethink how diplomacy
does its work and how it fits into this national security
process. So when these types of meta
(22:17):
reform issues come up, we often have really great conversations.
If somebody wants to figure out,well, how do we reposition our
China policy, don't ask us, I have no idea.
But for the little niche of process organization, decision
making, we love to chat about that stuff.
So we've tried to be helpful andfound a lot of engagement on
those types of questions. How to train and position
(22:38):
diplomats so that they're successful in those
negotiations. That's us.
You're there. Yeah.
Have you considered writing Ghost Doctrine?
Yes, quite frankly, I would loveto.
We're not resourced for it. Right, it's a lot of work.
It's a lot of work. Yeah.
And I've thought better them do it than us.
Why not just write the doctrine that will build the doctrinal
(23:00):
office? So you guys take this on.
I thought that would be a reallygreat task for the FFRDC on
something like how to negotiate the end of a civil war.
Why don't you guys convene a group of retired ambassadors and
some special envoys and policy makers and military folks and
intelligence folks and bring everybody in a room and write
the doctrine and can kind of nudge you in the right direction
(23:23):
rather than us having to write the doctrine.
If we had the money, if any of your listeners, you know, have a
few $1,000,000 and want to rebuild American diplomacy, I
think it'd be a great investmentin the future of our country.
Who knows, somebody might be enthusiastic and decide is it
possible for civil affairs people to get involved in it?
We love working with folks from related spaces.
(23:44):
We've written with intelligence officials and military officials
to really think about how to break down the divides between
good military work and good diplomatic work.
So yeah, folks are interested inperhaps brainstorming together
or writing something together. We're all ears.
We would love that. Is there any last comments that
you want to give about FP 21 where you're going?
(24:05):
I do want to say about foreign policy in general, just think it
needs to be said. People who go work in government
service care deeply. I know I'm probably preaching to
the choir here, but I don't think it can be said enough
these days. They care.
They want to do good for the country.
They want to do good for the world.
They just want to be given the resources in the direction of
how to accomplish these objectives.
(24:27):
And I think that we can better help government to accomplish
its objectives, to better help the rest of us if we put our
minds to it. So I remain a major supporter in
diplomacy. The importance of our foreign
policy in an administration's right to shift that foreign
policy and shape it in their ownimage, to advance their own
preferences, can come a conversation that can be really
(24:48):
productive, that can set us on abetter path a few generations.
To come. Well, fantastic.
I appreciate you coming on. Thanks for having me on and
thanks for doing the work that you do to have more of these
conversations. It's it's a real joy to chat
with you about it. Thanks for listening.
If you get a chance, please likeand subscribe and rate the show
on your favorite podcast platform.
Also, if you're interested in coming on the show or hosting an
(25:11):
episode, e-mail us at ca.podcasting@gmail.com.
I'll have the e-mail and CA Association website in the show
notes. And now, most importantly, to
those currently out in the field, working with a partner,
nation's people or leadership toforward US relations, thank you
all for what you're doing. This is Jack, your host Tay
(25:32):
tuned for more great eisodes. 1 California podcast.
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