All Public Diplomacy Should Be Local

By Patricia H. Kushlis

The following formed the basis for my comments on the American Public Diplomacy panel at the conference “Breaking Down the Walls: Increasing the Discourse in the American Policy Making Community,” held at the Phoenix Wyndham Hotel, March 31-April 2, 2010 and organized by Arizona State University. The panel was chaired by Gerald McLoughlin, Senior Advisor, US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.

All Public Diplomacy Should Be Local

I think the saying “all politics is local” applies as much to the successful conduct of public diplomacy as to the campaign for Maricopa County Clerk. This is my conclusion after serving over 27 years as a Foreign Service Officer with a specialty in public diplomacy in Europe, Asia and at USIA’s Washington, DC Headquarters.

What makes the public diplomacy specialty distinct from other Foreign Service functions for me is the accent on the word public. What made the term public diplomacy distinct from an individual working abroad for a private company, a school, a university or an NGO is the accent on the word diplomacy which, according to Webster’s Unabridged means governments and their accredited representatives conducting business with other nation states.

What is public diplomacy? 

In my view, public diplomacy means government representatives communicating with foreign publics. I see it as a process that combines a number of communications techniques, techniques that operate on different levels, apply different forms of discourse and dialog as well as occur at different rates of speed. These techniques are employed by government representatives from one country to inform, explain, engage, exchange information and opinions with citizens of another country whom ever they may be. Finally, I think public diplomacy is about attempting to influence the opinions of foreign publics for one’s own country’s policy goals.

It is this latter – the act of persuasion – that is the most difficult. Success is, at best, a sometime thing. By its very nature, the persuasive aspect of public diplomacy restricts it to the practice of and by governmental representatives. Who else, besides a public diplomat in the service of his or her country, would explain and advocate the zany as well as sensible policies and practices of any administration – Republican or Democratic?

The public diplomacy officer must be credible to be effective. This is where public diplomacy differs the most significantly from strategic communications. The latter, in my view, is foremost a military endeavor with battlefield objectives or at least military connotations and one that contains the use of black and gray propaganda as well as deceit in its communications arsenal.

Public diplomacy takes place primarily abroad

Where the public diplomacy rubber hits the foreign publics’ road happens primarily abroad. It is most effective when – to quote former USIA Director Edward R. Murrow – it breaks through that last three feet between individuals – often one person at a time. This is where opinions are formed, informed, misinformed and solidified. If the US wants to be part of that dialogue, its representatives need to be well informed, credible - and there on the ground  and in the flesh speaking the language and understanding the culture of the country.

Public diplomacy officers abroad should be viewed as nimble, front-line "first as well as second responders" and enabled to perform as such.  The largest challenges?  Rigidity abroad and at home.  Fortress embassies, loss of freestanding information centers and constraints placed upon public diplomacy officers in the field and in Washington that need replacing with a flexible yet coordinated organizational backbone.

Getting to know the people the US wants to influence personally and establishing credibility with them is how, at the very least, factual errors can be corrected and records set straight. Establishing credibility takes time - like the aging of fine wine: it does not happen overnight.

More high level appointees with solve nothing

I’m disappointed with the State Department’s recent skeletal public diplomacy power point Road Map because I think that the major “fixes” proposed – especially adding more high level bureaucrats to an already hierarchical, rigid and stratified organization in Washington - will not solve the extant fundamental structural problems facing public diplomacy today.

But Under Secretary Judith McHale is right that short one-two year tours at any given post hardly allow for public diplomacy officers to unpack and rearrange the furniture let alone learn the language, culture and penetrate the influence structure of a given country. I would add that filling public diplomacy positions with State Department cast-offs from other cones or not filling the positions at all makes the difficult task nigh impossible.

Public diplomacy needs to be seen and supported as a unique profession in and of itself, not tossed around as lesser assignments for unassignable political or consular officers. Furthermore, a public diplomacy officer abroad needs to focus primarily on the people in the country to which he or she is assigned - not the Embassy's front office.  As long as public diplomacy remains in the State Department, changing the Department's attitude and approach to public diplomacy officers and public diplomacy itself, therefore, needs to become a major goal.

Meanwhile, I think the public display of fear demonstrated by hiding public diplomacy officers and offices in fortress embassies behind high walls located in remote suburbs publicly demonstrates a weakness unbecoming of a super power. I this it is the antithesis of what public diplomacy should be about.

Ideology

How important is an overriding ideological approach to public diplomacy? In reality, I don’t think buzz words like “Evil Empire,” “war on terror,” or “war of ideas” for instance matter much abroad.  In certain countries and situations such slogans can even be counterproductive.  Promulgating a single counter-narrative?  Please - save it for the Hill.

Regardless of where I served, no one single-phrase-fits-all campaign could begin to capture the multitude of bilateral and multilateral issues an Embassy deals with on the ground. This was true during the darkest days of Soviet power. It is also true now. The issues between countries are complex. They change as events change and are often country or, at least, region specific.  Rigid Washington generated ideological rhetoric needs to be swapped for rapidly delivered policy-specific guidance to allow a public diplomacy officer to respond to the burning issues of the day. Attempting to talk to the Greeks, for instance, about engaging in an anti-terrorism “war of ideas” right now when their economy has just escaped collision with an iceberg, would be an exercise in futility.

Where a single ideological mantra was and may still be significant is on Capitol Hill as a way of convincing otherwise isolationist or recalcitrant members of Congress – to support increases in public diplomacy budgets and personnel.

