The Power of Public Diplomacy

CRITCHLOW, JAMES

How to Make Friends and Influence the World The Power of Public Diplomacy By James Critchlow TODAY, in country after country, people tell pollsters that they dislike or feel more...

...Some recent U. S. positions that foreigners have found hard to swallow, for example, are our rejection of the Kyoto treaty on the environment, our unwillingness to accept the jurisdiction of the new International Criminal Court, and—perhaps the biggest bone of contention—our insistence on the right to take unilateral pre-emptive action against sovereign states without United Nations approval...
...Not all distortions of American reality, of course, are the work of external enemies...
...Public diplomacy cannot mask such goit-alone stances, but it can help to keep them from being twisted out of context by those whose objective is fomenting antiAmericanism...
...As Murrow long ago put it, it is important for the President's information advisers to be "in on the takeoffs, not just the crash landings...
...The BBG member with the highest visibility is Norman J. Pattiz, the Los Angeles-based head of Westwood One, a billion-dollar corporation that syndicates American domestic broadcasts...
...Beers resigned this past February for reasons of health...
...Books have been written that document its role in the Soviet collapse...
...Descending to the level of those who deliberately distort the facts would only play into their hands, they add, by harming our credibility...
...Yet such events can be turned around...
...Long after his departure, that guideline remained an inspiration...
...In their heyday, public diplomacy representatives at U.S...
...James Critchlow, a past contributor to The New Leader, served with Radio Liberty, the U.S...
...Cynics charge that "public diplomacy" is a euphemism for "propaganda...
...The crowning blow, in the area of PD, a move to liquidate the USIA, was delivered in 1999 by a cabal made up of Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and other Clinton Administration officials, abetted by Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, the archconservative Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee...
...No one can say to what extent this unilateral political disarmament has contributed to the anti-American trend, but surely this is no time to be without a proven asset for making friends in the world...
...What the White House needs urgently is someone possessing the weight of a Karl Rove to advise not on how things will play in Peoria, but on how they will play in Peshawar or Penang or Poitiers...
...To take up the slack, the Administration has turned in its neoconservative way to private contractors for help...
...A recent New York Times editorial was bluntly headlined "America's Television Flop in Iraq...
...Their performance has been unimpressive...
...Elsewhere public diplomacy is nominally the province of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who matured in the military culture...
...And, indeed, after President John F. Kennedy appointed CBS' legendary Edward R. Murrow head of the USIA, which for decades was the chief steward of public diplomacy overseas, he insisted that America had to tell its story "warts and all...
...vulnerability it could find...
...At the senior level of an embassy the public diplomacy staff, besides conducting its own enterprises, is responsible for advising the Ambassador and those under him about the best ways to deal with local public opinion...
...At present, therefore, they are more intent on increasing the influence of PD in the White House and urging its autonomy within the State Department bureaucracy—an uphill struggle requiring massive support from Congress and the public that still seems to be lacking...
...For Muslims that word conjures up the European Christians who invaded and plundered their homelands centuries ago...
...Since 9/11, when the war on terrorism heated up, the President's personal contribution to PD has been mixed...
...At George Washington University, a Public Diplomacy Council, consisting mainly of retired government foreign affairs specialists, is advocating new muscle for the enterprise...
...For what better way is there to show people in, say, China or Iran how democracy really works than to have the Voice of America carry Lugar's statement...
...He seems unaware that BBC Radio's very serious World Service in English has 150 million listeners worldwide...
...Anti-Americanism is, in fact, nothing new...
...public diplomacy lost its independence and its status...
...Pattiz argues that television is better suited to serious programming...
...How to Make Friends and Influence the World The Power of Public Diplomacy By James Critchlow TODAY, in country after country, people tell pollsters that they dislike or feel more threatened by the United States than by any other nation...
...Unhappily for PD, too, the traditional State Department diplomat's instinct is to be exclusive, to operate within a tight circle consisting of his colleagues and his opposite numbers in other countries...
...A number of theories have been advanced to explain the rise of global anti-Americanism...
...When Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called on President Bush, his fellow Republican, to do some "real truthtelling" about Iraq, U.S...
...The idea of bringing the public into the picture leaves him cold...
...Then came his unfortunate "crusade" remark...
