Booktv interi viewed Hoover Institution fellow kori schake about her book, state of disrepair, which takes a critical look at the performance of the state department. Its next on booktv. Host on your screen is author kori schake, the book is called state of repair fixing the culture and practices of the state department. Kori schake, you write that the department of state employee roster consists of roughly 7800 Foreign Service officers,11,000 Civil Servants and 42,000 foreign nationals. In 09, 16,000 applicants took the written test to join the Foreign Service competing for roughly 1,000 jobs. The people selected have college degrees, 11 years of prior Work Experience before coming into the Foreign Service. Twothirds of people selected for the Foreign Service come in with postgraduate degrees, 80 have lived overseas. Foreign Service Officers are awarded tenure after four years. 95 percent of the serving officers receive ten your. 25 of all our diplomats are concentrated in only 30 countries, more than 2,000 this iraq and afghanistan. The main problem is that even by their own description they are not hiring people who have the skills they say they need for contemporary diplomacy. So theyre not hiring the right people. As you just pointed out, they keep them all, and they dont teach them anything in the meantime. State department expends all of its Training Resources on teaching languages, and yet as the jobs requiring Language Proficiency in the state department, 25 of them by states own reckoning are filled by people who cannot effectively use the language, another 25 by people who are not easily proficient in the language. So they have a 50 failure rate by their own standard on the sole area that they expend their Training Resources on. Its not a Good Business model. Host why is there a 50 failure rate, as you call it . Guest yeah. So the way that the state department, the career progression is that you take a diplomatic post, youre assigned to a diplomatic post for a couple of years, and then after that you go to Language Training and then go someplace else. We dont, we develop generalists in the american Foreign Service. We dont develop experts. So, for example, a talented young Foreign Service officer may be posted in baghdad and then, this is actually an example of someone i know, she will go to a couple of years Language Training and then be sent to beijing. And so host Language Training in arabic . Or in guest she will have had Language Training to go to iraq, but probably not enough so that she would have felt comfortable having a discussion like you and i are now having in the language of the country she was operating in. And then she will get a year or two of Language Training and then be sent to china. Its an extraordinarily profully gate professional development model. Kids come into our School District speaking 132 different languages, we could actually hire people with the skills we want. We dont have to teach them all that. So its a Business Model that you would never start with [laughter] and the culture of the state department replicates, they select people who have the skills of the people already there. So the example that you pointed out, the Foreign Service actually has an admissions rate the equivalent of stanford university. You have as high a likelihood of getting admitted into stanford as you have of becoming a member of the u. S. Foreign service. We ought to be able to pick anyone we want. And the people we pick are very good, but the institution doesnt make them any better over time. And thats something we should fix. Host where do you quote secretary rice, former secretary rice as saying state has pentagon envy . Guest yeah. What she meant by that is that, um, theres a defensiveness to the culture of the u. S. State department that my favorite example of it is secretary clintons quadrennial diplomacy and development review. This is a great thing she did. It was the first time a secretary of state had done it. She did a onceeveryfouryears look at the institution to set priorities. And it was a good first start, but its got a long ways to go before its an effective management review. And one way you can tell that is that secretary clinton opened it by saying, you know, we set out to figure out how to to make ourselves better. And the conclusion they came to is if you only gave us more money and more people, we could be better. Of and so the decision of the pentagon from the state department is they get all the money they want, the work that the Foreign Service does is every bit as difficult and dangerous, and yet everyone likes the military, and theres no constituency for Foreign Policy in this country. Host why dont the American People like the state department . Why dont they think much about the state department . Guest so only two million americans avail themselves of Consular Service overseas every year. So its not a very high number in a country of 310 Million People. So i think the first thing is most americans dont know their diplomats, right . Theyre mostly posted overseas. The Foreign Service institute where they do their training is here in washington, so in spokane, Washington State or duluth, minnesota, they probably dont know them. And the Foreign Service could actually do itself a huge favor by stitching itself more closely into american society. I have some suggestions in the book for ways they could do that. One would be that what american diplomats like about themselves is complicated multinational negotiations. Things like the Climate Change discussions in copenhagen, right . Because its hard, its intellectuallydifficult to master the material, there are lots of moving pieces. What americans actually value about the state department is if your brother gets arrested in el salvador, an american diplomats going to go see him in jail, make sure that hes being treated fairly, insure that the protections that any american citizens should have thinker in the world anywhere in the world or afforded him. And is the state department views that as its least important respondent. The culture doesnt reward it. Its most talented people dont into into consular affairs. There was a study done recently suggesting that so the state department complains that after september 11th so much funding and attention went to security and consular affairs. And yet american diplomats are the first line of defense for protection of our country. Theyre the people who give visas to foreigners who might come to the United States. And the seem who do that are our youngest Foreign Service officers. Its a required first tour, to be posted somewhere doing. Their workload is enormous, and they dont get lots of attention, ask yet they do it fan and yet they do it fantastically. Why doesnt the state department celebrate those young diplomats . Because my mom would actually be thrilled. That would make her