The United States possesses the world’s most powerful military, the largest economy, and the most admired culture. Yet, for decades, thoughtful observers have noted a quiet paradox: our diplomatic influence has not kept pace with our hard power. In an era defined by strategic competition with China, Russian revanchism, renewed war in Europe, and Iranian-sponsored terrorism, the need for a highly professional, agile, America-first foreign ministry has never been greater.
The core mission of the Department of State is straightforward and unchanging: to advance the foreign policy of the elected President and prevent manageable crises from escalating into unnecessary wars.
Effective diplomacy is much less expensive in blood and treasure than military action, and it is the only sustainable way to protect American interests across a world divided into 195 sovereign states. The State Department, with more than 69,000 employees, has become a sprawling conglomerate rather than a precision instrument. Only 13,000 of those 69,000 employees are Foreign Service Officers; the rest are civil servants, contractors, and locally employed staff.
Secretary Rubio has already reduced the Department’s workforce by approximately 3,000 positions and closed several marginal overseas posts. These are prudent first steps. Yet deeper, institutional change is required if the Department is to regain the agility and focus it displayed during the early Cold War.
Five interlocking reforms would transform the Department of State into a lean, elite force capable of projecting American power and preventing needless wars.
First, return to Eisenhower-era staffing levels, adjusted for today’s world. In 1959, the Department employed fewer than 20,000 people worldwide. Yet it orchestrated the Marshall Plan, contained Soviet expansion, and built the NATO alliance. A contemporary target of 25,000 total personnel by 2028 is ambitious yet entirely achievable. We can reach it through generous early-retirement incentives for civil servants, consolidation of bureaus whose missions have become unnecessary or subsumed elsewhere, and aggressive adoption of artificial intelligence for routine administrative processes such as payroll, personnel management, budgeting, and translation. Modern AI systems already handle these functions with greater speed and accuracy than human staff in many Fortune 500 companies. The bloated administrative tail at State today wags the dog. That has to change.
Second, make the Foreign Service an elite diplomatic force staffed by professionals who are qualified, trained, well-equipped and supported, and intensely loyal to the Republic and its elected leaders, not the Washington bureaucracy.
For most of the twentieth century, entry into the Foreign Service was regarded as one of the most rigorous intellectual competitions in American public life. Candidates faced a tough written examination that tested history, economics, geography, literature, and composition at a level comparable to the doctoral qualifying exams of leading universities. Those who passed then endured a full-day oral examination before a panel of senior diplomats who probed not only knowledge but character, judgment, and patriotism. The acceptance rate was routinely below two percent.
We have drifted far from that standard. The written exam was eliminated in 2021, replaced by a shorter, much less demanding test and a set of “personal narratives” that reward self-promotion more than substance. Lateral entry programs now admit hundreds of mid-career hires each year with no examination at all. The result is a service that is bloated, less cohesive, and demonstrably less competent in the core skills that once defined American diplomacy.
In order to rebuild the Foreign Service as a true elite corps, a rigorous, merit-based entry examination should once again test mastery of history, economics, international law, and key languages. Passage of this examination should be the sole gateway into the career service, ending all lateral-entry programs except for narrowly defined technical specialties such as medicine or cybersecurity. In order to take the examination, a candidate should be nominated by his or her Representative or Senator, just as is the case with applicants to West Point. This measure would strengthen the interest of Congress in the State Department and make the Department truly representative of the entire country. We should cap the maximum age of applicants and recruit future diplomats when they are still young.
The United States Diplomatic Academy should be the only path to commissioning of Foreign Service Officers. Every successful examination candidate would receive a four-year, full-scholarship education that combines the rigor of a great-books curriculum with intensive training in foreign languages, history, economics, statecraft, and diplomacy, in addition to mandatory physical training. Graduates would owe eight years of service and enter the Foreign Service at a rank equivalent to an Army captain, with accelerated promotion tracks for demonstrated excellence in the field.
We must use the Academy to restore basic areas of diplomatic competence that have atrophied: fluency in foreign languages, profound knowledge of foreign cultures, and deep understanding of history and economics to the diplomatic core. Every officer would be required to achieve fluency in at least one critical or super-critical language before tenure. Every officer would be expected to produce, over the course of a career, at least one work of original scholarship on the history, politics, or economy of a region to which he or she is assigned, published internally if security requires, but rigorously peer-reviewed nonetheless. Promotion to the Senior Foreign Service would require demonstrated mastery of these disciplines, not merely time-in-grade or equal-opportunity box-checking.
We should locate the Diplomatic Academy far from the corrupting atmosphere of Washington, DC and northern Virginia. It would be wise to establish it in a city connected to the world. Ideally it would also be ethnically diverse, mirroring the future of the Republic. Judging by these criteria, Miami or Seattle would be ideal locations for the US Diplomatic Academy.
