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.