My own view is that the process of globalization and interdependence referred to by Craig both undermines the state’s ability to control its own fate and enhances the demands the people place on their state for protection from the downside effects of globalization. This seems particularly true over the past year of global recession. I am inclined to see the state as continuing to be the central foreign policy actor as Bill does but recognize that there are many other actors on the international stage from influential social movements to regional institutions that operate in the international political realm. Bruce is correct, in my view to call attention to the complexity of the world political environment and to point out that diplomacy (or political action abroad) no longer is in the purview of states alone.

Domestically, politics shape the contours of a state’s foreign policy decisions. Internationally, politics shape the landscape on which those foreign policies are implemented. Whether the instrument chosen to advance the foreign policy is diplomacy or military force, the foreign terrain is increasingly political. COIN theory, in particular, recognizes a 80%/20% split between the political and kinetic balance of effort. The shifting balance of power in the international system from West to East, accelerated by the current economic upheaval, also increases world politics as largely western based international norms are contested by rising powers representing distinct political cultures. All of this occurs in a media saturated global public sphere.

It is the confluence the normative and cultural dimensions of international affairs with the political, military and economic dimensions that create the complexities Bruce highlights and makes his question about whether public diplomacy is really still a separate instrument of statecraft valid. Craig is right to remind us of Bull’s insight into international society as the context. If the formation of a global public sphere has advanced to the extent that global politics is mediated much in the same way that domestic politics is, then diplomats must recognize that the public sphere is the policy sphere and be skilled at working citizen perceptions as well as the corridors of power. Secretary Clinton demonstrated that she gets it in her brave and bruising effort to address perceptions and exert influence in Pakistan this week. The hard slogging grassroots work at the nexus of foreign policy, public opinion, and politics abroad is the mission of public diplomacy. Is it separate and apart from the political function of statecraft? Not any longer. Does it matter whether those performing this political function abroad wear combat boots or wingtips? Yes, I think it does because of the projection of values, added costs and potential friction created when the policy intent is political contestation and the actor is military.

For a more academic elaboration of my argument please read my article Statecraft at The Crossroads: A New Diplomacy, Copyright 2009 The Johns Hopkins University Press. SAIS Review, Summer-Fall 2009, Volume 29, Number 2. (forthcoming).

The Moon Is In The 7th House

Friday, October 30, 2009

For the real deal, and with real links, please visit her site here.

Bruce Gregory’s interesting keynote at the George Washington University’s Global Engagement event a few weeks ago triggered an interesting response by the esteemed Amb. William Rugh, a professor of Public Diplomacy at The Fletcher School, Tufts University (and renowned for, among other things, very important scholarly work on Arab media). Bruce Gregory graciously shared this email response, and his own rejoinder to Rugh, so that others in the blogosphere could weigh in.

It should be noted that the exchange was indeed civil.

For the sake of reference, here are some key comments from the exchange, starting with William Rugh, who takes issue with the relationship of PD to Strategic communication (SC):

I will start by quoting Adam Ereli, who is a 20-year Foreign Service veteran, in the PD-cone, who served several overseas PD tours, and was most recently PAO in Baghdad, where he worked for a year very closely with General Petreaus and many others in the U.S. military. He was before that a senior advisor to Karen Hughes and the Deputy Spokesman of the State Department. He is now ambassador to Bahrain. Adam is a Fletcher graduate and returned yesterday to Fletcher to talk about public diplomacy. A student asked him to explain the difference between PD and SC. Adam said something very simple (I’m paraphrasing): ‘PD is diplomacy, SC is not. PD is done by diplomats, SC by people in uniform. DOD regards SC like any other weapon, say a tank, that aims, shoots, hits and moves on. PD is a long-term endeavor. It uses many instruments and the effect is hard to measure in the short run. Because DOD has thrown many more people at SC, real PD is sometimes forgotten, but it is an essential tool.’

PD is diplomacy. SC is done by people who are trained war-fighters. PD is done by diplomats trained to do PD. PD is not done by everyone and anyone. If you teach diplomatic history, you teach about relations between states, because that is what diplomacy is. PD is relations between a government and a foreign public.

I realize that the world has changed with the IT revolution. PD practitioners of course take that into account and use it. And the IT revolution does not make non-governmental communicators into diplomats. Yes, the NCIV participates in PD when its volunteers help international visitors who come to the US, but that is part of an official PD program paid for initially by the US government, even though NCIV helps financially by contributing volunteer time. I fear that calling all cross-border communication PD destroys the meaning of the word diplomacy. I fully agree that non-governmental cross-border communication is terribly important to understand, but let’s please call it something else, not diplomacy, or even “new public diplomacy”

If I may pick one other nit, I have problem with your essay where you quote Monroe Price saying that we need “transformation not adaptation”. That sounds nice but what does it mean? It’s easy to make a sweeping statement and say the bureaucracy needs to change fundamentally and is only doing so at the margins….

