State Department Reorganization Advances

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced July 29 that she plans to reconfigure how her department is organized to better reduce and limit the spread of arms worldwide. But lawmakers have held up implementation of the changes while they review them.

Rice said that she intends to consolidate the Department of State’s Bureaus of Arms Control and Nonproliferation into a single new Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation. She also said some of the personnel and duties of the bureaus being merged would be shifted to the verification and compliance bureau, which, in the process, would be transformed into the Bureau of Verification, Compliance, and Implementation. In addition, some personnel would be reassigned to the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. All the bureaus would report to Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph.

Rice asserted changing times and new threats necessitate combining the two bureaus. Now that the arms race with the Soviet Union is over, Rice said, the department has to place greater emphasis on denying terrorists and hostile regimes the arms they desire. “Today, protecting America from weapons of mass destruction [WMD] requires more than deterrence and arms control treaties. We must also go on the offensive against outlaw scientists, black market arms dealers, and rogue state proliferators,” she stated.

As currently configured, the Bureau of Arms Control is largely responsible for negotiating new treaties and implementing past accords on limiting, reducing, or eliminating existing arms stockpiles. Over the past several years, much of the bureau’s time has been devoted to overseeing past treaties since the Bush administration has shown little inclination to conclude new ones. Indeed, President George W. Bush initially resisted seeking codified nuclear reductions with Russia, but he eventually relented to prodding from Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the two sides negotiated the May 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty. (See ACT, June 2002.)

Alternatively, the Bureau of Nonproliferation, which is charged with stemming the global spread of weapons, has found itself increasingly busy during Bush’s tenure. Among other non treaty-based initiatives, the bureau is entrusted with advancing the president’s voluntary May 2003 Proliferation Security Initiative to interdict shipments of unconventional weapons and related materials in transit at sea, on land, and in the air. (See ACT, July/August 2003.)
A 2004 evaluation of the two bureaus by the State Department’s inspector general’s office assessed that the nonproliferation bureau had too much work to do, while the arms control bureau had too little, according to sources familiar with the report. Although the assessment has not been publicly released, the inspector general’s office noted in a June summary that the performance of the two bureaus, along with that of the verification and compliance bureau, was hindered by “unclear lines of authority, uneven workload, and unproductive competition.”

Although the inspector general recommended trimming and redefining the Bureau of Verification and Compliance, it will grow under Rice’s plan. Tasked with assessing whether countries are complying with their treaty commitments, the bureau will inherit additional responsibility for implementing existing strategic nuclear arms reduction agreements and conventional arms control treaties.

The most dramatic changes will occur with the creation of the new Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation. Rice’s plan would trim the number of senior personnel, establish some new offices, and merge two offices that some U.S. officials say are incompatible.

Under the current alignment, the two bureaus have between them two assistant secretaries and four deputy assistant secretaries. The new bureau will have one assistant secretary and three deputies. No deputy assistant secretary will be responsible for arms control. Instead, the three will be assigned the missions of counterproliferation; nuclear nonproliferation policy and negotiations; and threat reduction, export controls, and negotiations.

Joseph said July 29 that no personnel decisions have yet been made. Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Stephen Rademaker currently heads the arms control bureau and has also been overseeing the nonproliferation bureau, which has been without a politically appointed assistant secretary since July 2004.

John Holum, who held Joseph’s position during the Clinton administration, has criticized the proposed reduction of senior personnel as a dilution of power. “The State Department will have less horsepower and less clout in dealing with other agencies and international entities,” Holum warned in the June 2005 issue of ACT. Holum had presided over the creation of the arms control and nonproliferation bureaus when the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency lost its independent status and was submerged into the State Department in 1999.

Two new offices will be created within the consolidated bureau. One will be focused on preventing WMD terrorism, and the other will be in charge of strategic planning. Joseph said that both offices are outgrowths of his personal assessment over the past several months that the administration could do more in a “very systematic and strategic fashion” to counter terrorist acquisition of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons.

Rice’s plan mostly marries offices from the arms control and nonproliferation bureaus that have similar functions. For instance, the arms control bureau’s office overseeing the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention will be combined with the office for stemming the spread of chemical weapons in the nonproliferation bureau.

However, one combination raising eyebrows among congressional staffers and State Department officials is the merger of the office tasked with promoting missile defenses with another’s whose purview is checking the spread of missiles. Because missile interceptors are comprised of essentially the same technologies as offensive missiles, some worry that the new office will be working at cross-purposes.

Rice submitted the reorganization plan to Congress for a mandatory 15-day review period as legislators broke for their annual August recess.

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), who joined Rice in unveiling the plan, applauded it. “I commend this thoughtful effort to improve the State Department’s ability to address the most dangerous threats our nation faces today,” Lugar said.

But Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the House International Relations Committee, informed the State Department that he wanted more time to review the plan. In response, the State Department has scheduled September meetings with Hyde and other legislators. Thus, it remains uncertain when the plan will be implemented and whether it will be modified to address any congressional feedback.