William Rugh, former ambassador to Yemen and the UAE, and now an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute, wrote a long rejoinder to my speech at InfoWarCon on April 24 (included in my post, “Stop Explaining!”).

He makes some excellent points, but it is a strangely defensive response. He seems to be criticizing a speech that I didn’t give. Begin with the first sentence. My focus was indeed narrow — it was supposed to be a speech about a particular endeavor in public diplomacy or strategic communication, not about the whole thing.

I did not intend to do a tour d’horizon of public diplomacy. I have done that many times, includng my valedictory speech at George Washington University on Jan. 14, which I reprint below. At GW, I answered the question, “What would you like to be remembered for as Under Secretary of State?” I listed four points, and number one was “understanding the importance of traditional public diplomacy.” My speech at the InfoWar, like my speech at GW, urged more emphasis on the war-of-ideas and interagency part of the Under Secretary’s job — a critical issue today with the nomination of Judith McHale.

I’m not going to respond to Ambassador Rugh’s other points. In the custom of the blogging, I want readers to make up their own minds. I would say, however, that any implication that I don’t appreciate the work of PAOs (see point 3 and 4) is nonsense. In the InfoWar speech itself, I said that “the people who staff the State Department’s overseas posts” are “America’s best assets in public diplomacy.”

Here is the Bill Rugh response to the speech, sent to me via Len Baldyga’s admirable p.d. listserv…

From William Rugh:

Glassman’s analysis is badly flawed. Following are a few of its shortcomings:

1. His focus is much too narrow.  His concern is only with violent extremism and with diverting youth from the path of violent extremism. Public diplomacy must be much broader than that.  He continues the Bushian narrow focus and militaristic approach.

2. He is incorrect to dismiss the importance of discussing and explaining America and its policies by saying that is arrogant and foreign audiences are not interested. People around the world are in fact very interested in many aspects of America, and since they receive incorrect information it is important for us to try to correct it. We shouldn’t of course by preachy and arrogant but engage in a civilized, respectful dialogue. Yet we shouldn’t abrogate our responsibility to defend our views and only leave that role to others as Glassman implies. Using surrogates (not a new idea) is useful but we must do a lot of advocacy ourselves. Many people do want to hear from us directly, unfiltered. They may disagree with us, but we need to be in the discussion.

3. When he says, “PD 2.0 exploits three sets of tools: 1) social-networking technology, 2) public-private partnerships, in which the USG is often merely a catalyst, and 3) interagency coordination.” – he ignores he fact that public diplomacy professionals have been doing all of that, for decades. PAOs all over the world have made use of social-networking technology but they have also made extensive use of personal contact, which Glassman fails to mention. USIA and State has always used partnerships with private organizations like NCIV. And inter-agency coordination, while not always smooth, has been attempted over the years.

4. The examples Glassman gives, including ExchangesConnect, the moot court in Kuwait, and the Alliance of Youth Movements are all commendable, but they are not really new in concept, and they should be considered as only very small examples of the literally thousands of programs of the kind that has been done over the years.

5. Glassman makes a statement about the internal Islamic debate that leaves questions unanswered. He says: “The war of ideas is not about us. It involves, in the most important case, a civil war within Islam – a war in which we are deeply affected, as 9/11 showed. We cannot hide from it, and we must influence it but we must do so strategically.”  How does he plan to do that? He provides no useful details. We should not get directly involved, as he implies. But using surrogates is tricky, because we can undermine their impact if our involvement behind the scenes is known. There may be ways to support reasonable Muslim voices but we need to think that through much more carefully than just to advocate it.

And here is my speech, delivered at George Washington University on Jan. 14, six days before I left office:

Public Diplomacy: Past, Present, and Future

George Washington University

Jan. 14, 2009

James K. Glassman
Under Secretary of State

Thank you, Marc, for inviting me here to GW today. I have been an avid reader of Abu Aardvark, and I’ve followed its migration to the Foreign Policy.com website, which by the way is a superb site. I have read your recent posts on Gaza and Alhurra, and I’ll be happy to discuss those issues and any others in the question-and-answer period. This is my valedictory, and I am pleased to see so many good friends in the audience.

