Today Secretary Clinton released the State Department's first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), which as my colleague Josh Rogin over at The Cable notes, is "meant to chart a way forward for the diplomatic corps to play a greater role in U.S. foreign policy in a world of shrinking budgets and resources."

Here are a couple of Clinton quotes from Rogin's report:

"As you dig in to this report, you'll see it's driven by two overarching factors, first is president Obama's focus on fiscal responsibility and efficiency throughout the federal government," Clinton said. "Through the QDDR, we have tried to minimize costs, maximize impacts, avoid overlap and duplication and focus on delivering results."

"Across our programs we are redefining success based on results achieved rather than dollars spent," she said. "This will help us make the case that bolstering U.S. civilian power is a wise investment for American taxpayers that will pay off by averting conflicts, opening markets, and reducing threats."

The video of Clinton's speech is below. The transcript is here.

FYI: Secretary Clinton will be hosting a town-hall meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 15, at 11:15 a.m. (U.S. Eastern time) on the release of the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), themed "Leading Through Civilian Power." At the start of the meeting, to be held with State Department employees, the QDDR will be made available for downloading at www.state.gov.

A State Department tweet also says we'll be able to watch the meeting live at www.state.gov.

In a videoconference with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad yesterday, Secretary Clinton announced the transfer of $150 million in U.S. direct assistance to the Palestinian Authority to help it build a viable Palestinian state as part of the two-state solution. Clinton said the latest infusion of money brings the United States' total direct budget assistance to $225 million for 2010 and overall U.S. support and investment to almost $600 million for 2010.

"This figure underscores the strong determination of the American people and this administration to stand with our Palestinian friends even during difficult economic times," the secretary of state said in announcing the transfer of funds.

The money -- whose use will be carefully monitored by the United States, the World Bank, and the IMF -- will go toward the important task of building a well-functioning Palestinian state. Clinton explained, "This new funding will help the Palestinian Authority pay down its debt, continue to deliver services and security to its people, and keep the progress going. It will support our work together to expand Palestinians' access to schools, clinics, and clean drinking water in both the West Bank and Gaza. And it will allow Prime Minister Fayyad's government to build and modernize courthouses and police stations, train judges and prosecutors, and launch new economic development initiatives."

This emphasis on building a viable Palestinian state accords with some of Elliott Abram's advice for President Obama, as detailed in his recent FP piece, "Build Up the West Bank." Abrams writes that instead of focusing on an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, Obama should instead spend the rest of his term helping build a Palestinian state in the West Bank. He writes:

If you build it, they will sign. The only way to reassure Palestinians that a state is possible is to make one, and the only way to reassure Israelis that their security will be enhanced rather than diminished is for them to see it with their own eyes. That won't happen for either side at Camp David or Oslo or Annapolis -- only right there on the ground in the West Bank.

Here is a video of Clinton's and Fayyad's remarks:

Normally, U.S. officials and politicians want American companies to create jobs in the United States and keep jobs at home, but today, Secretary Clinton encouraged U.S. business executives to create jobs across the ocean in Northern Ireland. Doing so might sound counterintuitive to many Americans, but creating jobs in Northern Ireland serves a good cause -- peace.

At a U.S.-Northern Ireland economic conference she hosted in Washington today, Clinton praised the 1,000 new jobs that American companies have created recently in Northern Ireland and explained, "[A] stronger economy in Northern Ireland will help secure a lasting peace. And peace in Northern Ireland is a bedrock foreign-policy priority for the United States."

In her remarks, she went on to add:

[E]conomic opportunities are what we are focusing on today because we know that to survive, peace must be visible beyond the halls of government or even the meeting places where former adversaries come together to work out their differences. It must be seen in daily improvements in people's lives, not just in the absence of violence, but the presence of good jobs, business starts, skills learned, communities recovered from decline.

Essentially, Clinton understands that for there to be long-lasting peace, people must have jobs and some sense of economic security. She acknowledged that when many Americans, particularly American business executives, have heard the words "Northern Ireland," they haven't exactly thought "investment opportunities." But Clinton said that mentality has been changing recently, and more people are associating Northern Ireland with "reconciliation, hope, and opportunity."

Of the 1,000 new jobs created by American companies in Northern Ireland, Clinton mentioned 100 positions established by GE Energy and over 300 in the New York Stock Exchange's Belfast office. She also hailed Dow Chemical's announcement that it was starting a supply-chain consulting service in Belfast.

The video of her complete remarks is below:

Secretary Clinton said yesterday that one of her pet peeves is poor countries that don't tax their elite and then expect the United States to come in and save their people.

Clinton made the remark in a round-table discussion on the U.S. administration's new global development policy. Her complete remark was:

It's one of my pet peeves: Countries that will not tax their elite, who expect us to come in and help them serve their people, are just not going to get the kind of help from us that historically they may have.

Moderator Frank Sesno of George Washington University followed up by asking, "You're going to go to countries that are getting [aid] now and say we're going to stop?" Clinton responded by singling out Pakistan:

There's got to be some reciprocity here. Because one of the things that is now happening in Pakistan, and I said this when I was there last year, you cannot have a tax rate of 9 percent of GDP when big landholders and all the other elites do not pay anything or pay so little it's laughable, and you've got such a rate of poverty and everybody is looking to the United States and other donors to come in and help.

Sesno pushed further, asking whether Clinton was truly prepared to tell governments of countries filled with poor people that the U.S. government would withdraw or scale back aid if they didn't tax their elite, who are often the base of political support for those countries' leaders. Clinton said that was one of the messages that the United States was starting to deliver and mentioned that Pakistan's finance minister has already introduced a set of tax and economic reforms.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, another of the participants in the round-table discussion, backed Clinton up, saying:

I've been doing this for a long time. I have never heard a discussion like this where you have a secretary of state saying what Secretary Clinton just said, which is recognizing that unless we are tougher on how we provide assistance, unless we look at those basic simple things, like are they running their country in a way that gives us confidence that our resources will be used well, we should not be financing them at this level. That is an enormously consequential thing.

