By Patricia Lee Sharpe
We all know that public opinion, mass or elite, can’t be ignored in today’s world. In democracies public opinion rules. Well, mostly. Even under authoritarian regimes, it’s extremely influential, as the term “Arab street” indicates. Unfortunately, according to reliable polling data from all continents, global publics have found less and less to like about the U.S. over the past eight years. America is neither respected nor admired. As a result, our ability to achieve policy goals without resort to force is sadly diminished. It’s a public diplomacy disaster for the country that virtually invented public diplomacy.
The PD Void
The Bush administration’s world view and its blustering unilateral policies are the primary cause of this disregard, but the individuals and institutions currently entrusted with America’s public diplomacy have managed to make the unpalatable inedible. The underfunded State Department, which absorbed the U.S. Information Agency in 1999, has misused to the point of destruction the professional resources it inherited. Nor, since 9/11, have the generously-funded Department of Defense and its over-compensated sub-contractors—hundreds of millions of dollars annually!—done any better. Together, the Pentagon and the State Department have not even been able to gain appreciation for President Bush’s laudable anti-AIDS initiative in Africa.
This state of affairs is really quite sad because public diplomacy is pretty much an American creation. For nearly fifty years the U.S. image and its influence were bolstered by an extraordinary and amazingly cost effective public diplomacy program executed by the U.S. Information Agency, whose activities and personnel were—I never ceased to wonder at this!—admired and trusted around the globe. U.S.I.A., an independent agency working in close cooperation with the State Department, told America’s story, explained America’s policy and presented America’s intellectual and cultural accomplishments in a thoroughly au courant, well-coordinated and cannily influential way. Attuned to local sensibilities and speaking local languages, U.S.IA. professionals called upon traditional as well as newly-invented media of communication to promote an understanding of America and Americans and to generate sympathy and support for U.S. policy. Above all, by insisting on impeccable intellectual honesty—the famed warts-and-all approach, U.S.I.A won the often grudging trust of critics and preserved the good will of carefully nurtured friends.
Off to a Brilliant Start
Originating during WWII as America’s truthful corrective to Hitler’s corrosive propaganda, U.S.I.A was headed in those early days by a Director whose journalistic bona fides and reputation for eloquent but principled straight talk quickly gained support from listeners. Building on that extraordinary start, the U.S. Information Agency evolved into the voice par excellence of a free and democratic people during a grim and prolonged Cold War. Finally, during the Carter administration, complete responsibility for the educational and cultural exchanges, which U.S.I.A. officers abroad had already been managing for the State Department, was formally transferred to U.S.I.A. America’s public diplomacy palette was complete.
The advantages of such a unitary approach to public diplomacy were immediately and lastingly apparent. Day in, day out, picking and choosing among an extraordinary array of wholly out-in–the-open intellectual and cultural tools, U.S.I.A. professionals laid the foundation on which global support for the entire range of U.S. policy initiatives could be—and was—built. Through press releases, lectures by distinguished professors, dancers, dramatists, pianists, libraries, English language institutes, scholarships or fellowships for promising students as well as established academics—and more, U.S.I.A officers presented the world with an engaging but accurate picture of the U.S., all the while feeding their uniquely intimate understanding of countries and cultures into the American foreign policy process.
The Costs of Misconceiving PD
That is no longer the case. When, as now, the varied elements of public diplomacy are housed in competing agencies and departments or farmed out to private entities, America’s voice becomes diffused, uncertain and confusing. Worse, from an internal point of view, radical decentralization and fragmentation jeopardizes the possibility of acting rapidly, authoritatively and appropriately during foreign policy crises. Ironically, and no less problematic, the costs of fragmented administration soar. Each department or agency, public or private, has its own administrative superstructure and a duplicate set of personnel more or less at the ready; each undercuts the others to get a bigger share of the pie, while doing its best to conceal as much as possible from the competition. So much for a finely-targeted, well-coordinated message! Finally, when military psy-ops mimic straightforward public diplomacy, the usefulness of PD is undercut. Its credibility is destroyed.
The world enjoys a marvelous multiplicity of creative voices. Americans are justly proud that many of those creative people are American, but private voices do not represent America as such. Each is individual. Each is partial. Each serves his or her personally-defined interests in an idiosyncratic way, however idealistic. This is all to the good, but the public voice of the American people speaking through the American government has a very different goal: to explain American policy, culture, society and history so convincingly that others will join us in building a world in which Americans (and others) may prosper and be secure.
From time to time it is suggested that public diplomacy should be privatized in one way or another. In fact, nothing stops any American individual, corporation or non-profit entity from addressing any topic of major or marginal global interest. Countless private citizens do indeed travel to other countries for business or pleasure. Some of them reflect well on the U.S. Some do not. But no one constrains them. This lack of constraint is the vital differentiator between so-called “citizen” diplomacy and the efforts of those who must think of the welfare of the nation as a whole every hour of every day. The official voice of the American people conversing with the world needs to be comprehensive, clear, coherent, consistent and, above all, trustworthy and authoritative.
Back to an Better Future
U.S.I.A. was not axed because its officers were incompetent or because its programs were ineffective. U.S.I.A. was a victim of success. When the Berlin Wall fell, the world loved America. During that crazy interlude of euphoria at the end of the Cold War, however, there were those who argued that full scale public diplomacy wouldn’t be needed any more. Tax dollars would be saved and nothing would be lost, they insisted, if U.S.I.A were merged into the State Department. Unfortunately, by the time it was all too clear that history was by no means over, U.S.I.A had been dismantled.
It’s time to recognize that, in the world we inhabit today, sophisticated public diplomacy skills are as important as they ever were, I think. It’s time to rectify that naive post Cold War mistake and reconstitute an independent public diplomacy agency to serve as the voice of an open society and a democratic people. Only a single official public diplomacy agency can do the whole job, do it continuously, do it persuasively, do it cost-effectively. The proof is in the past, which could also be the future.
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