Their interlocking functions make up a system analogous to the meshing of the land, air, and sea components of the armed forces. Diplomacy is prevention, our first line of defense. If we can exploit opportunities and resolve international differences through discussion and negotiation, we do not need to risk the lives of our servicemen and women. If diplomacy is weak, or ineffectual, troops may have to be deployed prematurely. Appropriations for the Departments of State, Justice, and Commerce are debated in a single bill, so that diplomacy must compete directly for resources with the domestic political constituencies of small business, the census, the judiciary, law enforcement, the war on drugs, and so forth.
Diplomacy lacks a domestic constituency.
Small wonder, in the absence of the sort of life and death threat posed by the Soviet Union, and in the absence of vigorous presidential leadership, that appropriations for the conduct of diplomacy have plummeted since 1992. In the 1960s, the international affairs account made up about 4 percent of the federal budget. By the early 1990s, it was down to 1.5 percent. Since the end of the Cold War, the administration, as again this year, has consistently requested too little for the 150 Account, and Congress has consistently further reduced these already inadequate requests. The budget for foreign affairs, in constant dollars, is today 41 percent below its level of the mid-1980s.