Political-Military Affairs: Smart Power Starts Here
Andrew J. Shapiro, Assistant Secretary, Political-Military Affairs
Keynote Address to ComDef 2009, September 9, 2009
Good morning, and thank you to the organizers of ComDef 2009 for this opportunity to talk to you about smart power, and how it will shape our priorities in the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. As Secretary Clinton is fond of saying, “smart power depends on smart people.” Looking around the room, it appears I’m in the right place.
From 2001-2009, I had the honor of serving on then-Senator Clinton’s staff as her primary foreign affairs and defense policy advisor. In that capacity, I was her primary liaison to the Senate Armed Services Committee, working closely with Pentagon officials and America’s men and women in uniform at home and abroad. From this experience, I bring to my new post the unshakable conviction that a robust partnership among the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and industry is critical if we are to address the serious international challenges that our nation — our world — faces today.
That brings us to the theme of this year’s conference which is also serving as the venue for my first public speech as Assistant Secretary. The concept of “smart power” — the intelligent integration and networking of diplomacy, defense, development, and other tools of so-called “hard” and “soft” power — is at the very heart of President Obama and Secretary Clinton’s foreign policy vision.
Since its establishment in 1960, the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs — or PM as it is known around the State Department — has served as the State Department’s primary link with the Department of Defense. Its unique mix of nearly 300 Foreign Service officers, Civil Service officers, contractors and uniformed military personnel makes it a workplace like no other in the State Department. Indeed, the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs is uniquely positioned to bring together the capacity and capabilities of the State Department and the Defense Department along with innovation of industry and the private sector to support our friends and allies and, ultimately, the Administration’s foreign policy goals. Given the importance of this partnership, discussing smart power before this audience is an ideal forum for my first public speech as Assistant Secretary.
Smart Power is more than just a catchphrase. It will be the driving force behind our foreign policy in the years ahead. Put into practice, smart power will act as a force multiplier, encouraging the development of new partnerships both overseas and within our own government. The President is dedicated to this idea. Secretary Clinton is dedicated to it. Secretary Gates himself has been a forceful advocate of better integrating our military power with diplomacy and development in a “whole of government” approach to enhancing our national security.
As Secretary Clinton said in her confirmation hearing, “With smart power, diplomacy will be the vanguard of foreign policy.” But she emphasized, that in order to do so, “we need to invest in our civilian capacity to conduct vigorous American diplomacy…and operate effectively alongside our military.”
Indeed, smart power is central to reinvigorating America’s bedrock alliances while reaching out to new partners as we work to confront shared international challenges bigger than any one country. Secretary Clinton has referred to the three pillars of our national security: defense, diplomacy and development and has noted that the State Department and USAID are responsible for diplomacy and development. However, only through the effective integration of all the tools of national power can we hope to achieve our broader objectives of security and prosperity.
Secretary Clinton is institutionalizing smart power in the recently announced Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, the QDDR, a blueprint for building effective global leadership through a robust and effective State Department and USAID working side-by-side with a strong military.
As Secretary Clinton has said, smart power is also rooted in the idea that no single nation can meet the world’s problems alone, but that American leadership can play a key role in convening, connecting, and creating new partnership networks to confront shared security challenges. For example, the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs is playing such a role in coordinating both U.S. Government and international efforts to confront piracy in the Horn of Africa — a regional security problem with truly global implications for maritime safety, commercial shipping, and humanitarian aid deliveries.
The Bureau has responded to Secretary Clinton’s call for “a 21st century solution to the 17th century problem” of piracy by leading the State Department’s efforts to conceive and organize the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia, an ad hoc diplomatic grouping of nearly 40 nations and international organizations that is coordinating international naval patrols and shipping self-protection, as well as efforts to encourage prosecutions of suspected pirates, discourage the payment of ransoms, and build the capacity and political will of countries affected by piracy to interdict and prosecute these maritime criminals. The Contact Group is convening its fourth plenary session tomorrow at UN Headquarters in New York, where they will continue their joint effort to take action against pirates in the waters off the Horn of Africa.
