 Hi, I'm Dan Rundy. I hold the Shrier Chair here at CSIS and I want to welcome you all to this afternoon. I mean, who to thunk on a Monday afternoon before Thanksgiving. We could fill a room to talk about QDDR 2.0, but we managed to do that. So we have a group of experts here that have affiliations with CSIS to talk about the QDDR 2.0. I think as a concept, lining up civilian power and getting everybody to sing from the same song sheet from a strategic standpoint, everyone agrees with this is a great idea. I think Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State had the absolute right idea and I think it wasn't certainly a far greater improvement than the process I lived through, which was known, the F process during the Bush administration, which was poorly named for a variety of reasons. So I think it's certainly an improvement. But to the extent that this sort of process is about tactical activities, about getting the trains to run on time better as opposed to having a strategic conversation about where we need to put our people time and money, how we line up this conversation with resourcing, how we have this conversation and in this sort of a strategic conversation with the Hill. I think these are all open questions. I also think it's this is a good time to be having this conversation and the reason we wanted to do this was a contribution to good government on the part of CSIS by saying we need to have this sort of a conversation. It may not just be AID in state. We need to have a number of civilian agencies doing this and lining up our soft and smart power in a much more strategic kind of a way. And so how we do that, the questions we ask and the people that lead it and the sorts of capabilities and cover that they have matter, as well as also honoring the different sorts of expertise that institutions have. So is this about taking over AID by state? I hope not. I don't think it is, and I don't think it should be. And it should be about honoring the expertise of development professionals and their expertise because they bring a lot to the table. So I'm not going to say anything more than that, and I'm going to turn over the podium to my new friend Kath Hicks, who's vice president running our ISP program here at CSIS and comes to us directly from the State Department. Kath, over to you. Thanks very much, Dan. And just to be clear, I come from the Defense Department, which the State Department I'm sure will be very glad to hear, no problem. And I was in the Defense Department during the F process. I actually have some good things I can say about that. And I was in the Department of Defense as the lead for the Department of Defense for the QDDR because I was the lead for the QDR. And I'm speaking to you today really from that perspective, as somebody who comes from an institution that has used a process of strategic review routinely to update its strategic planning and what we have found that provides both to DOD and then what the QDDR 1.0 process provided to State. So let me first say that when I came back into the Department of Defense in February of 09, one of the first interactions I had was with the State Department and two officials came over to DOD and said, gee, we'd like to do a QDDR. We'd like to do just what you do without having been required to do it by Congress. And my first thought, which I told them very freely, was you're crazy. If you're not required by statute to undertake a process like this, why would you ever do it? And the answer is because the Secretary of State wants to have strategic planning at State, that's a pretty good answer. We in DOD often take for granted that we have a strategic planning culture and that that has advantages to the Department. Instead, we spend a lot of time and attention on the QDDR document, which is largely derided in the Defense Department as sort of a caricature of a document that's produced by committee. But really, it's true in DOD as well as I think it ended up being in State for the QDDR, that the process by which strategic documents are developed, those processes do have meaning and value to them. Watching and interacting with the State Department officials who ran the 2010 QDDR process, what became very clear was that the Secretary of State felt true ownership as did her senior most staff. They were required to feel ownership of the document and of the document's process. And that's incredibly critical to the value of any process going forward. So not only did that first QDDR bring about a possibility for the State Department to really have a holistic strategic planning culture developed that wasn't simply based on the embassy level strategic planning that occurs, but it also really coined this term that Dan already used of civilian power. From the Defense Department perspective, we had heard Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Gates, Secretary Panetta and now Secretary Hagel all emphasize the importance of having really strong civilian capability and capacity. And in fact, CSIS had coined a term for this some years before and which was used in the QDDR report, which was called smart power, that combination of soft and hard power. But the term civilian power really is permeates that 2010 QDDR. And I think really brought to life this notion that it was incumbent upon the civilian diplomatic and development community to speak to what it takes to have the capability and capacity to hold up its two legs of the three legged stool that is our national security and foreign policy. One thing that's differentiated between the QDDR and the QDDR is that the last QDDR was largely for internal organizational reforms. And that's not typically how we use the QDDR. I'm going to leave to the panel that follows me today, how they believe the this administration should now use the QDDR in terms of organizational follow up and follow up reforms inside state and USAID. I'm not an expert on state or USAID organizational reform. I would suggest, however, that this that it's a very good time and it will be most welcome if the QDDR was actually used this time, at least in part, for developing a State Department USAID strategy document. There's so many foreign policy issues today on which we lack national security consensus on which we need to hear a strong narrative convincing narrative about why the United States engages as it does in the world and how we should achieve and advance our diplomatic and development objectives and what is the environment in which how do we describe that world of opportunities and challenges in which we have to develop a strategy. It would be fantastic from my perspective as a strategist if the State Department decided to use this QDDR to put forward a civilian face on answering that question. It's possible there'll be a national security strategy that does that as well. And that's great from coming from the White House. But there's no reason why the Department of State should not have a forceful voice, if you will, in articulating what the strategy of the United States and foreign policy ought to be. So let me conclude with just a few thoughts based on my experience. I am a survivor of many strategic reviews, the national security strategy, the QDDR, the QDR, the defense strategic guidance, there's sort of a whole soup of strategic reviews that I've been associated with. And so let me just name a few lessons that I've learned that come to my mind when I get asked for advice. The first and by far the most important is that a strategic review to be successful has to reflect the senior leadership that is leading the review in both form and function. So let me start with function. The functional pieces, how does the Secretary, in this case, the Secretary of State and the Director of USAID, what is it that they want to achieve with this review? When all is said and done, what will make that principle own the document and believe in the document and stand behind it? Think back to the QDDR rollout from last time where you had Secretary Clinton and Director Shaw rolling out the QDDR, showing clear ownership of the product. That's what you're going to want to see at the end of the day to measure that this is a successful QDDR, that it reflects the priorities and interests of the Secretary, whatever those priorities may be. The second is one of form. You often hear people talk about the processes around reviews, and I've seen every process there is a lot of us who've been in reviews like to say if you've seen, in our case, the QDDR, if you've seen one QDDR, you've seen one QDDR. There is no set standard process. It should reflect what the senior leadership, their style and how they like to run