| Photo by Jane Scherr |
Elizabeth Jones Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
| Photo by Jane Scherr |
Page 7 of 9
There seems to be a big contradiction in the work of a diplomat. On the one hand you have to understand domestic politics at home and abroad, and on the other hand, you have to fit that understanding into the dynamics of international relations. It seems like this applies both to the United States and to the countries that you have been posted to. How do you address that problem intellectually and in your work?
You start with the principles on which you base your policies. Then you take that and you try to understand how that's going to fit into the mindset of whichever group, country, organization it is you're working with. And you realize that the principles that you stand for are a pretty hard sell, possibly, to X country or Y country. So you use your knowledge of that country, that leadership, that history, whatever it is, to try to build the arguments, to get them to see that the principles that you're putting forward are actually also in their interest.
Isn't it the case, though, that one could take a particular country -- say, Pakistan -- where, on the one hand, we're very much interested in democratization, as we are everywhere else; but on the other hand, we have very strong security concerns at this particular point in time after 9/11. So [actions that] may further our security concerns in the short term can work against our hopes for democratization in a particular country. I'm not asking you necessarily to focus on Pakistan, but how do you live with those subtleties, and what is in your mind?
There's a very particular way we work on it, because we as Americans believe very strongly in the rights of the individual and the ability of the individual to make correct choices for him or herself, and for their community and for their country. So we start with that premise. Yes, there is a tension between "does that guy stay in power with whom we're working cooperatively," and the pressure for democracy. So here's how we argue it with the Central Asians, for instance. They say, "Oh, security; terribly important, very important for the U.S. to be there with us because security is so critical." And we say, "That's right, security is important. But you can't have security, President Whoever, unless you assure us that your citizens are in support of you and your policies. And the only way to do that is to make sure that they have jobs. And to get jobs, you have to have economic reform. To have economic reform, you've got to have investments. You've got to have an investment climate that works. To do that, you have different kinds of economic reforms that we could help you with, the World Bank can help you with, the European Union can help you with." So we work on that whole sector of interests.
We also say to President Whoever in Central Asia, "You're not going to be secure if your people want to overthrow you. The reason your people want to overthrow you is, number one, there's a jobs problem, but, number two, because they have no say in your cabinet, in whether or not you stay in government. They have no say even in who their mayor is or their governor is. They have to feel that they participate. So if we're going to stay here and work with you on these securities issues, the issues that you call security (because we define them so broadly), we're going to come in here and work with you on media development, on NGOs that are working for human rights improvements, democratic reform issues, so that we get the whole range of what we would consider 'security.'"
What's new, I guess, in today's work, as opposed to your work twenty-plus years ago, is that you are working a lot with groups other than the government.
Absolutely. We make a practice of working mostly with groups that are not the government, in all those areas, because that is what we call civil society. Those are the people who know how to make things move in their communities, they're the ones most interested in change, they're the ones most dedicated to change, and so they're the ones that are the most likely to be able to effect the kinds of changes that they want, that we think are important.
You entered the Foreign Service in the seventies, and at that time in our history we were learning, because of the Vietnam War, a lot important lessons about intelligence, about nation-building, about the use of military force. After 9/11, the United States seems to have had a wake-up call, in which we're watching the pendulum swing in the other way (not necessarily all the way). I'm curious how one, as a diplomat, navigates that change in thinking. There were valid lessons that we learned from Vietnam, but it could be the case that we've gone too far in incorporating those lessons. One can think of intelligence, for example, as a case in point. Talk a little about how, as a professional diplomat, you do those calculations in your mind.
Let me talk, in particular, about what it was like to realize on September 12 that we had a very different set of circumstances that we had to work with, circumstances that may have existed, we just didn't realize, just as you say, how devastating they would be to us, and how devastating it could be to the societies of our friends and allies.
We started with saying, "Okay, this is terrorism. We have dealt with this, we have counter-terrorist programs, but let's look at them. What other policies do we have in place that might contribute to our ability to stop terrorism, and to some degree, the root causes of terrorism?" We realized, in going through what we do worldwide with a variety of different societies and governments, that we needed to start connecting up some of the programs we're doing. So, border controls -- very important. Counter-proliferation issues -- these bring us to some of the techniques, some of the intelligence, some of the thought processes that would be very important in closing down terror networks. Same thing with financing. There's been a focus on hidden bank accounts here or there, but was there a way to use what we were just realizing is a huge terrorist financing network, to get at terrorism issues, but also to at trafficking, at white collar crime, at narcotics?
So we started bringing in all these elements -- the war on narcotics, the war on whatever -- bringing all those together into a much more comprehensive policy, instead of programs, to get at each of these transnational threats in a much more comprehensive way, realizing that if you go after the guys who were trafficking women, you're probably also going after the guys who are financing terrorists.
So you're suggesting that the circumstances, in a sense, impose a situation where you begin to think strategically in a way that you weren't politically able to do in the past?
That's right: much more globally. That's right.
After the fall of communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was this sense, "Well, what is our grand strategy? Do we need one?" For a number of years, for whatever reason, we didn't come up with one. But am I hearing you say that in a way, it's not that we weren't doing a lot of things, but rather that we weren't putting them all together in a more effective way?
That's exactly right, we weren't putting them together. From the end of the Cold War until September 11, we were focusing on promoting democracy, promoting economic reform, without focusing as much as it turns out we should have been on the threats as well. So it's putting the positive programs together with the border control - type of programs that helped us out, in terms of how to get after the problems that 9/11 brought us.
In rethinking foreign policy, the president and the national security advisor and the government have come up with a strategic document, and one of the new elements in that document, in terms of our grand strategy, is the notion that we are vulnerable not just to chemical weapons and biological weapons, but we are vulnerable to situations abroad which can breed terrorists who can act globally.
That's right.
And that's new, isn't it?
You're exactly right, and that's what's so important, and I'm glad you mentioned that, in the national security strategy, because that talks about the multilateral kind of work that the United States is doing, should be doing -- all of us should be doing -- to get at every aspect of a threat. Economic reform is a very big part of that. The challenge -- to help democracies in transition get at the sources of discontent -- are terribly important.
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