By Carrie Speranza and Dillon Taylor
For centuries, America prioritized international diplomacy because, as a young nation, our continued existence depended on it. It is time we recognize what has become axiomatic: the evolving nature of domestic crises jeopardizes our national security, global standing, and collective futures.
The wicked problems facing America are manifold, global, and growing. We are experiencing devastating and recurrent crises with increased frequency, severity, complexity, and cost. With COVID-19, mass migration, and humanitarian missions, global crises have shrunk the far-reaching world to what it is now, as close as an outstretched hand.
Coincidentally, those charged with anticipating, responding to, and mitigating the domestic poly crisis landscape—our nation’s emergency managers—possess a similar skill set and operate akin to international diplomats, but are drastically under-resourced for their mission. We offer the following to correlate the work of emergency managers to the international diplomatic enterprise and contend that emergency managers should be seen as “disaster diplomats” and prioritized, empowered, and resourced to meet their mission accordingly.
Whether international or domestic, diplomacy is a method of influencing policies, decisions, and behavior through negotiations, collaboration, and relationship-building. Internationally, diplomats nurture public and private sector relationships across the political spectrum to effectuate policy changes, often concurrent to conflict. In a similar fashion, domestically, disaster diplomats broker capacity-building and community resilience by strengthening ties, earning trust, and promoting lasting cooperation across layers of government bureaucracy and jurisdictional boundaries. They work to ensure our emergency response and recovery efforts are seamless and implemented in the spirit of building resilient communities and people.
Both international and domestic disaster diplomats apply tools and relationships to bring the government to bear on any complex event. Simply put, they are masters at influencing outcomes without controlling the chess board or the pieces. They leverage private sector and non-governmental partners, enact emergency authorities, scale response operations, manage billions of post-disaster recovery dollars with strict regulations, and execute public administration under pressure. Additionally, they implement evacuations under duress, negotiate intergovernmental agreements to expedite aid, and represent the policy priorities of their respective administrations (i.e., town manager, mayor, governor, or president). However, the degree to which we prioritize, resource, and empower our emergency managers, in contrast to international diplomats, is wildly disparate, and, arguably, negligent given the country’s state of domestic permacrisis. It begs the question: would America’s communities be able to better withstand chronic stressors and acute shocks if we invested in disaster diplomats like we do their international counterparts?
Proof is found in numbers. For example, the Secretary of State is the highest-ranking member of the President’s Cabinet (second to the Vice President) and is fourth in line to the presidency. They also oversee a budget of more than $63.1 billion and a staff of nearly 77,000. In contrast, the Federal Emergency Management Agency—the disaster diplomat’s equivalent federal agency to the Department of State—is only one of more than a dozen components within the Department of Homeland Security, its director is not a member of the Cabinet and has a budget of $25.5 billion and 20,000 employees.
These disparities are further replicated at the state level where only a handful of emergency managers serve on the governor’s cabinet, and all lead understaffed and underfunded agencies relative to the number of emergencies they face. Compounding this further, at the city or county level, emergency managers are often an office of one placed under the purview of the fire department or law enforcement, and sometimes delegated “other duties as assigned.” Which means emergency managers lack the authority and autonomy of their international counterparts but are responsible for similar missions. Except domestically, emergency managers directly interface with our families, friends, coworkers, and communities daily.
Simply put, [disaster diplomats] are masters at influencing outcomes without controlling the chess board or the pieces.
What the public may not know is that disaster management is a marathon. After the response ends, each disaster involves long-term recovery, economic development, insurance intricacies, and hazard mitigation in the effort to help rebuild and heal. The disaster diplomats’ sophisticated level of public administration across a borderless crisis environment ensures affected communities bend rather than break. The safety and security of the Homeland in the face of complex disasters, and our resolve to build a more resilient future, is reliant on leveraging their skills across communities, organizations, and the whole-of-government, disaster diplomats, though, are experiencing significant burnout given the relentless pace of incidents, coupled with the lack of staffing and insufficient funding. Our country and our communities depend on them to manage chaos and nurture long-term resilience, and it is time we begin to recognize the necessity of resourcing and funding emergency management. So why aren’t the American people advocating for domestic disaster diplomats?
Let’s take a closer look at the domestic enterprise, to justify such a request.
For many, managing COVID-19 felt like trying to hug a ghost. Overnight, our entire world deteriorated across every conceivable metric. Given the scope and pace of COVID-19, communities needed a group of public administration practitioners versed in establishing a framework to manage the chaos. Accordingly, disaster diplomats built a foundation through the National Incident Management System to connect all stakeholders, strengthen ties, build trust, and promote cooperation. Simplifying complexity is part of diplomatic tradecraft, and by doing so during COVID-19, disaster diplomats brought a sense of calm that inarguably benefited our response to a once-in-a-generation global pandemic.
By July 2024, America’s disaster diplomats were already thrust into the role they are most accustomed to; coordinating multi-agency response and recovery for extreme weather events. Deadly tornadoes in Oklahoma, a devastating Derecho in Houston and Harris County, TX, record-breaking heat, and the first Category 5 hurricane this early in a hurricane season, serve to remind us that the new normal of permacrisis is here. Through each operation, disaster diplomats deployed assets for search and rescue missions, operated mass care shelters and family assistance centers, and conducted damage assessments so that we can rebuild. And when each response concludes, they continue their leadership by seeking, advocating for, and administering billions of post-disaster recovery dollars and hazard mitigation grants to foster community resilience.
Twice within the last three years, the State Department has operated a humanitarian mission on domestic soil. The evacuation of more than 74,000 Afghans during Operation Allies Welcome in 2021 and the release of 200 political prisoners from Nicaragua in 2023 provided opportunities for disaster diplomats to do what they do best—bring people together to help those in need. Disaster diplomats supported large federal agencies and their international counterparts as they navigated customs and background checks, acute and short-term healthcare, vaccines, legal resources for asylees and parolees, shelter and sustenance, media and congressional interest, and a panoply of other considerations.
From concerts and conventions to Super Bowls and the Olympics, special event planning is one of the most orchestrated roles disaster diplomats play. With 2024 being an election year, teams led by disaster diplomats near Washington, DC, have been busy preparing for the 2025 Presidential Inauguration, which is similar to NATO Summits and the G7 internationally. For more than a year, they have planned, collaborated, trained, and conducted exercises with local, state, and federal officials, dozens of law enforcement entities, and leadership of both political parties to ensure America’s time-honored tradition of an inauguration is conducted with the public’s safety in mind. On Inauguration Day, disaster diplomats will host hundreds of partners in their emergency operations centers to monitor the event and be ready to respond if an incident occurs.
The changing climate influences the severity and frequency of natural disasters, technological advancements continue to expose our cybersecurity risks, and as global war conflicts pose threats to the Homeland, America has never needed emergency managers more. But in the absence of adequate funding and prioritization of our disaster diplomatic enterprise, the safety and security of our communities is in jeopardy. If we don’t respond accordingly, our surest bet for a resilient future will be lost.
Note: This article originally appeared in Homeland Security Today.
Co-Authors:
Carrie Speranza, CEM is an industry-recognized emergency management and homeland security executive with 20 years of experience in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, including five years leading an urban area big city emergency management program. She currently serves as the Chair of FEMA’s National Advisory Council and is the President of the International Association of Emergency Managers.
Dillon Taylor, Esq. serves as the chief of staff & senior counsel of a state-level emergency management agency, and has more than two decades of experience across legal, policy, and operational roles. He is the 2024 Ellen Gordon Award recipient from the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense & Security and is a Rising Leader at the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Strategy Group.
