I will be in DC next week to conduct the Information as Power seminar (there is still space to enroll), present at the open meeting of the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy (see link for information on attending), speak with a class at National Defense University, and for several other meetings. I'll be back in Los Angeles in time to teach my public diplomacy class at the University of Southern California (syllabus, 189kb PDF).

As such, blogging will be slim over the next week. As always, guest posts are welcome. I'm particularly interested in commentary on the QDR, the latest DSB report (seriously?), and the potential impact the recent Supreme Court decision on political speech on global engagement, specifically on the public diplomacy "firewall" and influence by non-US interests (have you seen this?).

Updated: See below for the change of venue

Through my firm Armstrong Strategic Insights Group, LLC, I am conducting a three evening seminar on the modern, global information environment characterized by the fallen barriers to information dissemination and influence as well as the convergence of "new media" and "old media" into "now media." The purpose is to understand requirements and methods for preactive, proactive, and reactive engagement in the struggle for minds and wills of today and tomorrow. The agenda is below. Sandwiches and drinks (water, soda, coffee) will be served. This executive training series was previously titled "Understanding and Engaging Now Media".

Preparatory material will be emailed to registered attendees. Additional material will be provided during class via the web.

Date: February 8, 9, 10
Time: 6p - 9p each evening
Location (updated): 607 14th St NW, Suite 300, Washington DC (Hill & Knowlton offices, Google Map)

Sign up before midnight February 3: $495
Sign up February 3-7: $595
Sign up at the door: $695

A discount is available for groups of 3 or more from the same organization. 

Email for an invoice and online payment options.

The following is Part II of a discussion between Jeremy Berkowitz and Matt Armstrong on Jeremy's paper "Raising the Iron Curtain on Twitter: why the United States must revise the Smith-Mundt Act to improve public diplomacy" (PDF, 415kb). Part I is Matt Armstrong's initial response to Jeremy's paper available here. Part III will be posted next week.

Jeremy Berkowitz:

I want to thank Matt for his thoughts on my paper. I appreciate his comments and strongly respect his scholarship on the Smith-Mundt Act. I would like to discuss a few of the ideas he raised in his critique. I believe some of his criticism is well-founded and I could have more precisely conveyed my ideas in certain areas. Yet, I also believe that some of his criticism is misguided either due to simple disagreements or misunderstandings of my paper.

Strategic review time.

Here is the Defense Department’s website for its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), a “legislatively-mandated review of Department of Defense strategy and priorities.” On February 3, DOD hosted a blogger roundtable discussion on the QDR with Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs Michael Nacht and Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Forces Kathleen Hicks.

Here is the Department of Homeland Security’s website for its Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR), a document that “offers a vision for a secure homeland, specifies key mission priorities, outlines goals for each of those mission areas, and lays the necessary groundwork for the subsequent steps.” DHS is hosting a teleconference roundtable (this blogger was invited but cannot attend) February 5 with DHS Assistant Secretary for Policy David Heyman to discuss the QHSR. (Good outreach.)

Here is the Department of State’s website for its Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR)… wait. Never mind. There’s nothing substantial at State’s website except the July 10, 2009, press release and a related blog post at DipNote four days later. It is due this month, possibly within days, a State Department spokesman told Federal News Radio. No word if State will host a discussion like DOD or DHS to reach out beyond the ‘traditional’ media in the press room.

Stay tuned…

Recommended: Alan Heil's The Ever-Expanding Global Electronic Town Meeting: Challenges ahead for U.S. international broadcasting at Layalina's Perspectives:

Imagine an electronic town meeting of person-to-person communications, writ large. So large, in fact, that it encompasses the entire planet, digitally. Entering this arena is the primary challenge to U.S. publicly-funded civilian overseas networks in a new decade, as 21st century international broadcasting approaches its adolescent years amid unpredictable geopolitical and technological challenges. ...

As outlined below, agenda items in the new decade could include a review of broadcast priorities, increasing coordination among networks, exploring the use of social media and information sharing, expanding training programs, pursuing a public-private partnership, and strengthening protections for objective and accurate journalistic standards. ...

