by Alex Evans | Jun 26, 2008 | Global system, North America
The United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, which reports to President Bush, published a report yesterday on (you guessed it) public diplomacy – specifically, on the human resources dimension of the challenge.
As Matt Armstrong at MountainRunner reports, one of the report’s key concerns is that there isn’t enough dedicated resource available for US public diplomacy work. While public diplomacy officers want to prioritise communicating with people where they’re based, they can’t – because “90% of their job descriptions and work requirements are something else, like administration”. The report worries “there is no one overseas whose primary job responsibility is to interface with foreign audiences”.
Moreover, Armstrong continues, PD officers find their career tracks hampered in DC as well. People on the public diplomacy track face a glass ceiling; no public diplomacy officer has ever become the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs; public diplomats are under-represented in senior management compared to other career tracks like economics, political, consular and management.
It’s easy to see why the Advisory Commission would be worried if public diplomats “view themselves, and are viewed by others, more as managers and administrators than as expert communicators”; likewise, it’s hard to argue against the idea that everyone who works on public diplomacy should “have at least one work requirement entailing substantive engagement with the host country public”.
Where I diverge from the Commission, though, is over their acceptance that public diplomacy can be seen as a separate discipline from other parts of diplomacy – and above all the political component. Armstrong thinks that “the problem is perhaps that State went too far to integrate public diplomacy, pushing a square peg into a round hole”. But you can argue the converse, too: that in today’s world there will never be a neat line between work with politicians on one hand and work with the media and with diverse publics on the other; that all of these tasks take place within the same political discourse; and that in all of these contexts, the core task and skill-set is the same: influence.
Sure, it’s a problem if State doesn’t “recruit for public diplomacy, test for public diplomacy, train for public diplomacy”. But I’m not sure that any of those three things has to imply a separate cadre of people. The implication of the ‘civilian surge‘, of a 24 hours news cycle, of the globalisation of risk and the erosion of borders may be that public diplomacy is – simply – tomorrow’s diplomacy.
by David Steven | Jun 23, 2008 | Global system, Middle East and North Africa, North America
Alhurra – the Arab language TV station and America’s most costly public diplomacy boondongle – has been regularly slagged off, but this superb report from Pro Publica patches all the criticism together into a damning indictment.
Here was the promise – in George Bush’s 2004 State of the Union:
As long as the Middle East remains a place of tyranny and despair and anger, it will continue to produce men and movements that threaten the safety of America and our friends. So America is pursuing a forward strategy of freedom in the greater Middle East. We will challenge the enemies of reform, confront the allies of terror, and expect a higher standard from our friend. To cut through the barriers of hateful propaganda, the Voice of America and other broadcast services are expanding their programming in Arabic and Persian — and soon, a new television service will begin providing reliable news and information across the region.
And here’s the reality:
- Half a billion dollars spent for an audience share of around 2% (about the same as Hezbollah’s TV station – which is run on a shoestring).
- Can’t document its expenditure to the satisfaction of its auditors.
- Run by a President who doesn’t speak Arabic, who is “is unable to understand anything broadcast on the radio and television networks he is paid to manage,” and who sits through editorial meetings without being provided with translation.
- Based in Springfield, Virginia, where it employs “an untrained, largely foreign staff with little knowledge of the country whose values and policies they were hired to promote.” (Yes, the Simpsons is set in Springfield. No, it’s not the same one. Yes, it might as well be.)
- Regularly slags off the US and supports the policies of its enemies. Describes Israel as waging a holocaust against the Palestinians.
- Promised to fire a reporter who “told viewers that Jews had provided no scientific evidence of the Holocaust” but didn’t.
- Believed by the US’s (former) top public diplomacy official in the Middle East to be stocked “with radical Shi’a Islamists who favored their political brethren and discriminated against and intimidated members of other parties … especially during the Iraqi electoral season.”
- Found by the State Department’s Inspector General to have had a hiring process that “may have been marred by favoritism toward Lebanese candidates or candidates of Lebanese ancestry.” Put a Lebanese hairdresser on a $100k salary to do the news anchors’ hair.
- Paid guests $150-1500 dollars for a single appearance – even if they were from Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
- Doesn’t even cover the United States as well or in as much depth as Al Jazeera.