things. So it's good for the QDDR to borrow best practices, either from QDDRs, QHSRs, we've even had intelligence community quickers. But really, it's most important to make sure that the process reflects how the Secretary of State wants to run it and how he best receives advice. So the next piece of advice I would give is to be strong in ambition, but careful in scope. Different groups of stakeholders will often want very different things out of a document. For instance, I've just given you as a stakeholder for strategic issues, one area that I think is very important. Others will have, other people will have other things they really want to get out of a QDDR. If you're going to run a process well and get a strong document at the end, you really have to limit the scope of ambition for it. The QDDR is really advantaged in this sense and also in terms of what the Secretary wants to get out of it, because there is not yet a legislative mandate that gives a lot of requirements. Just by contrast, the QDDR has something like, it's over 20 specific legislative requirements about what it has to cover. The fact that the QDDR process is one that is born inside the State Department and has flexibility for use inside the State Department means it does not need to be constrained by any kind of really expansive scope and should be able to be used to address the most salient issues today. And the last thing I would give as advice is it's always difficult to balance the need for input and advice with the tendency of very broad collaborations to water down results. So it's very hard to do, but it's important to make sure that there's an outlet to get good advice from outside, from across the Department, from outside the Department, of course from within USAID as well and its stakeholders, but at the same time at the end of the day for that final document and the process to really reflect what the senior leadership wants to achieve and to speak to. If you have too many hands trying to hold the pen in the end, it makes it very difficult to have a strong document come out. That's all of my comments, and I think what we'll do now is get the panel up here. And Dan, I think you're going to introduce the panel. And thanks very much. I'm interested in the discussion. Okay, we've got a very interesting panel. My good friend, Nicole Golden, who's a great partner and collaborator. Nicole has experienced both at state and aid in the Obama administration. And we're very fortunate that she joined us at CSIS to run a relatively new initiative on youth prosperity and security. And so she's going to be moderating the discussion. So she's got both sides now, if you will, from the take it from the song. And we have my colleague, Matt Goodman, who holds the Shull Chair, the Simon chair, as an expert was both at the State Department and at the National Security Council. And is also an Asia expert, as well as someone who leads our work here on multilateral work, especially with a focus on the G20. Then my very good friend, Ambassador Jim Michael, who has a very distinguished career, both at state and at aid, and as I've said many times, has ran the equivalent of the Major League Baseball Commission for the development world. It's called the Development Assistance Committee, the DAC, at the OECD. And so again, Ambassador Michael was an ambassador in Guatemala, so understands both the state and aid cultures, also understands the broader conversations that are going on about how do we concentrate soft and smart power around the world, but also was a most recently counselor at USAID during the last QDDR process and so has a lot of experience in terms of speaking to it, as well as, and is able to speak that as well. Matt was at state when the past QDDR was going on. So you'll hear from both of them. And then my friend and colleague, Bob Lam, who runs our 3C, our conflict, our conflict work here at CSIS is going to provide an additional perspective looking at specifically at fragile states and thinking about what this means because we want to, how do we concentrate all our power in particular conflicts and challenges such as conflict areas. So without further ado, if you could all come up, I'll hand it over to my colleague Nicole Goldin. Great, well thank you very much, Dan, and thank you, Kath, and thanks to my esteemed colleagues for joining me. It's, as Dan said, it must be an important subject to get everyone out and not only on Thanksgiving week but the very, the first in 70,000 years Thanksgiving, so I know everybody is very, very deep in their preparations for the 70,000th year anniversary first-ever Thanksgiving. So on that note, and I'm really excited to be here as a chance to kind of take off for the most part, although we will bring it up, my youth focus hat and have a chance to reflect back on some of my broader days with Under Secretary Otero and then further from afar, less visibility on the QDDR from my time at USAID, but really again just please have this chance to engage with you all and engage with my colleagues. You know, just to sort of end on Kath's last point about consultation, you know, colleagues of ours have said, associate colleagues of ours here at CSI and others have posited that it is a delicate balance to be both consultative and reflective of what's needed internally, but arguably the last QDDR, something we might hear more about, was not as engaging of the external community as it could have been and so we see today really as the start of a conversation and hopefully a constructive one to help put some thoughts on the table for our friends and colleagues in the administration to take forward as they really hopefully will get this work underway in earnest. So with that I'm going to ask each of my colleagues here to say a few thoughts and then I'll follow up with a few questions and then we'll really look forward to hearing from you all as well. I'm going to ask Ambassador Michael to see us off with some of his thoughts from his perspective, particularly in his role as counselor at USAID, but really speaking broadly as well. Take it away. Thanks very much, Nicole, and what a pleasure it is to be here. I want to commend CSIS for taking this initiative to stimulate thinking about the future of QDDR because among other reasons this whole idea of smart power, in my experience started with the US CSIS commission on smart power and I remember being at the launch of that in 2007 with Richard Armitage and Joe Nye and so this is really continuity for CSIS. Secretary Clinton announced the QDDR in July 2009 and often she said that the most important initial was the Q. This was the first one but it was not intended to be a one-time proposition. The effort really got underway in the fall with issue identification and some committed staff for the secretariat and from then we were off and running and running every day. We had the early insights from the Department of Defense. We had a senior team of managers come over and talk to us about their experience with the QDDR and I recall in particular their advice was don't try to do too much in this initial review but because it was the first review it was hard to adhere to that advice and we wound up with five working groups each of which had to look at the easy questions like building a global architecture of cooperation, supporting a whole of government, investing in the building blocks of stronger societies, responding to crises and conflict and building platforms for success. Easy stuff. After they studied in the five working groups through the end of the year then they pulled out what are the things we want to make recommendations about from the work of those five groups and that means 12 task forces were set up to work on the specific recommendations. Now in addition to just the magnitude of it I wanted to provide a couple of thoughts too about background that made it a difficult environment to do this first QDDR. First of all when all this started you say it had no administrator and didn't have one until early in 2010 and like the agency itself with no administrator the major operational parts of AIDs, all the bureaus were being led by career officers acting in an acting capacity and they would have working group counterparts who were assistant secretaries and undersecretaries and they were office directors in some cases. So that that was a complicating factor and the acting administrator Alonzo Fulgum was dealing with all of this and I want to acknowledge the great job Alonzo did in juggling lots of things during during his 10 years acting administrator. There was also at the same time that QDDR was cranking up a simultaneous interagency process of the