There are important lessons to be drawn even from the unclassified version of the State Department’s After Action Report (AAR), released on June 30, on the August 2021 evacuation of Afghanistan. But there is one lesson that requires no further study and should be acted on immediately: Just like America’s armed forces have reserve components, the State Department needs a fully funded Diplomatic Reserve Corps (DRC) ready to deploy immediately to meet emergencies like the evacuation of Afghanistan.
Ever since the battles at Lexington and Concord, Americans have volunteered to serve the nation as part of military ready reserves. The State Department faces extraordinary challenges but has no trained, dedicated reserves. Remarkable results have been achieved by cobbling together professionals drawn from other jobs — which then go undone — as well as short-term hires and informal pools of retired professionals and contractors. These ad hoc arrangements are costly and difficult to administer.
A State Department reserve would make possible surge staffing during political crisis situations, such as the evacuation of Afghanistan, or to respond to natural disasters or other crises.
Indeed, the AAR specifically recommends that the State Department have teams trained and ready to deploy for service in emergencies and to high-threat environments. Commenting on the review, a department official said that State does not have “the appropriate structure and resources to provide a constant set of capabilities to draw on when we’re suddenly confronting something at scale.”
A DRC not a new idea. The Iraq Study Group, former Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, and a report published in 2020 by the Harvard Kennedy School, have called for a State Department reserve. The AAR should be the catalyst for the Biden administration and Congress to act on this urgent national security requirement.
Luckily, there is a comprehensive, fully ready for implementation blueprint for a DRC, published in September 2022 by Arizona State University’s Leadership, Diplomacy and National Security Lab. This detailed plan uniquely includes the necessary legislative language to create, at a reasonable cost, a 1,000-person DRC composed of dedicated, trained, on-call professionals available for rapid worldwide deployment and modeled after the U.S. military reserves.
Recruiting the right people for the DRC will be crucial. To make recruiting broad and diverse, retired State Department personnel living across the United States would seek reserve candidates in their communities. In addition to former State Department and military personnel, recruiters would offer opportunities to qualified members of the public — from academia, think tanks, experts in areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, cyber and biotechnology, retirees from other federal, state or local agencies, and the private sector.
Successful applicants would pass security and medical screenings before being sworn into the reserve for an initial one-year term. Every member of the reserve would be subject to deployment at any time, and to any location, in support of the department. All members of the DRC would be evaluated annually. Like America’s military reserves, State Department reserve members would receive regular training. Also like their military counterparts, reservists would be guaranteed a return to their jobs after being called to active duty.
In a time of tight budgets, it is important to be clear about what the DRC will cost. The blueprint proposes a five-year ramp-up to a 1,000-person reserve. In the first year, $8 million would be required to get the DRC organized. In years two, three, four and five, budgets would need to pay for the 250 reserve members to be added annually. The blueprint estimates an inflation-adjusted annual cost of $42 million to then maintain the 1,000-person force into the future. This is half the price of one F-35 fighter aircraft. A crisis contingency account would cover the cost of specific deployments.
The AAR calls on the State Department to do a better job preparing for inevitable future “worst-case” scenarios. To honor the service at Kabul airport of U.S. diplomats, representatives of many other U.S. government agencies, and the men and women of the U.S. military — especially the 13 U.S. service members killed in a suicide bombing — the effort to decide what future actions are required to avoid a similar debacle should be bipartisan and focused on the facts. A vital way to be ready is to turn the available, comprehensive Blueprint for a Diplomatic Reserve Corps into a functioning reality.
Marc Grossman is a vice chair of The Cohen Group and co-author, with Marcie Ries, of “Blueprints for a More Modern U.S. Diplomatic Service.” He served as U.S. ambassador to Turkey and as Under Secretary for Political Affairs.
Marcie Ries is co-author of the Blueprints report. In a 37-year Foreign Service career, she served as U.S. ambassador to Albania and Bulgaria.
Ronald Neumann is the president of the American Academy of Diplomacy. He served as U.S. ambassador to Algeria, Bahrain and Afghanistan.