Here are some responses from Bruce Gregory:

In my GW remarks, and in my courses and publications, I argue that public diplomacy (PD) and strategic communication (SC) are “analogous.” I do not say they are identical. I chose “analogous” with care to indicate they are similar in function and marked by resemblance, but not by their origin. The central characteristics, time dimensions, and methods in public diplomacy can be found in strategic communication and vice versa. …

You say (paraphrasing Adam Ereli) that “PD is diplomacy, SC is not. PD is done by diplomats, SC by people in uniform. DoD regards SC like any other weapon.” I agree that many in DoD and the military services think of SC and ideas as weapons. But many do not. There are highly sophisticated views on PD and SC in military circles, and generalizing is a disservice….

The following comment begins to illustrate how the question of what a 21st century public diplomacy will look like starts to reflect broader developments in the understanding of diplomacy’s role in international relations.

You also say (your own words) that “PD is done by diplomats trained to do PD.” Elsewhere you have written that “a PD practitioner is a PD professional who has had actual experience doing public diplomacy abroad.” You go on to limit diplomacy to “relations between states” and PD to “relations between a government and a foreign public.”

These statements, in my view, are too narrow. First, they rule out many PD practitioners who are not diplomats (by this do you mean only Foreign Service Officers?) who fit within your traditional approach — Civil Service professionals in the Department of State and locally employed foreign nationals in U.S. embassies and consulates. They also rule out U.S. international broadcasters.

Second, you appear to exclude many others within government. These range from President Obama and Vice President Biden to many in U.S. departments and agencies who “understand, engage, and influence” foreign publics as an important part of what they do, and, yes, to people in uniform who do the same — and who do so in long-term as well as short-term endeavors…..PD of course is done by diplomats. But PD is not done “only” by diplomats.

Your argument begs important questions about the changing nature of governance, armed conflict, and diplomacy. Many scholars and practitioners, more in other countries than in the US, are struggling with what this means for PD and SC. Today, much more governance — the satisfaction of human needs and wants through rule based structures and legitimate interactive arrangements — takes place above, below, and around the state. Most armed conflict occurs “among the people,” not between state-based standing armies. What then are diplomacy and public diplomacy in this context? Just “relations between states” and just “between a government and a foreign public?” I think not.

I believe definitions are important. But my concern here is less with definitions than where we draw analytical boundaries in scholarship and practice. When you scrape away historical contingencies, diplomacy is communication between governance groups with representation that involves principals and agents. As Lund University’s Christer Jonsson and Martin Hall put it (quoting University of Minnesota diplomacy scholar Paul Sharp) in Essence of Diplomacy (2005): “Diplomacy is an institution representing a response to ‘a common problem of living separately and wanting to do so, while having to conduct relations with others.’” How we do this varies with time and circumstance. Jorge Heine, one of Chile’s leading diplomats, states this well when he argues that today’s “network diplomacy” is very different from the “club diplomacy” of the past.

Diplomacy is instrumental. It answers “how” questions, not “why” questions. It relates to governance and politics broadly defined – not primarily to education, journalism, business, and other ways that people communicate within and between societies. Public diplomacy imports methods and norms from these areas of social discourse, but PD is bounded by governance and its instrumental nature in relations between groups. PD is not cultural internationalism. I agree completely that not all cross border communication is PD and have never said so, all of which leads to questions as to what is meant by “citizen diplomacy.”

This response is meant to raise issues in study and practice relating to public diplomacy’s boundaries, agency, methods, priorities, and strategies. It also leads to a central question. Should we continue to distinguish PD from the broader concept of complex diplomacy in today’s multi-layered governance, thick globalism, rapidly changing information ecosystem, and strategic buffet of opportunities and threats? Is this distinction between diplomacy and public diplomacy still helpful analytically? Does it marginalize PD as a profession?

And here is my response to Bruce Gregory:

I am struck by how the definitional debate continues to plague the over-arching discussion of those concerned with PD. Granted, the interagency issue seems to loom large over the policy community now. Perhaps this is because the “reality” of PD for the United States involves the shared responsibility for communication with foreign publics, like an organizational microcosm of globalization itself. Just as globalization and its ICT infrastructure has eroded the traditional domains of nation-state sovereignty, allowed for new kinds of international actors, and imposed the need for more global governance – it’s also highlighted the need for a new kind of diplomacy, venues for communication, and attention to international
opinion.

I recall Jan Melissen’s comments back when he spoke at George Washington Univ… that Ministries of Foreign Affairs around the world are facing a crisis of identity, which explains some of the recent advancement of public diplomacy tools. It should come as no surprise that diplomacy studies within the larger discipline of international relations is also somewhat lackluster. It’s not that there aren’t excellent scholars, it’s that the central questions that reflect the reality of global politics are not always central to diplomacy studies. Perhaps, if our understanding of diplomacy itself were to undergo the kind of transformation that Monroe Price
suggests, we would find diplomacy as proactively defining the contours of international politics, rather than a tool perhaps increasingly ill-suited for the problems that are forced upon nation-states. Admittedly, diplomacy and PD are instruments, but such tools should reflect the changing nature of the actor needing such tools, and, the way in which the actor must relate to the broader “society” (with apologies here to Hedley Bull). As you [Bruce Gregory] said, “PD is not cultural internationalism.” But it is an imperative as much as it is a necessary instrument.

Public diplomacy as a broad concept captures the essence of what other aspects of international relations scholarship already recognizes and you elegantly describe in your letter. At the same time, I should stress that the traditional instruments of diplomacy aren’t going to go away. But the responsibility for these functions, the stakeholders, and the expectations are likely to change.

