 Hi everyone, I'm Anne-Marie Slaughter. I'm the CEO of New America. I'm delighted to welcome you to our event today on reinventing the State Department. Before we get going, I'm going to hand the virtual mic to Mike Tomaski, the editor of Democracy Journal who is co-sponsoring this event with us. So Mike, over to you. Thanks Anne-Marie and hi everyone, and thanks everyone for coming. Anne-Marie, thank you most of all for hosting this and for writing this great piece. This I'll be very quick, but Anne-Marie and I were at a dinner in, I guess it was April of 2019. It certainly wasn't April of 2020. It was one of those Washington dinner discussions about foreign policy and a couple dozen people, and Anne-Marie had the floor and was making some substantive point. I can't remember what it was, but she finished by saying, but if we do that, then we have to talk about reorganizing the State Department, which hasn't been done since the 1920s. And I have a lot of thoughts on that topic. And as soon as she said that, the light went off over my head and I thought, that's a piece. And so finally here we are. It's exactly the kind of piece that we love to do in Democracy Journal that looks around the corner and takes on serious questions that I think a lot of other publications just kind of don't look at. I just want to add quickly a plug for what we have up on our site currently, a special issue called Trump versus Democracy, which has 35 pieces by various contributors. Speaking of the State Department, Hillary Clinton has a piece in that package. I hope perhaps you'll check it out if you have a chance. But anyway, thanks everyone. And I will pass it now to Candice who will moderate the event. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Anne-Marie. Hi, everyone, I'm Candice Rondeau. I'm a senior fellow with the International Security Program here at New America and a professor with Arizona State University. Really excited to be here today. This is kind of a foreign policy geeks paradise here. We've got some great speakers and we have a great topic. I want to just quickly introduce our speakers and just sort of set the scene a little bit and hopefully we can have a conversation. And then we'll open it up for Q&A so everybody can chime in with your questions, your comments and we'll be tracking that online and hopefully we'll get a few of those in toward the end of our conversation here. So obviously for foreign policy geeks like me, most of the folks here don't really need much of an introduction. Anne-Marie Slaughter, of course the CEO of New America but also most famously the former director of policy planning at State Department which is basically the brain trust as it were of how to do diplomacy in America. And obviously formerly the Dean of what is now at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and president of the International Law Association. Many, many, many achievements and accolades it's probably too long to get into here but obviously Anne-Marie has kicked off the discussion with her piece and I think it's gonna be a really robust discussion. Next we have of course Congressman Ro Khanna and he comes to us from the great Golden State of California and where he represents the 17th district and has done since 2017. Congressman Khanna is formerly the Secretary of Commerce under the Obama administration. He serves on three congressional committees including House Armed Services Committee, Budget Committee and most importantly for this conversation, the Committee on Oversight and Reform which is gonna be a really big piece of whatever happens with the State Department now and in the future. Ambassador Nick Burns is another person who really doesn't need much introduction, very well known obviously in foreign policy circles. He's been one of the leading voices on American diplomacy and America's place in the world. He served for 27 years on the front lines of American foreign policy starting out his career in Cairo, Jerusalem, big Middle East hand, South Asia hand, one of my favorites and has a lot to say I think about this subject. We will not hold against him, his confession on his Twitter feed that he is a Red Sox Nation fan. It's okay. Oh, so am I. Oh, no. Well, we're all I guess this year including the Cubs and the Nationals. So, but nonetheless, baseball aside I think we're gonna have a good discussion here. A big driver for this conversation as Mike pointed out was sort of where we are now with the US role in the world and a lot has changed, not just in the last four years. As you point out, Anne-Marie, in your piece a lot has changed over the last 200 years for American diplomacy. But I wonder what it was that precipitated or triggered for you and maybe we can hear from the others as well. Was there something specific, a set of circumstances and event that made you start thinking about the need to make some changes that the State Department now as opposed to 10 years ago? Well, thanks, Candice. I will have to start my answer by saying actually it was 10 years ago that I started thinking about these issues in the context of the first quadrennial diplomacy and development review that I conducted under Secretary Clinton when she was Secretary of State in the Obama administration. And we had the mandate to write a big strategy review and one of the things that she very much wanted and that Deputy Secretary Jacob Blue also wanted and had been tried before was to make it much easier for mid-career entry into the foreign service. And she indeed said, we really ought to be able to tap more of America's talent, our talent in business, in NGOs, in the academy, faith communities, the scientific community. These are folks we should be able to bring in to be our diplomats at mid-career later than you would normally start in the foreign service. That proved impossible. We tried, we got a lot of pushback from the Foreign Service Union. And ultimately, all we were able to do was make it somewhat easier for some civil servants who had worked on specific foreign policy issues for seven years or more to become a foreign servant. So that was really the genesis of my thinking. But more broadly, in this century, we need to put our very best foot forward as we long have. We've had very, very distinguished diplomats and Nick is one and I know many others. But in this century, if you look at how America engages the world, again, our business leaders, our NGOs, many of whom are side by side with diplomats, if you think of people from CARE or Oxfam or Mercy Corps, all these big NGOs around the world. And then again, our academics and many of the children of our immigrants who