Innovation is key element of U.S. foreign policy, official says

While continuity in foreign policy is essential to reassure allies and win domestic support, policy also must respond, through innovation, "to changes in the environment of both threat and opportunity," says the US State Department's director of policy planning.

Mitchell Reiss outlined "three kinds of necessary balances" that characterize what he described as "the balanced and successful foreign policy of the Bush Administration" in remarks November 6 to the Strategic Assessments Group of the Central Intelligence Agency in Wilmington, Delaware. The text was released by the State Department on November 18.

First, he said, is the balance between obligations and capabilities.

"It is not easy to achieve that elusive balance between what one wants to do and what one realistically can do. One must have a vision to inspire and to shape. One must have aspirations that match one's power, and since American power is very great, our aspirations for the benign use of that power must also be great," he said.

The second balance, according to Reiss, "is between short-term necessity and longer-term planning." He recalled that when he first met with Secretary of State Colin Powell after assuming his current position in August, the secretary "shared with me his vision of the future and American foreign policy. And he challenged me to help him think beyond his in-box, to think long range. We discussed the structure of the international system, the importance of alliances, and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and certain countries that could cause great harm to the United States, and our allies and friends around the world."

Reiss said the third balance any successful foreign policy must strike is between continuity and innovation, noting, "When the environment changes, policy must innovate to keep up."

He said innovation in foreign policy could take three forms, the first of which is "innovation in ideas and language." He cited as an example President Bush's "significant rhetorical change" in U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian problem, when he "re-emphasized U.S. support for a Palestinian state," but at the same time "pointedly named terrorism and PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat's refusal to stop it as the main obstacles to a negotiated settlement. He also refused to second-guess in principle Israel's right to defend itself against terrorism."

"This policy was widely criticized. But in time it brought major pressure, both internal and external, to reform the Palestinian Authority," Reiss said.

Second, he said, are the administration's many substantive policy innovations -- "some obvious and controversial, others also very important but less often noted."

As an example of the former, he noted that after 9/11, President Bush made pre-emption an explicit aspect of U.S. national security policy. "What was new was the context -- the recognition that diplomacy and deterrence are not effective strategies in all circumstances."

"Little noted but of enormous importance," he said, "we have improved relations with all the world's major powers simultaneously -- and deepened the already deep structural peace of the post-Cold War world -- a subject at the heart of Secretary Powell's major address at George Washington University on September 5th."

He cited several other examples of substantive policy innovations, including the president's Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, the Proliferation Security Initiative aimed at interdicting WMD activities on the high seas and elsewhere, the Middle East Partnership Initiative, and the Millennium Challenge Account.

"When it comes to substantive innovations," he said, "we do whatever is right for the problem at hand."

Reiss said the third kind of innovation deals with organizational structures. He cited the creation of the Homeland Security Department and of a Joint Strategic Plan between the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development "to ensure that development is deeply embedded in our foreign policy strategies."

Following is the text of Reiss's remarks:

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Department of State

Innovation and Continuity in U.S. Foreign Policy

Dr. Mitchell B. Reiss, Policy Planning Director

Remarks to the Strategic Assessments Group

Wilmington, Delaware

November 6, 2003

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am honored to be here today.

While my words are my own, they will also, inevitably, have a State Department echo to them. So let me say just a few words about what Policy Planning is doing these days. I think I can sum it up this way.

Before I started this job, I was given three pieces of advice: (1) do what the boss says, (2) make the Policy Planning staff do what you say, and (3) always read the reports of the Strategic Assessments Group (SAG).

I cannot confirm how much time the Secretary has set aside on the work of the SAG, but I can say that we in Policy Planning benefit from your work -- and, shall I say, stand ready to borrow liberally from your analysis.

As a veteran of the SAG -- and now as an avid consumer of its products -- it is a daunting challenge to address this group. What can I bring to you? What can I tell you that as professionals and experts you do not already know?

So this evening I thought I'd speak generally about certain balances in foreign policy that have to be maintained if policy is to succeed. And I will offer examples of what I will argue is the balanced and successful foreign policy of the Bush Administration.

I want to note three kinds of necessary balances. I will speak to the first two briefly, and take a little more time with the third.

A successful foreign policy is one that is balanced between obligations and capabilities. To be mindful of this balance is merely to be aware of the common sense wisdom that it is foolish to make promises one cannot keep. Actually, it's worse than foolish: it's dangerous. Blustery language backed by underwhelming force and uncertain determination is the best formula for failure in foreign policy.

Besides, both an individual and a government get far more mileage out of delivering more than is promised, not the other way around. Anyone who has ever worked in retail knows this.

It is not easy to achieve that elusive balance between what one wants to do and what one realistically can do. One must have a vision to inspire and to shape. One must have aspirations that match one's power, and since American power is very great, our aspirations for the benign use of that power must also be great.

There's nothing wrong with great expectations. It certainly worked for Dickens. One must motivate and lead. Optimism, as Secretary Powell likes to say, is itself a force multiplier. But one must not overreach.

