Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently announced a major restructuring of the U.S. State Department. Although the media quickly lamented the downsizing efforts and focused disproportionately on the purging of liberal influence, the overwhelming bulk of Rubio’s statements have been focused on the need to align the department with national interests and consolidate manpower in regional offices and at embassy and consulate posts around the world.

Rubio has emphasized that this is not a cost-cutting exercise. It also isn’t a neutering of U.S. diplomatic prowess. Just the opposite — he claims that, by pushing manpower out of stove-piped functional offices and into regional bureaus, he is “reversing decades of bloat and bureaucracy” while empowering the “talented diplomats” who serve on the front lines of America’s whole-of-government national security strategy and policy. It is by this reasonable intent that his efforts must be judged.

To emphasize Rubio’s concerns about the stifling nature of the D.C.-based bureaucracy, the following personal anecdote is instructive.

I was deployed as the U.S. senior defense official to Iraq for 14 months during a particularly challenging time — May 2020 until July 2021. Iranian-aligned militia groups were acting on a regular basis to hinder the authority and sovereignty of the rightfully selected leaders of Iraq, and they were still fuming about the American airstrike that had killed Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani in early January 2020.

These groups expressed their displeasure through

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