As for strategic communication, I would say that there are aspects of what the military does that indeed “weaponizes” communication, but this seems like a over-reaching generalization. Strategic communication often works to effect an environment that is a theater of operations – often increasingly *long-term* operations. Its aim is very often to shape the communicative and indeed interpretive context for how U.S. actions are perceived. And sometimes this is used to complement military operations, while in other instances it replaces such operations. As an aside, I think the growth of SC at some level tracks with the militarization of U.S. foreign policy around the world, but that’s a wholly other issue. The point is, SC is needed, because objectives are being conceived, coordinated, and carried out at a strategic and tactical level via the military.

The “success” of PD for the United States is not going to come once a specific cadre of professionals are recognized as important or uniquely situated as the stewards of public diplomacy. It is going to come when leadership recognizes what kinds of objectives and/or policies are really the domain of public diplomacy. In addition to strategy, this leadership should provide a viable direction for how to mobilize existing resources, develop new competencies, and more to point, be able to recognize what is necessary to address specific problems as public diplomacy problems.

As a student of rhetoric and argument studies (among other things), I am inclined to believe that controversy is a good thing. It reveals important fault-lines in public discourse, and may prove to be a productive resource for shaping and intervening in the public understanding of subjects under contention.

Not all public argument can be enlightening or productive. Case in point, the bemusing little dust up over on John Brown’s Notes and Essay’s Blog, where angry students at USC took issue with Brown’s insinuation about what constitutes a “serious” university, and the pretense of USC students of public diplomacy to organize themselves as the Association of Public Diplomacy Scholars.

Here is my response to the episode:

Ladies & Gentlemen,

For the record, I was initially skeptical when the group was named, because I was told politely that as a post-doc studying PD (!), I was not welcome to be a member of this community – it was for the masters students. Go figure.

But let’s try for a bit of perspective here. While John Brown’s “serious university” may be a bit of institutional ad hominem, my read on Mr. Brown’s short note strikes me as more ‘amused’ than a critical attack on the supposed pretentiousness of the APDS.

And there is a note of self-criticism directed at the more “established” PD community towards the end of his note.

This scholar/student definitional debate is about as useful here as the “what is/isn’t PD” debate. Let’s get over this, shall we? PD scholar Jan Melissen, at ISA last year in NYC, welcomed an ecumenical attitude towards PD from his students because as we all know, the stakeholders and practices of diplomacy itself are changing. This stance assumes the ability of students to be *scholars* – to creatively and attentively grapple with enduring questions about PD in new contexts. This is the right attitude towards PD education, and encourages those considering this field as a professional or scholarly endeavor to take ownership and invest in the subject.

John Brown serves a vital purpose in sustaining the dialogue, issues, and yes, controversies surrounding PD, at a time when public attention IS necessary. At the same time, the U.S. is in serious need of creative thinking on PD, requiring a fresh perspective from groups like the APDS and yes, a *serious* university like USC.

This community is small enough as it is. Let’s not subdivide any further with pointless arguments that diminish the real issues.

I’m not casting blame here. But seriously, can we please not have this kind of argument? I realize I’m guilty by evening calling attention to this, but this kind of exchange is a waste of bandwidth. Moving on…

It’s now been many many days since the event at George Washington University, New Approaches to U.S. Global Outreach: Smart Power on the Front Lines of Public Diplomacy. The event, put on by the Institute for Public diplomacy and Global Communication, was interesting and frustrating at the same time. I had planned to blog about it earlier, and I am doing so now with the alacrity of a 19th century conversation by post. At any rate, here is my two cents… to no one’s surprise, the panelists reiterated the most pressing need: leadership. And right now, the opportunities for public diplomacy to capitalize on the energy of the Obama presidency are swirling in the bowl, so to speak.

Bruce Gregory’s eloquent introductory keynote (including an unsolicited shoutout to yours truly) neatly summarized the point at which the U.S. public diplomacy community currently resides. The culmination of numerous reports, white papers, email arguments, blogs, and commissioned studies point to the singular observation that there is no real leadership on PD. Instead, there is a wealth of related efforts cross-branded as public diplomacy or strategic communication, but little ability or effort to link these programs into a coherent process of management and strategic direction. There is a “tribal” division between public diplomacy and strategic communication, reflecting the different attitudes and motives of the State Department and the Department of Defense. But even that’s not the real problem. As the Africom joint operation demonstrates, there are novel experiments in crafting productive interagency efforts.

No, the problem is strategy, accountability, and responsibility. I’m not talking about the need for a coordinated message strategy. In a pluralistic, complex, global media ecology – there is no need (or place) for a monolithic Cold War contest of ideology. I don’t mean the Center for Strategic communication style intervention that Senator Brownback suggested last year. I mean policy and program leadership that can effectively assess what is being done and coordinate the interagency responsibilities for what we loosely call public diplomacy.

I’m not saying anything new here. Mark Taplin at GW nicely summarized the event here, and followed up with thoughtful comments on Gregory’s speech here. But there may be a brewing discontent with the current point of stasis that now defines the public diplomacy policy apparatus and community of attendant commentators. If you don’t believe me, just read this.