already speak languages who go back and forth to their parents' country. They are Americans, American born. There ought to be a way to harness much more of that talent. So I thought, well, it's time to really overhaul the Foreign Service. This Foreign Service was really created in 1925 with the merger of the diplomatic service and the consular service. So I thought I would call for a really radical set of changes where we have a new global service that really has five year renewable terms and people could enter at any stage in their careers. That's a big tall order. Congressman Conna, what are your thoughts on the subject? Well, thank you first of all for inviting me to participate and I have so much admiration for Emery Slaughter and agree with her call. Let me give you a concrete example of why this makes sense. I would argue that more than any American diplomat on coronavirus, when you look at the balance between security and privacy, Tim Cook and Sundar Prachai have far greater say around the world than any of her diplomats. I mean, they're the ones who are designing the apps in terms of what the balance is on privacy and what the balance is in terms of what the government can collect. Now, many people may not understand if they haven't been in the technology world why it is that governments can't design an app that would work on the iPhone without training the iPhone's battery and why you have to have certain apps be interoperable. And they probably don't appreciate that it doesn't really matter what they think if Google and Apple have most of the phones and are making the architecture in a way that is basically dictating what the privacy standard should be. So I give that example to say, if we don't welcome people for example, with technology background into the foreign service or this expanded global service, then we are hamstringing not just American interests we're hamstringing the ability to understand the complexity of what's gonna dictate foreign policy or world affairs. And so I would just focus on that one example as an argument for why we have to expand our conception of the State Department and what foreign service may mean. And that's a great example. I mean, as Ann Marie pointed out in some ways both Tim Cook and Sunder Pratay really represent kind of the best of America. I mean, they're first generation in one case college graduate and the other first generation immigrant. And this brings us to the question I think Ambassador Burns probably has something to say about this of kind of having worked in the State Department you know it 27 years, there's a real challenge not just with kind of the roles but kind of diversity, right? And trying to get America's face represented in all of its multitudes and all of its diversity on the front lines of diplomacy. Well, thank you Professor Rondo very much and thanks to my friend Ann Marie and thanks to Congressman Hanum. I'm pleased to be with you. I agree that the State Department needs to be reformed and specifically the Foreign Service does. There have been just three efforts in the last 100 years where Congress has thought about authorizing the mission and mandate of the State Department 1924 as Ann Marie said 1946. So after the two big world wars and 40 years ago back in a very distant time the beginning of my own career as an intern that's a long time not to think strategically about the State Department. So I'd begin there. I hope Congress in 2021 will undertake conversations and then hopefully passing a bill to authorize the Foreign Service and create a 21st century Foreign Service because right now there's a crisis in the Foreign Service, a crisis of morale. We've lost officers at the senior mid and junior levels particularly in the Trump administration. People have been driven out. They've been discouraged from attending. You saw when the Foreign Service officers were subpoenaed to testify in the impeachment inquiry last autumn they were vilified by President Trump and by Secretary Pompeo and the State Department leadership. I've never seen a crisis like this in 40 years in my 40 years of being in the State Department or out as I have been for a while. And so we need reform. What should that reform look like? We need to think about the mission of the State Department and that's to represent the United States and the American people overseas and over 285 consulates and embassies. We need to think about the mandate that gets to shouldn't the State Department and Foreign Service be the lead in dealing with all countries around the world? We need a new Foreign Service Act. We certainly need a much more diverse Foreign Service. We were talking before we began Professor about the fact that we've gone backwards on African American, Latinx and Asian American representation in the State Department. There are only four African American ambassadors in the world today. That's a dramatic cut in what the Obama and George W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations had achieved. And so we need overall reform. I would say this, we also need to deep politicize the State Department. The United States Civil and Foreign Service is nonpartisan. That's the service that I was in for 27 years. You need to have people who are not Democrats and Republicans who serve the country at State just like we do in the military and the intelligence community. I'll just give you two data points. Right now of our assistant secretaries of State and that's the ambassadorial level line managers of the State Department, there are 26 of them, not a single one is a confirmed, Senate confirmed Foreign Service officer. That's the first time in a hundred years that we've had no Foreign Service officer, Senate confirmed leading the State Department. And the second data point I'll give you is that every administration since the Eisenhower administration has averaged roughly 70% of our ambassadors overseas were career ambassadors, Foreign Service officers and about 30 political. President Trump is down barely at 60% of Foreign Service officers. It's the lowest level. And so we do need to think about the career as an entire career. People need to be trained for technology. Yes, we need a mid-level program and I agree with this and I agree with Anne-Marie on this to bring people into the State Department with those specialized skills. I wouldn't agree, however, with five year terms. We have thousands of young people taking the Foreign Service exam from all of our graduate schools and universities including Arizona State, Princeton and Harvard where the three of us are affiliated. Most of them want to serve a full career. They are willing