—

The other day I was asked how I would like to be remembered. “On my tombstone?” I asked. “I’m not that old.” No, I was told. We want to know how you’d like to be remembered for your work at the State Department.

I would make four points –and certainly no tombstone could accommodate all this verbiage.

First, understanding the importance of the traditional public diplomacy programs that work.

Second, shifting emphasis toward the war of ideas, or as we like to call it global strategic engagement.

Third, leading the interagency – that is, the State Department and the other parts of government in the business of strategic communications and public diplomacy.

Fourth, formulating an approach called Public Diplomacy 2.0, which takes advantage of new social networking technology.

Let me take them in order.

First, traditional public diplomacy….

My predecessor Karen Hughes gave me two pieces of advice – and I will pass those same pieces on to my successor: First, the best thing we can do is put Americans face to face with foreigners, and, second, we can’t do enough English teaching.

We put people face to face mainly through exchanges. Karen’s great accomplishment was expanding these programs that had been languishing for years. We now bring about 50,000 people from other countries to the U.S. on programs like Fulbright and YES and our International Visitor Programs, whose graduates have included such figures as Hamid Karzai and Margaret Thatcher, when they were rising stars.

Education is America’s greatest brand, and we have bounced back dramatically from 9/11. Today, despite tougher visa requirements, more than 600,000 foreign students are matriculating in the US – an all-time record. This year, we’ll have more than 7,500 Fulbrights – also a record.

We teach English because the world wants to learn it – because governments and people in practically every country in the world see English as a way to move up economically. Everywhere. In tough neighborhoods like Yemen and Syria. In the West Bank and Gaza. In teaching English, we impart important values like tolerance and critical thinking, and we tell America’s story. Our Access Microscholarship Program targets teenage students in deprived neighborhoods after school, mainly in Muslim countries – kids at risk of following a path to violent extremism.

Recently, I went to the neighborhood in Casablanca where this program began five years ago. I met alumni of the program who were going to medical school or had become engineers. Never have I heard from people who were more grateful to America.

I also travelled to Ramallah an Access classroom on the West Bank. We teach English in nine locations on the West Bank and four in Gaza –- a total of 900 Palestinian students. In Ramallah on the wall was a calendar that indicated that in February, the students were learning about Black History Month, in November about Thanksgiving. This is not mere language teaching; it is telling America’s story.

We teach more than 20,000 a year at a cost of about $20 million. We could be teaching 200,000.

I came to this job wanting to change some things but ALSO realizing that the best of what we do in public diplomacy we have been doing for a long time. The cutbacks that occurred starting in the mid-1980s, as the Cold War was winding down, and that continued through the early 2000s have hurt us badly today. These traditional PD programs take a long time to bear fruit. We still haven’t recovered from the cutbacks in American libraries, centers, and corners.

A few weeks ago, I visited our Lincoln Center, an American center at the University of Kabul in Afghanistan. It is filled with books, periodicals, computers for Internet access. It’s a place to gather for conversation, to listen to travelling speakers. And right next door to our Lincoln Center is a similar center run by Iranians. That’s the competition that is going on globally.

—

The second item on my tombstone is the shift in emphasis toward global strategic engagement, or the war of ideas.

Let’s take a step back.

Public diplomacy has the same goals as other national security policy – to achieve the American interest. The top goals articulated by the current administration are promoting freedom and reducing threats – goals that are linked. Not only does political and civil freedom reduce threats, it also advances the cause of social justice. When people have freedom, they tend to direct their governments toward choices that are responsible and just.

Public diplomacy achieves those goals with means that are different from official diplomacy (the secretary of state engaging with a foreign minister, for example) and from military action (killing people or scaring people into thinking you will). Public diplomacy is engagement with the foreign publics.