I guess my own moments of clarity at the event came when the excellent Dan Sreebny admitted to the State Department’s own inability to even have an inventory of what is being done for public diplomacy, let alone a kind of accounting (both in terms of resources, costs, and effectiveness). Then, Rosa Brooks of the DoD offered that her office is also trying to get a handle on what is being done. As she admitted, this takes time. But let me reiterate again – the U.S. government doesn’t appear to have a solid handle on what it is doing for public diplomacy and strategic communication. At least at a coordinated, strategic level. And this is, needless to say, a problem.

What the U.S. government appears to have are well-trained, passionate, and intelligent people doing public diplomacy and strategic communication. At a “tactical” or “grass-roots” level, this is a positive development. I was struck by the fantastic presentation of State’s Aaron Snipe’s experience in Iraq on a PRT mission, where he describes himself getting involved in local cultural practices (like his time participating in a sheep dip alongside Iraqi tribesmen), and on getting the Iranian-backed religious channel to start covering U.S. on-the-ground public diplomacy efforts. Amazing, encouraging, and something we can learn from.

In sum, I think the event was a great snapshot of where the government is going in terms of coordinating an interagency process of public diplomacy. More importantly, I think future events should focus in depth on the practices of PD “in the field” – that can help to focus and energize efforts at the strategic level to provide leadership and direction of U.S. public diplomacy.

I had the privilege of being on a blogger’s roundtable discussion on September 15 with members of the new Harvard Public Diplomacy Collaborative, where they fielded questions from myself, Patricia Sharpe of Whirled View, and Matthew Armstrong from mountainrunner.us. After participating in the discussion and asking a few questions, I believe the new program is an important development in promoting wider recognition of public diplomacy, while offering some positive steps towards real knowledge production that will benefit the practice of public diplomacy.

The Harvard Collaborative is also a good complement to the clearinghouse of information provided by the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. While I may be a bit biased (I am a Research Fellow at the USC CPD), I do believe the USC program serves an important role in providing a forum for emerging issues and debates about public diplomacy that encompasses the PD agenda. The Harvard Collaborative, in contrast, seems like a specifically applied intervention that involves two related tasks. The first, identified by Doug Wilson (the Chairman of the Board of Directors), is to draw together a diverse group of opinion-leaders and what we could loosely call “practitioners” to supplement the efforts of others who are doing the PD work overseas, including those from business, labor, finance, “political thought,” diplomacy, national security, think tanks, and other sources. I don’t want to reiterate too much of what they’ve already put on their website. But I do think it’s a bold initiative to consider how the U.S. might leverage it’s considerable networks of influence and opinion-leadership on a global scale – outside traditional conceptions of PD.

But doing this requires some rethinking about what influence means, how it is cultivated and distributed across networks, and how it is transformed by the infrastructures of global communication technologies and their attendant practices. Professor Matthew Baum (the Faculty Chair) and Jed Willard (the Director) provided the details on what their research program will look like. Put simply, to do the ambitious things that the Collaborative wants to accomplish – it requires some serious research into the nuts and bolts of persuasion across (increasingly mediated) networks. It’s not that such work isn’t being done, but focused research questions aren’t being asked to build empirically-based, systematic knowledge about how influence and engagement can work for public diplomacy. As I’ve said before, there’s no theory of public diplomacy – no cohesive body of theoretically derived arguments, let alone tacitly predictive models, that structure our understanding of public diplomacy. We have a wonderful body of anecdotal evidence of diplomatic history. We also have a sweeping catalog of influence, communication effects, and media studies research – but nothing has been corralled to the purpose of public diplomacy in the way envisioned by the Collaborative. Needless to say, I think this is an important development.

Patricia Sharpe asked an incisive question about what the Collaborative means by citizen diplomacy – and how their expansive view of stakeholders squares with how they understand the motivations of citizens as diplomats. I still think there are some questions about how influencers are themselves affected by their status as potential “diplomats.” I asked questions about what kinds of research questions they plan to investigate. Basically, their research will directly address the complex and disconnected dynamics of global influence in ways that are focused on the needs of public diplomacy – and they anticipate working with the wealth of data already gathered around the world to help with this effort.

Perhaps equally significant is their intention to sidestep the often unproductive definitional debates that bog down knowledge production about public diplomacy. They are not drawing boundaries around the concept, or establishing some kind of canon. As they put it: “We’re not studying PD as a field – but providing knowledge from experts that is usable when and where the practitioners are serving.”

This is a refreshing perspective, and I look forward to the insights produced through their program.

James Glassman’s post on Foreign Policy.com is thought-provoking and troubling at the same time. “It’s not about us” builds on the thesis of Admiral Mike Mullen’s argument that the U.S. has misplaced it’s faith in communication programs – public diplomacy – to realize foreign policy objectives. Admiral Mullen’s argument picks up a common refrain among critics of public diplomacy – that deeds matter more than words – and that the U.S. should focus on amending its policies to address the contours of opinion in regions vital to nation security. So what’s wrong with that? Well for starters, I think we’re beyond this observation.

