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Newsom on State/Defense Department Foreign Policy Coordination |
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(Source : U.S. State Dept. ; issued March 29, 2000)
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WASHINGTON---The ability of the Departments of State
and Defense to operate 'jointly' will have a profound impact on
U.S. leadership in the world and effectiveness in protecting
our interests and those of our allies and friends," says
Eric D. Newsom, assistant secretary of state for
political-military affairs.
"We need to understand the nature of this
mixed or joint instrument, and what it requires from the two or more
sets of bureaucracies called upon to implement our national security
strategy," he says.
The following article, adapted from a recent
speech given by the assistant secretary, is included in the March
issue of the State Department electronic journal "U.S. Foreign Policy
Agenda," which addresses the topic, "The Making of U.S. Foreign
Policy." The Internet address for the journal is:
http://www.usinfo.state.gov/journals/journals.htm.)
Uniting The Tools Of Force And Diplomacy To Enhance Security
By Eric D. Newsom
The ability of the United States to shape international events in ways
that advance U.S. interests will in large measure depend on whether
the Department of State, together with the Department of Defense and
other agencies, can respond creatively and cooperatively to the joint
challenges we face in a changing world environment. The world we live
in now is undergoing a revolution in technology, communications, and
information flow; in business practices and organizational structures;
in ways nations relate to one another and respond to their publics; in
the ability of multinational corporations and other non-governmental
organizations to influence international events; and in how regional
and international organizations respond to conflict and humanitarian
and natural disasters.
Our military has recognized that these factors contribute to a
"Revolution in Military Affairs" that may well be changing the very
nature and conduct of war. They are seeking to adapt to the new
realities both within the individual service structure (Army, Navy,
Air Force, Marines) and in the "joint" world in which the capabilities
of each of the services must be brought to bear to achieve U.S.
security objectives. The new world environment has demanded a new way
of being a soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine. It now often requires
an understanding of international politics, ethnic rivalries, local
politics in a foreign country, and how fair elections can work -- as
much as how to command a unit and take the next hill or piece of land.
In much the same way, the State Department is experiencing a kind of
"Revolution in Diplomatic Affairs" in which the role of the diplomat
in the 21st century and the way we communicate, make decisions,
negotiate, and conduct public relations (which we call public
diplomacy) -- even the very nature of the work that we do -- have
radically changed. Diplomats today are out in the field working with
the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) on anti-drug campaigns in Latin
America, flying in military helicopters over Northern Iraq, assisting
refugees and planning non-combatant evacuations in Africa,
implementing regional security cooperation efforts in Central Europe,
and planning the next phase of civilian operations in Bosnia, Kosovo,
and East Timor.
The Revolution in Military Affairs and the Revolution in Diplomatic
Affairs bring the work of the soldier and the work of the diplomat to
an intersection on an almost daily basis worldwide. The international
environment and the challenges we face are such that our policy-makers
often must use the military and the diplomatic instruments in concert
rather than as distinct, separate tools to achieve our goals.
In the Gulf War, our military planned and conducted Desert Storm in
concert with a coalition of partners that required the work of
diplomats to assemble and to maintain. In Bosnia and Kosovo, and
similar peacekeeping and peace enforcement operations, diplomacy must
be employed to coordinate with allies and partners on a host of issues
ranging from managing the electoral process to treatment of
international war criminals. Following Hurricane Mitch, when the U.S.
military responded to urgent calls for help from beleaguered
governments, diplomats negotiated terms of entry and departure and
helped facilitate the military's disaster relief work. In other world
regions, diplomats and soldiers sit together in the meeting halls of
NATO and the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Regional
Forum.
Without naming it as such, we are evolving -- in practical ways every
day -- into a new kind of "interagency jointness" in which State and
Defense cooperate to achieve the goals set out for us by the President
and our policy leaders. Secretary of State Albright and Secretary of
Defense Cohen exemplify this new trend. In a recent op-ed piece in the
Washington Post, they wrote: "As Secretaries of Defense and State, we
work daily to combine the tools of force and diplomacy in order to
protect the security and advance the interests of the American
people." They went on to say, "Our armed forces must remain the
best-led, best-trained and best-equipped in the world....But we also
need first class diplomacy. Because on many occasions we will rely on
diplomacy as our first line of defense -- to cement alliances, build
coalitions, and find ways to protect our interests without putting our
fighting men and women at risk."
