State Over Defense in Obama NSS

Helle Dale / May 28, 2010

The roll out of the administration’s first National Security Strategy this week has been a classic exercise in strategic communication, Obama style – a highly coordinated, choreographed exercise involving the highest levels of government.  First, the President himself laid the groundwork at the West Point graduation last weekend. Then, Deputy National Security advisor John Brennan handled the counterterrorism part of the strategy at CSIS on Wednesday, promulgating some depressingly sophistical approaches to terrorism, jihadism and Islamism. And Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at the Brooking Institution, presenting a bewilderingly broad range of issues that are now part of national security, according to the administration’s strategy.  In the Obama administration, tightly controlled messaging is almost an obsession, and what a message this was.

From the get go, as far back as her confirmation hearings, Clinton has embraced the concept of “smart power” – a kind of Hegelian synthesis of the elements of hard and soft power.  Just like the government’s messaging involves the totality of all its major parts, according to the Obama administration’s National Communications Strategy, so in its National Security Strategy, everything is related to national security – “defense, diplomacy and development.” As Clinton  stated at Brookings, the three are not separate entities, either in substance or in process . . . but have to be viewed as part of an integrated whole,” which will demand the involvement of “the whole of the government.”  Clinton promised that these ideas would be further fleshed out in the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, which  is allegedly now in its “final lap” as well as the Presidential Study Directive on global engagement, also reportedly close to completion. (more…)