I'm on a roll tonight.

Ok kiddies, lately I have seen more and more people suggesting that the US Military is taking over foreign policy.  And frankly, this is driving me nuts.

It seems to be historical revisionism at best to suggest that the military was ever not the key foreign policy tool of the United States.

1. Great White Fleet
2. The Barbary Coast
3. Gunboat Diplomacy in the Banana Republics
4.   . . . and in China too.   The Sand Pebbles (1966) anyone?
5. Civilize em' with a Krag

Those are just a few I could come up with off the top of my head.  But seriously, I have even heard someone who generally isn't a tinfoil-hatter suggest Gates is merely using COIN strategy to move the military into things like foreign development projects.  Gates isn't after more power, the dude has been trying to retire since the day he got the job.  He is doing his job and filling in the staggering mission gap between the State Department and Department of Defense that is right now being occupied by a ragtag group of:

• Military COIN strategists
• Academics in the social sciences
• Private Contractors
• NGOs
• USAID FSO's
• Some guys from Army Special Forces (the light side ones, not the dark side crowd). 

 Honestly, you probably wouldn't be able to fill a good-sized Hotel Conference Hall if you got them all together.  And yet this is the most important job in the 21st Century, these are the guys that are going to stand on the seem between war and peace and try to drag nation-states away from the brink.  So excuse the hell out of Gates for trying to make sure this job gets done.  Gates isn't talking about the militarization of foreign policy, he's talking about the diplomatization of what has historically been a military-led foreign policy.

Why isn't State doing this job?  Because State is all about working with existing Nation-states, and their institutional mindset is at the embassy in Paris, not Baghdad. I like this quote by Nagl and Fick over at ForeignPolicy.com: 

This imperative to get out among the people extends to U.S. civilians as well. U.S. Embassy staff are almost completely forbidden from moving around Kabul on their own. Diplomacy is, of course, about relationships, and rules that discourage relationships fundamentally limit the ability of American diplomats to do their jobs. The mission in Afghanistan is to stabilize the country, not to secure the embassy.

 The part that I made bold should be tattooed on some peoples foreheads.  And honestly, I like the idea of a separate organization for each part of the Defense, Development, and Diplomacy blend.  The so-called, "3D" Approach.  Department of Defense gets shrunk, State Department stays the same minus USAID, and a new Department of International Development built on the guys I listed above gets a hefty chunk of change.  Use the existing Unified Command regions, each Command has a Presidentially appointed Director, and a Deputy Director from DoD, DoS, and DID.  Good luck prying anything away from Secretary of State Clinton.

Oh well, a kid can dream can't he?