The U.S. military has been tasked in the President's National Security
Strategy report to prepare itself to respond across the full spectrum
of military operations, including: major theater warfare, peace
enforcement, hostile and non-hostile non-combatant evacuations,
humanitarian and disaster relief in hostile and non-hostile
environments, and simply creating favorable and interoperable
relations with foreign militaries who can support us in the military
tasks we undertake. It is clear that at every notch on this spectrum,
diplomacy will be an integral element of success -- either to reduce
or eliminate the need for use of force, maintain coalitions, or
negotiate peace.
Thus, in any scenario for the future, our ability to operate jointly
will have a profound impact on U.S. leadership in the world and
effectiveness in protecting our interests and those of our allies and
friends. This will require us to cooperate not only at the highest
levels and on an ad hoc basis, but regularly in the corridors of our
bureaucracies where we plan and conduct our nation's business.
Success will require habits of cooperation that will undergird success
when our leaders employ an instrument of policy that is at once
military and diplomatic. We need to understand the nature of this
mixed or joint instrument, and what it requires from the two or more
sets of bureaucracies called upon to implement our national security
strategy.
Since returning to the State Department in 1994, I have seen change,
in both State and Defense, in how we think about and approach the
marrying of force and diplomacy in pursuit of our national objectives.
Together we have achieved fundamental strategic objectives for the
United States in the post-Cold War world. Yet, we have a long way to
go. Historical differences, institutional cultures, and stereotypes
have fostered attitudes of territoriality and some distrust in our
dealings with each other's organizations -- or at least very different
conceptions of our respective roles and missions.
In order for our leaders to integrate force and diplomacy as a new
sort of policy tool, the Defense and State Departments will have to
break out of old cultural and institutional barriers to an
unprecedented extent and find new, creative ways of planning and doing
business together.
This is a major goal of the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, and
we are pursuing it vigorously. Some are skeptical about this new
approach and strongly urge us to go slowly.
Frankly, I don't think the United States can afford to have us inch
along in this process. Though we can analyze trends and make
predictions, we do not know for certain when and where the next
conflict will arise that will require the combined use of force and
diplomacy. Though we managed in Bosnia and Kosovo, ad hoc cooperation
should evolve into better institutional ties and arrangements that
allow us to know one another and respond rapidly when the mix of force
and diplomacy is required in an unpredictable international
environment.
For this reason, we are developing methods to promote cooperation,
coordination, cohesion, and consensus on how best to use our
diplomatic and military tools to shape the international environment.
At its essence, this means planning together from the top down, and
then cooperating in implementation. This will involve serious
interaction between State and Defense in developing State's foreign
policy goals as well as its bureau and embassy program plans. It also
should involve serious interaction in the formulation of goals and
objectives in defense policy, and in such key planning exercises as
the Quadrennial Defense Review and regional military "theater
engagement plans."
This is not to say that each agency should take over the other's work
or dictate or meddle in each other's business. At a certain point,
soldiers must be soldiers, and diplomats must be diplomats. Rather,
the goal is to develop and implement plans and policies that are
informed by and in sync with one another in fulfillment of the
President's National Security Strategy. We're trying to do that now in
the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, working closely with the
Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and
other sectors of the military establishment to achieve this goal.
Second, as we seek to shape the international environment and respond
to current events, we need to better coordinate the work of all of the
interagency players, not only Defense and State. We are making
progress in this area. One of the highlights of my tenure as assistant
secretary for political-military affairs has been the work that we
have done to advance political and military coordination on complex
contingency operations (such as Kosovo and our role in East Timor). An
important tool is Presidential Decision Directive-56 (PDD-56), which
provides mechanisms for interagency cooperation in these
circumstances. As the bombing campaign in Kosovo wore on, 30 military
and civilian officers from 18 agencies, bureaus, and offices
collaborated over several intense weeks of work to produce a 46-page
"mission analysis." This ultimately shaped the UN Mission in Kosovo
and KFOR (Kosovo Peacekeeping Force) operations and helped synchronize
international efforts after the bombing stopped. Despite initial
skepticism on the part of some, this process was shown to work better
than even the optimists had predicted.
Now we are seeking clearer, more effective mechanisms to make the
PDD-56 process work better. A new contingency planning Interagency
Working Group will greatly advance this effort.
