Obama is Engaging the World... What about Congress?

Ever since taking office in 2009, the Obama Administration has been engaged in an all-out offensive to redefine the way America does its business abroad. Specifically, Obama has elevated development and diplomacy as both essential pillars of our national security and economic answers to the world’s challenges and opportunities. That strategy became ever more apparent in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s latest essay in Foreign Affairs magazine.

What makes this approach so different from what we had before?

First, the sheer breadth of engagement this administration has taken with the rest of the world has been unprecedented, or at least was simply unheard of in the previous administration. From a speech in Cairo and a town hall event with students in Shanghai, to delving into the emerging mobile market in Africa and much more, America’s international rock stars have taken rather unconventional approaches to the act of diplomacy.

They’ve found ways, through technology, to communicate directly with the citizens of countries where high level diplomatic engagement has been difficult, and even in places where it’s been solid in the past.

Clinton says it best in her essay: “We are shifting away from traditional platforms and instead are building connections to foreign publics in regions once considered beyond the United States' reach," she writes. "It makes no sense to allocate the greatest amount of resources to parts of the world where the United States' ties are already strong and secure and to minimize efforts where engaging the public is critical to success.”

She’s not the only one advocating for unconventional tactics. USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, profiled over the weekend in the New York Times, has by all accounts “Begun to re-energize the agency in the last 10 months.” According to the newspaper, the heyday of USAID back during former US President John F. Kennedy’s administration took a serious hit between then and the Bush administration. But Shah has been on a worldwide tour ever since taking office to gin up support for the sort of entrepreneurial approach to development and foreign aid that is all the rage around the Beltway these days.

With an administration so focused on righting the wrongs of the past when it comes to alleviating global poverty, it’s time for Congress to act, too. Perhaps this administration can lend its outspoken voice to this important cause once more?

Take action today by asking President Obama to reignite debate over the Global Poverty Act, to devote the full resources of the federal government towards achieving the United Nations Millennium Development goal of reducing by half the number of people worldwide living on less than $1 a day.

Photo Credit: bthomso