Admiral Mullen: foreign policy is too dominated by the military

“They can’t handle it,” said the former official. “They don’t have the professional capacity in their staff to manage that level of money.”

While Gates and Mullen stopped short of recommending that Congress cut his own department’s budget in favor of State’s, their call for a more balanced resourcing of foreign policy is causing some policymakers and lawmakers to begin rethinking the status quo. But it could take years before Congress really gets the message.

The culture within non-military agencies must change, too, say experts. State, Agriculture, Justice, and even the FBI need to become more “expeditionary” in nature – willing to send their agents to dangerous places with little infrastructure and change security regulations that can make it difficult for civilians to work in conflict zones.

Generational differences

“The scope and scale of the change required is probably generational,” says John Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington and a former Army officer who specialized in counterinsurgency. “That doesn’t mean we don’t start now.”

Non-military agencies already send personnel to war zones and to other countries, but it can be difficult to get volunteers from agencies whose cultures cling to antiquated views of how the US engages overseas.

The US sees a need to spend more resources in Africa, for example, to help development efforts in many countries, build military capacity within those governments, and help prevent some regions from giving terrorist networks cover to operate. For now, the military steps into a void. US Africa Command was created in 2007 to help advance some of these interests. But Africans have been wary, seeing it as the militarization of American foreign policy.

“It’s hard to see our way out of this, given that it’s highly unlikely that you’ll get an influx of money and resources going into the State Department,” says Richard Downie, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington. “People have been talking about this for a long time.”

Mr. Downie, who participates in the organization’s Africa program, noted that the US needs more resources to engage effectively overseas, including Africa.

“More resources are needed, full stop,” he says.

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