What does matter?  Form should follow function, not the reverse

I think the field and its activities abroad should take priority – not self-serving demands of a Washington bureaucracy or its contract agencies. 

The public diplomacy officers in the field are the people who should know best the issues that need addressing, the ins and outs of the local communications environment, and the people who should be reached. If a public diplomacy officer doesn’t he or she should not be in the job.

This also means getting public diplomacy offices and officers out of Embassy fortresses and into separate US information centers wherever possible.  Like the Peace Corps, US information centers should be accessible to the public.  If this can be accomplished through  current US laws and administrative structures, so be it.  If not, then public diplomacy should be removed from State and the restrictive laws changed.

While a British Council type educational and cultural organization divorced from press and media works very well for the British,  having been a US Cultural Affairs Officer, an Information Officer and Public Affairs Advisor in Europe and Asia, I often found the "great divide"  between information and education/culture a pencil-thin smudged line.  Add the stand-alone separately administered and funded Binational Fulbright Commissions into the US equation and the separation issue becomes even murkier.  Furthermore, such a development will not solve public diplomacy's problems in Washington because public diplomacy in an American context means far more than separately administered educational and cultural affairs. 

In reality, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs has not fared all that badly under State - the Bureau has a separate line item that has kept its funding intact.  It also has a coterie of contract agencies that see the exchanges money continues to flow - although I would be far happier if more went to performing arts, to reestablish university-to-university linkages and school to school exchanges than in the current configuration. The development of exhibit programs that extend beyond a few high priced paintings hung in an Ambassador's living room would also be nice.

Restoration of planning documents crucial

The restoration of formal planning documents – as proposed in the Road Map – is crucial to making public diplomacy work abroad. These documents need to be flexible – not set in stone like the Soviet Five-Year Plan – but also provide the framework for making public diplomacy work abroad. They also need to be field generated. This is also where program measurement and evaluation should be found. Meanwhile, Washington needs to be reorganized physically and mentally to produce a flexible, and well financed and staffed enough organization to support the field in a coordinated fashion. 

Resources and staff jealously spread across bureaus in a large department which sees public diplomacy as a last minute add-on and with an Under Secretary who lacks overall authority does not and will not work. Adding seven more high level positions – five of which are not controlled by the Under Secretary makes no sense.

The primary problem with State Department support for the field, however, is whether the Department is capable - or even interested - in managing operational programs in a meaningful way.  Secretary of State John Foster Dulles  - apparently behind the establishment of USIA and USAID in the 1950s - thought not.   He  seemingly believed they diminished the Department's then preeminent policy formulation role. What has happened since 1999 to prove him wrong?  Nothing as far as I can see. 

In my view, the USIA function that has suffered the most under State Department reign is not educational exchanges but International Information Programs (IIP): a bureau plagued with mid-level staff shortages, lack of consistent high level direction, spotty funding and questionable long-term commitment to focus on national security and other hard policy issues.

The policy content on America.gov  is better and far more relevant than earlier this year when national security and other major policy issues were hardly even part of the website's offerings, but there's a lot more that could and should be done. Meanwhile, let’s not even talk about the bureau's direct support for the field.

And, until Jim Glassman's brief tenure as Under Secretary at the end of the Bush 43 administration, the Bureau had fallen grossly behind the information technology curve whereas before the merger with State in 1999, it had been at both the technology and policy promulgation forefront.

New US Information Centers will need coordinated Washington support

More importantly, IIP’s field equivalent is not the lone press attaché who can take a reporter to lunch and hand out the Embassy's (or America.gov's) web address - but the free standing US Information Centers where foreigners really do have a chance to meet Americans and obtain information about the country – those hybrid information and cultural institutions that combine open shelf libraries, reference services, internet access, space for information and cultural programs that are run by American officers in the field. Some centers even teach English depending on demand. 

They become gathering places for those wanting contacts with America and its representatives. They often became precious resources for the community – from a member of parliament, a soon to be Foreign Minister, a journalist or a professor researching a paper to the university student who may grow up to become any one of them. So modern technology is nice and the US – which invented the Internet after all - needs to be at the forefront.  But it's far from everything.

The Internet is great - but has limitations

A policy-focused web portal is crucial and I'm glad to see the recent face-lift on America.gov.  Internet and satellite broadcasting are opening up faster and wider channels of information flow than ever before but many countries are not as wired as the US, Europe, Japan, Israel and Singapore.    Besides, raw information needs to be put in a context people can understand. 

Technology should be seen as an opportunity.  It should be employed as appropriate to the media climate and capabilities in a particular country and/or region.  Information technology - like the telegraph or the papyrus - is simply a means to an end: enhancing communications between and among people.  But before jumping into the new technology pond with all four feet, public diplomacy officers also need to assess the communication realities on the ground.  This is where those pesky and currently missing planning documents come in.

What Small Step Next?

With minimal restructuring, therefore, I would let ECA be ECA, but I would press President Obama hard on his campaign promise to re-establish Information Centers abroad, especially, but not exclusively in the Muslim world. To make such Centers work well, there needs to be considerable coordinated and sustained support from Washington.  Such support needs to flow quickly, continuously and can't dry up. Some of this support is already part and parcel of IIP like reference specialists and speaker recruitment. Other pieces, like English teaching specialists  -could be moved in from ECA and perhaps elsewhere. A Centers Management office that advises and assists on administrative matters would need to be established.  All of this would be one very small step forward, but if done properly, could begin to reap significant public diplomacy rewards in the not so distant future.