Report Review: "Voices of America: U.S. Public Diplomacy for the 21st Century" Foreign Policy at Brookings By Kristin M. Lord (November 2008).

The following report provides recommendations based on the conclusions that America’s reputation is fading across the world and thereby undermining its influence to gain cooperation of foreign publics. Thereby, the report urges to strengthen and enhance America’s public diplomacy-defined as the promotion of national interests through efforts to inform, engage, and influence foreign publics, in order to improve America’s stand in the world and “to strengthen America’s efforts to engage, persuade and attract the support of foreign publics”(Kristin, 2008).

As solutions or at least possible steps to achieve these objectives, this report recommends to create a new independent, public-private organization to strengthen America’s relations with foreign societies, while recognizing that the creation of such an organization will be insufficient unless it will be fitted into a broader U.S. strategy that undertakes more dedicated efforts towards public diplomacy and strategic communication, which is why it also advocates for the need of changes within current government agencies to strengthen U.S. public diplomacy. Regarding these suggestions, there are two important things to note: first, creation of a new organization does not call for a new cabinet-level government agency to conduct public diplomacy as it would absorb energy and resources and create competition and overlapping authorities within existing agencies and secondly, it does not suggest for undertaking major organizational restructurings, but rather it suggests to support the existing government agencies.

Report emphasizes the changing nature of the globalized world in the 21^st Century that America faces and the need for adjustment of policies and communication with foreign publics, because if America wants to advance its interests, defend against threats and build the desired international system that is conducive to American interests, then America cannot limit itself to relations with foreign governments only, but rather it has to gain the support of their people due to the recent spread of democracy and the importance of public opinion, as well as threats that transcend national boundaries such as climate change, infectious disease, international terrorist networks, whereby they cannot be dealt in traditional state-to-state ways, and the importance of ideas and ideologies that are crucial feature of contemporary security threats and finally, military force that is not only enough for dealing with current threats, but rather it is also the cause for the mobilization of support for enemies.

Considering these circumstances the role of public diplomacy is considered critical. Therefore, the report calls for the creation of an entrepreneurial new non-profit organization under the name of USA World Trust, which would coordinate and “draw on goodwill, creativity, knowledge and talent of the American people and likeminded partners overseas”(Kristin, 2008) and aim to:

• Present America in a more positive light and counter the negative views from popular culture and foreign media
• Support an environment of mutual trust, respect and understanding
• Work as a promoter of shared values and their champions
• Support the government’s public diplomacy efforts through informing and sharing the knowledge concerning communication, public opinion, foreign cultures and technology.

Main responsibilities of the USA World Trust would be that of:

• Conducting research and analysis with the help of the knowledge of experts and present in a form useful to public diplomacy practitioners.
• Encourage and coordinate the private sector such as companies, non-governmental organizations, universities and others to contribute to the innovative new initiatives.
• Support projects and initiatives that are parallel to the USA World Trust’s objectives through providing grants and venture capital
• Identify, cultivate, and experiment with new technologies and media products that support US public diplomacy and strategic communication.
• Work as a hub and gatherer of practitioners from the US government, scholars, and talented visitors from the private and non-profit sectors to address public diplomacy and strategic communication challenges.

In sum, the main purpose of USA World Trust is to: “engage new voices and talent, serve as a resource to government and private groups that wish to improve America’s image, strengthen America’s relations with foreign populations, and combat anti-American ideologies”(Kristin, 2008).

Meanwhile, report emphasizes that the organization by itself will be ineffective unless it is part of a broader U.S. strategy to engage the world, which should include:

• More committed efforts of public diplomacy and strategic communication at all stages of policymaking and government.
• New investment in public diplomacy and strategic communication
• Leadership and stronger mechanisms to ensure coordination between government agencies.
• Expansion of public diplomacy capacity within the State Department along with the creation of interagency “hubs” for public diplomacy and strategic communication in major world regions provided with deputy assistant secretaries for public diplomacy in every regional and most functional bureaus of the State Department; more and better trained staff; more training and educational opportunities for public diplomacy professionals; and programs to draw outside experts into government.
• Streamlined policies to facilitate government partnerships with the private sector.
• A review of international broadcasting strategy and operations
• Discussion upon the compatibility of covert information operations and public diplomacy
• Policies and practices that balance security and engagement within borders, overseas embassies as well as immigration and visa policies.

This report by providing above-mentioned recommendations, illustrates the growing need and importance of a more committed efforts towards public diplomacy and the necessity to make it more coordinated and organized in order to make it more effective and efficient. There are now numerous reports that are analogous in nature, which also illustrates a pressing need for a coherent and balanced use of public diplomacy. For example, in the light of the report by Defense Science Board, that claim: “Strategic communication, coordinated and executed in association with all aspects of national power, can help prevent and limit conflict as well as enhance responses to global challenges that threaten America’s interests and values.” (Defense Science Board, 2008), it is possible to note similar claims towards the use and importance of public diplomacy. For example, an analogous recommendation of Defense Science Board to create “an independent, non-profit, and non-partisan Center for Global Engagement as a focal point for strategic communication activities, bringing together government and non-government leaders and expertise” (Defense Science Board, 2008) supports the claim for the need to create USA World Trust and enhance the use of public diplomacy.

