Secretary of State Marco Rubio should order a re-evaluation of the strategic planning of the U.S. Consulate General in Curaçao. Otherwise, the Country Team risks non-compliance with the information quality standards expected of the U.S. Department of State.  

The current mission strategic plan of the U.S. Consulate General in Curaçao presents an unusual case. Only U.S. diplomatic missions to independent states tend to produce their own strategic plans (e.g., Netherlands). However, there are a few exceptions. The U.S. Consulate General in Curacao is one of them. 

Under the Biden Administration, there were mission strategic plans produced for a number of non-independent states. Examples include Aruba, Curaçao, Hong Kong, Macau, Palestinian Territories, and Sint Maarten.  

At the inauguration, the Trump Administration inherited these mission strategic plans from its predecessor. Now, each will need to be substantially revised to achieve alignment with the America First Foreign Policy Agenda of the new administration. That will take time.  

Until that happens, the Trump Administration will have to make do with the leftovers. That includes the most recent mission strategic plan produced by the U.S. Consulate General in Curacao for Aruba, Curacao, and Sint Maarten.  

In some ways, that mission strategic plan is a textbook case. As with most U.S. diplomatic missions that have concurrent accreditations, there is only one strategic plan for all three constituent countries. Note, this is the same approach that was taken by the U.S. Embassy in Suva for Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga, and Tuvalu. Nothing special there. 

However, differences start to come into focus when one takes a closer look. One of the biggest is that it does not refer to its mission strategic plan as the Integrated Country Strategy for Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten. Instead, it is named the Integrated Country Strategy for the Dutch Caribbean. That approach not only marks a divergence from the U.S. Embassy in Suva and most other U.S. diplomatic missions that have concurrent accreditations. The term "Dutch Caribbean" is also problematic for users to interpret. 

In the official taxonomy of independent states, dependencies, and areas of special sovereignty of the U.S. Department of State, there is no definition provided for “Dutch Caribbean,” “Eastern Caribbean,” or any other region of the world. As a consequence, it is left open to interpretation whether the Integrated Country Strategy for the Dutch Caribbean sets the whole-of-government goals and objectives for all of the parts of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the Caribbean. 

The U.S. Department of State has done little if anything to resolve this interpretive dilemma.  

The official website of the Rijksoverheid makes clear that the Dutch Caribbean refers to Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Eustatius, and Sint Maarten. However, the official website for the Integrated Country Strategies declares that the referents of the Integrated Country Strategy for the Dutch Caribbean are Aruba, Curacao, and Sint Maarten without any justification for that move. 

Such an oversight is indefensible. No strategic plan of a U.S. diplomatic mission should be riddled with such conceptual ambiguity. Its geographic scope should be crystal clear from page one. Readers should not be left scratching their heads and asking whether the Integrated Country Strategy for the Netherlands or the Integrated Country Strategy for the Dutch Caribbean applies in the cases of Bonaire, Saba, and Sint Eustatius. 

Secretary of State Rubio should direct his staff to find a solution to this problem. That will require taking a step back and answering a couple of policy questions for the Country Team.  

First, it must decide whether public bodies like Bonaire, Saba, and Sint Eustatius should be classified as dependencies or areas of special sovereignty for the purpose of U.S. diplomacy.  

Second, it has to decide which mission strategic plan should provide the whole-of-government goals and objectives  for Bonaire, Saba, and Sint Eustatius (i.e. ICS Netherlands; ICS Dutch Caribbean). 

Until there are definitive answers to those questions, the U.S. Consulate General in Curaçao will continue to struggle to meet the information quality standards that are required under the Information Quality Act and other U.S. federal statutes, which demands Congressional oversight. 

Michael Walsh is an Affiliated Research Fellow of the Lasky Center at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.