like the Foreign Service. But seeing an undersecretary come sweeping out of the copenhagen negotiations doesnt do much for my mom. Host well, corey shock key, for those who have traveled overseas and actually tried to visit one of our embassies, its nearly impossible. Its a fortress. Guest this is actually not the state departments fault. There are the congress out of concern about protecting american diplomats and in particular after the bombings of the american embassies in nairobi, in the clinton administration, congress started legislating much better protection. But it has the dysfunctional outcome that you say. Its actually not making american diplomats safer, because its so difficult to get into an American Embassy that today go out to have their meetings that they go out to have their meetings. So they are less well protecteddal hoe theyre doing their jobs well. Theyre out and about in foreign societies being the america that people see. Host im going to read a quote you have here in your book, tell us who this is from. Washington awoke, a capital at war. The indecisions, hesitations and doubts of the past year, the pretenses and fumblings were gone. Argument other the country and its capital turns to what americans like and do best, action. In a few months, half a continue innocent and 130 Million People were transformed into the greatest military our the world had seen. Host what is that from . Guest yeah. It is dean acheson writing on december 8, 1941, right after pearl harbor. He was at that time the assistant secretary of state for economic affairs, and he was exasperated to see that the state department wasnt with better at its job when he goes on to say further on in that same passage that what the state department needed to be doing was acquiring the resources that a war machine would need and keeping them off the hands of our enemies. And he found the state department singularly unable to do that. Host kori schake, you worked at the National Security council for president george w. Bush be, director for Defense Strategy and requirements. Did you find the same state department that dean acheson found in 1941 . Guest you know, i went to work in the pent gone as my first real job, and one of the things i was really struck by since i didnt grow up in a military family and didnt know the culture, i was really struck that mostly what the American Military is is brilliant teachers. Because they live this an environment where you cant be with good at your job unless you can make everyone else good at their job. And i was the person everyone had to make good at their job. And when i went to the state department 20 years later, i was struck that the people who are successful in the state department are people you can throw into the deep end of the pool, and theyre not going to drown. But nobody ever teaches them to swim with. Moreover, the best of them dont even value swimming lessons was, after all, they didnt drown. And so its a culture that makes very little of the enormous Human Capital it has. And with a little bit of attention and basic management, you could actually realign the incentive structure or and make it as well functioning as the military is. The militarys great at making a lot out of very little. And the state department could be too. We just dont hold them to the same standard. And my argument is to try and show that we shouldnt inherently civilian responsibilities accrue to the military in the way that they have since september 11th. Thats actually bad for our country. We need to make the people whose job it is its important to the world to see civilians doing civilian Foreign Policy. And we actually need to make the state department capable of doing that. Is there a bias against republicans in the state department . Guest i did not find that myself. What i found instead was a culture that, um, that believes itself pray torian in a sense, for example, the Foreign Service complains there was an editorial in the Washington Post about two weeks ago by ambassador pickering and a few others arguing against political appointees being named to senior ambassadorial posts. But theres actually no evidence that political ambassadors are any less good at their job than the career Foreign Service officers. In fact, sometimes they are better because they understand the president s agenda and have the kinds of connections to the white house that allow them to advance the agenda. Very often the state department pulls itself in to believing its job is to protect American Foreign policy against the people who get elected to run the country. And thats of either political bias, political persuasion i should say. And thats just, thats part of the Reason Congress doesnt like them, thats part of the reason they dont resonate with the broader american public. Host in your book state of disrepair, you thank Condoleezza Rice for her help in putting this together. Does she share your viewpoint . Guest oh, well, i wouldnt burden her with all of my views, but she gave me a couple of very good interviews for the book, and i was working at the deputy for policy planning this the state department when she was secretary. So i got to watch her struggle with trying to fix some of these problems. You may remember, though, a notorious incident where she was doing a town hall meeting with Foreign Service officers, some of whom were complaining that they didnt want to be deployed to iraq because it was dangerous. And that, i think that is not characteristic of the people of the Foreign Service, but it is characteristic of the problems that we these to fix and the culture. The people of the Foreign Service are actually terrific. They do dangerous work with almost no attention, and they never have enough resources to do it. But they go out in the world or and try and tell people about the United States and what were doing in the word. So people are terrific. The Institution Needs to get deserving of them, and were not yet. Host what does the deputy for policy planning at the state department do . Guest im so glad you asked that. So the policy planning staff is a small 25person staff that works directly for the secretary, and theyre the kind of inhouse critics. They try and dream up ideas that the bureaucracy itself wouldnt produce for the secretary. They second guess whats going to the secretary. So as you can tell, theyre widely popular. But half of the staff of policy planning are Foreign Service officers, rollsal diplomats who come because they want an opportunity to get away from the constraints of consensual policy making and try and float their best ideas to the secretary. It was really inspiring to work will because the people are fun and exciting. Let me give you just one example. We have someone who did polling about iranian lick public attitudes, people who have ideas that iranians would vote for in their parliamentary