One can see clearly the difficulties in striking this balance when it comes to orchestrating words and deeds over Iraq. We have high aims for Iraq. The President has said that success in Iraq can have positive reverberations beyond Iraq's borders. He's right. Failure in Iraq would be disastrous.

So if we are seen to falter, if we lose courage, if we speak prematurely or in the wrong tone about exit strategies, we embolden our adversaries in Iraq and elsewhere to wait us out. We would send the wrong message to some dangerous and calculating people.

But to accelerate the difficult process of getting Iraqis organized and capable of standing on their own two feet, and to assure the American people and the Congress that our commitment is not entirely open-ended, some consideration of end-games and exit strategies is required. That consideration sends the right message, too, to others around the world who still think that U.S. policy in the Middle East is imperial, avaricious and selfishly motivated.

Has the administration found the right balance here? I believe it has. We have great expectations here, and we have given voice to those expectations. The President did so again today at the National Endowment for Democracy. But we have made clear that it is up to the Iraqi people themselves to translate opportunity into lasting achievement.

The second balance I want to talk with you about is between short-term necessity and longer-term planning. All of us in this business know that the urgent tends to drive out the important. This is to be expected, because in the long run, as Keynes famously wrote, we're all dead. If we don't get through the short term, there is no long term.

On the other hand, planning ahead has its own frustrations. But it can change the course of history. George Kennan himself bemoaned its difficulty, but then turned around and gave us a strategic paradigm that spanned nearly half a century.

When I first sat down with Secretary Powell this past August, he shared with me his vision of the future and American foreign policy. And he challenged me to help him think beyond his in-box, to think long range. We discussed the structure of the international system, the importance of alliances, and Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and certain countries that could cause great harm to the United States, and our allies and friends around the world. He was certainly more expansive in his guidance than was George Marshall, whose two words of advice to George Kennan were to avoid trivia.

The third balance any successful foreign policy must strike is between continuity and innovation. The reasons for continuity are obvious. A policy cannot reassure allies or win domestic support if it's subject to unpredictable change. Innovation, however, is important, also for obvious reasons. Innovation is tantamount to survival. Policy must respond to the environment, the environment of both threat and opportunity.

When the environment changes, policy must innovate to keep up. Innovation in foreign policy can take three forms: First, innovation in ideas and language; second, innovation in the substance of policy; and third, innovation in organizational structures.

Let me discuss these in turn, and give some examples. First, innovation in ideas and language. In June 2002, the President introduced a significant rhetorical change in U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian problem. He re-emphasized U.S. support for a Palestinian state, but he pointedly named terrorism and PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat's refusal to stop it as the main obstacles to a negotiated settlement. He also refused to second-guess in principle Israel's right to defend itself against terrorism.

This policy was widely criticized. But in time it brought major pressure, both internal and external, to reform the Palestinian Authority.

It has not been easy translating that pressure into results, but the trend is clear: a breakthrough on the Palestinian side, on the side of real reform, will come. When it does come, that mainly rhetorical change in U.S. policy will be recognized as a major reason for it.

The administration has also changed the tone of policy toward Iran, putting the U.S. squarely on the side of the Iranian street, which yearns for change, for democracy.

Indeed, it has dramatically changed the tone of U.S. policy in the Arab world generally -- and not just the tone. It's no more business-as-usual with non-democratic governments in that part of the world, even ones with whom we've had good relations in the past.

If you heard the President earlier today, you understand. This is one of the President's principal messages; and it is one emphasized by Secretary Powell, as for example, when he addressed the U.S.-Arab Economic Forum in September in Detroit.

Yesterday, I returned from London where I had extensive talks with my British, French, and German colleagues. There was broad agreement that change is needed in the Middle East. I used the President's term, transformation. One of my counterparts used reform; one used democracy, and one used modernization. Different words but same meaning -- the Arab and Muslim worlds will change.

For our part, this doesn't mean that the U.S. intends to go around invading countries with abandon. This is a wild caricature of the Administration's intentions.

Remember that other balance? The one between promises and results? We aim to strike that balance, too. But the change in tone toward the Arab and Muslim worlds is unmistakable -- and long overdue.

As to substantive policy innovations, there are many -- some obvious and controversial, others also very important but less often noted.

After 9/11, President Bush made pre-emption an explicit aspect of U.S. national security policy. What was new was the context -- the recognition that diplomacy and deterrence are not effective strategies in all circumstances.

Let's look at other key innovations in our foreign policy.

We have expanded NATO, again, and adapted its mission, so that it is playing important roles in Iraq and, especially, Afghanistan. In June 2004, Turkey will host the next NATO Summit. I believe at Istanbul the Alliance will again demonstrate its innovation in adapting to new challenges far afield from Europe.

Little noted but of enormous importance, we have improved relations with all the world's major powers simultaneously -- and deepened the already deep structural peace of the post-Cold War world -- a subject at the heart of Secretary Powell's major address at George Washington University on September 5th.

