Tools of Engagement

The most recent review of U.S. public diplomacy by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) was the fourth such report to find that the State Department “faces significant challenges” in its efforts to stem anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world. Yet, the report's main recommendation–applying public relations's best practices to U.S. public diplomacy–is unlikely to help America's image abroad. The GAO's information-centered approach for designing and delivering messages is based on a flawed premise that not only ignores the decline in U.S. credibility but also overlooks the difficulties of implementing a traditional public relations campaign in a global communication era.

The report opens with a postmortem of sorts, recounting the State Department's previous failed initiatives in the Islamic world. Three projects that began with great fanfare–the “Shared Values” media campaign, the youth-oriented Hi Magazine, and the Partnerships for Learning youth exchange programs–have either been suspended or terminated. (One official in Egypt said that of the 2,500 copies of Hi Magazine the embassy distributed monthly to newsstands in Cairo, often as many as 2,000 copies were returned unsold. Readers, however, can still access the online version.) The GAO then describes current public diplomacy efforts in Nigeria, Pakistan, and Egypt and finds that–aside from a shortage of manpower resources and difficulties balancing public outreach with security concerns–the missions lack country-specific communication plans and direction from Washington.

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What's needed, according to the GAO, is for the State Department to base its public diplomacy strategy on private-sector best practices. The report presents a diagram of “Key Elements of a Typical Public Relations Strategy” and then details what's lacking: U.S. missions don't have core messages or themes; target audiences are not clearly defined; strategies and tactics lack operational details; and research and evaluation efforts are limited.

Although the goal, as the GAO's title suggests, is to “engage targeted audiences,” the approach is, in fact, dedicated to delivering U.S. messages to the Islamic world. Offering an assessment that no doubt plays well to veteran political campaigners on Capitol Hill, the report declares, “Most importantly, the messages should be repeated over and over again to ensure that they are heard.”

The problem is that while this strategy is technically sound, the premise isn't. The intense focus on designing and delivering U.S. messages to the Islamic world presupposes either a lack of information or an abundance of misinformation. Such a premise might be plausible if the United States were not a superpower. However, nations around the world are continuously monitoring and analyzing U.S. policies–especially those in the Arab and Muslim world, where U.S. political and military involvement is keenly felt.

U.S. public diplomacy undermines its effectiveness by presuming that people in the Islamic world cannot hear or understand U.S. messages. Saying something louder and repeatedly is precisely what many in the region find so condescending. None of the opinion polls from the Arab world hints that the U.S. image problem is due to a lack of information. In fact, as the GAO report acknowledges, “U.S. foreign policy is the major root cause behind anti-American sentiment among Muslim populations.” Sadly, the GAO mentions this crucial point only in the context of advocating more in-depth polling to identify and develop messages.

JOURNAL ROUNDUP

What comes first, the threat or the perceived threat? An engaging set of articles in the June 2006 Biosecurity and Bioterrorism (Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.) attempts to address this question in regards to the Department of Homeland Security's Biological Threat Characterization Program (BTCP), which was created in 2004 to investigate existing biothreats and anticipate future ones. Since the program's founding, analysts and scientists have debated whether program scientists should be characterizing (i.e., creating and studying) hypothetical and engineered bio-agents, such as genetically engineered bacteria and viruses, and if so, under what circumstances.

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Jonathan Tucker, a senior fellow at the Center for Nonpro-liferation Studies, argues that creating such agents would be “exceedingly dangerous and counterproductive” and “can be justified only when strong evidence exists for their actual existence [as a threat].” W. Seth Carus, deputy director of the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction at the National Defense University, and James B. Petro, a researcher at the Joint Military Intelligence College, counter that researching existing and “emerging” biothreats through the BTCP will weed out unrealistic threats and help develop funding priorities. (The two first set out their arguments in the December 2005 issue of the journal.)

