WhirledView

Poaching, Propaganda and, Maybe, Romance: A Memoir that Turned into a Novel

Diana Forrest abandons a bad marriage, rejoins the Foreign Service and is sent to counter Soviet disinformation in Tanzania, where bribery corrupts the socialist ideal and elephant lovers are battling ivory poachers.

Toggling between a diffident boss and a hard-to-please Ambassador in a country that turns out to be a media wasteland, Diana spends weekends in the bush, usually with a Tanzanian colleague, whom she probably likes too much. Safari life involves her with local hunters who aren't above petty poaching.  The worst of them is covering up the murder of a headman adamantly opposed to the ivory racket.

Diana will be on probation for a year.  Then what?  Even if she can stay in the Foreign Service, she may not.

Meanwhile, Diana is making friends: a pair of baboon-loving primatologists; an American visa officer who actually says “yes”; a beer-dispensing village nurse; a park ranger too honest for his own safety; a professor desperate to keep her daughter; a French social worker dreading the results of a lover’s HIVntest; a Tanzanian secretary married to a smuggler; a roots-seeking, African-American fashionista; an embittered Tanzania-born Pakistani in the transport business; and courtly old Suleiman, a safari chef, whose snores are as resonant as lions’ roaring.

Those lions aren’t bit players. They move things along, as do the elephants, hippos, wildebeest, impala, cape buffalo, warthogs, baboons and malaria mosquitoes.

There’s serious stuff in this slice of the diplomatic life, all wholly relevant in these days of Russian disinformation and a  revived Cold War.  But Poachers isn’t a tract. You see. You feel. You care. About the people. About the wildlife. About the resilience of the land.  And there you are, on the savannah, leaning happily against an old termite mound, far from your companions—and way too far from the loaded rifle....

Um...sorry. No lions attack. No elephants charge. Diana tells the story, but it isn’t only hers. Think of a knockout engagement ring: a major brilliant wonderfully enhanced by the smaller sparklers encircling it.

P.S.  There's lots of humor, too.

Available on Amazon as well as Barnes & Noble and on order through your local bookstore.

What’s Really Shocking about Russian Hacking

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

On the Left the reaction was fear and outrage; on the Right indifference. Politics explains the polarity. Russian interference, impossible now to deny, thanks to Grizzley Steppe’s tip-of-the-iceberg data dump, was damaging Clinton while giving Trump a boost. A bromance, it seemed, was under way. Donald and Volya. With Hillary cast as the wicked witch in a Russian fairy tale.

It's all but certain that government-sponsored Russian hackers were stealing information from American individuals and institutions. Nothing out of the ordinary about that. Mosquitoes bite. But no one needs to get bitten, and prevention is easy. Screens. Bednets. Deet. Eliminting pools of stagnant water. Ditto with computers and all sorts of e-technology. They can be attacked and they can be protected. Unfortunately, most Americans and too may critical American institutions don’t take that responsibility seriously enough. Hence, American infrastructure is ripe for interruption and American data, including juicy email exchanges, are ripe for stealing. Our democracy rests on fragile grounds, by the way, if our elections are not safe from foreign manipulation.

Defencelessness Is Indefensible

The just released DHS-FBI report entitled Grizzley Bear not only identifies by name dozens of operators connected with Russian intelligence services, it tells people what to do when their computer operations have been compromised by attacks traceable to those actors.  Just this past week there was a false alarm involving a Vermont power company which, it was reported, had identified a compromised computer by using this vital information.  The computer involved was quarantined, the incident was reported— and it turned out that someone had jumped to unwarranted conclusions, a process clearly open to various interpretations. Prudent precaution? Conspiracy theory fodder?  Simple honest mistake?

But let's consider a worst case scenario anyway.

What if a compromised computer had been connected to the rest of the power company’s system and thus to the national grid that links power providers throughout the U.S.? Suddenly the entire U.S. goes dark and nothing—nothing!—works. The U.S. is defenseless. This is war, cyberstyle, and the Russians are clearly aware that the U.S. is not well defended. Given the vulnerability of U.S. cyber systems to outside attack, President Obama had to tread very carefully when it came to exacting a tit-for-tat price for Russia’s election fiddling—and, yes, TrumpTeam, this was a very big deal requiring a strong reaction. The wrong tit, however, could have resulted in a paralyzing tat. Not a good situation to be in.

While it is no surprise that Russia is hacking away at ill-defended American institutions, the complacency with which many Americans have greeted the Russian mischief is more than surprising. It is shocking. Some Trump supporters won’t even admit the possibility. Many “Progressives” fear a revival of McCarthyism. Both may argue that the mere existence of a massive American information-gathering apparatus exonerates the Russians from blame not only for stealing information but for swaying an American election. To me it's partisanship and/or objectivity gone mad.

Russian Dirty Tricks: an Old Story

I spent 23 years as a foreign service officer. Much of that time I served in Africa where I had to deal with Soviet propaganda charging that AIDS was created by the U.S. Army at Fort Detrick. People were dying in Africa. Their friends and relatives were angry and frightened. That false story was comforting. It said that the scourge had a known, external cause. In fact, AIDS came from chimps, and little by little I and my colleagues in the U.S. Information Service got the truth across. That wasn’t the only malicious Soviet disinformation we had to dispel over the years. Thus, openly, by every available and public medium, we defended the U.S. and promoted the superior economic and political system during the Cold War. And when, for a host of other reasons as well as our own efforts, the Berlin Wall tumbled, the Soviet Union crumbled, and people previously subservient to a brutally imposed Stalinism were free to construct their societies along democratic lines, I felt no shame. There was no moral equivalence. Ditto if we fast forward to compare today’s radically imperfect American democracy with Putin’s repressive one man rule in Russia. Unfortunately Donald Trump hasn’t noticed. Or maybe he doesn’t care.

