State action instigates diplomacy over global issues – Maryland’s disease mitigation during COVID & California climate policies prove.

At the height of the pandemic, the lengths to which local leaders were willing to go to secure supplies for their communities was staggering. In April 2020, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker coordinated a secret charter plane to bring PPE from Shanghai, China. Governor Pritzker’s plan was meant to circumvent the Trump administration’s alleged seizing of PPE shipments from abroad.7 A hallmark of the desperation and supply chain challenges at the time, the state of Illinois was forced to hand million-dollar checks to intermediaries in parking lots to get more masks, gloves, and gowns for healthcare workers.8

Perhaps the most high-profile example of subnational diplomacy on the fly occurred in Maryland. Governors like Larry Hogan, who were left on their own to address the ever-worsening crisis, were desperate to build up testing and contact-tracing programs. At the time, testing was considered the key to containing the pandemic.9 The initial flaws in the federal Center for Disease Control’s tests set the country back by months in terms of containment, and South Korea had a far more effective testing apparatus than the United States. Hogan and his wife made a direct ask of Korean President Moon Jae-in, touting the “special relationship between Maryland and the Republic of Korea.”10 When the tests arrived in Maryland, the Governor called it “Operation Enduring Friendship” and touted his diplomatic efforts to secure 500,000 COVID-19 tests from South Korea.11

Meaningful, high-profile subnational diplomacy existed well before the pandemic.12 For example, during the Cold War, communities around the country used their local political power to vocalize opposition to nuclear armament.13 In the 1980s, upwards of 4,000 communities in seventeen countries, including the United States, declared themselves “nuclear-free zones” in response to escalating tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union.14 In 1987, 700 United States mayors and city council members gathered at the National League of Cities Congress in Las Vegas and signed onto the Nevada Declaration, which called for a national ban on nuclear testing.15

Today, over fifty-five percent of the world’s population live in cities.16 That number is expected to climb to sixty-eight percent by 2050.17 Some local leaders oversee economies comparable to those of entire countries. Large cities and counties are claiming more and more economic power in the United States, with one percent of counties in the United States accounting for one-third of the country’s gross domestic product (“GDP”) in 2018.18 Los Angeles County, for example, has an output of $710.9 billion GDP, the equivalent of Saudi Arabia.19 The state of California is the fifth-largest economy in the world, making its GDP larger than that of the United Kingdom and Russia.20

Rural jurisdictions and states with rural areas have also benefitted from subnational diplomacy. Foreign officials routinely visit agricultural areas and ink contracts for various agricultural products.21 When the Director General of the Hebei Provincial Agricultural Department visited the United States to discuss agriculture and animal husbandry, did he visit the State Department in Washington, D.C.? No, he went to Kansas and met with the Kansas Department of Agriculture and Kansas Department of Commerce.22

When subnational actors join forces, they can have an undeniable and far-reaching impact. The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, a coalition of 97 cities from around the world committed to addressing climate change currently chaired by the Los Angeles Mayor, represents more than 700 million people and a quarter of the global economy.23 This subnational effort to address climate change represents a large movement by local leaders to find commonality with foreign counterparts to advance shared goals, even in the face of stalled efforts at the national level. We have seen these principles apply to local responses to the pandemic as well.

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates in the starkest terms what happens when local governments do not have the federal support to address a crisis. It also shows us that states and local governments are already coordinating with foreign counterparts and will continue to do so. What is missing is direct and explicit federal support to help achieve shared goals. In the case of COVID-19, coherent federal support in the diplomatic space would have meant local governments would have had access to information and potentially resources from allies abroad contending with outbreaks in their communities. That type of knowledge-sharing may have saved lives and offered valuable insight into the United States’ COVID response. Instead, the patchwork of local responses left our communities vulnerable to outbreaks. There is much that cities and states can—and already do—learn from other countries through diplomacy, and the federal government has the tools, knowledge, and resources to expand those efforts.

While subnational diplomacy has become increasingly prevalent in United States cities and states as mayors and governors recognize the power of international cooperation for their constituents, the federal State Department has no dedicated structure to support these local efforts to engage with the international community. In 1979, the State Department created an Ambassador-at-Large for Liaison with State and Local Government.24 But since then, these functions have been folded into a parade of temporary stand-alone offices or into the Bureau of Public Affairs.25 This lack of focused federal support for city and state governments is the reason for the City and State Diplomacy Act,26 which will support state and local diplomacy with counterparts abroad. The bill will establish an office of city and state diplomacy at the State Department, which will coordinate overall United States policy, programs, and resources in support of city and state engagement with foreign governments and officials. This is a vital tool for our democracy because it ensures a coordinated effort between local officials and the State Department, thereby streamlining and strengthening both federal and local diplomatic aims.

The pandemic has provided a lens through which to view the value of subnational diplomacy. It does not undermine national level diplomacy but rather enhances it. By leveraging federal resources to support cities and states, the State Department can advance foreign and domestic policy goals relating to economic prosperity and geopolitical stability—and help local governments reap the full benefits of foreign engagement in the process.