For Glassman and to some extent Mullen, the problem is the focus of U.S. Public diplomacy. Their quarrel is with the goal of brand-burnishing, of getting hostile populations to “like us.” I think this is a straw-man argument – but it does suggest a troubling implication. While I’m not convinced that the State Department believes that their primary goal is to get populations to “like the U.S.,” I am concerned that I actually don’t know what the goal is other than bland assertions of “engagement.” Like many, I wonder about the strategic template used to justify and design the initiatives of U.S. public diplomacy. The term “rudderless” comes to mind – a muddle of divergent imperatives (from international broadcasting to exchange programs) – that seem to operate out of inertia and blanketed with some vague language of engagement and dialogue. Am I wrong? I sure hope I am. I should add, I’m not convinced that one strategy can justify all the various forms of public diplomacy at the same time – there’s no magic bullet public diplomacy strategy that kind bind all of what is being done into a nice logic. But I digress.

Glassman takes a shot at the term “bridge-building” – and suggests that while we can’t abandon the important long term programs (like exchanges and cultural diplomacy), we should focus on more immediate strategic communication initiatives. What would these look like? If the goal is not to polish brand U.S.A, then perhaps so-called public diplomacy 2.0 initiatives can be used to empower democratic and civic action, dialogue, etc. within countries like Pakistan to help in-country institutions embolden those stakeholders that wish to minimize the influence of extremists and regain control of their
political destiny.

I wholeheartedly agree with Glassman that a “popularity contest” tactic of press meetings and high profile “to know us to love us” events is not going to serve U.S. foreign policy goals, nor cultivate any real soft power that translates into diplomatic success. Of course I’m also not entirely convinced that the State Department is really focused on this kind of PD, it’s just the stuff that gets headlines. But I do take some issue with the arguments for the proposed new vision for PD.

The notion that the Arab and Muslim world is going through some historical analogue of the religious wars of Europe and transition towards the Age of Enlightenment does two things – first, oddly enough, it literalizes the metaphor of a “debate” in Muslim societies between extremists and modernists and importantly, makes a victory of the extremists a plausible outcome in this societal struggle. To me, this sounds like giving the extremists too much credit and clout. Second, I think this line of reasoning sounds too patronizing at best, and fuels the “American’s are arrogant” when we pronounce with orientalist confidence just how the struggle for Modernity is progressing among the Arab nations. It’s one thing for Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed of Al-Arabiya to say this on Frontline World. I’m not sure if public diplomacy planners should be expressing these sentiments.

Which brings me back to deeds and communication. Glassman is of course right to suggest that the U.S. needs to do something about supporting a political narrative that minimizes and isolates the influence of extremists – in order to start mending the public opinion problems facing the U.S. Implicitly, he suggests that public opinion can be channeled away from a focus on the U.S., to address the fundamentally “endogenous” problems in Arab and Muslim countries facing violent extremist movements. Sounds like a great idea, though I still believe that tinkering with the role the U.S. plays in the broader Arab and Muslim mediasphere is too ambitious to transform by itself (see Entman, 2008). I think that acts of public diplomacy that facilitate civil discourse in the ways that Glassman envisions is a good start – but the motives and expectations need to be clarified at the outset.

Should the U.S. lead this, or should it encourage a cooperative, open-source PD push… a multilateral effort involving nation-states and citizens in a cooperative effort to facilitate (to use the parlance of PD 2.0) communication interventions that empowers social forces opposed to religious or nationalist fundamentalism of any stripe? I think this is the strategic question that remains to be answered. If public diplomacy is to be about facilitation, listening, and dialogue (all touchstones for the supposed way forward in public diplomacy) – then I think a strategy should begin to envision a communication ethic that is inclusive, open, and cooperative in ways that I believe are still radically counter to the way public diplomacy gets rationalized as part of parochial soft power needs.

I have been somewhat sanguine about Matt Armstrong’s position on the Smith-Mundt Act and its domestic dissemination ban on U.S.-produced international broadcasting. While I acknowledge that the Smith-Mundt ban is structurally ineffective in an age when much of U.S. communication material can be accessed by Americans online… I have not heard much about how American access to U.S. programming could improve U.S. public diplomacy efforts (other than perhaps a check on quality).

But Armstrong’s recent article in Foreign Policy, which describes how a Minneapolis radio station wanted to use VOA’s informative programming on Somalia to reach local immigrant audiences and was denied under the provisions of Smith-Mundt, provides a stark reminder of Smith-Mundt’s antiquated relevance. This hindrance becomes more galling when we consider that nothing in the Smith-Mundt legislation prevents terrorist organizations from targeting audiences in the United States, let alone the more high profile international broadcasting of China and Russia. Simply put – the quality programming provided by the VOA might have been a crucial intervention into a local audience that has produced fighters for Al-Qaida in Somalia. VOA provides comparatively accurate and balanced news programming, and allowing such programs to reach critical audiences within the United States costs nothing. To add insult to injury… Kim Andrew Elliott reminds us that U.S. programming is available to domestic broadcasters… you just can’t ask for it directly. Basically – to use the government’s valuable programming, you have to navigate a “don’t ask, don’t tell” farce.

And yet here we are… the U.S. continues to let Smith-Mundt serve as a firewall between U.S. international broadcasting and the domestic population. Why? Perhaps the phantom fears of a looming propaganda state.

