[The following conversation began as an email exchange on May 20, 2009, after Craig Hayden wrote Public Diplomacy and the Phantom Menace of Theory, a response to Pat Kushlis’s Detroit on the Potomac. The first email of the exchange, by John Brown below, like the comments that follow, do not have accurate time stamps due as the comment were copied from the email-based discussion. All comments do appear in correct order and are posted here with the permission of the respective authors. This is posted here to continue the discourse. Add your voice. –MCA]
Craig Hayden,
Thanks for your recent excellent piece on the academic study of PD. It think it contributes much to the debate of theory vs. practice in PD. I hope it will be widely read. Have you considered submitting it to “American Diplomacy,” which is published by ex-FSOs? My main quarrel with much of the “scholarship” re PD, which Pat Kushlis critiques so well, is that it often misses a key element in PD — what PD officers (or whatever you want to call them) concretely do “in the field” and the day-to-day issues that they face. That is why, in the case of PD, I find memoirs, history and media reporting often more enlightening that abstract treatises. We are not, after all, dealing with rocket science here, but with a down-to-earth, all-too-human activity. As you point out, there’s no PD “theory.” Also, I am concerned that people who want to “do PD” as a career might think that “a degree in PD” is sufficient to be an effective PD practitioner (I realize that is not what academic courses on PD “promise”). Of course, nothing wrong with being a PD “scholar,” but based on my FSO experience what is most helpful in preparing to be an effective “public diplomat,” at least for the US government, is learning foreign languages in depth, familiarity with cultures overseas, and people-to-people skills that are not necessarily acquired in the classroom or by research in libraries/on the Internet.
Jack Harrod says:
And I recall a State Department desk officer, with whom I arranged a “background” briefing for USIA media folks (VOA, Wireless File etc.), which was quite informative and useful on a critical issue of the day. At the end, the State fellow shook hands, and then said that he assumed everything he had said was “off the record”.
After a moment of stunned silence, I explained the difference between “background” and “off the record”. The guy had been told the ground rules but didn’t understand.
I also remember a rare meeting involving a dozen or so of USIA’s senior PAOs and Director Duffey, with the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, who went on to a rather stellar career (as a political officer-cum-ambassador). It became very clear partway through this meeting that the Assistant Secretary had no/no idea what USIA did overseas. Nada. His concept of public affairs was domestic press relations, period.
Yale Richmond says:
I must take issue with my colleague and good friend Tom Tuch and his claim that “public diplomacy, by definition of the word ‘diplomacy’, is a government
function.” The dictionary on my desk defines “diplomacy” as “The art or practice of conducting international relations, as in negotiating alliances, treaties, and agreements.” But a secondary definition defines it as “Tact and skill in dealing with people.”
That brings to mind the idea of Cooperation with Private Initiative” (CPI), which Assistant Secretary of State (CU) John Richardson promoted in the 1970s, and which involved State (CU) giving small grants to NGOs to assist them in initiating exchanges with foreign NGOs and governments. The idea of CPI, which was opposed by some in USIA, proved most successful in expanding US exchanges with the Soviet Union which prepared the way for the reforms of Gorbachev and Yakovlev. In fact, a prime component of the Nixon/Kissinger détente was to encourage US organizations, NGOs as well as government; to get engaged with the Soviets in cooperative activities. Moreover, a book by Gale Warner and Michael Shuman, Citizen Diplomats: Pathfinders in Soviet-American Relations and How You Can Join Them (1987), related the work of Dr. Bernard Lown, Sharon Tennison, Norman Cousins, Armand Hammer, and others, in conducting cooperative activities with the Soviets that we would today call Public Diplomacy. (George Soros had not yet come on the scene with his funding of many public diplomacy programs in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.)
It makes no difference, really, what we call it; the private sector has been in the past, and will be in the future, a necessary part of US Public Diplomacy efforts around the world.