to do it if we give them the support to do it and they need to be trained not just in technology but languages, China specialists, Africanists, Latin America experts. You can't train someone in four or five years to be the kind of ambassadorial expert we're gonna need at later stages. So I would agree on the main point bring people in from the outside to join but I think you have to keep this full career non-partisan perspective. That's the bedrock of the federal government. So a lot to unpack there. I wanna come back to this issue of kind of five years versus career, whether or not there is some sort of middle road maybe between the two. As somebody who is probably the last of the generation ex folks to actually study Sovietology and Russian when people cared about those things and of course we were kind of off map for a long time. I certainly would argue for myself some early pipeline investment. I think high school is never too soon because you really need to be fluent in culture. You have to be fluent in the language and sometimes that can be difficult to do if you're in your 20s or 30s and you're distracted by other things in life. Anyway, I wanna come back to that but I also wanna ask the question because I think you've hit on something all three of you have hit on something here which is around this kind of challenge of harmonization between defense, diplomacy and development. And we saw that most poignantly in Afghanistan where I spent five years living on the ground watching basically US policy unfold. And I think there were a lot of challenges there. And I think Iraq was another example where this kind of attempt to integrate provincial reconstruction teams the State Department and the military and USAID all in one place proved very challenging. And yet we know that that is kind of the status quo ante for any conflict where you've got a lot of things going on with the counterinsurgency. So I wonder if we could talk a little bit about why it's been so difficult to harmonize the three Ds. We talk about it all the time. It's kind of like your IR 101 is a need to have whole of government responses but is there something that has been particularly challenging? Is it organizational? Is it political? What are the roadblocks Henry? The biggest roadblock is simply the disparity in funding. The Pentagon budget is just many multiples of the State Department's budget. And similarly with foreign assistance even though it may look big, it's still a very small multiple of the Pentagon's budget. So the money is enormous. And I remember in the State Department where we were really trying to work very closely with the Pentagon, but as diplomats I would work with would say that you would go to a meeting with the Pentagon and your counterpart would show up with an entourage of some 20 people who had all done research and were all ready to go versus one or two people in the State Department. So we were often quite swamped. And then sometimes often you would have tensions between State and USAID that also meant even there we weren't able to really show up as two equal pillars to defense. But I do think this is connected to the need for reforms in the foreign service. It's not the whole thing, but we really if we're serious about diplomacy and development then we just have to put our money where our commitments are and that means really shifting funds from the Defense Department or finding new ways of funding the State Department and USAID. But here's the thing, if you look at our ability to tackle global problems, let's think right now about global health or certainly climate change or access to energy, food, water, counterterrorism, lots of big global problems. A lot of where the United States has resources are again the private sector, many, many corporations around the world recognizing they can't work if the circumstances aren't conducive to local health and the health of their own employees. But again, lots and lots of NGOs, lots of universities. So we have a tremendous amount of influence and resources in sectors other than government. But it was my observation that even very talented foreign service officers precisely because they'd spent their whole career in the foreign service weren't really trained or sort of provided with the culture of different sectors and the contacts in different sectors to bring together the kinds of coalitions I'd like to see. I mean, if you're talking about right now a vaccine for COVID, you'd wanna be talking to pharmaceutical companies to healthcare NGOs, certainly to international organizations where we are quite skilled, but also to scientists and doctors. And so I'm imagining a way of strengthening us on the diplomatic and particularly the development side that would again, assume we had people representing us who had tons of former business associates as their colleagues or former civic folks in the civic sector or in the university sector. And that's something that a 30 year career in the foreign service makes it not impossible but harder to do. Really interesting points. And in fact, you mentioned actually, I think in your piece, the kind of challenge with USAID and where it sits in the cabinet, right? And that kind of makes me wonder a congressman, Hannah, you're the man with kind of your finger on the pulse of how money gets spent and allocated. Do you see in this kind of new future of potential American restraint as you've pointed out, I think in your LA Times piece a little while ago, does American restraint then mean we have a rebalancing of the defense budget versus the diplomacy budget and what does that look like in your view? What I've advocated is for military restraint unless a direct threat to the United States, but that would mean more active engagement on the diplomatic front, more active engagement in terms of empowering other nations where we can be strategic with our aid. So I think that restraint in the military should not be confused with isolationism. I think America has a strong obligation to lead, to build alliances, to help make sure that we're promoting our values, which I still believe on freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and freedom of press are values that have universal worth. I think the challenge in candidly is that when you see so many parts of the American politics, so the American body politic, feeling that they have not had a fair shake, feeling that globalization and deindustrialization have left them behind, that they don't feel a access to the American dream that their kids are having to leave the communities they grew up in, then it becomes hard to marshal a consensus for