Read the whole thing and weep.
by David Steven | Jun 12, 2008 | Global system, South Asia
Last week, I gave a talk at the Defence Academy on the new public diplomacy, focusing in particular on its implications for Afghanistan.
The full text is after the jump or read it as a pdf.
(more…)
by David Steven | May 21, 2008 | Influence and networks
Yesterday’s Brooking’s event on the US and Europe (see this post) included three panels – one on the Presidential election; one on the French EU presidency; and one on Russia.
The Presidential panel combined general rejoicing at the imminent (243 days and counting) departure of George Bush (“somewhat less popular in Europe than Satan”) with caution that expectations may be too high at what will follow.
Gary Schmitt, from the American Enterprise Institute, who advises McCain, thought that Republicans had become much more realistic about the need for transatlantic ties. McCain’s speech at the Munich Conference on Security Policy got a plug (and not just from Gary, but from other speakers too):
The debate in the transatlantic relationship – over who is to lead and who to follow, whether to act in concert or unilaterally, or if the bonds that unite us are stronger than interests that divide us – that debate is over. Our interests, though not always perfectly congruent, are rarely diverging.
The Obama narrative, meanwhile, is ‘deeply attractive’ to Europeans, according to Laurence Freedman, currently promoting his new book, on American and the Middle East – A Choice of Enemies. The Bush administration was forever tarnished in European eyes by Guantanamo Bay, Iraq Abu Ghraib, he said. At a time when Europe is populated by a cast of ‘weak leaders’, a new President will have the opportunity to make a clean break from the past (close Guantanamo) and generate real leadership for the US. (more…)
by David Steven | May 20, 2008 | Conflict and security, Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa, North America
I’ve been at the Brookings Institution in Washington today for its conference on the transatlantic relationship.
In the chair, Daniel Benjamin, who runs Brookings’ Center on the United States and Europe, and who wrote The Age of Sacred Terror and The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right with the Council on Foreign Relations’ Steven Simon.
In The Next Attack, Benjamin and Simon argued that:
It is unlikely that even in his feverish reveries, Usama bin Laden could have imagined that America would stumble so badly and wound itself so grievously. By occupying Iraq, the United States has played into the hands of its opponents, affirming the story they have been telling to the Muslim world and adding to their aura as true warriors in defence of Islam…
There is, as has so often been said, a war of ideas going on, a battle for hearts and minds. Unfortunately, America has wound up on the wrong side.
Of course, this was pretty predictable. Every effective terror movement in history has been fuelled by the adverse reaction of its host society. The Bush administration has simply proved particularly obtuse and self-destructive- a fact for which Al Qaeda is appropriately grateful. In 2004, bin Laden mischievously quoted an unnamed British diplomat speaking at Chatham House (!) to support his assertion that ‘it seems as if we and the White House are on the same team shooting at the United States’ own goal’.
Benjamin and Simon’s policy prescription for the US can be summed simply as: stop scoring own goals. They call for a ‘deep and dramatic’ engagement with the Islamic world and point to Turkey’s relationship with the EU as a model. It has moved from military repression to relative liberalism, they suggest, albeit a liberalism that has an Islamic hue.
‘These changes, as well as the speed with which they have taken hold, are nothing short of remarkable,’ they write. ‘That they have happened at all is due to one thing: the prospect of membership in the European Union. The transformative potential this prospect has held has been clear to American policy makers for years, and, wisely, they have supported Turkey’s bid consistently and vocally.’
Of course, US support for Turkish accession to the EU is somewhat problematic. George Bush pushed this line in 2004 despite attempts from the French and others to warn him off. ‘Including Turkey in the E.U. would prove that Europe is not the exclusive club of a single religion, and it would expose the clash of civilizations as a passing myth in history,’ he said.
It’s hard for Europeans to be lectured on this issue by a man who believes that the US is in the midst of a Christian revival prompted by the ‘confrontation between good and evil’ (his words) that America finds itself in. Or from a guy who said this in 2001:
Oh, I know there’s some voices who want to wall us off from Mexico. They want to build a wall. I say to them, they want to condemn our neighbours to the south in poverty, and I refuse to accept that type of isolationist and protectionist attitude.
And then signed a bill to build a 700 mile fence along the Mexican border in 2006 – part of a desperate attempt to shore up his approval rating with the shrinking portion of Americans who represent his base.
But I digress. (more…)