Yale Richmond
Craig Hayden says:
Greetings again,
The discussion on this email thread has been very illuminating, and has given me much to digest. I will eventually post more about my thoughts so far on my blog (intermap.org) – but before I get to that, here are are few short takes:
There seems to be some very strong opinions about policing the definition of public diplomacy. Whether or not “citizen diplomacy” is appropriate, or whether the MA students at Syracuse have a historically accurate definition of the term – I would suggest that this kind of terminological border patrolling is actually counter-productive for generating interesting in public diplomacy.
Granted, such strict definitions would probably make for more distinct historical analysis as well as rigorous social scientific investigation of discrete variables.
An inclusive definition of public diplomacy, however, captures the growing recognition that communication is increasingly central to the practice of statecraft, and also that actors other than governments may be essential to achieving specific nation-state objectives. Public diplomacy, in this expansive view, is about the practice of influence in the most basic sense. Thus it draws in the efforts of the private sector, of NGOs, and visitor programs. Thinking about the “context” of
PD: the effects of media representation, social networking practices, cross-cultural contact, and communication infrastructures (access, production, and consumption) are also equally important. Yes, these subjects can also be lumped into “international communication,” or perhaps be taught under the label “intercultural communication” (both, incidentally, academic fields with their own turf issues). But why?
Put another way, why is an inclusive definition of PD such a big deal?
For example, when BDA engages in what they consider public diplomacy – is that a bad thing? Should we exclude case studies of their efforts on the grounds that it’s not PD, even such case studies might inform the practice of those employed by governments? Which of course begs the question – should course work and degrees in PD be strictly for those interested in government work?
I realize my position is somewhat contentious – but I think the definition debate is ultimately counterproductive. Taking a cue from Matt Armstrong, if we as scholars and practitioners want to encourage widespread attention to the benefits of constructive “engagement” – I don’t think definitional quibbles are the way to go. Rather, we need to find ways in which contemporary communication and foreign policy contexts intersect with the methods and practices that have defined the practice of traditional public diplomacy – in order to chart new paths to insight. Both Nick Cull and I were at a presentation at the recent International Studies Association convention in Feb 2009 – where European scholars Ali Fisher and Jan Melissen both challenged scholars to get past the definition issue and on to good observational analysis.
Which leads to me last point. Rather than focus on whether or not such and such activity is “public diplomacy,” I think it’s pretty clear that one of the biggest issues in the U.S. experience is the gulf of understanding between the field and Washington. William Rugh’s comments speak to this directly: we should have more field” research of day-to-day operations and case study histories of the field perspective. Academics studying public diplomacy from their respective disciplinary perspectives should just not be focused on the beltway recommendation litanies, but should be getting at those “last three feet” where the business of PD gets “done.” Maybe when this kind of work becomes more common – our curricula will be that much more relevant and informative.
-Craig Hayden
Bill Kiehl says:
Craig I think we can disagree about the utility of agreeing about what we are talking about, i.e. a definition. That is kind of basic it seems to me. I wouldn’t think it it “terminological border patrolling” to suggest that we may define what we mean when we use a term. That “defining” has nothing to do with the inherent utility, worth or value of activities undertaken by various entities, governmental, NGO or international. To assume that one defines public diplomacy as government sponsored efforts and thus one rules out looking at case studies of the efforts by BDA or other non-USG actors is a false syllogism. Any study of influence and persuasion has to include the entire spectrum of these efforts, government and non-government alike–but we don’t have to have an “inclusive definition” of public diplomacy that so blurs the distinctions that any definition is meaningless.
I recognize that it might suit your academic purpose to have as broad a field of study has possible under the rubric “public diplomacy” but I’ll stick with my more narrow definition and ultimately I doubt if either definition will be crucial in increasing public interest in or support for greater attention to public diplomacy, under either definition. There are greater factors at play here than what we consider to be the better definition of the term.