NSC to develop recommendations to the president for a global development policy and they were looking at things like would you guess interagency architecture. So there are the same people who were doing the work on QDDR were also doing the work on the presidential study directive and that that was exhausting. Then finally there were some internal management issues in USAID that we had discussed with the administrator designate when he was getting ready to take office and he thought some of these needed early attention in 2010 and the question was how do you do that in a way that wouldn't be disruptive of QDDR but wouldn't say well you wait on all your internal reforms in AID until we finish the QDDR next year. So all of these things complicated it and in the end I think then with the recommendations that it made diplomacy for the 21st century, transforming development to deliver results, preventing and responding to crisis, working smarter with personnel procurement and planning. It came up with some useful ideas but I think we did try to do more than we had the time to accomplish and it was labor intensive, it was exhausting and there were some criticisms afterward one of which published by CSIS that said some of these conclusions were too generalized and not sufficient and was specific in what are you trying to do? What is the result of this observation? I think that there were some worthwhile objectives. QDDR focused attention on how state and AID engage with each other with the interagency community and with the international community in the conduct of foreign relations. And there were some specific helpful steps to improve efficiency and effectiveness. For example, the mandate of the undersecretary for now civilian security, democracy and human rights. Much more holistic and coherent and that helps AID, it helps state in looking at these issues in a congruent way to support secure and just societies with whom we can deal around the world. One issue on which there was broad agreement was they need to reduce the reporting burden on the field. That was a state concern. It was a USAID concern. We have costly operations around the world and if the people in those facilities are sitting at their desk writing reports to Washington rather than out and engaging with the people in the country, it's not a good use of having them there. So I think there's been some progress on that front in both agencies. Another example is the creation of a joint management committee to help sort out some of the issues on administrative services. So instead of yes you will know I won't, it was more how do we make this work in a collaborative way. I think that provided good forum for discussing how to streamline services, improve user satisfaction and reduce costs. Now I must say that in trying to dig all of this out because I left before it was final and so I looked on QDDR implementation and you don't find a lot. I could find nothing in the state website that was comparable by contrast with the report card that was put out by the administrator of aid in his update on the USAID internal reforms. So he had things like improved decision making in programs and budgets and one of the indicators was number of completed high quality evaluations and his report card says well we did 51 in Africa, we did 31 in Asia, we did 25. You can tell what was done to implement those reforms. You can't find that on the state website. You had a speech by Pat Kennedy, you know, different things that you can look to and you can find some of the implementation. There were I think eight cables of guidance issued by the Secretary of State, but they're internal documents. So I think one of the lessons maybe is having a more systematic implementation follow up in a transparent way. I think one of the best results of QDDR was that it brought people from state and they'd together to think through some of the shared interest in the obstacles and you know we used to be in the same building. I used to sit on the one corner with running deputy in the State Department's Inter-American Bureau and I was back and forth talking to my counterpart over in AID around the corner and then I sat in that office as the Assistant Administrator for Latin America and we were together all the time and we lost that simply because of physical separation. So I think QDDR reminded us that we have a lot of shared interests in what we can contribute to the interests of the United States. A lingering problem I think is how we can make this whole of government concept better advance U.S. foreign policy objectives. Whole of government can't mean everybody does the same thing. How can interagency collaboration and division of labor improve effectiveness? And I'd like to see the QDDR focus on this issue in some concrete ways. How can state be most effective as a convening authority to foster coherence and coordination of interagency issues and support the coordinating role of the Chief of Mission in the field. Now that's not just state and aid. That's broader. As a state has in the past exercised a convening authority and people will come and pay attention. Where is the principal U.S. where there is a principal interest to support locally owned development? Should there be parallel programs in house run by state run by aid? Is there a better way to do that and might reduce fragmentation? How can state officers complement and reinforce U.S. aid's policy dialogue with the host country counterparts on the political and economic reforms that are basic for development? And how can public diplomacy, for example, be engaged in that process? Development diplomacy is really a multi-tiered proposition. It takes place at several levels and has several instruments. And you have to look at political commitment and you have to look at institutional capacity and you have to look at popular demand. And there's plenty of roles, I think, for state and aid to do that better. I looked at the public affairs guidance that describes the development diplomacy cable that went out. And it's, again, it's too general to tell how this is going to work in practice and how it will support the chief admissions effort to have a coordinated message to the local counterparts in the public sector and the private sector. So a review on the state guidance of development diplomacy just might be a good, fertile area for seeking greater clarity. Well, there's a lot of these issues and I won't take up any more time just to say that there were the recommendations by Diana Obam and Connie Millett that were published by CSIS and I admire both of those experts and I wanted to mention a couple of the points they made. One was, how can a legislative mandate for QDDR establish a framework for reviews that will contribute to integrating diplomacy and development to support U.S. foreign policy in a way that will promote collaboration and mutual respect between the participants from the two agencies. So it's not seen as a tug of war between who gets what office. And how can the next QDDR lead to efficient implementation strategy and scorecard so that the process will influence behavior within and allow evaluation of the results. And then how can other instruments be integrated into the process. They mentioned security assistance, but I think casting a net, looking at all the instruments of foreign policy and how state and aid can better implement those various instruments would be good. Well, I suggested a more focused agenda for 2014 and they recommended that too. And I think maybe I'll stop there, except for the longer term. I think it might be interesting to look at the broader range of issues of civilian power and military power and how they interact. But that's not for 2014. I think maybe that's a 2018 agenda. So thanks very much. Thank you very much, Ambassador Michael. Just a couple of quick follow-ups. You raised obviously many, many really interesting and important points. But before we turn over to Matt, just a couple of follow-ups. You mentioned how when the first QDDR was initiated, the administrator was not in place and then since the USAID forward reform agenda got underway. So as now that Raj is still there and the USAID forward agenda, as you mentioned, is sort of going strong. How should USAID be starting to think about itself and where the QDDR process will reside sort of moving forward so that USAID forward can be sort of properly integrated and move forward in a strategic way? Well, a lot of USAID forward was picked up in QDDR and indeed there was a lot of consultation as these more immediate things had to keep moving because they were needed. And it was, I think the result was these were called