Something tells me that if Barack Obama's administration is having such a difficult time increasing taxes on the richest Americans, then it's going to have an even harder time getting another country's government to do the same. And in the case of Pakistan, is that country really going to do the United States' bidding? In the interest of national security, the United States will continue pouring billions of dollars into Pakistan; with so many Islamist extremist groups on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the United States isn't going to scale back development efforts just because the Pakistani government won't reform its tax code and crack down on tax evasion.

(For more on this topic, check out my colleague Josh Rogin's report, "Clinton presses Pakistan to raise taxes on wealthy" over at FP's The Cable.)

Secretary Clinton today launched an initiative that could save millions of lives around the world -- the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a public-private partnership to which the U.S. government is committing $51 million over the next five years.

Sounds a bit wacky, but this effort will improve health, empower women and girls, and mitigate climate change. For real. As Clinton explained in a speech today in New York at the Clinton Global Initiative, where she was escorted to the podium by her husband, Bill Clinton:

The World Health Organization considers smoke from dirty stoves to be one of the five most serious health risks that face people in poor, developing countries. Nearly 2 million people die from its effects each year, more than twice the number from malaria. And because the smoke contains greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, as well as black carbon, it contributes to climate change.

There are other consequences as well. In conflict zones like the Congo, the journeys that women must take to find scarce fuel [such as firewood] put them at increased risk of violent and sexual assault. Even in safer areas, every hour spent collecting fuel is an hour not spent in school or tending crops or running a business.

People have cooked over open fires and dirty stoves for all of human history, but the simple fact is they are slowly killing millions of people and polluting the environment.

The solution? Clean, efficient, afforable cookstoves that cost as little as $25. The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves aims for 100 million households getting clean cookstoves by 2020. The initiative will involve research and development for improved designs and lower costs, an effort to create a market for the stoves (which will include lowering trade barriers and fostering public awareness), and weaving clean stoves into international development programs, including women-owned microfinance networks.

At the end of her speech, Clinton asked us to do the following:

The next time you sit down with your own family to eat, please take a moment to imagine the smell of smoke, feel it in your lungs, see the soot building up on the walls, and then come find us at the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. Hearths, whatever they look like, and wherever we gather around them, where we tell our stories and pass down our values, bind families together. And the benefits from this initiative will be cleaner and safer homes, and that will, in turn, ripple out for healthier families, stronger communities, and more stable societies.

And, check out the video:

At the President's Forum with Young African Leaders this afternoon, Secretary Clinton told a group of successful young African entrepreneurs and civil society leaders that, ultimately, progress in Africa is is "up to you."

After saying, "I see Africa as a continent brimming with potential, a place that has so much just waiting to be grasped," she went on to say:

Across Africa, more citizens believe they now have the power and the duty to shape their own lives, to help their communities, to hold their governments accountable.… I want to focus on these gains because it is through this positive progress that we can motivate and incentivize even more to take place. And ultimately, it is up to you. The president and I very much believe in Africa's promise, and we can do what's possible from afar to assist and to be front-row cheerleaders, if you will. But ultimately, it is up to you, and to citizens like you, to make sure that we sustain and deepen the progress.

Clinton noted President Obama's remark last year in Ghana: "Africa's future is up to Africans." And she added that the United States "stand[s] ready to be your partners," working "in a spirit of mutual respect and accountability."

The impression is that the United States doesn't want to be paternalistic. Even if it tried calling the shots in Africa, it wouldn't work. Rather, development must come from within, with every child growing up to be able to use his or her "God-given talents and potential" to make the continent thrive. At most, the United States can be a "cheerleader" or a partner, an actor with solely an auxiliary role. 

Ultimately, only the citizens within a country can build it and make it successful. Now, if only only there were more of this going on in Afghanistan.…

Secretary Clinton delivered a speech, as seen above, today at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. In discussing development as one of the three pillars of U.S. foreign policy -- defense, diplomacy, and development -- she said:

[D]evelopment was once the province of humanitarians, charities, and governments looking to gain allies in global struggles. Today it is a strategic, economic, and moral imperative -- as central to advancing American interests and solving global problems as diplomacy and defense."

She was wise is stressing that throwing dollars at the problem isn't enough. There must be accountability:

[W]e must evaluate our progress and have the courage to rethink our strategies if we fall short. We must not simply tally the dollars we spend or the number of programs we run, but measure the lasting changes that these dollars and programs help achieve."

Meanwhile, this speech isn't the only one Clinton will be giving this week. Friday, she is giving a speech to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development. I'll attend, if I can get away from the office.

Secretary Clinton has no public appointments on her official schedule today, but that doesn't mean she isn't busy.

It appears that Clinton will be making a trip to Haiti on Thursday en route to this weekend's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago. Additionally, she'll be leading the U.S. delegation tomorrow at a donors conference on Haiti, to be held in Washington. The Miami Herald reports that the U.S. government is expected to announce $50 million in aid to Haiti, which was ravaged by storms last year.

Haitian President René Préval was the first head of state who Clinton met with after she became secretary of state. (In the photo above, the two of them meet Feb. 5 at the State Department.) And just last month, husband Bill visited Haiti with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, where they attended a food distribution event. In fact, Bill Clinton, whose Clinton Global Initiative has been involved with aid projects in Haiti, is expected to attend tomorrow's donors conference. (Will we see photos of Hillary and Bill together?)

Photo: PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images