By Patricia H. Kushlis
Sometime last week, the Pentagon quietly posted a 102 page report called “Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication” on its website (pdf file). This comprehensive report is a stinging indictment of the GW Bush Administration’s ability to convince the rest of the world of the rightness of its policies. It was commissioned by the Pentagon’s advisory Defense Science Board and dated September 2004. Why the delay in releasing to the public? Perhaps the impact it might have had on the November 2 elections? The release of this report could have, or should have, been used as yet another example of the myriad weaknesses of U.S. foreign policy under the Bush Administration in a close and contentious campaign that hinged on the President’s supposed ability to keep the country safe from the “war on terror.”
Yet Strategic Communication should not be read as a partisan political document. Its contents are valid for whomever won the election. Its committee members are foremost professionals: some with years of experience in the field of international communications. Their report paints a not very pretty picture like it is in their analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the current "winning hearts and minds" capabilities of the National Security Council, the Department of State and the Department of Defense.
The bottom line: not only is the US message questionable, it is garbled, weakly presented and the Administration needs to start listening as well as talking as it crafts its future actions abroad. The US also needs to reconstitute, restructure, up-staff as well as adequately fund the organizations it now uses to relay its message. This report is also a lot about talking and listening to people – a quality the US largely lost after the Cold War. It is not about selling fried chicken via television commercials.
Strategic Communication needs to be taken seriously by this Administration and also in the Halls of Congress. It is the 16th such report on the subject written since 9/11/2001 – all, unfortunately, thus far brushed off by a Bush Administration that doesn’t think it needs foreign policy advice.
Given Rumsfeld’s initial lukewarm reaction to Strategic Communication, the Administration’s continued stingy budgets for and attention paid to "winning hearts and minds" – I don't expect this task force’s recommendations to be considered any more seriously than those of its 15 predecessors. But then, miracles do happen.