for what the city went through and how it changed and it is supposed to be a good read. if i get through two or three of those books i will be very proud of myself the other one is the great gatsby because believe it or not i never read it. >> on your screen is off 39 the book is called "state of disrepair" fixing the culture and practices of the state department".

kori schake, you write the department of state employee roster has some the hundred foreign service officers coming 11,000 civil servants and 42,000 foreign nationals and in 2009 and those that took the written test competing for roughly 1,000 jobs. those selected have college degrees and the 11 years of prior work experience before coming to the foreign service. two-thirds of the people selected come in with postgraduate degrees degrees, 80 percent have lived overseas, foreign service officers are awarded tenure after four years, 95 percent of the serving officers receive tenure. almost all the diplomats are concentrated in only 30 countries more than 2,000 in iraq and afghanistan. what is wrong with state? [laughter]

>> there are several things wrong with the state. although an institution that ought to be good at its job and could be, with careful managerial attention, the main problem is even by their own description they're not hiring people that have the skills they say they need for contemporary diplomacy. they're not hiring the right people and as you pointed out they keep them and don't teach them anything in the meantime. the state department extend straining resources on teaching languages and yet of the jobs requiring language proficiency in the state department, a 25% by the state's own reckoning are filled by those to effectively cannot use the language and another 25 percent who are not easily proficient. they have a 50% failure rate by their own standard. in this whole area they

expend training resources. it is not a good business model. >> host: why is a 50% failure rate? >> guest: though way the state department, there career progression is you take a diplomatic post, you are assigned one for a couple of years then after that, you go to language training then go someplace else. we developed a generalist enough for it -- foreign service, not experts. so a talented young foreign service officer may be posted in baghdad and then, an example, she will go to a couple of years of language training then be sent to beijing. >> host: main wage training in arabic? >> guest: she has it to go to iraq but probably not enough to feel comfortable having a discussion like we are having in the language

of the country she was operating in a. then she gets one or two year then ascend to china. it is an extraordinary profligate professional development model. i would just point* out kids come into the palo alto school district already speaking 132 languages we could hire people that have those language skills but we don't have to teach them that. it is a business model the would never start with. the culture of the state department replicates and those of the skills who are already there. the example it is the foreign service has the admissions rate equivalent of stanford university. you have as high a a likelihood do get into stanford as the foreign service. we ought to be able to pick

anyone we want in the people we pick our very good for the institution doesn't make them any better over time. that is what we should fix. >> host: what about former secretary rice who says the state has pentagon and vermont one what she meant is that there is a defensiveness to the u.s. state department that my favorite example is secretary kelantan with diplomacy and development video is a great thing she did the first time a secretary of state had done it once every four years looks at the institution to set priorities it was a great first chart that has a long way to go before it is the effective management review. one way you can tell that is secretary clinton opened by saying we set out to figure out how to make ourselves

better and the conclusion they came to is, if you only gave us more money and for people we could be better. so the vision of the pentagon from the state department is they get all the many they once in the works of foreign service does is every bit as physical and dangerous but everybody likes of military been no constituency for foreign policy. >> host: why don't the people like the state department? why don't they think much about it? >> guest: only 2 million americans avail themselves of service overseas every year. that is not very many of the country of 310 million. most americans don't know there diplomats. they are mostly posted overseas, the foreign service institute here in washington, in spokane washington state, or to lose minnesota they probably do not know them.

and the foreign service could actually do itself a huge favor by stitching itself more closely into american society. there are suggestions for ways they could do that. one is what diplomats like about themselves is complicated multinational negotiations, the climate change discussions in copenhagen and. it is hard comment intellectually difficult to master the material, what americans value about the state department if your brother gets arrested in the house of the door of the american diplomat will go see him in jail to make sure he is being treated fairly and ensure there protection is that any american citizen should have are afforded him. the state department views that as the most least important responsibility. they don't give the most

talented people into consular affairs. study was done suggesting the state department complains that after september 11, so much funding and attention went to security and consular affairs. but yet american diplomats are the first line of defense for protection of country to give the visa to foreigners who may come to the united states. and the people who do that are the youngest foreign service officers, it is a required first tour to be posted daily, the workload is enormous and they don't get lots of attention but yet they do it fantastically. why doesn't the state department celebrate those diplomats? because my mom would be thrilled. that would make her like the foreign service but see that sweeping out of the copenhagen negotiations does not do much for my mom.