early victories of QDDR. And they did have a connection with QDDR. I think though the fact that now this process has gone forward and you have an administrator in place that maybe you have a better opportunity for the kind of strategic approach. And just one more quick follow up. You talked about expanding the scope, if you will, and bringing a real whole of government approach to this. And so maybe I don't mean to misinterpret your words, so you'll correct me. But on that, I mean, the question I had is in terms of the development piece, if you will, and the array of non-USAID, but sort of foreign assistance institutions, to what extent did you engage with or did you hear from? What do you think MCC, OPIC for that matter, should be engaged in the next QDDR process? There were consultations with all of them. And as I mentioned before, we had going on simultaneously the presidential study directive review with a bigger table that the NSC where all of these agencies sat, and we talked to each other a lot. And sometimes it was hard to put a label on it. Are we talking about QDDR? Or are we talking about the presidential study directive? Because we were talking about the issues in the same, they were the same thing. I do think that part of what Secretary State had in mind in this was this role of state and aid as people who worked in conduct department affairs every day. And the thought that they would be able to engage in a more collaborative way with the other agencies that maybe, you know, does the Department of Agriculture do this as all of it does? No, it does this and other things as well. And maybe there should be more of an interaction that brings the other departments and agencies of government. I don't know, Matthew saw a lot of that. I'll defer to you on some of that, on some of that answer, too. Well, what a great segue. Thank you. Thank you, Nicole. Thank you, Dan, for including me. It's an honor to follow Jim Michael, who I consider to be the two Ds embodied here. Having been on both sides of the fence and we did work together in the QDDR process. I feel a little like that machine in the movie big. There's that machine at the fair in the back and it's kind of dusty and has that scary creature in it, Zelda or something. And you put a quarter in and then sort of strange things happen. And there's a little risk with me that if you put a quarter in on this subject, you're going to get some, some, some strange outputs here. So just be warned. So just as a word of background, I came into the QDDR as a sort of moonlighting job as I was senior advisor to the under secretary of state for economic affairs and was pulled in to help advise on the sort of economic dimensions of the QDDR and it worked the first 10 months or so. I also did not stay through the very end of the, the first year. And so I wasn't there when the report was rolled out. But I had had a career at Treasury and also had worked at the White House a couple of times. And so I even did an internship at USTR once upon a time. So I sort of brought and it served at an embassy under states of wing. So I brought a sort of an outside perspective based on having been in the whole of government operating with state. And and yet I think I try to approach this exercise as a citizen. And as a citizen, you know, I think that our foreign ministry and our development agency should be strategic, should be, should have their priority straight, should have their operations and budgets aligned to those priorities. And that was the focus that I tried to give to this exercise. And I would say against that backdrop, I just want to put myself on record of saying I think the QDDR was a good thing. And I think it is important to do it again, despite the, the, the enormous challenges of doing it successfully, not to mention the, the pity I feel for the people who actually have to do the work, the empathy, let's say. But just to say, you know, for the record, I think it's important. I mean, when I think about what it was all about, obviously it was about smart power. It was about the world's changing and the U.S. has to bring all the tools of its power to the table and align its policies and operations and budgets to, to make those tools effective. But I guess the way I would sum up what the QDDR was about starts with what Katz said, which is, and this is actually from Secretary Clinton's letter at the front or the forward to the report, that it's about building up civilian power. I would sort of put a comma and qualify that slightly with my own words, which was, which, which I would again carefully chosen words, that this is building up civilian power comma, led by, led by an empowered and more efficient State Department and in concert with and, but frankly, supported by a more effective USAID. And I choose those words carefully because I think that particularly when I think about state and I won't really comment on the USAID parts of this because I was really an outsider to those issues. But I think that really what Secretary Clinton was aiming for was a State Department that could really hold its own against other agencies, starting first of all with DOD. In the wake of Iraq in particular, I think there was a feeling that, that State had conceded a lot of ground in areas where it really should have had more of a voice and even the decision to go into Iraq let alone the aftermath. And that's I think what some of what Bob is going to talk about. But I think also vis-a-vis the rest of government and because over time there has been a challenge to States preeminence in foreign affairs, which we all I think recognize and as a former Treasury person, I try to, I mean I look at this not as, I mean I usually joke that as a Treasury person they put a little chip in the back of your brain the first week you're there and you're kind of taught to think Treasury is preeminent in the things it does at least. But when I look at this sort of objectively that the challenge is that 100 years ago the State Department was the only foreign affairs agency really out there in the field doing sort of everything in foreign affairs. Over time the domestic agencies because of the change in their own mandates really or the requirements of their mandates to even to deal with domestic issues because of the changes in the world they had to be involved in international space. So if you look at Treasury I mean if you boil down what Treasury is about it's about you know I guess defending the dollar and ensuring the stability of the US economy and you can't do those things without being in the international space. And I could say the same thing about energy or HHS or any other agency that you think of as a domestic agency has to be in the international space and State has to concede that in a sense that there are other agencies that have these interests. But at the same time you don't want and here I'm trying to be objective about Treasury you don't want an agency like Treasury or HHS or energy determining the overall thrust of our foreign policy or really coordinating our foreign affairs as a general matter. And so I think that the it is important for the State Department in this sense to be really you know the leader on some level in foreign affairs or at large. And I think that was clearly a role that it had over time lost an ability to play for variety of reasons and I think it was important to try to turn that around. So I'm not being cynical about this I think it was it was an important objective here to try to empower the State Department. But I also put the word efficient in there because I also think that the organizational reform part of this exercise was very important. In the end an agency has power you know at the table because or has voice because it actually gets stuff done and gets it done well and frankly State has you know had struggles with that over time. And I think that there were a lot of things broken there are a lot of things broken in the State Department that it was right to take a look at and try to find ways to fix and make better. And so I think it was quite important to look at the issues of structure of the department of you know hiring and training issues incentives and so forth for employees. And so I actually think those aspects of the QDDR were very important. But I also I mean I agree with Kat that you need a strategic planning exercise somewhere. The question to me is whether that can all be done as one exercise. I mean I think they have to be aligned at some point but I almost think they're two different worlds. There's a kind of a higher level sort of mostly driven by the senior political folks discussion about what the strategy is