We do agree however that the more important point raised in the discussion so far is the need to pay more attention to what happens in the field where “the rubber meets the road.” This is an area that public diplomacy practitioners well understand and perhaps do not do a good enough job of communicating to others interested in public diplomacy (whatever that means!). As Lisbeth B. Schorr wrote: “Even the best practitioners often can’t give usable descriptions of what they do. Many successful [organizational and societal] interventions reflect the secret the fox confided to Saint Exupery’s Little Prince: “What is essential is invisible to the eye. The practitioners know more than they can say.” Bill
Len Baldyga says:
Jack. The same goes for some USIA officers….who I, in turn, would have gladly locked in a vault rather than expose to a host-country audience…..and I found the FSOs I served with in Poland, Italy and India to be exceptionally qualified to conduct “public diplomacy” if called upon to do so. In New Delhi I subsidized the travel of Pol and Econ officers in order to give the embassy greater outreach and to address audiences not
normally on the PD officers’ circuit.
I share Bob Callahan’s view that all FSOs at an embassy should be aware of the public diplomacy dimension
of their jobs since they are often interacting with foreign publics in their duties and their words and actions can have either positive or negative PD impact. Tom Pickering believes all incoming FSOs for whatever cone should be given public diplomacy training and I share his view.
Cheers Len
Jack Harrod says:
Lenusz –
I agree on the training part, and on your assessment of some USIA officers (lord knows, I’ve worked with some of them). I think the percentage of State (in the old days) officers who couldn’t/shouldn’t face public exposure was higher, though.
It does get to the point that PD requires certain skills, and they can be inbred or trained or, in some cases, never learned. So I’d opt for required training in PD for all incoming FSOs, but then a careful screening process to make sure we can separate those officers who can effectively work with publics and those who may be best at intensive analyses of local conditions, but in a confined space…
Jack
Kristin Lord says:
Bill:
Thanks very much for your thoughtful comments. As usual, I agree with many – but not all – of them.
In the spirit of constructive debate, I would like to take issue with your characterization of my position on engaging the private sector. There are undoubtedly people who do believe what you’ve written here, i.e. that “the U.S. Government has failed to do PD properly and the remedy is to add some smart private sector insight and know-how to fix it.” However, that is not how I would characterize my views.
My position is this: public diplomacy has become an enormously complex undertaking. Public diplomacy professionals have unique insights and skills – as do business people, academics, area studies experts, communications experts, NGO leaders, diaspora communities, documentarians, foreign NGO representatives, and others. Thus, the question becomes how best to tap these many varieties of expertise in service of the national interest. I proposed my own solution; while I think it is a promising concept and developed it after extensive research and interviews with hundreds of practitioners and scholars (yourself included), I do not believe it is the holy grail of public diplomacy. However, I do think our nation is best served by an approach that recognizes and draws on the vast potential that exists in our society, both inside and outside the foreign service. I will wholeheartedly stand behind any proposal that accomplishes that objective.
Moreover, the Voices of America report states clearly that engaging the private sector more effectively is only one part of what should be a comprehensive effort to strengthen U.S. public diplomacy. It states unequivocally that, “Investing in the creation of the USA-World Trust, while worthy, should only be undertaken if it does not draw already limited resources away from civilian international affairs agencies or other public diplomacy efforts.” The report then spends many pages calling for more resources, more training and education, and more influence for public diplomacy professionals in the US Department of State and our government more broadly.
Finally, just because PAOs already do lots of good things around the world doesn’t mean our nation shouldn’t try to multiply that good work (or that scholars are ignorant of their efforts). There is only so much that even the most creative, most talented PAOs can do – and that would still be true even if their numbers were tripled. Calling for assistance from private actors is not a real or implied criticism of PAOs. Rather, it is a recognition that the world is a big, rapidly changing, and complex place; that PAOs cannot be everywhere at once; and that there are indeed some audiences who will view a non-USG representative as a more appealing partner, just as there are audiences who would rather work with an American diplomat that anyone else in the world.
I welcome this debate and hope that we can all help to bring it into broader discussions of foreign policy and national security.
With best wishes,
Kristin
Donna Oglesby says:
Gentle Knights on the Castle Wall,
While you “old fuddy-duddies” are busy manning the barricades of the profession to protect it from irrelevant academic intrusion, pseudo-practitioner pollution and saving the English language from corruption you might want to take ten and revisit the history and mission of the Public Diplomacy Council on which you sit.
