By PHK
Karen Hughes, our erstwhile Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, told Financial Times reporter Edward Lucein earlier this week that her most important task is dealing with the Islamic world.
Lucein went on to describe Hughes – no new news here - as a close confidant of W who “wields an influence few others possess in Washington.” Well maybe. But if so, she’s even more of a ninny than I thought. If she understands the Muslim world so well and has so much influence over W, then why did she allow him to embark upon more of the same ill-begotten over-militarized policies towards Iraq and Iran that have already proven such tragic mistakes? Ken Lounsbury also refers to this question in his recent post about the FT interview.
Or why, at least, hasn’t the administration budged on the Guantanamo detainee fiasco?
After all Hughes told FT’s Lucein that she understood that Guantanamo is a major impediment to US credibility in the eyes of the world. Yet the most recent reports I’ve seen on this continuing disaster concern Republican zealots trying to force American law firms who are providing detainees free, or otherwise, legal services out of business. Bill Fisher’s recent “Axes of Evil” is a good synopsis of this.
Or why is the US still pursuing a Middle East policy that remains so lopsided towards Israel that Condi Rice’s latest trip to the country to attempt to get the Road Map back on track will be just another administration failure?
Or why did W once again rely upon neocons and one retired neocon general for policy advice on Iraq and the wider Middle East as he, Bush, “made up his mind” on what next steps – or given the direction he chose – missteps to take?
It’s not as if there aren’t more realistic and more thoughtful approaches to consider in getting out of this quagmire, including the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group proposal that W dissed even before the report reached his desk. I still wonder, did he ever even bother to read it?
Or if Hughes is so close to the powerful one – then why does America’s public diplomacy effort remain so anemic, bifurcated, underfunded and understaffed?
What concerns me as much, however, is even though Hughes is supposedly one of George W. Bush’s main confidants and purportedly meets with him at least once a week that the budget for U.S. public diplomacy remains minuscule and the governmental infrastructure for implementing its various programs remains broken. That is, if public diplomacy and its role in waging the war of ideas are as crucial to the future welfare of this nation as the administration proclaims.
From what I can tell, whatever increased funding for public diplomacy there is, is being funneled into the coffers of private contractors who can now also line up for State’s recently announced private sector pat-on-the-head Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Diplomacy. Lucein mentions this in his FT article, but WaPo’s Glenn Kessler has far more details.
So while the State Department has created another private sector award designed to make companies more willing to promote America’s image abroad while slurping up government funds at home, the US Army has raised the importance of its psychological operations (PSYOP) to the branch level. This happened last October.
I wonder how the size, funding, training and quality of the U.S. army psyops personnel compares with State’s tiny public diplomacy cadre.
“George Bush You’re No Reagan” – Larry Johnson and Karen Hughes You're No Charley Wick
The Tale Did Not Then Wag the Dog
Reagan made mistakes, but this kind of ineptitude in public diplomacy did not happen under him.
The then USIA Director Charles Z. Wick – like Hughes with close personal connections to a Republican President – made certain than public diplomacy was a crucial element in the war of ideas being fought with the Soviet Union. As a result of Wick’s continual prodding and proximity to presidential power, public diplomacy received substantial support.
Reagan, far better than W, understood the need to get America’s message out and about abroad. Wick did too and he foremost harnessed the professional bureaucracy to do it. The activist Wick – also from Hollywood – substantially increased USIA’s budget over what it had been to pay for programs he considered important. I never agreed with Wick’s concentration on satellite television and would like to have seen more funds and staff for overseas operations.
But nevertheless – Reagan and Wick, unlike the hapless W and the weak and ineffectual Hughes, understood:
• the need for a robust public face abroad to get one’s message across;
• the importance of a permanent government-based coordinated infrastructure to support this face; and
• and the need to do so primarily through a cadre of professional federal employees who produced the products, provided the services, staffed the cultural and information centers and libraries abroad, as well as oversaw the private contractors who ran many, but not all, of our international exchange programs.
True, Wick did hire a few of his pals’ children – but that number was miniscule considering the politicization of the foreign affairs bureaucracy that has subsequently taken place. And he was soundly reprimanded for doing so in the media and elsewhere. But then, the American media had many more independent voices than it does now.
Wick also understood the need and learned how to run a tight, responsive, coordinated, integrated administrative public diplomacy ship. I witnessed this first hand when I worked at USIA in Washington between overseas assignments.
In fact, it was only under Reagan’s successor, W’s father – and his disastrous choice of USIA Director Bruce Gelb (an Andover high school roommate if I remember correctly) that the support for public diplomacy began to crumble. And crumble it did.
After 9/11, the W administration had a golden opportunity to reverse the freefall. W could have blamed the Clinton administration for the destruction of USIA and our coordinated approach to telling America’s story abroad. He then could have restored the funding and the function to what it once had been - or even increased it in the Muslim world.
I’ve seen several models for restoring our public diplomacy infrastructure over the past several years. I’ve also seen reasonable proposals just within the past couple of months by two former colleagues – Ambassador Pamela H. Smith and David L. Arnett. Had almost any of the recommendations been implemented, the US government’s public diplomacy infrastructure would be far superior to what exists now.
Instead, Hughes and company continue to “fiddle while Rome burns”
At the time of 9/11, Hughes was a senior White House counselor. If she had wanted, she could have restored our weak public diplomacy infrastructure. The result, however, has been lots of rhetoric but little substance: Par for this administration’s approach to the civilian side of foreign affairs. Back then, the lapdog Congress would have gone along with whatever W wanted.
For that matter, if Hughes is as close to W as the FT and conventional wisdom makes her out to be, she should still be able to initiate major changes – even though the new Congress is not the pliable floppy eared puppy it was before January 2007.
Compared to the billions of dollars the US government has wasted in Iraq while the pockets of various American military and civilian contractors are lined with taxpayer’s gold, the cost to restore a coordinated public diplomacy mechanism staffed by experienced professionals would be peanuts.
I don’t get it. If “public diplomacy is a low budget priority” as Lucein reports and Hughes has such influence on W, then something is wrong with this picture. If selling America to the world is crucial to our foreign policy interests, would Karen please wake up the happy fiddler and advise him to support something that might have resonance - at least in the long term - for a change?
It’s not as if Hughes is likely to be ignorant of what needs to be done. Or if she is, she shouldn’t be in her job. She’s clearly learned some basics about the Muslim world. Yet maybe she still doesn’t get it. After all she continues to remain faithful to the densest and most destructive president of them all.