and then in terms of these operational issues. I think those are related of course but the somewhat different exercise and I'm going to say is my last point and I'll preview it now. I agree totally with Jim Michael and I think Kat said something similar don't try to do too much. And I think at some level you have to make a choice there within the QDDR. And I would personally choose the efficiency issues just because there are so many things that could be done better and it would make state I think it would improve state's voice. In terms of you know lessons learned so I've already given you my final lesson learned don't try to do too much and I'll make that a little more specific in a second. But I'd say the other things are just more operationally. I think you do need the you need the right first of all you need buy in and ownership from the top level at the State Department and AID. And then you need I think you need somebody in the kind of upper middle to lead this thing who both knows the building with a capital B which is a term of art that one learns when one joins the State Department understands how the State Department works and how it functions and the same thing with USAID. But it's somebody who has the confidence of the Secretary and is political in that sense and I think you it's hard to find somebody who can do both of those and maybe it isn't one person you may need a tag team of two people to drive this. I think that's that's very important. I guess the second lesson is you do need to listen to the building not be totally driven by all of that. And in the end you got to make some decisions but I think it is very important to consult and not try to not try to bring in sort of new ideas or reinvent the wheel when a lot of these things have been tried and I won't you know cite any well maybe I'll cite one example. I mean there were some ideas about forward leaning diplomacy or something which sounded a lot like things State already did and I think it's if you'd listened to the FSOs and heard what they really do out there in the field you would have learned that that actually a lot of things work pretty well. It's just that you need to change the incentives and of course budgets and resources and all of that. So I guess I would focus on on on on on what what works and doesn't work based on the experience of people who've been doing this for a long time. And then as I say my final you know leave behind is don't try to do too much and and I when I left to go to move over the White House in the summer of 2010 just before this came out I left behind a punch list with Ann Marie Slaughter who was running the exercise then of just some small things that I thought would make a difference and and those include I mean things that you might not think about all the time like get a more professional Hill lobbying staff the state I mean this I don't know the whole lineup of the Defense Department but my understanding is each service has people up on both sides of the Hill working the Hill professionally and and I mean you know there there are reasons that DOD does better in budget processes because of that the State Department you know doesn't have anybody who resides up on the Hill and the people who are all very you know professional people they're not they're not actually Hill you know Hill lobbyists frankly to use for want of a better term who have that experience and knowledge and are resourced and supported and so you know that's the sort of thing that that that there's a there's a straight line in my mind between that and some of these some of these bigger questions but but even a smaller one in that regard you know put a put one of those people on the plane whenever a congressional delegation goes overseas there ought to be a State Department Hill person on the plane with these these folks when they travel around the world you know in the category of little things the chief of mission that is the ambassador ought to be required to write an evaluation of every other agency representative at post to support this notion of one one mission overseas under the chief executive role of the of the ambassador which is one of the big sort of headlines of the QDDR I was treasury at the shea in Tokyo and the fact that my ambassador wrote back home to tell my treasury bosses that I was doing a good job or not doing a good job was a great incentive let's say and and I think to work together as a team out in the field so I think little things like this the civil service I spent a lot of time on the civil service because I was a civil servant worked a lot with FSOs so you don't want to mess with the foreign service which is a very special thing but civil servants are a second class citizen at the State Department and there are little things you could do without messing with the foreign service to make life better and they've I'm glad to see have done some of them for example giving civil servants an opportunity to spend a little time overseas in an embassy for six months or something I'm not sure there's money for this but but in principle there is that program now or to rotate to other bureaus because a lot of the civil servants are in the functional bureaus which are the second class bureaus speaking as an econ functional person to the regional bureaus but give these guys a chance to rotate into the regional bureaus and do the sort of the higher level work that State recognizes so I think there are a bunch of little things like that and I would just finally say that I think particularly for the second QDDR within an administration like the one that's coming up I think it's different from the first one the first one I think you have more need and an understandable desire to sort of frame the broader issues and the broader strategy I think for the second one you could be much more focused and try to look at look at some of these smaller issues and how to make the place run better so that's my perspective Thanks Mike just a couple quick follow ups and then we're going to hear from last but not least Bob sort of picking up a little bit on your last point from the get go from the how would you advise sort of going into the new QDDR to put a real focus on implementation from the start how do you build that in so that you know in four years from now the conversation isn't well do we know do we even know where we stand on implementation how do we think about implementation going forward well I mean first of all you have to have the secretary and top leadership committed to implementation and I think Secretary Clinton certainly said this was very important and this was a as Jim said you know this was something that was going to be repeated and was going to be a living document secondly I think you need to have an office that still stood up to keep track of how things are going but ultimately it's going to be up to the individual bureaus and embassies and all the different parts of the system to follow through on the specific specific initiatives and then and then have the you know the central QDDR central by the way we used to call it QDDIDI as to distinguish it from the QDDR QDDI central to sort of drive the implementation and make sure people are staying on track on content we've been focused primarily on sort of process for the moment I know Bob hopefully we'll have a chance to get into some content issues with you as well Matt obviously have a particular background on the economic side and there was some repositioning if you will of E as a result of the QDDR so I'm just wondering you know your sort of perspective looking back on how that's faring well we don't have enough time to go through all my views on that issue we'll have to do a separate event but I but it is a hugely interesting and important issue to me I think that let's rewind the tape a little bit when Secretary Clinton was nominated and came in to the I was in the transition team at State and she came in to to visit us as we were doing the transitional work in the fall of 2008 we each had a chance to sit with her to talk about the issues we had been working on and of course I had been working on the E the economics function and before she even before we even sat down she said I want state to do a better job at economics we're not good enough at this and we need to do a better job we have a thousand officers in the field econ officers not all working on econ issues but by the way there are a thousand econ cone officers at post and they're not you know nearly well enough used and so all of that ultimately translated into the two big things well three big things I guess two and a half one one was the restructuring the creation under