In recent years, there has been a lot of concern about America’s image in the world. And for good reason. Having people abroad like us makes it easier to achieve our foreign policy goals because foreign governments are more likely to join us or do what we ask them to do if their citizens have warm feelings about us.

When you read a report about the state of public diplomacy, it usually begins with a recitation of miserable favorability statistics about America from the Pew Global Survey. The report then asks how we can get people to like us better. Many of my predecessors accepted this analysis as well and built their own strategies accordingly.

No doubt, as I said, that we want people to like us and, indeed, our exchange programs have understanding and favorability as goals – and exchange programs are where most of our money goes.

But improving America’s image is a difficult, long-term business for government. The reasons that people abroad bear us animosity are complex, but many of these reasons relate to policies on which we are not going to take a global vote. The Bush Administration and the Obama Administration and every other administration in every other country will certainly take global opinion into account, but, in the end, every nation will pursue its own interest. Just as the U.S. decided in the early 1980s, along with European governments, to place nuclear missiles defensively in Europe. The European public was outraged, but the decision was the right one.

Some people wonder whether public diplomacy has a seat at the table when key foreign policy decisions are made. It does.

Thanks to Karen Hughes, the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy attends the Secretary of State’s daily 8 a.m. meeting with the very top State Dept officials. I sit in on key meetings chaired by the National Security Council. Edward R. Murrow famously said that public diplomacy needs to be “in on the takeoffs, not just the crash landings.” We are in on the takeoffs, telling policymakers what the likely public foreign response will be to our actions. Most of the time, those policymakers already know. But we in public diplomacy do not alone make policy, nor should we.

Also, let’s face it. The few million dollars – or even hundreds of millions – that we might spend to improve our global image through public relations techniques is a drop of water in an ocean of other influencers of opinion, including the actions of our allies and the content of the US films and TV shows that appear abroad.

Again, we are, indeed, trying to improve our image — through exchanges, speaker programs, and wonderful sports and cultural programs.

By the way, the news about America’s likeability isn’t all bad. The U.S. is very well liked in Africa, as well as in much of Latin America and Asia. We have good favorability ratings in large and important countries like Japan, India, and South Korea. The most recent Pew survey, last June, showed that in 16 of the 20 countries that were surveyed in both 2007 and 2008, our ratings rose. Still, in some of these cases, the numbers were dismal – mainly in Europe, the Mideast, and non-Arab Muslim nations.

But it has been my view that achieving specific foreign policy and national security ends is possible even if the United States is not popular. Our shift in emphasis was toward activities that were meant to help reach these goals, not through image burnishing, but through a contest of ideas, or global strategic engagement, or GSE.

The focus of today’s GSE for the U.S. government is counter-terrorism. As the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism of 2006 puts it: “In the long run, winning the War on Terror means winning the battle of ideas.”

Our mission today in the war of ideas is highly focused. It is to use the tools of ideological engagement – words, deeds, and images – to create an environment hostile to violent extremism.

Is this a change in Washington? Yes. It is a significant shift in emphasis and focus. Much of the public diplomacy effort in the past has focused on our own image, on how we are seen by others. But today, in the war of ideas, our core task is not how to fix foreigners’ perceptions of the United States but how to isolate and reduce the threat of violent extremism.

Indeed, the United States itself is not at the center of the war of ideas. And, for that reason, we have common cause with people who may disagree with us on such policy matters as Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian issue. On the threat of violent extremism to their own societies, we are absolutely on the same page – as I have seen throughout the world, in places like Morocco, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.

We need to recognize that there is a complex, multi-sided battle going on in Muslim societies for power. This is a battle in which we cannot be a bystander if we wanted to. We cannot step aside and simply watch Muslims slug it out among themselves. Instead, the battle within these societies for power affects the United States directly and was responsible for the deaths of 3,000 people seven years ago.

It is the fact that the battle is going on within Muslim societies that makes our role so complicated and that requires that we ourselves not do much of the fighting.

