Out: Embassy in a Box. In: FLEX

Good detail here, given the limitations of secondary reporting. https://t.co/Jto6pl0l0B

— TSB (@TweetingTSB) April 16, 2025

Closing diplomatic posts and changing our overseas presence must be a complicated process, so you'd expect there to be a manual or instructions of some kind. Well, you'd be right, and it's right here in a publicly available document. Feel free to really explore the bureaucratic minutia. 

Assuming you've read that Punchbowl article, let's discuss a few things. 

First, is "FLEX" an acronym, and if so what does it stand for? The answer is yes, and it stands for Fast, Lean, Efficient, and Expedient. In practice that sounds like diplomatic missions of limited scope and scaled-down facilities. Like what a tiny house is to a regular house. 

Another term that probably made you curious is the concept of closed missions being “folded into” nearby embassies. Very odd. My guess is that means some functions and personnel would simply be moved to those nearby missions, and maybe ambassadors would be regionally-accredited to more than one country.  

And what about that plan for our Tri-Mission posts (Rome, Paris, Brussels, Vienna, etc.)? They're in for a shock if the international missions are moved into our bilateral embassies. Can three ambassadors share a single building??? Who gets first dibs on the pool or tennis court??? Endless petty annoyances would ensue. 

Nothing will bring out in-fighting better than a struggle over an up-to 50 percent budget cut. Coming soon.

Annnd, Away We Go! State Budget Cuts On the Table

Up to 30+ posts would be closed, $$ to multinationals, NGOs such as the East-West Center, UN peacekeeping, and INL zeroed out, migration and refugee programs cut in half. We’ll see how much Congress shares the enthusiasm. https://t.co/FiYgrC62JI

— TSB (@TweetingTSB) April 14, 2025

There's still a world of politics and process between an unofficial budget proposal and an actual congressional appropriation, so don't everyone take a deferred retirement just yet. 

Last Stand at U.S. Institute of Peace (Includes a Gun Safe and the Car Left Behind)

Changes of power often entail the use of a bit of force to shake up the bitter-enders among the losing side. The USIP seems an unlikely place for that, nevertheless that's what happened here in the nation's capitol last week. 

According to a law suit and multiple news reports, the USIP leadership and a few loyalists barricaded themselves in the USIP's large and impressive headquarters building, even to the point of removing outer lock keyways from its entrance doors, trying to disable them. Reportedly they also disabled elevators, electronic access controls, and phone systems. 

According to a lawsuit filed last week the dastardly DOGE invaders finally gained entrance by enlisting former security guards employed by a private security agency that USIP recently ended its contract with. The agency did not return USIP's master key when the contract ended. 

Reportedly, DOGE was able to gain the agency's assistance by threatening to cut off all its federal contracts. (Here I am reminded of Machiavelli's warning that mercenaries cannot be trusted.)

Once the lower battlements had thus been breached, USIP’s leadership barricaded themselves on the building’s top floor. A sound tactical move, that, since the top floor usually makes the best place for a last refuge during a siege, whether in an embassy's safe haven or a castle's Keep.   

The siege was soon over, but DOGE offered merciful terms of surrender and the defeated survivors were permitted to leave unharmed, although without their personal property or even the car belonging to the vanquished former President of USIP. 

One big surprise, to me at least, came in a court declaration filed Wednesday by USIP's outside counsel George Foote where he stated that after the former security agency's employees heard his protest that they were trespassing “they ignored this and proceeded to walk toward USIP’s gun safe.”  

WHAT? The institute of peace felt it necessary to have firearms on the premises? Evidently our professional peacekeepers think there are limits to the practical value of conflict resolution techniques. Like, if they feel personally threatened they want the option of bustin' a cap in some troublemaker's ass. 

Not that I disagree, but, well, I now feel disillusioned. How were those guys going to end conflicts and  create peace in the whole world if they don't trust themselves to cool down a few former contract employees? 

SCOTUS to POTUS: Bring Me the Head of Abrego Garcia

 

Not to be confused with the object of that 1974 second-tier Sam Peckinpah movie, but the coincidence of names is worth noting. 

As it was with Alfredo, so it is with Abrego - some powerful people want him returned, only in this case with his head still attached to his body. Read the SCOTUS decision here. 

The current Garcia is, of course, a Salvadoran citizen who is in the custody of the Salvadoran government. That'll make him very easy to find but very hard to return. 

In any case, all SCOTUS asked of the Trump administration was that it "facilitate and effectuate" his return. So, short of ordering SEAL Team 6 to rescue him from Salvador's Center for Terrorism Confinement, I'd guess the administration will be unable to deliver.

SCOTUS should brace itself for disappointment. 

DSS Investigates a Human Smuggling Network

DSS flexes that new(ish) illegal alien bustin’ value. https://t.co/nQYJuRd4WQ

— TSB (@TweetingTSB) April 9, 2025

See the local Peruvian news here in inglés. 

DOGE, are you seeing this? Worth immunity from RIFs, unless I miss my guess. 

What Goes Around Comes Around and Burns You Down (A Story of the Japanese Empire and Harvard's Chemistry Department)

While browsing today's Higher Ed newsletter (don't laugh, everyone needs to keep a few job irons in the fire in these uncertain times) I saw a book review that included this nugget:  

In 1967, in the midst of the Vietnam War, Harvard University English professor Neil Rudenstine intervened in a protest on campus, where a recruiter from Dow Chemical Company, which made napalm, had been surrounded by students upset about U.S. attacks on Vietnamese civilians. He helped defuse the tension by negotiating with students to release the recruiter.

Well, that immediately made me think about the history of napalm, which by a great irony was the brainchild of Harvard itself when it was doing war work for the USG in 1942. True story, which you can read all about in this Harvard Crimson article.

The first napalm experiments were even conducted right there on the Harvard campus, as you can see in the photo above. That came as an uncomfortable surprise to Vietnam War protestors on campus.

 

The great historical irony is that the USG was in need of a new incendiary in 1942 only because latex, which had been used in earlier incendiaries, became a scare commodity after the Japanese Empire invaded and occupied Malaya, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand early in the war, thereby capturing most of the world's natural rubber sources.

Napalm was used in all theaters of the war, and was later used in Korea and Vietnam, but by far it's greatest concentration was in the U.S. fire-bomb campaign against 60-some Japanese cities. 

How's that for unintended consequences? 

 

Great Foreign Service Is Just a Short Walk Across the Border

It might seem strange but one of the oldest, most historically rich, and simply useful posts in the U.S. Foreign Service is within sight of Brownsville, Texas. 

Don't look too closely at what the city's Spanish name means, and please read this article in the current State Magazine: Matamoros - Building American prosperity and protecting American citizens for two centuries. 

There is so much to know about that post that the article doesn't even go into Matamoros' role in the U.S. Civil War, a time when the contraband trade flowed from north to south because Matamoros was the only port available to the Confederacy that was not blockaded by the Union Navy, or its diplomatic role vis-a-vis the Republic of Texas when the later was a separate country.

You can't miss with that post, although one does have to sympathize with junior officers who find themselves doing 'foreign' service at a place where they can swing over to the USA to get groceries or to fill up their cars.