American Public Diplomacy: Foundations & Background

In 1948, the law that permitted the establishment of the US Information Agency, the Smith-Mundt Act (Public Law 402, 80th Congress) was passed. The Act saw that propaganda on behalf of the US Government and US policies was a serious matter. But equally serious was the concern that such an agency not turn into a Ministry of Propaganda, as recently manifest in Nazi Germany.

It was recognized that there was enormous power in talking to publics directly, not through their governmental filters. But there was also great danger if that power was used irresponsibly, or worse, malignantly.

I can't find a full text of the law on line, so can't offer a direct link to it. (GPO does not have electronic copies predating 1998). Thus, there is also no direct link to the 1972 Zorinsky Amendment to that Act, which strongly reinforced the "no domestic dissemination" part of the law. You can find some useful discussion by the Federation of American Scientists (1999) of that law and how it carried over to State when it absorbed USIA in a "hostile takeover". There's also in an Annenberg Northwestern report, Adapting Public Diplomacy to a Changing Global Community.

There's also a very well-written piece called The Purposes and Cross-Purposes of American Public Diplomacy (2002) by John Brown, a former Public Diplomacy practitioner. He offers a good discussion of the "hard v. soft" versions of public diplomacy. Both are necessary, of course, and the balance needs to be tailored to the country and audience in question.

Getting What We Pay For

While I liked Tim Oren's article, his discussion of the missteps and mistakes in public diplomacy doesn't recognize the incredible damage that was done to USIA (and State) in the quest for a post-Cold War "dividend". The USIA posts in Saudi Arabia, circa 1990 (I include both pre- and post-Gulf War) were in 3 cities, with American staffing at 8 officers and about 35 foreign nationals. When I was assigned to run that office in late Sept. 2001, there were 4 Americans and 15 foreign nationals, in 2 cities. In places like India it was even worse: from 25 Americans and over 2,000 Indians on staff, by 2001 it was 12 Americans and 200 Indians. Although all 4 India locations remained open, an office responsible for country-wide efforts had been closed.

Since salaries and benefits are always the big bump in the budget, the only way to trim costs effectively was to cut staff. But programs were also cut. In some places, programming money - that's the money that's used to actually do things - was under 15% of the budget.

I know that some people think that the US pisses away money overseas. But the entire US foreign affairs budget - including all foreign aid - is under 1.5% of the entire USG budget.

We most certainly get what we pay for.

State went for entire years in the 1990s without inducting new officers. Why? There was no money to pay their salaries. By 2002, there were 800 positions open overseas that had no bodies in them. There were no bodies available within the budget.

The State of State

Part of the problem was a change in employee attitude in the U.S. State Department, I'll certainly grant. With the Cold War over, many people seemed to assume that diplomacy was a non-starter career, too. But there was far less of a drive to tackle hard problems - in hard places. It was (understandably) far more desirable to work in Canberra or Copenhagen than, say, Khartoum or Karachi.

But State is no longer the career that it once was. Now, people will go into State for 5-7 years, either early in their working lives, or after they've done something else. State has plenty of people who come in after entirely successful careers in other areas. In my office in Riyadh, I had a junior officer who had retired--after 20 years--as a Texas attorney. Another who had been both a public defender and deputy district attorney in Wisconsin--as well as having been a university professor and a public relations person. A third, from South Carolina, came in after seven years in the US Army. Yet another, not in my section because she was doing "rotation" service as a new officer, was a 56-year-old, Emmy Award-winning TV journalists and author of several books. (She, incidentally, has gone on to run the Public Diplomacy section at the US Embassy in Algiers.) None of us, by the way, came via Ivy League.

Salary can also be a deterrent. Junior Officer salaries start at just under $37K (though they are higher if you bring in above-average credentials) and are capped, currently, at about $120K, for a member of the Senior Foreign Service (Foreign Service cannot earn more than a Congressman). The GAO has consistently reported over the past 15 years that Foreign Service salaries are from 20%-30% below their private sector equivalents in most classifications. Hard chargers - the kind of people State needs - can earn more in the private sector. But money certainly isn't everything.

Nevertheless, if you want to do something about State, rather than just rag on it, I encourage people to join. If you're under 57, you're eligible. (State has a mandatory retirement at age 65, so they want to get something back for the training they provide.)

Performing Public Diplomacy

USIA had a dictum, coming from Edward R. Murrow, one of the early directors of VOA, that went, "The last three feet are the hardest". This was the face-to-face distance that you had to go to close the deal, to make something happen. That dictum is still true today, though it is being challenged in some regards by technology.

Once upon a time, an ambassador was the active personal representative of the President. That meant he could take actions without a six-month referral back to HQ, the time it took correspondence to cross the ocean. While referrals still can take six months, due to the multi-leveled clearance process, technology (including the phone) often puts ambassadors out of the loop. When the SecState or the President can pick up the phone and directly speak to a head of state, ambassadors can sometimes become ancillary.