We achieve our GSE goals in two ways: first, by pushing back and undermining the ideology behind the violent extremism while at the same time explaining and advocating free alternatives (and not just the American alternative) and, second, by diverting young people from following a path that leads to violent extremism. What all terrorist groups have in common, in fact, is the exploitation of young people.

In both of these endeavors – undermining and diverting – Americans themselves are rarely the most credible actors and voices. Much of what we do is to encourage others. For example, we have supported a global organization of female family members of victims of violent extremism and supported another network, based in Europe, of Muslim entrepreneurs.

As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said recently, “Over the long term, we cannot kill or capture our way to victory. Non-military efforts – …tools of persuasion and inspiration – were indispensable to the outcome of the defining struggle of the 20th century. They are just as indispensable in the 21st century – and perhaps even more so.”

—

The third change we’ve brought about in public diplomacy is improving cooperation and synchronization within the interagency – that is, government-wide. In April 2006, President Bush designated the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy as the interagency lead in strategic communications. I have taken that charge seriously, working closely with DoD, the intelligence community, Treasury, USAID, and other agencies.

For the first time ever, these agencies got together, under the auspices of our interagency group based at State called the Global Strategic Engagement Center to draw up a strategic communications plan for Pakistan – with specific tasks allocated to different agencies. Believe it or not, this was a big breakthrough. Just two days ago, 80 officials from a wide variety of agencies met for what we called a “Deep Dive” – a thorough examination of data and analysis, again about Pakistan (we had done one earlier on Afghanistan). This kind of sharing was highly unusual in the past – and highly effective.

I am proud of the relationship State now has with CENTCOM, SOCOM, the National Counter-Terrorism Center, and other groups engaged in the GSE effort.

I am not going to dwell on this, unless someone in the question and answer session me to go into detail on our reorganization, which I announced two weeks after I was sworn in, back in June. This is bureaucratic stuff.

Do we wish that State had as much money as the Department of Defense? Of course.

Let me tell you what I said to the transition team on this subject. From Secretary Gates and so many other officials, we hear about the importance of public diplomacy and strategic communications. But PD is not approached with the same perspective on scale as military action. Much of what we do in PD is the size of a pilot program. Even if it is a great program, can it really make a difference? When I got to the State Department, I asked a friend who had been at the Pentagon and was not at DoS what he thought of the Digital Outreach Team. That is our group that blogs in Arabic, Urdu, and Farsi, going on websites to explain U.S. policy and push back against distortions, with the bloggers identifying themselves as USG employees. My friend told me, “Sure, it’s a good program, but you have eight people doing it. At DoD, we would have 800.”

—

Finally, Public Diplomacy 2.0. Understand first that it is an approach, not a technology. The approach begins with the result of research on America’s image. We found three reasons for low favorability – differences with our policies (as I mentioned earlier), a lack of understanding of those policies and values, and a perception that the United States does not respect their views, does not listen to them, or take them seriously.

These last two subjects – lack of understanding of policies and beliefs (best reflected in the widespread belief among Muslims that the U.S. is out to destroy Islam and replace it with Christianity) and the lack of respect – cannot be addressed by preaching or by telling the world how wonderful we are.

A better way to communicate, we believe, is through the generation of a wide and deep conversation. Our role in that conversation is as facilitator and convener. We generate this conversation in the belief that our views will be heard – even if we in the State Department are not always the authors of those views. We also believe that in facilitating such a conversation we do, in fact, improve our image – and make it reflect who we Americans really are: open-minded people who know that the best way to reach the right conclusion is to hash things out, openly and democratically.

This new approach takes advantage of new social networking technologies like Facebook and YouTube and Second Life. In fact, a few days ago, I became the first U.S. high official to participate in a Second Life event when I participated in a discussion with bloggers from Egypt and others from around the world.

Our Education and Cultural Affairs Bureau just launched the first U.S. government social networking site: ExchangesConnect, on the Ning platform. We take a risk in doing this. We cannot control everything that goes in within a social networking site. Currently, for instance, there’s a debate going on about Gaza, and views that do not conform with those of the USG are being represented.

