CQ HOMELAND SECURITY
Dec. 5, 2008 – 7:40 p.m.
Report Sees Need for New Independent Voice on Public Diplomacy
By Matt Korade, CQ Staff
The Brookings Institution’s Kristin Lord has proposed a new method of public diplomacy to ressurect America’s ailing image abroad.
The initiative, outlined in Lord’s latest report, “Voices of America: U.S. Public Diplomacy in the 21st Century”, would involve creating a nonprofit agency with one express purpose: strengthening U.S. national security though engagement in public diplomacy.
George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute invited Lord and a panel of experts last week to present their ideas for change and explore some key questions from the institute’s task force on the presidential transition: How can America overcome the charge that foreign aid is a façade for counterterrorism goals? How can the nation engage productively with international organizations to build security and stability around the world? These were questions, in large part, of public diplomacy.
Although global values have shifted in the last several decades toward U.S. norms — embracing racial and gender equality, freedom of expression, a government of, by and for the people, public opinion abroad can be a lethal thing to U.S. interests, especially of late, the panelists said.
While the number of democracies around the globe has doubled since the 1970s, public-opinion polls today show anti-Americanism is high — and not just in the predictable places.
In Canada, 62 percent of those polled believe U.S. influence in the world is mainly negative, according to a poll by the BBC and University of Maryland cited in Lord’s report. In Germany, where the U.S. has enjoyed close political, diplomatic and military ties since World War II, that number jumps even higher, to 72 percent.
On the pressing issues of climate change and energy use, terrorism, and the economy, global opinions matter, and America can’t achieve success on its own, Lord and the other panelists said. Other nations are critical, as are corporations, nongovernmental organizations such as the Red Cross and Red Crescent, and transnational networks.
Although some experts advocate creating a new federal agency for the task, the panelists agreed a new bureaucracy might not be the best solution. Today’s problems are large and diffuse, in some beyond the scope of the kinds of diplomatic agencies created in the mid-20th century. If a cost-benefit analysis were undertaken to examine such an investment, the price, in terms of time and energy, would be too high, they said.
Sometimes, the government’s touch can confound the efforts of transnational organizations, whose credibility depends on perceptions of their independence and neutrality, said David Meltzer, vice president of international services for the American Red Cross.
In addition, public diplomacy needs to go beyond a strict focus on counterterrorism, Meltzer said. Without a broader view, it will be hard to overcome the believe that Western aid is merely one more tool of the U.S. and allies’ to dominate the region, the panelists said.
The United States and international community need to forge a consensus and bring as many nations to the negotiating table as they can for each given diplomatic situation, said Karin von Hippel, a senior fellow in international security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Von Hippel, who wrote two recent studies, “Confronting Two Key Challenges in Afghanistan” and “A Counterradicalization Strategy for a New U.S. Administration,” said there are problems not just integrating strategies on the ground in places such as Afghanistan, but also within the U.S. government.
The U.S. military alone has three combatant commands there, counting involvement in NATO’s operation: U.S. Central Command, European Command, and Special Operations Command, in addition to being the majority player in the disorganized and severely tested NATO operation.
Report Sees Need for New Independent Voice on Public Diplomacy
But the situations in Sudan, Lebanon and Iran also have posed major organizational challenges.
Instead of developing a consensus, international efforts have often resulted in long lists of priorities and ideas, “many of which are totally inappropriate for the situation on the ground,” she said.
The reach of the private sector, meanwhile, far exceeds that of government, although it can be difficult to formalize and quantify how the private sector can contribute, said Jonah Czerwinski, a consultant for IBM and senior adviser for the Center for the Study of the Presidency.
That’s because businesses spread legitimacy through thousands of individual actions, he said. One thing businesses can do is provide advice on best practices, and often private companies are far more welcome than government entities, Czerwinski said; in part, this is because foreign populations often see globalization and international trade as good for their countries and themselves, a recent poll of several Muslim countries showed.
According to Lord’s report, the annual budgets of Coca-Cola and Citigroup dwarf that of the State Department, though their global presence is similar. But creating a new public diplomacy organization doesn’t mean creating a General Motors-like entity, she said. In an age when a world of information is just a click away, the Internet is a powerful and important public-relations tool, as al Qaeda’s propaganda videos and news photos of detainees being humiliated by U.S. servicemembers have shown. Call it “the Google solution,” Lord said, or, according to an audience member, a better metaphor might be Linux: You fight ideology with counterideology, the panelists said, and dispersed terrorist networks with a nimble counter-network.
Before creating a new organization, it is important to understand its goals, Lord said. Public diplomacy can be used to persuade foreign publics to support U.S. policies, place the conflicting messages of U.S. leaders and opinion-makers in context for foreign leaders, and encourage shared values — support for free markets, the illegitimacy of suicide bombing. Conversely, it requires of those involved a thorough understanding of the cultures, societies and peoples to be persuaded, she said.
How can all this be accomplished? Independent reports have called for creating an independent or semi-independent organization modeled on agencies such as the U.S. Institute for Peace and the Rand Corporation, Lord wrote in her report.
“Voices of America” found that the need is there, but for a new nonprofit that would fill gaps government agencies aren’t suited to fill. The organization, “USA World Trust,” would attempt to mobilize, galvanize and amplify the ideas of others, strengthening government by “providing targeted and useful research, analysis, technologies, and strategies drawn from a wide range of experts in a wide range of fields,” Lord wrote.
The thrust of the foundation’s efforts would center on four key areas: research and development, grants and venture capital, media and technology, and fundraising, emphasizing partnerships between American and foreign groups and collaboration among a wide range of experts.
Such an agency would need to build up to an annual budget of at least $50 million within the first three years, supplemented by donations and fee-for-service projects, Lord wrote. At least half of the annual budget would go to grants and the rest to staff, operations and in-house research and projects carried about ultimately by about 150 full-time professionals.
Although a tiny budget compared to what the Defense Department receives, the money would do a lot to support U.S. national security by engaging different audiences with different tools.
“With the Iraq war costing an estimated $434 million a day and the annual U.S. information agency budget in the 1990s reaching well over $1 billion,” Lord wrote, “this investment seems — if anything — too modest in comparison.”
To be effective, the nonprofit would have to be scrupulously nonpartisan, objective and constructive in tone, keeping to the highest American ideals of justice, tolerance, and democracy, she continued. Its goal would be to aid other U.S. efforts by reducing wide swings in funding, tactics and focus that have marked the history of American public diplomacy by focusing on long-term interests along with short-term needs.
Report Sees Need for New Independent Voice on Public Diplomacy
A rebalancing of federal resources also would be useful, she said. Although the State Department has the lead in public diplomacy, the Defense Department has far greater relative budget for the task.
“Even though the Defense Department is quite good at this . . . that’s a bit out of whack,” Lord said.
Matt Korade can be reached at mkorade@cq.com.
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