PD Today
Part 5
By Patricia H.
Kushlis and Patricia Lee Sharpe
For twenty years America’s
leaders neglected public diplomacy.
After the U.S. had
won the Cold War and the USSR
fell apart, people who should have known better crowed about the “end of
history,” the Secretary of State spoke of the U.S. as the “indispensable nation”
in a unipolar world, and USIA was absorbed and dismembered by the State
Department.
Then history
restarted. Russia
got uppity, “cheese-eating Old Europe” rebelled, China
and India
reinvented themselves, and the Muslim World bestirred itself. But the George W. Bush administration had
already decided, well before 9/11, that the U.S. didn’t need diplomacy,
alliances or negotiation to work its will on the world. Raw unilateral power
would do. By the end of 2008, America
was hated, its wars weren’t going well and its economy had crashed. The days of go-it-alone were over. Even the Bush administration knew that
diplomacy needed another chance.
Opportunity Still Beckons
Unfortunately,
while the State Department puzzled over what to do with its public diplomacy
step-child, the Pentagon began to spend hundreds of millions of dollars a
year on PD simulacra. The resulting
series of highly visible fiascos will undermine the credibility of the real
thing for years to come, assuming that the State Department can regain control
over communications with foreign publics—or seriously cares to. Unfortunately,
nine months into the Obama administration, there is no sign that the State
Department’s budget will be proportionate to the need for savvy communications
on a global scale. If State goes hungry,
public diplomacy will continue to subsist at starvation level. Budgets speak. It looks as if America’s foreign policy will remain
over-militarized.
Discouraging as
this is, it’s important to remember that moving money from one department to
another isn’t as easy as it should be.
Here’s the conundrum: the president proposes a budget and Congress signs
the checks, but the State and Defense Department budgets are processed through
separate Congressional committees, each subject to outside influence. When it comes to lobbying Congress, the
Pentagon and its generous contractors are far more adept than Foggy Bottom,
especially since State’s limp goody
bag attracts very few well-heeled
lobbyists.
Yet, even if the
merest fraction of Pentagon funds could be transferred to the State
Department’s Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy to beef up PD staffing and
enhance PD programming, that pittance (from the Pentagon point of view) could
make a vast difference—providing, of course, the money is protected from the
departmental raiders who have made a habit of siphoning PD-intended funds and
staff slots into other State Department offices. Ever since consolidation in 1999, funds
intended for educational exchanges and certain cultural programs have been
firewalled by law, which is to say, they can be put to no other use. Yet, as we have explained elsewhere, a
well-balanced public diplomacy program is not limited to those highly visible educational
exchanges and cultural events. All
public diplomacy funding, including desperately needed budget increases for
beefed up information programs and the reestablishment of American centers
abroad, should be equally non-fungible.
Otherwise, even if the Pentagon lets more than a few dollars slip
through its fingers, public diplomacy’s ability to influence events will
continue to be compromised.
But we can
dream. Barack Obama’s popularity remains
high abroad, his speech in Cairo
had resonance in the Islamic world, and his decision to work with the Europeans
while also engaging the Russians and Chinese shows signs of paying off. He may yet wake up to the power of and need
for a more securely institutionalized public diplomacy capacity. However, as time goes on and hard choices are
made, his popularity could slip, and his ability to massage budgets would
lessen accordingly. Meanwhile, Secretary
of State Clinton’s travels to India,
the Far East, Africa and Latin America have
been well-planned and well-received. Hopefully, as the U.S.
withdraws from Iraq and
finds a sensible and sustainable equilibrium in Afghanistan
and Pakistan,
the Obama administration will realize that fluid situations create great opportunities
for public diplomacy, assuming the tool kit is kept well-stocked and at the
ready. To the extent that Obama
strenuously reaffirms the values of the rule of law, due process, the
separation of powers, open government, the unacceptability of torture, and the
inalienable civil rights of every citizen, public diplomacy can help America
to regain its dangerously diminished moral and intellectual preeminence. But the tool kit isn’t ready, because public
diplomacy has been systematically neglected for twenty years. At minimum, the State Department’s
organizational chart must be revamped, the PD mission must be explicitly
reaffirmed, the budget must be enhanced and protected and leadership
recruitment must be based on more rigorous qualifications.