The two best examples of what we are doing in PD 2.0 are these:

A few months ago, we formed a partnership – with such private-sector organizations as NBC Universal, the Directors Guild of America, and the Tisch School at NYU — to launch what’s called the Democracy Video Challenge. Entrants make their own three-minute videos, posted to a site on YouTube, with the topic, “Democracy Is…” Winners will be determined by a vote of the public over the Internet. While we did set a few rules – no pro-terrorist or pornographic videos – it is certainly possible that the winner of the contest will espouse views not completely shared by the U.S. Government.

And last month, our Education and Cultural Affairs Bureau launches a similar video contest, in partnership with the Adobe Foundation, with the theme, “My Culture Plus Your Culture Equals…”

These contests promote two big ideas that are at the heart of public diplomacy – democracy and cultural exchange – and they do so in a manner that is more effective than simply issuing white papers. We are encouraging others to tell us what’s valuable about democracy and exchanges, to think about these subjects, and to share their conclusions. Millions can benefit from the interaction.

Second example: A few months ago, I visited Colombia, which has probably had more success than any nation in the world in fighting terrorism of both the the left and right. A powerful counter-movement emerged there that has demoralized the remaining terrorist group, the FARC. The origins of the new force were not in government or civil society. Instead, a young unemployed computer technician named Oscar Morales spontaneously started a Facebook group that grew quickly to more than 400,000 members. The group, called One Million Voices Against the FARC, put 12 million people in the streets in a single day in 190 cities around the world — just two months after it was set up.

We decided to form a public-private partnershp – with Facebook, Google, AT&T, MTV, Columbia University, Howcast, and others – that would bring two dozen youth-empowerment groups, most with an online presence, together with technology experts in a conference in December in New York. The group put together a handbook and an electronic hub – all to help groups around the world use new social-networking digital tools to build anti-violence and pro-social-change networks. We call it the Alliance of Youth Networks, and, very frankly, we do not control these groups, nor could we. But we think they will be a force for good in helping to defeat violent extremism and to lead young people down a path leading away from terrorism and toward constructive pursuits.

Other manifestations of PD 2.0 include press conferences with bloggers, whose work radiates out to the conventional press corps, twittering by our Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Sean McCormack and others, our Digital Outreach Team, which is expanding into the Russian language, and great work by our posts around the world.

Yes, Al Qaeda and other violent extremist organizations have exploited the Internet to their advantage, but that advantage has rapidly diminished – and not just because the jihadist message has worn thin with Al Qaeda’s penchant for slaughtering fellow Muslims.

The Internet remains a venue for Al Qaeda to exhort and instruct and even plan attacks. But, as Marc Lynch has pointed out, new technology has at the same time diminished Al Qaeda’s “ability to spread its ideology, frame public discourse in the Islamic world, [and] assert claims to leadership of Islamic movements.”

Why? One reason, says analyst Daniel Kimmage in the New York Times, is that “the Qaeda media nexus…is old hat. If Web 1.0 was about creating the snazziest official Web resources and Web 2.0 is about letting users run wild with self-created content and interactivity, Al Qaeda and its affiliates are stuck in 1.0.”

The Internet world of Al Qaeda is one of direction: believe this, do that.

The Internet world of today is one of interactivity and conversation. In fact, the Internet itself is becoming the locus of Civil Society 2.0.

This new virtual world is democratic. It is an agora. It is not a place for a death cult that counts on keeping its ideology sealed off from criticism. The new world is a marketplace of ideas, and it is no coincidence that Al Qaeda blows up marketplaces.

—–

A little over five years ago, the Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World, mandated by Congress and chaired by Ambassador Edward Djerejian, produced a powerful report that concluded, “At a critical time in our nation’s history, the apparatus of public diplomacy has proven inadequate.”

The report pointed to our “unilateral disarmament in the weapons of advocacy” and urged that the United States get serious and strategic about public diplomacy, rebuild the institutions, provide interagency leadership, increase resources, and get the President and the Congress fully behind the effort.

