U.S. Announces Strategy to Prevent Conflicts, Promote Stability

The State Department on Friday released a strategy that will focus and prioritize America’s international diplomatic, defense, and development efforts to help prevent conflicts before violence takes hold, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.

The 10-year plan will improve Washington's efforts to stabilize ongoing conflicts by implementing best practices and lessons learned from decades of American engagement, and address global fragility in line with the Global Fragility Act of 2019, top officials announced Friday afternoon.

"America’s prosperity and security depend on peaceful, self-reliant, U.S. economic and security partners. By breaking the costly cycle of conflict and instability, the United States advances its own security," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement

The U.S., he noted, is "committed to sustaining a consultative, collaborative approach throughout Strategy implementation, monitoring, and evaluation."

Speaking to reporters at a joint telebriefing, Jim Richardson, director of the Office of Foreign Assistance at the State Department, said that the new strategy will "transform how the United States works to break the costly cycle of fragility and conflict that undermines U.S. national interest."

"The reality is that the United States has spent $30 billion over the past five years in just 15 of the most fragile nations in the world. And this new strategy will give us better tools and better approaches to be able to see more progress in the – that the countries want and that the American people expect."

Dr. Denise Natali, assistant secretary of State for conflict and stabilization operations, said the strategy is "not old wine in a new bottle."

Rather than externally driven nation-building, the United States will support locally driven solutions that align with U.S. national security interests rather than fragmented and broad-based efforts, the United States will target the political factors that drive fragility.

"And rather than diffuse and open-ended efforts, the United States will engage selectively, based on measurable results, host-country political will, respect for democracy and human rights and cost sharing," she  said.

The selection of priority countries and regions is "being carefully considered. It’s still underway."

"We are aiming to get this out within the next several weeks, but there’s still some final clearances," Natali said.

In the meantime she refrained from naming any name when asked by TURAN's correspondent about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and what the people in Azerbaijan and Armenia should expect from the new American strategy.

The plan was originally planned to be announced in October, but "we worked closely with the interagency with all due speed within the constraints of COVID-19 crisis, we consulted with our partners, and we wanted to make sure that we completed the necessary consultations as well as – so that we could have a comprehensive strategy," Natali said in response to TURAN's question.

Stephen Biegun, deputy secretary of state, said in a statement that the strategy "reflects input from a broad range of experts and draws on lessons learned from decades of experience."

More about the strategy can be found here.

Alex Raufoglu

Washington D.C.