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THE ENEMY WITHIN

 

 

Sent: Saturday, November 07, 2009 11:52 AM

Subject: Website update: The global change we need: Campaigning Diplomacy

Foreign Secretary David Milliband spoke to the Fabian Society on the challenge of engaging citizens on foreign policy issues. This is a conference about the lessons of the Obama campaign and the first year of the Obama Administration.  I want to look at foreign policy, but not at a particular issue, theory or policy.  I want to look not at what we are trying to achieve, but rather how we try and achieve it.  The reason is simple: a central premise of the Obama Presidency is that the solution of our problems involves not just a new partnership between states but a new partnership between state and citizen.  That was true in the campaign; it is true in government.

This theme is all the more important because in the last decade, the political classes across established democracies have engaged in a familiar lament, agonising over the growing disconnection between citizens and politicians, fearful that the future of politics was either a descent into managerialism or populism.

A year ago, the triumph of President Obama provided the best riposte. Obama’s campaign inspired millions of people for good reason. It was a victory of popular insurgent motivation. It gave America a new start domestically and internationally.  His message was defiantly optimistic about America, international in its scope and unifying in its reach.

Today is a good chance to take stock.  The cynics are in full cry.  The waters may not have been parted.  But a new start has been made and new agendas set.  I remain an optimist about this defiantly transformational Administration.   

The ambition is indeed high but befits the times.  The range and depths of problems facing the world is unprecedented: the deepest global recession since the 1930s, the window closing on our chance to halt global warming, war in Afghanistan, and danger and dashed hopes in the Middle East, the biggest challenge to the Non Proliferation Treaty in a generation, to name but five. That is before we even touch on the US’s domestic challenges.

These problems reflect two things.  First, we are living in a world where the shifting sands of economic power are making real an idea previously beloved only of academics.  This is a multipolar world.  No one country can bring the world to heel.  Second, there are dangerous legacies from the previous era.  Not just long term chronic problems unresolved. But also divisions where there needs to be common purpose.

So the change we need is easy to state.  To build new coalitions and supersede past divisions.

Hillary Clinton has talked about the challenge of yoking together hard and soft power into smart power.  I want to highlight one part of the equation today: soft power.  The ability to change the behaviour of countries by attracting people to our values, norms and institutions; what I call the challenge of campaigning diplomacy.

The insight of President Obama’s campaign was that in a world where power is more dispersed than ever before, between emerging and existing powers, and between citizens and government, change is not merely legislated or imposed from above. Change comes through mobilising coalitions and creating a movement that crosses traditional divides.  

The Power of Soft Power

The obvious point of reference is domestic policy.  But it applies in foreign policy too.  And the world of diplomacy is still catching up with this change.

Traditional government-to-government diplomacy will always have a vital role.  But today, rulers are more constrained than ever before by the wishes of their people. More literate, more informed citizens, more connected to the outside world through trade, media, and travel, more able to communicate easily with each other, exert more influence over decision-making.

Look at the situation today in Pakistan.  For years, the UK and US have been lobbying Pakistani politicians and army generals about domestic militancy. Yet despite billions of pounds in US military assistance, there was little shift in behaviour.  That position has been transformed because Pakistani public opinion shifted dramatically.  Following the peace deal in February that ushered in a hybrid of traditional and Islamic law in parts of the Swat valley, the media showed girls’ schools being burnt down, mobile phone footage of a 17 year old woman being flogged in the Swat valley, and Sufi Mohammed, the leader of TNSM (the militant organisation in Swat), declaring that he did not recognise the writ of the Pakistani state.  It was domestic pressure, fuelled by graphic media images, that shifted Pakistani behaviour, not external lobbying.

Our opponents are increasingly appreciating the importance of soft power. In Afghanistan, when the Taleban was in power, they banned television. Now, they use video recordings, radio and the internet to distribute footage of civilian casualties, such as the film last year of a US-led raid purporting to show rows of bodies of children and babies in a makeshift morgue. They issue CDs, DVDs and mobile ringtones with pro-Taleban songs and poems.  

Rulers not just democracies increasingly have to factor in public opinion. Think of the monks protesting in Burma against the repression the regime imposes. The twitterers in Iran, making their protests at the elections heard in the wider world and organising to meet. In Zimbabwe the use of mobile phones to record votes cast at polling stations exposed fraud.

Traditional diplomacy can achieve incremental and marginal change by persuading leaders to push the boundaries of what their publics will tolerate.  But as power becomes more dispersed, a coercive or transactional approach to diplomacy is increasingly limited.  Negotiation and compromise will always have a role, but transformational change relies on shifting the political conditions within countries and the context in which leaders make their decisions. It involves the soft power of attraction rather than the hard power of coercion.

The role of soft power and the need for popular mobilisation is relevant across all the main foreign policy challenges.

On the Middle East, in Jordan this week I discussed the prospects with King Abdullah. The greatest gap today is between populations in Israel and the Arab world both sick of peace “process” and cynical about compromise.

In Afghanistan, success will not come by killing or capturing all the insurgents. As General McChrystal has said "The measure of effectiveness will not be enemy killed; it will be the number of Afghans shielded from violence".