This new way of cooperating is a challenge for both military and
civilians. Every U.S. military officer has studied the great Prussian
military thinker Karl von Clausewitz and understands that military
operations and objectives are always subordinate to strategic
political and diplomatic goals. But that understanding has not
necessarily led to the conclusion that civilians should sit at the
military planning table. Today's international environment continues
to call for limited, precise, often untraditional uses of military
power in the pursuit of specific -- but sometimes rapidly changing --
political objectives. This will require a more open approach to
planning interlinked military and political objectives.
The State Department also will have to alter its traditional
conceptions. We are only beginning to understand what it means when we
say that our work does not end when we negotiate an agreement. The
abstractions of a settlement must be made operational. We need to
sweat the kind of details we may normally ignore. We must be willing
to deal with matters that were not previously part of the diplomatic
realm: how to create police forces, how to rebuild defunct judicial
systems, how to reestablish a functioning currency, how to make an
uncooperative host nation military accept civilian authority and stop
massacring opponents, and how to perform a host of other, unusually
uncongenial, tasks.
Joint planning will never be easy, even in the best of all possible
worlds. During the planning for the period after the bombing campaign
in Kosovo, strong differences surfaced between Defense and State. At
times, parts of the Defense Department buttoned up and went silent
whenever State officials showed up. It took some battering on the
gates to get insights into military planning and thinking. Both
departments fought hard about issues like policing, military support
to civil administration, and so on. To the credit of both, we did not
paper over our disagreements. There were vigorous debates.
But, before anyone was deployed in support of the post-bombing effort,
we came to closure on an agreed strategy and plan. Great and
contentious issues were argued and settled before, not after, mission
start-up, providing those who implemented the plan with clarity of
purpose and division of labor. I contend that the whole process was of
great value, and a precedent for the future, even if subsequent events
in Kosovo did not go according to plan. As the late president General
Dwight Eisenhower once said, "A plan is worthless, but planning is
everything."
In addition to State-Defense planning, our international environment
also requires coordination with the U.S. Agency for International
Development, which is often called upon to organize the response to
humanitarian crises throughout the world, drawing on U.S. military
resources. These humanitarian efforts sometimes take place in the
midst of a peacekeeping or peace enforcement operation, making
coordination among the various components absolutely imperative.
Not every issue or challenge requiring close coordination is a complex
contingency operation or a major humanitarian effort. The U.S. effort
to shape the international environment requires objectives that are in
sync and actions that are well coordinated. To facilitate this daily
coordination at the working levels, we might do well to develop a
"Country Team" approach in Washington comparable to the one that works
so well at our embassies abroad. To some extent, we do this in the
Interagency Working Group process. But this process is often issue
specific rather than ongoing; we need further opportunities for a
free-flowing exchange of ideas and information.
As a means to overcome institutional barriers and stereotypes, I
recommend various measures: We need to expand the existing program of
exchanging officers between the Defense and State Departments both in
Washington and in the field. We should look for more opportunities for
Foreign Service Officers to serve on senior military staffs, and at
the same time, we should offer opportunities for senior military
officers to hold policy-level positions in the State Department. I
would like to see military officers serving at the Deputy Assistant
Secretary level in State, and State officers serving in the Defense
Department in the same capacity, as in the past.
In addition, we need to look at opportunities for joint training. We
should increase the number of State Department officers who attend
service schools. And I would like to see our own National Foreign
Affairs Training Center open its doors wider to military colleagues as
we study regional policies, negotiating, and other foreign service
professional skills and political-military issues.
Finally, there is a compelling reason for those of us in the
State-Defense security community to cooperate from the top down and
the bottom up: our responsibility to the men and women in the military
and in the Foreign Service who serve on the front lines of defense for
the United States in some of the most difficult places in the world.
When we conduct our business in Washington at the rarefied levels of
planning and interagency discussion, it is easy to forget that our
success or failure to act effectively together can have serious
consequences for the actual people called upon to implement our
decisions and directives. It pains me every time I hear our military
in the field say they do not understand what our policies are and how
they are supposed to be advancing them. We need to make sure that they
go out with the clearest goals and objectives, the best-crafted plans,
and the highest quality equipment we can get for them. In today's
world, that requires "joint" cooperation by military and civilian. We
are committed to this effort.
That is why my goal for the Political-Military Bureau at State is to
increase the level and depth of understanding between State and
Defense of each other's missions and to strengthen our planning and
cooperative efforts. Recently, I wrote a memo to Secretary Albright
offering this as the bureau's primary mission for the year 2000. I
know she shares this goal and is committed to making it happen.
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