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Carus and Petro also question whether Tucker's threshold for investigating engineered bioagents is realistic. “Transparency is impossible to achieve in the biodefense arena,” they argue. In other words, assume the best at your own peril. ∗ ∗ ∗ One thing anthropologist Daniele Moretti, a researcher at Britain's Brunel University, didn't expect to find when he arrived in a remote Papua New Guinea mining community in 2004 to do field research were locals wearing T-shirts emblazoned with images of Osama bin Laden. The local interest in terrorism went even deeper. In the June 2006 Anthropology Today (Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland), Moretti writes, “Reports on ‘terrorism’ and ‘the war on terror’ were followed and debated with concern.” Some locals became so concerned about terrorists that local sorcerers “visited” bin Laden and warned him to stay away from their village. The villagers' views, though far removed from actual events, offer an opportunity “to break the illusion” that the current global terror “crisis” is between only the West and Islam, Moretti writes. ∗ ∗ ∗ The personality of national leaders undoubtedly has an effect on their domestic popularity, but does it also affect their foreign policy choices? According to Stephen Benedict Dyson, a researcher at Wabash College, the answer is yes. In the July 2006 Foreign Policy Analysis (Blackwell Publishing), Dyson analyzes British Prime Minister Tony Blair's personality based on his comments during sessions of the House of Commons. Among Blair's distinguishing characteristics: a high belief in his ability to control events, a low conceptual complexity, and a high need for power. Looking at recent events, Dyson argues, it is reasonable to conclude, “Blair's personality is a crucial factor in understanding why the British went to war [in Iraq].”

JONAS SIEGEL

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It's important that the underlying cultural style and content of a nation's pubic diplomacy messages resonate positively with a foreign public. If there is asymmetry in cultural styles, one can alienate the very audience one is trying to persuade. Many of the recent U.S. diplomatic initiatives reflect a uniquely U.S. cultural style. President George W. Bush's penchant for “speaking straight” may resonate positively with an American public that values directness, but the Arab public prefers more indirect messages, especially in public. Similarly, Americans view facts and arguments as particularly persuasive. In other cultures, metaphors and analogies that suggest important relationships are much more persuasive than impersonal facts.

One can look at public diplomacy from two perspectives: relationship-building strategies versus image-building strategies. Currently, U.S. public diplomacy appears very much focused on its message and its image. Relationship-building strategies–as embodied by such programs as the Peace Corps and the Fulbright program–focus on developing mutually beneficial and reciprocal connections between people and nations. Such an approach may prove much more effective for U.S. public diplomacy efforts in the Muslim world. When officials began to address public policy in the aftermath of 9/11, much was made of how to “win the hearts and minds” of people. The very focus on “winning” in itself suggests a competition, a dividing line between “us” and “them.” One wins, the other loses. The information-centered approach that the GAO is advocating enables that mind-set even further, by ignoring the dynamics of what is arguably a new global communications era, defined by interactivity and connectivity, rather than information superiority. Getting information out is not as strategic as getting connected.

Moreover, the GAO's relentless focus on messages misses the most immediate challenge facing public diplomacy: restoring U.S. credibility. The United States cannot pretend to be effective either in persuading potential allies or countering the misinformation of its adversaries so long as others question its motives. As a 2004 report by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board candidly acknowledged, this crisis of credibility is especially acute in the Islamic world. The overwhelming majority of Muslims, the report noted, object to the long-standing, even increasing support for what they see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states. “Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy. Moreover, saying that ‘freedom is the future of the Middle East’ is seen as patronizing, suggesting that Arabs are like the enslaved peoples of the old communist world–but Muslims do not feel this way: They feel oppressed, but not enslaved.”

The GAO report acknowledges the U.S. credibility deficit but treats it as a tactical issue, suggesting that U.S. public diplomacy use third-party sources that have credibility to deliver U.S. messages. But this tactic only masks the problem. Instead of focusing on its messages, Washington needs a wide-angle lens that carefully reconsiders policies that expose the United States to charges of duplicity.

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