election. But, of course, the Iranian Supreme Council vets candidates. So we created fake internet candidates who had the views that iranians wanted to vote for, and tens of thousands of iranians actually voted for them in the election. It was so, such fun mischief to do. And the department was supportive of it. You couldnt have done that from within the bureau of middle eastern affairs, but you could do it from policy planning. And we had at that time a really terrific director, david gordon, who is a career Intelligence Officer who was not afraid of ideas he didnt agree with. And so he was a perfect leader for that kind of outlet. It was a privilege to work for him. Host from state of disrepair, the department of state is deficient in three crucial areas in which the department of defense excels. Mission focus, education and programming. Guest its really true. If you ask the marine corps what they do, youd get a straight answer, right . Every marine is a rifleman. If you asked a diplomat what do they do, its much harder because they have a much more diffuse focus. But it also means that the leadership of the institution is not conveying its core values and central responsibilities. And if you dont do that, people very quickly lose focus. And on the programming part, part of the reason that congress trusts the pentagon with an enormous amount of the taxpayers money is because the pentagon provides a lot of information and makes, does assessments of whether its worth it. So think about Dave Petraeus when he was commanding in iraq during the surge and congress was deeply skeptical that the surge was working. What did the military do . They identified what they thought the right metrics were for which to hold themselves accountable, number of intelligence tips they were getting from iraqis, number of attacks on american troops. They collected data over the course of a whole year. They head that data lick so scholars could second guess whether anyone had better ideas than they did, and it was on that basis that they changed congressional attitudes. The power of ideas and the power of actually proving your case is how to win policy debates with the congress. And the state department doesnt have the bureaucratic machinely to build a budget thats defensible in the way the Defense Department is. And im a very strong deep in my heart, im an insurance actuary, and i think we need clean eyeshade budget tiers who will make the state departments budget as bulletproof as the Defense Departments is. Host kori schake has worked at the National Security council, at the state department. Shears currently at the Hoover Institution. Shes taught at west point, johns hopkins, the National Defense university. How did you get interested in this line of work . [laughter] guest i was a student of condi rices here at stanford. [laughter] yeah, i had grand idea about writing my ph. D. On the renaissance as a latin american novel in the 1970s and what this dells us about the role of the tells us about the role of literature and art in repressive societies. And i did not do that. And congress condi rice is the reason i did not do that. Host one of the recommendations you have is for the state department to reconsider universal the city. Yeah. So we have american embassies in every country that we have diplomatic relations in. And that makes a certain amount of sense. But if you try to reenvision how to spend our resources on diplomacy, its not entirely clear to me that luxembourg would these ap an embassy of its own when belgium is next door, and the European Union does a lot of its diplomatic work this brussels now. So it seems to he possible that given american predominance in the International Order much of the work that we want to do diplomatically, the high politics of statetostate relations, that most hi gets done in washington. What we need american embassies for out in the world are to talk care of americans when theyre traveling ask to be involved in local activities in other societies. So the great democratization that a Communications Revolution and other things of our modern age have brought forward mean that we dont need an embassy in berlin to be talking to the german government, but we need to be out at community meetings, seeing what new Political Parties are doing, working the fbi working with the german counterpart on terrorism issues. A lot of those kinds of things. We dont need embassies to do necessarily. And states doing some interesting experimentation about whether we can have, create Virtual Access centers, for example. Where you really, really need embassies is in societies where there isnt free transmission of information. My favorite example is ambassador ford this damascus in damascus who i think at the start of the Syrian Civil War did an enormously powerful and important job for the United States by going to the funerals of political dissidents who had been killed by the government, showing that Americans Care about that. Giving interviews about what the Assad Government was doing. There are thats american diplomacy at its finest. And thats what we need to free the state department up to be out doing in the world. And kori schake is the author of state of disrepair fixing the culture and practices of the state department. Thank you for joining us on booktv from hoover. Guest its been a pleasure. Is there a Nonfiction Author or book youd like to see featured on booktv . Send us an email at booktv cspan. Org or tweet us at twitter. Com booktv. This weekend on booktv at 4 p. M. Eastern, charles gati and a Panel Discuss the life of former National Security adviser si big knew brzezinski. And then a panel on how the wounded come back from war. Tomorrow on booktv at 10 0 a. M. Eastern, edwin black talks about his book, financing the flames. And at 6 p. M. David folkenflick. His book is murdochs world. For a complete schedule, visit booktv. Org. What ive seen is that in our schools theres been a decline of Character Education and moral education, a kind of move to replacing it with things like selfs chemoprograms or selfesteem programs or various therapeutic programs that are of doubtful merit. Second problem with boys, and there are problems with girls too, but im right thousand talking about the boys right now talking about the boys, is i believe now that boys have become second class citizens in our schools. And their problems are severely neglected. A young man today is far less likely to go to college than his sister. And you look across all ethnic groups and racial groups and socioeconomic groups, and you find the boys are behind their female counterparts. They are far less literate. The average 15yearold boy has the writing skills of a 13yearold girl. Hes reading about a year and a half behind her, and most importantly boys like school a lot less than girls, theyre more disengaged. Now, there may have been a time