State Department Head for the Western Hemisphere Steps Down

On July 15, Arturo Valenzuela bid farewell to the State Department in a tweet. As he announced in May, Valenzuela will resume teaching at Georgetown next month after a two-year leave of absence. Chilean-born Arturo Valenzuela served as deputy assistant secretary for Inter-American affairs during Bill Clinton’s first term and senior director for Inter-American affairs at the National Security Council during Clinton’s second. Valenzuela says he pursued four foreign policy goals during his tenure: boosting economic engagement, combating insecurity, working to confront climate change, and deepening democratic governance. Consistent with President Barack Obama’s stated policy of developing a “new partnership with the Americas,” Valenzuela also worked to diffuse tensions between the United States and its ideological polar opposites in Venezuela and Cuba. “This is a time when we’re not going in and telling anyone what to do,” Valenzuela said at a digital town hall meeting in November. “We’re really seeking to have mutually respectful partnerships with the countries of the Americas.”

Writing for The Atlantic, Steve Clemmons credits the scholar-turned-diplomat with helping diffuse tensions in the region, citing the defrosting of U.S.-Cuban relations, Washington’s help leading Honduras back into the fold of the Organization of American States after the 2009 coup, and securing Brazil’s cooperation on a UN measure sanctioning Libya. But Valenzuela also has his detractors. He went up for Senate confirmation shortly after the June 2009 overthrow of Manuel Zelaya in Honduras and GOP legislators, led by Jim DeMint (R-SC), delayed Valenzuela’s appointment for over three months because he viewed the Honduran coup a unconstitutional.

As Liz Harper points out in a post for the AQ blog, Valenzuela’s enthusiastic embrace of social media platforms may turn out to be one of his longest-lasting accomplishments at the State Department. Valenzuela ran an active Twitter account, @WHAAsstSecty that now has over 7,000 followers. Eight of the State Department’s 20 most-followed Facebook pages are in the Western Hemisphere. And Valenzuela presided over the State Department’s first digital town hall meeting at George Washington University in November 2010. “Right from the start, [Valenzuela] formed a new media team and empowered it to come up with ideas like the digital town hall,” an unidentified source at the State Department told Liz Harper. “[H]e saw social media as an opportunity to reach out directly to young people in the U.S. and the hemisphere writ large.”

The Obama administration has yet to announce a replacement to fill Valenzuela’s empty seat. James Bosworth, an independent analyst, writes that Congress may again take months to confirm whoever the Obama administration picks to fill Valenzuela’s shoes. Some observers think Ambassador William Brownfield, a career foreign service officer* currently serving as the assistant secretary for the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, is a top contender for the job. The Miami Herald’s columnist Andrés Oppenheimer writes also named Anne Patterson—who has served as ambassador to Pakistan, Colombia, and El Salvador—as a possibility.

Learn more:

• View the @WHAAsstSecty Twitter account and Facebook page. 
• See Valenzuela’s November 2010 digital town hall on YouTube. 
• Read Liz Harper’s post on the AQ blog about Valenzuela’s enthusiastic adoption of social media.
• Consult Arturo Valenzuela’s biography at The Washington Post’s Who Runs Gov. 

*Editor's note: The original version of this story described Ambassador Brownfield as a "career civil servant." He is a long-time foreign service officer.