The Edwin L. Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.Business executives know too little about diplomacy and U.S. diplomats know even less about business, a knowledge gap that diminishes the effectiveness of commerce and diplomacy and carries serious consequences.
The world is in an existential clash between Western-style market economies and state-run economies whose key businesses, unlike those in the United States, have the full resources of the state at their disposal. China is particularly astute at weaponizing economic investment overseas to coerce and exploit developing nations and to step into the vacuum that occurs when U.S. leadership fails to effectively promote global free market competition.
The answer is not for the United States to forgo free markets in favor of clunky state-run enterprises, but to promote diplomacy that helps develop overseas business opportunities that can make the United States economically stronger and geopolitically more influential. Enter the Center for Commercial and Corporate Diplomacy, an initiative by Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business to train U.S. diplomats about business and provide similar opportunities for business executives to learn about geopolitics. While still in the planning stage, the center’s goal will be to break down silos and promote public-private collaboration required to maintain our nation’s economic advantage in key industries.
The concept has the support of U.S. Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Austin, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and retired Ambassador David C. Miller Jr., president of the