As I have said before – we already live in a propaganda state, where mainstream media reporting caters to narrow-cast markets with news and opinions framed to be marketable. So the dangers that Smith-Mundt supposedly protects U.S. citizens from is non-unique. At the same time, the U.S. clings to a phantom hope that its journalistic institutions adhere to a kind of impartial “objectivity” to serve the interests of public debate. Objectivity has been watered down to artificially bisect all issues as politically debatable, with few evaluative standards other than those posed by stakeholders with conveniently contrasting views on the “news.” Put simply – current U.S. media institutions produce propaganda – for better or worse.

So why hasn’t Smith-Mundt been addressed by the legislation, or by executive workarounds? The issue has been ignored because domestic controversies like “healthcare” have an incredible event horizon that occludes all other news. There are few incentives to focus government energy on revising the Smith-Mundt Act, especially at a time of zero-sum politics. As I have said before – it’s not hard to imagine political opponents lining up to oppose any change with charges of “Obama administration wants to legalize domestic propaganda program.” In any age where “death panels” get serious airtime, it’s not surprising that Smith Mundt has been left alone.

So what are the consequences to this ignorance of Smith-Mundt and the domestic dissemination ban? I think Armstrong’s anecdote is a compelling reminder of a larger issue. The U.S. cannot willfully exclude itself from the chaotic global contest of opinion and news framing between international actors. More importantly, the U.S. cannot ignore that globalization involves increasingly porous borders and the flow people. The Minneapolis case highlights the importance of diasporic publics within the United States, and how these media audiences retain connections to their homeland and those parties willing to provide information about their homeland.

The U.S. population is not just a constellation of voting blocks, but a diverse set of communities with interests and relations that overlap and extend beyond the United States. As such, the U.S. is “exposed” to global communicators with an agenda; with pointed framing practices designed to elicit specific opinions and understanding. Here I will say that Norman Pattiz was right in 2002: “There is a media war going on out there.”

The U.S. just isn’t willing to admit that the “war” is being fought within its borders as well as somewhere else. With domestic media institutions having few resources (or incentives) to provide meaningful programming to intervene in pivotal diasporic markets, that leaves the solid reporting of the VOA and other U.S. information programs to fill in the gap. Except, of course, that Smith Mundt protects the U.S. from these government entities. Enough of the ignorance, please!

There is a lot of useful common sense advice in James Glassman’s essay in the Layalina Perspectives publication about President Obama’s Cairo speech. Glassman’s title is thought-provoking, in that he calls for Obama to assert a new narrative that recasts solutions for Arab and Muslim audiences, rather than focus too much on U.S. actions and motivations in the Arab and Muslim world. His advice is intended as a guide for future strategic communication efforts. Glassman agrees with Obama’s call for mutual interest, and somewhat begrudgingly acknowledges the necessity of Obama’s apology for previous U.S. historical transgressions against the Arab and Muslim world. I think Glassman is spot-on to suggest that the U.S. should rightly focus on the principal and enduring sources of negative opinion about the United States. But I also believe the U.S. can’t edit itself out of the narratives that Arab and Muslim audiences find meaningful anytime soon.

Glassman’s proposed solution is to remove the United States from the narratives that continue to frame the U.S. as part of the problems facing both Arabs and the Muslim world. Following this advice, a rhetorical strategy would be to portray the principle anxieties and pressing problems facing these crucial populations in such a way as to minimize the role of the U.S. in the stories that convey understanding about them (such as violent extremism, political corruption, the problem with Iran, democratic reform, and so on). U.S. rhetoric should emphasize how these problems and their solutions are endogenous.

I have a couple thoughts about this recommendation.

First and foremost, I think U.S. strategic communications (from presidential rhetoric all the way down the line to press relations) should think seriously about conflating U.S.-Islamic relations with ethno-political relations. Attempting to recast the narrative of the U.S. and Islam is as daunting as it sounds. And in the process, the U.S. inadvertently draws attention to Islamic relations, when it should more rightly be focusing its strategic relations on specific, regional concerns and grievances. U.S. relations with Arab countries are different that those with Indonesia, yet the U.S. somehow manages to let those concerns become consubstantial. To borrow from Reza Azlan, the U.S. plays into the “cosmic war” narratives when it continues to focus on Islam – when in fact many of the problems that these pivotal audiences are concerned about are political… matters of policy. Glassman rightly suggests that the U.S. try to break the stranglehold on the narrative – that specific grievances facing these audiences are somehow part of a larger U.S. epic struggle against Islam. I would amend the solution to suggest that U.S. rhetoric stop talking about Islam at all. Why fuel the concerns?

Second, a consideration of what narratives do might be in order here. Narratives are often convenient ways to assemble, perceive, and judge events within a scope of history. Narratives frame – in that they allow audiences to process what is happening in a convenient and predictable arc. So, when a bomb goes off in a mosque in Baghdad, propagandists can fashion the U.S. via the narrative template as somehow culpable – in a way that is often maddeningly easy.

