New Rules for New Enemies

[marct]

Hi Tom,

Although I agree that a ROTC approach to the Foreign Service would have benefits, I will say that barring a fundamental shift (akin to California opening new waterfront properties adjacent to Ft Irwin after the rest falls into the sea) in the way the Foreign Service approaches life. It remains in its heart an organization founded on Ivy league elitism and it maintains a caste system that would make sense in old school S Africa or India.

I have a suspicion that the closest paralel for the current US Foreign Service lies in the Byzantine Empire of the 11th century. The same is probably true of the Canadian civil service as well. Hmmm, maybe that's why Byzantine history isn't really taught in North America...

We are going through the transformation of Civil Service. A larger goal and one easier to manage due to its lesser size should have been creating a National Security Corps that draws all foreign relations oriented organizations into a central being, like we were supposed to have done with Homeland Security.

Maybe I'm being cynical, Tom, but from what I have seen, creating "super-bureaucracies" merely expands bureaucratic empires while reducing the efficiency of individual units operating within them and making them less accountable to the supposed "rulers" of their society (doesn't seem to matter if they are "the People" or an absolute monarch). Consider, by way of an historical example, the ratio of Colonial Office bureacrats in the UK to the population they supposedly "govern" and look at how it has changed since 1850.

I have often thought that it would be a great idea to adapt Roman engineering quality control traditions to bureacratic initiatives...

Marc