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By PAUL D. WOLFOWITZ
Scores of State Department employees are reported to be planning to protest the Trump administration’s executive order on immigration. CreditWin McNamee/Getty Images
Organizations, particularly large ones, have a tendency to engage in group think. They need to make an extra effort to listen to dissenting views to ensure that the organization is pursuing the right goals.
The Trump administration’s new immigration policy would have benefited from a review and comment period to solicit dissenting views before a final decision. Then they might have heard from experts like Gen. John Allen and Michael O’Hanlon about the devastating consequences of the policy in the fight against the Islamic State, particularly in Iraq and Syria, and hopefully would have modified the policy accordingly.
Instead, President Trump’s inner circle is confronted with a wave of dissent, including the reported intention of scores of Foreign Service officers to protest the new policy through the State Department’s official “dissent channel.” This presents the administration and the entire government with the question of how to balance the need for discipline for organizations to function effectively with the importance of open debate in determining the organization’s goals.
In the military, discipline that guarantees orders will be followed can also protect dissent, because there is a clear line between executing a lawful order and expressing an opinion about it.
But diplomats are in a more awkward position than soldiers because so much of their job involves explaining and defending government policy. The State Department created its dissent channel in 1971 as a response to concerns that contrary opinions were suppressed or ignored during the Vietnam War. It provides American diplomats with a means to provide written submissions expressing disagreement with policies. Those submissions are supposed to be circulated among the most senior officials in the department, and the writers are supposed to be protected from retaliation.
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In 1992 a group of Foreign Service officers used the dissent channel to protest United States inaction in the face of atrocities in Bosnia. In early 2003, Ann Wright, then the chargé d’affaires in Mongolia, wrote a dissent channel message objecting to a prospective invasion of Iraq. And just last June, some 50 Foreign Service officers used it to protest United States inaction in Syria.
Significantly, when a draft of the dissent channel cable objecting to President Obama’s Syria policy leaked to The New York Times last summer, William Harrop, a distinguished career ambassador who strongly believes in the dissent channel, condemned the leak, saying that the Foreign Service officers’ “oath of office is to protect and defend the Constitution, but they are not free to debate publicly with their president.” He added, “If they wanted to go public they should have resigned.”
Another diplomat, Chas Freeman, said at the time that “the channel can only work if it is ‘internal use only,’ i.e., it does not become part of the political diatribe or embarrass the administration.”
Diplomats confronted with an immigration policy that they believe is harmful to national interests should not abuse their government positions to undermine or sabotage the policy, no matter how strongly they feel about it. They do have three courses they can follow in good conscience:
They can seek reassignment to a position that is not affected by the policy, as John Negroponte did in leaving the White House and accepting reassignment to Ecuador after objecting to what he considered a betrayal of South Vietnam; they can continue working to mitigate the effects of a policy they object to, as Ryan Crocker did with extraordinary effectiveness in Iraq; or they can resign and go public with their objections as the Bosnia dissenters did and as Ann Wright did over Iraq and Ambassador Robert Ford did over Syria.
Whether they also have a First Amendment right to go public with their opposition while still serving in official positions is a question that lawyers can no doubt debate for a very long time.
From my own experience I would say that if you want to change a policy, going public should be a last resort. You are much more likely to be listened to, even if you are a very senior official, if you make your concerns known privately.
Unfortunately there is still no confirmed secretary of state to listen to the dissent channel signers, nor is there any evidence that the executive order reflected the views of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly or Defense Secretary James Mattis. However the Trump administration decides to respond to these dissenting diplomats, I hope it does not do so in a way that stifles debate.
Paul D. Wolfowitz, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, was a senior official at the State and Defense Departments in the Reagan and both Bush administrations.
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