Hillary's "Smart" New Move: Revamping American Diplomacy and Development

In a 5,500-word essay in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs

, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has offered a sneak preview of the much-anticipated Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, or QDDR. Launched in July 2009, the QDDR is a top-to-bottom review of the U.S. State Department's current objectives, priorities, strategy and operations, and will make recommendations for American foreign policy and aid for the years ahead. Clinton said she was originally inspired by the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review (which similarly occurs every four years), and believes that defense must be complemented by diplomacy and development in order for American foreign policy to be effective.

In Clinton's words, the QDDR "defines how to make diplomacy and development coordinated, complementary, and mutually reinforcing. It assesses what has worked in the past and what has not. And it forecasts future strategic choices and resource needs." The forthcoming review will no doubt be magisterial and exhaustive in scope. So what will the QDDR probably look like when it's released later this year? The following is an overview of some of Clinton's key strategic recommendations, which reflect this coming decade's new foreign policy challenges:

Transformational Diplomacy is Out. Smart Power is In.

Clintons forerunner under the Bush Administration, Condoleeza Rice, was known for her strategy of "transformational diplomacy," which aimed to "end tyranny around the world" by exporting and promoting democracy. In 2006, Rice began relocating hundreds of U.S. diplomats from "old" power centers in Europe to Africa, Asia and the Middle East in order to bolster the weak democratic institutions there. Critics of Rice's approach warned that her strategy was aimed at influencing the political environments of these states, so that elections would occur. The blowback from this approach, however, was that many governments would perceive these moves as manipulative or intrusive.

Clinton's strategy, on the other hand, wields "smart power" (first conceptualized by Suzanne Nossel and Joseph Nye). As Clinton said in her first speech as Secretary of State, "We must use what has been called smart power, the full range of tools at our disposal-diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal, and cultural -picking the right tool, or combination of tools, for each situation." Smart power blends the instruments of both hard power (e.g. military coercion, deterrence and economic sanctions) and soft power (e.g. educational and medical programs delivered by Americans overseas, humanitarian assistance, winning hearts and minds, cultural influence and moral authority). The smart-power strategy of defense, diplomacy and development enjoys considerable respect from think tanks such as The Center for Strategic and International Studies and several foreign-policy scholars.

The contrasts between the two "transformational diplomacy" and "smart power" strategies could not be starker. By reducing the inordinate amount of attention on democracy promotion, the Clintonian tripartite strategy instead aims to persuade people around the world that America is a force for good without Bush-style belligerence, thus theoretically bolstering American national security in the long term. The comparative payoffs of the latter approach, however, can realistically be only assessed toward the end of the Obama Administration's term in 2012.

Public Outreach is Back.

A return to public engagement with the citizens of the world also seems to have taken hold. Clinton notes that G2G interactions between public-sector diplomats are not enough to advance an effective American foreign policy: "Increasing global interconnectedness now necessitates reaching beyond governments to citizens directly. In this information age, public opinion takes on added importance even in authoritarian states and as nonstate actors are more able to influence current events."

The State Department's use of e-diplomacy and Web 2.0 social media has exploded in recent years. Diplopedia ("the Wikipedia of American diplomacy"), the DipNote and Obama Today blogs, Voice of America's downloadable podcasts, the America.gov website and other channels are just a few examples. The State Department also has a far-reaching presence on Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter, which the upcoming QDDR will no doubt point to as Web-based platforms that should continue to be deployed as tools for engaging directly with people around the world.

Clinton also notes the importance of reaching out to citizens of other states directly through open public forums: "Public diplomacy must start at the top. In Indonesia and Turkey, I conducted bilateral meetings with government officials, but I also met with civil-society leaders and appeared as a guest on popular television talk shows. I have held town-hall meetings with diverse groups of citizens on every continent I have visited, as I have done throughout my career. Public events such as these are as much a part of my job as secretary of state as my meetings in foreign ministries." As Secretary of State, so far Clinton has visited 67 countries, has logged 1,628 days of travel overseas, and shows no signs of stopping. For example, from the 27th of October to the 8th of November her trip to the Asia-Pacific region will encompass Vietnam, China, Cambodia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Australia.

Partnerships are Critical.

Clinton seems to recognize that the development environment has changed radically since the last two decades, with entirely new players who can be allied with to produce change or development outcomes. "Twenty years ago, the development community did not exist far beyond the walls of USAID. Today, it includes corporate leaders, philanthropists, foundations, and advocates, all of whom add new skills and perspectives," she writes. "Equally important are the grass-roots leaders: the religious groups, the students, and other activists who lend their passion and energy to humanitarian efforts. These advocates and entrepreneurs are willing to challenge old orthodoxies and bring a new mindset to their work. We will partner with them to get results."

As an example of the power of partnerships, Clinton cites specific players that were crucial for disaster relief efforts in Haiti after the notoriously devastating earthquake earlier this year: "One great success this year was a partnership forged almost overnight among U.S. and Haitian cell-phone companies, the Red Cross, social entrepreneurs, the U.S. Coast Guard, and, eventually, the U.S. Marines to create a platform that used text messaging to broadcast the locations of earthquake victims in need of rescue. The State Department also launched a program to facilitate the texting of $10 donations to the Red Cross for Haiti, which drew contributions from 31 million Americans." Forging this wide array of partnerships is, of course, quintessential smart power.