While I am a firm believer in the power of rhetoric to transform or challenge the narratives that govern social life – I don’t think that the U.S. can directly the challenge the dominant narrative straight away with a counter-narrative. Sure, a presidential speech can set the terms and tone for subsequent specific policy advocacy… but it should also acknowledge what is reasonable and expected in its audience. If we believe that narratives can be powerful forces – perceptual lenses if you will – then how might one expect a U.S. presidential speech to play in Cairo if it did not acknowledge the accepted doxa of the target audience? To use the terms of rhetorical theorist Walt Fisher, engaging in some mea culpas challenges existing narrative fidelity and probability – if the U.S. is the kind of character that acts like it is portrayed and experienced, then an apology strikes directly at what is expected and understood. Playing against type destabilizes existing narratives, setting the ground for further elaboration and challenges to the received wisdom about the U.S.

To simply write the U.S. out of the script at this stage would be tone-deaf at best to the enduring narratives that govern framing of U.S. actions and intent. While I appreciate Glassman’s suggestions – I view his ideas as narrative objectives, not tactics of rhetorical appeal. The U.S. wants to end up where it is not automatically prefigured as a culpable party to the grievances of Arab and Muslim populations. Getting there, however, means directly challenging the dramatic assertions that hold up the narrative – the actions that demonstrate both intent and responsibility. It means a more vigorous “diplomacy of deeds” (a term borrowed from Karen Hughes), but also a flexible approach to rhetorical appeal that does not reaffirm the monolithic divides that pit the U.S. against a threatened Islamic community. Focusing on that narrative only makes the more substantive policy arguments harder to make persuasive, let alone heard.

Shawn Powers, a fellow Intermap blogger, wrote over at the USC Center on Public diplomacy Blog about about the implications of transparency in journalism for public diplomacy and international broadcasting. In highlighting the shift from objectivity to transparency – he notes that governments should capitalize on how information is legitimated in today’s hyperlinked global media landscape.

The rapid erosion of journalistic credibility evidences a more fundamental challenge to the standards of legitimacy that people use to judge material they consume via media. But what does this mean for public diplomacy and state-based advocacy in general?

It’s one thing to say that governments should embrace the modes of social media. The U.S. State Department and the Department of Defense have multiple initiatives that begin to leverage the benefits of these media. They all recognize the shift in information direction and how information gets processed as credible or relevant. Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Judith McHale justified the use of social media (instead of typical routes through the mainstream media): “This is the way people now get their news, they get their information,” she said. “It’s not as if there’ll be a big black hole. That hole will be filled with other information.”

The basic wisdom here is that governments should attend to the structure of media flows that make up the ecologies of opinion. The two-step flow model of influence may not be irrelevant, but rather refracted in webs of referentiality – how we use and evaluate the multiple streams of info and opinion we get from the internet and beyond.

But does that mean that governments can circumvent the criticism currently leveled at journalism’s brittle objectivity? The implicit solution offered by Powers is that transparency reveals bias, and it demonstrates a willingness to be accountable for the argument moves made to persuade and inform. If embraced as an ethical standard for U.S. PD, it would mean that it is not only in the business of providing truth or factual based information, but that it highlights its information sources, providing open access to the reasoning behind communicative intent.

The problem is, of course, that much of the challenges facing U.S. PD are precisely about intent and bias. Attempts to advocate and persuade, or even demonstrate through exposition (the fact-based journalism of VOA, etc.), are inevitably a presentation of a particular perspective or selection of reality. They are meant to influence – and thus are far from objective in the purest sense. But are they really transparent, and will that matter ultimately in how publics judge information presented to them about the U.S.? If the U.S. puts up a facebook page (like the eJournal USA facebook page managed by the State Deparment) – does that perform the values of transparency that lend credibility to the U.S. perspective?

Or, does it cynically appropriate the social function of social media to insert the agenda and information serving U.S. foreign policy objectives?

In celebrating the value of genuine, individually created content, we create expectations about the value of social media as somehow more authentic. But this authenticity does not necessarily mean communication without intent to persuade or manipulate. I think the conflation of social media with transparency needs to be further explained.

So what happens when social actors (like the United States) perform the acts of social media communication? What becomes the markers of the legitimate and credible when international actors set to influence attempt to muscle in on the terrain of social media? How will we know when we are being manipulated, influenced, or otherwise being “sold” on something? I’m not sure this matters – except for PD planners anticipating how their intended audiences may yet dismiss or disregard attempts by states to leverage social media as part of their PD.

I am asking a lot of questions here to tease out the outlines of why states use social media for PD and whether this constitutes a more ethical or less propagandistic set of activities that might make for a more “effective” PD. I am also concerned that the embrace of social media PD may provide yet more “evidence” for those concerned about being propagandized by states.
To return to the central topic – transparency – can transparency be an effective route to persuasion for nation-states saddled with persistent prejudice about their motives?

Social media may be an answer to develop a sense of community between stakeholders and constituents, but that strategy is not without risks. Regardless, I think that PD commentators and planners need to be honest about the purpose of the activity. As Matt Armstrong stated directly, PD is about influence. To expect political actors (whether they are states or irate Live Journal users bent on agenda-setting) to not attempt to move opinions is to not see why communicative activity is engaged in the first place.

