1476 



Department's internal deficiencies and diminished its usefulness as a center for 

 exercising overall surveillance and coordination of foreign affairs. Closing the 

 circle, there accordingly results a state of affairs which only strengthens the 

 movement toward broader coverage by the White House . . .^*^ 



The thrust of these critiques appears to be that poUtical officers ex- 

 perienced in the arts of diplomacy concentrate on avoiding dissonant 

 situations, and try to anticipate and prevent clashes of policy, but do 

 not generally interest themselves in creative initiatives to achieve 

 policy goals. The motto seems to be that of Talleyrand: "Above all, 

 no zeal." In practice, this approach favors the treatment of each new 

 diplomatic event or crisis de novo, relying on the arts of negotiation 

 and making no particular use of systematic analysis of causations. 

 To the technologist, committed to the world of cause and effect 

 relationships, this universe of diplomacy is mysterious, perhaps even 

 irrational. Yet the time is at hand to meld these differing skills and 

 philosophies into a working combined operation. In short, the con- 

 clusion seems inescapable that it will in the future be necessary some- 

 how to develop a Foreign Service Corps that contains both scientific 

 diplomats and diplomatic scientists. 



Proposals To Strengthen Technical Diplomatic Machinery 



The 1973 report of the U.N. Association analj^zed in some depth the 

 foreign policy machinery of the U.S. Government and concluded 

 that it needed strengthening in five areas: (1) In the coordinating 

 function of the Bureau of International Organizations ; (2) in the Presi- 

 dential system of foreign policymaking other than military; (3) in the 

 policy staff at the secretarial level of the Department of State, (4) 

 in the Department's functional bureaus (especially Economic, Scien- 

 tific, and Intelligence and Research) ; and (5) in the Foreign Service 

 Officer training program. On these five areas of need the panel com- 

 mented as follows : 



THE STRENGTHENING OF lO 



Because of its primary preoccupation with the relationship between 

 the Department of State and the United Nations s^^stem, the UNA 

 Panel addressed at some length the organizational needs of the 

 Bureau of International Organizations Affairs (10). Excerpts of 

 findings and recommendations on this subject were as follows: 



The general weaknesses of the Department of State are replicated in its primary 

 organ for coordinating U.S. participation in miltilateral agencies — the Bureau of 

 International Organization Affairs (10). (p. 51) 



10 is the repository of a great deal of expertise on the procedural and institu- 

 tional aspects of international organizations. But its substantive expertise is 

 limited in part because the bureau, as with other bureaus in the Department, 

 is staffed primarily by FSOs who are rotated every two to four years. Because 

 the Foreign Service has not emphasized technical and scientific training, and 

 has not given priority to the developing field of multilateral diplomacy, 10 is not 

 one of the places where the ambitious oflScer has most wanted an assignment. 

 Moreover, its better FSOs have not always come back later in their careers. 

 Parenthetically, it may be mentioned that 10 is seriously handicapped in its 

 desire to rotate young or middle-level FSOs to posts in the USUN in New Yoik 

 for useful experience because of inability to compensate for extraordinaiily high 

 cost of living in the city. (pp. 51-52) 



The Bureau is not without leverage over other officials inside and outside the 

 Department. It helps develop and then presents to Congress the budgets for most 

 international organizations including the UN agenciesv It is the agency through 



2" Ibid., p. 50. 



