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Public Engagement in American Foreign Policy

American Assembly at Columbia University

February 1995


Preface

Daniel A. Sharp

This report summarizes and interprets an American Assembly project designed to convert policy recommendations into action. It was prepared by Dr. Harry Harding, dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University, who served as rapporteur for the workshop on public engagement in foreign policy, which took place February 23-25, 1995, at the Wye Conference Center in Queenstown, Maryland. The workshop was co-directed by Sidney Jones, director, Human Rights Watch/Asia, and Samuel Popkin, professor of political science, University of California, San Diego.

From 1987 to 1993, The American Assembly conducted a series of six international Assemblies on the overall theme of the changing global context for U.S. foreign policy. At each of the first five Assemblies, policy recommendations were made for advancing U.S. national interests on critical global issues.

The sixth of the series, entitled Public Engagement in Foreign Policy after the Cold War, was held in June 1993, and chaired by Cyrus Vance, former U.S. Secretary of State and partner of Simpson, Thacher and Bartlett. It was co-directed by Daniel Yankelovich, chairman of DYG, Inc. and president of the Public Agenda Foundation, and Professor I.M. Destler, director of the Center for International and Security Studies, School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland.

That Assembly sought to understand and make recommendations about the process of engaging the public in support of U.S. foreign policies. During the meeting it became clear that such fundamental changes had taken place in American society and in the world that the old way of quietly designing a foreign policy and then persuading the American public to support it would, in general, no longer work.

The sixty participants in that Assembly reached consensus on five major areas of findings and recommendations as follows:

  1. Foreign policy issues are on a continuum, from those in which little public engagement is involved (e.g., perhaps some security issues), to those in which the public is much involved, even to being the initiator, as in global environment issues. Most issues lie between these poles, and involve substantial public interest.
  2. The separation between domestic and foreign policy has blurred to the point of having little meaning for most political purposes, but government organization, habits, and practices are still based primarily on that separation. This false division has led to the false assumption that the United States can turn from foreign to domestic policy.
  3. The tradition of top-down foreign policy, functioning largely independently of public concerns, is no longer valid. Sustainable policies for most critical issues now may depend upon engaging the public in the decision-making process. This applies especially to new concerns, such as economic, humanitarian, and environmental issues.
  4. The public will no longer settle for the top-down approach. The old model, in which the leaders impart their greater knowledge to the masses and the public is expected to climb on board, is no longer effective. In fact, it can even be counterproductive if the public lacks trust in its government.
  5. The major institutions of government require new procedures.
    • The presidency needs to provide a more collegial leadership and energize the process by which the nation decides its policy.
    • The executive branch needs to make Secretary of State Warren Christopher's American Desk a reality, and do more than make more speeches and distribute information. The public no longer trusts the government to decide and merely inform them of the policy.
    • Congress needs to engage more often in the kind of public deliberation seen in the 1991 Gulf debate.
    • Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) need to be even more engaged with the government on their issues.
    Therefore, in the words of the co-director of that Assembly, Daniel Yankelovich, new rules of public engagement are needed.

The February 1995 workshop summarized in this report was designed to implement those findings and recommendations. It was organized on the strong urging of several participants in the 1993 Assembly, and with a decisive role played by Winston Lord, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and Michael McCurry, spokesperson for the White House, who held the same position previously at the State Department, among others. They helped us to design the workshop and select two issues vital to U.S. interests on which it focused, namely, U.S. policy toward Vietnam, and U.S. policy toward China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Two case studies were commissioned, one by James Mann of The Los Angeles Times on the evolution of the policy decision to renew MFN status for China, and the second by Richard Kessler, professional staff member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, on U.S. policy toward Indonesia with a particular emphasis on the problems posed by the East Timor situation. Both case studies focused particularly on the roles played by NGOs in the formulation of these policies. James Mann concluded that U.S. policy on the renewal of the most-favored-nation treatment for China would have been different and more effective if there were fuller public engagement, and if that engagement had occurred earlier.

In preparation for the workshop, participants were asked to prepare in advance an action plan for how they would communicate with others on one of the two issues selected.

Our purposes for the day-and-a-half workshop were to focus on the procedures of public engagement, the planning process, and the alternative strategies, tactics, means, and goals from both sides:

The workshop was addressed by Robert B. Zoellick, who served in the White House as Deputy Chief of Staff and as counselor to the Secretary and Under Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, as Under Secretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs under President Bush, and currently as executive vice president and general counsel to the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) Foundation.

The unique challenge -- and opportunity -- of this program was to explore the process of planning for public engagement from both the government and the public perspective. It was not a meeting to discuss what U.S. policy should be on China/Hong Kong, Vietnam, or any other issue. The objectives were to develop guidelines for helping private groups develop action plans for engaging in the policy process; to help government officials involved in the formulation of foreign policy learn how better to assess the range of interests involved before a policy is adopted and develop action plans for engaging the public; and to understand how groups outside the government engage in the policy process and what strategies and techniques are most effective for getting heard in Washington.

The discussions were organized around the central question: How can government and non-government actors engage each other more effectively to influence policy outcomes? It was hoped that participants would leave the workshop with a better sense of the importance of, and opportunities for, public engagement, along with a richer repertoire of tools and procedures to take advantage of those opportunities. The Assembly expects that this will help our country to develop and implement a foreign policy that more completely advances the national interest through more effective public engagement on foreign policy -- and domestic policy, for that matter.

A reunion is planned for the fall of 1995 in Washington, D.C. to review implementation of each action plan and to examine this report in the light of the intervening experience.

Dr. Harding's report is both a summary of what he heard during the workshop, as augmented by notes from the other rapporteur, Dr. Bruce Jentleson, and Dr. Harding's interpretation of how that discussion fits within a broader context. The overall purpose of the final report, as of the whole workshop, is to improve the quality of public engagement and of U.S. foreign policy.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the following, who helped to fund this workshop:

The American Assembly takes no position on any subjects presented for discussion, nor are the positions adopted in this report necessarily those of the funders. In addition, it should be noted that most of the participants took part in this meeting as private individuals and spoke for themselves rather than for the organizations and institutions with which they are affiliated. The Assembly would like to express appreciation to all who participated and made this workshop possible and to Dr. Harry Harding for the report that follows.