希拉里新经济外交政策内部解读

    穆阿迈尔•卡扎菲之死令利比亚成为全球焦点，所有人都在问这个深陷战乱的国家下一步路在何方。对于美国国务院（the State Department）而言，美国国务卿希拉里•克林顿提出的所谓“经济战略”的新外交政策将面临初步检验——新的外交政策进一步向决定世界格局的经济因素倾斜。10月14日，希拉里在纽约经济俱乐部（Economic Club of New York）的一次演讲中提出了这项战略。

    为了进一步了解这项计划，《财富》杂志（Fortune）采访了上周随同希拉里出访利比亚、阿富汗和巴基斯坦的美国国务院政策规划处主任杰克•苏利文。苏利文先在喀布尔接受了我们的电话采访，随后又在伊斯兰堡回复了我们的电子邮件。

    在美国帮助利比亚重建的过程中，这一战略将如何发挥作用？

    我们刚刚结束了北约（NATO）在利比亚的行动，期间我们不仅使用了传统的政治和军事手段，还使用了经济手段，实施制裁、冻结数百亿美元的资产并建立了临时的金融机制帮助反抗者提供给利比亚人民。正是这些手段的有效组合帮助利比亚实现了解放。现在，我们需要继续根据利比亚的具体情况提供量身打造的、类似的综合性帮助。我们需要帮助利比亚重建并实现经济增长，满足人们对于机会和尊严的渴求，当初正是这种渴求促使利比亚反抗者走上了街头。要在当今世界环境下做到行之有效，我们需要在做出军事和政治努力的同时使用经济手段。

    为何现在推出新策略？

    这个问题从一开始就是（国务卿希拉里）关注的焦点。过去一年中东、欧洲和世界其他地区发生的事件则直接促成了这项战略的提出。她在全球各地访问的过程中，亲身感受到了经济力量在衡量各国国力和影响力方面的核心地位。正如她在演讲中所说，我们看到新兴势力的影响力上升更多是源于经济增长，而非军事力量的增强。而且，我们看到很多国家将国内经济增长和国外经济影响力作为外交政策的核心原则。国务卿认为这一点随处可见，从中国在撒哈拉以南非洲地区的基础设施项目到土耳其在中东各地的投资项目上都有体现。

    同时，国务卿希拉里还将经济战略视为其政治财富的重要组成部分。不是因为这是新的理念，但从某种程度来看，这部分内容最近变得重要了。

    你能举个具体的例子吗？

    每次我们在亚洲访问时，美国的经济承诺都是国务卿所会见的领导人和各界人士最为关注的问题。同样受到关注的还有美国国内的经济状况。他们询问有关贸易协定、亚太经合组织（APEC）议程以及美国在帮助亚太地区建立和维护经济秩序中将扮演的角色。他们还询问美国国内的立法争议，比如负债上限等问题。根本问题是，他们想确认一点，即美国不只是长期发挥军事和外交影响——还将展现其经济影响力。

    国务卿在演讲中敦促，要求取得更多经济外交成果。你们打算怎么做？

    比如，国务卿希拉里将要求驻外大使馆搜集具体的非关税性壁垒——她将这些称作“国境线后的壁垒”——我们会选取三、四个壁垒，通过有组织的外交策略，为美国企业争取公平的竞争环境。以此实践这一理念。

    另一个明确的计划是国务卿希拉里计划召集全球各地的美国商会（American Chamber of commerce）负责人同我们的地区专家和国务院领导层共同讨论，如何像其其他国家一样，确保政府和美国商会的工作协调一致。

    此外，我们可以志同道合的国家展开形式多样、范围广泛的合作，针对世贸组织（WTO）现有协议尚未涵盖、全球竞争领域存在的挑战建立一系列规范——处理需要新规则和新机制来规范的国际活动。

    这是不是说世贸组织缺乏约束力，我们需要另辟蹊径？

    The death of Muammar Gaddafi has international attention fixed on Libya and the world asking what's next for the troubled country. For the State Department, it will be an early test of a new diplomacy that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has termed "economic statecraft" -- an approach that gives more weight to the economic factors shaping world events. Clinton laid out the strategy in a speech to the Economic Club of New York last Friday.

    To get a better understanding of the initiative, Fortune talked to Jake Sullivan, director of the State Department's policy planning office, who is travelling with Clinton this week through Libya, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Sullivan talked to us first by phone from Kabul, then over email from Islamabad.

    How will we see this approach at work as the U.S. helps Libya rebuild?

    We have just finished a NATO operation in Libya where we applied traditional political and military tools -- but also economic tools, imposing sanctions, freezing tens of billions of dollars of assets, and setting up a temporary financial mechanism to help the rebels provide for the Libyan people. It was this effective combination of tools that helped liberate Libya. Now we need to follow up with a similar coalition effort tailored to Libya's unique context. We need to help Libya rebuild and grow to satisfy the desire for opportunity and dignity that brought the people out into the streets in the first place. To be effective in today's world, we need to use economic tools alongside our military and political efforts.

    Why are you rolling this out now?

    This has been a focus of [Secretary Clinton's] from the beginning, but the events of the past year -- in the Middle East, in Europe, and elsewhere -- have really brought it home. In her travels, she has seen first-hand the centrality of economic power in how states measure and exercise influence around the world. As she said in her speech, we see emerging powers gaining influence less because of the strength of their armies than because of the growth of their economies. And we see countries making economic growth at home and economic influence abroad organizing principles of their foreign policy. She sees this everywhere -- from Chinese infrastructure projects in sub-Saharan Africa to Turkey's investments across the Middle East.

    Also, as Secretary Clinton looks to her legacy, she sees economic statecraft as an important piece of it. Not because it's new, but because it is in some ways newly important.

    Can you point to a specific example?

    Whenever we travel in Asia, America's economic engagement is top of mind for the leaders and people the Secretary meets. So too is the state of our economy at home. They ask about trade agreements, about the APEC agenda, about the role America will play in helping shape and sustain the economic rules of the road for the Asia-Pacific region. They also ask about our legislative debates, on issues like the debt ceiling. Ultimately, they want reassurance that the United States will not just be a resident military and diplomatic power -- but a resident economic power as well.

    The Secretary in her speech called for a more economically literate diplomatic corps. What are you doing to foster that?

    Just as one example: Secretary Clinton is putting a call out to embassies to identify specific, non-tariff barriers -- what she calls "barriers behind borders" -- and then we intend to target three or four as models for concerted diplomatic strategies to level the playing field for our companies -- a proof-of-concept kind of approach.

    Another concrete example is Secretary Clinton's plan to gather the heads of every American Chamber of commerce around the world to talk with our regional experts and the State Department's leadership about government can align our efforts with American Chambers of Commerce just as many other countries do.

    And then there are the wide variety of ways that we engage with like-minded countries to begin to build a set of norms around challenges to global competition that right now aren't covered under the WTO -- to address the types of activities that require new rules and new mechanisms.

    Is the idea here that the WTO has shown a lack of force, and we need to forge some work-arounds?