But they can be very active in public diplomacy, if they understand both the mission and the media. Public Diplomacy (PD) is not just PR. It doesn't exist to glorify the ambassador. I've been lucky in most of my assignments to have Ambassadors who understood the difference and put themselves out there (the few who didn't get it, though, are exceptionally painful memories). PD offices in embassies work to analyze the local media and generally know what has clout and what doesn't.

And sometimes that's not what you expect.

In the UK, for instance, the most important medium is still the radio. Getting an interview on BBC-4's "Today" program, in either the 0710 or 0810 slot, means you make news and drive the agenda. It's the subject of conversation for most of the country. But stunningly, many American officials - including Congressmen - want to argue that point, preferring instead to do TV.

One of our finest Ambassadors, Adm. William Crowe, was doing the radio at least once a month. He got it. In my four years in London as Information Officer, though, SecState Albright did exactly two interviews with the British media: they were both TV interviews with David Frost. Frost gives one fast-ball question, straight down the middle; the rest are softball pitches with no follow-up. Her PA person, Jamie Rubin, managed one radio interview in that same period, though he did do backgrounders with the media.

I would argue that snubbing the media was not taken well. Not because their feelings are hurt, but because it demonstrated that the US was taking the UK for granted.

Getting out there and talking with and to people - or arguing, if necessary - is more productive than keeping one's mouth shut. And using only international media like CNN doesn't do it: people want to learn from the channels of information they are used to using.

SecState Powell understood public diplomacy, but he was defeated in his attempts to get the importance of that mission into the minds of sufficient numbers of State employees, both foreign service and general service. He did make marked improvements, but not nearly enough. This is now an issue for his successor. Condi Rice also needs to find a strong advocate of Public Diplomacy to head that Bureau (which is currently rolled together with Public Affairs and Research).

What Can You Do to Help?

Start by realizing that most Foreign Service Officers are not the striped-pants cookie-pushers depicted in films from the 1930s, or in the TV programs of the 1980s and 90s. Most of them are quite like you in their backgrounds, education, and interests. It's worth keeping that in mind as we discuss State and its future. Or even your future, if you're so inclined. You might not want the life of a Foreign Service officer, because most places in the world are more like Tegucigalpa or Bamako; Bratislava or Kabul; rather than Paris or Milan. Then again, you might enjoy it.

There are also other ways to get involved.

• Smith-Mundt, described above, is still the law of the land. State can't change that. Only Congress can change that.

USIA was well aware of the absurdity of the application of the law in the face of new technologies like the Internet, which reaches across borders. It did lobby - as has State - to have the "no domestic dissemination" provisions stricken. They're still on the books, and in many regards they're still absurd. But don't write State about it; write your Congressman.

• Get involved in the foreign affairs-oriented groups in your own communities. Go to the speakers events they offer with an open mind. Ask questions. Instead of passively waiting for contact, you might even go out there yourselves and offer your services.

• Learn something about - and apply for - the different grants available to academics and others. The Fulbright program offers a range of possibilities for students and professors in almost every country of the world, in almost every discipline.

• Consider joining Peace Corps: they serve a vital function.

• State Department continues to operate the International Visitors Program, in conjunction with local volunteer organizations across the country.

This is the most effective means of international information exchange available. The program selects people from various countries, in various lines of work, and brings them to the US for a three- to four-week period, allowing them to meet ordinary Americans and get their own, first-hand picture of who and what America is, what our concerns and values are. Volunteer to sponsor a group or individual at your place of work, or take them home for dinner at your house. You learn; they learn.

• Finally, you can pay attention to Congress, even if that means watching C-SPAN or reading the Congressional Record (conveniently available on-line) to see just what is being said and done there concerning foreign affairs.

Learn which Congress people are grandstanding, playing to the electorate rather than acting for the overall good of the country. See who pick "witnesses" for investigative hearings to make their points rather than learn the truth. Figure out who is out there scoring points rather than making laws. Expose them on your blogs. Insist on responsibility; insist on reducing budget ear-marks that handcuff the government in its public diplomacy abroad.

As Americans, we all need to pull together in the years ahead. The work done by bloggers has opened up new possibilities for PD, and new frontiers for both the people of the world and the diplomats who work to influence it. One of my last acts in State was to argue for allowing young State officers - assigned to the various cities across Iraq - to do their own blogs. The loss of authority that would represent was too much for State's bureaucracy: I lost the argument. But as bloggers and citizens, we can do a lot for our country. We can accomplish even more if, in addition to blogging, we also devote time to advocacy, and to other face-to-face efforts that can raise understanding and improve the way State Department employees can do their jobs.

There are many ways to participate in citizen diplomacy. These days, we need them all. The stakes are high. Our time is tight. And the rest of the world is watching.