Frugal superpower puts on airs

With Senate hearings scheduled for January 24 for former Senator John Kerry as Secretary of State and January 31 for former Senator Charles Hagel as Secretary of Defense, the American press is wondering what their nominations portend.  Will there be big changes in policy?  Or will there be more continuity?

At least one of my colleagues worries that Hagel’s nomination will be seen as undermining President Obama’s commitment to preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons, but Hagel will also have a great deal of credibility the day he tells the Iranians the deal they’ve been offered is the very best they can expect.  Even on Iran, I anticipate more continuity in attitude than abrupt change in direction.  That is partly because Obama is still in charge.  Hagel will not only conform what he says to the Administration’s policy, he will also want to maximize the chances for success in blocking Iran from getting nuclear weapons.  That necessarily means making the military option credible, even if in private life he was inclined against it.

But for other issues circumstances may not remain constant.  In particular the budget challenge is likely to be greater than in the past.  The government ran on continuing resolutions throughout Obama’s first term, to the dismay of conservatives.  That gives government departments relatively decent financing, compared to what they would get if Congress triggers the sequester or if the House Republicans get the dollar cut in expenditures for every dollar increase in the budget ceiling that they are demanding.  If instead of continuing current expenditure levels, we head in the direction of big cuts, both Defense and State are likely to get hammered.

Defense, bloated after years of doubling its budget even without counting Iraq and Afghanistan war spending, can afford it better than State, though State (and USAID) are relatively flush as well.  The problem is that both institutions have far-flung capital commitments to bases and embassies that are essentially fixed costs.  Even if you cut back on personnel presence overseas, you can’t turn off the heat and electricity.  It will take time and effort to de-accesssion unneeded facilities.  Bureaucrats at both State and Defense will be more inclined to keep the heat and lights on, hoping for budget increases in the future.

Senator Kerry visited Rome once when I was Charge’ d’affaires ad interim there.  He wondered why we needed 800 people in the diplomatic mission to Italy.  I said we didn’t, but that 36 different agencies of the U.S. government had made separate decisions that put them there.  He threatened to cut the Embassy budget.  I noted that would leave more than 90% of the staff still screaming for State Department services–their salaries and benefits were paid by the mostly domestic agencies that put people in Rome.

None of this will be discussed in the confirmation hearings, which are conducted by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC).  It has no budgetary responsibility–that is the purview of the appropriations subcommittees in both House and Senate.  SFRC will focus not on budget and overseas presence but rather on “policy” issues.  Right now that likely means the Benghazi murder of U.S. diplomatic personnel (Hillary Clinton will appear in Congress a day before Kerry’s hearing to testify on that unforgiving subject), the Al Qaeda push in Mali, the hostage crisis in Algeria, Iran’s nuclear program, maybe a bit of Syria and Egypt and a quick look at Asia (rising China, nuclear North Korea, America’s treaty obligations).  My order of priority might be different, but that’s because I’ve got a 3-5 year time frame.  The Congress has more like a one week-one year time frame.

There is little doubt that Hagel and Kerry will be confirmed.  The question is how far they will have to go to satisfy Congressional critics in committing the United States to military action in Iran, Syria and Mali.  The President seems determined to keep his powder dry for Iran, but there is a good deal of agitation for more military support to the Syrian opposition and for assisting the French intervention in Mali.  Neither budgets nor domestic politics will warrant much more than that, even if the Senators give eloquent speeches advocating it.  We are in the era of the frugal superpower, but you won’t know it from the upcoming hearings.