Mission
The Public Diplomacy Council is a nonprofit organization committed to the importance of the academic study, professional practice, and responsible advocacy of public diplomacy. Its members believe that understanding, informing, and influencing foreign publics and dialogue between Americans and United States’ institutions and their counterparts abroad are vital to the national interest and core elements of 21st century American diplomacy.
History
The Public Diplomacy Council was founded in 1988 as the Public Diplomacy Foundation. Dedicated to fostering greater public recognition of public diplomacy in the conduct of foreign affairs, the Foundation evolved to serve also as a resource and advocate for the teaching, training, and development of public diplomacy as an academic discipline.
However significant your own personal contributions to the academic study are, surely, the PDC, and the foundation before it, didn’t mean retired Foreign Service [Information] Officers only need apply to write about, teach and create this new academic discipline.
Furthermore, if Bill Rugh’s lexicon is to be adopted — “a PD practitioner is a PD professional who has had actual experience doing public diplomacy abroad” — perhaps the PDC might need to adopt a certification system precluding civil servants, political appointees, or our colleagues from exchange organizations from being so audacious as to put on the precious purple mantle of “practitioner” when speaking about a practice I always thought we conducted together for the benefit of the nation we all served.
Good grief guys, there aren’t enough of us who care about public diplomacy to embark on a purge of the faithful. The altar was turned to face the congregation years ago, the lay deacons are passing out communion wafers, and the congregation — some wearing combat boots and some having avatars — is singing in the vernacular.
Dick Virden says:
There are so many threads to this conversation that I choose to ignore all the loose ends and instead start some new lines. One is to acknowledge the primacy of policy; what our leaders say and do matters more than public diplomacy programs, however well conceived and well crafted they may be. Think of President Obama announcing that the United States will not practice torture, for example. Or that we will close Guantanamo. Or his decision to give a major address to Muslims, in an Islamic capital. For that matter, consider the public diplomacy impact of Obama’s very election.
It would be easy to cite lots of negative examples as well. What’s clear, though, is that just as diplomacy is no longer a priestly craft practiced only by Foreign Ministries, neither do public diplomacy professionals have a field to themselves — nor should they.
Jack Harrod makes a great point about the importance of area, country and language studies. It doesn’t apply only to public diplomacy officers, however. The most effective officers I observed were those who worked at trying to understand the people and the culture, political and otherwise, of the countries where they were assigned, regardless of whether they hung their hats in USIS, the political section or the foreign agricultural attaché’s office.
One last thought is to note the distinction between short-term and long-term pd efforts. The first can and should be linked to specific goals in country or region x, and programs tailored accordingly. Fulbright and other exchange programs are different, aiming instead at developing a reservoir of knowledge and understanding we can draw from for the campaigns of the future.
Jack Harrod says:
Dick –
Regards from up in the woods. I would only question whether there are any short term PD goals. I think PD is by definition longer term. The short-term stuff is something else (there is no P-tactics).
Jack
Jack Harrod says:
As a one-time “senior consultant” to the then-Public Diplomacy Foundation, I think all of Donna’s citations are spot on. But they were one aspect of the bigger picture. PD isn’t academic, or field practitioned. It’s the whole thing, and we seem to be denying one or the other aspect of this.
We can preach in the college classrooms or try to convince folks out there on the physical and geographical margins, but what counts is empathy, cultural and linguistic knowledge, and persuasiveness. You can’t teach some of this stuff in a classroom. Former Peace Corps volunteers come to mind as recruits.
PHK says:
Craig: You raise some fascinating questions – questions which do indeed need thought.
Here’s where I come down.
First, I am one of those who subscribes to the position that the term public diplomacy first and foremost relates to the civilian government’s work. Stress: civilian. Stress: government.
Actually, I thought I was more critical of the military and strategic communications than I was of the private sector in my post “Detroit on the Potomac” that stimulated this discussion. It’s interesting that no one representing the military has weighed in.
I think another term (or terms) need to be devised for the spider-web of private sector relationships with the government in terms of the public diplomacy sphere. They are indeed complex and multidimensional.
I’ve seen, for one example, what’s happened in New Mexico over the past decade with the employment of the broad definition: too many questionably-competent self-appointed IV program volunteers have come to believe they are “citizen” Ambassadors or diplomats. This is just wrong especially when they forget the “citizen” part of the equation.
