By Patricia H. Kushlis
You have to hand it to the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy for engaging in what must have been a Herculean tooth pulling exercise with the State Department’s normally secretive Human Resources Division in an endeavor to determine what has happened to America’s public diplomacy specialists since 1999 when much of the U.S. Information Agency was slurped up by State. This is the subject of the Commission’s most recent report. It has a terrific title “Getting the People Part Right” and is the first report I’ve seen on the topic. It raises many of the right questions. Now almost ten years since 1999, this report, its approach and the resultant findings (and more) are badly needed.
Alarming
Anyone interested in learning about how the vast majority of civilian professionals tasked with tending America’s image abroad are being treated at Foggy Bottom and in US Embassies abroad should read this 45 page report. It is well written, organized and thought provoking. It explores recruiting, hiring, training, bureaucratic structures, institutional cultures as well as career advancement and the ever important question of impact - all in non-jargon laden terms.
In short, despite all the Bush administration’s rhetoric about the importance of public diplomacy and Condi Rice’s maxim that “we all do public diplomacy,” the State Department has too often neglected the very people who are tasked to “do public diplomacy.” Moreover, it has failed to provide the additional training necessary to enable Ambassadors or other high level embassy officials to “do” even a smiggen of public diplomacy right either.
It’s not for no reason that many public diplomacy specialists who could leave, left at the first opportunity or planned to leave as soon as possible after the consolidation announcement in fall 1997. And it’s also not for no reason that the US military has subsequently inserted its own information operations specialists into US Embassies abroad – presumably to pick up the slack in human capital missing from State.
State’s “Red-haired step children”
In my experience, far too often too few State Department officers ever understood how to use public diplomacy staff, programs and funding effectively. When I joined the Foreign Service in 1970, public diplomacy specialists were derisively labeled “red haired step children” by State. It’s clear that this part of the equation has not changed.
Unfortunately, this latest public diplomacy report demonstrates that public diplomacy officers remain State’s red-haired step-children. Despite the fact that the Department couldn’t wait to get its hands on USIA (in particular its budget) in its Greater State Department expansionary days under then Secretary Madeleine Albright who had made a devil’s pact with then Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Jesse Helms to sell out USIA, the public diplomacy specialty remains among the two most popular among new recruits. But unless things change quickly, the reality is that if these newly minted public diplomacy diplomats want to get ahead they need to shift into some other field and rapidly.
What should be the requirements for public diplomacy specialists?
There’s much to-ing and fro-ing and tut-tutting in the report with respect to lack of specialized recruitment and training for public diplomacy officers. I don’t doubt that it is real. But I wonder: what sorts of people would make good public diplomacy officers as opposed to, say, political officers? Is there really that much of a qualitative difference?
I would argue that just as the best journalists are products of liberal arts colleges not undergraduate journalism schools – so too are successful political and public diplomacy officers liberal arts college graduates. Both need to know how to analyze, distinguish shades of gray, perceive nuances, read between the lines and understand people of all cultures well. They need to be fearless, honest and persuasive in talking with others but also recognize when its time to back off and listen as well as talk. Explaining our own country, society, politics and values are also part of the bargain. Yet these skills – in the end – take years to develop. They don’t just walk, prepackaged, through the door.
Three Cups of Tea – And Some Valium for Washington
Public diplomacy and political officers must understand how to work in other cultures and to speak and comprehend foreign languages at advanced levels. And finally they need to understand how to operate in one of the most hierarchical, hide-bound and stultifying bureaucracies in the U.S. government.
Where political and public diplomacy officers differ, however, is in terms of management skills – although in the end, at the higher levels both need them because, as this report shows, far more political officers make Ambassador each year than anyone else. And it’s not just Ambassadors, it also transcends to high level positions in the State Department that should be Public Diplomacy’s own but aren’t - as I learned from someone close to this report.
The numbers are startling: for 2007 there were only four Ambassadors who had specialized in public diplomacy versus 45 political officers, 26 economics officers, 12 administrative officers and 11 consular officers. (34 percent of all Ambassadors were political appointees.)
