Defense secretary wants more diplomatic ammo

Defense Secretary Robert Gates called Monday for a "dramatic increase" in the U.S. budget for diplomacy and foreign aid, arguing that al-Qaida does a better job than Washington of communicating its message overseas and that U.S. deployment of civilians abroad has been "ad hoc and on the fly."

In a speech that emphasized the importance of "soft power" to prevent and end conflicts, Gates suggested beefing up the State Department's foreign-affairs budget of $36 billion, even as he acknowledged Pentagon observers might consider it "blasphemy" for the Pentagon chief to make such an appeal for another agency.

"One of the most important lessons of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that military success is not sufficient to win," said Gates at the annual Landon Lecture at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan.

The wars of the future, he said, are likely to be "fundamentally political in nature" and will not be solved by military means alone. "The importance of deploying civilian expertise has been relearned — the hard way" in Iraq and Afghanistan, Gates said.

Many have argued that the Bush administration missed opportunities early in the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns to head off insurgent resistance by failing to focus on economic development, promotion of internal reconciliation, training of police forces and communication of U.S. goals.

The lesson, Gates said, is that nontraditional conflict — against insurgents, guerrillas and terrorists — will be the mainstay of battlefields for years to come, requiring more than military power.

"We are miserable at communicating to the rest of the world what we are about as a society and culture," Gates said. "It is just plain embarrassing that al-Qaida is better at communicating its message on the Internet than America."

The U.S. military has shouldered much of the burden of the lack of civilian expertise, Gates said, adding that recent civilian efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan had been done "ad hoc and on the fly in a climate of crisis."

He called for developing "a permanent, sizable cadre of immediately deployable experts with disparate skills" that is integrated with the U.S. government, private sector and institutions of foreign countries receiving assistance.