The US Military and US Public Diplomacy: creating the image we want?

Briefly, the New York Times reports on the trend of the United States Government handing over public diplomacy and possibly traditional diplomacy over to the military. The key issues are in the middle and end of the article:

Andrew J. Bacevich, a retired Army colonel who is a professor of international relations at Boston University, said the report provided further evidence that American foreign policy was becoming “progressively militarized.” He said a warning in the report that the secretary of state could lose primacy over American foreign policy decisions in some ways had already come to pass.

“That horse has already escaped from the barn,” he said. “The secretary of state enjoys no such primacy. The Pentagon has the money and calls the shots.”

But the report warns that military personnel are too often dispatched to embassies on a short-term basis, sometimes lacking cultural or language training for the country.

...

One area where the Pentagon has expanded significantly since Sept. 11 is information operations, which are intended to build support for American policies and to marginalize radical factions in Muslim nations.

Since the 2001 attacks, the Pentagon has ratcheted up its information campaigns to fill the vacuum left by the gutting of the State Department’s “public diplomacy” budget at the end of the cold war.

Do we want to continue to use our military as our agents of outreach? The risk goes beyond possible and likely missteps but how the US is perceived, framed, and received. While many in the military understand counter-insurgency, for example, and realize the importance of properly cultivating an image, building alliances, and earning trust, many more do not.

The Pentagon's role sounds like more of the same: action without a grand strategy.

Short sightedness that led to debacles like almost anything the CPA did is evident in the example Mark Mazzetti closes his article with:

The presence of the teams occasionally creates friction within embassies, according to the report. In Mali, military officials wanted to feature a moderate Muslim cleric in a video produced by the embassy, yet the embassy’s civilian staff argued that showcasing the cleric’s support for the United States would only taint him among the local population.

One of the fortunate things about State is the foreign service officers generally really know what they are doing and they get into the local environment. Under-resourced and undersupported by both Secretary of State Rice and USoS Karen Hughes, these guys do a damn fine job in spite of the obstacles.

While Karen Hughes talks about her Four E's that emphasize "advocacy" without understanding and without real listening...  Actually does she still advocate that? does she advocate anything anymore? Well her last public comments posted on her website, over a month ago, were on Medical Diplomacy, specifically, wait for it, a project of the US Navy.

However, Public Diplomacy Watch noted she did publish in the Washington Times:

Last week's White House "Malaria Summit" not only promises major progress against this preventable disease, but also represents the best of American public diplomacy -- the diplomacy of our deeds.

This Medical Diplomacy really seems to be her cause of the moment, which is probably why PDW highlighted a Foreign Affairs article on global health. But where is she on Iraq, notably after the RAND report indicated health care as a major component of nation building earlier this year.

On the topic of what is Hughes doing about public diplomacy and why is there such a gap the military continues to fill up, I like to go back to the GAO report of 2003 mostly because of questions the GAO asked but didn't include in their summary.

• 87% of US diplomatic posts responded "public diplomacy" was a "strategy and/or tactic for meeting other strategic goals"
• 77% responded that "mutual understanding" was not in their Mission Performance Plans.
• 42% of the diplomatic posts worked coordinated with the USAID office in country.
• 59% coordinated with US military elements in country.

I've asked this question before, but I'll ask it again, should we not be concerned, at least not surprised, that now gone SecDef Rumsfeld was frequently asked about and discussed his vision of a new USIA?

Bacevich is spot-on with the militarization of our foreign policy, including our public diplomacy. The New York Times article doesn't surprise but confirms the trend that's been obvious for a couple of years now.