Kristin M. Lord, (2008) Voices of America: US Public Diplomacy for the Twenty-First Century, Brookings Institute, available at www.brookings.edu/reports/2008/11_public_diplomacy_lord.aspx

Defense Science Board (US), (2008) Report of the Taskforce on Strategic Communication, available at www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/ADA476331.pdf

Chinese Views of the EU

The European Union has funded a project called Chinese Views of the EU. Conducted by Nottingham University, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Remnim University in Bejing, Leiden University in Holland and Jacobs University in Breman. It sets out to discover the attitude of the Chinese population toward the EU. Asked which countries or regions they held a favourable impression of, 74% said the EU, 74% said Russia, while the US scored 60% and Japan only 38%.

“Soccer, cars, fashion, perfume, historical sites, music, movies, nature, technology and beer in that order”[1] were the things that interested them most about the EU, while Napoleon, Hitler, Lenin and Marx are the four historical figures most closely associated with Europe. Only 43% thought Chinese/EU relations were good but 46% were cautiously optimistic for future relations while 16% were very optimistic. The EU’s role in protecting the environment was perceived positively by 86% while 85% thought its role in furthering scientific progress worthy. The EU’s role in fighting terrorism and poverty were scored at 63% and 62% respectively and 81% welcomed the spread of European culture in China. While these numbers are gratifyingly high, only 55% said they liked European ideas about democracy.

“The project’s coordinator, Dr Zhengxu WANG, said in a paper delivered at the conference the research showed that the more knowledgeable people were about a country or region, the more positive an attitude they had towards it. This and other factors meant that the EU had an opportunity to influence China’s foreign policy through promoting greater knowledge about the EU itself, he concluded in a joint paper written with Bogdan Popescu of the University of Nottingham’s School of Politics and International Relations.” (ibid.)

Given the Chinese government’s authoritarian grip on the information available to the population, it may be interesting to reverse engineer these findings, in a very unscientific way, and examine the cultural and public diplomacy methods being deployed toward the Chinese people. The Chinese interest in “Soccer, cars, fashion, etc., suggests the EU’s cultural diplomacy is having the desired effect, doubtlessly beaming these icons directly into the Chinese living room, while their government’s public diplomacy is obviously not adverse to encouraging an increase in consumerism. The lower percentages on the EU’s role in poverty reduction and the perception of European democracy suggests a government line which naturally supports its own political and diplomatic agenda, denigrating democracy and espousing Chinese foreign policy over that of the west.

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[1] http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/pressreleases/2011/february/researchrevealschineseviewsoftheeu.aspx

Critical Review: Public Diplomacy: Strengthening U.S. Engagement with the World

Critical Review


Public Diplomacy: Strengthening U.S. Engagement with the World

http://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/index.php/resources/government_reports
(March 2010)

A Strategic approach for the 21st century



This report was prepared by the office of the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.
This report is intended to be a “roadmap for Public Diplomacy” bringing a strategic focus to public diplomacy programs, recourses, and structures, on which basis, should be constructed next year (2012) budged request.

Mission Statement

To support the achievement of U.S. foreign policy goals and objectives, advance national interests, and enhance national security by informing and influencing foreign publics and by expanding and strengthening the relationship between the people and government of the United States and citizens of the rest of the world.

This is quite a presumptuous opening statement of the official state’s report. It is quite superficial and pretentious, which one could become used to regarding U.S. state’s governmental statements. One can presume, this is an inheritance of the Cold War.
“advance national interest, and enhance national security by informing and influencing foreign publics” Shame that, the U.S. foreign policy is (in a few last decades) using for the purpose, at least in certain parts of the world its military or weapons.


The World We Face

To meet the challenges and seize the opportunities of the 21st century, we need a foreign policy that uses tools and approaches to match a changing global landscape of engagement.

The report accurately acknowledges the ever changing environment of international politics and the global landscape of engagement of public diplomacy. It rightly seeks an enhancement of U.S. public diplomacy through three main dynamics of a changing global landscape.

1. Demographics

• The report recommends targeting women, young people and “illiteracy and low level of education in conflict areas”. One can argue that this recommendation is justifiable on the basis; that connection between low levels of education and low levels of democracy, as well as low levels of democracy and possibility of a conflict are highly potential, and often tend to evolve into complications which diplomacy cannot resolve.

2. Communications

• The report promotes, on one hand, “an immediate public access to a wide array of information” and on the other hand adverts the power of technology and various Internet networks as possible means of a misuse and an abuse by criminal groups.

3. People Power

• The report acknowledges the power of the masses and the rapid growth of population, “societies have shifted from the few to the many”
• The report is, and rightly so, pointing that the traditional bilateral diplomacy is almost outdated and the new actors have now fully engaged in global politics, and this fact must be addressed by the U.S. public diplomacy.


