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The other shoe

I just caught wind this morning of the right-wing angst about the State Department’s decision to move the US Embassy to the Vatican into the same complex with the US Embassy to Italy, albeit with a separate entrance.  Maybe the perspective of a former deputy chief of mission (DCM) and charge’ d’affaires at the embassy to Italy will enlighten, or more likely stir up even more protest.

I was DCM at the embassy to Italy 1990-93.  The embassy to the Vatican had a separate ambassador, DCM, political officers and premises then, but it got its administrative services from the much larger and well-established embassy to Italy.  The natural state of the relationship between the two embassies (as well as the mission to the UN organizations in Rome) was mildly contentious.  The ambassador to the Vatican often felt ill-served and disrespected.  He competed for Washington’s attention.  The physical separation made things worse, not better, as it deprived the two embassies of casual daily interaction.

The DCMs of the three embassies, all then in separate premises, tried to meet regularly to sort things out.  This was more useful than our ambassadors knew or cared.  Most of what we talked about were the trivia of daily embassy existence, but sometimes more important things got done.  The Vatican embassy DCM, Cameron Hume, and I decided that he would handle the then on-going negotiations to end the civil war in Mozambique, mediated by a Catholic organization known as the Community of Sant’Egidio.  It was an Italian nongovernmental organization rather than a Vatican one, but I had my hands full with the first Gulf War and its aftermath so we happily decided Cameron would take on Mozambique.  He did a great job supporting Sant’Egidio and wrote a fine book about it.

The notion that moving the Vatican embassy into fabulous quarters on the via Veneto constitutes a demotion in stature will amuse generations of diplomats. The Vatican itself is all right with the arrangement. The administrative and security savings are said to be only $1.4 million (per year of course), but that does not count sale of the Vatican embassy property, which according to its website the US government purchased in 1994. The savings in terms of staff time and energy will be far greater.  The ambassadors might even learn to get along a bit better.  But if they don’t the DCMs will try to smooth things out.

More interesting is the State Department’s assertion that staffing will not be reduced.  It should be, at both the embassy to Italy and the embassy to the Vatican.  These are vastly overstaffed for current requirements.  Embassy Rome is back up to 800 people (about half Italian and half American).  When I was DCM we cut it back to about 720, which was hard to do because there were 36 different agencies of the US government represented.  Most of its 63 diplomats are servicing non-State agencies, who are there because of legacy and inertia rather than current requirements.  I today think 50 Americans would suffice in Embassy Rome; there are 400 there today.

The Vatican embassy occasionally takes on enormous significance, but presidential visits and the like have always required the Rome embassy to pitch in.  That will be much easier once the two embassies are co-located.  Day to day business is usually pretty tame.  The Vatican doesn’t do a lot of radical policy change and instant reaction.  So the Vatican embassy could also do with a slimming down.  Its staff of seven diplomats is more than twice what it was when I was DCM twenty years ago.  Has the Vatican doubled its significance since then?  Has technology improved productivity at all?  We’ve got to take a much harder look at our diplomatic presence abroad and cut it back to more reasonable dimensions.

The move of the US embassy to the Vatican into glorious via Veneto quarters should be seen as a first step in the right direction.  Listening to people who complained about inadequate security in Benghazi advocate keeping another facility separate from a well-protected embassy would be funny if it weren’t sad.  I hope the administration has the gumption to drop the other shoe: cut staff back to what we really need.