By PHK
In case you're wondering why I've concentrated on the never ending passport delay debacle and written so little about the State Department's continuing attempts at pretending to be USIA, it's because although the passport imbroglio can and will ultimately be resolved, in the meantime if I can play a bit part in helping a few people successfully navigate an under-staffed, abysmally managed, bifurcated overly secretive process to obtain what should be a basic document for all citizens in good legal standing, I will. Passports are, after all a "fee for service" operation. So when WV can provide information to and a message board for people to help them salvage trips abroad, I think it's worth doing. (If you're looking for tips on navigating the process, we have a tips page which might help.)
Besides, the more Americans who travel overseas and gain a better understanding of the world the better it is for all of us.
This administration can't even issue passports - so how can it possibly do public diplomacy?
The public diplomacy debacle, however, is a very different, less publicized yet also significant "mini-Katrina" at the State Department. The problems and issues here, however, are far more complex than untangling the passport maze.
On the one hand, America's lousy image abroad is clearly entwined with Bush and his administration's disastrous foreign policies. Therefore, Shelby Telhami, Thomas P. Barnett and the Economist's Kevin Kallauger and others all have a point when, one way or another, they argue that the US can only expect public diplomacy to do so much as long as the Bush administration remains in power strumming its unpopular foreign policy tunes.
All true, but it does disturb me that Barnett, at least, seems to think that all that needs to happen is to wait 19 more months for W to ride into the sunset taking Cheney and the rest of the neocon cabal and their ridiculous foreign policy ideas with him and all will be right with the world.
From my perspective, that will help - depending upon who replaces our worst president on record - but it's not everything. The rest of the equation is all about the process, operation, goals and priorities of whoever becomes the next public diplomacy czar or czarina and how much support he or she receives from the White House and Congress.
Playing at Public Diplomacy
I'm not sure if Karen Hughes' decision to make educational and other exchanges her top public diplomacy priority isn't in reality a simple act of public relations and/or political desperation. It's not as if I don't think that exchanges aren't important - after all I dedicated years of my life to making them work - but saying that exchanges are the top priority is one thing. Putting the pieces in place to make them a priority is another - and those pieces from what I can see - are in tatters.
As a current report by the Foreign Affairs Council entitled Managing Secretary Rice's State Department: An Independent Assessment, tells us, Cultural Affairs Officers are a dying breed. And it's the CAOs who manage exchange programs overseas. This same assessment on public diplomacy based on an April 2007 GAO study also says that 22 percent of all public diplomacy positions world wide are vacant whereas in 2006 "only" 16 percent were left unfilled. CAOs, of course, are part and parcel of this understaffed public diplomacy contingent.
The FAC report's section on public diplomacy is short. It contains kudos as well as criticisms - but it is certainly no glowing endorsement of the Karen and Condi public diplomacy show. It also tries to make helpful suggestions - like proposing a special career track for Cultural Affairs Officers - given the severe deficit - to be recruited and handled separately like State Department physicians.
One obvious comment, however, is that when there was a USIA, there were no shortages of qualified cultural or assistant cultural affairs officers. So why are they in such short supply now? Seems to me, then USIA must have done something right that is missing in the State Department. Might be useful to find out what that was.
As someone who spent a considerable number of years on the cultural/exchanges side of the house I can tell you that learning to manage exchange programs well takes time. It includes paying lots of attention to details, money, people, and politics. A Ph.D. helps - as the FAC Report suggests - but one does not need an advanced degree to be a terrific Cultural Affairs Officer. I've worked for and with any number who did not have the credential.
The ability to run a successful exchange program does not come drifting down upon an incumbent like manna from heaven: the secret to success is lengthy on-the-job apprenticeships that begin in the junior ranks. Under State, however, wanna-be cultural affairs officers spend those first several years in visa mills. Now that's fine for Consular Officers because visas are part of the territory - and it's clear we need more of them (State's badly understaffed overall), but not for people who need the time to learn the exchanges trade.
Huge gaping holes - or positions filled by the unqualified - just demonstrate once again the disconnect between what this administration describes as priorities and its failure to provide the people and resources to make those programs work.
Deeds speak louder than words
Seems to me the resources question and how those resources are distributed are fundamental parts of the problem. I'm not savvy enough to figure out how much money the State Department devotes to public diplomacy but I am pretty sure that a large proportion goes to educational and other exchanges. For the coming fiscal year just over $500 million will be devoted to exchanges.
If I remember the funding formula correctly, about 85% of that goes to various American institutions - from airlines to universities and private exchange organizations - the latter doing much of what the government used to do. Please correct me if I've got it wrong.
Today the Department manages grants, not programs or people. Even when I worked in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in the mid-1990s, the staff had become foremost contracting officers and most were not happy about it. Many previously satisfying jobs had been outsourced. I'm not sure how this saves anyone money in the long run and it seems to me it just adds another layer, costs more and assures less public and Congressional accountability.
In the overall scheme of things, $500 million for what Karen Hughes has identified as the single most effective public diplomacy activity is just plain peanuts. Take out the $100 - $125 million that goes for contractor administrative overhead and the total comes to around $400 million or less. It's also possible that an additional amount is devoted to helping to fund civil service exchange specialist positions in Washington.
$500 million for international exchanges and $11 billion for Missile Defense
It's even more of a bad joke when compared with the $11 billion destined this coming year for a Missile Defense system which doesn't work, is internationally destabilizing, grossly unpopular, of questionable necessity and foremost enriches two major military contractors.
Now I realize that Ms. Hughes does not control the Pentagon budget, but isn't she supposed to be a chief W confidante? And wouldn't you think that a person with that kind of access would be Johnny-on-the spot to point out that there's something wrong with this picture? But maybe she doesn't have that kind of clout after all. Or maybe she just doesn't take her job all that seriously. Or maybe she doesn't get the broader picture . . .