Euphemisms for public diplomacy – engagement, uncertainty reduction, dialogue, information clarification, education, etc. are all secondary routes to the ultimate goal of influence in PD – and thus even the use of social media must be assessed with the kind of influence envisioned. Transparency does not necessarily mean dialogue, respect for other opinions, or some normative template of rational deliberative discourse. It is form of presentation that emphasizes clarity and the maximum disclosure of information and bias. What remains to be seen is whether a public diplomacy that utilizes social media can actively perform and convey the requirements of transparency. In the process we may come to know the purported value of transparency, whether it actually reflects the demands of global media and communication audiences over other communicative values.

Many thanks to James Glassman for his thoughtful response to my comments about his exchange with Marc Lynch over the strategic implications of “PD 2.0.” I’d like to respond and address some of his arguments about the relationship between a “Grand Conversation” and a “War of Ideas.”

On the problems of using facilitative programs to “inject” the U.S. message, Glassman writes:

“Yes, we risk contaminating the conversation so that it won’t be listened to. But I do see the conversation as being a message-bearing methodology. It does not have to bear a message, but it can. Certainly, conversation as valuable for its own sake: when bad arguments are exposed to the light of day, they lose their power.”

Agreed, and I did admit that employing a message-strategy isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Surely, leveraging facilitation to insert U.S. messages can be construed as advocacy – and that might rub against the “Open Source” mentality suggested by Ali Fisher. But, the point of facilitation is to recast the credibility of the actor through the communication practice – not necessarily the message. Engaging the audience as something other than a monolithic and inaccessible entity, cynically addressing instrumentally expedient audiences, is the normative principle here. Facilitation allows actors representing the U.S. (FSO’s or whoever) to connect more as peers. Granted, the ethic of this strategy isn’t necessarily new, and much of U.S. PD has historically been about relationship building, listening, and facilitation of some sort. Glassman’s notion amplifies the concept in the domain of information and communication technologies.

But if the experience of the Digital Outreach Team is any guide – the exposure of “bad arguments” is still a relative matter, and I’m not sure if those kinds of encounters are currently more than so much “talking past each other” exercises. Maybe someone can weigh in on this.

Glassman also questions my claim that the “Grand Conversation” is incompatible with the “War of Ideas.” I admit that the U.S. can use both as operational ideas to entail policies, objectives, and the policy scene. Aside from the seeming non-sequitur of winning the “war’ through a ‘conversation’ – I agree there’s nothing essential about the incompatibility. What I was really getting at were two things:

A) Policies tend to follow logics of how they are justified. So, for example, if we have a war on terror, we’re not deploying cops, we’re deploying troops. We’re not out to diminish or dissuade, we’re out to destroy. I’m concerned about the terministic compulsion that comes with conceiving of something as a “war” – especially when a war implies conflict with a legitimate and threatening actor. If the goal is transform the operational environment (the ’scenic’ objectives of US foreign policy), I think it starts with our terminological strategies of narrating the scene itself.

And some terms ring louder than others. Like War. When the BBG declared that Radio Sawa and the nascent Al-Hurra were going to be perceived as legitimate (and not as propaganda) – Norm Pattiz touted the value of the BBG “firewall” from policy-makers. I think it’s fair to say that kind of nuance never really translated to the audiences as intended. I wonder if the “BBG-as-firewall” argument was even considered as deliberate obfuscation and misdirection.

Which leads to point B…

B) Extremism is real, and so is Islamic terrorism. But the “War of Ideas” infuses the enemy with the kind of dramatic role they dream of fulfilling. The U.S. should not engage in a “cosmic war” at any level, linguistic or otherwise. I don’t mean to dismiss the threat of terrorism – but the real threat is giving reasons to more “moderate” publics to tolerate extremist elements, and persuasive evidence for such movements to feel they can in turn compel publics into tacit acceptance. This is Lynch’s argument in a nutshell. As Jarret Brachman’s excellent research has suggested – extremist rhetoric is pretty darn crazy. Let’s not add any gloss to their efforts.

The War of Ideas smacks of the binary logics that are grist for the conspiracy theory mill in the Arabic “hidden transcript” – the commonplaces that connect the dots back to an existential campaign against Arabs and by extension, all Muslims. A Grand Conversation, however, doesn’t foreclose opportunities to directly squash terrorist activities. It doesn’t “kill” extremist movements with some kind of argument contest either. Rather, it might succeed by de-legitimation and further isolation of extremist perspectives.

For me, the “War of Ideas” was always about motivating a domestic constituency for public diplomacy. It was not a term suggestive of policies and communication themes. Hence the need for something like “the grand conversation” to provide a helpful description for elaboration. But it’s this disconnect that I think gets U.S. policy planners in trouble, when global audiences have access to our efforts at persuading ourselves on the proper course of action.

As for facilitation – On Youtube, Facebook, Second Life, or whatever… I think the communication methods speak volumes about intention and respect for the “target” audience. Performing (sincerely) the rituals of listening are part of this strategic direction. And the gains should be considered in long-term horizons, much like the relationship-building of exchange diplomacy.

As Robert Entman argued, public diplomacy campaigns of media advocacy at best would result in getting the U.S. perspective in the mix. Facilitation exercises like this are part of that strategy (as is news management), for as Joseph Nye described, a significant challenge is just getting messages through in the wash of readily-tailored information already available to crucial audiences enmeshed in their own social networks. But more importantly, I think facilitation can help to demonstrate the respect that global audiences seek, without sacrificing the beliefs and strengths behind the American position.