2008 Annual Meeting
Event Summary
By Yvonne Siu
The American Academy of Diplomacy hosted its 2008 annual meeting at The Cohen Group on Wednesday, May 14, 2008, and had the pleasure of welcoming Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates as the keynote speaker.
Participants at the well-attended meeting included Academy members, as well as leaders in business, nongovernmental organizations and the media. The speech and discussion focused primarily on current Academy activities, including a forthcoming study to be published by AAD in fall 2008 entitled the Foreign Affairs Budget of the Future: Fixing a Hollow Service, which will provide concrete recommendations to the next Administration on what is needed by the State Department, USAID, and the Foreign Service to accomplish their missions in classic diplomacy, public diplomacy, development diplomacy and crisis response.
Ambassador Thomas Pickering, Academy Chairman, introduced Secretary Gates, who addressed the crowd and took questions from Academy members. The major themes discussed at the meeting were the importance of strengthening the civilian component of our government and the institution of American diplomacy, the importance to national security of better cooperation among government departments and agencies, America's foreign policy vis-à-vis Iran, and the militarization of foreign development assistance and reconstruction efforts.
Specifically, Secretary Gates mentioned recent positive steps forward toward enhancing America’s diplomatic capabilities, including the growing consensus in Congress for the need to devote more resources to the State Department and to the civilian component of our national security. He described the decrease in capacity and staffing of America’s Foreign Service and USAID since the end of the Cold War, underlining the growing marginalization of these agencies. He also mentioned his personal support for Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s request for 1,000 additional positions for the Foreign Service in 2009, as well as a significant dollar increase in its budget.
During the Q&A session, Secretary Gates pointed out that critical to America’s ability to meet the pressing foreign policy challenges of the 21st century is greater integration of government efforts and collaboration between agencies. Given that our security threats are increasingly complex and require not just a military response but also expertise in economic development, rule of law and governance, Secretary Gates emphasized that national security now increasingly relies upon greater communication and cooperation among the different government departments.
Responding to a question of how to address the useful role military personnel play in embassies abroad while considering the fact that the military is stretched with current conflicts, he said it would be good to assign smaller numbers of highly-skilled military people to embassies with low resources. He reiterated the need to increase the training and professionalization of our military services so that they can, when needed, assist American embassies throughout the world.
When asked about his evaluation on the follow-up and implementation of the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations, Secretary Gates, who was a member of the Iraq Study Group chaired by Lee Hamilton and James A. Baker III, commented on the recommendation for increased American engagement with Iran. While he recognized the negative role Iran is today playing in Iraq, he also suggested the US would do well to engage more in a two-way dialogue with the country, which would help create a more workable diplomatic relationship. However, he also said it is necessary to increase US leverage so that Iran will have reason to negotiate.
Regarding his thoughts on the increasing militarization of international development and foreign assistance work abroad, Secretary Gates said he would be cautious about how the military moves in this direction, and that he would like to see the military focus more on matters of peacekeeping, professionalization of the military, capacity building, and building relationships between the military and civilians in a democracy.