Back in 1989, however, the U.S. crowed loudly. Much too loudly. “The sole surviving super power.” “The essential nation.” Etc. What we might call “Trumpian” braggadocio today. It was bad politics then and now. Being a good winner isn’t a genteel anachronism. The humiliated never forget.  Revenge is usually on the agenda.

Enter Vladimir Putin with a score to settle.

To repeat: humiliation, sooner or later, breeds retaliation, something that Donald Trump needs to learn. His tweets abound in smears and insults. He glories in stomping on losers, the apparently helpless and the hapless, as if a worm can’t turn—into a viper.  Ditto a cagey flatterer, like the President of Russia, who's been showering his American bosom buddy with flattery.  Which brings us to candidate Trump’s reaction to any suggestion that Russian interference might skew the election. A threat to U.S. democracy? Not at all!  “Bring it on!” he declared.  Meaning “help me trounce the witch.”

Who's the Really Clever Operator?

That’s where he crossed a line and came very close to treason, to put it mildly. His post-election behavior has been consistent, actively collaborating with a foreign power to discredit a sitting U.S. president and his policy.  Meanwhile, back to questionable electoral politics: an aspirant to the U.S. presidency courted victory via covert aid from a hostile foreign power already scheming to weaken long-standing American allies and to wean the U.S. from organizations that have, for the most part, strongly reinforced American policy. N.A.T.O., for instance. Even the U.N.

As an ego-blinded (“Putin loves me.”) Donald J. Trump blithely puts it, “Vladimir Putin is clever."

There’s something downright suicidal about Trump’s embrace of Putin. Once the U.S. is terminally fragile from internal divisions Trump himself has encouraged and totally isolated from allies he’s systematically denigrated, what happens? What if the bear hug gets a little too stifling and the U.S., thanks to Trump’s (mis)calculations, no longer has the strength to break away? Spying is normal. Circulating propaganda is normal. Trying to influence politics is normal. Not objecting, not resisting, not shaming, not countering—these are abnormal in the extreme.

Vital Questions

Is it any wonder, then, that a certain question is making the rounds: what’s in it for the Trump organization? Worse, is the Donald working for the U.S. or for Russia? Or, less culpably, when is he going to realize (or show us that he realizes) that running an international real estate operation for personal profit is child’s play compared to the multidimensional chess game of international politics in which do or die isn’t a metaphor?

In the meantime, those cyber vulnerabilities must be addressed. Above all, Americans need to solve the privacy vs. security conundrum, technically and legally. A door open to U.S. security services is also open to Russian hackers. On the other hand, given an inch the home grown snoopers usually take a mile or more.

 

Saudis Playing with Fire

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

If the documents recently made public on Wikileaks are authentic, and they appear to be, then Saudi Arabia seems to be doing a more ambitious job of public diplomacy than the U.S., its originator and once thoroughly competent practitioner.  There’s a major difference, a troubling difference, however.  The U.S. didn’t fool around with religion.  The Saudis do.  They are playing with the most sensitive, most explosive political dynamite available these days: Islamic sectarianism.  They’re even meddling in Kerala, one of the most peaceable, prosperous states in India.  Anyone who knows anything about the history of South Asia—e.g. the slaughter during Partition—notes this with trepidation.  

Wahabi Missionaries

Actually, the fact that Saudi Arabia is sponsoring missionaries to promote its brand of Islam throughout the world is not news to anyone who’s been following the history of religion in India, pre and post independence.  Before oil was discovered, Saudi Arabia was poor, but already there were “barefoot” mullahs pushing Wahabism in Northern India, where Sufism (heresy to Wahabis and other modern salafists, including the violent sort) had already become a major form of Islam.

But India hasn’t been the only target for Wahabi missionaries.  I saw evidence of Wahabi influence all around me when I was BPAO in Medan, Indonesia, in the 1980s. Visiting madrassas there, I saw teachers clad in traditional arab dress, long white gown, desert sheik headdress.  New mosques weren’t being built in the local fashion, like pagodas.  No.  Arab money was building cubistic little mosques whose prototypes I’d seen earlier in Kuwait.  Because I thought it a shame that a tolerant version of the faith was being subverted by a harsher one,  I reported all this back then.  No one was interested.  

Washington's Blind Eye

Oddly enough, official Washington has also shown little interest in following up on the many hints of money trails from royalty-connected, Saudi moneybags to fanatical sects seeking to impose Wahabism (or worse, including its I.S.I.S. descendent) on the rest of the Muslim world.  Long dependent on Saudi oil (though no more) the U.S. developed a habit of looking the other way when it came to violations of human rights within Saudi Arabia.  As for the funding of terrorism by Saudi citizens, many of whom are wealthy enough to take on the role of  bankrolling jihad when it would have been been impolitic for the monarchy itself to do so, the U.S. government was more interested in cutting off support  to Hamas and Hezbollah, as if the U.S. were no more than an arm of the Israeli government.  Instead of outing major terror-supporters, the U.S. has jailed petty contributors to charities which political innocents might well have believed to be wholly committed to humanitarian causes.

We are perhaps sadder now, but not much wiser.  Have we really taken in the fact that Wahabism is a precursor to Al Qaeda and to the various even more violent sects that are succeeding it—and which, irony of ironies, might end up by toppling our “good” friends in Riyadh?  The royal family and its fabulously wealthy inner circle have a life style that is pretty close to decadent.  So serious blowback is possible.  Meanwhile, these “friends” who are also the financers of a violent new Caliphate, have operated under the implied stamp of  U.S. approval, while the U.S., ironically, is trying to counter an extraordinarily successful  I.S.I.S.  

A Two-Faced Ally

Yes.  Pretending to be a U.S. ally and a buffer against Iran for Israel, official Saudi Arabia has watched benignly as money has flowed from Riyadh to violent extremist jihadis. Islam, like Christianity, is a universalist religion.  There’s nothing intrinsically evil about the goal of uniting all in reverence for the one God, Islamist version, but I.S.I.S. methods are reprehensible, and most Muslims are no more eager than Westerners to submit to Islamist intolerance and misogyny. Wearied of corruption and incompetent leadership, however, they are susceptible to calls for a more just, more moral society.  American Christians are  susceptible to similar blandishments from equally narrow-minded Christian preachers.

