“Mutual Interest and Mutual Respect: Ideas for U.S. Public Diplomacy toward the ‘Muslim World’” is the title of discussion I will be having at 2 p.m. next Thursday, May 7, at this year’s Soref Symposium, held by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, 1150 22nd St., N.W., in Washington. (By the way, I approve of the quotation marks around the phrase Muslim World. It’s not a “world”; it is an extremely diverse collection of societies that share a religion.)

The other participants are two friends, Rob Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute, and Marc Lynch, cochair of George Washington University’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communications and author of Abu Aardvark’s Middle East Blog on foreignpolicy.com, right here. It’s a serious subject, and my guess is that we’ll have a serious and productive discussion. The Soref Symposium is an invitation-only event, but if you would like to find out about attending, contact zsnyder@washingtoninstitute.org.

Last Friday, April 24, I gave a speech at InfoWarCon, a major gathering of the I/O (Information Operations) community. After noting that I was happy to see the I/O folks did not cower at the word “war” in describing the conflict of ideas in which much of the world is engaged, I expanded on my arguments in favor of a new approach to strategic communication — what I call Public Diplomacy 2.0, or, more broadly, the Grand Conversation.

The giant megaphone that we have been using does not work. “The rest of the world does not want to hear from us about us,” I said. “Our friends see such an approach as condescension, our enemies as incitement to more anger. Our message is: ‘To know us is to love us.’ I find that irritating myself. Imagine how a Jordanian feels.”

In the speech, I urged practitioners of strategic communication to “stop putting so much emphasis on extolling and explaining ourselves. The strong temptation, indulged in by my predecessors, by me to some extent, and by our new president, is to correct misimpressions about the United States – that we are anti-Muslim, that we are not religious or family-oriented ourselves, that we don’t have the world’s best interests at heart. These attempts are futile at best and more likely counterproductive.” Instead, we should be to facilitate and convene a Grand Conversation, taking advantage of the best new social-networking technology. This is a strategic conversation — actually, thousands of conversations — in which our views are heard but do not necessarily dominate and are not necessarily voiced by us. And, at any rate, we need to remember that the subject is not the USA. It is you, the audience; the others; the ones who, in fact, are engaged in the civil war that is convulsing Islam.

Which brings me back to the title of the discussion at Soref next week. Rob Satloff, as usual, has it right. The key words in this engagement are “interests” (we need to keep our eyes on the prize — our strategic goals) and “respect” (what has been sorely lacking, and still is, in our interactions internationally). Here is the speech….

“Can a Conversation Win the War on Terror?”

Address to InfoWarCon
April 24, 2009
National Harbor, MD

James K. Glassman

One of my favorite movie quotes comes from “Godfather II,” Francis Ford Coppola’s great film. Hyman Roth, the mild-mannered, modest fictional stand-in for the Jewish mob boss Meyer Lansky, notes the death of the Las Vegas gangster Moe Green (a.k.a., Bugsy Siegel) and says ruefully but philosophically, “This is the business we have chosen.”

The business that many of you have chosen is influence. It is not exposition; it is not explanation. It is information with a purpose. It is using words, images, and non-violent deeds to get people to behave in ways that help America achieve its national security objectives. We define public diplomacy as understanding, engaging, informing, and influencing foreign publics. But it is the fourth gerund that counts – influencing.

As an article in the New York Times last week indicated, the business in which you are engaged and in which I used to be engaged can be contentious in a free society. There is, in some quarters, a squeamishness about using information to influence.

But it is absolutely necessary. It is a noble calling. And it is changing. As a result, much of what we think we know about this endeavor is wrong.

We continue to spend much of our time, personnel and other resources pushing out press releases, giving speeches, making TV appearances, extolling our own virtues, explaining our policies, trying to improve the American image. This approach, which I call the great megaphone, is not working in the current environment – and it is unlikely ever to work.

Why?

