By Patricia Lee Sharpe
Shortly after the presidential election results were in, a friend of mine who’s in touch with members of the Obama transition team asked me to help him think up Public Diplomacy programs to be aimed at Muslims. He wanted things like “Seminar on Topic X,” “Conference on Topic Y,” "Web Chat on Topic Z.”
Just like that! Specific programs ready for delivery on Day One after inauguration. Programs like OTC medicine. Glibness incarnate.
I was, briefly, flattered and tried to comply, following my friend’s example. He’d sent me a list of his own inspirations. Since he’d actually been a PD man before going into private sector public relations, the list was superficially more than plausible.
In no time, however, I had to say Whoa! I can’t do this. I can’t design PD programs with any hope of impact until I know a few very important things.
Policy Precedes Program
For instance, what’s the Obama policy spectrum, domestic and international, going to be? If the new president, like the outgoing one, wants America to be in the business of preaching democracy, what will his administration do, and quickly, to rectify the damage to our own democracy? Right now, America isn’t a very good example, despite the ground-breaking biracial heritage of the president elect. The torture policy, the rejection of the Geneva Conventions, the suspension of habeas corpus, the extraordinary power grab by the executive, the anti-democratic provisions of the so-called Patriot Act, the unwarranted secret spying on ordinary Americans—all this and more comes to mind. Each of these Bush era innovations must be quickly abrogated if the U.S. is to become a leader in the realm of human rights, civil rights and democracy promotion. Another concern: if America is going to continue to preach free market economics, what will the new administration be doing to make markets attractive again? Free enterprise, at the moment, is looking decidedly scarey, and America isn’t looking very wise. Are we capable of leading the world toward an economic system that rewards creativity even as it curbs capitalism’s tendencies toward strangle-hold monopoly and Gilded Age corruption and excess?
In short, under an Obama administration, will self-confident, forthright public diplomacy be possible again? Or must our PD practitioners continue the Bushian duplicities that ended in a PD disaster that will go down in history: the infamous shoe throwing.
The Muslim Grab Bag Fallacy
Once the critical matter of who we are as Americans is positively redefined and convincingly acted upon through legislation and executive order, it still won’t be easy to create effective PD programs for the “Muslim world,” because there is no such thing, any more than there is a homogenous “Western world” congruent with an equally uniform “Christian world.” Furthermore, to design respectable programs for Muslims of any sect or any ethnicity or any nationality or any degree of modernization or secularization or any combination of the foregoing, PD strategists and programmers need to know what understandings of Islam, past, present and future, the Obama administration will be basing its policies on. In short, to whom do our new leaders think they will be talking—and, equally important, what will be the American stance during these exchanges? Will the Obama administration address its Muslim audiences as equals or as clients to be tutored? Will we be engaging in substantive conversation or will we be preaching and making demands? The Bush administration couched most of its conversations domestically and internationally as “musts.” X must do this! Y must do that! Needless to say, George W. Bush didn’t get much cooperation. That being obvious, we still don’t know the voice in which the Obama administration plans to address the world.
Finally, post policy-making, voice-choosing and audience-defining, it’s essential to know how much money will flow into the diplomatic pot and how much of that will be allocated to PD. Resources have been piddling during the Clinton and Bush years. Will the new administration try to economize with an on-the-cheap, one-size-fits-all approach to the world or even to all Muslims from Morocco to Malaysia? Hey, dude! Let’s talk to Muslims! Round up the Mullahs! Round up a bunch of women in veils! Or will the thinking be a bit more sophisticated and budgets considerably more adequate?
Rabbits Anyone?
In short, as a professional PD person, I can’t pull program rabbits out of policy hats that don’t exist yet. Well, I can, magician-wise. I can throw together a program that sounds plausible on the surface. I can bring it off, then write it up in a way that makes it look “successful” to funders and/or bosses. But we’ve had enough of irresponsibly contracted-out Pentagon propaganda and clueless Foggy Bottom piggybacking on the latest web fad to reach untapped dream audiences. Serious policy discussion via twitter anyone? 140 characters! Can you believe it?
