Can Three Weeks Make a Difference?

We began the trip in Dubai as a diverse group of 12 American fellows, representing every region of the United States and various companies including Dow Chemical, Intel, Wells Fargo, Verizon, Sephora, and DDB. Having spent time in the region when I worked for the State Department prior to 9/11, I was eager to see if this brief fellowship could really be as “transformative” and “life-altering” as past fellows had proclaimed. What I discovered early on in the trip was that it was not only transformative and memorable, but something that I will take with me for the rest of my life. In three weeks, I made more contacts, and had broader, deeper interactions at every level of Middle Eastern society than I had during my entire time working for the federal government in the region. How is this possible? No discussion was off limits, no interaction discouraged. It was a “safe” environment to ask any question, probe any issue, and raise sensitive cross-cultural concerns. We came to learn and engage… we came away completely changed.

Smashing Stereotypes and Misperceptions from Egypt to Palestine

Our fearless group of twelve split into two after our first few days in Dubai. Half of us headed to Egypt, the other half to Palestine; two very different countries, each with their own challenges and opportunities, and two very complex business environments. Universally, we were welcomed. People not only welcomed us into their businesses and homes, but into their lives - sharing with us their hopes, passions, concerns, challenges, and joys. It was remarkable how quickly these discussions smashed every stereotype and misperception on both sides, making us all realize how similar we really are when focusing on that which binds us as people, not on the issues that separate us. I was struck by how quickly we could come together, build trust and move towards discussions of how to work together in this rare environment. My conclusion after countless meetings, briefings and discussions confirmed my belief that business is uniquely positioned to accelerate and promote diplomatic action. In business there is little choice but to engage, seek understanding, build relationships, find ways to collaborate and manage challenges. Business has perfected the elements of diplomacy often overlooked by scholars and politicians - that of leveraging diplomacy effectively for strategic advantage and building solutions to complex challenges.

Moving Towards a Global Mindset

We also saw firsthand that successful global businesses, especially the ones operating in the Middle East on a massive scale, develop and invest in their people so that they excel in diverse, challenging cross-cultural environments. Every executive we met with had a global mindset. This was not by accident. How incredibly refreshing and bizarre for Americans to witness.

Of our twelve American fellows, each of us admitted at the outset that we were outliers in our respective communities and hometowns;the “strange” ones who actively seek out global experiences beyond Canada, Mexico and Europe. We all truly enjoyed engaging in thoughtful global discourse with our Middle Eastern counterparts, as so many of them truly have a global mindset. They see themselves not just as Egyptians, or Palestinians, or as Arabs, but as citizens of the world. They are connected to and interested in what’s happening in the world. This fellowship confirmed for me how critical the cultivation of a global mindset really is for every American. We no longer have a choice as to whether or not we engage with the world. We do have a choice in how we engage. Do we seek to learn and understand or hide behind stereotypes, fear, and ignorance?

Sisyphus Reborn

On our last night in Dubai, we were reminded by our new friends in the region that 10 years ago a program such as the AABF, where Arab and American business leaders come together to dialogue and learn from one another, wouldn't have existed. I returned to the US with an enormous sense of gratitude and hope; an abundance of optimism, energized by the myriad opportunities in the region, eager to build upon the new relationships I cultivated, and perhaps most importantly, to share the learnings and insights with fellow Americans. Watching the Young Arab Leaders firsthand championing innovative development and mentoring efforts in the Middle East, you can’t help but be moved to action here at home. Diplomacy begins at home and it begins with each of us who engage with other cultures and travel the world. It may seem a Sisyphean task, but what is the alternative? Do nothing? It will take an army of globally minded Americans to steer America’s role in the world. It is a massive, generational task, but one we are equipped and ready for. Our work has only just begun. Will you join us?