...Those left with responsibility for it have been submerged in State's slowmoving, stifling bureaucratic maze...
...After Soviet military aircraft shot down a Korean passenger plane in 1983, killing 269 people, the Kremlin denied responsibility...
...He received applause for stressing that U. S. actions in Afghanistan were not directed against Islam...
...Where public information is concerned, the Pentagon basically has only two arrows in its quiver...
...But the disarray of PD has some people in Washington beginning to act...
...For Albright, this seems to have been a power and money grab on behalf of the State Department...
...In the Cold War days, however, U.S...
...for Helms, a chance to settle scores with an agency he never liked...
...Public diplomacy (PD) is distinct from the traditional striped-pants variety in that it reaches people directly, without going through the filter of their governments...
...The reorganization gave responsibility to a newly created Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) whose nine members, from both political parties, are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate...
...It involves a wide range of activities, such as promoting cultural and scientific exchanges, awarding scholarships, identifying potential leaders among the youth of other countries and inviting them to visit the U.S., and creating services like the Voice of America...
...public diplomacy was fine-tuned to its highest peak of performance...
...The U. S. -funded Iraq Media Network shrinks from carrying news adverse to the occupation authorities, so it is invariably scooped by Arab broadcasters like Al Jazeera...
...A commission convened by the Administration and led by Edward P. Djerejian, a former ambassador to Syria and Israel, has also called for increased public diplomacy efforts in the Arab world...
...In addition, they distributed publications in local languages and maintained American libraries open to the public...
...Symptomatic of the public diplomacy downsizing wrought by the present and previous Washington administrations is the replacement of comfortable overseas libraries and their congenial librarians with "virtual" libraries on the Web...
...From the time the U.S...
...With the Cold War over, it seemed that the main source of hostility to the U.S...
...The Broadcasting Board now has plans for an Arabic television network, with $30 million for start-up...
...Practitioners hotly dispute this...
...Even when we waged the first Gulf War against Iraq, an action opposed by many at home, we managed to retain a strong coalition of support...
...international broadcasting adrift at a time when communication with the rest of the world has never been more important...
...The second is a public affairs machine aimed at influencing opinion back in the U.S...
...It is doubtful that he has had much time for the problems of PD, given the crises that have beset him...
...In Amman, Radio Sawa claims to have a larger audience than the BBC Arabic Service...
...A successor has yet to arrive, perhaps an indication that the Administration considers the job a low priority...
...After he took over, Powell appointed a crack advertising executive, Charlotte Beers, as his Undersecretary for Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy, to the consternation of those who remembered the failure of Madison Avenue approaches that were discarded back at the beginning of the Cold War...
...In the past they also had a direct line to their supervisors in Washington, who would counsel the White House and other elements of government on the likely effects of planned statements and actions...
...One of the most successful PD ventures, in the US SR, lasted decades...
...By presenting other less commercial facets of American culture, PD can help to restore balance...
...But to be fully effective he or she has to be consulted before the President makes his pronouncements...
...The Secretary of State, an ex officio 1 Oth member, is too busy to attend the BBG's meetings...
...The BBG has already issued a plan of its own, entitled "Marrying the Mission to the Market," that is long on process and broadcasting jargon ("formatics will shape our program philosophy") but short on constructive ideas...
...had been liquidated, that the time had come for a "peace dividend...
...Beers also turned to private contractors...
...Perhaps most encouraging of all, even the hawks are starting to see that, superpower or not, the U.S...
...Some people on the sidelines thought the consolidation was a good idea because it put PD closer to the center of foreign policy decision-making...
...The main qualification for an appointment appears to be good political connections, although Chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, a former managing editor of the Reader's Digest, directed the Voice of America for two years early in the Reagan Administration...
...Previously, the government's networks—the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Radio Marti—were housed loosely under the USIA's roof...
...Still, maintaining the credibility of American leaders creates challenges— and opportunities—for PD...
...The USIA's research department, whose unclassified reports kept government officials advised of foreign opinion, has been stuck into State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, making it part of the intelligence community...