>> host: kori schake, those who have traveled overseas and tried to visit one of the indices, it is nearly impossible. it is a fortress. >> guest: this is not the state department's faults. congress coming out of concern for protecting diplomats and after the bombings of the american embassies in nairobi, with the clinton administration congress started to legislate much better protection. but it has the dysfunctional outcome fact it is not making american diplomats safer because it is so a difficult to get into the embassy that they go out to have there meetings. they are less well protected although they are doing there jobs well, they're out and about to be the american that people see. >> host: another quotation and tell us who this is from, washington awoke the capital at were that decision and hesitation and

doubts and the pretense and fumbling we're gone and arguments over the country and its capital turned to what americans like can do best, action. in a few months half a continent and 130 million people were transformed into the greatest military power the world has seen. amid this burst of energy, the state department stood breathless and bewildered like an old lady at a busy intersection during rush hour. where is out from? >> guest: it is dean acheson riding on december 8, 1941, right after pearl harbor basically the secretary of state for economic affairs and was exasperated to see the state department was not better at its job when he goes on to say further on in the same passage, what the state department needed to be doing was acquiring the

agresource is that the war machine would need to keep them out of there hands of our enemy but they simply unable to do that. >> host: kori schake you worked at the national security council to ben strategy under george w. bush. did you find this date department that dean acheson found? >> i went to work in the pentagon as my first real job and one of the things i was really struck by i did not grow up in a military family and i did not know the culture but mostly what the american military is brilliant teachers because they live in the environment where you cannot be good your job unless you can make your reveals good that there's. i was the person everyone had to make good that there job. when i went to the state department 20 years later the people who are successful in the state department are those you can throw into the deep end and

they will not drown but nobody ever teaches them to swim. but the best of them do not even in values swimming lessons because they didn't drown. it is a culture that makes very little of the enormous human capital it has and with a little bit of attention and basic management you could actually realigned the structure and make it as well functioning as the military. the military is great to make a lot out of very little but we just don't hold them to the same standard but to show we should not let inherently civilian responsibilities accrue in the way they have from september 11. that is bad for the country it is important to see civilians that we need to

make the state department capable of doing that. >> host: is there a bias against republicans in the state department? >> i did not find that out myself. i found the culture that believes itself mainly they are the guardians of american foreign policy against all of these politicians. for example,, the foreign service complains, an editorial in the "washington post" about two weeks ago by ambassador pickering and a few others and for appointees being named to the senior post but there is no evidence that political ambassadors are any less good at there job the career foreign service officers and sometimes they are better because they understand the president's agenda and the

connections to the warehouse that allow them to a vance the agenda very often the state department believes its job is to protect american foreign policy against those who are elected. and fact is political bias. that is why they don't resonate with the broader public. >> host: in your book "state of disrepair" you think condoleezza rice for her help to put this together. dishy share your viewpoint? >> i would not burden her with all of my views but she gave me a couple of very good interviews for the book i was working in the state department when she was secretary so i got to watch her scrub -- struggled to fix these problems you may

remember she was doing a town hall meeting with foreign service officers and some were complaining not to be deployed to iraq because it was dangerous. aunt that i think is not characteristic of the people of the foreign service, but it is of the problems we need to fix and a culture. and the people are terrific. they do dangerous work with almost no attention and almost have enough -- never have enough resources to do with but they go out to try to tell people in the united states and the people are terrific but the institution needs to get deserving of them and we are not yet. >> host: what is the policy planning at the state department do? >> the policy planning a small 25 persons staff to

dream up ideas that they would not produce for the secretary so they are widely popular in the department. [laughter] but half of the staff there are professional diplomats for those to get away from the constraints to foot the best ideas to the secretary which is inspiring to work there because the people are fun and exciting. we had someone who pulled the iranian public attitudes think people who have ideas that iranians would vote for in the parliamentary election but of course, the supreme council looks at the candidate so we created fake internet candidates said

they wanted to vote for in tens of thousands actually voted for them in the election. it was such fun mischief to do and the department was supportive and you could not have done that from within the bureau of metal eastern affairs you could do it for policy planning and at that time we had a terrific director who was a career intelligence officer who was not a freight -- afraid of ideas he did not agree with. said he was a perfect leader. >> host: the department of state is deficient in three crucial areas in which the department of defense excels mission focused on education, and programming. >> guest:. >> it is true if you ask the marine corps what they do. they are a rifleman if you ask a diplomat what they do it is much harder because

they have read defused focus but also the leadership of the institution is not conveying fagot core values of responsibility. if you don't do that people quickly lose focus. with programming, part of the reason the congress truss the pentagon with the enormous amount of taxpayer money is because the pentagon provides a lot of information and does assessments. so think about david petraeus and congress was deeply skeptical that the surge was working. what did the military do? they identified what they thought the right to metrics were to hold themselves accountable, no. of intelligence tips they were getting, and collected data

over a course of a whole year and made a public so scholars could second-guess the they had better ideas and on that basis they change congressional attitude. the power of ideas to prove your case is how to win policy debates and the state department does not have that bureaucratic machinery to build a budget that is defense ball like the defense department and i am a very strong and deep in my heart i am the insurance actuary and i think we need budgeteers will make the state department budget as bulletproof as the defense department. >> host: ms. schake working at the national security council and the state of bremen and now our research fellow and teaching at west point, a johns hopkins, how did you get interested in this line of work? >> guest. [laughter] i was the custom of