The Not So Scary Iran Agreement

The U.S. Congress has sixty days to vote the recently signed accord with Iran up or down.  One conservative argument against this fiercely-negotiated, multi-lateral agreement (now U.N. approved) is that ending sanctions will free Iran to spend more money on supporting Shia-sympathetic forces outside Iran, thus further threatening an already vulnerable Israel.  Others fear that Iran seeks to become a regional super power, which it obviously should be.  A strong Iran happily respected within the world system is surely more desirable than  a not inconsequential Iran acting out because it’s been prevented from taking its proper place in the spectrum of world power.  

And think of this: if Israel ended its occupation of the West bank, Iran wouldn't need to support Hamas, a Sunni group that is now being challenged by Islamists who make Hamas seem like a pussy cat.  Time marches on.  I tend to agree with Israeli thinkers who argue that even a nuclear-armed Iran would not threaten Israel’s existence, since a guaranteed return strike from Israel would destroy Iran as well.  It’s the old familiar M.A.D. story.  As many observers have noted, Iran’s leaders have behaved rationally despite their dramatic rhetoric.

In short, it’s quite possible that the U.S. has more to fear from Saudi Arabia’s missionary activities than from going whole hog and  normalizing relations with Iran.  But that’s for the future.  Now Congress must act.  It can support the President—or sabotage the nuclear agreement.   Israel will lobby hard to undermine it for various reasons, among them the fact that it provides safeguards for “only” ten or fifteen years, or a bit more, depending on the  clause.  But no human agreement works for ever, whether or not it is still “officially” in effect.  Another perspective also makes sense: ten years allows plenty of time for positive developments.

And maybe we should also be asking why Saudi Arabia is not working to create a more peaceful world instead of stirring up sectarian animosity.  Perhaps this relationship, too, needs to be renegotiated.  A little more distance would seem to be in order.

Where’s the Vision? Where’s the Dream?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Satire, shock, ugly facts—since 9/11 the U.S. has tried practically every psychological approach to discourage young people from joining up with Al Qaeda and ISIS, according to Greg Miller and Scott Higham in the Washington Post.  

A Tale of Failure

The consensus is that nothing has worked.   Young men by the hundreds,  and even some young women, are leaving Europe, the U.K and the U.S., to qualify for the high honor of being martyred for Islam.  Non-Muslim Westerners (and many Muslims, for that matter) are not only mystified, but horrified by the boldly flaunted beheadings and the systematic slaughter of unbelievers and members of rival Muslim sects.  Scenes of gore and brutality are regularly posted in what we might call ISIS selfies.    

And yet, given the bloody hell that’s war anywhere, anytime, these would be legitimate questions: is performing pitiless jihad categorically worse than murder from a safe distance via drones or patriotically swearing to give one’s life for one’s country? is the ISIS onslaught so much worse than the cruel goings on during the wars of religion in Europe?  Didn't Christians wreck ancient Greek temples?

The Negativity Trap

Devising propaganda to counter ISIS has been complicated by the fact that its cohorts fight under the banner of Islam, using methods that appear to be advocated in one way or another in the Koran, which is said to have been dictated by Allah to the Prophet.  I’ll be reviewing Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s very interesting exploration of this matter in her Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now in the near future.  This presents the West with a serious problem.   How can outsiders criticize ISIS without criticizing Islam itself?  

The larger tactical problem, I think, is related: the tendency to rely on just such criticism, criticism, criticism, an entirely negative approach.  Direct verbal attacks are as likely to strengthen jihadi commitment as to weaken it, unfortunately.  Satire or ridicule, though amusing to outsiders, may have equally unintended consequences.

Underestimating the Enemy

Another naive and much too frequent aspect of U.S. propaganda is the tendency to underestimate the knowledge and  intelligence of ISIS recruits.  Assuming the improbable, that susceptible young people are ignorant of ISIS brutalities, the US has recycled the very social media material that attracts fervent young Muslims to the cause.  At this point, it might be useful to recall an axiom that was once in common use in the State Department.  You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.  ISIS is definitely breaking eggs.  Is it possible that ISIS is also making an omelet?  Whether it’s to our taste is basically irrelevant.

No doubt some ISIS recruits are thoughtless and  immature adventure seekers with, like bullies on the playground and or little boys kicking down Lego towers or sand castles.  No doubt a certain primitive, chest-beating, purely destructive ecstasy is as vital to some jihadis as the solemn commitment to destroying graven images and reminders of false religions to others.   The profit motive must also be given its due.  Snatched for personal gain or ISIS benefit, stolen treasures fetch a good price on world markets.  But is that all?  Is ISIS itself only about negativity and destruction?  

Recruits from All Classes

Westerners have often comforted themselves with the notion that only losers find ISIS attractive.  Neglected, ignored, maltreated, unsuccessful, lacking money, education and opportunity, if they can’t make it in America or France or the U.K., they can, at least, get in on the ground floor of a restored Caliphate.  

But wait!  Well-educated young men from good families are also gravitating to ISIS. Not only are they masters of technology.  They are masters of  propaganda because they know the enemy from the inside out, which is more than we can say of American propagandists trying to compete with ISIS.  Techies we have.  Insight we clearly don’t have.

Blind Idealism

So let’s try to look at the problem from another angle, a historic angle.  Communism in the Soviet Union was not a pretty system.  Propagate dissent and you ended up in the gulag or dead.  Belong to the wrong class and you might be starved to death, as were the kulaks in Ukraine.  And so on.  Yet, for years, many Americans and Western Europeans persisted in calling themselves communists.  How could that possibly be?  The short answer is this: hating selfish, capitalistic materialism, believing in the dream of cooperative egalitarianism, they overlooked the reality of totalitarianism. Seeing the imperfections of Western democracy, they grasped at the fantasy of something better.  If they glimpsed disturbing things, they looked away and said, “You can’t make omelets, etc.”