outward-looking action. And so in my view, the problem of solving global problems is inextricably linked to the breakdown of our democratic ability to solve domestic problems and how we figure out a place-based economic strategy in getting people more of a stake in today's contemporary economy, I think is linked to developing greater consensus for the type of increases in USAID or foreign engagement that we need. Absolutely valid. I mean, this question of why spend money on schools in Afghanistan or in Bangladesh when we need schools here at home. I mean, this is a big debate. Ambassador Burns, I think you also probably have some perspective on this, especially I'm curious if you can pull from your experience really specifics on where this kind of inability to navigate, not have the resources, right, for diplomacy has really been a stumbling block for you or that you've seen in your personal experience. Well, I agree very strongly with Congressman Hanna what he just said. We need to think of our diplomats as our front on point representatives of the American people and we ought to be exhausting diplomacy before we even think about the use of force. Since 9-11, we've been in two very expensive, very bloody, very costly land wars. 19 years in Afghanistan, we're still in Iraq so many years later. And we've got to learn the lessons that we've got to think about other solutions to these global problems. And as Anne-Marie has said, think about the agenda for the next couple of years is to recover from the pandemic, is to recover from this terrible recession that we're in, is to do something about climate change and go back into the Paris Climate Change Accord, work on the whole range of transnational problems. Those are not, they don't lend themselves to military power. We need the military. We need the intelligence community. We need the State Department out front, Foreign and Civil Service and the State Department's two-week. Another data point we've been spending for the last 10 to 15 years, about $700 billion a year on our defense. We spend about $54 billion a year on the State Department, on USAID and all US foreign assistance. We just think about the dichotomy there. I'm not arguing that the State Department deserves and USA 700 billion, but it does give you a sense of our priorities. And the last thing I'll say is that we at Harvard have been working on a report for over two years now. Four of us former Foreign Service officers, Marcie Reese, Nancy McEldowney, Mark Rosin and myself is to think through, how do we put diplomacy first? How do the American people lead with that first? Why would that be, we think it's in our interest. Why would it be in our interest and what kind of reforms do you need to make? I would use the word, we need to reimagine the State Department. I agree with what I really like about Ann Marie's piece and Ann Marie in general is such a creative thinker is, this is a time to reimagine, revive and rebuild. We can't just use the playbook of the last couple of decades and we do need radical change. We ought to have a reserve core in the State Department that Congress would authorize and fund so that when we have a Haiti earthquake or a major global pandemic, we've got people trained from our society who can come out of their jobs and contribute to the government. We need this mid-level core to bring in specialized people and specialized topics and technology is one of them, but we also need to reinvest in our core foreign service officers and we haven't done that and we've let them down. So I think it's a big moment. That's why I'm happy to be here today in this discussion. Well, that provides a perfect segue for maybe what will be my last question before we open it up for Q&A. And I wanna encourage folks, if you haven't put a question in the Q&A column, please do, we have some folks tracking that and I will have to put on my older roaming glasses to look at that, but in any case, the segue here that you've kind of provided, Ambassador Burns, is the question of like, how do we get this done, basically? We're talking about doing something, reimagining, reinventing, re-mapping, redesigning, essentially American diplomacy for the 21st century. I think we could argue we are in a situation where we have a multipolar world where US hegemony is not a given and certainly maybe even up for debate domestically in terms of how we view ourselves in the world. So, and we had a kind of, as you point out, 40 years ago around the time when there was major reform in the State Department, there was a triggering event for that. And that was of course, the disastrous attempt, unfortunately, to extract hostages from Iran. A big moment, Eagle One, the big operation that unfortunately also led to a lot of casualties and a lot of embarrassment, but then of course resulted in the complete overhaul of the combatant campaigns, right? And under Goldwater Nichols, which is kind of the gold standard for how change happens in American interagency bureaucracy, there's a perfect example. To do that, of course, you need the conversation to get there publicly, right? It can't just be happening between folks on a Zoom screen. What are the steps? I mean, I'd actually go to Congressman Hanna a little bit to talk a little bit about the role of Congress, but also to you then, Ann Marie and Ambassador Burns to talk a little bit about the role of public and also public institutions in shaping that conversation. So Congressman Hanna, what are the steps to kind of get this moving, get this reform going? Well, candidly reform is very difficult. I mean, I remember when President Obama wanted to restructure the Department of Commerce and in a way that I thought was perfectly reasonable and he had Jeffrey Zients and others look into combining duplicative agencies and having some thing that would promote American competitiveness. And I remember discussion about why certain offices were in certain states. And we were talking about the rate, I was making a presentation on the rate of return and what the efficiency is and what the value to the GDP is. And someone said, you know, kind of naively that's there because so-and-so senator wants it in that state. So the domestic politics in turf and jurisdiction are very real phenomena. So what then can motivate reform? Usually in my experience, it's born out of some form of crisis and unmet need. So we saw of course, after 9-11, the commission recommending massive reform necessary to strengthen our internal security because there were breaches that everyone realized. And I wonder whether this pandemic, whatever one's partisan view, I think it's obvious that America