First, very simply, the rest of the world does not want to hear from us about us. Our friends see such an approach as condescension, our enemies as incitement to more anger. Our message is: “To know us is to love us.” I find that irritating myself. Imagine how a Jordanian feels. Even our current president, a gifted communicator, seems not to understand. In a recent meeting with Turkish students, his first message point was, to paraphrase: “We really are a just society. Look at my middle name.” Again, to know us is to love us.

But the first message point, especially, should not be about us, but about you! About Turkey, about students, about Muslims. It is time for us to stop putting so much emphasis on extolling and explaining ourselves.

The strong temptation, indulged in by my predecessors, by me to some extent, and by our new president, is to correct misimpressions about the United States – that we are anti-Muslim, that we are not religious or family-oriented ourselves, that we don’t have the world’s best interests at heart. These attempts are futile at best and more likely counterproductive.

Here is the way David Kenning, a psychologist and strategist with Bell Pottinger, the London-based consulting firm, put it in “Influence and Hostility,” a paper delivered at Wilton House (2008) – “even the best rational arguments will not be effective against strong negative emotions – or even simmering resentment. Indeed, in a hostile atmosphere, the more reasonable the arguments are, the more they may cause a negative and hysterical reaction formation. At best, they will be dismissed with a shrug.”

The second reason the big megaphone doesn’t work is that audiences have become far too sophisticated. This is not the Cold War, where Poles and Hungarians hung on the every word of Radio Free Europe to get the truth they were denied. These are audiences bombarded with images and opinions and, because of their experience dealing with government media, they are extremely skeptical about what they hear from us.

So what is the answer? It is certainly not to abandon the field, which some seem to want. It is not to be timid. The answer, instead, is what I have called Public Diplomacy 2.0, or Strategic Communication 2.0. Or, more broadly, the Grand Conversation.

The Grand Conversation is a strategy. It begins with clear goals: to make Americans safer and to promote freedom – objectives that are linked.

Let’s also understand that this is a war of ideas – a phrase that seems to be out of favor these days but that is highly descriptive. (I am happy to see that this conference, InfoWarCon, does not shrink from the word “war.”) There is real contention here. There are lots of people out there who want to impose not just their authority on billions of others but their ideas, religious, political, or otherwise. Ideas that threaten our safety well-being.

With those thoughts in mind, during my tenure as Under Secretary of State, in the war of ideas part of my job, I said we concentrated on two efforts: first, to undermine the ideology of violent extremism and, second, to divert young people from a path that leads to becoming a violent extremist. In both of these efforts, we as Americans are often not the best practitioners and messengers. Instead, our job is often to build networks and to encourage credible non-American voices to speak out. This, we did.

But we also went beyond. Working with the interagency, which, for strat com, the President designated me to lead, we developed the Grand Conversation as a strategic approach…

Let me definie it: “Instead of a USG actor directly engaging foreign publics, the USG facilities, convenes, or otherwise generates broader engagement (often without specific direction) in which the USG’s interests are expressed (often by non-USG actors). 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.”

Some examples….

Last year, my former office’s International information Programs Bureau 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 made 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.

My former office’s Education and Cultural Affairs Bureau launched what we believe to be the first social-networking site in the U.S. Government – a dot.gov site called ExchangesConnect, whose theme is educational exchanges, of all sorts. Again, State does not directly control what goes on on the site among what are now 9,000 registered users – and I imagine soon will be tens or hundreds of thousands. During the fighting in Gaza, the site saw many comments reflecting opposition to American and Israeli policy.

For bureaucrats, this lack of control is daring, even politically risky, but ultimately the right approach.

This contests and the website 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. The efforts encourage 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.

We also urged America’s best assets in public diplomacy – the people who staff the State Department’s overseas posts – to find ways to serve as PD 2.0 facilitators. Public affairs officers helped in the formation of groups, for example, of European Muslim entrepreneurs and of victims of terrorism. A partnership that we catalyzed set to work the modern  analogue to “Problems of Communism,” a Cold War publication of the USIA from 1952 to 1992. The difference is that the new “Problems of Extremism” won’t be run by a U.S. Government organization but by a foundation supported with both public and private funds and directed by European think tank scholars.

