Policy Planning Staff S/P

Secretary of State George Marshall created the Policy Planning Staff in May 1947 and named George Kennan its first director. Marshall wanted a small group free of day-to-day operational duties that could look ahead and advise him on long-range strategy. Within months Kennan's staff helped shape the Marshall Plan for European recovery, and his writing on containing Soviet expansion became the intellectual foundation of Cold War policy.

The staff, usually a few dozen people drawn from the Foreign Service, other agencies, academia, and think tanks, reports directly to the Secretary. It writes strategy papers, drafts major speeches, reviews policy across the department's regional and functional bureaus, and acts as a sounding board on emerging issues. Its director is often one of the Secretary's closest advisers.

Its directors have included Paul Nitze, who drafted the 1950 national security document NSC-68, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Jake Sullivan, who later became National Security Advisor. How influential the staff is depends heavily on the Secretary, and critics have long noted that bureaucracies under constant pressure rarely make room for long-term planning, which is exactly the gap the office was created to fill.