U.S. Department of State

The United States Department of State is the oldest cabinet level agency of the United States government, responsible for American foreign affairs. The Secretary of State is the cabinet officer responsible for the Department, and is nominated by the president and confirmed by a 2/3 vote of the Senate.

The secretary of state administers a large department of government, acted as principal adviser to the president on foreign affairs, and herself handled many on-site diplomatic negotiations personally, often through many trips abroad of Secretary Henry Kissinger illustrate the modern demands of the office. The secretary of state is the senior member of the president's cabinet and was first in the presidential succession after the vice-president until 1947, when the speaker of the House, as an elected rather than an appointed official, was added to the succession. Condoleezza Rice, the current Secretary, was appointed on January 26, 2005; she is the second woman to hold the job (the first was Madeleine Albright in 1997), and the second black (the first was Colin Powell in 2001).

The department had 34,000 employees in 2006. The federal budget for foreign affairs in 2007 was $33.9 billion, including $4.7 billion for diplomats and $1.5 billion for embassies.

History

Before 1789

American foreign affairs from independence in 1776 to the new Constitution in 1789 were handled under the Articles of Confederation directly by Congress until the creation of a department of foreign affairs and the office of secretary for foreign affairs on January 10, 1781.

1789-1968

The cabinet-level Department of Foreign Affairs was created on July 27, 1789, by the First Congress during its first session under the Constitution in 1789. Foreign Affairs was one of three executive departments established during the session, the others being War and Treasury. Because of the need to provide for the administration of "home affairs," and the reluctance of Congress to add a fourth department, Congress on Sept. 15, 1789, changed the name of the Department of Foreign Affairs to the Department of State and changed the title of secretary for foreign affairs to secretary of state.

Until the establishment of the U.S. Department of the Interior in 1849, the secretary of state handled both foreign affairs and home affairs, including responsibility for the Patent Office and the censuses.

The number of staff members in the Department of State grew very slowly during its first decades. Thomas Jefferson, appointed the first secretary of state on September 26, 1789, had a staff of five clerks; only two diplomatic agents were stationed abroad, and only four foreign governments had representatives in New York, the national capital. By 1820 the number of personnel had reached fifteen, but the work of the department continued to be severely hampered, particularly since all copies of documents had to be made by hand. Secretary of State John M. Clayton wrote in 1850 that he hoped his successor would have enough clerical assistance to reduce the drudgery then associated with the office. Until 1853, when the Office of Assistant Secretary of State was created, the senior official under the secretary was the chief clerk.

By 1870 there were two assistant secretaries and a total of thirty-one officers. By the time of the expansion of the American role in world affairs toward the end of the 19th century, the State Department had begun to take on more suitable dimensions. Even so, in 1938 there were still only 766 Foreign Service officers (as compared with 1,360 in 1948 and 3,379 in 1968). The total State Department personnel, including other personnel categories, such as Foreign Service reserve, Foreign Service staff, civil service employees, and foreign nationals, increased from 5,692 in 1938 to 20,327 in 1948 and 25,495 in 1968.

The landmark Rogers "Foreign Service Act" of 1924 created well-defined career paths in the U.S. Foreign Service. Previously all appointments were made in a casual way. Change had begun in 1906 with President Theodore Roosevelt's executive order providing that appointments at the lower consulate grades were to be made only after examination. In 1909, by a similar order, President William Howard Taft extended the merit system to the appointment and promotion of diplomatic service personnel below the grades of minister and ambassador. Even so, because of the small salaries, none but the sons of the wealthy could actually afford making diplomacy a career. Under Secretary William Jennings Bryan in 1913, patronage again became a major factor in distributing major and minor offices.

The 1924 Rogers Act brought together consular and diplomatic personnel and established a system of difficult written and oral qualifying examinations. Adequate salaries were introduced, and promotion was made on the basis of merit-promotion up or selection out. As a consequence of these reforms (and later modifications, such as the Foreign Service Act of 1946) a true career service came into being. An exception came at the highest level, so that in 1940 only half the ambassadors and ministers were career men.

Other agencies abroad

The Rogers Act and subsequent amendments did not solve all the personnel problems. Between 1927 and 1935, for example, the United States had in effect four or more foreign services operating abroad. In 1927 the U.S. Department of Commerce formed a separate foreign commerce service. In 1930 the U.S. Department of Agriculture established a smaller foreign agricultural service, while the Bureau of Mines operated a small service of mineral specialists. The U.S. Treasury Department created a foreign service. The foreign services of the Commerce and Agriculture departments and the Bureau of Mines were merged into the U.S. Foreign Service in 1939 and 1943, respectively. But the Treasury Department kept its separate foreign service, and in 1954 the Department of Agriculture created a new foreign agricultural service, with more than sixty foreign posts.

By the early 1960s only 7,200 of the 30,000 U.S. federal civilian employees abroad worked for the State Department. To deal with them in 1961 a presidential order put the chief of a diplomatic mission in a country in charge of all the Americans at the mission. A 1969 order gave the chiefs of mission "affirmative responsibility for the direction, coordination, and supervision of all activities of the United States Government in their respective countries." Thus foreign affairs personnel abroad came, in principle, under the Department of State.

Coordinateion in Washington

Coordination in Washington between State and other agencies involved in foreign affairs was a growing problem after 1941. A major reason in 1947 for creating the National Security Council (NSC) under the president was to ensure a unified foreign policy formulation and implementation. NSC at first was only advisory and it was headed by a State Department official. Changes under President Dwight D. Eisenhower increased NSC's functions, while the tendency under Kennedy was to concentrate control in the White House. Nixon and his powerful national security adviser Henry Kissinger established "Interdepartmental Groups in the NSC system," each chaired by the appropriate assistant secretary of the State department and each having representatives of the assistant to the president for national security affairs, the secretary of defense, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Senior to the other "interdepartmental groups" was the NSC Under Secretaries Committee, chaired by the under secretary of state and including the deputy secretary of defense, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In major crises, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, a special NSC executive committee chaired by the president operated on a daily basis.

Internal management

As the Department of State grew coordination within it became more complex. In 1870 the department had only sixteen separate units; by 1931, thirty-six; by 1948, 113; and the problem has continued to grow. The number of top management employees also increased, so that in 1971, the principal officers of the included the secretary, an under secretary, an under secretary for political affairs, a deputy under secretary for economic affairs, a deputy under secretary for administration, a counselor, and four other senior officials, plus twenty others who held the rank or equivalent rank of assistant secretary. There were also 121 chiefs of diplomatic missions reporting to these officials. In addition, there were special missions to the United Nations, Organization of American States, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, International Atomic Energy Agency and so on.

Bibliography

• Dorman, Shawn. Inside a U.S. Embassy: How the Foreign Service Works for America (2003), for high schools excerpt and text search
• Plischke, Elmer. U.S. Department of State: A Reference History (1999) excerpt and text search; online edition

See also

• Department of State home page