Something like this is happening today within Islam.   Governments in the Middle East have been almost universally horrible.  Now, perhaps, there’s a chance of radical change consistent with moral principles aka sharia law, even if it's enforced viciously.  Most of the earnest Muslims who sympathize with ISIS or join up to fight the good fight probably have a good sense of the messiness of the process,  while hoping that the worst is only an unfortunate but necessary prelude to something better.  No doubt there are cynics within ISIS who delight in taking advantage of such blind faith, but without the hope there would be no one to coopt.  With each ISIS victory, the dream in both cynical and idealistic versions must seem ever closer. And so even more recruits pour in.  Winners are popular.

America the Once Admired

Coming from behind in the contest for hearts and minds, is there any way for the U.S. to regain the initiative and neutralize an incredibly successful ISIS propaganda offensive?  There is a way, a very promising way. But the only way to conquer a dream is with a better dream—or better yet, an inspiring reality.  And what would that be today?

Once upon a time the U.S. had a reality that seemed like a dream.  Democracy.  Prosperity.  Education for everyone.  Good jobs.  Upward mobility.   The freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.  And this, too: civil rights legislation had brought to an end the legal protection of racial inequality.

What was there not to like about that America?   Of course, there was some carping and criticism.  America was too materialistic, too self-indulgent, too preoccupied with sex, too imperialistic.  Sayyid Kutb, a U.S.I.S. -sponsored visitor from Egypt was one such critic. He was disgusted with what he called America’s pervasive licentiousness, among other things, and his writings continue to inspire Islamist thinking today.  

American diplomats didn’t pay much attention to Kutb's ilk back in the good old days.   Most of the foreigners who spent time in the U.S. reported great enthusiasm for what they had seen—or so they said, perhaps only out of politeness, though that quaint idea was unlikely to enter our minds back when we ourselves had more faith in America.  We were rich, powerful and secure, which may be another word for smug.

Needed: A Better Reality, A Credible New Vision

Things are more complex now.  The U.S. is so divided ideologically  it’s practically paralyzed politically.  The financial system is  dishonest.  Money warps the electoral process.  And irony of ironies, considering the fate of the U.S.S.R,, overspending on the military deprives education, research, infrastructure and everything else of sufficient sustenance.  Even the judicial system is under-funded.  This is not the place for a thorough critique of contemporary America, but the decline is so great that the U.S. struggles to maintain its influence in world affairs.     

Such being the case, it’s easy to see why American propagandists have drifted into fruitless negativity.  So, the big question is this: what credible aspirational dream (or better yet—reality) can the U.S. match against the powerful dream of an invigorated Caliphate?  Is there a way to include all Americans, meaningfully, comfortably, and soon within that attained vision?   And does that vision for America allow for a better, less militarized vision of how to get along in our fractured unhappy world? 

Lacking convincing and inspiring answers to these questions, there is no way the U.S. can compete with ISIS.



 

Victory for Putin, or Skewed Reporting?

By Patricia H Kushlis

Even during the darkest days of the Cold War, leaders of the US and the Soviet Union met to discuss areas of agreement and disagreement to keep international conflicts from escalating out of control. 

Such was Secretary John Kerry’s recent meeting with Vladimir Putin in Sochi – the intent of which, I think, was badly mischaracterized in Dale Herszenhorn’s report in the New York Times May 16, 2015.  The headline of that article was “Kerry’s Visit Marks Diplomatic Victory, and Affirmation, for Putin.”

Herszenhorn’s sources? 

Spokesmen – or quasi-spokesmen – for the Kremlin.  Only many paragraphs down does he describe the reason for the visit from the US government perspective which he took from a post-meeting press conference with Kerry – namely a discussion of Middle East issues which the US and Russia are not surprisingly, for the most part but not entirely - at odds, and almost incidentally a warning from Kerry to Putin regarding Russia’s “continued arming, training, command and control” of separatist forces in Ukraine.     

Please New York Times, you can do better than this.  The tone and slant of the article is of “victory” for Putin at the expense of the U.S.  One could easily and equally argue that the article should have been headlined “Russian experts close to the Kremlin paint Kerry’s visit to Sochi in best possible terms - for Putin.”  Or “Making mountains out of mole-hills, the Russian propaganda machine paints a far rosier picture of Putin’s supposed “triumph” than it really is.”

Far from a Summit

Let’s face it, a low-key Secretary of State visit to a President of another country – even Russia - at an offsite retreat is normally not headline news nor should this one have been described as such.  Slow news day in Moscow? Did Moscow-based Herszenhorn not talk with US Embassy officials who might have helped him write a more balanced story?  Was this yet another failure of US public diplomacy?  Did no New York Times journalists accompany Kerry on this latest trip? What’s the back story here?    

It’s my understanding that the US government is well aware that the Russians are using the current ceasefire in Ukraine to resupply and bolster separatist and Russian forces operating in that country’s East.  This at least according to General Philip Breedlove’s most recent assessment - and one which has credence elsewhere in the US government. Now Breedlove is the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO Forces with plenty of intelligence data at his disposal and in his April 30 press briefing he observed that the combined Russian and separatist forces could begin hostilities again in the near future.  I would not discount this assessment.

In response to the Russian grab of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine in 2014, the US substantially upped its commitment to European defense over the past year especially for building infrastructure and capabilities in NATO’s East.  As a part of this, NATO exercises have been held in the Baltic in recent months and rapid-response NATO military exercises are planned for the region in June in conjunction with several non-NATO member partners including Sweden and Finland, countries which are having their own problems with Russian military incursions.    

Meanwhile discussion still continues in the US and Europe about how best to help Ukraine defend itself.  My guess is that much hinges on Russia’s next steps:  this may have been a part of Kerry’s warning to Putin but not mentioned in the press conference.

Face Saving or Grasping at Straws?