Success will therefore come when people start switching sides: when ordinary Afghans and Afghanistan’s neighbours stop hedging their bets out of a fear that the international community will leave prematurely allowing the Taleban to return; when those fighting for money, status, or power realise the best route to such rewards is to side with the Afghan government.

But Afghans will only be attracted away from the Taleban when they see Afghan security forces increasingly able to protect them; when they see Afghan governance that is rooting out corruption, able to resolve disputes and administer justice; when they see economic development offering them an alternative livelihood to drugs and crime; when they see their government reaching out to opponents and former fighters, and to their neighbours in Pakistan and Iran.  That is the programme that the new Afghan government under President Karzai must deliver.

On climate change bold leadership by politicians can make a decisive difference.  A year ago Japan was committed to an 8 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020. The new government has now adopted a 25 per cent cut. But many leaders will be reluctant to get too far ahead of their publics. And as we see in the US, leaders need to be able to command broad support from their legislatures.

Values, Institutions, Campaigns

I think there are three lessons from this analysis and from the last year.
First, soft power is more important in the modern world; but our soft power – that of the West - is also more fragile because our values are contested and doubted; so we have to rebuild support for them and for our ability to represent them.  

The West’s economic, political and moral authority is more contested now than at any time in the last two decades: economically, by the global recession, politically, by the emergence of successful authoritarian state capitalist regimes, and morally by the war on terror and charges of hypocrisy and double standards, whether on Guantanamo or even MP’s expenses.

The temptation is to slip into the purest case-by-case pragmatism – to return to a world of value-free foreign policy. Indeed, as a reaction to the dogmatic promotion of universal values, progressives have grown nervous of espousing commitments to democracy promotion or human rights.

My view is that progressives should not be scared of universal values just because others have confused the traditional dividing lines.  Our task is to respect different values, ways of life and points of view, while holding firm to our own view of the good life. To ensure our policies are consistent with a commitment to justice, human rights and democracy. Where there are charges of double standards and hypocrisy, they must be addressed candidly.   Where there is perceived inconsistency, it has to be addressed.

We do support greater political liberty and freedom of speech across the Arab world.  We do not contest that Hamas won parliamentary elections.  But we do not embrace Hamas as a political partner for a two state solution because they do not accept the other state in the solution, even in the manner of the Arab Peace Initiative, and because their terrorist actions belie the democratic values we support.

When it comes to our counter-terrorism work, we can and should be robust in establishing the right red lines for our policies and actions, and defending both. The Government and all its agencies are determined to live up to the laws to which we are subject.  And whenever there are serious complaints and allegations that people’s rights have not been upheld they are always carefully investigated, and where appropriate tested in the courts.

Second, the most powerful way of spreading those values is through shared institutions such as the EU or NATO which have strong values at their heart. Since the second world war, the most powerful vehicles for soft power have been institutions where membership has conferred clear and attractive rewards such as trade and security, alongside clear responsibilities on human rights, the rule of law, or nuclear non-proliferation.   As Vaclav Havel has said, "the vision of becoming part of the EU was…the engine that drove the democratisation and transformation of" of Central and Eastern Europe”.  

Without the prospect of full membership, countries bordering Europe will have little incentive to undergo the political reforms needed to entrench democracy and the rule of law. I was in the Balkans earlier this week.  It is no over-statement to say that the promise of membership is driving economic and political reform in Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Croatia, and Macedonia. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, where nationalist divisions and ethnic tensions still shape politics, progress is proving much more difficult. Yet the persistence of these divisions only reinforces the strategic importance of Bosnia’s eventual EU integration.  

Third, we need to change foreign policy to take important aspects out of the realm of secret talks.  The climate change debate is a good example.  In the run up to Copenhagen, we need to win three arguments with citizens and business.
 
-    We need  scientists, economists, and defence experts to join the debate on a climate deal and set out the catastrophic impact of global warming at 3 or 4 degrees on our economy and security.  2 degrees must be the bottom line.  That is the purpose of the climate impacts map of the future published by the FCO with the Hadley Centre.

-    We need to prove that there can be an early mover advantage for countries that switch over to new green sources of energy and transport.  The Climate Change Act – and the regulatory measures that will deliver it –is as important to our strategy for industrial activism and economic recovery as it is to our environmental programme.

-    We need to engage the ethics of climate change.  The Prime Minister’s proposals on climate change finance have gained support from across the EU that 100 billion euros annually is required by 2020 to support developing countries making the transition to low-carbon energy and adapting to climate change. Those proposals are critical to unlocking action among poorer countries by addressing the need for fairness in a deal.   

Conclusion

Soft power produces less dramatic or immediate changes than hard power. It is easy to underestimate its importance. But as we commemorate the fall of communism 20 years ago, we should remember that the soft power of values is as vital as the hard power of armies when it comes to advancing our goals and defending our societies.  We should remember too that it is only through promoting shared values and shared institutions – progressive means as well as progressive ends – that we can renew and strengthen our soft power.

A year on from President Obama’s election, people are already questioning why he has not already solved the world’s problems. But the whole point of Obama’s campaign was that the power and responsibility to change the world is distributed. And it is only through working together – citizens, business and government, emerging and existing powers – that we can overcome problems too big for any single leader or any single nation. We all have to play a role.  That is the real change we need.

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