State Department Still Unsure of Its Role One Year Later

By GottaLaff

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: marcn, mindfrieze)

I have a very smart friend, Allen McDuffee, who also happens to be extremely nice and a good writer. He has a new post up at Truthout. I'll share a little of it with you, and then you can read the whole thing here:

One year after Obama takes office and appoints Hillary Clinton secretary of state, the State Department struggles to determine whether it really wants to separate from the Pentagon.

At a December 3 closed briefing to a group of foreign policy journalists from the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism on the concept of "smart power" under the Obama administration, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said that the Obama administration was taking "a more holistic approach to national affairs." [...]

Citing the Obama administration's mantra of the Three D's: Defense, Diplomacy and Development, Kelly said that implementing "smart power is a rebalancing of our foreign policy." Smart power - a concept that combines the hard power of the military with the soft power of diplomacy - has gained increasing acceptance in foreign policy and military circles as a reaction to right size the Bush administration's heavily militaristic policies.

Yet, while insisting on the smart power model as the right model for the United States, the State Department is still struggling with its relationship to the Pentagon, how it will "reimagine itself" and, ultimately, how hard and soft power will work together in practice.

It's the thought that counts.

More here.