If Putin’s continued hold on power in the Kremlin is portrayed as a triumph for Russia by his supporters then so be it.  Saving face is important in diplomacy as well as life in general.

But if the Kremlin really thinks that continued aggression in Ukraine and its threatening behavior elsewhere in Europe can proceed without a price, perhaps it needs to think again.  As I’ve written here before and will likely do so again, the more Russia tries to change the equation in Europe and threatens its neighbors militarily and by other means, the likelier it will backfire.          

Would the Kremlin’s propagandists have painted such a visit by a US Secretary of State as a “triumph” even last year?   I doubt it.  This too rosy assessment, in my view, is simply grasping at straws.  It’s unfortunate that the New York Times Moscow correspondent failed to get it.     

       

Embracing the Future: A Public Diplomacy Paradigm for Cuba

By Patricia Lee Sharpe with Patricia H. Kushlis

The U.S. and Cuba have been negotiating the terms for normalizing relations.  This means it’s not too early to think of what an appropriate American public diplomacy strategy might look like. 

The most visible stumbling block to the success of these negotiations (success being minimally defined as an exchange of ambassadors and the opening of embassies in the respective capitals) is that both sides seem to be asking for more than makes sense at this juncture: they want the end state before the opening moves, which isn’t the way most games are played.  US conservatives, for example, are demanding that Cuba be transformed into a human rights paradise before the agreement is signed and sealed.  Cuba wants Guantanamo back right now.  The U.S. is afraid to lift sanctions without an immediate tangible return.  Cuba is afraid the U.S. wants to mess around in Cuban politics.  Hard liners on both sides demand reparations.  

As a result, it sometimes seems as if the talks are a charade, complete with warring menus designed to sabotage any hope of rapprochement, while  credit is claimed for trying.  Probably, to move forward, each side will have to make a mild concession or two.  Why? To save face.  To placate those who prefer the status quo.  To demonstrate good faith.  Reciprocity is the name of the diplomatic game.  So is realism.  There was indeed a revolution in Cuba.  It can’t be undone, though further change is inevitable, most likely in a liberalizing direction, which will not please Castroites who prefer to dig their heels in.   On the other hand, change may be too slow and too future-oriented to allow Miami’s Little Havana anything like a victory march, which is good, from the PD point of view.  Triumphalism isn’t loveable.

Put It in Writing

In fact, from the PD point of view, it might be well if the negotiations’ end product included a side agreement concerning permissible cultural and information activities.   Specificity worked well during the Cold War, when distrust was maximal on both sides of the Iron Curtain.  A cultural agreement carefully conceived and well negotiated can benefit both parties, especially when radically different cultures and governments are involved.  Such a document, best viewed as enabling, not restricting, can pave the way toward better bilateral relations and more vibrant public diplomacy activities sooner or later.  A very important clause in any such agreement would allow American (and Cuban) diplomats  to travel freely, meeting—yes, freely—with people of all sorts.  In addition, non-official Cubans/Americans should be given unrestricted access to reopened embassies, to seek visas, to meet officials, to attend programs, to obtain literature.  If wishes were horses, we also would recommend the opening of an American Center in Havana, but the closing of innumerable, locally-admired, highly-respected institutions for short-sighted, post-Cold War financial reasons makes a revival, even as a showcase hands-across-the-water gesture in Cuba, unlikely.  

The All Important Context

In any event, should negotiations succeed, however slowly and painfully, what’s essential is that the State Department be primed to open the embassy doors on a coherent and comprehensive PD program.  Long and short term goals (hopefully with the national interest taking precedence over narrow concerns pushed by powerful lobbies and voting blocs) will have to be defined, but the initial top priority for PD must surely be trust-building.  The U.S. and Cuba have been at odds for fifty plus years, and accumulated issues will need to be identified and dealt with.   But there’s another, deeper problem that American PD strategists must face and not only in Cuba.   To put it bluntly, the reputation of the U.S. has suffered some serious blows in recent years.  

Once a not entirely perfect, but still widely-admired human and civil rights leader, the U.S. has yet to deal effectively with the torture issue which touches Cuba directly, via Guantanamo.  Not forgetting infamous allied sites, Gitmo is not only a U.S. navy base but a post 9/11 prison where detainees were, to put it mildly, mistreated and are still held.  Worse, American democracy itself seems to have lost some of its power as a paradigm. Washington remains in political deadlock, and U.S. politics seems to be drenched in money, much of it from unidentified sources, the result being that many Americans openly profess futility about voting.  Finally, capitalism and the free market system are under assault.  The great recession hurt many people in many countries, and inequality is reaching levels that worry many Republicans as well as Democrats.  Human rights.  Free markets.  Democracy.  These have long been the three strong legs of American PD, and their unexpected wobbliness is too obvious to ignore.  Given such vulnerabilities, the predictable pushback from Castro loyalists will be all too credible to Cubans whose access to objective information about the U.S. has been limited, despite the best efforts of Radio and TV Marti.

Truth Not Propaganda

Given the new realities, it seems to us that those broadcast entities, so strongly identified with the rhetoric of the Cold War, are now anachronistic and expendable. The dawning of a more open Cuba allowing greater American access to the Cuban people suggests that a successor Cuban broadcast service could easily be melded into a strengthened Voice of America.  VOA, despite its recent organizational travails, retains much of its well-earned reputation for reliable news and information about the U.S. and elsewhere.  Cubans would also appreciate a renewal of the brilliantly-curated  pop music programs which attracted devoted listeners around the world.  Pundits may not be happy to admit this, but an assertion of the right to listen to jazz often comes before a demand for other freedoms.      

Thus, America’s initial PD efforts in Cuba will have to be very carefully calibrated.  Messages must be truthful as well as positive.  Indeed, there are plenty of positive things to be said about America today, but the complexities are better recognized than glossed over.  

