Condi is remaking State

Sec. of State Condi Rice continues to impress. Austin Bay looks at recently announced changes at the State Dept. Rice want to move the overly Eurocentric diplomatic corp towards the important areas of the 21st century world. Being focused on Europe doesn't seem to have helped much. This quote comes from the Washington Post:

The State Department’s culture of deployment and ideas about career advancement must alter now that the Cold War is over and the United States is battling transnational threats of terrorism, drug smuggling and disease, Rice said in a speech at Georgetown University. “The greatest threats now emerge more within states than between them,” she said. “The fundamental character of regimes now matters more than the international distribution of power.”

This is important insight. Conflict in this new century are more likely to develop between ideologies that nations. Groups that work within and across national boundaries are increasingly more important, and to be sensitive to those developments we need people who are working out where the action is. Staying close to the black-tie crowd in a European capital won't accomplish that.

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