Our class visit to the Department of State provided a great insight to many of the topics we have been discussing in World Politics. David Bame, the Director of Public Affairs and Outreach for the Department of State, was a great speaker who inspired me to do more research on the different policies and affairs of State Department. I especially am interested in the policies that have been implemented since the appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.
In 2009, Hillary Clinton created the Global Philanthropy Forum which she hoped would generate public-private partnerships with foundations, businesses, non-governmental organizations, universities, and faith communities through what Secretary Clinton called Global Partnership Initiative (GPI). The GPI stood out to me as a unique partnership that would attempt to implement partnerships in American foreign policy, with a more comprehensive approach to diplomacy, development, and defense. Secretary Clinton’s idea with the GPI has a similar tie to our study on the International Relations theory of Realism and Liberalism.
In the Realist’s perspective, cooperation with other states is encouraged by a common security thread. This is different from Liberalism where, if states feel they are both gaining, they can achieve greater success if they rationally chose to corporate. Nonetheless, these theories both stress some form of corporation between states as one of the best possible resources to achieve prosperity. While the GPI does not refer directly to state to state government cooperation, it puts more of an emphasis on government actions, corporations, religious organizations, charities and foundations to work in conjunction with each other. To foster the state agreement, Secretary Clinton makes the argument of how important building relationships with foreign governments and foreign people are to our nation in improving what compromises can be achieved.
I admire the non-government means of cooperation Secretary Clinton is working towards by establishing the GPI. On the Department of State website, Secretary Clinton refers to the need for partnerships. “Partnerships would create communication with seasoned, experienced professionals and experts leading the United States efforts on diplomacy and development and working, where possible, in partnership and coordination with the private sector and the not-for profit sector”.
The work Secretary Clinton has done to develop and maintain positive international relationships between the United States and other countries has been in strong contrast to her success. Secretary Clinton states on the Department of State website that the Global Partnership Initiative is a way “for us (the United States) to see if we can figure how best to better coordinate and facilitate the private sector and the not-for-profit and religious community of the United States on behalf of humanitarian and commercial efforts." My perspective, after reading Clinton’s hopes for the GPI, would be to guide the desire of the state, individual, or non-governmental organization from dominating their own self-interest when forming partnerships. Self-interest is a key matter in any IR theory, when discussing relationships between states, foreign powers, or organizations. While I am not advocating that self-interest is a negative philosophy, self-interest does have the potential to make this “partnership” Secretary Clinton advocates very challenging.
With the use of the non-governmental organizations, private sector, and religious organizations in American foreign policy, self-interest will not dominant the sphere of cooperation, as would the alternative partnership between government organizations (states). Secretary Clinton defines such public-private partnerships by the GPI as characterized by openness and transparency, mutual benefit, shared risks and rewards, and accountability. It is interesting to note how IR theories, such as realism and liberalism, have left very strong influences (as in the area of corporation) on many of the agreements made today. While it is debatable if the GPI idea Hillary Clinton established would be successful in encouraging foreign private organizations to develop these partnerships, her attempts at such an endeavor are extremely revolutionary. In her speech advocating the Global Partnership Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations, Secretary Clinton called for the United States to “lead by inducing greater cooperation among a greater number of actors and reducing competition, tilting the balance away from a multi-polar world and toward a multi-partner world”. These ideas strain from many of the philosophies (corporation, prosperity, and agreements) discussed historically in the international relation theories of liberalism thus leading to IR modern relevance today.
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