Author: Matt Armstrong

Event: Public Affairs in a Global Information Environment

~ Matt Armstrong

My company, Armstrong Strategic Insights Group, LLC, is sponsoring an invitation-only event titled “Public Affairs in a Global Information Environment” next week. It will be a small, off the record discussion about ongoing and crisis communication in the modern global information environment. The half-day event will be chaired by former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs James K. Glassman.

The focus of the discussion will be the keynote by and conversation with Swedish Director-General Mats Ekdahl, formerly of Sweden’s National Board of Psychological Defense. Mr. Ekdahl will discuss “Psychological Defense”, “Media Preparedness”, and Public Diplomacy. His bio is here.

Attending this event are representatives from across the Government and the private sector, including the Departments of State, Defense, and Homeland Security, think tanks, academia, Congress, and the media.

Mr. Ekdahl will also be on a panel at InfoWarCon titled “Homeland Psychological Defense”.

Event: InfoWarCon April 23-24

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

Next week is InfoWarCon, a conference to discuss “theoretical and practical changes and uses of Information Operations/Information Warfare, Cyberwar, Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy.” Giving keynotes are LTG Thomas F. Metz, Director, JIEDDO, (title: “IO: The Great Enabler") and the Honorable James Glassman, former Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs (title:"Can a ‘Conversation’ Win the War on Terror?").

The conference is two days, April 23-24, and in Washington, DC. Check their website for registration details. The panels promise to be interesting. Check them out below:

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Advice from the Former Under Secretary to the Incoming Under Secretary

~ Matt Armstrong

Amy Harder at the National Journal asked Jim Glassman, the former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, about his successor.

Glassman has not met with his successor, but he said he would be more than happy to do so if approached. So, what advice does he have for McHale? “I would urge her to not simply talk to the people in the building,” Glassman said. “She needs to understand how the office works within the State Department, but she should also get out and talk to the key players in the interagencies.” He cited the Defense Department as the most crucial agency relationship.

See also:

White House Nominates Judith McHale as Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 4 Comments

From the White House:

Judith A. McHale, Nominee for Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Department of State
Ms. McHale is a leading media and communications executive whose career has been devoted to building companies and non-profit organizations dedicated to reaching out to and connecting people around the world. She is the former President and Chief Executive Officer of Discovery Communications. From 1987 to 2006, McHale helped build the parent company of the Discovery Channel into one of the world’s most extensive  media enterprises, with more than 100 channels telecast in over 170 countries and 35 languages to more than 1 billion subscribers.  In the 1990s, McHale launched the non-profit Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership, which supplies free educational video programming to more than half a million students across Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe.  After two decades at Discovery, McHale extended her commitment to helping build opportunity for people in Africa.  With the Global Environment Fund, a private equity firm, she worked to launch the GEF/Africa Growth Fund, an investment vehicle intending to focus on supplying  expansion capital to small and medium-sized businesses that provide consumer goods and services in emerging African markets. McHale’s commitment to global outreach efforts also includes her service on the boards of the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the National Democratic Institute, and Vital Voices. She previously served on the board of Africare.  The daughter of a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, McHale was born in New York City and grew up in Britain and apartheid-era South Africa. Before joining Discovery, McHale served as General Counsel for MTV Networks and helped guide the company’s international expansion.

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Guest Post: An Anti-Piracy Mission Transforms From Interdiction to Strategic Communication

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 3 Comments

By Chris Tomlinson

Imagine the scene: a U.S. Navy destroyer shadowing a tiny lifeboat carrying four Somali pirates with a U.S. hostage in an Indian Ocean standoff. Most Americans see the USS Bainbridge as the cavalry riding to the rescue. But not everyone will see it that way. The poor and oppressed living in the developing world might see something akin to the lone Chinese civilian standing in front of a Red Army tank trying to reach Tiananmen Square. Where we see a cop stopping a robber, others will see Robin Hood cornered by the sheriff of Nottingham.

Now that the pirates have gotten the attention of the world, a low-profile mission to interdict criminals in the Indian Ocean now is a major strategic communication. Does the Pentagon and the State Deptartment understand that?

