Washington, DC, May 22, 2018 —  I am honored to be here today.  With conviction and sincerity I want to do my most important job: to congratulate you, the class of 2018, on your graduation. You are joining an illustrious group of alumni who have contributed so much to the world beyond GWU.  I am looking to you to make this the most productive, impactful class ever!

To the undergraduate graduating class, I want to signal my appreciation that you have chosen early in your careers to think globally not just locally.  You have recognized that you can only understand your own country if you understand the world.  And we need more of that in the world today.  

To the graduate students graduating today, there is an additional message.  Thank you for defying the shrill catcalls of modern politics which dismiss experts as eggheads and denigrate expertise as a luxury.  This is not new.  It is the refuge of populists down the ages, who seek to channel anger rather than find answers.  So thank you for deepening your knowledge, and preparing to take your learning into a world that needs your judgment and your depth of learning.

To both groups, I know you worked hard to get into GWU, you have worked hard here, and you join a long and distinguished tradition of scholarship, research and leadership that should be an inspiration as you go forward.  Diplomats, military leaders, politicians have all sat and learned here. Now you have the opportunity not just to graduate from here, but to put to good use the skills and knowledge you have acquired here. 

Graduation is a time when people look inwards.  Graduates reflect on family and friends who have supported them.  Please thank your family who are here with you today!  Graduates think about the students who have made their university experience.  Please take time to thank your fellow students today! 

But graduation is also a time to look outwards.  And that is what I want to reflect on today.

The reason I wanted to be here to speak to you today is not just that this is a distinguished school. It is that the world needs you.  It needs your insights, your internationalism, your energy, your knowledge, your skills, your optimism. 

The mission of the School is to build the leaders of tomorrow.  And I can say this with confidence and conviction: we need you to do better than the leaders of today!

You have learnt in your time here about the importance of diplomacy, the lessons of diplomacy, the craft of diplomacy.  Yet today there is a crisis of diplomacy.  A crisis of commitment, of conviction, of consistency, even a crisis of purpose when it comes to building bridges and finding common ground across lines of region, religion, nationality and ethnic group.  

There is even a question, an even more fundamental question, about whether solving the world’s problems is part of a nation’s purpose.  And that is what I want to ask you to address when you leave here.

In the midst of a crisis of diplomacy, the world needs more skilled and effective diplomats, not just in government, but across private and NGO sectors too.  Please make that your mission.

The metric of the diplomatic crisis is not just the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement or the Iran Nuclear Agreement.  It is measured by the talk of a “new Cold War”; by the gridlock in the UN Security Council; by the fatigue about the world’s longest-running problems, from Palestine to Congo; by the weakening of international institutions like the World Trade Organization; by the abandonment of international treaties; by the siren song of military solutions.  These are not erased by the welcome prospect of talks on the question of the North Korean nuclear program.

But the most sobering metric is number of conflicts underway today; their intensity; and their duration. It is no comfort that these conflicts are wars within states not wars between states. All conflicts speak to a crisis of politics and a deficit of diplomacy. And that is what we are seeing on a grand scale:

Many believed that the end of the Cold War would mean a new era in which the connections between peoples and nations increased, and as those connections increased, tensions would diminish. 

The connections have increased.  But so have the divisions.  And that is the central challenge that I see that in my work every day.

The International Rescue Committee is a global humanitarian charity with 17,000 staff in nearly 40 war affected countries. In the last year we have seen:

We have also seen a shattering of the global consensus about haven for refugees.   Countries like Uganda, Lebanon and Ethiopia all have more than a million refugees, but they are giving them sanctuary. Germany has been a leader in Europe.

But in the last year the refugee resettlement program in the US, a lifeline to an average of 95 000 refugees a year, has been cut by three quarters.  More Syrians were killed in the chemical weapons attack in Douma in April than have been admitted to the US as refugees in the last six months.

It’s a tragedy because the history does not lie:

IRC’s work, from Boise, Idaho, to Beirut, Lebanon, aims to staunch the dying and help rebuild lives.  We run water and sanitation operations in Ethiopia; we have mobile health units in Bangladesh; we offer 1.5 million displaced children education from Nigeria to Iraq; we run employments centers in Lebanon and Jordan; and we help refugees start new lives in the US, meeting them at the airport on arrival, getting their kids into school, helping them into jobs.

But however much we do to staunch the dying, we need diplomacy to stop the killing. This is where there is a failure of imagination.  A failure of leadership.  We need you, the generation which can see the consequences of the failure of diplomacy, to take up the baton.  

Just as a leadership vacuum has led to mass mobilization across American high schools to demand that guns be kept out of communities, so we need the graduates of the foreign service schools of the country to demand that resources, priority, mojo, humanity be put into diplomacy.

Whether you are going into government service, the private sector, or joining me in the non profit sector, you are part of the drive to build a connected world. We need your energy and commitment in that drive.

We need you, when you populate foreign ministries, to be the people urging that they start holding the all night peacemaking sessions, finding ways to establish common ground, building the ties that allow different sides to find ways to live together.  

We need you, when you join the great businesses of the world, to be the people arguing that a healthy global economy relies on stable global politics, and that the voice of business needs to be part of the diplomatic equation. 

We need you, when you staff, create and run NGOs, to be organizing unofficial diplomacy, dedicated to bringing warring sides together by recognizing their legitimate interests.

Diplomacy has been called - by one of the most famous diplomats - the business of going abroad to lie for your country.  No.  It is the commitment to understand and listen as well as represent and talk.  It is the dedication to put respect before bluster and coalition building before self aggrandisement. It is the recognition that in a connected world national interest is served by framing solutions with others.  

America first, China first, Britain first, should mean cooperation for shared goals not putting up the shutters.  And one of those goals must be peacemaking and peacebuilding that curbs the spread of conflict.

Neglect the causes of conflict, and the problems of conflict ricochet across continents.

Neglect the causes of climate change, and effects are felt around the globe.

Allow fragile states to become failing states and then stable states are undermined.

Allow governments to flout international law and international law becomes an optional extra.

Make foreigners an enemy and then you have new divisions at home.

The world has never been more connected than it is today.  Yet it feels more unstable and insecure.  That is because it the inequalities and unsustainabilities of our connected world are being heightened not tackled.  And so to preserve the blessings of a connected world we need to take care of its burdens.  

That is the business of diplomacy.  That is the ideal on which this School was founded.  And now you need to carry the torch.

The resources have never been greater.

More people are educated than ever before.  And every government has to live in coalition with its own people.  So that means that diplomacy is a matter for people not just for elites.

More businesses are concerned about their reputation than ever before.  So that means the private sector can be an ally for progress as never before.

More leaders are accountable than ever before, because what they do, and the consequences of what they do, are open to public scrutiny in the palms of our hands as never before.  So that accountability needs to be a force for progress.

More countries are affected by the neglect of the global commons than ever before.  So the alliances to tackle global problems should be more wide-ranging than ever before.

This connected world has been created from noble motives: to spread individual freedom, to promote prosperity, to foster peace.  So now please join in trying to achieve those goals.

The challenge for the people IRC serves – from Syria to Congo to Afghanistan – is not that international institutions are too strong and overbearing.  It is that international norms are not upheld and international institutions too weak.  

So they need you, the class of 2018, to have the same spirit as earlier generations.

In the class of 1911, 107 years ago, one of the graduates was John Foster Dulles.  After the Second World War he wrote this: “The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest qualities.  Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice.”

Those were good words then.  They are necessary now.  I look forward to seeing you put them into practice.