The Miracle of Cultural Exchanges

Under such fragile circumstances, America’s opening moves in Cuba should probably involve a mosaic of cultural exchanges that will, in the natural course of things, open the way to bolder, more substantive interactions with leaders, opinion makers and the general public. What kinds of cultural exchanges?  The gamut.  Exhibits featuring artists working in traditional and electronic media.  Readings by notable poets and fiction writers.  Music and dance performances.  Music, for instance, offers great potential for a spectacular program celebrating the restoration of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba.  For instance, how about a rip-roaring guitar festival featuring classical, rock and every style in between, with identical programs scheduled for sites in Cuba and the U.S., thus making people in both countries feel good in a strictly non-political way?   

Who, except the bean counters, could find anything wrong with a guitar festival?  The production process itself would allow innumerable Cubans and Americans to work together, not only in the process of putting live performers on stage, but in widening the impact through radio, TV, I-Tube and CD versions for those unable to attend in person, another big plus.

Intellectual exchanges are always trickier to manage because they cut closer to the political bones of contention, but even here early-phase reciprocal trust-building is possible.  The many options now available under the Fulbright program are easily adaptable for this purpose as are many well-honed programs for high school students.  Short term international visitor programs based on artistic and humanitarian interests should also be possible.  The U.S. is a leader in many fields, and Cuba is justly proud of its accomplishments when it comes to education and medicine.  These topics might provide excellent trust-building options, while visits and exchanges built around law, communications and governance might gradually be introduced.  And remember: even when “safe” subjects are the ostensible focus of exchange, people are always learning around the edges.

Professionalism Matters

This brings us to the realm of private and business travel, which are bound to proliferate.  The renewal of tourism and ordinary business visits will help to weave an ever-tighter network of interaction, which is all to the good.  However, while the U.S. should indeed facilitate such activity, it would be wise to maintain a certain skepticism about the romance of citizen diplomacy as a cure-all for international ills.   Ordinary citizens, including business people, are primarily interested in their own goals, which may or may not coincide with the national interest.  Tourism exists for well-earned private pleasure.  Big business is mainly interested in big profits.   It’s probably politically incorrect to say so these days, but their investments and enthusiasms are no substitute for skilled and well-targeted public diplomacy, especially in sensitive places like Cuba, where anti-Americanism has been a way of life for half a century.  Another fairly obvious caveat: covert operations must be rigorously distanced from PD programs, participants and officers.

The free flow of information necessarily lies at the core of any PD program, instrumentally and as a goal of Cuban reform.  No U.S. public diplomacy program can lack a plank that demands (or works toward) a free press.   Meanwhile, no PD program in the twenty-first century will succeed without the creative orchestration of an enormous spectrum of communications media and tools.  New and old  media.  Long and short form.  Broad- and narrow-casting.  Face-to-face and mediated.  One-on-one or via groups of various sizes.  All these modes of interaction have a place in a state-of-the-art PD strategy designed to reach every vital audience and every potentially influential contact.  While each medium has a distinctive voice and its own kind of feedback, each must also relay and reinforce messages consonant with a carefully calibrated public diplomacy strategy.  Still, the most sophisticated array of PD tools won’t work if the targets aren’t well chosen: individuals and institutions, officials and private citizens, opinion-makers and information-consumers.  In short, a well-constructed PD strategy sends the right message via the right medium to a continuously updated array of contacts—and then measures the impact so as to refine methodologies.

The Right People, The Right Program

The best strategy in the world can be undermined by mediocre execution.  We expect that the PD section of a new embassy in Havana will be staffed with a professionally-trained, well-prepared, deeply experienced cadre of PD people. This is no time for amateurs.  A mastery of Spanish goes without saying, but those who will be responsible for rebuilding the US relationship with Cuba should also be well grounded in Cuban history and culture.  However strongly America may be dedicated to supporting Cuba’s evolution into a democracy that respects human rights, Cuba will never turn into a clone of the American system.  Latin America and North America descend from vastly different legal systems and cultural patterns.  For the revived relationship to work in the twenty-first century, Cubans and Americans will need to feel that their distinctive cultures and ways of thinking are respected.  

As negotiations proceed, Americans who have been working so diligently on US-Cuba policy over the past decades will bring much of value to the table.  Others, including those who have served in Communist countries as well as those whose perceptions are free of such experiences, should also be added to the mix.  Realistic expectations, consummate professional skills and imagination—these are three strong, solid pillars upon which a powerful public diplomacy strategy may be built as the U.S. and Cuba reconnect.  Above all, at this point in history, it makes more sense to look toward the future than to dwell on the past.

Ukraine and Cuba: What a Contrast!

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I wish I were still in the foreign service.  This serendipitous conjunction of US and Russian foreign policy makes for a beautiful public diplomacy message: as Vladimir Putin’s Russia fights viciously to hold on to Ukraine, its uppity Cold War satellite, the US under Barack Obama looks to the future, re-establishing diplomatic  ties with Cuba.

Obama’s Cuban Surprise

Cuba is an interesting case.  Back in the nineteen fifties Cuba was indeed ripe for revolution.  Corruption was rife and American gangsters embedded in a flamboyant casino culture had a lot to do with it, while island politicking was dominated by a callous wealthy elite in cahoots with an unsavory dictator.  There was reason for ordinary Cubans and many Cuban intellectuals to resent, even hate, the United States for its support of the Batista regime, but Castro’s revolution was a pendulum swing that went way too far.  Lands and businesses were confiscated.  Freedom of speech and movement evaporated.  Tens of thousands of Cubans fled to Florida. 

All that was bad enough.  But when Havana welcomed a Soviet attempt to install on Cuban soil nuclear-armed missiles that could threaten the US, firm action had to be taken.  The US, under President John Kennedy, announced it would blow the USSR’s  missile-delivering ships out of the water unless they did an about face and headed back across the Atlantic.  This was the Cuban Missile Crisis.  For a few days things were very tense, and bomb shelters were best buys.  Was the Cold War about to get very very hot?  It didn’t, but relations have been frigid ever since.  It’s been US policy  to girdle Cuba with severe economic sanctions and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, not only to punish Cuba for becoming a Soviet dependency but to warn others away from a similar path.

