Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume I, Foundations of Foreign Policy

124. Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs (Crocker) to Secretary of State Shultz¹

Washington, November 5, 1982

SUBJECT

• Foreign Policy Planning

At the end of the most useful discussion of this subject on October 30,² you invited us to send along to you any further thoughts we had. The thoughts below are offered in that spirit. While they inevitably reflect an AF perspective, they are hopefully relevant to others and might help us bridge some important gaps between bureaus.

Foreign Policy Planning Process and Structure

Foreign policy planning staffs are subject to well-known dilemmas and pitfalls. Typically, they become one of three things: (a) irrelevant, (b) speechwriters, (c) operators in the sense of direct competition with the operating bureaus and offices. I know of no abstract structural solution to this problem. Much depends on the quality of people and the chemistry between them.

I do know, however, that the session on October 30 was the most stimulating and worthwhile exchange among Department principals that I have witnessed in some two years in this job. From my perspective, there is a severe structural problem between the sixth- and seventh-floor levels of this building, one that goes back many years and is accounted for in part by the high level of decentralization and dispersion of authority in the building. Partly, it is a simple question of access to very busy senior people, including you. But it is also partly the absence of any forum for trial-ballooning, exchanging ideas, and arguing free of bureaucratic turf constraints. There is a lot of intellectual horsepower at your disposal if there is a way to organize it. I suggest you give consideration to further brainstorming sessions, but I believe that a longer block of intensive time away from telephone, in-boxes, and the building itself would be the way to really address the issues.

The Domestic Base for Foreign Policy

There was apparent consensus on October 30 that we could do a lot better in addressing and strengthening our domestic base. At times we have taken an unnecessary bath, both in terms of being accused of things that are not true and in terms of getting no credit for viable and effective policies. Speaking for AF, my clients overseas in Africa and Europe understand and appreciate what we are doing far better than “US public opinion.” I see three remedies: (a) the White House itself must fight more visibly on behalf of its foreign policy; (b) we are not bad at stating what we are against, but there has been a paucity of articulate advocacy on behalf of what we are for, especially as it pertains to the Third World; (c) we have paid a price over the past two years for creating the impression that there is no access to senior people by black Americans with concerns about foreign policy.

The Allies

This bureau conducts a very active dialogue through periodic consultations and ad hoc exchanges with our most important allies in Africa: Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Portugal, Japan, and Belgium. I sometimes feel that we do so in a vacuum because other parts of this building and of Washington have no appreciation for the importance of Africa in the eyes of our allies. This shows up continuously when briefing papers are tasked for high-level discussions between us and our allies. When US principals fail to raise African issues, or are inadequately briefed when allies raise them, it undercuts the extensive groundwork laid in the working levels. On the whole, we have relatively good coordination and cooperation with most of our allies on African issues, but we could do a lot better if the message was reinforced from the top. Since we are always short of resources for African policy, this is one good way to get more out of our alliance relationships.

North-South Economic Issues

In the absence of an overall policy framework in the economic field for relations with the Third World—apart from the expectations raised at Cancun—we have nonetheless been forced by events to develop a number of initiatives and responses for dealing with the African economic crisis. We have made some progress in the inter-agency and allied contexts in addressing the fundamentally interrelated issues of IMF conditionality,³ debt relief, and development assistance; but we have a long way to go. Moreover, we are viewed as primarily talking the language of austerity. We are viewed by Africans as having identified the need for policy reform and having the sticks available to insist upon it, but we are also viewed as having very little in the way of carrots. Obviously, carrots can cost money, but there are certainly ideas we should be exploring in the area of trade policy, development assistance, and support for the private sector. AF would be pleased to present our perspective in a future brainstorming session, after which we might be able to staff out some serious ideas with other relevant offices. But I would despair of trying to do this in the formal, bureaucratic channel, given the sensitivities and turf issues that exist.

U.S. Foreign Policy and the Private Sector

Logically, the private sector should be one of the strongest supporters of our foreign policy, but the truth is that the private sector is probably as much confused and mystified as it is supportive. On the one hand, we have made clear in no uncertain terms that private enterprise is the key to economic recovery and economic development in the Third World. This message is enshrined as a matter of declaratory policy in our bilateral aid programs and in our support for IMF and IBRD policies which go in the same general direction. Here in AF, we have pushed our overseas posts and our colleagues in the economic agencies to push aggressively the importance of getting our private sector involved and of creating the necessary climate in Africa to attract it.

