Foreign Affairs

This report summarizes the views presented at GAO's 1996 conference on foreign affairs issues. The purpose of the conference was to help focus GAO's work on the full range and complexity of U.S. foreign activities in order to better assist Congress in adjusting U.S. foreign affairs functions and structures to meet post-Cold War realities. Conference participants included current and former government officials and private sector public policy experts representing a range of interests. Topics covered in the conference included the changed environment for foreign policy, the influence and the impact of U.S. programs, the role of multilateral institutions, the world trade interests of the United States, and the structure of the U.S. foreign affairs apparatus.

GAO found that: (1) a central theme that emerged from the 2 days of deliberation and debate was that the needed rethinking of U.S. foreign policy objectives, requirements, and structures has not taken place at the highest levels of the foreign policy agencies; (2) conference participants expressed a variety of views on the role and requirements for U.S. leadership in this transitional post-Cold War period, and they highlighted the complexity of assessing the effectiveness of U.S. policies and programs; (3) conference participants agreed that U.S. international economic activities need to be more clearly recognized as a new reality of international engagement that merits higher priority in the definition of U.S. national interest; (4) in addition, participants also noted that in this new era of constrained federal budgets, increased effort needs to be directed at improving management efficiency and program effectiveness; (5) the continued absence of a broader consensus on foreign policy objectives, however, raises the risk that the U.S. government may not have appropriate resource allocations, reflecting articulated priorities, or the structure to deal with many post-Cold War issues; and (6) the various themes and issues raised by conference participants suggest that executive branch and congressional attention should focus on the following topics: (a) clarifying and balancing U.S. interests; (b) determining what policy instruments work; (c) assessing U.S. participation in multilateral organizations; (d) scrutinizing the pace of management reforms; (e) measuring possible productivity gains from technological advances; and (f) coordinating and integrating U.S. overseas policies and programs.