In contrast to the go-it-alone unilateralism of the Bush Administration, Obama and his Cabinet also seems to recognize the importance of strengthening alliances with traditional European, Middle Eastern and Asian partners, NATO allies and other states that have proven their commitment to civil liberties, human rights and good governance. President Obama's November trip to Asia's most important democracies (India, Japan, Indonesia and South Korea) as a move to counter China underscores this, as does his 2009 Cairo speech to the Muslim world and Clinton's recent call for enhanced multilateralism and American leadership: "The United States is investing in strengthening global structures such as the G-20 and regional institutions such as the Organization of American States and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations," she writes. "This is part of a commitment to building a new global architecture of cooperation that includes not only the East and the West but also the North and the South."

Medical and Healthcare Programs Are In.

Clinton notes that several humanitarian aid programs currently run by State and related agencies revolve around medical and health issues. Here are three examples:

* The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR): A massive US$48 billion program designed to weaken HIV/AIDS worldwide,which was originally launched by President Bush and holds a place in history as the largest effort by any nation to combat a single disease. PEPFAR has so far supported the provision of treatment to more than 2 million people, care to more than 10 million people, including more than 4 million orphans and vulnerable children and prevention of mother-to-child treatment services during nearly 16 million pregnancies overseas. It continues to this day.

* Feed the Future: The U.S.'s signature program to fight global hunger and food shortages worldwide. Through American doctors, scientists and other experts on the ground, Feed the Future helps various states improve their agricultural outputs through education, technology, entrepreneurship and rural development.

* The President's Malaria Initiative: The goals of this program are to reduce the burden of malaria by 50 percent for 450 million people (who represent 70 percent of the at-risk population in Africa), as well as to expand malaria efforts into Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Again, American doctors, scientists and other experts on the ground are involved.

Clinton describes these and a cluster of other successful healthcare programs as a key cornerstone of the State Department's development efforts, and anticipates that they will continue to be run by Americans who fight disease and hunger abroad.

Ambiguity is Out.

Clinton mentions that metrics and measurements will increasingly be utilized in order to quantify performance: "Evidence-based development must be more than a notion; it must become reality. We will measure our investments not by the number of programs run but by the number of children nourished or vaccinated and by the number of people benefiting from clean water, electricity, teachers, medicine, or jobs."

This section of the forthcoming QDDR will no doubt be welcome to American policymakers and development champions who have long advocated the importance of both a data-driven approach and measuring development outcomes more frequently. Clinton provides a hint of some of the methodology and rigor which will be involved: "We will also make sure that taxpayer dollars are well spent, by gathering baseline data, surveying development indicators before projects are launched, and then measuring those same indicators over the lives of the projects. Where our approaches are successful, we will replicate them and scale them up. Where they are not, we will admit it, learn from our failures, and come up with a better idea."

USAID Is Cool Again.

Once condemned by policymakers as a sluggish, at-best mediocre government agency, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) the U.S. government's primary vehicle for development and foreign assistance has a new leader, is in the process of being overhauled and is starting to show promising signs of effectiveness.

Richard Holbrooke, the Obama Administration special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, has called USAID "a mess" and "nearly broken." Defense Secretary Robert Gates called USAID "a glorified contracting agency." A devastating 2006 essay in The American Interest also contended that the agency has "failed disastrously in its mission." In the last 10 months, however, the new head of USAID, Dr. Rajiv Shah, seems to have started the process of revamping the agency from the top down.

The QDDR will most likely promise that USAID will be overhauled and more closely integrated with the State Department. A recent New York Times profile on Shah notes that he has so far led humanitarian assistance efforts for the Haiti earthquake, the floods in Pakistan, the volcanic eruptions in Indonesia and other disasters. The piece also mentions that a number of interviews with several USAID employees point to evidence of a seachange within the agency Shah has begun to implement better metrics and monitoring structures, de-fund failing programs and reinforce successful ones, establish an in-house policy planning office and integrate a multiple ideas from multiple sources in order to increase the agency effectiveness.

In a recent blog post on the day of the White House's launched of the Presidential Policy Directive on Development, Shah wrote about how USAID needs to shift more towards long-term transformative programs, rather than focusing too much on immediate or emergency assistance:

"We want to help countries out of poverty and set in place effective, democratic institutions to create the next generation of emerging markets. We want to see science and technology change the prospects for development across the board: increased crop yields, cures for devastating diseases, and production of clean forms of energy. We want to see governments take on the responsibility for meeting citizens' basic needs - with the technical know-how, the systems, and the sources of revenue to do it. Ultimately, we want to support the conditions that enable countries to sustain further progress on their own."

Shah, who reports directly to Clinton, is expected to deal with a wide array of internal and external challenges during his stint. If he and the agency play their cards right, the eagerly-awaited changes in the organization may fulfill the QDDR's promises and gradually bring USAID back to its place as a leader in international development and humanitarian assistance.

An Intelligent Synthesis

With a combination of soft and hard power, partnerships with educational-, private- and third-sector leaders, direct outreach to citizens of other countries, an emphasis on medical and healthcare programs, an increase in evidence-based development, quantitative performance management and an expanded role for USAID, the QDDR will reflect both the new priorities of the State Department and the changed state of the world in the 21st century.

Blending diplomacy and development with defense is a vision that is revolutionary in terms of American leadership around the globe, and it has trenchant, monumental implications for America's humanitarian missions, foreign aid, multilateralism, peacebuilding, conflicts and alliances. If the mandate of the QDDR is as far-reaching as Clinton's preview demarcates, then the State Department and its hundreds of diplomats certainly have their work cut out for them. Get ready for the newest iteration of American foreign policy.

Hillary's "Smart" New Move: Revamping American Diplomacy and Development

By: nbb

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