Engagement (diplomacy)

Last updated

Engagement is applied in diplomacy as a synonym for a wider range of more specific practices of contact between an international actor and a foreign public, including public diplomacy, communication and the deployment of international aid. It is associated with the approach to foreign policy that some have dubbed smart power. It was the title of a 2008 anthology of essays on the future of public diplomacy published by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. [1]

Contents

Since January 2009, it has been widely used by the Obama administration, who in May 2009 announced the creation of a unit within the National Security Council responsible for coordinating diplomacy, aid and international communication called the Global Engagement Directive. [2]

Variations on 'Engagement' include 'Strategic Public Engagement', which was first seen in June 2009 in a report by the Washington-based Think Tank Center for a New American Security entitled Beyond Bullets: A Pragmatic Strategy to Combat Violent Islamist Extremism. [3]

The term engagement is used in both military and marketing contexts and thus has the advantage for the Obama administration of reassuring both these constituencies[ clarify ]. Other terms might imply less neutrality or greater continuity with the approach of previous administration. [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

The Clinton Doctrine is not an official government statement but an interpretation made by experts of the main priorities in the foreign policy of the Bill Clinton administration in the United States, 1993-2001.

The National Security Strategy (NSS) is a document prepared periodically by the executive branch of the United States that lists the national security concerns and how the administration plans to deal with them. The legal foundation for the document is spelled out in the Goldwater–Nichols Act. The document is purposely general in content, and its implementation relies on elaborating guidance provided in supporting documents such as the National Military Strategy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bureau of Counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism</span>

The Bureau of Counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism (CT) is a bureau of the United States Department of State. It coordinates all U.S. Government efforts to improve counter-terrorism cooperation with foreign governments and participates in the development, coordination, and implementation of American counterterrorism policy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Nagl</span> Retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army

John Albert Nagl is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army. He is a former president of the Center for a New American Security and former headmaster of The Haverford School. Nagl is an expert in counterinsurgency and has published two books on military strategy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Center for a New American Security</span> American think tank

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) is a Washington, D.C. based think tank founded in 2007 by Michèle Flournoy, board member of military contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, and Kurt M. Campbell, coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs in the Biden Administration. Funded by Northrop Grumman, dozens of military contractors, Chevron, Amazon, Google and other large corporations, CNAS specializes in United States national security issues, including terrorism, irregular warfare, the future of the U.S. military, the emergence of Asia as a global power center, war games pitting the US against the People's Republic of China and the national security implications of natural resource consumption.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Institute for Strategic Dialogue</span> Think tank

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) is a think tank founded in 2006 by Sasha Havlicek and George Weidenfeld that specialises in research and policy advice on hate, extremism, and disinformation. It is headquartered in London, United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Sewall</span>

Sarah Sewall is Executive Vice President for Policy at In-Q-Tel, a strategic investor for the national security community. A national security expert whose career spans government service and academia, she most recently served as Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, where she was the key architect of the Obama Administration's preventive approach to combatting violent extremism abroad. At both the Pentagon and State Department, she built and led organizations that integrated security and human rights in their policy and operational work. She spent ten years as a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where she directed the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. In partnership with U.S. military leaders, she helped revise U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, led groundbreaking field assessments of U.S. civilian casualty mitigation efforts, and created new operational concepts for halting mass atrocities.

In international relations, the term smart power refers to the combination of hard power and soft power strategies. It is defined by the Center for Strategic and International Studies as "an approach that underscores the necessity of a strong military, but also invests heavily in alliances, partnerships, and institutions of all levels to expand one's influence and establish legitimacy of one's action."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Farah Pandith</span> American academic (born 1968)

Farah Pandith is an American academic of Indian descent. She was appointed the first-ever Special Representative to Muslim Communities in June 2009 by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The position was made specifically for her after she briefed Secretary Clinton about her work in the Bush Administration. She had the rare distinction of being a political appointee for two Republican presidents and President Obama. When she was the Special Representative she traveled to almost 100 countries. After serving under both Secretaries Clinton and John Kerry, she left government. She said she came to Washington after 9/11 again and wanted to serve – she left after more than a decade in public service. She worked at USAID and then went to the National Security Council and then the U.S. Department of State. When she left in 2014, she returned to her home state of Massachusetts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review</span> US master plan for non-military foreign policy

The Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) is a study by the United States Department of State, conducted beginning in 2009 and intended to be done every four years, that analyzes the short-, medium-, and long-term blueprint for the United States' diplomatic and development efforts abroad. It seeks to plan on a longer-term basis than the usual year-to-year, appropriations-based practice, and to integrate diplomacy and development missions. It similarly seeks to correlate the department’s missions with its capacities and identify shortfalls in resourcing. Finally, it is a precursor to core institutional reforms and corrective changes. The first review was completed by the end of 2010. A second review began during 2014 and was released in April 2015. No further reviews have taken place.

