1414 



have been about 12 such actions smce World War 11.^^^ The problem is 

 a doubly intractable one : with the support of his staff the Secretary of 

 State must somehow deliver credible advice to the President on high 

 policy under the scrutiny of the Secretary of Defense and his staff, the 

 other members, of the National Security Council, and the President's 

 own White House staff; he must also exercise policy coordination of 

 the overseas activities of nearly 20 departments and agencies. The 

 literature is replete with criticisms of the performance of the Depart- 

 ment of State in both directions, and with suggestions for further 

 reorganization to set things right. Much of the attention is directed 

 toward the Policy Planning Staff. 



Writing in 1964, Roger Hilsman was critical of the track record of 

 the Policy Planning Staff. 



New and better knowledge is needed, but how can it be developed? Certainly 

 the attempts to institutionalize the effort within government have not been very 

 fruitful. It was this need for knowledge and foresight, according to Dean Acheson, 

 that led General Marshall when he was Secretary of State to establish in 1947 

 the Policy Planning Staff, a group of about a dozen top-level specialists under an 

 assistant secretary. But in practice, the Policy Planning Staff did not work out 

 to be the panacea some had hoped for. It proved to be a useful pool of talent that 

 could be tapped in time of crisis. ... Its members have also contributed "think- 

 piece" memoranda, which have been neither better nor worse, on the average, 

 than similar thoughtful memoranda written in the action bureaus, in the intelli- 

 gence agencies or by outside scholars and writers. But none of this, no matter 

 how well done, fulfills the concept of a "planning" staff, and yet beyond this the 

 Policy Planning Staff has done very little. 



To Hilsman, "long range planning in foreign affairs" was not drawing 

 blueprints for future operations but "anatyzing the nature of the prob- 

 lem and making broad strategic choices for dealing with it." It was 

 distinguished from short-range planning — "working out the moves 

 and countermoves in the midst of an ongoing situation." Both of 

 these, he said, "are at the political heart of policymaking." More- 

 over, for good and sufficient reasons policy is the product of a political 

 process rather than one of pure logic in a vacuum. Accordingly, 

 attempts at institutionalizing the complete process are likely to fail. 

 "New and better knowledge" can have many sources but the process 

 of applying it to foreign policymaking is a "groping effort at under- 

 standing the nature of the evolving world around us." 



But important though the results of these kinds of effort might be in the long 

 nm, the immediate results would not be any very dramatic improvement in 

 United States foreign policy. The making of foreign policy is a groping effort at 

 understanding the nature of the evolving world around us. It is a painful sorting 

 out of our own goals and purposes. It is a tentative, incremental experimenta- 

 tion with various means for achieving these purposes. It is an unremitting argu- 

 ment and debate among various constituencies about aU of these questions and 

 an attempt to build a consensus on how the United States as the United States 

 should decide on these questions and what action it should take. And none of 

 these several activities is the kind that wiU yield to organizational or institutional 

 gimmicks.''" 



'^« Ibid., p. COl. 



■30 Roger Hilsman, To Move a Nation: The Politics of Foreign Policy in the Administration of John F. 

 Kennedy (New York: Dell Publishing Co., A Delta Book, I'J&l), pp. 566-568. However Hilsman also 

 observes (p. 18): 



So whether one thinks a certain organizational arrangement is "good" or "bad" depends on what 

 one thinks of the kind of policy it facilitates. And this, too, has its repercussions. We have said that 

 policy-making is essentially a political process, by which the multiplicity of goals and values in a 

 free and diverse society are reconciled and the debate over means and ends is distilled into a politi- 

 cally viable consensus on a workable poUcy. But if some organizational arrangements faciUtate 

 certain kinds of policy and other arrangements facilitate other kinds, then organization is also politics 

 in still another guise— which accounts for the passion that men so often bring to procedural and 

 organizational matters. 



