3D Security Initiative

Diplomacy plays a direct role in addressing the root causes of insecurity. Diplomatic initiatives build partnerships so people can work together to address issues of U.S. and global security. Polls show Americans are strong believers in the power of diplomacy, even with countries like Iran.

Many issues we face are bigger than any one nation: making the global economy work for us, stopping killer germs before they reach our shores; and taking steps to prevent global warming require diplomatic partnerships with other countries.

What is Diplomacy?
Diplomacy refers to communication or negotiation tactics that use political and legal channels to address conflicts. Official government negotiations are widely referred to as (Track I). Unofficial diplomacy, known as(Track II) diplomacy, refers to negotiations, dialogue or relationship-building by religious, business, or other civil society leaders. Track I and II work best on parallel tracks resulting in agreements that are legitimate, widely supported, and sustainable. Unofficial diplomacy, also widely referred to as conflict transformation or peacebuilding, involves ordinary people, working together on issues that matter to our daily lives.

Track I and Track II diplomatic efforts have successfully prevented violence between groups in many parts of the world. These multi-track diplomatic initiatives build lines of communication between communities and nations. Diplomacy addresses global security issues such as the promotion of fair trade, proliferation of weapons, the spread of diseases, and global warming through mutually agreed upon legal and social frameworks. Negotiation works and it is the only sustainable solution to complex problems that require mutual agreement so that groups don't return to arming themselves for future battles.

Diplomacy is an American Legacy
The U.S. has a proud history of bringing nations together for the common good. The U.S. has already solved many problems and prevented terrorist attacks by using diplomacy to build partnerships with others. The U.S. helped to create institutions like the U.N. and we can lead in reforming them. One of our most cherished values as Americans is the idea that everyone is equal under the law. When nations around the world share that view and agree on what the law is, we are all better off.

Diplomacy works in at least four ways:

• To protect ourselves: Attempted terrorist attacks on December 31, 2000 were prevented because Canada, Jordan, and other countries tracked down the perpetrators before they reached the U.S. Since 2001, our partner countries have arrested 3,000 suspected terrorists and their supporters.
• To stop potential threats from becoming real: International inspectors track nuclear weapons in countries like Iran and North Korea, where U.S. citizens are not welcome.
• To secure our economic future: We can't be isolated from the global economy, so we need to make sure that it produces good jobs and rises living standards for ourselves and others.
• To protect the global environment: In the 1980s, President Reagan and Congress recognized the need to join other countries in taking action to close the atmosphere's ozone hole. The treaty the U.S. and 180 other nations signed has helped reverse the hole's growth even faster than scientists predicted.
• To live out our most basic values: Families and communities sit down with each other every day to work out agreements on how people can live together despite their differences. It’s no different in the global community. Diplomacy lets us fulfill the shared human desire to live in a world where common decency and hope for the future prevail.
• To prevent future crises: Diplomats successfully prevent violence all the time. It is impossible to measure all the wars that have not started because hard-working diplomats helped people solve problems at the negotiation table rather than on the battlefield.

U.S. Security requires Diplomatic Cooperation
The U.S. can't be everywhere, doesn't catch every violation, and can't pay for every inspection. We need other nations to help do this hard, expensive work and to help communicate the benefits of playing by the rules and the consequences when rules are broken. This investment in prevention pays off; we've had some close calls, but so far no terrorist group has used nuclear weapons, no government has used one since 1945, and very few have even attempted chemical or biological attacks. We need to keep it that way.

Much like our own communities, the process of cooperating on "easy" issues builds trust and relationships that help when harder issues come along. As the world gets smaller, the best way to keep ourselves safe is to work with other countries to prevent or stop threats like terrorism, deadly weapons, illegal drugs, and unknown diseases before they cross our borders.

Diplomacy Saves Money
Cooperation works and the benefits gained outweigh the costs.
International cooperation provides cost-effective solutions for the global challenges we face. Like most things in life, we tend not to notice this cooperation when it is working well. But our world would change completely if this cooperation didn't exist, or if we, the world's strongest nation, stopped supporting it.

International cooperation through organizations such as UNICEF, the U.N. Children's Fund, has improved the lives of the world's children more in the past 40 years than the world had done in the previous 100. Our U.N. dues and support for other groups during the past 40 years have also helped cut worldwide illiteracy in half and raise average global life expectancy by 20 years. U.N. peacekeepers and post-conflict experts have helped end conflicts and rebuild governments in places like Sierra Leone and Liberia where no one else could or would.

When we choose to belong to a particular club or religious organization or live in a particular neighborhood, there are costs. As in our own lives, the benefits of cooperation far outweigh these costs.

The UN's annual budget [core plus agencies] is about $10 billion dollars -- just $1.70 for each person on Earth. By comparison, the state of Arkansas spends more than that in a year. Less than 25 percent of U.N. costs are paid by the U.S. -- a pretty good investment, considering how much we benefit from working with other countries on global issues that impact our security.

