The State Department, for budget consideration, is linked with the departments of Justice and Commerce, and so must compete with the domestic political constituencies of small business, the judiciary, law enforcement, the war on drugs, and so forth. Small wonder, in the absence of the sort of life and death threat earlier posed by the Soviet Union, and without strong presidential leadership, that appropriations for the conduct of diplomacy have plummeted since 1992. Meanwhile, the world becomes more and more interdependent, and diplomacy is as involved with economic and social issues as it is with national security. The United States is the world's largest trading nation. Exports now account for a third of America's real economic growth, and have created one million new jobs in this country over the last few years.
Overseas markets are pivotal for cereal and soybean producers of the Midwest and plains states.
Cyberspace does not know national borders. The timing is bad for a decline in America's diplomatic readiness. At the dawn of the new millennium, American foreign policy seems less manageable than it was during the Cold War. The Soviet threat was a yardstick against which to measure each issue. Whether the challenge arose in Cuba, Vietnam, the Congo, Central America, the Middle East, or Afghanistan, we knew what we had to do.