FOR MORE INFORMATION

Business for Diplomatic Action: http://www.businessfordiplomaticaction.org
Young Arab Leaders: http://www.yaleaders.org/en/
AABF Building Bridges Blog: http://businessfordiplomaticaction.blogspot.com/2009/11/building-global-mindset.html

For those interested in the evolution of the practice and the profession of public diplomacy, we have arrived at an interesting moment in its history, a moment of innovation and adaptation. I wish to point to two trends in this global evolution, and then underscore several challenges they pose to the future of the field. One trend occurs at the global level, where several universal conditions are worth noting. The second trend is unfolding within the United States with the advent of the administration of President Barack Obama, which manifests some of the global trends but also presents unique elements worth noting.*

Global Trends in Public Diplomacy

The three trends I identify below are of relatively recent occurrence, and have not always been a part of the long history of the field. First, prime ministers, presidents and other high level government leaders across a wide variety of states increasingly have come to recognize that public diplomacy (PD) is a useful element of statecraft, along with traditional elements like war fighting, standard diplomacy or the exercise of economic leverage. No longer restricted to states like France or the Nordic nations in the global North, senior government officials around the world believe that they can advance their national interests through the judicious use of PD.

Second, over the past several years many governments’ leaders have actually acted on this recognition by allocating money and manpower to design, organize and implement PD. They have created new directorates within their ministries of foreign affairs as well as entirely new free standing agencies, staffing them with senior officials and allocating government funds to support them.

For example, in June I met with a senior government official in India whose public diplomacy department has a fascinating portfolio that includes informing domestic audiences of the importance of India’s international PD, reaching out to its increasingly powerful diaspora, and using its popular film culture to leverage national interests. Similar departments have been created in Canada, Germany and other nations. The MPD program at USC Annenberg is attracting a growing number of students from around the world, including mid-career professionals, who come seeking the most relevant individual skills and the ‘best practices’ for their organizations back home. Canada and Germany have created and funded separate units for PD, as have Mexico and Brazil. The People’s Republic of China is also beefing up the organizational and budgetary capacities of its PD agencies. USC Annenberg has been invited by several states in the Gulf to offer customized courses on strategic communications and public diplomacy.

Third, a wide variety of non-governmental interest groups are learning the language of “public diplomacy”. Business associations, civic groups and human rights movements are increasingly incorporating PD language and tactics into their relations with like-minded groups around the world (this is also true for public units below the national levels, as cities and states vie for greater visibility and appeal in a globalizing world.) Non-governmental groups are also using the language of PD to try to influence their own governments to pursue policies in the international arena that support their own values and views of what is important.

PD Trends in the Obama Administration

Some of these same trends are visible in Washington, but to varying degrees and influenced by other trends that are unique to a superpower and unique to American culture. For example, one can see the global trend toward more dialogue with civil society groups in Obama’s greater reliance on two-way conversation with non-governmental organizations (and with governments) than in the preceding administration of George W. Bush. President Obama’s speech to the Muslim world delivered in Cairo is one example.

This administration’s visible movement toward greater diplomacy, whether public or private, is running into the imperatives and expectations of a dominant super power which possesses unparalleled military and intelligence assets. From the Middle East to Europe, from trade to terrorism, the still-young administration is trying to calibrate its use of military power and diplomacy, its balance of hard power and soft. The current Secretary of State and her immediate team are on record in favor of reaching beyond traditional government parameters to engage women’s organizations and local self-help bodies, and her senior policy advisor in the Policy Planning office (Anne-Marie Slaughter) has written persuasively in Foreign Affairs and other outlets about the need to engage all segments of society in a ‘global network’ of mutually beneficial ties in order to modernize foreign policy – not just governments, but companies, NGOs and knowledge centers. But for some problems like terrorism, and some nations like Afghanistan and Pakistan, PD’s appeal and utility is limited.

But most importantly, and most obviously, America’s reliance on more public diplomacy has an obvious asset in the person of President Obama. As the first American president with the heritage of rising from a despised minority, he has judiciously but consistently called on his minority status – and his experience living abroad in a Muslim society – as an important basis for his global appeal to people in other socially-difficult conditions around the world, going over the heads of their governments to claim unique understanding and sympathy for the excluded and the impoverished. Translating this personal charisma into sustainable policies and organizational reforms will be more challenging, which leads me to the final section on the remaining challenges confronting all those who are interested in institutionalizing and expanding the reach and impact of public diplomacy.