Meanwhile, UNM has lost university-to-university programs and Albuquerque a very effective Russian-US high school exchange because – well – in the first case State stopped the former after Mary Ashley retired and somewhere along the line State or perhaps USIA stopped miniscule funding to the American Association of High School Principals (may have the exact organizational name wrong) and a local high school was unable to carry on without the token funding it provided.
The problem is finding the term and definition or perhaps terms and definitions for what the private sector does and how these activities relate to the USG. Perhaps you as an academic or someone from the journalistic side of the house can best describe the characteristics of this nexus between government and private sector. There may need to be a couple of definitions: contractors and everything else.
Second, the students I’ve encountered have had far fewer problems understanding the differences between what the government does and what the private sector does than what I read here. Some are looking for jobs with State and that includes public diplomacy; others are military and others just want to know what their government is up to and get a better understanding of America’s relationship to the world. Yet as Tom Tuch says: his students were most interested in what he actually did. That’s what I found too.
This, on the one hand, tells me that perhaps the fuzzing of the definition of pd is irrelevant. Yet, I also think labels and definitions remain important because Americans need to understand the government’s unique role, how their taxpayer dollars are spent and, as importantly, how the private sector fits in to the equation.
That’s also the bottom line for a lot of students: the more definitions are diffused, the less meaningful and understandable they are and the more problems students have in comprehending what their government does and doesn’t do.
Third: Are, and should, students be the target audience? Shouldn’t the primary audience be those in the administration and Congress who can make a difference? Shouldn’t the most pressing question be how best to reach them and make the most compelling case?
While the public diplomacy house is disintegrating, we’re most worried about students and arguing academic definitions? Come on.
I also thought academia was about nuance and understanding shades of gray – not about black and white differences in a Manichean world. That’s certainly what I taught – and what others in the political science department here taught and teach as well.
Fourth, I agree: there clearly need to be far better communications between the academic community and those few of us who were (and are) public diplomacy practitioners. Our numbers were tiny in the best of times. It’s painfully obvious that non-practitioners studying the field need to understand far better than they do now how we operate(d) effectively abroad, how this is too often no longer the case thanks to the huge gap left by State’s gross mismanagement preceded by starvation funding during USIA’s last years and that neither academia nor the military have been able to fill the chasm.
As far as academia is concerned, I fail to see why no MA programs in public diplomacy are headed by former public diplomacy practitioners like happens with journalism and law schools. Instead, what I see is that those few PD practitioners involved are largely relegated to low paying adjunct positions or are on short-term loan from State. Yet another example of how “town and gown” remain unhealthily divorced from each other.
I would certainly like to see systematic training programs for students who aspire to become public diplomacy specialists. I don’t see them now – except perhaps Georgetown and the Georgetown program is designed to help students pass the FSO exam. What I see in New Mexico is a diplomat in residence sent by State HR to recruit minorities. In the past it was Hispanics. This past year it has been Native Americans. The problem is far too few can pass because their written English skills are not good enough. From what I’ve seen in response to written assignments I’ve given, this weakness is not just among the minorities.
Finally (enough already), I think specific public diplomacy job-related preparation differs from classes that teach about public diplomacy – whether specific courses (regardless of broad or narrow definition) or modules in more general international politics, journalism (or related courses). Both are crucial and the former should build upon, or follow on, the latter. Pat Kushlis
Yale Richmond says:
I don’t want to get into the useless debate on whether PD should be governmental or NGO, but I believe it will be useful to show how a mix of the two were so successful in our winning the Cold War. [And here an aside for those who say that neither we nor the Soviets won. Rather, it was a victory for the Soviet people. After communism collapsed and the Cold War ended, I looked up in Moscow my old counterpart, Viktor P. Sakovich, with whom I had a very good working relationship in Washington when I was Director of CU’s Office of Soviet and EE Exchanges, and Viktor, now deceased, was the Soviet Embassy cultural attaché. Over lunch, in discussing the changes that had occurred, Viktor said simply “You won.”]
