By PHK
A German Embassy sponsored “friendship bus” circulating DC busy streets? Saudis talking to Americans, not just the administration, their banks, the oilmen and the Pentagon? Chinese sponsoring language contests for American students? Finns exhibiting their newest furniture designs?
The New York Times published an AP story on June 13 entitled “Nations Try to Foster Goodwill with the U.S.” The story is far from all encompassing – what article can be in 800 words or less – but it makes heartening reading for those of us who spent our careers in the public diplomacy business. In fact, the few examples it cites are just the tip of the iceberg.
But “The Nations Try to Foster Goodwill” story does seek to inform the many Americans still clueless about how to deal with the world “over there” other than from the turret of a tank, or as Mao Tse-tung would have said “the barrel of a gun” that other nations do care what we think and, moreover, are trying to do something about it.
Thanks to John Brown’s June 13 Public Diplomacy Press Review for highlighting the story. I just returned late Tuesday from a trip to Europe and would have missed it.
Since this was an AP story, it should receive far wider coverage in the U.S. than just in the venerable Times - if regional and local media print it. The electronic media, too, could make use of it - but they’ll probably exclude it and other stories to zone in on the aftershocks of the Michael Jackson acquittal verdict instead.
It’s high time that Americans begin to learn that foreign countries have decided to improve their images here among "we the people."
In fact, I wrote a blog on a closely related topic, e.g. the increase in foreign cultural institutes in the U.S., several months ago. I’m certainly not the only blogger to have highlighted the story before AP picked it up. Regardless, it’s nice to see this slow-news-day report finally make the mainstream press.
The AP story focuses on the German, Saudi, and Canadian governments, but it also mentions the Austrians, Finns and Japanese in passing. I know the German and Finnish programs well. Let me assure you that the projects listed in AP’s “for examples” - a German-American friendship bus advert in DC and a display of Finnish furniture design at the Finnish Embassy are just the beginning.
Unfortunately, I missed seeing both the bus and the furniture when I was in DC in May. Perhaps the friendship bus wasn’t yet up and running, but the Finns were holding an invite-only event the afternoon a friend and I tried to visit furniture show. The visit that afternoon was closed to regular visitors, but I’ve been to numerous exhibits at the Embassy over the years so have a pretty good idea of the exhibit’s quality which should have been excellent.
The Germans have engaged in public diplomacy big-time in the U.S. as long as I can remember. This undertaking goes far deeper and reaches many more Americans than just the “friendship bus” advertisement that the AP story featured. The bus, however, must make a particularly nice photo-op – kind of like the large colorfully decorated concrete bears that graced Washington’s sidewalks last year or the painted ponies in Santa Fe the year before.
During the 1980s and the 1990s, I worked on German-American youth and academic exchanges – and it was the German Government and its universities, think tanks and youth organizations that were pushing, even then, a largely recalcitrant U.S. Government to do more to forge strong people-to-people links.
I was sorely embarrassed when our academic exchanges budget was cut by about 28% in 1995 after the U.S. Congress changed hands and members decided U.S. foreign policy was unimportant. The scales had been tipped by an incoming narrow-minded, know-nothing, stay-at-home Republican freshmen class and a Senate Foreign Relations Committee chaired – not by the GOP’s thoughtful, knowledgeable Richard Lugar - but by its antiquarian isolationist ostrich-with-his-head-in-the-sand Jesse Helms.
Why was I embarrassed? At the time, the Germans wanted to increase funds for the bilaterally supported U.S.-German Fulbright Exchange Program just as the U.S. insisted upon deep cuts. For similar reasons, the U.S.-Finnish Fulbright Program – along with many other Fulbright programs in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America - has become a mere shadow of itself. Don’t blame the Finnish Government – the finger should be pointed directly at Uncle Sam.
For decades, the Germans and the Finns have spearheaded large high school youth exchange programs with Americans. As a consequence, thousands of Germans, Finns and Americans have benefited from living and studying in each other’s countries.
And on another note, the Finns have a terrific sort-of-quiet cultural “weapon” – an incredible line-up of international celebratory status orchestral conductors, musicians and composers schooled at the country’s top-flight Sibelius Academy who appear regularly on America’s stages.
Many Americans desperately need far greater knowledge of the world than they now have. It’s not that the information isn’t available for those who know where to look – the Internet is a wonderful resource, but too many of our primary and secondary school teachers and many in our media sorely lack the social science basics needed to be able to help their students or readers begin to understand the world in which we all live.
Too many American teachers, editors and reporters don’t and can’t help people learn where to look for the “news behind the international news” or how to put into context all that raw information zipping through cyberspace. For most people, going beyond the “headline” news that runs 24/7 below the talking heads on the media tickers – much of it banal and brainless – takes effort, basic training and critical thinking.
If I were a cynic, I would make the case that this is precisely how the Bush Administration likes it – it’s far easier to pull the wool over the eyes (the Finns would say “wide blue eyes”) of an ignorant, unquestioning citizenry than over those of people who ask the hard, but necessary questions about the consequences of certain actions (aka Iraq invasion) and do not unquestioningly support any government’s line – including their own.
Speaking of the Bush Administration, I note that AP also highlights the administration’s current line that “public diplomacy is something the Bush administration wants to do better, too,” Could this “regurgitate-the- party-line” part of the story be for news balance and to continue to allow AP reporters access to the White House and State Department press briefings?
Four years of far too much verbiage, far too little money and 28 scathing reports by various internal and external task forces later, the administration now tells us that Karen Hughes - after she arrives - will undertake a broad review with an eye towards restructuring U.S. public diplomacy programs.
Yet, the U.S.image overseas continues to slither along the bottom and Hughes, as AP correctly notes, is not due in Washington until the fall. I believe September after her son goes off to Stanford. So precisely how serious is her high profile appointment anyway?
At this juncture, the administration’s public diplomacy effort remains words and no action. Whether or not Hughes is Bush’s closest pal, money talks – and the U.S. public diplomacy budget has been straight-lined for the past three years. Except, of course, at the Pentagon where huge amounts are being spent – one might say wasted – on defense contractors who bid to implement what they call public diplomacy projects but what looks to me to be military public affairs programs and psy-ops.
Since U.S. public diplomacy funds and staff have been fragmented among a variety of agencies and splintered like shards of glass throughout parts of the State Department – Hughes, as Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, will – if she ever shows up and even if she does try to make a difference – have an uphill battle.
In my view, however, the pressing need is not for yet another evaluation of this country’s public diplomacy failings. The data’s there in the previous 28 reports. Now’s the time for action, not more words. What Karen Hughes needs to focus on is how to obtain administration and Congressional support for a major overhaul that quadruples the money and recentralizes oversight and control of the entire US government effort. Less is no longer more.
This means corralling international broadcasting, everything in the State Department that calls itself public diplomacy and wresting away from the Pentagon those pieces which now conduct whatever really is public diplomacy that migrated there after USIA’ breakup in 1999. Until and unless this administration takes those steps – the U.S. public diplomacy effort is doomed to continue blowing smoke-rings in the air.