I served on the Djerejian Commission, and, probably because I was the only journalist in the group, it was one of my assignments to put the words to the ideas of my colleagues.

Criticisms expressed in that report continue to be heard today. But many of those criticisms are, quite simply, out of date.

Times have changed. Profoundly. Today, there is a broad, bipartisan consensus that soft power, smart power, public diplomacy are absolutely critical to achieving America’s interests – including the defeat of violent extremists who threaten this nation and the world.

I hope that the three changes I have discussed – the focus on global strategic engagement, the new interagency cooperation, and a vigorous Public Diplomacy 2.0 – will be embraced and enhanced during the next administration. And that the Obama administration is as excited about preserving and boosting our great traditional PD programs as I have been.

—

Let me also offer a personal note with only a few days to go in my tenure.
This has been a wonderful experience.

I was trained as a journalist by the best 40 years ago – my undergraduate peers — and I have been a journalist ever since. One big reason I wanted to take a government job is that I am a curious guy and wanted to see what things were like on the inside – from a different perspective.

My curiosity was certainly sated, but, in the end, what was better about being a government official was the feeling of serving my country. Which was, if I may be self-indulgent, a damn good feeling.

A few months ago, I went to the ifthar dinner at the White House – one of the many accomplishments of George W. Bush (eight ifthars) that have gone unnoticed. After the dinner, I shook hands with the president and said, “Thank you for allowing me to serve you.” He said, “You don’t serve me. You serve the American people.”

In seven months, I have met dozens of impressive, dedicated people people. I took seriously the President’s designation of the Under Secretary as the interagency lead in strategic communications, so I reached out to my colleagues at DoD and the intelligence community especially. I’ve worked closely with the NSC.

As for the State Department: You will not be surprised when I tell you that before I took the job, some of my colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute warned me that Foreign Service Officers would be out to sabotage any changes I advanced, that they would be uncooperative, that the State Department culture – a culture, they said, of inertia and caution – would win in the end. Instead, I found people willing to change, people with imagination and drive, people who taught me more than I could possibly teach them.

I am also aware of the limits of what government officials – and government itself – can do.
George Bernard Shaw once said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

What we can do in government is find these unreasonable men and women in the private sector and encourage them – sometimes with a bit of money, sometimes simply by helping them make the right connections and giving them a little nudge. I have had the privilege of hitching our government wagon to the stars of such unreasonable men as Doug Johnston, whose faith-based NGO is helping to improve madrassas in Pakistan; Jeff Kline, one of the most imaginative media minds of our time; Jason Liebman of Howcast; Ziad Azaly of the American Task Force on Palestine and Jean Case of the Case Foundation, both of whom are working wonders in improving the lives and prospects of young people on the West Bank. They do things we cannot.

—

Finally, remember that public diplomacy performs its mission of achieving the national interest in a particular way: by understanding, informing, engaging, and influence foreign publics. The “understanding” part comes first. You can’t persuade if you don’t truly understand the people you are trying to persuade. Senator J. William Fulbright, who created the Fulbright exchanges in 1946, put it well: The “essence of intercultural education,” he said, referring to what would become one of our most effective public diplomacy programs, is “empathy, the ability to see the world as others see it, and to allow for the possibility that others may see something we have failed to see….”

—

Public diplomacy had a glorious past, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. It helped win the Cold War. Then it severely deteriorated with the fall of the Berlin Wall. My predecessors and I have been rebuilding it.

The present of PD is a critical juncture. Are we serious about scaling it up? Will we adopt a mature approach? Will we see the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy as a national security job, as I believe it is, or a public relations job, as many policiticans and much of the press believe? That’s the present.

As for the future? I think it is bright because I believe a consensus has developed around the need for robust PD. But we can’t be sure.

I am fond of quoting the Danish physicist Niels Bohr, who once said,
“Predicting is very difficult. Especially about the future.”

Thank you.

Tags: Len Baldyga, public diplomacy, William Rugh