E there used to be just one assistant secretary the EB assistant secretary who basically did everything they split that now and have you know an economics general sort of economics and growth assistant secretary one doing energy and one doing climate change and environmental and oceans and science issues and I think that was a very important innovation to bring all most of the economic related functions I frankly would have put pulled the development nexus liaison function into there which was there once upon a time into E that's my own personal quirky view so that structural change was very important and I think has made a big difference to the state's performance and the other big thing was the economic statecraft initiative which secretary Clinton launched to help use diplomacy to help commercial diplomacy to help U.S. export stuff and that part I think is working better I personally think the flip side of the coin not just using diplomacy to improve economic outcomes but using economics more strategically to inform our foreign policy that side is harder and I don't think there's been as much progress on that front but again as I told you if you start me up on that subject I could say a lot more the chief economist was the half I'm a little with no disrespect to anybody involved in that decision or execution I'm less convinced that state needs a chief economist per se I mean I think you need somebody to bring all these strands together and if that's what the person's doing I think it's great I don't think you need to replicate the economic analysis of the Fed or the Treasury or let alone investment banks or anything else but if it's a sort of coordination function for economic stuff at state I think that's useful well as we said this is the start of a conversation so hopefully we'll have a chance to further engage so with that Bob you have a almost an informed observer perspective excuse me having been around the QDR when you were over at DoD and then as you said having been playing in the area so to speak of one of the main content areas that being conflict and fridal states of the QDR so we'll love your thoughts on this and then we'll have a couple questions and then hear from our group thanks very much yeah a lot of the work that our program does focuses on how the United States engages in some of the more difficult environments in difficult situations so fragile states places emerging from conflict or at risk of conflict various kinds of crises a year ago we were wrapping up some work on how the United States responds to mainly defined internal crises major protests and demonstrations coups, minor conflicts and major conflicts including some that involved some sort of regional actors and non-state terrorist groups getting involved as well and one of the things that we concluded from that was aside from the fact that the United States gets involved in a whole lot of crises every year an average of every few months there's a new major civilian engagement with some foreign internal crises was that the United States really needed what I call a civilian posture review really the major question of does the United States have the right civilians with the right tools in the right places with the right kind of support given U.S. strategic interests given U.S. values and given demands for civilian power worldwide and that was something that I thought would have been a really useful broad exercise to do to feed in to the QDDR the question of what role should civilian power play overall in the United States and in U.S. interests and values that and I agree with Matthew that the QDDR shouldn't necessarily try to do too much that perhaps a separate process reviewing civilian power would be something useful but what are the civilian capabilities that are most needed to promote U.S. interests and values in the world do we have the right personnel with those capabilities what's the right balance of contractors to personnel what's the do civilians have the support and the flexibility and the incentives that they need out in the field to do their jobs and is the current system for recruiting, training, educating, supporting, paying civilians adequate and now those are questions that are I think a lot broader than the mandate of the QDDR which mainly focuses on institutions and capabilities for diplomacy and development you know it's obviously it's a state and aid they're not going to do a Treasury, commerce, justice department review but clearly given the way the world works given the challenges that we're facing right now as you said earlier it's important to recognize how diplomatic personnel and development personnel interact with Treasury, interact with commerce are we really using those capabilities for development purposes Dan's program and others here at CSIS look a lot at the role of the private sector in development for example and you know you're going to want commerce people and Treasury people and OPIC people and so on involved in that so that's I think an important set of issues that maybe the QDDR itself isn't going to deal with but certainly the broader strategic questions of why do we do what we do at the State Department and USAID is going to be important to engage and then comes the question of do we or do our institutions have the right people with the right skills in the right places I think this is particularly important because a lot of the challenges that were not as good at dealing with in the world are in fragile states conflict areas and so on the development world has recognized that the development you know we do a pretty good job in a lot of places but in fragile and conflict areas were a lot less effective in a lot of ways for obvious reasons but I think it's an important set of questions to deal with through the QDDR the nature of power and authority have been changing there are a lot more non-state actors involved the laundry list of the new emerging threats and emerging issues that we've all heard about the power of social media and mobile phone technology and empowering individuals and groups to be able to operate without central control it's sort of an almost in my world at least a cliche and a boring list of things to be concerned about but the truth is we haven't really wrapped our heads around how do you deal with an al-Qaeda that is not centrally commanded that it's really now just a movement of potentially small cells learning stuff over the internet and then acting from there how do you deal with a situation in Northern Africa the Middle East, even Afghanistan where the conflict actors seem to be insurgents but now they seem to be terrorists but now they seem to be extremists but now they seem to be friends with people who we thought were our friends and it's just changing all the time and we just can't keep up with that and so I think those are some issues it's not clear to me that we're really any country it's not just the United States that there are legitimately difficult issues it's been changing even more I think over the past four or five years and coming to grips with how you deal with that in a set of institutions that grew out of world structure with state to state relations were really the most important thing now the last Q2DR I think did a great job of identifying the importance of working with non-state partners not just recognizing that non-state actors are sometimes a threat as we've known for 10 years now but also acknowledging that private sector actors sub-national governance, civil society that they really are important actors on the world stage and finding a better way to interact with them is exceedingly important and one thing I would love for the next Q2DR to do is to really grapple with how we do that institutionally more at a deeper level I think as you've both pointed out people in the field I think do a pretty good job improvising where they need to improvise but I think that especially in crisis situations there's I think there remain questions about whether they have the support they need from headquarters especially when you compare it to military personnel if you get much more training their families get much more support and so on so I think I'll just end by saying that while I think there needs to be a recognition about the broader understanding of what role civilian power should play in the world and a long list of questions about whether they match what our real interests and challenges are in the world today on the other end of the spectrum is the small question of what are we going to stop doing that for a real review about what we are and are not going to do I think we could probably do a better job of identifying