...American films and pop music, with their blend of violence and pornography and nihilism, are the only aspect of U.S...
...He is currently an Associate of the Davis Center at Harvard...
...But is it more important than the smaller one that seeks comprehensive news and commentary from the BBC...
...umbrella of protection no longer hesitate to express their long repressed sentiments...
...Whatever the case, one thing is clear: The clouding of the American image has coincided with Washington's bipartisan emasculation of the U.S...
...embassies set up speaking engagements for prominent Americans, sponsored exhibits of American artists, and arranged presentations by American performing groups...
...During the Cold War, the Communist propaganda apparatus lavished hard currency on exploiting any U.S...
...Among its staunchest admirers in Washington and former staff members, the feeling is that it's too late to retrieve the pieces and reassemble them...
...Under a bilateral exchange agreement the Kremlin probably regretted signing, the now defunct United States Information Agency penetrated many Soviet cities with a series of elaborate exhibits devoted to different aspects of American life, from outdoor recreation to agriculture...
...To critics who say that relations with the Arabs call for more serious fare, Pattiz responds that he gets a bigger audience this way...
...Once the U.S...
...The USIA speedily put together a tape of the Soviet pilots' conversations (monitored by radio) that left no doubt of their guilt, and played it for audiences around the world...
...In the diplomatic run-up, the U.S...
...Besides bills that have been introduced in Congress, so far to no avail, the State Department is said to be working on a "strategic plan...
...Robert Safloff, Executive Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy predicts that "unless Sawa begins to provide its listeners with a message they will never get from local radio stations, it is doomed...
...One is psychological operations ("psyops") aimed at tactical combat use against enemy troops...
...life that many people in foreign countries know, especially the youth...
...It is said, for instance, that with the collapse of the Soviet Union those who depended on the U.S...
...prestige may have suffered...
...The consequences of PD'sattritionbecame glaringly evident with the onset of the Iraqi crisis...
...emerged as a global leader after World War II, other nations have occasionally looked askance at us, if only because of the power we wield...
...cannot go it alone in the world...
...Competent advice might have spared President George W Bush the embarrassment he experienced in the aftermath of 9/11 when he called for a "crusade'- against terrorists...
...With the Pentagon running the show in Iraq, PD there devolved to the military, which is not geared to that function...
...lost the support of country after country, helped along by postures like Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's mocking of "the old Europe...
...The drawing card was not so much the displays as the young Russian-speaking American guides, mostly college students, who smilingly answered questions on any topic...
...In the information vacuum rumors abounded, some of them started for malicious reasons...
...Could the USIA be re-created and achieve its past effectiveness...
...It has little capability for reaching the Iraqi public, or any foreign public, to calm antiAmerican resentments...
...Information Agency, and the Baord for International Broadcasting...
...Outside the Soviet bloc, PD helped to keep the record straight in the face of Soviet propaganda...
...What was left of the USIA was folded into the State Department...
...But somehow we managed to keep our positions strong in the UN, in NATO and in other regional alliances...
...That person will require the support of a refurbished public diplomacy establishment with enough independence to call the shots regardless of domestic political considerations...
...With much fanfare, Pattiz has created Radio Sawa, which beams pop music (Britney Spears, Eminem) to Arab listeners, with brief, punchy news headlines squeezed in between...
...In practice this soon proved to be a disaster...
...and Britain gained control of Iraq, it became apparent that the occupiers were no better prepared on the PD front than in other civilian areas...
...public diplomacy establishment, the arm of government concerned with building good relations abroad...
...The job of public diplomacy is to keep perceptions of the United States in a proper perspective without sugarcoating the truth...
...International experience is clearly not a criterion: Members are drawn mostly from the business and commercial media communities...
...In another important PD area, the 1999 reorganization that ended the USIA has left U.S...
...There are shining exceptions to this mentality, but so far PD has not fared well at State...
...They point out that in the long run the U.S.— like any respectable news medium— gains most from getting out the unvarnished truth...
...One of her efforts, to market films showing that Arab-Americans have good lives, was so far from what Arab audiences really wanted to see that it was virtually impossible to place it in their countries...
...In any case, State's PD performance on his watchhas been lamentable...
...Budgets were slashed, staffing reduced, programs cut back...

Vol. 86 • September 2003 • No. 5


 
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