The bottom line: international broadcasting can set the record straight instantaneously (as in real-time news reporting of events in Iran, China, Burma, Haiti, and terrorism's deadly toll). But it is also long-range; listening to and reflecting over time countless conversations of "collective groups" about how to improve individuals' lives in an ever-expanding global electronic town meeting. It can enrich the blogosphere in this lively marketplace of ideas, while empowering publics as never before. May the new leadership of U.S. international broadcasting seize the moment. The 21st century adolescent years of their trade can truly be a time of renewal central to the growing global engagement that America seeks.

Read the whole essay here.

In today's The New York Times, Dick Brass, a former Microsoft Vice President (1997-2004), describes a corporate paralysis that stifles the release of relevant and innovative products in his op-ed, Microsoft's Creative Destruction.

As they marvel at Apple's new iPad tablet computer, the technorati seem to be focusing on where this leaves Amazon's popular e-book business. But the much more important question is why Microsoft, America's most famous and prosperous technology company, no longer brings us the future, whether it's tablet computers like the iPad, e-books like Amazon's Kindle, smartphones like the BlackBerry and iPhone, search engines like Google, digital music systems like iPod and iTunes or popular Web services like Facebook and Twitter. ...

Microsoft's huge profits -- $6.7 billion for the past quarter -- come almost entirely from Windows and Office programs first developed decades ago. Like G.M. with its trucks and S.U.V.'s, Microsoft can't count on these venerable products to sustain it forever. Perhaps worst of all, Microsoft is no longer considered the cool or cutting-edge place to work. There has been a steady exit of its best and brightest.

What happened? Unlike other companies, Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation. Some of my former colleagues argue that it actually developed a system to thwart innovation. Despite having one of the largest and best corporate laboratories in the world, and the luxury of not one but three chief technology officers, the company routinely manages to frustrate the efforts of its visionary thinkers. ...

What does Microsoft's "Creative Destruction" have in common with the State Department's Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP)? According to Pat Kushlis of the public diplomacy blog Whirled View, too much. Pat drew my attention to the Dick Brass op-ed and had these comments, published here with permission:

Read the last paragraphs in particular and just substitute the initials IIP because that's precisely what happened to a forward thinking bureau when State took over.

If the [International Broadcasting Bureau, the administrative and marketing arm of the Broadcasting Board of Governors,] were functional, I think I would argue that IIP should be transferred out of State and put into a functional international broadcasting entity (like VOA) since the line between electronic media has changed so dramatically.  Unfortunately the IBB is dysfunctional too.

Is this a viable, even preferred, alternative to reconstituting the United States Information Agency?

Of possible interest is the following received this morning from BMW. It is an example of the parallel paths of corporate social responsibility and public diplomacy:

The BMW Group is pleased to announce its first call for submissions for the Award for Intercultural Commitment. The company is looking for intercultural initiators worldwide whose goal is to motivate people from diverse backgrounds to encounter one another with open minds and to take committed action. With the Award, the BMW Group aims to support the best projects and thus contribute to their lasting success. To this end, the company offers award winners customized support services as well as a financial "jump start".

The deadline for submissions is 31 May 2010. The award ceremony will take place in Munich, Germany, on 18 November 2010. You will find further information about the Award in the enclosed press release and flyer as well as on www.bmwgroup.com/award.

From the press release (110kb DOC):

"To make intercultural understanding work, it is necessary to establish a multifaceted culture that is open to people from different cultural backgrounds and environments," emphasizes Harald Krüger, member of the Board of Management of BMW AG and Chairman of the award competition. "The BMW Group Award for Intercultural Commitment is intended to make a contribution by motivating people to enter into an open dialog and pull together."

See also their flyer (544kb PDF).

Now for the disclaimer: Neither MountainRunner or Matt Armstrong has an affiliation with BMW Group. The information above is provided as an instructive example of a corporation practicing public diplomacy.