can prepare better for a future pandemic. I wonder whether that may give some impetus for reform. But I think it'll be important to link whatever reform effort we're undertaking to something people feel very immediately as necessary in improving their lives to get Congress to act. Yeah. Figures. So first of all, I just have to compliment Nick who is a brilliant diplomat. And if you'll note, even though he and I disagree on a number of things like the diplomat he is, he's figured out the things we agree on, which is exactly the practice of diplomacy. And Nick, I will also say, I very strongly support your idea of a reserve. My father was in the Navy reserve, every two weeks he would go. And that idea is a very important one and shouldn't be limited to our military. To the idea of how we get this done, I do hope that the pandemic is part of a trigger. Although of course, if you think about 9-11, that was a very, a huge and but very short shock. I mean, the actual event, which was easier, we have so many different things we need to fix that it's hard to imagine that you're going to have the equivalent of a 9-11 commission on overhauling the State Department. On the other hand, I think there's a dramatic need for the US government across the board to be taking advantage of what we can now do because of technology. The US government's been well behind and the actual technology that the State Department uses is deplorable. It's really 10 to 20 years behind the standard. But so I can imagine a Goldwater-Nickels kind of commission, which would have to be prepared by work in think tanks and academic centers as the Goldwater-Nickels process was. The Center for Strategic and International Studies did a lot of work together with members of Congress before there were congressional hearings. But I could imagine a proposal for essentially modernizing the government to both take account of the very different world we find ourselves in post-Cole War, which we really haven't done and to take advantage of what we can now do because of technology. I mean, honestly, as much as I love cables in an era of email and an era of even more instant communication than email, there's a tremendous amount that could be done. So that's how I would probably frame it, not just reforming the State Department, reinventing the State Department, but part of a larger overhaul and government initiative. And I wouldn't tell a new administration to do that right away. I'd tell them to lay the groundwork and do it with Congress because Congress is essential here for all the political reasons that Congressman Kana mentioned. So a conversation, Ambassador, between the public in many different forms in Congress back and forth, right? I think so. And hopefully this can be non-partisan. I know that may be naive to say we can be non-partisan, but we need both parties involved. You have to engage the public. In our Harvard research, I think we've met with now with 400 or 500 members of the public, largely in World Affairs Councils. I'll be with the Cleveland World Affairs Council next week and talk about this. There are a lot of good ideas that come out of the American people, local service organizations, NGOs, and businesses across the country. We're gonna be listening to them. Second, as Anne-Marie suggests, a new administration, and I hope it's gonna be a Joe Biden administration, by the way, has gotta take this on, of a radical overhaul of the personnel system and the structure, the way all three of us have been talking. And I agree with Anne-Marie, not just because I'm trying to be a deaf man, by the way, but I do agree with her, that you can't just produce this in a month or two at the beginning of an administration. This has to be carefully thought through. So the administration needs to commit to it. And third, and I would say Congressman, most importantly, Congress needs to write the laws. To go 40 years without a Foreign Service Act, to actually say, what should the mission be? What is the mandate? Are these, how does this organization succeed? We need Congress, both parties, to weigh in here. This may take one to two to three years, but it'll be worth it. A final point I'd say is, we did this with the military after the failure in Vietnam. The coal and pile generation led it. Goldwater nickels. We did it with the intelligence community after the intelligence failure at 9-11 and on the Iraq War. We've not done this with the State Department and we've gone out and talked to the architects of the military reform and the intelligence community reform. And they tell us, you have to be all in, you have to admit the mistakes and problems that you have. And so part of this, frankly, is the Foreign Service, not as a victim here, but how do we change the culture of the Foreign Service to make it much more risk tolerant and much more proactive? I think that's gonna be a tall order as well, but we badly need this. Right, I mean, some lessons learned. I mean, a lot of past efforts come directly from really examining some very case-specific instances in which there have been these challenges and picking them apart, looking at the anatomy of different challenges and risks and mistakes as they occurred, right, in situ. So I think that's an excellent point. And Ambassador, I'm gonna open it up now for Q&A here. And obviously, I guess your Red Sox nations fan out there, I wanna hear from you a little bit more about the- Finish the last place this year so we need to encourage each other. It's a hard world. It's a hard world for baseball fans this year, I have to say. I watched Moneyball last night and had a moment of nostalgia, but in any case, our questioner asks a very important question, which is actually kind of baseball relevant. How do you rebuild a team that has been broken down, right? We've seen, as you pointed out, as others have pointed out here, over the last three and a half, four years, an absolute decimation of the foreign service. Morale is low, respect for the service itself is dwindling. And I think the point that you kind of put your finger on is a lot of people of color have laughed at four ambassadors of color, African-Americans. For me, a mixed race American woman, that's shocking. So how do you rebuild the trust in communities of color where we need to be recruiting? And how do you incentivize folks to come back into the service? So I'll put that to you, Ambassador, and then maybe Ann Marie and the Congressman. Sure, and I'll try to be brief so my two colleagues can come right in. We need presidential leadership. We need someone who comes along and says, I believe in you. I believe in the public, in