condoleezza rice here at stanford. [laughter] i had a grand idea about writing my ph.d. in the response of the west and american novel and what it tells us about literature and art and i did not do that and she is the reason. >> host: the book is "state of disrepair" one of the recommendations you have is for the state department to consider universality. and every kid to we have universities and it makes sense but if you try to reinvention how to spend our resources on diplomacy and is not entirely clear luxembourg would needed embassy of its own when belgium is next door and the european union does a lot of

the diplomatic work in brussels. so it seems possible that given american predominance with the international order, much of the work we want to do diplomatically diplomatically, the high politics of state to state relations is mostly done in washington. what we need american and the seas for to take care of americans in there traveling to be involved in local activities with other societies. so the great democratization and the communications revolution mean that we don't need an embassy in berlin to talk to the german government but we need to be out at community meetings and seeing what political parties are doing, the fbi working with the german counterpart on terrorism

issues, a lot of those kinds of things we don't need and sees to do necessarily and the state did interesting experimentation if we can create virtual access centers where you really, really need the embassies in societies where there is not free transmission of information. my favorite example of vassar for in damascus at the start of the civil war did an enormously powerful and important job for the united states by going to funerals of political dissidents killed by the government showing that americans care about that and to give interviews about what the aside government was doing. that is american diplomacy at its finest and that is what they need to do. >> host: kori schake author of "state of disrepair" fixing the culture and practices of the

state department" thank you for joining us on a booktv. >> guest: it has been a pleasure. >> contain to answer my own question, i started my first job as the reference archivist and one of the

charges was to find a project to work on. and from the time i started started, a series of five boxes in the bottom of the shelf that said artificial limbs. they race -- basically arranged alphabetical by surname. i thought this is great. here are records arranged by peoples name. confederate veterans, and the records started 1866. the federal government have already been doing a similar program so not that we came up with less on our own and during the war the federal government was providing in duties with artificial limbs. we were the first of the former confederate states to pass legislation to get a program for artificial limbs for the veterans. after that the stipulation of the resolution was that the share of the beach

county were to go out and count the name to veterans in there county and they decided at the time the arms were not that useful but they would focus on the lakes because of the importance, the government drive was to get people back to work and they felt getting people lay eggs to walk on was more important than the arm that was not that useful purpose of the focus initially was just legs. the state chose scituate light company with that was not necessarily the best leg. it was fine. but another citizen in this state who had purchased a leg from the company wrote to the governor and said there is a person who works for the company and he wants to come home and he would be willing to come and set up an office and manufacture

limbs year. by putting the book out, a few of the limbs have surfaced. duncan hannah from red springs road in a letter if you cannot come to the archives to do your research you can write to our correspondent archivist and he said the confederate pension for my grandfather and i have his leg if anybody cares. said he did not have access to e-mail. i wrote him a letter and told him that i cared. i did not know if he would be able to take pictures to e-mail it to me but then a few weeks passed and i got an e-mail that said the subject white wine was duncan hannah, and the message and is said a series of photographs taken in the feed store so it was a leg and all of the feed bags

somebody's hand holding it from a variety of angles than one picture that shows the bottom of the floods and i could see the screw holes and i knew how the of up pat and worked and where the cables went and i knew it was the jewett leg and the stumps people had were so ragged and painful that to put this big wooden leg to get around it was often not desirable for them. they were hot, they hurt the stocks than they would come up with something at home or walk around with a couple of crutches. but they paid for them. they had two options. they could purchase the patent and then purchase the kit, the wood blocks for a little less, obviously the most cost-effective thing is just to have somebody from the factory to pay $75 if

you thought it would work or if you lost your leg from too far down what we had commercially would not work you could take the money. the legs today verses' then, some of them are high tech for everybody has seen 70 walking down the street with the metal $6 million contraption that is very high tech and if you did not know differently would not know they were in apt they're walking comfortably with the leg that might seem a little stiff but offers a natural gaits and comfort, light weight, not everybody has access to a late like that. amputation done today, they can do flaps of skin that were sewn together carefully and during the civil

war, the surgeons didn't have a lot of time for reconstructive surgery. it was ragged and the skin was tucked under and the bone close to the surface and it made it very hard for them to utilize artificial limbs. phantom pain which is the pain of the missing leg or arm. it is universal almost all ntt's report sensing pain in an area that has been amputated. the people at the npt support group described it. you wake up in the middle of the night and your leg hurts and it is not there but it is excruciating but it makes the recovery difficult and the state had its own phantom pain trying to fix these people and and at the time people thought if they

to get the injured veterans back to work it would ease the pain. the book genesis was a list of every person who contacted the state related to having lost a leg or the use of a limb and the names of the veteran company and regimen and what county neighbor from and everywhere you could find a document related to there correspondence with the state. . .