News Journal: We will pay a price for neglecting diplomacy

There are three elements to any nation’s foreign policy: diplomatic, economic and, as a last resort, military.
The Trump administration is coming dangerously close to making American policy rely almost entirely on what should be our last resort.
The budget the president submitted to Congress calls for a 10 percent increase in military spending — an extra $54 billion. It cuts the State Department budget by 30 percent, which would catastrophically weaken our diplomatic capabilities.
As for the economic element, the most successful strategy we have pursued has been imposing economic sanctions. Those sanctions, however, are only effective if other important world powers also enforce them. Putting together coalitions to do so will be nearly impossible if other countries are constantly reminded that our country’s only priority is”America first.”
In fact, our once-closest allies, reacting to the Trump decision to leave the Paris climate agreement, are now talking about how to adjust to his “America only” policies.
“If you don’t fund the State Department fully,” then Gen. Mattis said in 2013, “then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately.” Mattis is now Secretary of Defense.
The $10 billion the Trump budget would take away from the State Department would gut the its basic operations as well as the operations and security of our embassies around the world. It would eviscerate essential exchange, information, development, and democracy-building programs.
There are hopeful signs that not all Republicans in Congress support President Trump’s budget proposals. Congressman Ed Royce, Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said, “I don’t support deep cuts to the State Department and the Agency for International Development that undermine national security. Diplomacy matters. It helps keep America strong and our troops out of combat.”
Senator Lindsey Graham said of the cuts, “over my dead body.” Will those voices prevail? We can hope, but even if compromises are reached, we are probably going to have a greatly weakened Department of State.
The planned wrecking of our diplomatic capacity does not end with the extreme budget cuts. To conduct diplomacy you need diplomats. You need knowledgeable ambassadors in every country in the world. You need experts on all the regions of the world in Washington who understand the politics and history of the countries we want to influence.

The Trump administration has to date nominated only 13 of the 119 State Department officials who must be confirmed by the Senate. All six of the incredibly important undersecretary positions are unfilled. One out of three ambassadorships are vacant.
The message being sent is clear: the United States no longer cares much about diplomacy.
There are many economic tools a major country can use to implement its foreign policy, but the most successful weapon is economic sanctions.
Ending apartheid in South Africa was only accomplished after all the world’s major powers joined together and used sanctions to economically strangle the country. Whether you agree with the Iranian nuclear pact or not, the government of Iran was finally forced to come to the table only when world powers led by the United States enforced sanctions that severely affected its economy.
There were sanctions on Iran when President Obama took office, but they were ineffective because Iran could get what it needed from Russia or China. Years of diplomatic efforts finally persuaded those two countries that keeping Iran from becoming a nuclear power was in their interests. Only at that point did the coalition’s sanctions bring Iran to the bargaining table.
Every signal from the Trump administration has made it clear to the world that it intends to go it alone. The days of building economic coalitions may very well be over.
The presidency is a powerful office, but Congress still has an important role in foreign policy.
As constitutional scholar Edwin Corwin once said, “The Constitution is an invitation to struggle for the privilege of directing American foreign policy.”
The Republican leaders in the House and Senate must finally take their constitutional responsibilities seriously. If they don’t, the men and women of our armed forces will pay the first tragic price, unnecessarily sent into harm’s way by an administration that purposely destroyed the diplomatic and economic elements of our foreign policy.
Ted Kaufman is a former U.S. senator from Delaware