The City and State Diplomacy Act also provides two other benefits. It helps us push back on near-peer competitors like China that use a whole of government approach to achieve their objectives, by giving United States state and local leaders the tools and knowledge needed to navigate pressure and exploitation by foreign officials. And it helps diversify and increase the actors involved in our nation’s foreign policy. Instead of just having one federal department with a limited number of overworked foreign service officers and ambassadors (with relatively few minorities),27 we can leverage the expertise, talent, and energy of tens of thousands of city, county, and state officials from around the country who are going to be engaged abroad with or without federal support.

II. THE VALUE OF SUBNATIONAL DIPLOMACY WITHIN THE UNITED STATES

The aforementioned examples of how governors from Maryland and Illinois handled a global pandemic at home speak to the wide possibilities of strong strategic engagement with foreign counterparts during moments of crisis. Local leaders are the ones with their fingers on the pulse of their communities. Their political prospects hinge on delivering tangible support for the communities they serve. That is why city and state leaders will look abroad for resources, knowledge-sharing, and economic support, particularly when federal support is limited.

It was the foundational relationships local leaders in the United States had built with foreign counterparts before the pandemic that created the space for collaboration during the COVID-19 outbreak. Take the city of Los Angeles: Mayor Eric Garcetti has chaired the C40 Cities since 2019.28 C40 is a coalition of cities founded in 2005 to find common ground on solutions to climate change.29 Currently, ninety-seven cities from around the world have joined C40 to commit to bold solutions to climate change.30 Those city-to-city relationships proved invaluable during the pandemic when Mayor Garcetti and his C40 counterparts launched the Global Mayors COVID-19 Recovery Task Force to create shared goals for a post-pandemic recovery that would span the globe. In an impressive feat of global collaboration, more than forty leaders from cities around the world agreed to ensure recovery efforts were inclusive, green, and equitable.31

This kind of collaboration is paramount as we address problems that arose from or were exacerbated by the pandemic. Local governments can provide deeper insight on issues that matter around the world. From inequity in public health and the pandemic response, to environmental racism and climate justice, cities and states contend with these issues firsthand. While the United States is an economic juggernaut, it is still marred by inequality that was worsened by the pandemic.32

According to a Save the Children survey of families from thirty-seven countries, three out of four households suffered from a decline in income due to the pandemic. Of those households, the poorest among them were the hardest hit.33 In the United States, forty-four million people lost their jobs in the beginning months of the pandemic.34 The coalition of C40 cities strove to tackle the inequities that city leaders were seeing firsthand. Having a coalition like the C40 cities sign on to principles like “the recovery must address issues of equity that have been laid bare by the impact of the crisis” sends a clear signal that this is a shared priority among the global community.35

The value of subnational diplomacy spans beyond the pandemic and can serve as a vital asset in our efforts to combat pressing issues like climate change. In 2019, California signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Israel on energy and water cooperation.36 The basis of the agreement was to create a framework in which Israel and the state of California could collaborate on initiatives related to industrial research and development and economic cooperation.37 This is one of many agreements the state has implemented with other countries.

Additionally, in 2013 California became the first subnational government to sign an agreement with China’s National Development and Reform Commission to combat climate change.38 California has always been a leader on environmental policy within the United States, so a natural extension of that would be engaging with foreign counterparts on climate issues. In the same year, Quebec linked with California’s cap and trade program, which allows emissions offsets to be traded between the two, thereby reducing the cost of compliance for businesses in California and Quebec.39 California achieved a thirteen percent drop in emissions from 2004 to 2015, an incredible accomplishment given that it has not hindered economic growth in the state.40

These city and state-level engagements can serve not only local interests but our national goals as well. Some challenges, such as global climate change, are increasingly rooted in city, state, and civil society action. The United States will depend on state action to meet its climate commitments. The U.S. Climate Alliance, for example, is a coalition of Governors from twenty-four states that have committed to meeting the goals outlined by the Paris Climate Agreement and was formed after President Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2017.41 Although efforts to address climate change are far more robust under President Biden, the U.S. Climate Alliance has maintained its commitment to achieve emissions reductions and other anti-pollution benchmarks established during the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (“COP 21”).42 Similarly, 200 cities, states, and companies charted a “parallel pledge” forward on climate change by submitting a plan to the United Nations committing to meeting United States greenhouse gas emissions targets under the Paris Climate Accord.43

Beyond specific policy goals, there is also a clear economic incentive for states and local leaders to look abroad for foreign engagement. California creates nearly 15 percent of the United States’ agricultural output and has sold nearly $2.3 billion in agricultural products to China in recent years.44 As a result, the state was slated to be one of the biggest losers of a drawn-out trade war with China, a hallmark of the Trump administration’s foreign policy agenda.45 In Michigan, foreign trade is the largest driver of the economy.46 Last year, Michigan’s trading activity with Mexico and Canada represented nearly $134 billion, primarily driven by the cross-border supply chains needed for automobile manufacturing.47