A New State Department to Meet the Challenges of a New Era

Author: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio

Today America confronts a new era of great power competition and the rise of a multipolar order with a State Department that stifles creativity, lacks accountability, and occasionally veers into outright hostility to American interests. The Department has long struggled to perform basic diplomatic functions, even as both its size and cost to the American taxpayer has ballooned over the past fifteen years. The problem is not a lack of money, or even dedicated talent, but rather a system where everything takes too much time, costs too much money, involves too many individuals, and all too often ends up failing the American people.

Bureaus and offices fight to be included on the approval chains for the most mundane of memos, only then to reach agreement on drafts that are bloated in length while stripped of all meaning. Motivated and creative State Department employees see their ideas watered down by turf battles until they give up, disillusioned, while the inboxes of senior officials are inundated with hundreds of requests for approval. While the talented and loyal are driven into indifference, radical ideologues and bureaucratic infighters have learned to play on this exhaustion to push through their own agendas that are often at odds with those of the President and undermine the interests of the United States.

An example of an out-of-control Department is the Global Engagement Center (GEC) that I shuttered last week. The office engaged with media outlets and platforms to censor speech it disagreed with, including that of the President of the United States, who its director in 2019 accused of employing “the same techniques of disinformation as the Russians.” Despite Congress voting to shutter it, the GEC simply renamed itself and continued operating as if nothing had changed.

Unless we confront the underlying bureaucratic culture that prevents the State Department from carrying out an effective foreign policy, while allowing offices like GEC to flourish in the shadows, nothing will change. That is why I am initiating a broad reorganization of the Department to address the steady growth of bureaucracy, duplication of functions, and capture by special interests that have crippled American Foreign Policy.

We will drain the bloated, bureaucratic swamp, empowering the Department from the ground up. That means regional bureaus and our embassies will now have the tools necessary to advance America’s interests abroad because region-specific functions will be streamlined to increase functionality. Redundant offices will also be removed, and non-statutory programs misaligned with America’s core national interests will cease to exist. All non-security foreign assistance will be consolidated in regional bureaus charged with implementing U.S. foreign policy in specific geographic areas.

This will ensure every bureau and office in the Department of State has clear responsibility and mission. If something concerns Africa, the bureau of African Affairs will handle it. Economic policy will be consolidated under the Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and Environment, while the responsibilities for security assistance and arms control will be united under the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security.

Until now, overlapping mandates paired with conflicting responsibilities created an environment ripe for ideological capture and meaningless turf wars. With a bloated budget and unclear mandate, the expansive domain of the former Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Human Rights, and Democracy (known internally as the “J Family”), provided a fertile environment for activists to redefine “human rights” and “democracy” and to pursue their projects at the taxpayer expense, even when they were in direct conflict with the goals of the Secretary, the President, and the American people.

The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor became a platform for left-wing activists to wage vendettas against “anti-woke” leaders in nations such as Poland, Hungary, and Brazil, and to transform their hatred of Israel into concrete policies such as arms embargoes. The Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to international organizations and NGOs that facilitated mass migration around the world, including the invasion on our southern border.

To transfer the remaining functions of USAID to such a monstrosity of bureaus would be to undo DOGE’s work to build a more efficient and accountable government. Consequently, the bureaus and offices in the J Family will be placed under the new Coordinator for Foreign Assistance and Humanitarian Affairs charged with returning them to their original mission of advancing human rights and religious freedom, not promoting radical causes at taxpayer expense.

The American people deserve a State Department willing and able to advance their safety, security, and prosperity around the world, one respectful of their tax dollars and the sacred trust of government service, and one prepared to meet the immense challenges of the 21st Century. Starting this week, they will have one.

Marco Rubio is the 72nd Secretary of State serving under the leadership of President Trump.