Politics & Power Quote by Lawrence Eagleburger

Bureaucratic on the surface, Eagleburger's line is really a compact argument for a particular kind of American power: not tanks or treaties alone, but salesmanship as statecraft. Coming from a diplomat of his era, "natural partnership" is doing heavy lifting. It frames government and business not as potentially conflicting interests but as an organic alliance, as if history itself endorses the merger. That word "natural" quietly disarms the obvious objections - conflicts of interest, corporate capture, the awkward optics of Washington as a concierge for multinationals.

The phrasing also reveals who he thinks needs persuading. The business community, he implies, isn't simply asked to export; it's asked to "educate the United States" about overseas marketing. That's a subtle rebuke to domestic political culture: protectionist instincts, ignorance about foreign markets, and a public that treats trade as either a technocratic footnote or a threat. In Eagleburger's world, the obstacle isn't foreign hostility so much as American myopia. "Educate" casts commerce as a civic project, elevating marketing from profit-seeking to national mission.

The context is the late Cold War and immediate post-Cold War mindset, when diplomats increasingly spoke the language of competitiveness and access. "Marketing overseas" is a euphemism for opening doors - negotiating standards, smoothing regulatory pathways, leveraging embassies and aid relationships to make foreign markets legible and penetrable. The intent is pragmatic: align the State Department's legitimacy and networks with corporate agility, and sell that alignment back home as common sense rather than a choice with winners, losers, and moral tradeoffs.