A Wall Street Journal article and subsequent posts by Matt Armstrong and Marc Lynch explore an Obama Administration “Global Engagement Directive” that would create a new National Security position to “coordinate public diplomacy, foreign assistance and international communications at a single White House desk.” The plan is no surprise. The Obamaites were looking for someone to fill the post a month ago, and the signals coming out of my former office at the State Department strongly indicated that the new Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs would not have the same lead interagency role for strategic communications that I held.
On the reorganization itself, I have some ambivalence.
On the one hand, the administration is absolutely correct in recognizing that all the government’s international outreach functions need coordination. That was the primary recommendation of the Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World (the Djerejian Group), on which I served in 2003. To be more precise, strategic communications needs: a) unified leadership, b) a cohesive strategy, c) allocation of functions among agencies, d) coordination and de-confliction, e) evaluation, and f) mid-course correction.
Also, along with Armstrong and Lynch, I like the term the Obamaites have come up with to describe the government-wide effort: “global engagement.” Actually, “global strategic engagement,” as in “Global Strategic Engagement Center,” the interagency group we created, headed by Peter Kovach, a Foreign Service officer, is even better.
On the other hand, I have worries about the leadership for this function being centered at the NSC. Certainly, the NSC, as the ultimate font of national security strategy and as the voice and arm of the president, should guide all global engagement activities. But the NSC is not an operational entity — at least not since Oliver North. It can’t go out and do things on its own. It has no budget and only a tiny staff. Even with a small budget, the Under Secretary of State can start a program quickly, as we started the Alliance of Youth Movements, and tell the interagency, “There. That’s what I mean. Do more of that.”
In my experience, the military and the intelligence community understood that a high-ranking State Department official, with authority granted by the president, is someone that deserves deference and that will, indeed, be followed. In short, I liked the old structure, devised by the Bush Administration in April 2006.
But that doesn’t mean that an NSC-led structure won’t work. A lot depends on the people — on who will be in charge and on how well that person works with State, DoD (especially the key commands like SOCOM and CENTCOM), the NCTC, and the rest of the intelligence community. I am glad that, after four months, the administration is moving forward. As Lynch put it: The move “signals that President Obama and his core team take global engagement, public diplomacy and strategic communications very seriously.” That’s a good thing.
Tags: CENTCOM, Djerejian, Mark Lynch, Matt Armstrong, NSC, SOCOM
Posted in: Foreign Policy, Obama, Uncategorized, public diplomacy
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Jim,
Allow me to replicate on your blog the note I sent to Marc Lynch re the recent WH directive:
“Public diplomacy not mentioned in WH announcement re Engagement
by john h brown on Fri, 05/29/2009 – 4:40pm
Marc,
In the first para of your post you are evidently quoting the Wall Street Journal piece re the ‘Global Engagement Directive.’ This article, by Cam Simpson, states:
‘Among the other shifts at the NSC, a new entity, dubbed the Global Engagement Directive, will aim to coordinate public diplomacy, foreign assistance and international communications at a single White House desk.’
But the WH annou[n]cement re the ‘Global Engagement Directive’ makes no mention of ‘public diplomacy.’ Indeed, here is the actual language of the section of the Directive you are evidently referring to:
‘Creating a new Global Engagement Directorate to drive comprehensive engagement policies that leverage diplomacy, communications, international development and assistance, and domestic engagement and outreach in pursuit of a host of national security objectives, including those related to homeland security.’
Links for the above cited items are at my blog at
http://publicdiplomacypressandblogreview.blogspot.com/2009/05/may-27.html
Best,
John”
(Mr. Glassman, may be of interest to you–a post I made on another email loop earlier today)
Fearless leader,
There has been some speculation in the media and on this email loop regarding the significance of the recent reorganization of the National Security Council, with particular attention on the melding of the Homeland Council into the NSC and the creation of the Global Engagement Office on the NSC.
Just some quick observations that, given my not having served in the Beltway for 20 plus years, may not mean much, but:
(1) Peter Feaver opines that if there is any real change, “it is likely to be this new ‘Global Engagement Directorate”, which appears to merge several functional areas that were previously housed in other directorates. This office will coordinate public diplomacy, foreign assistance, and international communication in a single WH office.
– I would caution against reading too much into this. In 1987 I was promoted to Special Assistant to the President and named as the Senior Director of the Office called “International Programs and Technology Affairs”, after four years as Director for Soviet, European and Canadian Affairs. The office encompassed public diplomacy, strategic trade, foreign aid and assistance, export controls, international broadcasting, and a host of other issues that didn’t fit anywhere else. In fact, as Colin Powell described the office after he and Carlucci reorganized the NSC post-Iran Contra, “We created several regional offices–Europe, Asia, Mideast, etc–and a few functional directorates–international economics, intelligence, etc.–then took whatever didn’t fit into those boxes, drew a line around them, called it a Directorate, and then looked for someone stupid enough to run it. That be you”.
– When I Ieft the NSC on January 20, 1989, at 12 pm, I believe AMB Dave Miller took over this conglomerate. I’ll let him tell us what happened after that.
– I’m not sure this new Directorate will be doing much more than coordinating policy in these areas, hammering heads together to create coherent plans, and putting out fires.
(2) I’m amazed by the size of the NSC now extant, some 280 staffers the last I heard. That seems awfully big and most unwieldy. When I joined the NSC in 1983 we had only 40 professional staff (and none from the State Department at that time, interestingly). Most NSCs start small–they re always going to be agile, quick, restricted to coordinating policies, not implementing them, etc. In most instances the staff grows over time and some directorates become policy originators and implementers (like my colleague Ollie North). But this NSC starts big, very big, and will grow even more (also wondering where the hell everybody sits! And, the all important question, of course, who has White House Mess privileges!).
(3) A few on this exchange have expressed the desire to have the NSC become pro-active, grab the con on policy issues, lead the charge, in short, become the action agency. I think that is a mistake–in my mind the NSC should function primarily as a coordinating body with the responsibility of honing policy initiatives into a coherent set of actions and submitting that to the President for review and/or approval (noting Agency dissents or contrary positions where necessary). It should not replace State, Commerce, DOD, the Agency, etc., as the principal focus of issue analysis, policy development and implementation.
I suspect many will not agree with this perspective.
Ty
Tyrus W. Cobb
Reno