Dan Drezner on the State Department

Dan Drezner has two great posts worth reading on his personal website about the state of the State Department. The first post is an examination of how the government is actually constrained by interests groups–in other words, as Drezner says, the executive branch can no longer (if it ever could) just “gin up any excuse for war.”
His second post concerns the need for reorganizing the State Department, and addresses some of the issues raised by what appears to be an anonymous group of Foreign Service officers. I haven’t read through the group’s website, but their ideas seem to be fruitful for debate. (I really hope, though, that the State Department human rights reports aren’t curtailed: They’re an invaluable source for me when I want good information. And we can’t always rely on the pronouncements of “official” bodies in other countries.)