Remaining Global Challenges in the Design and Conduct of Public Diplomacy

Despite the impressive spread of public diplomacy as an important instrument to achieve one’s international purposes, critical challenges remain. Let me identify challenges which are internal to PD, external, technological and political.


Internal challenges. Within the domain of public diplomacy, how should governments (and significant NGOs) combine the multiple constituent elements of PD into one organic whole so they are mutually reinforcing and not pulling in different directions toward chaos and failure? (cf Nicholas J. Cull on this issue) PD consists of the pursuit of quite distinct purposes that employ quite different instruments. International broadcasting, citizen exchanges, cultural diplomacy and policy promotion are used to achieve different goals, and governments confuse them at the risk of weakening the impact of all. The daily briefing from the president’s office, and the attendant ‘strategic communication’ message imposed across all government agencies should not try to achieve purposes of exchanges which take a generation to bear fruit.

External challenges. How should government leaders find the correct balance between its soft power instruments of conversation and persuasion on the one hand, and the hard power instruments of armies and coercion on the other? All governments by definition have armies and police forces, and they sometimes use threats and coercion to achieve their international purposes. What individuals in a country, and what institutions, have the breadth of understanding necessary to design ‘smart power’ through the integration of the ingredients of ‘hard power’ and ‘soft power’? Public diplomacy and soft power are not ends in themselves; they should be seen as ingredients of 'smart power.'

Technological challenges. What is one to make of the new communications and information technologies like the Internet and its equally-radical modern updates, known as social media? NGOs from health organizations to terrorist cells are better at deploying these assets than governments, and these technological changes have proved profoundly disruptive to government’s plans to conduct ‘public diplomacy’. The tension between access and control has proved unsettling, and will remain so for some time.

Political challenges – who really cares about public diplomacy? In a world where other instruments of state power have influential lobbies, who stands up for PD? International trade has its powerful trade associations and lobbyists. The military establishment is powerful everywhere, whether current and retired generals or arms makers and sellers. Will domestic coalitions emerge that learn to press government consistently and insistently to do more PD? And how will governments respond – by heeding calls for more PD from civil society groups, or will they try to co-opt or crush them? Do NGOs run the risk of becoming mere tools of state power? Will government PD agencies become the captive of the loudest PD advocate?

These challenges are not open to easy or immediate resolution. But for those who care about the long term health of global international affairs, they do constitute the next steps in enhancing the design and implementation of global and national public diplomacy. Meeting these four challenges requires hard work, immediately, to start reforming the institutions and training the PD experts of tomorrow. Creating the public diplomacy field of the future is an important task for all of us.


*These observations flow from my work as a member of the team at the Center on Public Diplomacy and a lecturer in the Master of Public Diplomacy degree program at the University of Southern California, and recent conversations in India, China, Taiwan. I also served on the Presidential Transition Team of President Obama, with responsibilities in the area of public diplomacy.

Clinton, who has fondly reminisced about her decades-long friendship with President Zardari, dating back to the time when they were both first spouses, promised when she landed in Islamabad today to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with Pakistan in its fight against terrorism.

Hillary, I think we’re standing close enough as it is. This government, feted by Clinton as a much ballyhooed ally, doesn’t have a very solid handle on what’s what. President Zardari’s party, the PPP, is run more like a corporation, negotiating billion-dollar aid packages for Pakistan from anyone who’s willing to foot the bill.

Pakistan’s sovereignty was signed over to Hillary and Barack some time ago. With a government willing to use U.S. drone technology against its own people, bomb various parts of its country when directed to, and allow a revolving-door policy for American officials, it’s no wonder Washington is hell bent on supporting the disastrous Zardari government.