CONFLICT PREVENTION, MITIGATION, AND RESPONSE: Support the prevention, containment or mitigation, and resolution of existing or emergent regional conflicts, as well as post-conflict peace, reconciliation, and justice processes.
Analysis: To meet U.S. foreign policy commitments for building peace and security, assistance resources are used to prevent and manage violent conflict at the local level. Such programs help mitigate conflict in vulnerable communities around the world by improving attitudes toward peace, building healthy relationships and conflict mitigation skills through person-to-person contact among members of groups in conflict, and improving access to local institutions that play a role in addressing perceived grievances. Training focuses on factors that underpin conflicts, such as land disagreements, including disputes involving claims by women and indigenous groups. In FY 2010, the United States fell slightly below its performance target. Delays in the promulgation of Nepal’s constitution deferred training programs based on the new constitution and resulted in fewer people trained. Programs in Indonesia shifted from a focus on conflict resolution to post-conflict livelihoods activities, resulting in 2,148 fewer people trained than anticipated. In contrast, a number of other Operating Units reported better than expected results. In Ethiopia, positive reactions to a pilot training program led to increased requests from both the Government of Ethiopia and university partners. In Kenya, grants enabled partner organizations to provide training at both the national and local levels. Five Operating Units (Ethiopia, Haiti, Kenya, Kosovo, and Uganda) also exceeded their targets for the number of women trained in conflict mitigation, reflecting the U.S. Government’s emphasis on empowering and creating opportunities for women.
Analysis: The U.S. Government focuses significant effort on peacekeeping operations in Africa and Near East Asia. The Peacekeeping Operations indicator is illustrative of progress towards this strategic goal. United Nations Peacekeeping Missions in Near East Asia received an average rating of 3 out of 4 for FY 2010, surpassing the target of 2.5. The rating mirrors the score received in FY 2008 and FY 2009. The FY 2010 average rating for United Nations Peacekeeping Missions in Africa remained at FY 2009 levels with a score of 2.3, which is slightly below the target of 2.5. This decline reflects the increasingly difficult security, political, and economic environment in many parts of Africa.
Analysis: In a rapidly and continuously changing global environment, failing and post-conflict states pose one of the greatest national and international security challenges of the modern world. The U.S. Government is pulling together the government’s wide range of expertise to address the urgent need for a set of formalized, collaborative, and institutionalized foreign policy tools that can adequately address the diverse stabilization needs of the global community. The United States can better influence key transitional moments in fragile states if it can deploy civilians skilled in reconstruction and stabilization operations early in the conflict cycle. The Department has begun to do so in connection with the January 2011 referendum in southern Sudan. In step with this strategy, the United States is tracking the average number of civilian deployments per month. Deployments increased more than five-fold in FY 2010 compared to FY 2009.
COUNTERNARCOTICS: Combat international narcotics production and trafficking, reduce the cultivation and production of drugs and maintain that reduction, prevent resurgence of drug production by providing opportunity to earn livelihoods with licit crops, and constrict the market for drugs and the human toll of addiction through prevention and treatment.
Analysis: A key element of U.S. support for counternarcotics efforts is the Alternative Development and Livelihoods (ADL) program that promotes sustainable and equitable economic growth opportunities in regions vulnerable to drug production and conflict, with the intent of permanently ending involvement in illicit drug production. ADL programs focus resources on the three main source countries of Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru, in addition to supporting efforts in Afghanistan and Ecuador. U.S. assistance generates sustainable, licit employment and income opportunities; improves the capacity of municipal governments to plan and provide basic services and infrastructure; fosters citizen participation in local decision-making; strengthens social infrastructure; and promotes transparency and accountability at the local level. The number of hectares of alternative crops under cultivation has a direct relationship to job creation and income levels in targeted areas.
The United States exceeded its FY 2010 target with all programs reporting better than expected results. For example, in Bolivia, ADL activities helped increase the number of hectares dedicated to alternative crops to 5,998 hectares. This result was almost two times the target due to high interest in the program among local farmers. In coffee producing regions, favorable market prices for coffee helped stimulate farmer interest. In addition, USAID made significant progress in Bolivia’s Yungas region with cultivation of annatto, which is used to dye garments and is in high demand on global markets. Peru’s results were 18 percent over the target. New beneficiaries were incorporated into the Peruvian alternative development and livelihoods program in the Ucayali region after eradication efforts made participation possible. The decrease in the FY 2011 and FY 2012 targets compared to the FY 2010 results reflects the scheduled closeout of some existing projects.
President Obama and Russian President Medvedev signing New START Treaty in Prague, April 2010. ©AP Image
Secretary of State Clinton has led U.S. engagement in strengthening the pillars of the nonproliferation regime—nuclear disarmament, access to civilian nuclear energy, and nonproliferation.
In April 2010, the United States and the Russian Federation signed the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which the U.S. Senate approved on December 22, 2010. As Secretary Clinton noted following ratification of the Treaty: “Once the Treaty enters into force, on-site inspections of Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons facilities can resume, providing us with an on-the-ground view of Russia’s nuclear forces. The information and insight from these inspections forms the core of our ability to “trust but verify” compliance with New START. A responsible partnership between the world’s two largest nuclear powers that limits our nuclear arsenals while maintaining strategic stability is imperative to promoting global security. With New START, the United States and Russia will have another important element supporting our ‘reset’ relationship and expanding our bilateral cooperation on a wide range of issues.” The New START Treaty with Russia advances the goal of bolstering nuclear nonproliferation by verifiable reduction of deployed strategic nuclear warheads by the world’s two largest nuclear powers. It sets the following mutual, verifiable weapons limits:
The Nuclear Posture Review reduces the role of U.S. nuclear weapons, provides a strategy for reducing their number, and provides negative security assurances to non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The NPT is the only legally binding agreement that provides a global barrier to the spread of nuclear weapons, and ensures the following:
The Nuclear Security Summit highlighted agreement among 47 governments on the critical importance of securing all vulnerable nuclear materials within 4 years to prevent them from falling into the hands of terrorists. The Summit reinforced that all States are responsible for ensuring the best security of their materials.