The Obama Doctrine is a catch-all term frequently used to describe one or several principles of the foreign policy of U.S. President Barack Obama. It is still not agreed whether there was an actual Obama Doctrine. Nevertheless, in 2015, during an interview with The New York Times, Obama briefly commented about the doctrine saying: "You asked about an Obama doctrine, the doctrine is we will engage, but we preserve all our capabilities".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rashad Hussain</span> American diplomat

Rashad Hussain is an American attorney, diplomat, and professor, who currently serves as the United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. He previously served as associate White House counsel, as U.S. Special Envoy of President Barack Obama to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), and the U.S. Special Envoy for strategic counterterrorism communications. Hussain has also served on the United States National Security Council and in the Department of Justice as a trial attorney and a criminal and national security prosecutor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Full spectrum diplomacy</span>

Full spectrum diplomacy is a combination of traditional, government-to-government diplomacy with the many components of public diplomacy as well as the integration of these two functions with other instruments of statecraft. The term was coined by John Lenczowski, founder and president of The Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. in his book Full Spectrum Diplomacy and Grand Strategy: Reforming the Structure and Culture of U.S. Foreign Policy which was released in May, 2011.

<i>National Security Decision Directive 77</i>

National Security Decision Directive 77, was a U.S. National Security Directive signed on January 14, 1983, by President Ronald Reagan. The directive established a Special Planning Group (SPG) under the National Security Council (NSC) whose purpose was to strengthen, organize, plan, and coordinate public diplomacy of the United States relative to national security. This NSDD positioned the White House and the National Security Staff at the helm of public diplomacy coordination across government agencies. NSDD-77 lay the groundwork for the Reagan administration's aggressive public diplomacy strategy and included guidance for inter-agency working groups to execute wide-ranging tactics for information dissemination both domestically and internationally.

Islamic extremism in the United States comprises all forms of Islamic extremism occurring within the United States. Islamic extremism is an adherence to fundamentalist interpretations of Islam, potentially including the promotion of violence to achieve political goals. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, Islamic extremism became a prioritized national security concern of the U.S. government and a focus of many subsidiary security and law enforcement entities. Initially, the focus of concern was on foreign Islamic terrorist organizations, particularly al-Qaeda, but in the course of the years since the September 11 terror attacks, the focus has shifted more towards Islamic extremist and jihadist networks within the United States.

The White House released the United States' first strategy to address "ideologically inspired" violence in August 2011. Entitled Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States, the eight-page document outlines "how the Federal Government will support and help empower American communities and their local partners in their grassroots efforts to prevent violent extremism." The strategy was followed in December 2011 by a more detailed Strategic Implementation Plan for Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States. The National Strategy for Empowering Local Partners and the strategic implementation plan (SIP) resulted from the identification of violent extremism and terrorism inspired by "al-Qaeda and its affiliates and adherents" as the "preeminent security threats" to the United States by the 2010 National Security Strategy and the 2011 National Strategy for Counterterrorism. Regardless of the priorization of the threat from al-Qaeda's ideology, both the strategy and SIP are geared towards all types of extremism without focus on a particular ideology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Violent extremism</span> Extremism perpetrated through violent means

Violent extremism is a form of extremism that condones and enacts violence with ideological or deliberate intent, such as religious or political violence. Violent extremist views often conflate with religious and political violence, and can manifest in connection with a range of issues, including politics, religion, and gender relations.

The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) is an independent think-and-do tank providing multidisciplinary policy advice and practical support focused on prevention, the rule of law and current and emerging threats three important parts of effective counter-terrorism work. ICCT's work focuses on themes at the intersection of countering violent extremism and criminal justice sector responses, as well as human rights related aspects of counter-terrorism. The major project areas concern countering violent extremism, rule of law, foreign fighters, country and regional analysis, rehabilitation, civil society engagement and victims' voices.

<i>Smart Power</i>

Smart Power: Between Diplomacy and War, is a 2013 book written by Christian Whiton with a foreword by Paula Dobriansky. Both were diplomats in the George W. Bush administration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Counter Extremism Project</span> Nonprofit NGO that combats extremist groups

The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) is a non-profit non-governmental organization that combats extremist groups "by pressuring financial support networks, countering the narrative of extremists and their online recruitment, and advocating for strong laws, policies and regulations".

References

  1. Engagement: Public Diplomacy in a Globalised World(UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London , 2008)
  2. Cam Simpson, ‘Obama Revamps National Security Posts,’ Wall Street Journal, 27 May 2009
  3. Kristin Lord, John Nagl & Seth Rosen, Beyond Bullets: A Pragmatic Strategy to Combat Violent Islamist Extremism. (Center for a New American Security, Washington DC, 2009)
  4. These points are made in the essay by Professor Nicholas Cull of USC entitled 'Engagement is the new Public Diplomacy'