Gloria Sawyer

The U.S. State Department is perhaps the eminent instrument of global influence in U.S. foreign policy formulation. In the midst of questionable perceptions of American foreign policy standings in the community of nations, the State Department under the incoming Obama administration is poised to potentially change policy directives and redefine the U.S. role as a global manager in international affairs.  

The concerns of international interdependence and the subsequent global economic meltdown will warrant a new strategic course and policy paradigm, one that incorporates both intelligent foreign policy articulation coupled with cogent arguments in effective international coalition building and diplomacy. Established in 1789, headquartered in Washington D.C. and employing over 28,000 people, the U.S. State Department is the oldest U.S. Executive department with approximately 42 departments and bureaus, 260 U.S. embassies and consulates in various countries.

This hierarchical structure runs the spectrum of Arms Control, African issues, refugee, immigration, Eastern, Pacific and South Asian Affairs as well as interventionism, foreign aid, sanctions, public diplomacy and covert activities. The U.S. State Department will warrant a skilled policy framework that considers strategic options and viable measures for deterrence before employing military engagements.  

U.S. intelligent foreign policy management must engage new global initiatives to address matters of nation state conflict and rogue nations with – or suspected of having – nuclear capabilities. This is especially evident given the increasing need for effective U.S. intervention and management of non-traditional global crisis such as sectarian genocide, human trafficking, global infectious disease, environmental degradation and sustainable development coupled with the continued threat of global terrorism as in the case of Mumbai India, as well as matters of nuclear proliferation.

No one currently on the American political scene may be more prepared or suited for the complexities of this appointment than New York Senator and former U.S. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. A reasonable trajectory of Senator Clinton as Secretary of State is likely that of a Centrist (conventionally, a person who deals with facts and works in concert with others to determine solutions), in policy initiatives, yet also an advocate of U.S. Military strength.  

Reasonably, one may speculate that Senator Clinton has the intellectual path, depth and command of foreign policy issues as well as a respect for the ethics of law and its implications in successful international policy formulation and intervention. As Secretary of State, and thus executor of U.S. Foreign policy, Senator Clinton is certain to be a significant instrument of global influence under the Obama administration.

This does not presuppose that Senator Clinton’s initiatives will not be challenged.  Perhaps, most challenges will come from some national media and pundits, as well as political partisans and past opponents versed in the politics of divisiveness.

Other areas of challenge may well be the lack of adequate racial and cultural diversity in the State Department.  In the fragile international balance of power, the immense importance of greater racial and cultural diversity as a strategic conduit to promote security and stability of U.S. foreign interest is an undeniable fact. To this end there are likely to be structural and procedural changes to redefine policy that may well constitute an increase in diversity in the State Department. The expressed concerns of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, current Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice and Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY) notes the historical vacuum in diverse racial and cultural representation in the State Department.   Some, as Rangel, have taken an active role in fostering increased minority presence in U.S. foreign assignments.

Congressman Rangel notes, “The absence of minorities in our embassies and official offices has been astounding.”

Programs such as the Ralph J. Bunch International Affairs Center housed at Howard University D.C. Campus as over seen by the Department of State is one of several emerging academic institutions fostering increased minority presence in foreign affairs by graduating African American and minority students and assigning them as Foreign Service Officers in embassies in Honduras, Berlin, Morocco, Panama, Yemen, Burkina Faso, Peru, Burma and other nations. Such increased opportunities for racial and cultural diversity will likely open vast doors for African American and other minorities not traditionally viewed as candidates for these new global assignments and may indeed constitute a new policy manifesto for Senator Clinton.

As to the question of the “seamlessness” between the newly selected Secretary of State and President-elect Obama, it is reasonable to project that Sen. Clinton will demonstrate the supportive role as evidenced in the surrogate position she assumed in the President-elect’s campaign.  Discarding the implications of the preventive paradigm where the end justifies the means, the newly emerging U.S. global strategic direction may well be inclusive of multilateralism, racial diversity, multiculturalism, “soft power,” strategic militaristic, yet thematic ethical foreign policy management suggestive of a new age of American pragmatism.  This pragmatism may well be characterized by policy morality in which the lives of innocent civilians (non-combatant women and children) are inherent and germane to U.S. strategic policy formulation. The American public and the world may possibly anticipate fewer military engagements of discretion, which characterized the Bush administration’s foreign policy agenda and subsequent erosion of American international relations.

(Gloria Sawyer is a lecturer in the Dept. of History, Philosophy and Political Science at Chicago State University and a former instructor at the University of Memphis.)