Off-Target
Leadership Choices
When the Obama
administration nominated the internationally visible and globally well-liked
Hillary Clinton for Secretary
State, we watched, with
high hopes, to see who would be nominated to the Under Secretary for Public
Diplomacy job. For the past twenty
years, under both Bush and Clinton administrations, the top PD position had
been filled by otherwise brilliant people who did not understand that public
diplomacy is like nothing else in the communications world. Two disappointing incumbents were stars in the
advertising and public relations worlds. But promoting America isn’t the same as selling
cars or colas. Then came a presidential
crony who may have understood Texas politics and American motherhood, but she
ludicrously misread the mentality of educated Muslim women and was equally out
of her depth when attempting to communicate on other global issues.
Unfortunately the
Obama administration has followed the lead of its predecessors in nominating,
as Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, a figure whose public pronouncements to
date suggest a shallow understanding of diplomacy and, worse, a superficial
understanding of the wider world. Judith
McHale, late of the Discovery Channel, attempted to pad her largely irrelevant
vita by stressing, during her Congressional confirmation hearing, that growing
up as the child of a Foreign Service Officer made her especially well qualified for
the job. Now the authors of this series
are both mothers of Foreign Service brats, and over the years we have known
many more. Believe us; that experience alone does not translate into a credible
qualification for leading this country’s public diplomacy efforts. Indeed, McHale
to date far is proof that more, by far, is needed.
More seriously, we wonder how many truly qualified candidates were
offered the job and turned it down.
Why wouldn’t they?
Who of any major caliber would want the
Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy as the position is presently
constituted? Who would take a job that
has become powerless by design? There
are only two ways to attract top talent to lead America’s public diplomacy efforts
again. (1) Recreate USIA as an
independent agency with a clear mandate, a seat on the National Security Council
and an adequate budget. (2) Or, at
minimum, restructure the State Department’s organizational chart to give the
Under Secretary direct supervisory control over public diplomacy staff, budget
and programming within the Department and at US missions abroad.
Confused and
Neglected Mandates
Oddly enough, the
two founding mandates for handling public diplomacy within the State Department
were sweeping enough to have attracted the most ambitious talents: (1)
The Under Secretary would be responsible for coordinating all US
government public diplomacy efforts.
Notice that no exception was carved out to allow the military or any other
agency to conduct go-it-alone public diplomacy programs whether or not funds
were available internally. (2) Meanwhile, the Under Secretary would not
only oversee the day-to-day operations of public diplomacy within the Department
of State, but also represent the US
government on the BBG (Broadcasting Board of Governors), a bipartisan board of
directors that oversees the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and an increasingly
confused array of US
government-supported foreign broadcasting spin-offs.
What’s getting in
the way of accomplishing these mandates?
Lack of clarity, focus and bureaucratic infighting within the State
Department, for one thing, plus constant turf battles with the Pentagon, which
has expanded its jurisdiction to development projects as well as public
diplomacy over the past decade. Moreover,
when the new Secretary of State announces that her department’s mission is
“diplomacy, development and defense,” it’s not clear which entity is doing what
and who is responsible to whom, a bad sign for the proper performance of any of
those functions. The result is bound to
be confusion, gaps, duplication, those turf-battles
and unhappiness.
What’s more, since the Pentagon’s wish list is always munificently
funded—the military’s strategic communications operation alone receives more,
by many multiples, than the entire State Department, filling the step-child
position of Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy can’t help but be an extremely
challenging head hunting operation.
We say step-child
because there are also enough internal organizational complications to make a
really qualified candidate hesitate to take the position. The Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, one
of six Under Secretaries, has no control and not much influence over PD
staffing abroad or in Washington. This is the province of State’s human
resources bureaucracy in cooperation with the geographic bureaus, who often
fill PD slots at embassies and consulates with unenthusiastic under-qualified
or unqualified officers—when the slots aren’t left vacant, that is. Needless to say, the quality of public
diplomacy programs suffers, and the Foreign Service is diminished by the lack
of a pipeline for training an experienced cadre of public diplomacy experts.
Once again the
Pentagon is there to fill the gap, using its bottomless resources to assign
strategic communications teams to US Embassies.