Oddly enough, the more I thought about the input opportunity that turned into an impossibility, the more I felt as if I were back in graduate school, where I taught English composition to undergraduates from the college of education or the college of engineering, students who had to take and pass a course they wanted nothing to do with because they really didn’t understand what “writing” is.
What they had to grasp is that you can’t write until you have something to say and you can't say it effectively unless you’ve defined who you’re saying it to.
Ten fingers or Two thumbs
Writing isn’t something you do with ten fingers on a computer or two thumbs on the latest hand held device. Writing is a mental, intellectual, conceptual (and, yes, emotional) activity, which uses language as its medium, as a tool. The English language is a wonderful instrument of expression. Its vocabulary is unmatched. Its grammar and syntax are flexible enough to produce all manner of texts at every conceivable level of formality or coarseness. But nothing’s automatic, unless you’re channeling some higher power. When writing for ordinary human beings, making good choices from all that linguistic richness depends on knowing, even before you boot up the computer, more or less what you want to say to whom for what purpose. Possessed of that little secret, the writer has a chance of getting the communications job done well.
Office Hours
Over and over again, back then in graduate school, I’d sit down with some kid who’d turned in some 600 words of a so-called composition on one subject or another. The paper might be perfectly grammatical (though rarely). The vocabulary might be quite impressive (also rarely). Yet the paper might still be a hopeless mishmash. No order. No coherence. So I’d start asking questions. What are you trying to say? Who are you talking to? What do you want to happen? Given such goals, how could you rephrase and reorganize this composition to ensure the result you want?
When some smart aleck sniggered and said his/her goal was an A (or a passing grade, at least) from me, I got the last laugh. The same rules apply to pleasing the writing teacher.
Inspiring a student to produce first rate work in English composition courses isn’t always easy, because the assignments are artificial, but the consequences of sloppy work can be serious. Students can’t afford to fail a required course.
Sloppy diplomacy, public or otherwise, is also not so inconsequential. When it’s done ineptly, in conceptualization or application, as with the outgoing Bush administration, and it’s done ineptly time and time again, the image of the United States suffers. When we no longer look good, it’s hard to get things done, even with hard power.
The PD Tool Kit
Like an English comp student struggling to deploy the resources available to an English-speaker to fulfill an assignment, the PD programmer has many communications tools to master and employ, some time-tested, some novel, some one-way, some interactive, some face-to-face, some electronic. Consider the following: educational exchanges, international visitors to the U.S., conferences and seminars, lecturers, video and web-based programs, print media placement, domestic and international broadcasting, books and libraries, poetry readings, English language instruction, the whole gamut of cultural programing involving the performing and visual arts, to say nothing of personal contact between American diplomats and host country nationals—and I’ve probably omitted something from the list. In the course of a year a solid public diplomacy program is likely to call upon all these instruments to further American interests in a particular country or area of the world. But tools are only tools. The one that’s used depends on the job to be done, the image or policy that’s to be advanced, the audience that’s to be addressed, the action or understanding that’s to be encouraged.
For Want of a Nail
I’m not so sure that the member of the Obama transition team who contacted my friend understood that PD carts need horses which need horseshoes which need nails, etc. When, in frustration, I found myself jotting down notes for the equivalent a PD primer, it was already clear that the guy asking for a clutch of OTC program suggestions for Muslims wouldn’t be interested, so I wrote this instead.
My hope is that Secretary-of-State-in-Waiting Hillary Clinton already has a more profound appreciation of what PD can do for the foreign policy process. If she doesn’t, let’s pray that she and Barack Obama recruit a candidate for Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs who has an infinitely better understanding of PD’s nature and potential than anyone George W. Bush selected.
That’s not setting the bar very high, I realize, but there’s not much intelligent thought about PD floating around officialdom, judging from what reaches me. Even if the Obama administration turns out to be as inspired (and brave) as many hope it will be, the PD task ahead is enormous. We need an under secretary who understands that PD is not advertising or public relations or propaganda or all the nice things that private citizens can do in their various capacities. It’s the official voice of the government of the United States of America talking to (and with) the people of the world about matters of critical importance to all of us.