Reactions in Miami's Little Cuba

A somewhat moderated version of those severe, even draconian sanctions remains in effect,  and a Republican-controlled  Congress is playing the Florida card for all it’s worth, threatening to prevent any significant change in US-Cuba relations.   (This goes in spades for the ex-Florida governor and 2016 Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush.)  However, the Latin American world is praising Obama, which means our influence there is likely to improve,  and Miami’s Cuban community is far from unanimously unhappy about the prospect of easier contact with old friends and family.  Many are looking forward to eased nostalgia trips to ancestral sites.  Some are dreaming of returning to Cuba, not as visitors, but citizens.   Business is salivating. 

But there are indeed many die hards for whom a thousand years of iron-bound sanctions would not be enough, despite the fact that their version of tough love has failed 100% to make a dent in the Castro regime.   Naturally their counterpart Castroites in Cuba will cling as long as they can to a non-productive system, and the wily Vladimir Putin will do his best to encourage them, even though a Russia not rolling in rubles can’t do much in the way of subsidizing loyalty.  My own hunch is that the relaxation will hold despite the largely theatrical Republican squawking  and change will occur, though gradually and probably without a neat cause/effect sequence that will make either side feel like an out-and-out winner or loser, which should make for greater stability.

Russian Apron Strings for Ukraine

Meanwhile—and this amuses me mightily, Vladimir Putin wants to control Ukraine as a permanent satellite, even though, during the Cold War, it suited Moscow to declare Ukraine a fully independent nation worthy of its own seat in the U.N.  In making a case for neutralizing Ukraine, Putin has the support of  a good many American analysts of the “expert” variety.  According to various documents and discussions, they insist,  then U.S. President Reagan promised Mikhail Gorbachev that a post Cold War Ukraine would never be allowed to ally itself with the West.  Thus, by not objecting to Kiev’s desire to draw closer to Europe (and, more recently, to NATO, thanks ironically to Putin’s jealous bellicosity), the current administration is breaking a solemn pledge—or so these scholars say.  

To these mistakenly scrupulous friends of Moscow, however, I put this question: do Moscow and Washington have the right to determine forever which alliances a sovereign Ukraine will make?  I think not, which tempts me to ask them and the present occupants of the Kremlin a further question.  If Russia has a right to reincorporate Crimea, wouldn’t it be consistent to pressure Moscow to release its hold on Kaliningrad, a fairly recent Soviet land grab which consists of a patch of territory squeezed between Poland and Lithuania and sharing no common boundary with Russia.  But—aha!—Kaliningrad does border the Baltic sea.  Thus, like Crimea, it offers a warm water port to a country that is mostly iced in all winter.  Russia has big naval bases in both places.  As for Kaliningrad, it’s also a nifty launch pad for short and medium range nukes intended to keep Europe on edge.   Nevertheless, Mr. Putin:  Kaliningrad for Crimea? Seems logical to me, though Kiev might not be as happy as Poland and/or Lithuania–or NATO.  

It’s Hard to be Pure

Speaking of naval bases, I can’t help thinking of Guantanamo, that corner of Cuba which, since the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898, has hosted the US fleet.  Of course, most people don’t think of that Guantanamo nowadays.  They think of the post 9/11 prison, which Barack Obama promised to empty once he was president. Two years into his second term more than a hundred prisoners still languish there.  Given the further fact that the Cubans have wanted the US off the island for decades, our strong position on Putin's repossession of Crimea is somewhat complicated, if not entirely compromised.  Nevertheless, at this point in time, the US is opening a proper embassy in Havana, not trying to convert the whole or part of Cuba  into the 51st state.  

Raj-like Fantasies

Obviously, the Ukraine-Cuba comparison isn’t  a tweedledum-tweedledee proposition, but it does suggest that the US is ready to let the Cold War slide into history. Meanwhile, the current President of Russia is doing his best to turn back the hands of time, a trick that’s very hard to carry off.  Setting aside the grave issue of his sending troops across recognized international borders,  Putin’s scheming/dreaming project to recreate the Soviet empire seems to this writer as quixotic as reconstructing the British raj in India.  


 

Public Diplomacy Post Ferguson

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The protests stemming from the failure of a grand jury to indict the Ferguson, Missouri, policeman who shot and killed an unarmed Black man continue.  In fact, demonstrations tied to this and recent similar shootings are blocking traffic and livening up the night in cities from coast to coast.  The people in the street insist the evil they wish to put an end to goes far beyond the tragic death of a handful of young Black men; it’s pervasive, systemic, intolerable racism.  The indignation may fizzle. It may build to a new civil rights movement.  Can we make that happen?  

How easy it was to represent the U.S. abroad while I was still in the Foreign Service!  Having grown up in a massively White suburb—there was one Black girl in my high school graduating class—I nevertheless craved dignity and justice for all, in my own lifetime, and so I rejoiced as the civil rights movement seemed, at last, to be eradicating the remnants of the original sin that cursed the founding of the United States and dogged it decade after decade thereafter.   It had taken too long for slavery to give way to segregation and segregation to less systematic forms of injustice, but surely we were approaching the goal of full equality under the law.   

Advising Grantees Then and Now

And so I felt quite comfortable telling that part of America’s story to foreign contacts.  I even counseled students and other exchange participants en route to the U.S. for a month or a year at Uncle Sam’s expense that they could trust the police if they needed help.  America isn’t a police state, I assured them.  Americans, in uniform or not, are helpful.  Just tap a shoulder or knock on a door or ask to use a phone if you’re lost or there’s been an accident.

