I am at the Diplomatic Academy of London for a conference on ‘transformational public diplomacy’ (programme- pdf).
As the title suggests, the launch pad for the conference is US one – the agenda Condoleezza Rice first set out in a speech at Georgetown University in 2006:
I would define the objective of transformational diplomacy this way: to work with our many partners around the world, to build and sustain democratic, well-governed states that will respond to the needs of their people and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system.
Let me be clear, transformational diplomacy is rooted in partnership; not in paternalism. In doing things with people, not for them; we seek to use America’s diplomatic power to help foreign citizens better their own lives and to build their own nations and to transform their own futures.
In her speech, Rice set out priorities for preparing ‘old diplomatic institutions to serve new diplomatic purposes.’ First, a new ‘posture’ – getting staff out of Europe and the US and onto the diplomatic front line. Second, a regional rather than a bilateral approach. Third, ‘localization’ – less focus on capitals, more on major population centres. Fourth, more ‘jointness’ between soldiers and civilians. And finally, a reskilling of diplomats to meet new challenges.
Rice returned to this agenda in a second Georgetown speech in 2008. The nub of this speech was the scant resources the US devotes to diplomacy (despite some recent increases):
How can it be, for example, that the Pentagon has nearly twice as many lawyers as America has Foreign Service Officers? How can it be that the United Kingdom, with one-fifth of our population, has a diplomatic service nearly as large as America’s? Clearly, modernizing our diplomacy and fully resourcing it will be the challenge of a generation, not just one administration.
In questions at Georgetown, Rice was asked about the United States’s international reputation and gave a bullish response. “America is viewed and revered throughout the world as a country that is a fierce defender of human rights, a fierce defender of liberties, a great multiethnic democracy,” she claimed, while also hailing US leadership in the development field (“the largest international development effort since the Marshall Plan”).
Presenting this agenda to the conference, though, Barrie Walkley, from the United States embassy in London, noted that transformational diplomacy was “a purely American initiative”. Rice “leaves it to other countries to respond to this situation and say what they’re going to do.”
This assumption of US leadership reminded me of the words of Jim Connaughton, the US climate negotiator, at the Bali climate conference: “The US will lead and continue to lead [on climate] but leadership requires others to fall in line and follow.”
But if the problems of an interdependent world are essentially multilateral, interoperability between like-minded actors is surely at a premium. It’s probably not enough for the US to wait for its allies to fall in line…
