By Patricia H. Kushlis
How much do you want to bet that whichever presidential candidate – particularly the two remaining on the Democratic side - wins in November, America’s standing in the world will improve. So much of what we see reflected in opinion poll after opinion poll in country after country reflects the unpopularity of the most unpopular president this country has inflicted on the world at least since the US claimed great power status years ago.
It’s impossible to turn a sow into a silk purse – as every grade school kid should know - and it’s not only W’s policies, but also his persona – the face that appears on the front of those policies – that contributes big time to this country’s huge image problem abroad.
But how long will the international grace period last for the new president? Six weeks? Six months? One year?
Seems to me it all depends on what the incumbent does and how he or she presents himself or herself and his or her policies abroad. The further the new president distances himself or herself from W-send-in-the-bombers-unilateralist and his fellow travelers, the better this country will be received abroad. At least for a little while.
A popular new face at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue might even be enough to send Osama Bin Laden scurrying to the back of his cave to rethink his strategy and Ahmadinejad to Qom to write a new script for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Now I’m not arguing that the US also doesn’t need to develop effective means of delivering a new president’s message. That’s part of the problem too. It’s just that all the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men cannot begin to repair this country’s image in the world until the king himself is changed.
As I read about the latest round of public diplomacy kurfluffering on Capitol Hill just before the Memorial Day Recess, I couldn’t help but wonder about the point of these legislative activities so late in this administration’s day.
Who cares . . .
whether James Glassman is finally approved by the Senate to replace his pal Karen Hughes as the new Czar of Public Diplomacy at the State Department? Won’t make an iota of difference. Seems to me that the steam is out of this administration. In fact, it’s in the last stages of senility.
There will be no big – or even small – initiatives unless, of course, the bomb-Iran-now-folk finally get their way and are allowed to set off one last large stink in the unstable Middle East. Otherwise new proposals and new policies will have to wait until a new team comes on board – but, a warning; the new president won’t have all day.
So what . . .
if Congressman Smith is pushing a bill on information operations/public diplomacy (take your choice) calling for any number of things most of which have been thought of before – including yet another study of a badly flawed operation – yawn – and shelved. I’ll bet this is foremost another example of way too much money available to a US military that still doesn’t know how to spend it. In this case, the sad thing is that the Pentagon needs to learn when it is time to bow out – and let the civilians take over. Guy Farmer’s recent article in “The Nevada Appeal” describes well his own experiences with this same problem in Granada years ago.
Clearly the information operations types who contributed the DOD jargon to Smith’s bill have no idea what public diplomacy is all about or – for that matter - how it differs from information warfare. There are two different and thought-provoking takes on the contents of this bill by Matt Armstrong at Mountain Runner and Kim Andrew Elliott discussing International Broadcasting and Public Diplomacy
Of course, if the State Department understood how to design, staff and operate public diplomacy programs and did so adequately then DOD might have remained on its real field of battle and left the civilian side of informing and interacting with foreign publics to, well the civilians.
Unfortunately, State has made such a hash of the programs that used to be handled by USIA, the organization that ran the civilian side of public diplomacy rather competently during the Cold War, that it left its own front door wide open to the DOD raiding party. The gung-ho, get the job done, Defense-types barged in and took the keys. You can’t really blame them, they were, after all, rushing in to fill an enormous vacuum.
Closing the barn door after the cow has left
Unfortunately, it’s far more difficult to get the cow back in the barn than if it hadn’t been let out in the first place, but that’s one of the things a new administration will need to do if it wants to engage constructively with the world. Civilians prefer engaging with civilians – not people in uniform. Uniforms have really bad connotations in lots of countries and the new administration needs to take this seriously when embarking on international engagement anew.
Clearly there has been far too little thought on the part of any of the three candidates about dealing with America’s image problem abroad although each of them has touched on a piece of it.
Nevertheless, they all need to realize that Americans do care how this country appears to the rest of the world. So whoever comes out on top in November should have at the ready a multifaceted, well-designed coherent public diplomacy proposal that includes new institutional arrangements as well as competent and trusted people to put them in place and make them work. It’s not just W’s leadership and his disastrous policies that have led to America’s lousy image abroad. The ways in which we communicate with much of the world are disasters too.
Meanwhile: The world’s clock will start ticking come January 2009: international good will will only last so long