July 13, 2009 -- Borrowing a page from the Pentagon's play book, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is launching a quadrennial review of the diplomatic corps and foreign assistance in a bid to erect a new strategic framework for the State Department's budget and organization, as well as its connection to efforts by the Defense Department and agencies to advance foreign policy goals.
On July 10, Clinton announced the launch of the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, spanning both the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, “to get ahead of emerging threats and opportunities and to make the case effectively for OMB [the White House Office of Management and Budget], the Congress, and the people of our country for the resources we need.”
Speaking to State Department officials on Friday at a town hall-style meeting, Clinton said her decision to launch the review was inspired by the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, which she became familiar with during her six years on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Clinton said the QDR provided a way to make difficult decisions and produced a framework that had the effect of convincing Congress that priorities the Defense Department requested were aligned with the budget.
“I want to make the same case for diplomacy and development,” Clinton said. “We will be doing this quadrennial review, which will be, we hope, a tool to provide us with both short-term and long-term blueprints for how to advance our foreign policy objectives and our values and interests. This will provide us with a comprehensive assessment for organizational reform and improvements to our policy, strategy, and planning processes. And this will help make our diplomacy and development work more agile, responsive, and complementary. This is what we mean when we talk about smart power.”
Leading the review along with Clinton will be the deputy secretary of state for management and resources, Jacob Lew. The review will be co-chaired by the yet-to-be-named Obama administration choice to head USAID and the State Department director of policy planning, Anne-Marie Slaughter. These officials “will engage” with cabinet agencies and nongovernmental experts, according to a State Department fact sheet.
“We’re going to coordinate with the interagency process, because obviously other agencies play a role in diplomatic and development. But we’re going to lead this and we’re going to look for ways to better coordinate, whether it’s with Treasury or [the Agriculture Department], or DOD or the White House,” Clinton said.
While lawmakers have proposed that the State Department conduct such a review, Clinton initiated the quadrennial effort in the absence of a statutory requirement. She said she expects lawmakers will soon require a periodic examination, however.
“And this QDDR process is likely to be put into legislation,” the secretary said.
Lew, speaking to reporters on Friday, said that in preparing to begin the assessment he has spoken with his counterparts in the Pentagon about the military's experience with congressionally mandated QDRs, one of which is under way. Others were conducted in 1997, 2001 and 2005.
“I’ve talked to my colleagues in the Defense Department,” Lew said. “They know a lot more now than they did the first time they did a QDR. They know about problems to avoid, they know about ways to get value out of it. We’re going to try to learn from the experience of others, but once we’ve established the process here, we think it makes sense to carry it forward.”
The first QDDR is expected to produce guidance on how the State Department develops policies; allocates resources; deploys staff; and exercises its authorities, according to the fact sheet on the new review.
The final QDDR report, according to the State Department, will include an “assessment of the range of global threats, challenges and opportunities both today and over the next two decades that should inform our diplomatic and development strategies.” In addition, the review will reflect “the current status of our approaches to diplomacy and development, with emphasis on the relationship between diplomacy and development in our existing policies and structures.”
“A clear statement of our overarching foreign policy and development objectives, our specific policy priorities, and our expected results, with an emphasis on the achievable and not merely the desirable,” will also be in the report, as will explicit strategies and specific recommendations to support its execution, according to the fact sheet.
The report is to include an “assessment of how the results and recommendations of this review fit into broader interagency, whole-of-government approaches, and into the Administration’s larger foreign policy framework,” it adds.
A key thrust of the Pentagon's ongoing QDR is examining how the military interacts and cooperates with civilian agencies, both in domestic operations and in foreign missions. -- Jason Sherman
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