public service. I believe in the career professionals, and we don't have that with Trump. You remember when he said that the State Department was the deep state with the Secretary of State standing beside him on the White House press room, and Pompeo did not have the courage to speak up on behalf of the men and women of the foreign service. That was the lowest point for me thinking about what has happened. Joe Biden is a leader who deeply believes in government and strengthening government and in public service. So we need that. But Candace, you're right. With the hundreds of people with whom we've spoken, diversity probably has been the dominant issue, the lack of diversity, the lack of opportunities for people of color to come into the State Department and to succeed. The interesting thing is, Ann Marie and I both teach, and we have three of us teach. You do too. We're seeing a lot of people of color, students, who want careers in the foreign service and in the CIA and the military. And we're actually recruiting through the Pickering, Irrangle, and Payne scholarships a lot of good young people, African-Americans, Latino and Latino officers, we're not retaining them because we're imposing barricades to them, to their career advancements when they get in. Sometimes there's not an acceptance, I think of the kind of acceptance to diversity promotion and inclusion that has to take place. One of the solutions that we've thought about and we've been led to this by people of color, every single person in the State Department when they're evaluated annually on their individual employment report, they can't just be I'm sensitive to equal opportunity, what have you done? What have you done to mentor people and bring them along? And that has to start with a leader, with the president, with the secretary of state and everybody has to be infused by it. It's not happening right now. So I agree with that, but I think this does go to the heart maybe of my disagreement about how radical the reform needs to be because I think it's true that there are plenty of people taking the Foreign Service exam, although again, we all agree that the department now is demoralized and fewer people are enthusiastic about joining. But when I was in the State Department and just more generally after decades working with younger people as a professor and even now, many of the young people, I would say all of them that I talked to, do not think of anything in terms of a 30-year career. In fact, we, their mentors are telling them that they're gonna have multiple, not just jobs, but careers that they should be planning for, constantly learning, constantly growing. When I was dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, I would encourage all of my students to think about working in all three sectors in the civic sector, the public sector, and the private sector. And so I really do think if we want a whole new generation of Americans to join the Foreign Service, we have to make it much easier for them to do so. We have to make it easier for them to get their qualifications in another sector. And there are plenty of people in business who spend a lot of time abroad and are totally fluent in languages. We haven't done so well, even with our Foreign Service officers in terms of the kind of fluency in languages that let our diplomats, for instance, go on foreign television and interview. So that is exactly when I talk about a five-year renewable tour of duty. And maybe it's a seven-year renewable tour of duty. Maybe there is a sort of a minimum length of time you must commit. I certainly recognize the value of that. But I think if we're going to rebuild, we have to do more than just raising the morale and having presidential leadership, both of which I agree with. But we have to really say to a generation of Americans, hey, this is a very exciting thing that you can do in your life, but it's not your whole career. That's right. I mean, I'll just chime in and I want to hear from the Congress as well. I have to admit to being a former Princeton student who benefited from a mid-career sort of transitional program. And I think there is something to that that there are a number of barriers for people of color right now. Cost of college, cost of a graduate education. We cannot forget that those barriers are still there. If you want to undertake a career in international relations, international affairs, you have to be prepared to either go into pretty massive debt today, or you've got to be a pretty stellar outstanding student in one of the hard languages, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, Russian. And those programs are long gone. So I think that that's a very important point about some of the other barriers outside of sort of the standard track for foreign service. Congressman, what do you think about this issue? Well, I think both Ambassador Burns and Henry have thoughtful points. Maybe we can have a hybrid approach, have some folks there for life and have some folks there for shorter terms. That's usually how Congress does things, trying to figure out the compromise, but maybe we could compromise more. But I think that the ambassador's point about the attack on service is a very profound one. I mean, one of the things that I think we forget is how radical Donald Trump's presidency was, someone who's never served on a commission, on city council, coming in as a business person and saying public service doesn't work. The folks who have been elected, the folks who have been serving in the bureaucracy, they have failed you. And then we need a totally different approach and an attack really on this idea of public service, which was very different than most of the previous presidents. And the question is, how do we restore people's confidence, their trust in public service? Knowing that public service is incredibly hard because we are facing economic forces and globalization that is really putting challenges on many parts of the country. We're transitioning to a multiracial, multicultural democracy and struggling to define a common American identity. So I guess the, I think inspired presidential leadership would help, but I think we have a generational challenge of how we redefine a public service in a way that will inspire people in how we have a common purpose, a common American story after the extraordinary polarization. I don't have an answer to that other than to say that it's a daunting challenge. I think hopefully Joe Biden will help us, but I think beyond even one president. Well, you created a great segue. Actually, we have a question here from Brett. Is there still bipartisan consensus