See also:

• Defining Public Diplomacy

Recommended: US International Broadcasting: an untapped resource for ethnic and domestic news organization (PDF, 139kb) by Shawn Powers.

The American approach to public service broadcasting, which is severely underfunded when compared to the rest of the world, is also legally separated from U.S. international broadcasting, a firewall that inhibits effective collaboration between either. Indeed, the problem is worse, as U.S.-funded international broadcasting is prohibited from disseminating its journalistic features within the U.S., a ban that prevents effective use of its significant journalistic resources by both public and private news networks in the United States. including a large sector of ethnic media that could surely benefit from the 60 languages that American international broadcasting reports in. For comparison, the BBC, the world's most respected news institution, houses all of its international and domestic news services in the same newsroom, therefore maximizing the benefits of a diverse and large staff while limiting costly redundancies. This paper argues for further collaboration between government funded international broadcasting and its domestic counterparts -- both public and private -- and thus for policies that match the reality of today's information ecology.

Shawn's paper is a welcome contribution to the need to break down the firewall of the revised Smith-Mundt Act. The original purpose of the institutionalization of US international broadcasting in 1945 (the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 was first introduced in October 1945) was to fill a gap in reaching non-US audiences that US media could not. Testifying before a House Appropriations Committee in 1946, the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs stated the purpose of US government broadcasting:

Our number one policy is to encourage private agencies to do the job. We propose only to fill in the gaps where, and when private agencies cannot do the job.

Today, in a twist on the question about a tree in the forest, if America's media does not cover an event, does it really happen? The retreat of US domestic media from overseas is troublesome for America's global affairs. America's media focus on speed over accuracy and a short-attention span prevents not only informing the American public, but of legislators, policy makers, and even the media itself. 

Shawn's paper should be required reading by Congress and the State Department.

One minor comment on the paper: Shawn implies the language "for examination only" in Section 501 of the Act / Section 1461 of US Code was in the original legislation. It was, in fact, inserted by Senator Fulbright. 

See also:

• Smith-Mundt Act: Facts, Myths & Recommendations
• Report on the 2009 Smith-Mundt Symposium
• Comment on "Raising the iron curtain on twitter: Why the US Must Revise the Smith-Mundt Act to Improve Public Diplomacy"
• Censoring the Voice of America

Friend Bill Kiehl offers a remodel of the State Department at Layalina, Foreign Affairs for the 21st Century:

To re-right the balance in America's national security structure, the Department of State must be broadened into a true Department of Foreign Affairs (the original name by the way) and like the Department of Defense should be restructured to accommodate the many roles it must play. Within the Department of Foreign Affairs there could be semi-independent sub-departments, similar to the departments of the individual services in the Defense Department, to deal with traditional diplomacy (i.e. state-to-state relations), public diplomacy (similar to the former USIA), foreign assistance (USAID), foreign trade (USTR, FCS, FAS etc.), stabilization and reconstruction (in league with DoD). These Departments within the Department of Foreign Affairs could function as the Department of Diplomacy, the Department of Public Diplomacy, the Department of International Development, the Department of International Trade, etc.

Read the whole thing here.

See also:

• A Proposal for Reorganization at Foggy Bottom - my proposal to reorganize State
• Hitting Bottom at Foggy Bottom at FP.com
• Reorganizing Government to meet hybrid threats at the Stimson Center

Dennis Murphy reviews the Routledge Handbook on Public Diplomacy edited by Nancy Snow and Phil Taylor.

To address these shortcomings and provide a balanced, and heretofore lacking conceptual framework [for public diplomacy], Nancy Snow and Philip Taylor have pulled together an impressive number of academics and practitioners to lay the foundations of the concept in the 29 chapters of this handbook.  Organized topically into six parts, the editors have attempted to provide a resource with wide-appeal ranging from the lay-person interested in public diplomacy to the advanced practitioner. ...

The "Handbook of Public Diplomacy" is a worthy effort that provides a broad conceptual framework for the increasingly important national security field of public diplomacy. It is recommended reading for all who study, practice and are interested in the application of the information element of power in support of national objectives.