the things that we're not going to do one of the criticisms I think of the previous Q2DR was it was a rephrasing of all the stuff we wanted to do anyway I don't think it's a fair criticism but it's a criticism that's stuck for a number of reasons and to unstick it I think it's important to do a better job of clarifying that great thank you one quick follow up before we turn to you all so get your questions ready one of the things that's come up is with the three of you is the idea of the balance within the Q2DR between the bigger strategic questions and some of the issues about effectiveness and I'm wondering as a Q exercise as a four year exercise how does that play out in conflict and fragile states where things are moving quickly how do you bring that in while sort of recognizing again that balance that this is a four year exercise and how do you think that that should affect this balance that is trying to be stricken you know there are particularly the Office of Transition Initiatives and the new Bureau for Conflict and Stabilization Operations you know CSO fairly new organization certainly a new position within within the State Department that was stood up as a result of the last Q2DR both of those I know a lot of the people who work for them they're very good they go out in the field they're in impossible circumstances where there's no really good information and they manage to find most of the time the right people to talk to to figure out what the needs are and they manage to navigate the bureaucracies to figure out how to get it and I think both of them are pretty good at it both sets of offices tend to I think feel like they're not always they don't have a particularly prominent role or they're often trumped by the regional bureaus and maybe don't get the respect they need or the support they need but so I think institutionally understanding what role they actually they do play, what role they should be playing and recognizing how what their contributions are to broader objectives is something that I think isn't broadly appreciated certainly OTI has always criticized well you guys are just there for two years really having an strategic impact and CSO like we don't know actually we actually don't know what you guys do and helping helping them to either define themselves and make that clear as part of the QDR and how they relate to the rest of them or acknowledging the role that they actually do play and sort of making that a bit more explicit I think would be extremely useful it's really interesting I think one of the other pieces of I'm calling it on the content side that was codified if you will in the QDDR was the prioritization of gender integration empowering women and girls and this is where I'll put my youth hat back on for a minute but think broadly whereas one question I have is to what extent and this is not necessarily this is a question for everyone out there to what extent and how can other kind of demographic call them or cross cutting major trends be addressed in the next QDDR if there are going to be the kind of policy side as well as the process or whether that's the fact that half the world's population is under the age of 30 and 85% of them live in the developing world or look at urbanization again another kind of massive shift in the landscape within which we are implementing our development and diplomacy so I kind of put that out there as a as a thought but that we have time for a few questions from the group so why don't we take two to three at a time or we'll take two at a time just since we are a little bit short let's hit the gentleman and the woman in front yep there's a mic coming sir Mr. Lam, would you say civilian power can you let us know who you are my name is Frank Lennox I'm from the International Center and I work on the State Department International Visitor Leadership Program when you say civilian power do you mean not military or not State Department not military okay that's important secondly this is also very quick QDDR what does that stand for does anybody know QDDR diplomacy and development here's my real question if I may at the International Visitor Program we see many topics entrepreneurship women and girls women in science lots of them my question is does the trend in those topics have anything to do with the QDDR I'm at Seaworth, I'm with the Naval Postgraduate School after 9-11 the Defense Department got rid of its phone book which was always the best organization chart we had and if you're trying to get something done you need to know who to call so my question is does State have something equivalent to what we used to have at Defense which was the yellow pages and is it kept up to date so that as new people come in you know who to call just to decide here to let you know how crazy things are at Defense I started the energy program at Defense and I wanted to create something called energyyellowpages.gov and people could only use it if they put information in you couldn't just impose it on them and the fellow from the Air Force said why would I want that I already have my strategy so I think it's very important to know who to call State has an organizational directory on the web they've stopped doing thousands of people by name alphabetical order but they do have an organizational directory which works pretty well and it is kept pretty much up to date well yes and you can tell for example if the QDDR office head is a vacancy or if there's somebody an incumbent there and then there's their phone number AID has an organizational directory which requires you to know the name of somebody well I mean a staff directory that you have to know the name and they have an organizational chart and between the two sometimes you can figure out it's a little more harder to navigate a little more difficult to navigate and the international visitors is not necessarily a QDDR thing but QDDR maybe establishes ways of doing business that will influence how the different parts of the state and aid want to use international visitors as one of the instruments in trying to achieve the objectives they're trying to achieve and when I said before something about in my earlier remarks about is it just development and diplomacy and what about the other instruments of foreign policy I have my experience has been that international visitors can be a great instrument for advancing something else that you're trying to accomplish through diplomacy and development activities the added benefit of having people visit the other country having people from the other country visit engage counterparts in the same profession those kinds of things can add a lot to the effectiveness of your foreign policy initiatives you know I speak with experience you're doing good stuff Stephanie, the acting director of Homeland Security and Counterterrorism program here but I grew up professionally both at the pentagon which we call the building and the hill happy news a little bit for Matt which is there are State Department liaison offices both in the Rayburn House office building and the Russell building in the senate but they're staffed by foreign service consular affairs officers so for my use of them it was oh my god my passport needs to be renewed or what does this travel advisory mean which is not exactly what you're getting at but I would think if anybody's listening to this broadcast in state might actually take on board and they could be used much more way the military services use them as actively liaison offices the question I have for the panel goes to a common critique of the QDR which is that it is instead of looking out 20 years or determining first what your priority areas and priority missions are is that they talk about resources first and then what missions can you fit under those resources I noted the QDDR talked a lot about organizational management and structure and then about priority areas I'm hoping that the QDDR 2.0 won't be open to that same critique of what are your resources what is your organizational management and what can it do versus what are your priority areas and how are you going to staff and fund those priority areas can you offer some comments on the cart and the horse in the situation thanks to the international research service I spent the past 10-12 years looking at and helping congress work through interagency battles between state, treasury and commerce on international economic issues and so my question is given states limited to some extent non-existent statutory authority on international economic foreign policy how far can this discussion on economic statecraft go I think it is a self evident argument we need to have a more