that the State Department matters? I think Congressman, you alluded to presidential leadership, but I just wonder if you find partners across the aisle that you can talk to about this, where there is at least some momentum that you can build on perhaps in the next administration. Yes, no, there is. I mean, Secretary Mattis, when he used to testify in front of the Armed Services Committee used to be always an advocate for increased State Department funding. There are people in Congress who recognize the critical role of alliances and the critical role of diplomacy. I had gone with Speaker Pelosi to Munich for the Munich Security Conference, where we had a bipartisan group of legislators. So I think that there can be a bipartisan consensus on the need to rebuild it. But obviously you'd need some public support. And I think this is another question we have from Steve Clemens here. And I think we touched on this a little bit. Americans are tired. We're exhausted by these forever wars. It's 20 years in the Middle East. There's a lot of doubt. We've seen Pew polls about sort of Americans' sense of disconnect with those wars in particular. And maybe not understanding what the trade-offs are when we don't have diplomacy, right? When we don't have the right kind of package for development and the harmonization. So how do you convince doubtful Americans that global engagement really does matter, that it enhances their lives as opposed to undercutting their lives or undermining their future? Why invest in sort of this diplomacy stuff at all? Who wants to take that, Emory? Well, I was gonna let Nick start because you've been out on the hustings actually doing just that. And I've got a few thoughts as well. Go ahead, Emory. I'll follow. I'm happy to do that. So I actually think we need to start more with the America we are becoming. And indeed Congressman Hanna said, we're becoming a multiracial democracy. Indeed, by 2027, there will be no white majority among Americans under 30. So that's not very far away. And then of course by 2045 or so, that will be true of the whole countries. If you look at what that means as a country, we will still be 49% white. Those white people come from all over the place, still lots of immigrants still, but certainly among Americans of color, we are reflecting the world. To me, that is a source of great pride. So the place I would start is really celebrating, not immigrants, these are the children of immigrants, sometimes two generations on, but still very connected to their parents, grandparents country. I'm half Belgian. I grew up going back and forth to Europe. But if I were a Latina, I might be going back and forth to Guatemala or to Brazil, many other places. If I am African American, I may have been here for 200 to 300 years, but I may also have parents who are Nigerian and on it goes. So I would really start by reminding people across the country, look who we are. We reflect the world. It is thus imperative that we engage and I would say even connect the world. And I think there's a whole generation who don't support America, the global policeman, absolutely not, but do support the idea that America can be a force for good in the world and that we can lead in ways that bring lots of other countries together and help solve global problems. Mr. Burns? Well, I say it's a question of just reminding people about their own self-interest in our communities and state self-interest. So many jobs in America now, one of every six jobs are tied to exports of goods or services. The whole security of the country was challenged by 21 young men on 9-11 who broke through all of our security to get in and kill 3,000 Americans and take down the Twin Towers were vulnerable unless we work with the rest of the world in our security. And frankly, in 2020, 2021, you look at the pandemic, we've got to be working around the world to help. That's helped us and it helps people around the world to get out of the recession. We're not going to get out of the recession unless we're working globally as well. So it is a matter of self-interest as well as being the right thing to do. The Chicago Council polls are very interesting here. They show the American public is not isolationist, historically high levels of support, 75% a year ago for NATO in that poll, you can't get Americans to agree the sky is blue, 75% of Americans, but they do agree that NATO is important. But the most recent poll that was just announced by our mutual friend, Eva O'Dowlder show that there is beginning to be a divergence and maybe the Congressman knows a lot more about this between Republicans and Democrats. Trump has had an impact on the Republican party. They're less global, they're less supportive of American engagement, Democrats more supportive. And so that worries me a bit because we do need both parties to be supporting an outward looking foreign policy. Excellent point. And actually speaking specifically to, we could point to US China trade balance as something that is a pocketbook issue for any Midwestern, I'm a former Chicagoan. I know when I get on a plane and I go home to see relatives, the price of corn is talked about and China is pointed to. So I mean, I think that's a very good point. Congressman Hanna, what do you think about getting Americans to understand the connection between their pocketbooks at home, their reality at home and how we look abroad? I think what's Americans understand it, I think unfortunately Donald Trump has painted a dystopian picture thinking that the tariff war is going to bring back these jobs, which the data shows hasn't happened. I mean, the data shows that the trade deficit is worse. The data shows it's actually hurt agricultural communities, hurt our ability to export. It hasn't brought back the manufacturing that has been promised. But he has managed to spin a narrative that a trade war is going to help bring these communities back. And the challenge for the Democratic Party is how do we offer an alternative vision for these communities? I mean, as Donald Trump basically says, you lost your jobs and you lost your jobs because the governing class was asleep for the last 20 years and China and Mexico took the Mexican immigrants to China. It's totally false, but that's the story he's been telling on Twitter, on cable news for the last four years. And the challenge for us is to say, no, we do have a vision for bringing jobs, bringing new jobs into these communities. We recognize these communities have been left out and here is our vision. And you can be part of this global world, global economy where you aren't going to be a loser in it. And I think Joe Biden