PRINCETON – On February 1, the United
Nations Security Council met to consider the Arab League’s proposal
to end the violence in Syria.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton represented the United
States. Midway through her remarks, she
began speaking not to the Syrian ambassador, who was in the room, or even the
Syrian government, but directly to the Syrian people. She said that change in Syria
would require Syrians of every faith and ethnicity to work together, protecting
and respecting the rights of minorities.
Addressing those minorities, she continued: “We do hear your fears, and we
do honor your aspirations. Do not let the current regime exploit them to extend
this crisis.” She told Syria’s
business, military, and other leaders that they must
recognize that their futures lie with the state, not with the regime. “Syria
belongs to its 23 million citizens, not to one man or his family.”
Speaking directly to citizens – seeing
a country’s people, as well as its government – is not just a rhetorical
device. While many foreign-policy pundits have focused on the US
“pivot to Asia,” Clinton
has also executed a less-publicized, but no less important, pivot to the
people. She has introduced policies, programs, and institutional reforms
designed to support government-to-society and society-to-society diplomacy,
alongside traditional government-to-government relations. These initiatives do
not get headlines, but they will gradually transform much of American foreign
policy.
In January, the State Department
unveiled a new “super-office” of Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human
Rights, under the leadership of Under-Secretary Maria Otero. The office brings
together agencies that focus on international law enforcement, counter-terrorism,
and reconstruction and stabilization with those charged with advancing
democracy, human rights, and humanitarian assistance to refugees and migrants.
Otero explains the logic behind the
initiative in terms of “protecting individuals.” That, in turn, requires “not
just engaging state to state,” but also working “with players and actors
outside of the traditional [channels] we’ve engaged in.”
Viewed from this perspective,
countering terrorism includes rebutting terrorist propaganda with a strategic
communications campaign. Countering narco-gang violence includes working with
Mexican telecommunications mogul Carlos Slim to develop tools that allow
ordinary citizens to report violence anonymously by text message and enable police
to map the results. Strengthening democracy means working with the Kenyan
developers of a crisis-mapping platform that allows anyone with a cell phone to
text information about election fraud or violence to a central monitoring
station.
On a country-by-country basis,
pivoting to the people means engaging with Egypt’s bloggers as well as with the
ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces; convening young entrepreneurs in
Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco and connecting them to funding and mentoring; and
using social media in Russia to rebut government efforts to smear the US
ambassador. And, working at an official level, it means co-sponsoring with Brazil
the Open Government Partnership, which brings together governments committed to
increasing transparency, accountability, and citizen participation, and uses
mutual peer pressure and open reporting to hold them to their commitments.
Thinking about countries in these
comprehensive terms also provides a different strategic perspective. Clinton
has created a raft of new positions at the State Department to spur outreach to
different social segments. The strategies and programs developed by the
Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues, the Special Adviser for Global Youth
Issues, the Senior Adviser for Civil Society and Emerging Democracies, the
Special Representative for Outreach to Muslim Communities, the Special
Representative for Global Partnerships, and the Special Representative for
Commercial and Business Affairs often present a very different face of the US.
As a result, Clinton
has launched an actual strategic dialogue with civil society. For example,
Ambassador Melanne Verveer has attended more than 1,000 events around the world
focused on empowering women in areas ranging from peace negotiations to farming.
Similarly, she has launched programs such as mWomen, designed to expand and
support mobile technology that increases women’s independence, security, and
access to health care and vital knowledge. The Office of Global Youth Affairs
is building a local youth council at every US
embassy around the world, to advise and help to implement embassy programming
aimed at local youth.
Much of the programming aimed at
youth, women, entrepreneurs, diasporas, technologists, and other social groups
is partly funded and conducted by the private sector. Indeed, the Obama
administration’s National Security Strategy mentions “public-private
partnerships” more than 30 times. Clinton
created the Global Partnership Initiative to build as many coalitions,
networks, and partnerships as possible with corporations, foundations, NGOs,
universities, and other civic organizations.
Here, the pivot to the people includes
the American people: the dynamism, creativity, and resources of American
business and non-profit organizations already engaged around the world. One
privately-funded initiative spearheaded by the State Department will send 300
dogwood trees to Japan
this spring, to be planted in the tsunami-affected region and in Tokyo
to express the American people’s support for the Japanese people; another will
send English teachers throughout Southeast Asia.
After participating in the Friends of
Syria conference in Tunis, Clinton
convened a town hall meeting with Tunisian youth. In her opening remarks, she
told her audience that “young people are at the heart of today’s great
strategic opportunities and challenges.” Speaking about her lifetime efforts to
put “women’s empowerment on the international agenda,” she added, “It’s time to
put youth empowerment there as well.”
The implications of all of this
activity, which Clinton calls
“twenty-first-century statecraft,” are profound. From now on, US
diplomatic relations with other countries will engage directly with their
people and connect them to the American people as much as possible. From the
perspective of US diplomats, the people of every country stand on the same
footing as their government. That assumption is the heart of democracy; it is a
revolution for diplomacy.