The Demilitarization of American Diplomacy ― Two Cheers for Striped Pants

Both an insider and a historian, Laurence Pope describes the contemporary dysfunction of the State Department and its Foreign Service. While the Defense Department and the American military services have reinvented themselves in a decade of failed nation-building wars, the State Department is promising to do a better job of nation-building next time. Its policy functions have migrated to the White House. Secretaries of State largely ignore the State Department bureaucracy, circumventing it with a personal staff. Pope contends that in the information age diplomacy is more important than ever, and that, as President Obama has stressed, without a 'change of thinking' the U.S. may be drawn into more wars it does not need to fight.

Laurence Pope is a retired American diplomat who lives in Portland, Maine, USA. He is the author of several books, including Francois de Callieres: A Political Life (2010), a biography of the first proponent of professional diplomacy.