has a vision for that. I mean, he's come out with policies on investing in new industry, investing in industry across the country. But the proof will be if we do get a chance to lead, how we deliver on that to show people that there is a positive engagement with the world that can benefit them as opposed to a reliance on a nationalist rhetoric that really hasn't moved the needle. Yeah, well, obviously we're gonna need conversations on both side of the aisle going forward. We have one more question. I think we have just enough time to slip in here from Philip McDonough, former Irish ambassador to India and Russia. Some of you may have met him on the front lines here and there. Two questions the former ambassador puts to us. First, is the panel underestimating the convening power of embassies? It's not just about the context of foreign service officers, but also kind of the presence of embassies as a kind of as a place where American ideals can be discussed, pursued, promoted. I think we know post-2011, there are some serious challenges with security for embassies, getting people in, getting people out. What's your view on that? Maybe I'll take Ambassador Burns and then Ann Marie. Well, it's a good question, Ambassador, and thank you for asking it. I think I was ambassador to Greece, as a bilateral ambassador, and then I was ambassador to NATO. And I think the lesson I had to learn is that, yes, the government function, the United States government relating to the host government through the person of the embassy staff is really important. And in some countries it's vitally important, think of China or Russia. But in the spirit of this conversation, the fundamental lesson I learned as ambassador to Greece is that American business, American NGOs, American universities, in the case of Greece fraternal, Greek American organizations, they were the majority of their relationship. And so we felt our job in the embassy was to help them, enable them. So you have kind of a transparent embassy where Americans from different walks of life feel that we can help them, negotiate their way forward, but we really wanted to have them succeed. And I think that's how a lot of our ambassadors in the modern world are thinking, especially in the United States, about the value of embassies. They're not antique. They're not from a vanished world. They're really important, but you've got to understand it's not just about the government's business, it's about a whole of society business. I would agree with that view of what an embassy should be doing. And again, it's one of the reasons I think it should be easier for business or for people from other sectors to actually become the people in the embassy as the foreign service, or as I put it, a global service. But I would also second Kansas' point about security, it really made my heart ache when I was in government. And since then to go to a capital and see an American embassy that looks like Fort Knox, I'm thinking about the new embassy in Singapore, but also in London, places where diplomats themselves would tell me that they would meet their contacts outside the embassy so that the poor person they were meeting did not have to spend all the time necessary to go through the protocols to get them into the embassy. And really as an American and as someone who thinks of our country as open, as welcoming, I think we've wildly over corrected on the absolute need, of course, to keep people safe, but if we can't keep people safe without a bunker, then we need to rethink how we are present because it's not the way I think America should be showing up in other countries. And Congressman, I hate to put you on the spot. Obviously this raises the question. We know what 2011 meant for the security of diplomacy in the past. And I don't think that conversation has been resolved neither in the public sphere nor in Congress. What are the options in terms of changing the face of American diplomacy? So one, it becomes more approachable and also changing kind of the footprint so that it becomes a little bit less threatening and allowing for the kind of engagement that Ambassador Burns and Marie were just discussing. Well, I think the work that both Anne-Marie and Ambassador Burns are doing, which is to link American foreign policy to grassroots conversations is so important. I'll tell you personally, when I was born in Philadelphia and when I was a young person, I went to India to visit my grandparents. And I still remember I was 10 or 12, 12 or 13 at the time. And I was in line with one of my cousins who was not a US citizen, but I was a US citizen and I have this vivid recollection of someone at the American embassy yelling at me saying, you get out of that line, you're not an American citizen. And I had to show them my passport. Of course, when I went being in the Obama administration, I met the ambassador there. But the point is that, as Nick said, the State Department, the embassies are faced to the world. This is most people around the world never get to see an American, but they see their understanding of who we are, of what kind of people we are, is based on their interactions and what they hear from those embassies. And when I was at Munich, the whole Munich conference was called the West versus the rest. And I remember having a conversation, I had asked Prime Minister Trudeau. I said, I was born in Philadelphia in 1976, or by Centenary, and yet my grandfather spent four years in jail with Gandhi. So does that make me a product of the West or the rest? And Trudeau talked about how we have to look differently and multiracial, multi-ethnic democracies. And so what we'll create more trust is to make sure that we value the expertise, because Trump has had a systematic assault on expertise and knowledge, and that's wrong. I mean, you just can't have any person go work at the State Department and have the success that Ambassador Burns or Henry Slaughter has. I mean, you have to have respect for experience expertise, but that experience and expertise has to be rooted in conversations that are organic to a community so that they're not out of touch. And I think that that's what we'll build trust. Conversations, it's all about the American conversation. Well, I think we're at time here. I just wanna thank all of our panelists and also our audience for some really thoughtful questions. I think we're gonna be continuing this conversation going forward and please look out for new announcements from New America and from our panelists about the work we're doing to talk about the reinvention of the State Department and diplomacy in America's place in the world. Thanks.