But our private sector emperor has no clothes. We have taken few steps to either add incentives or remove disincentives to greater U.S. private sector involvement overseas. As a result, our credibility on the private sector scene is weak, both with Third World countries and with our own private sector. Our failure to support increases for the EXIM Bank, our unwillingness to countenance the use of AID funds as a form of mixed credits, the lack of any new funding to support foreign assistance initiatives and the mortgaging of existing money in older projects all add up to a negative message. Both OPIC and AID’s new private enterprise bureau⁴ are spread far too thin to respond to more than one or two opportunities in each region. With the notable exception of some agri-business teams flowing out of the Cancun Summit, which have taken more than a year to organize and deploy, our bureaucratic machinery has done very little to promote positive linkages between U.S. investors and the Third World.

Then, there is the question of how politics and our policies impact on trade and investment and, therefore, on our firms. This is the pipeline issue writ large. We have chosen—or not been able to resist the temptation—to use our firms, our credits and our votes in the IFI’s as an expression of our broader policy towards such places as Libya, Angola, and Ethiopia. To take the Ethiopian case, Boeing—the largest industrial exporter in the U.S.—believes itself to be in danger of losing the entire African market to Airbus industry.⁵ Boeing and Lockheed both see their positions in Angola to be endangered by our cautious restrictions on their activity there.

To raise these questions is not to solve them. Rather, I wanted to point out the fact that many companies see little direct benefit to our foreign policy from such USG positions but considerable damage to their commercial interests. They see little understanding or concrete support for their activity abroad. They find this administration taking actions which disadvantage both trade and investment, at a time when even socialist governments overseas are providing liberal support to help their companies win the competition. Finally, our friends in the Third World, forced by economic crisis to become more pragmatic and to listen to our economic philosophy, are finding us no more able than our predecessors to support the role of the private sector in their countries in a concrete fashion.

A Final Note on Process

Realistically, these and other ideas you get are more numerous than you can take on without support and an operational planning process. My suggestion is that more brainstorming and free exchange should come first. If the time and venue could be arranged, it would be ideal to assemble the ingredients of a rich conceptual stew and let it cook over the course of a day or more. You could then select those few actions and concepts that are viable, and direct specific, follow-on planning efforts led by Ken Dam and other 7th floor principals. In some fields, you may wish to include individuals outside the bureaucracy in concert or parallel with our own senior people.

1. Source: Department of State, Executive Secretariat, S/S Files, The Executive Secretariat’s Special Caption Documents: Lot 92D630, Not for the System Documents November 1982. Confidential. Not for the System. Drafted by Crocker. Bremer initialed the memorandum at the top and wrote “11/6.”
2. Reference is to an October 30 morning meeting Shultz held in his office on foreign policy planning. In an October 29 memorandum to Dam, Eagleburger, Wolfowitz, Howe, Burt, Crocker, Bosworth, and Veliotes, Bremer conveyed Shultz’s invitation to the meeting, which would discuss the two papers prepared by the Policy Planning Staff in response to Meese’s September 16 request (see Document 119 and Tabs B and C thereto) and Eagleburger’s September 9 memorandum to Shultz (see Document 117). (Department of State, Executive Secretariat, S/P Files, Memoranda and Correspondence from the Director of the Policy Planning Staff to the Secretary and Other Seventh Floor Principals: Lot 89D149, S/P PW Chrons 10/21–31/82) Wolfowitz’s handwritten notes from the meeting are ibid. No minutes of the October 30 meeting have been found.
3. As a condition of receiving assistance from the IMF, member countries agree to undertake economic policy reforms intended to restore balance to their economies.
4. The AID Bureau for Private Enterprise, headed by Assistant Administrator Elise R.W. du Pont, consisted of four offices in 1982: Office of Policy and Project Review, Office of Investment, Office of Housing, and Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization.
5. In telegram 295445 to London and Paris, October 20, the Department reported that Boeing’s Washington representative had called several offices in the Department and stated “that Boeing believes Airbus may be undertaking to arrange a leasing agreement with EAL through a third party, and that the leased aircraft could later become a direct sale to EAL.” (Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, Electronic Telegrams, D820524–0486)