This improvement in great power relations has required many substantive policy innovations, for example, the new U.S. approach to India. Our policy used to sound like johnny-one-note: no nukes, no nukes, no nukes. This well-intentioned policy in South Asia prevented us from doing many other things that are both possible and useful with India and Pakistan. Now we're doing them, with India in accordance with a policy vehicle we call the Glidepath.

We have also innovated widely with regard to dealing with failed and potential failed states, and with the key, related problem of WMD proliferation.

There is the President's Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, which has moral, economic and national security dimensions to it that are hard to exaggerate.

The Proliferation Security Initiative is another major policy innovation. It is a new form of arms control developed, in a multilateral context, for the special dangers of our age. It is an ambitious endeavor that combines numerous elements of our government to interdict WMD activities on the high seas and elsewhere.

There is the 6-Party framework for dealing with the Korean problem. This is a particularly interesting innovation, and it bears implications wider than Korea, say, for example, in Sino-American relations and a possible future security architecture in the region.

We have created the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) that puts action behind the rhetorical change in U.S. Middle East policy. We are actively rethinking U.S. public diplomacy with regard to the Middle East, and other areas of the world as well.

We are examining the idea of applying the logic, and perhaps the substance, of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to the Middle East.

We have undertaken a serious effort to deal with trafficking in persons. We have a major new program designed to fight the 21st century forms of human slavery that mar our world: sexual slavery and forced labor. Together with the Congress, we are holding other countries to international standards that uphold fundamental human dignity.

Hardly last or least is the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA). The Administration has developed a new approach to poverty alleviation that creates a market-based incentive system to encourage better governance in the world's developing countries. We offer a contract: reform your political and economic institutions, and we will support your efforts. Ask us to subsidize dysfunctional institutions and practices, however, and we will take a pass.

We hope that Congress will fund the MCA, soon. We're asking for $1.3 billion as ramp-up money for the next fiscal year, and more thereafter. We need every penny. We have in hand the most creative approach to the problem of economic development since the Kennedy administration, and it deserves the funding we request.

And there's more in the works over a wide range of challenges. We're thinking about international training centers for constabulary forces for robust peacekeeping. We're thinking of new mechanisms to handle global public health issues, especially the threat of pandemic disease.

We have bundled initiatives for certain regions, like Africa, dealing with education, trade and health. We have bundled security and economic issues for the most recent APEC meeting into the so-called Bangkok Goals that identify the security issues that can undermine economic growth.

We are also considering an Inter-American Democratic Charter to protect, promote and strengthen democratic governance in our hemisphere.

When it comes to substantive innovations, we do whatever is right for the problem at hand.

The third kind of innovation, beyond innovation in ideas and policy substance, is organizational in nature -- where we change not just words, and not just deeds, but the very way we are organized to implement strategy.

The creation of the Homeland Security Department is, of course, the main example here. Before that Department was created, no systematic interagency process for dealing with national security crises within the United States existed. Worse, incremental changes in organization over the years had made the task well nigh impossible.

It took the 9/11 disaster to really focus attention on the problem. But attention did get focused. So now we have changed things and made our organization for homeland security far more rational. We have also better integrated homeland security with U.S. national security policy more generally.

We at the State Department have been busy, too, with organizational innovation. We have now for the first time ever a Joint Strategic Plan between State and USAID. The goal is to ensure that development is deeply embedded in our foreign policy strategies. We have one mission, and now, finally, we have one strategy to fulfill that mission.

As we strike the balance between continuity and innovation, the role of intelligence is critical. We need the best minds at work to help us sort out what is really new, what is immediate, and what is long term. Getting through my in-box -- the cables and messages, the memos and agendas -- is necessary, but not sufficient. If I am to help the Secretary in his efforts to advise the President and chart America's course, I, like you and my other colleagues throughout the government, need intelligence which is not just tactical but long term; which not only helps identify the immediate, but illuminates the future.

Let me end by spending a few minutes on what I call the battle of the "isms" -- the unilateralism-multilateralism debates. Some critics talk of America going alone; of our alliances in tatters; of our key relationships in question. I believe that part of this criticism stems from the debates all countries are having as they sort out what to do with a world far different than the globalized roaring 1990s.

Can we as a nation do things better in foreign policy? Of course. That has been the starting premise of every one of the 21 policy planning directors who preceded me: How can we better protect our citizens, advance our interests, and nurture the peace?

As a lawyer by training I look at case law, and I look at hard facts: 32 countries directly contributing to the future of Iraq; 15 countries unanimously supporting UNSCR 1511 -- a triumph for the President, and, if I may add, for the Secretary and his Rolodex diplomacy. Thirty-three billion dollars raised at the Madrid Donor's Conference. NATO taking a unanimous decision to formally take over the ISAF mission in Afghanistan.

I believe that the Administration has struck an admirable balance between ambition and realism, between short- and long-term orientations, between continuity and innovation. And I believe that our reputation for both decisiveness in the defense of our interests, and compassion with respect to our values, will continue to serve us well.

Thank you very much.

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