Foreign Affairs Panel Calls For Overhaul of State Dept.

The United States must scrap the current structure of the State Department and radically reshape its foreign assistance, trade and diplomatic programs to create a super-size international affairs agency to meet overseas challenges, a majority in a congressionally mandated bipartisan commission will recommend tomorrow.

While all 20 members of the HELP Commission agreed that the current foreign affairs structure is inadequate, a minority of three Democrats and one Republican dissented from the recommendation. The dissenters instead urged elevating foreign assistance and international development to a new Cabinet-level agency, according to a copy of the commission's final report.

Either proposal would be a significant departure for the United States. The proposals are intended to influence the next administration at a time when the debate over the U.S. role overseas has become a central feature of the 2008 presidential campaign.

Last month, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates also called for strengthening "soft" power and integrating it better with "hard" power, which he said entails "a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security -- diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action and economic reconstruction and development."

Mary K. Bush, a business consultant and chairman of the commission, said the idea of a "super-State" is "bold, very innovative, provocative," but she emphasized that it is one of many recommendations designed to bring rationality and structure to a system that is no longer working.

Over two years, the commission heard from 75 experts, and "no one walked in and supported the status quo," Bush said. "They all said this has to be fixed."

The commission will also recommend rewriting the 45-year-old law that governs foreign assistance programs, designing programs that collaborate more with business partners, and aligning trade and development policies to give trade preferences to recipients of aid so that the benefits of aid are not frittered away by high tariff duties. The commission will call for establishing separate $500 million funds that could be used when natural disasters or foreign crises occur.

The commission members, who were appointed by President Bush and congressional leaders, were tasked to review whether the current system of providing foreign aid is effective. The commission "strongly believes that development should be elevated to equal status with defense and diplomacy and that dramatic changes to the existing structure are required," the report says.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has attempted to overhaul foreign aid efforts at the State Department, including elevating the foreign assistance chief to the level of deputy secretary, but many members appeared to view her efforts as wanting.

The recommendation to create a super-size agency was the subject of contentious debate, several members said. Under the commission's plan, the super-State would have four sub-Cabinet agencies, each reporting to the secretary of state. They would focus separately on trade and long-term development; humanitarian crises and post-conflict states; political and security affairs; and public diplomacy.

The commission will also call for a high-level position at the White House for coordinating policy for all U.S. government agencies involved in development and humanitarian programs.

"The sixty-year-old model for the international affairs community -- where diplomacy is housed at the Department of State with primacy over all other international affairs concerns in 'independent' agencies -- is fundamentally flawed," the report says.