The world we face: Competing influences

This part of the report -is rather interesting. It recommends the focus on a new, more sophisticated media strategies used often by an extremists to influence the public; report recommendations that, through public diplomacy this trend could be averted.

Further on, the report is addressing marketing of higher education opportunities in the EU, Singapore and Australia as an aggressive way. Blaming their own marketing for diminishing U.S. opportunities and loosing the position as the world’s best and brightest. (One can argue that this statement is possibly closer to propaganda than to public diplomacy rhetoric) Considering that the budget for Educational and Cultural Exchange programs has risen from 633.243 bn. in year 2010 to just 697.900 in 2011.

The report of the Office of Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs is quite complex and includes a vast range of problems and issues, however one can argue that it shows a certain lack of focus or, more focused targeting of problems or strategies which public diplomacy should focus on in the next year. The language of the report dozed off in the era of the Cold War, and in certain parts shows deficiency in the field of research or even naïveté of the American self-importance.

One can assume that the ideas and objectives could appear quite pompous and empty at the same time. Although the report identifies quite a few global challenges, from violation of democracy and human rights, to violent extremism, to nuclear non-proliferation to women’s empowerment, global health and climate change; as well as acknowledgment that “an effective approach to public diplomacy is now more important than ever.”
Nonetheless the report, one can argue could be more specific and focus more on troubleshooting of more specific issues.

This report, although addressing certain tangible issues and objectives, those are the issues of the 21st century, which one can argue, does not have to be feasible or possible to tackle within the next (2011) year, without big enough increases of the budget of the Office, but with the structural reforms expecting on increase of the bureaucratic apparatus.

CSIS Commission on Smart Power

The Report of the CSIS Commission on Smart Power

The report of the CSIS Commission on Smart Power, produced in 2007, followed the recognition, as Armitage and Nye state in the introduction, that since 9/11 the US had been “exporting fear and anger rather than… hope and optimism.”(p 10) The first section of the report gives ample evidence of how attitudes to the US changed from being very largely favourable in 2002 to being almost everywhere unfavourable in 2007 (p 18). The section continues to give evidence of the “waning influence” of the US on the world stage.

The second, longer section outlines the commission’s “Smart Power Strategy,” which means spending a great deal more of the budget on “soft” power, trying to improve relations, targeting world health concerns, targeting global warming, using public diplomacy to improve access to international knowledge and increasing trade without having head-on collisions with trading rivals such as China.

The commission recommends all these measures as a necessary alternative to “hard” power in restoring America to a place of leadership in the world.

The authors do not seem, at any point, to doubt whether America should be leading the world; their concern is that they seem to have lost support in doing that, and it is now time to regain it. The repeated emphasis throughout is not so much on the world perhaps becoming a more peaceful place, or even America becoming a more peaceful place, but on America becoming “a smarter and stronger power”. (Todman, p52)

There is a surprised, and patronising, comment on page 37, that many European nations are ahead of the US in their understanding that world progress is necessary for their own development. The emphasis throughout the report is on the US “wanting to inspire people in other countries”. It is about the US being the donor (though they have to admit they are a rather mean donor compared to many other nations), but at no point does the report suggest that the US itself perhaps needs to learn more about the rest of the world.

Sport as a diplomatic tool

Cultural diplomacy is the promotion of culture of a state or a social group to another in order to establish and strengthen relations between people and even states. Milton C. Cummings described it as “the exchange of ideas, information, art and other aspects of culture among nations and their peoples to foster mutual understanding”.

Nowadays, people engage more and more in the development and enhancement of their cultures with host countries and cultural exchanges can happen in a variety of ways: Travellers, teachers and artists can be all considered examples of informal cultural diplomats.

Like culture, sport can be a powerful means of influence that nations use to spread a positive image. In the 2008 Olympics, China succeeded in portraying itself as a modern urban country when in reality the country is predominantly rural. David Beckham, Zidane and Ronaldo are among many sports personalities who have worn the colours of their retrospective countries on the media stage world wide and The United states also know the benefits they can gain from sports heroes revered far beyond US borders. To disseminate American values in a gentle way, the United States for several years has used its high-level athletes, to gain sympathy in targeted countries. This policy began in late 2006 with five-time world champion figure skater Michelle Kwan. A more recent example is when the state department announced the appointment of the baseball player Ken Griffey as public diplomacy envoy in 2008. Baseball is still a very misunderstood sport in Europe and much of the world. However, it is very popular in several Latin American countries, including Cuba and Venezuela, two countries with whom US relations are not very friendly. The state department attaches great importance to sport as a conduit to export the American way of life and in her presentation Condoleezza Rice sums this up when saying “When Ken Griffey travels overseas, one of his greatest objectives will be to talk to young people and to spark their interest in America and in our culture.”

Source: http://www.america.gov/st/sports-french/2009/January/200901061055350pnativel0.2934687.html?CP.rss=true