economically oriented foreign policy but how do you create the incentives within the State Department given the fact that they have very little leadership authority on any of these policy issues can I start with that one while it's fresh the Marshall Plan who did the Marshall Plan the State Department what happened that was a brilliant combination of strategy execution resources that's what I think state should be and there's no statutory authority for that as far as I'm aware now the world was different I'm not saying we can do exactly that again but the ability for state to play a role in strategic thinking about economics and about strategic execution of foreign economic policy I think there's an unlimited possibility for state to do better in that regard and I think that too often state just ends up shadowing other agencies so a lot of times on these issues it just sort of shows up in interagency meetings has a state like perspective state ought to be driving a lot of these conversations and I thought a lot about again as a former treasury guy trying to think as a citizen about what it has to offer that treasury doesn't have to offer and I came down to one word which was reach I was one of seven attaches in the world and when I went to I could go to the finance ministry and the central bank and maybe meet with American bankers beyond that I had no reach other than my friends and hanging out in the bars and Roppongi to interact with that society where state is in every country in the world and it can reach across both government and all of society and there's something in that that's the value proposition for state state ought to be able to somehow bottle that and be able to say well we have an insight into economic policy in China this week because they've just announced these big reforms treasury can't figure out they know what the finance ministry and the central bank's view is of that plentum stuff but state could go all over China and get valuable insight into what's going on on the ground and how this is going to translate into economic change and so I think there's a lot and then it's somehow between by the way across the ocean somehow all this gets lost by the time it gets to the deputies meetings in Washington it's not nothing to do with the individuals there but there somehow state isn't able to bottle this and bring it back and make it a part of the strategic conversation about economics in my experience with of course many exceptions based on individuals on issues and so forth so I think there's a huge huge opportunity and I would start with resources and then we have time for one more question last question Michael Levin with CSIS I watched as an outsider the QDDR and the presidential study directive and as an outsider it had my head spinning was it helpful to have them or was it a total pain in the ass was it a conflict did they add to each other did they subtract from each other did it end up with a single better set of results or did it display how terrible we are about across government working together I would say that it was more difficult, more complicated we were running like crazy because the same people were working on both and at the same time there was something exciting about it and it was sort of addictive it really made you think and I think that for that first time out with QDDR maybe we got a little better result because of that interaction I think for a second QDDR not having one of those going on simultaneously would be a blessing great we got one more last hand David said formally Department of State and Department of Defense a couple comment questions the first is I think Kath Hicks later finger on it that the effectiveness of the QDDR comes about because there is already an embedded policy or embedded culture strategic planning at the Department of Defense there is no such embedded strategic planning culture in the Department of State and so for the QDDR is that an apt topic to actually look at that issue not all of my former State Department colleagues would agree with me but I think that's one of the things that lies behind the situation that that you Matt pointed out about the lack of the State Department's ability to play that role that you have because they don't have that strategic planning that lies behind what they do so could that be something for the QDDR the second question and this also refers back to something that that Kath did a couple weeks ago which was a panel on is there any possibility of a bipartisan approach to national security strategy is that something that's beyond the reach of the QDDR my recollection Kath you can correct me if I'm wrong that the panel didn't really come up with a clear way forward but agreed that it was an important thing so is that something that's beyond the reach of the QDDR or is it something you would like and if it isn't is there another way to look at that issue welcome back I've been asked to guess the panel well certainly defer to others points of view the issue David was referring to was a panel we held on the lack of foreign policy consensus and I mentioned that briefly in my remarks as well that what I think the QDDR can do is not resolve that which has many fathers one of which is the dysfunctional political situation in the United States which is well beyond the State Department's grasp to handle but I do think what it can do is try to make as convincing a case as possible for the administration in terms of where the United States should be in its foreign policy what the U.S. role in the world is is to have a ground and center that debate a bit better because I think right now it's pretty freewheeling because there isn't a strong articulation frankly there just isn't I know from the defense side we would always hear from the military side in particular this concern that let's just take Asia where Department of Defense has done a huge amount of work in Asia's strategy as has other parts of the government including the State Department the strategy that was commonly distributed even if classified doesn't have to be public the lack of that created each agency having to go out on its own and infer the strategy based on whatever source documents they chose to use always of course the President's own speeches but sometimes going beyond that and trying to infer what the strategy is you don't want to be in that situation and a strategic planning culture is needed if an organization has the task of creating that strategy it was an explicit goal of the first QDDR to create that strategic planning culture there is at least one chapter of the QDDR devoted to that I leave to others their assessment as to how much has changed in the last several years I haven't been inside the State Department but my impression is as others have said that implementation was not the strong suit of the QDDR and a second go around would certainly help strengthen those muscles by drawing people out again to have to exercise them I mean I think strategic planning is important so I didn't want to imply it isn't I think State needs to do a better job of that I just am not sure that you can marry up that with all these other questions about the organization and so and I didn't mean to be flippant about starting with resources and priorities I'm just trying to think about realistically I think you have to have a sense you have to have a strategic plan I think you have to have a set of priorities at a high level I think State is going to I mean every agency in the reality of the world we're dealing with has got to look at resources and say what can we actually do and what can we not do or what shouldn't we be doing and part of that is not replicating what other agencies are doing in a lot of cases and then I guess I just at the end of the day military people know this as well when you need the plan but then in the battlefield things very quickly move in directions that you can't always stick to the plan and you've got to be flexible enough to move to adjust to current circumstances so if you look at what's going on in East Asia which is what I worry about right now I think we're not to shut fire in the theater but I mean we've got a major challenge right now in East Asia that is getting worse by the day between China and Japan and I think you know we need a plan we needed a plan to look at that but I also think we need to be operationally nimble enough to respond to what's going on there great thanks Matt we're going to let that be the last word please join me in thanking Dan and Kat Bob, Matt, James and all of you as we said this is the start of the conversation here on QDDR so we'll look forward to seeing you all again thank you