As part of Foreign Service reform, the current “cone system” (with its separate career tracks for political, economic, consular, administrative or management, and public diplomacy officers) should be abolished, and the current prejudice against regional specialists and experts ended. We need diplomats who understand and can perform every aspect of diplomatic work. Then, when they become ambassadors after serving 20 years, they will understand 9every aspect of the embassies they lead. Similarly, we need to encourage our young diplomats to become true experts in the politics and economics of critical countries and regions, such as Latin America, the Middle East, Russia, and China.
The Academy should inculcate loyalty — not to a particular party, but to the Republic and its elected leaders. Just like their military peers, students at the Diplomatic Academy must follow an Honor Code, banning lying and cheating. The penalty for violating it should be expulsion. The oath every Foreign Service Officer takes when commissioned is to the Constitution, not to the permanent bureaucracy. The Diplomatic Academy would teach, from the first day, that the ambassador is the personal representative of the President, and that every officer serves at the pleasure of the elected Commander-in-Chief. Dissent is protected; disloyalty is not. Officers who are fundamentally at odds with the President’s policy have always had an honorable path: resign then speak freely, as George Kennan, George Ball, and many others have shown.
A Foreign Service rebuilt on these principles would number far fewer officers, perhaps 6,000 worldwide instead of today’s 13,000, but each would be the diplomatic equivalent of a Navy SEAL or Army Ranger: superbly trained, polyglot, steeped in history and strategy, fit for worldwide service, and unwaveringly loyal to the elected government of the United States. Such a service would not merely staff embassies; it would project American power and prevent needless wars with an effectiveness we have not seen since the days of Charles Bohlen, George Kennan and Richard Holbrooke..
Third, restore the embassy to its original purpose and restore the ambassador to his or her constitutional role. For most of our history, each American ambassador was exactly what the Constitution intended: the personal representative of the President abroad, speaking for the entire United States government. That changed in the late twentieth century when dozens of agencies built their own fiefdoms inside our embassy compounds. Today the ambassador is too often the harried coordinator of a sprawling “country team” rather than the President’s representative.
This must end. Legislation should mandate that no agency other than the Department of State (except for the traditional Department of Defense military attaches) may be housed inside the embassy building. Commerce, Agriculture, Treasury, Center for Disease Control, Drug Enforcement Agency and Homeland Security would all be represented by State overseas. The State Department would revert to what it was designed to do: represent the interests of the United States government as a whole, under the leadership of the President. The ambassador would no longer coordinate a multi-agency country team; he or she would be empowered to speak authoritatively for every department and agency of the executive branch, just as Dean Acheson, John Foster Dulles, and Henry Kissinger expected their ambassadors to do.
Fourth, refocus diplomatic efforts on core national interests. Our country strategies should prioritize four objectives: protecting American citizens, expanding American commerce, countering strategic adversaries, and preventing armed conflict. Secondary objectives, laudable in themselves, must not displace these priorities. Climate change, global health, and cultural exchange are vital, but they are not the primary responsibility of the Department of State. When every issue is of strategic importance, nothing truly is.
Fifth, reaffirm that the Department executes policy; it does not make it. The President alone possesses constitutional authority over foreign affairs. Career diplomats serve at his pleasure and must implement his policies with energy and professionalism. The Dissent Channel remains a valuable safeguard for principled disagreement, but it is not a license for obstruction.
None of these proposals are partisan. They echo recommendations from the Hoover Institution, the Heritage Foundation, and the Carnegie Endowment alike. They build on the 1980 Foreign Service Act, the 1998 Overseas Presence Advisory Panel, and the 2022 National Security Strategy.
Critics will raise familiar objections. “Institutional memory will be lost.” In truth, our corporate knowledge is already fragmented across dozens of unintegrated IT systems in as many government agencies. A smaller, younger, better-trained cadre backed by modern data architecture will preserve far more usable knowledge than today’s paper-based chaos.
“Morale will suffer.” Morale suffers when talented officers spend careers drafting reports that no one reads and managing programs that belong elsewhere. Give diplomats real authority, real training, and a legitimate, constitutionally mandated mission, and strong morale will follow. “Allies will be alarmed.” Allies respect competence and predictability. A State Department that speaks with one voice, responds rapidly to crises, and delivers measurable results will command more respect than today’s diffuse bureaucracy.
The reforms are not about punishing the Department; they are about restoring its vitality and greatness. Under Secretary Rubio’s leadership, the process has already begun. With sustained congressional support and presidential resolve, the United States can deploy a diplomatic service second to none — lean, elite, and unequivocally devoted to American interests. In the twenty-first century, great powers will win not by waging war at every opportunity but through skillful, determined diplomacy. That is the promise of a reformed Department of State. It is a promise we can, and must, fulfill.