In the Department, career political, economic, administrative and consular officers often hold the top (under secretary) jobs in their respective substantive specialties, but not Public Diplomacy. That position has been, and continues to be a revolving door for political appointees. The Bush administration, if I’m not mistaken, is on number five in seven and one-half years.
Meanwhile, only a single public diplomacy specialist heads one of the three public diplomacy bureaus (International Information Programs) – but this is abnormal. Moreover, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs is headed by a political appointee, something that sometimes happened and sometimes didn’t in USIA days and the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs (usually also Department Spokesperson) has never been held by a public diplomacy specialist even though public diplomacy officers are the spokespeople for Embassies abroad. You would think, therefore, they should stack up well for the job – but not.
What is wrong with this picture? Why do public diplomacy specialists too often draw the short end of the stick? Could they simply be less qualified? Is something wrong with recruitment and training or did the problem result partially from the consolidation-prompted brain-drain-rush-for-the-exit that took place in the late 1990s when USIA went down the tubes and many veterans, on their own volition, disappeared.
How not to succeed in public diplomacy
Now I know the Advisory Commission’s report criticizes public diplomacy officer evaluations for stressing management skills and omitting outreach and powers of persuasion - arguing that in-house management chores are impediments to being out there in the public, interacting with people and showing the face and the flag.
I think both attributes are necessary. Here’s the dilemma: Without requisite planning and seamless logistics any program will crash and burn. On the other hand, having only six contacts or hiding behind a desk piled high with paper is not how to succeed in public diplomacy either.
There is no, repeat no way a cultural affairs officer can, for example, oversee the myriad of exchange programs and cultural programs without being a good manager. One suggestion (which the report’s authors also raise but question) is to do away altogether with public affairs officers to whom both cultural affairs and information officers report. Yet this removes – as my colleague Patricia Sharpe reminded me - a vital coordination function. It does so horizontally and vertically.
PAOs at large posts also provide a buffer between the cultural affairs and information officers whose job it is to get things done and the too many political ambassadors (now 34% of the total) who are demanding and generally clueless about what US national interests are, how to express them and to whom - or even what a Fulbright program is all about. Been there, seen it happen and was happy to have a PAO in between. Finland, by the way, has had five ambassadors - four of them political appointees - since the Bush administration began. The most recent just arrived this spring. None of her predecessors stuck around long enough to do much more than redecorate the residence – once again.
Further, if one thinks public diplomacy officers are now marginalized at large posts as yet another unintended consequence of consolidation, just wait until there are no PAOs and the cultural affairs and information officers rank as middle grade officers on the Embassy totem pole. That will be marginalization.
Personal contact and advocacy deficit
I wonder if, in fact, the personal contact and advocacy deficit among public diplomacy officers abroad as stressed in this report might not also have other roots: first, without a credible foreign policy and foreign policy leadership, how can anyone – even Hercules, Athena or the Salesman Who Knocks Twice – sell – or explain away - such damaged goods.
No self-respecting independent foreign journalists or academics are going to buy them regardless of the packaging or the persuasiveness of the salesperson. Nor should they.
The Fortress Embassy Syndrome
But second, the disappearance of most free-standing USIS facilities and the retreat of public diplomacy staff from our once-upon-a-time publicly accessible cultural and information centers, libraries and binational centers to behind Embassy crusader castle-electrified walls hidden somewhere out in the countryside is, in my view, an insurmountable barrier for effective communication with the people with whom one is supposed to be communicating. In my considered opinion, you have to be there, on site – much of the time – and with the doors wide open - to make that happen.
Without publicly accessible centers and offices near universities and editorial offices, trips beyond the moat become far more arduous. Without USIS transportation to call upon, even getting from here to there becomes problematical. In a place like Manila, for instance, a trip to visit even a major in-town university turns into a full day outing. Driving oneself is taking one’s life in one’s hands. Try driving along EDSA sometime.
Suggesting that a public affairs officer teach a course or write a blog might be a nice idea in theory as a way of helping to bridge communications gaps. But in reality, this is asking for mission impossible simply because of time constraints.