The U.S. Embassy in Kuwait is sponsoring a moot court at a local university to examine Guantanamo – seriously and dispassionately. Rather than sling slogans or ignore a difficult topic altogether, the post is saying, let’s have a conversation – bringing together legal experts (not USG representatives) from all sides of the question of how a nation should detain enemy combatants in an unconventional war.

For those who ask how PD 2.0 relates to image burnishing, my answer is that we want to portray the image of a society that grapples with tough issues, lets millions of voices be heard, and believes that, in the end, the best ideas win. And, by the way, this image comports with American reality.

Probably our best-known Grand Conversation was the one that began in December, when, after a trip to Bogota, my former colleagues and I brought young representatives of two dozen online organizations, along with technologists from companies like Google, Facebook, Howcast, and AT&T, to Columbia University in New York to share best practices in an attempt to find ways to build global anti-violence movements.

Our model was the Colombian group that organized using Facebook and stood up to the murderous FARC, putting 12 million people into the streets worldwide a little over a year ago. The New York conference led to the formation of a non-profit organization called the Alliance of Youth Movements, which the State Department is planning to help fund and then back away and let it take its own course.

Secretary Clinton announced recently that AYM would hold a regional conference in Mexico City in October. Is that too warm an embrace from government? It is hard for government to resist taking credit for successes. Most of the time, I think it is better to wind up these machines and let them walk on their own.

I suddenly realized the other day that many of the precepts that Gen. Petraeus, Gen. Amos and Col. Nagl lay out in the section “Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency Operations” in the Counterinsurgency Field Manual are directly relevant to the Grand Conversation:

– Sometimes the more you protect your force, the less secure you may be.
– Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction.
– The host nation doing something tolerably is normally better than us doing it well.
– If a tactic works this week, it might not work next week; if it works in this province, it might not work in the next.
– Tactical success guarantees nothing.
– Many important decisions are not made by generals.

Most of these precepts run counter to the big megaphone or even to the USIA school of strat com, where, once again, we are at the center of the action.

We are not. 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. We must, in the favorite word of the Obama administration, be smart. But so much more.

In this effort, we are being supremely foolhardy if we believe that we can succeed without a strong interagency structure. So far that structure has not emerged from this administration. We are also being supremely foolhardy – to the delight of our enemies – if we think we can succeed without heavy reliance on activities that go beyond conventional public affairs. We can’t possibly succeed without I/O and without covert operations.

We would be equally foolish if we denied that the Grand Conversation involved risks – new risks. When we open up a new trade-space for ideas, even something as innocuous as ExchangesConnect, we give up the kind of control that governments always want. We open ourselves up to press criticism and Congressional sanction. The question always begins, “Why are the taxpayers spending their money on a website where the U.S. is being criticized?” There’s a simple answer to this: in such an environment, people listen; in a US-controlled environment, they are less apt to. But it is still a tough sell.

So let me end this way:

The question I asked in the title of this talk was, “Can a Conversation Defeat Terrorism?” Certainly not by itself. But PD 2.0, the Grand Conversation, is absolutely necessary to success. Engaging, informing, and influencing using these new techniques, which promote a broad and deep conversation, into which we can inject our own messages and ideals – this is an approach that works. Or let me be more precise: I believe it works. We clearly need research to evaluate the approach.

Seretary Gates said that we cannot kill or capture our way to victory. True. Your efforts are every bit as important as the kinetic ones and, like the kinetic efforts, yours are changing in this new world. It is not enough to send messages from Washington. We need a broader, more powerful conversation. We also need structure, strategy, and leadership. And we need it now. Otherwise, we are denying ourselves the tools of success.

Influence: This is the business we have chosen. Let’s do it.

Thanks for listening.