Comprehensive Study Could Improve Diplomacy, Says State Department Official

By Ravi Bhatia – Talk Radio News Service

Director of Policy Planning for the U.S State Department Anne-Marie Slaughter said Monday that a new study aimed at plotting out the future of the department, the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, could yield improvements in international relations.

“[Following the success of the QDDR] we would have much greater capabilities in the building of a new global architecture of cooperation,” said Slaughter. “[This] would include a greater capability and greater strategy in building bilateral partnerships with emerging nations and with our traditional allies. We would have a far greater capacity to work with non-state actors.”

According to the State Department, the QDDR hopes to provide a short, medium, and long-range blueprint for U.S. diplomatic and development efforts by showing how the current and future administrations should develop foreign policy, allocate resources, deploy staff, and exercise authority. The Review’s final report will be presented to President Barack Obama and Congress.

Slaughter spoke about the QDDR’s efforts at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C. Her remarks coincide with the release of the center’s recommendations for Obama’s National Security Strategy.

The CAP report states that the NSS should fundamentally change the U.S. response to radical extremists, increase U.S. funding for development in “weak or failing” states and use diplomatic tools to engage with hostile regimes, among other recommendations.

“Everywhere you turn, it is clear that we need not only government power, but the power of the private sector, the power of [non-government organizations], the power of think thanks like [CAP] — all putting in their comparative advantage and resources to tackle common problems,” Slaughter continued.

The Obama administration was required to deliver its first NSS report within five months of the president taking office, according to the CAP report’s executive summary. The administration has yet to issue one.

Retired Army Major General Paul Eaton, who also spoke on behalf of the CAP report, discussed the government’s unresolved issues with allocating resources, which the QDDR and the CAP report seek to correct through their recommendations.

“There is no hard-ass Colonel who is telling people in a directive fashion, in the development of a plan, how you’re going to resource the plan,” he said. “There’s no mechanism today to establish directive authority, to establish tasking authority and to make things happen in a comprehensive, integrated fashion. Until that entity is created, [our diplomatic and development efforts aren’t] going anywhere,” said Maj. Gen. Eaton.