Starting a blog is one thing; keeping one fresh and relevant is another. I cowrite WhirledView and post two to three times a week: this just plain takes a lot of time. It’s harder than you might think and I couldn’t begin to do it in a foreign language.
Teaching a course? Right. Been there, done that too. First it took an excellent relationship with the appropriate faculty member – and the requisite academic credentials - to do so. If teaching on the side were to become a major public diplomacy task, then a PhD should be required for all new recruits. Second, teaching a university level class requires far more time outside the classroom than in. Done that, too. But that’s also why we have Fulbright lecturers to help fill the need.
An occasional guest lecture or speech, however, is a very different kettle of fish: this does not require the ongoing commitment that teaching a class does. But overall what I think works best is done at, through and out of free-standing, well-equipped, attractive, accessible and up-to-date USIS facilities. And yes, they can be secure enough in most countries without resembling Fort Knox. The only part of the operation that I think requires close proximity to an Ambassador is an embassy press spokesperson.
Training - or lack thereof
But let me move on to training: the report is right. Sure, State has increased the number of PD courses from four to eight – so what? None include the specific skills needed for successful communication or cross-cultural communication beyond two days here or three days there. Yes, there are classes that might have helped me – in particular speech writing and making - along with certain writing skills that I did not get. I could certainly have also benefitted from classes in cross cultural communication, negotiation and the art of persuasion. So the Commission’s recommendation that the Department institute a nine-month public diplomacy skills course – like its well reputed economics one - makes sense.
What I did get, however, was plenty of on-the-job training from day one and this is missing for today’s junior public diplomacy officers. If I were writing the rules, I would eliminate the current one-three years on State’s visa line or a year playing dodge the IEDs in Iraq or Afghanistan and substitute an overseas public diplomacy practicum at a large post with an excellent PAO and a nine month cross cultural communications course instead.
New public diplomacy officers normally now spend at least their first tour on some visa line or in a war zone. Given the ever increasing security paranoia, the number of years on the line could soon worsen because State may face a major shortfall in junior visa officers thanks to impending changes in the Visa Waiver Program. This could impact overseas staffing requirements as early as August. And who knows about the size of the future American presence in Iraq or Afghanistan under a new administration.
As for language training: FSI can only really get most students to the minimum professional proficiency level. In contrast, the British system adds on (or at least it used to) a couple of months of in-country language training immersion. This is when British diplomats I knew lived with a family and spoke the language daily in a city or village outside the capital. It makes a difference.
A Bizarre Structure
Finally, just a few words on the bizarre public diplomacy structure of the Department itself: This report hit the nail on the head. The quasi-integration of public diplomacy staff into the geographic regional offices has never made sense. Where I question the report’s contents, is a recommendation that public diplomacy officers be integrated into State’s country desks themselves. I do agree, however, with the report’s suggestion that the Department undertake a zero-based review of the public diplomacy staffing structure to see whether or not it functions optimally.
Here’s the problem: First, there are nowhere enough public diplomacy officers to integrate them into each country desk (with the exception of the largest countries, public diplomacy officers backstop several different countries within a region) and second, it seems to me that such integration is a recipe for further stripping away whatever public diplomacy expertise remains.
I suspect, given State’s track-record and attitude towards public diplomacy (which after all has never been its core mission), it wouldn’t be long before public diplomacy became only one small aspect of some junior desk officer’s overflowing portfolio and the one too often relegated to the bottom of the inbox.
What’s missing?
Clearly this report did not begin to address the overarching question as to whether public diplomacy should even remain under State’s tutelage in a new administration. Neither did it encompass all aspects of State’s public diplomacy human capital problem. But “Getting the People Part Right” did raise serious questions based on data it was able to wrest out of State that has been heretofore lacking – at least in public - about how well this country’s civilian public diplomacy capital is faring. That’s important in itself. I hope the Commission continues to hold the meetings, obtain data, and write and issue such high quality reports. It is, in the end, simply part of the public’s right to know how its taxpayers’ dollars are being spent.