The teams’ often incompatible activities and narrow focus undermine the
credibility of outspent, out-staffed public diplomacy efforts. Other agencies show signs of doing the
same. Just as there is no longer one
VOA speaking clearly and proudly for America,
America’s public diplomacy voice
is becoming a fragmented, incoherent, cacophony, each strain speaking for some
one agency or department, none speaking for the U.S. as a whole.
Clearly, then,
the Under Secretary for PD is fulfilling neither mandate. Tails don’t wag dogs, so the puny PD
operation in the State Department certainly can’t
influence, let alone oversee PD-like operations in
the Pentagon, and the Under Secretary occupies an equally powerless slot within
the tradition-bound State Department itself.
Let’s face it. Even without a
designated seat on the National Security Council, the Director of the small, independent
USIA was far more powerful and influential. What to Do?
The studies and
recommendations proffered (and ignored) since 9/11 are too numerous to list
here. The mere fact that they exist
indicates that something is seriously wrong with America’s public diplomacy
picture. Recommendations have ranged
from simply establishing a permanent seat on the National Security Council for
the Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy to creating a non-governmental entity
called “USA-World Trust” to be funded jointly by the US government and American
private sector. In the latter case, of
course, the resulting organization would be one more addition to the ever
proliferating ranks of “non-governmental” organizations receiving federal
funding. It would lack the clout and the
strong claim to international attention that’s automatically accorded to an
organization speaking as America’s
official voice. What’s more, the US would cease to have a coherent public
diplomacy presence in the world at the very time when public persuasion is
increasingly essential to preserving America’s ability to influence
world affairs.
A more attractive
and reasonably feasible option for reorganization is a modest reform proposal originating
with figures who know public diplomacy and the State Department well. If implemented, it would by statute unify
control of existing State Department public diplomacy staff, programs and funds
both in Washington and in
missions abroad under the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy. This proposal
for well-defined PD consolidation is referred
to in the final document of a conference held at
White Oak this past winter. Conference
participants included American public diplomacy specialists as well as
prominent concerned citizens. In our view, the internal restructuring proposed
in the White Oak document represents the bare minimum of what needs to be done. What it dramatically fails to do is to
address the Under Secretary’s current inability to coordinate public diplomacy
efforts government-wide. Furthermore, modest
and sensible as this proposal may be, experience to date suggests that State’s
internal fiefdoms and vested interests will continue to obstruct the emergence
of an effective, unified, influential public diplomacy operation within the Department
itself. Bureaucratic politics can be
deadly.
Others have
suggested the creation of a hybrid new civilian program agency that would house
development and humanitarian assistance as well as public diplomacy operations,
but the two functions, so destructively absorbed into the State Department ten
years ago, are simply too different to be jointly administered. America’s foreign policy encompasses the entire
world, which means that America’s
public diplomacy program must also have global scope. Foreign aid programs, on
the other hand, are concentrated in areas with very specific needs. As if this obvious mismatch were not
disqualification enough, it should be noted that, during the 12930s evidently,
a similar marriage of development and public diplomacy was tried. It didn’t last for long.
A Proven Model
All in all, then,
it’s hard to resist the conclusion that public diplomacy and development
support should once again be housed in separate agencies, each with appropriate
provisions for cooperation and coordination with the State Department, of
course. We’ve done this before and very
well. We can do it again. As US economic
power shrinks, not absolutely, but in comparison to rising economies like
China, India and Brazil, as the various regions of the world jockey for more
respect and a bigger role within global decision-making bodies, as restive or
submerged ethnic groups challenge international borders and internal governance,
as religion reasserts itself as a world-changing force, as environmental and
climate-related issues claim ever greater attention, as established political
and economic doctrines fall increasingly under challenge, as the world is
bombarded by old media and new media churning out entertainment, information
and disinformation, and as nuclear ambitions and capabilities proliferate,
the U.S. needs every communications
skill and device it can muster simply to maintain let alone extend its
influence. Now more than ever a
comprehensive, coherent public diplomacy effort of global scope seriously matters. Isn’t it time to reclaim the profession we
invented and that others, very cleverly, are
copying? Why
should we find ourselves beaten at our own game?
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