Read the whole review here. Support this blog and go to Amazon and buy the book or something else using this link.

American Diplomacy has several interesting articles this month, including a historical review by Walter Roberts, The Voice of America: Origins and Recollections:

Beginning in 1937, the failure of the Executive Branch to reach a decision regarding the establishment of a governmental radio station led to a shift in initiative from the Department of State to Congress. Gregory calls it "a change that was marked by the introduction in both the House and the Senate of several bills." Their sponsors, in particular Congressman Emmanuel Celler (D- NY), argued that every other nation was prepared to see that the world understands its point of view - yet the U. S.  was at the mercy of the propaganda of other countries without the ability to present its own position. The year was 1937 and German-Nazi and Italian-Fascist propaganda were in full swing.

The Congressional sponsors of a government short wave station found themselves fiercely opposed by the private broadcasters of this country. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) passed a resolution in June 1937 opposing any governmental international radio station. Within the Executive Branch there was no unanimity and the President was not willing to support the establishment of a government radio station.  The plan died in early 1940.

Hans "Tom" Tuch reflects on US public diplomacy in Germany over three decades, from 1950 to 1982, at American Diplomacy. In How Public Diplomacy Worked in Practice, Tom describes the value of America's overseas libraries, resources that today have been cut back or hidden to the point of being, in some cases, nearly useless.

[T]he America House library was "open-shelf" where people could select and check out books of their choice.  We did not immediately realize the democratizing impact of our open-shelf library until a frequent visitor, the city librarian who was also the director of the University library, told us that in rebuilding both libraries, he would convert them to open-shelf institutions, the first in the Federal Republic. A German researcher later wrote that one could not underestimate the success of the America Houses in introducing Germans to a new open-shelf library system, which made libraries attractive institutions. The principal impact of the America Houses, she wrote, was in influencing and changing the view of America among the German people. Through the medium of the library it was possible, she concluded, to persuade many Germans to regard America positively and often admiringly.

See also:

• Communicating with the World: U. S. Public Diplomacy Overseas by Hans Tuch at Amazon.com.
• Practicing Public Diplomacy: A Cold War Odyssey by Yale Richmond at Amazon.com
• Why "public diplomacy"? by Tom Tuch, guest post at MountainRunner
• What is Public Diplomacy

For reasons that are beyond me, I heard a rumor that the leadership of State Department's Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP) will remain a "Coordinator" and not be an Assistant Secretary. In 2008, then-Under Secretary Jim Glassman successfully created the new position, but as of yet, it has remained unoccupied. (Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Support to Public Diplomacy Mike Doran was nominated but never confirmed.) The move was to put IIP on equal footing with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) and the geographic bureaus, all of which are headed by assistant secretaries.

Perhaps this decision will be explained in the yet-to-be-released public diplomacy strategy of Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith McHale.

Your thoughts?

This is the first of two parts. The second part will be a response by Jeremy Berkowitz to be posted shortly. This post will be updated with that link when it is available.

"Raising the Iron Curtain on Twitter: why the United States must revise the Smith-Mundt Act to improve public diplomacy" (PDF, 415kb) is an intelligent and thoughtful paper from law student Jeremy Berkowitz. It is a valuable contribution to the too-sparse knowledgebase of legislation that shapes much of the US Government's engagement with the world, including Americans. Written from a legal perspective - in May 2010 Jeremy will receive a Communications Law Studies Certificate from the Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America - this paper delves into juridical actions related to the Smith-Mundt Act not found anywhere else. Jeremy also explores some of wrangling between the legislative and executive branch, specifically the confrontation between Senator Fulbright and US Attorney General Kleindienst. I was pleased to see his discussion on the 1998 DC Circuit Court decision in Essential Information v. United States Information Agency. In this case, the Court failed to distinguish "dissemination" and "disclosure", ruling that "it seems unlikely that these two terms were meant to bear different meanings."

The image above is a partial representation of the visitors to www.MountainRunner.us for the month of January 2010. Clearly the issues of US public diplomacy and strategic communication have a global audience.