We may have won but it was not without the cooperation and deep involvement of the US private sector in our PD program in the Soviet Union. Our big academic exchange program was dependent on the cooperation of US universities which waived tuition for Soviet students. And in the first year of our exchanges, when the 17 Soviet graduate students completed their two semesters of study at US universities, thanks to a small $15,000 State Department grant, they spent the summer working on American farms. What better way to demonstrate the advantages of US agriculture to Russians with a deep heritage in agriculture.
Our performing arts exchanges could not have been successful without the participation of Sol Hurok and other US impresarios. Ditto for our technological, agricultural, and public health exchanges. As for USIA’s exhibitions, they were dependent on US manufacturers and others providing the items on display. More than 20 million Soviets visited the 23 USIA exhibitions over the 30-years of the US-USSR Cultural Agreements, and for most of them their conversations with the Russian-speaking American guides was their first and only opportunity to speak with an American.
But perhaps the greatest contribution to our PD effort with the Soviets was the work done by members of the National Council for International Visitors (NCIV) who volunteered their time in arranging activities and visits for the Soviet IVs in more than 90 communities across the United States, including stays and visits in American homes. They were truly, and still are today, “Citizen Diplomats.” In this connection, I am reminded that NASA, when it was hosting Soviet cosmonauts in Houston in preparation for the first joint US-USSR space flight, put the Soviet cosmonauts up in the homes of the American astronauts who would soon be their partners in space. What better way to see how their American counterparts lived and worked.
So let’s not forget the private sector. We can’t do PD without them.
Cynthia Efird says:
Dear Friends: As a silent partner in the many blogs on PD, I enjoy keeping up with the several threads of the debates. With my e-mail full of all of your learned comments, I have succumbed to the temptation to weigh in, at least this once.
I hope that I am doing my part as an active duty public diplomacy practitioner, now at the US Army War College but shortly to take the senior PD slot at Georgetown. After my stint as Ambassador to Angola, I chose to take the DCIA job here, in part because of all the military services, the Army has been the main DOD actor in the arena of Strategic Communication writ large, excluding PA which is more widely shared. Over the last two years, every one of the poor Colonel-students has endured my lecture on State’s public diplomacy and it primacy in WOG international communications strategies. In addition, I host monthly get-togethers for all of the practitioners and those others interested in the range of military specializations that impinge on strategic communication. (Sorry for the circumlocutions, but listing all the titles involved would be even more tedious.)
Not surprisingly, when my group talks about what works, the necessary cycle of: research, input to policy-formation, creating strategies and tactics (I am convinced that PD must include both), implementation, review of outcomes leading to adjustments in policy, we agree. Also not surprisingly, the debate becomes more heated when we discuss grey or black information activities.
One of the major problems I see is one that better communication theory could contribute to solving. Both military and diplomatic policy makers have, of course, refused to take into account likely public reaction to proposed and implemented policies by positing a super public diplomacy “pixie dust” that when sprinkled liberally can bend the hearts and minds to whatever course of action is desired. This misconception of public diplomacy effects is due in part to a lack of a consensus on what at its best public diplomacy or any informational effort can achieve.
There are several good communication theoretic sources discussing the extent to which outsiders can change committed believers’ minds. We practitioners have, perhaps, been too eager to sell our wares, offering a kind of snake oil as payment to get to the policy-makers’ table. Wouldn’t it be helpful if academic theorists were heard when they describe the limitations of messaging. Wouldn’t it also be useful for us in the field to talk modestly about the centrality to our PD task of identifying areas in which our interests overlap the interests of those with whom we need to act in concert.
I will now subside back into my daily duties, with greetings to all old friends.
Bill Rugh says:
Dear Kristin,
Thank you for your note. I apologize if I mischaracterized your view.
Perhaps also my comments were not entirely clear. I do know that private activities abroad are very extensive and they do affect foreign perceptions of us. Some have nothing to do with the U.S. Government – TV programs, Hollywood films, Rotary scholarships, U.S. corporate activities overseas, etc. – but they help shape the world’s view of America and thus influence the context for U.S Government’s public diplomacy. Other private activities abroad are undertaken in deliberate partnership with the U.S. Government. One example that I mentioned was NCIV’s longstanding support for visitors to the U.S. Another is the State Department’s program that sends experts abroad to lecture (and doesn’t tell them what to say). So the private efforts abroad can be independent, or they can have U.S. Government involvement, and in the latter case they are part of our official public diplomacy.
