Monday, January 23, 2006

Creating the America Desk

I recently wrote that Secretary Rice's proposals to revamp our State Department are radical departures from over three centuries of assumptions about the primacy of the state.

Ralph Peters (via RCP) agrees that the proposals are ground-breaking in their scope:

If Rice can implement even half of the changes she proposed before an irate diplomat shoots her for canceling his assignment to Vienna, her effort may become State's equivalent of the Army's crucial Root Reforms of a century ago (diplomatic practices are more than a hundred years out of date). And the truth is that a functional State Department is essential to America's role in the world.

Nice to see somebody noticing. It is revolutionary after all. Imagine the State Department advancing American interests? In a reflection of the world we must live in and not the world the Foreign Service operatives were trained to operate in?

It almost seems too good to be true.