The National Security Strategy
The Obama Administration released its first National Security Strategy today, and the document is heavily rooted in smart power principles. “Our diplomacy and development capabilities must be modernized, and our civilian expeditionary capacity strengthened, to support the full breadth of our priorities,” the strategy reads. “To succeed, we must update, balance, and integrate all of the tools of American power and work with our allies and partners to do the same.”
Achieving the goals and following the approach outlined in the strategy will require greater nonmilitary resources, authorities, and interagency prestige. The forthcoming Presidential Study Directive will be a clue as to how the Administration plans to move forward in operationalizing their security plan. Without a clearly articulated strategy , it will be difficult for the State Department and USAID to play the roles and meet the responsibilities outlined in the Administration’s national security vision.
The document directly addresses key USGLC principles throughout, including:
- Increasing resources: “We are increasing our foreign assistance, expanding our investments in effective multilateral development institutions, and leveraging the engagement of others to share the burden.”
- Improved cooperation between Congress and the Executive: “To effectively craft and implement a sustainable, results-oriented national security strategy, there must be effective cooperation between the branches of government. … This Administration is also committed to active consultation with Congress…”
- Interagency approach to development: “We will ensure a greater and more deliberate focus on a global development agenda across the United States Government, from policy analysis through policy implementation.”
- Better use of resources: “…pursuing a development budget that more deliberately reflects our policies and our strategy, not sector earmarks, and ensuring that our policy instruments are aligned in support of development objectives.”
- Civilian-military coordination and balance: “We have already begun to reorient and strengthen our development agenda; to take stock of and enhance our capabilities; and to forge new and more effective means of applying the skills of our military, diplomats, and development experts. These kinds of measures will help us diminish military risk, act before crises and conflicts erupt, and ensure that governments are better able to serve their people…..“Proactively investing in stronger societies and human welfare is far more effective and efficient than responding after state collapse.”
A few other highlights from the National Security Strategy:
- Emphasis on economic security: “To promote prosperity for all Americans, we will need to lead the international community to expand the inclusive growth of the integrated, global economy.”
- Hint at the MCC model?: “The United States has an interest in working with our allies to help the world’s poorest countries grow into productive and prosperous economies governed by capable, democratic, and accountable state institutions…The United States will initiate long-term investments that recognize and reward governments that demonstrate the capacity and political will to pursue sustainable development strategies and ensure that all policy instruments at our disposal are harnessed to these ends.”
- Millennium Development Goals: Important for U.S. strategy because “Basic human rights cannot thrive in places where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive.”
- Global initiatives: Touched on multiple development initiatives, including Feed the Future, calling it an example of U.S. approach to development: “Instead of simply providing aid for developing countries, we are focusing on new methods and technologies for agricultural development. This is consistent with an approach in which aid is not an end in itself—the purpose of our foreign assistance will be to create the conditions where it is no longer needed.”