Now,I agree in theory that it would be nice to increase such private activities if they serve U.S. national interests. But the point I was trying to make is that proposals that we should draw on the “vast potential that exists in our society”, tend not to go beyond those nice generalities, and fail to provide concrete examples of what that actually means. It is not enough to list assets that the private sector supposedly has available to contribute to PD, without explaining specifically how the private sector would add value that is not already being provided by current USG practitioners. Sure, some big American corporations for example have foreign employees working for them abroad who have knowledge of local attitudes about the corporation’s products, but why are they better at PD than the local-hire employees we have at every U.S. embassy whose full time job it is to advise the U.S. Government on all of the issues of relevance to American national interests? The PAO’s job is to explain not only U.S. policy but all relevant aspects of U.S. society, not sell a product. The same question can be asked about American NGOs working abroad. They typically focus on specific activities and are not concerned about the full spectrum of U.S. interests. Nor are U.S. corporations and NGOs present in every country where we have interests.
There may well be untapped opportunities for the private sector to contribute to PD but I have yet to see them described with any specificity. Someone should spell out exactly what more the private sector could do. I wish the BDA would do that. Or perhaps some academics could do so. Last April 13 the Washington Post published Joe Nye’s strong criticism of international relations scholars for not writing policy-relevant analyses. He said, “too often scholars teach theory and methods that are relevant to other academics but not to the majority of the students sitting in the classroom in front of them.” One way some academics could be helpful to students and to PD practitioners would be to look into exactly what more the private sector could do for PD, with actionable specifics, taking us past the nice sounding generalities.
Best regards, Bill
Hans Tuch says:
Yale, there is no difference in our views on the definition of public diplomacy. You write that your dictionary defines diplomacy as “the art or practice of conducting international relations as in negotiating alliances and treaties and agreements” — exactly what only governments do. Thus public diplomacy is a government’s process of communicating with foreign publics to bring about understanding for its nation’s current policies and national goals, for its institutions and culture, for its ideals and ideas by way of cultural and information activities.
One reason why I, perhaps obsessively, harp on defining public diplomacy is that the Reagan administration in 1983 deliberately misused the term for the purpose of propagandizing the American public in support of its policies in Central America.
And, of course, public diplomacy includes the participation and support of the private sector–NGOs, academic institutions, cultural entities that you cited. As a matter of experience, our government could not conduct public diplomacy without the participation of the many institutions (IREX, NCIV etc.) that it has engaged to carry out the programs and projects that promote and support our public diplomacy objectives.
Yale Richmond says:
One small correction. Private entities also negotiate agreements with other countries. In the Soviet days, IREX, Sol Hurok, and many academic and cultural institutions had written agreements with the Soviet government. And similar agreements exist today with Russia and many other countries.
Len Baldyga says:
Both IREX and NCIV received substantial funding from the USG and so are/were instruments of government PD.
Yale Richmond says:
IREX was originally funded by the Ford Foundation, and its USG funding came later, in the mid 1970s. NCIV also originally had no USG funding, and was proud that it was self-funded.
Len Baldyga says:
Yale. One does not always have to be a “knowing” instrument of government propaganda or PD efforts as evidenced in the years of operation of the Congress for Cultural Freedom and similar CIA-funded fronts. To get funding one does sometimes have to deal with the devil.
In 1981 I took Allen and Dan Matuszewski over to the CIA co-chaired COMEX meeting to convince the committee overseeing exchanges with SU/EE that IREX should continue getting USG funding….and also later in 1992, I got Joe Duffey to continue USIA’s IREX annual grant. Given the negative connotation, perhaps “instrument” is not the appropriate word but without the USG funding, both IREX and NCIV would find it impossible to conduct their current programs. I do not deny that NGOs played an important role in the earlier exchanges with SU/EE. Cheers. Len