Diplomacy Stops the Spread of Deadly Weapons
During the past 40-plus years, the U.S. and other nations built a network of laws, international agreements, and treaties governing weapons ownership and how weapons must be stored, tested, and used. As a result, rule breaking is less likely and we are more likely to know about it.

There is a lot that can be done to prevent the spread of deadly weapons -- but almost none of it can be done by the United States alone. Fortunately, many countries share our concern about this problem. Working with other nations, we can strengthen the international agreements that limits weapons development and testing.

The U.S. can join diplomatic efforts to reduce the regional tensions that prompt countries to seek military dominance over their neighbors. We can share intelligence with our allies to find groups planning attacks. we can support the international agencies that work to relieve the conditions of poverty and indignity that terrorists exploit. We can increase work with Russia to lock down that country's stocks of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Global teamwork is the way to get results on this tough issue.

The international institutions that the U.S. and our global partners created together. The International Atomic Energy Agency and other bodies that watch for cheating have made discoveries that the U.S. never could have made alone.

Today we have a legal network of treaties and agreements controlling nuclear and chemical weapons: the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty, under which the vast majority of the world's nations agreed not to pursue nuclear weapons; the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which bans the U.S. and all other nations from testing weapons; the Chemical Weapons Convention, which outlawed chemical weapons and provided for the destruction of existing weapons; and many others. We also have international agencies that monitor for cheating on nuclear and chemical technologies (the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons). While improvements are still needed, the global community has come a long way to reach agreements in a relatively short amount of time.

Through these agreements, we've cut the number of countries believed to have chemical weapons in half and have reduced the number of nuclear weapons worldwide by half. U.S. military officials say that U.N. weapons inspectors have been responsible for destroying more chemical and biological weapons in Iraq than has the U.S. Army. It was inspectors working for the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency -- not U.S. intelligence -- who discovered signs of North Korea's hidden nuclear program in 1993.

Diplomacy Has a History of Success
Diplomatic partnerships between nations have actually reduced the number of nations pursuing nuclear, chemical, and bioweapons technology. During the early 1960s, President Kennedy predicted that we would be unable to prevent as many as 25 nations from gaining nuclear weapons by the 1970s. Because he and subsequent presidents from both parties reached out to other nations to try to prevent proliferation, today only eight countries have nuclear weapons. This network of law and diplomacy initiated by President Kennedy convinced many major countries to drop their own nuclear weapons programs, including Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Japan, South Africa, and South Korea.

Three countries -- Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine -- inherited nuclear weapons after the breakup of the Soviet Union. U.S. and international persuasion convinced them to give up their weapons and become non-nuclear states. Because of the Chemical Weapons Convention, 151 countries -- including China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, and the U.S. -- gave up all chemical weapons, and 2 million chemically armed weapons have been destroyed, never to be used or fall into the hands of terrorists. In 2001, a bipartisan commission estimated that we could address the full range of these threats by spending just 1 percent of our defense budget over the next 10 years.

Diplomacy Improves Our International Image
Recent polls tell us that much of the world now sees us as a bully who isn't willing to work with other countries unless they agree to do things our way. That isn't strength, and Americans of both parties know it. When U.S. actions are seen as arrogant or hypocritical, it limits our ability to play a constructive role in building a more peaceful, prosperous world, for us and for others. We need partnerships based on trust and respect to get the job done. Working together multiplies our strength, expands our options, and divides our costs and risks.

The U.S. has a profound effect on the citizens of other countries, because we have the world's largest economy, strongest military, and most-exported culture.

• The U.S. military budget is so large that in 2006, the U.S. will spend more on it than all other countries on Earth combined spend on their armed forces.
• Our impact goes far beyond the actions of our government. Pop culture is the U.S.’ second largest export, and almost everyone who sees TV anywhere in the world will at some time see U.S. programming. For better or worse, that is the world’s window into America and the perception is that Americans are wealthy, tolerant, and successful, but sometimes violent, materialistic and self-absorbed.
• The impact of our trade agreements sometimes threaten entire national industries -- like grain farmers in Mexico or cotton farmers in West Africa -- in countries and regions where farming is the only alternative to starvation. Sometimes we have a serious impact on other countries without realizing it, or without intending to affect them at all. Those effects, in turn, can make people who should be our partners hostile to us.

If the U.S. chooses to ignore or oppose peacemaking efforts, violence may break out. Which trade agreements the U.S. supports, and how we work to shape world markets, will have profound effects on workers and communities in other parts of the world. We need to look into the future to understand those effects, and how they might boomerang to affect us.

» click to read about Overview of 3D Security

» click to read about Development as a Security Strategy

» click to read about Defense as a Security Strategy

The 3D Security Initiative offers thanks to www.USintheWorld.org for insights into talking with the US public on global issues.