Would I do the same today?  Ha!  After the latest horrendous sequence of white-on-black  police killings (and related stand-your-ground civilian killings), could I be so blandly reassuring to Nigerian or Tanzanian or Sierra Leonean grantees?  For that matter, given the problem of racial profiling vis-à-vis the fear-mongering attached to the “war” on terrorism, could I be confident that grantees from India or Pakistan would be treated with respect?   The answer to both is the same: absolutely not.  (For that matter, America’s biracial president gets little respect from a large percentage of American Whites.) These days, therefore, I would have to take the dear things  aside and—sigh!—tell them the facts of life in contemporary America.  I’d have to urge them to be cautious and prudent because, in the U.S. today, you never know when you’re going to be shot.  There are too many guns around, and a lot of them belong to trigger-happy police officers who seem to believe in execution before trial.  To say nothing of the lethal weapons in the hands of neurotics or psychopaths or unhappy teenaged boys who shoot up schools and movie houses and malls.  

The Myth of the Good Cop

I suppose I should note that, with the proliferation of guns in civilian hands, guns often legally concealed, a nervous policeman may be tempted to shoot first and ask questions later.  I suppose I should also note that most police officers conduct themselves responsibly.  But that’s no excuse for the rash of police thugs who are exonerated by the system.  If there’s a vast moral majority, why don’t these good eggs demand punishment for the bad eggs who give the whole force a bad name?  Until the men with conscience do speak out, it seems to me, they get no credit for being nice at heart.  They’re part of the problem, which is that American police are disproportionately and lethally suspicious of Black suspects.

The police force in Cleveland has been severely censured by the Justice Department.  Retraining has been mandated.  Meanwhile, the people of Albuquerque, New Mexico, desperately want something done about their own lawmen who kill much too cavalierly.  Here in the Southwest the ethnicity problem is a little different, however.  For Blacks substitute Hispanics as perennial suspects.  The Justice Department has promised to look into the Albuquerque situation, too.    

As if the possibility of racially-tainted police violence weren’t bad enough, the Ferguson incident has precipitated a long-simmering, more open questioning of the fairness, read color-blindness, of the criminal justice system itself.  Because the prosecutor presented the Ferguson case in a prejudicial way, it’s claimed, the grand jury failed to indict the officer who killed James Brown.   Not for murder, which might have foundered on murky issues of intent.   Not even for   manslaughter, which carries no risk of the death penalty anywhere.  Such an indictment would have allowed for a full public airing of the evidence as well as rigorous public cross examination of all witnesses.  Even though a jury might still have voted for acquittal, the process would have been  transparent and thus trustworthy.   (News flash: after a federally-conducted, second autopsy, the death has been classified as a homicide.  Civil trials may ensue.)   

Some legal experts have ridiculed the grand jury process as mere puppetry under the control of  police-favoring prosecutors, but based on my own service on a grand jury in New Mexico,  I wonder.   We refused to endorse a prosecutor’s demand for a murder charge in one case, insisting that only a charge of  manslaughter was reasonable.  We also refused to indict in cases involving drugs found in cars that shouldn’t have been stopped.  Often, as we passed from case to case,  we demanded documents and asked to read the text of applicable law.  Far from being infinitely malleable putty in the hands of the prosecutor’s office, we would never have indicted a ham sandwich!  But Missouri law may be different, so I cannot be sure whether or not the Ferguson grand jurors had the same independence that we in New Mexico legally enjoyed and fully exercised.

The Taint Seeps Upward

At any rate, the proof of unacceptable racism in the American justice system is quite visible: our prison population is monstrously, disproportionately Black and there for all to see, which must make it rather difficult for my old colleagues to promote  those jolly old exchange programs involving judicial reform.  What precisely are these foreign visitors going to learn from a visit to  the U.S.?  Unfortunately, the likes of this: if you’re black, there’s a target on your back, and, if you’re rich, the Supreme Court says it’s perfectly fine for you to control the system by legally pouring millions of dollars into elections and then pulling the strings of the legislators you’ve bought.  Free speech reduced to dollars and cents!  Talk about puppeteers!  

So much for those wonderful old exchange programs on rule of law, transparency and democracy.  Unless you  can say this with a straight face: do what I say not what I do.

Which brings me back to those activists in the streets. Two years ago the prevalent theme was Occupy Wall Street, which started a conversation about economic justice that is far from dead, thanks partly to the compelling data in a tome by the French economist Thomas Pikkety.   Today the visible rage involves Blacks and many Whites calling for race-blind justice.  Once upon a time I would have insisted that voting is far more important than marches and die-in demonstrations in a functioning democracy.  But are we a functional democracy anymore?  The Supreme Court has drowned the right to vote in a sea of money.  As government by the people gives way to the rule of the rich and greedy minority, we validate Aristotle’s ancient insight: democracy naturally dissolves into oligarchy which, in his scheme of things, inevitably gives way to tyranny.  

Must Ballots Give Way to Feet?

With our votes rendered increasingly meaningless, it would seem that all we the non-rich can do is to take to the streets as the powerless always, eventually, do.   Anarchists, those cowards in the black balaclavas, will no doubt use the cover of peaceful demonstration to smash and pillage, but it’s hard to see why a little violence should bother anyone in power. Contemporary capitalism loves the concept of organizational disruption.  (Shades of little boys smashing Lego towers and sandcastles, which is why we need more women in leadership.) Disruption being the new norm, we can only hope that the 90% who aren’t benefitting from today’s soaring stock market  will be able to disrupt the system of rule by obscene wealth that suffocates and corrupts the U.S. these days.  (The ocean-going yacht business is flourishing, and the US. position on the corruption index has deteriorated.)

Now that’s something I’d love to tell my old foreign contacts: if we Americans, against all odds, can reclaim our democracy from the plutocrats, you too can built a just society.  

In the good old days, we American public diplomats proudly told the story of our country, warts and all, because we believed—we really did!—that, warts or not, the U.S. offered a very special paradigm that was worth copying.  Maybe, with the Senate’s cleansing release of the (heavily censered) torture report, the U.S. has turned a corner.  If we can begin to be honest with ourselves, openly repudiating a reprehensible past, sincerely working to eliminate deep-seated racial prejudice once and for all and severely mitigating the role of wealth in politics, we’ll regain the soft power we need to regain at least some of our former status in the world.