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Guest Post: Must. Be. AWESOME!

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 3 Comments

By Christopher Dufour

Too often in government, we settle for the most expedient solution. The cheapest option. The quickest way. The path of least resistance.

We justify it by quoting acquisition regulations. By glomming onto existing authorities. By refusing to challenge the status quo.

It’s this attitude that prevents us from accomplishing big goals. Immense objectives. Tremendous challenges. Gi-normous grand strategy. Instead, we choose to do just enough to get our assignments completed to a preexisting or arbitrary standard. This is the culture of Washington.

We shouldn’t make this choice. We shouldn’t be shooting for "just good enough." Instead, we should be shooting for AWESOME.

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Is this public diplomacy? Close but not quite

~ Matt Armstrong

Read: Obama scores again, but the game is just starting by Marc Lynch at Foreign Policy

The Good: President Obama is changing the narrative and directly engaging Muslim communities. The President said America’s relationship with the Muslim world is greater than and will extend beyond defeating Al Qaeda.

The Bad: Marc says there is “disarray in the public diplomacy bureaucracy” and continues to say “Obama has already succeeded at the initial public diplomacy phase of his effort to transform America’s relations with the Muslim world.” The President’s remarkable speech is at best a small sliver of "public diplomacy" not to be confused with the full spectrum of options of engagement through communication, exchange, development, capacity building, health programs, and even countering adversarial messages.

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Simple Advice for Dealing with the Media

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Very briefly, take a look at the following wallet card. The images are from the front and back of a card distributed to the Swedish Foreign Ministry by the Foreign Ministry.

mfa_presscard

There are a couple of minor linguistic differences between the Swedish and the English but the major difference between the two sides of the card is the Swedish bullet that’s not replicated: don’t ask sources. Sweden has very strong “whistle blower” protection laws so that a government official even asking about a source is against the law.

All the bullets are sensible and direct and come from a Foreign Ministry that gives media training to nearly the entire organization. Everyone, in their view, is a communicator.

Comments?

What Does the New Tech Guru at the State Department Mean for Public Diplomacy?

~ Matt Armstrong

The Washington Post reports Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has a new “senior adviser on innovation.” According to the Washington Post article Diplomatic Efforts Get Tech Support, the adviser, Alec Ross, is “armed with a new set of diplomatic tools including Facebook, text messaging and YouTube.” I’ll get back to the hyperbole below, but the paper’s description of his job is interesting:

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Guest Post: Renewing America’s Global Leadership

~ Matt Armstrong

By Ursula Oaks, NAFSA: Association of International Educators

When President Obama stood before students and service members at the National Defense University in early March and committed the resources of his administration to “renewing diplomacy as a tool of American power” he rightly said that we cannot “leave dormant any aspect of the full arsenal of American capability.” The bold path our president has charted puts the United States on a new footing in its relationships with the world, one that emphasizes listening and mutual respect as cornerstones of responsible and constructive leadership.  This new course requires our country to become much better informed about and engaged in the world. A proven way to accomplish this is to make international education a national priority.

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Government reports on public diplomacy you may have missed

~ Matt Armstrong

Several reports on public diplomacy that are worthwhile, even recommended, reading. All but two are US. One is from Sweden and the other is Chinese. All of the below are links on MountainRunner.us. 

Can Social Media organically transform government?

~ Matt Armstrong

Social media is an appropriate title for much of what is generally called “new media”. Social media creates connection through information dissemination systems that facilitate and encourage dialogue, enhancing the original message to subsequent readers and repeaters.

Technologies like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, blogs and other systems are interesting in their own right, but searching for and mashing up of data is a more interesting and more valuable. The potential for mining knowledge from heaps of noise and clutter that result from dynamic networks that last for only a split-second or for years.

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Robots as Strategic Corporals

~ Matt Armstrong

This week, the Complex Terrain Laboratory, or CTLab, hosted another of its brilliant online symposiums. The topic of this one is Peter W. Singer’s book Wired for War and robots in warfare.

There are a lot of good posts over there to read. Go check them out.

My first of at least two posts just went up: Robots as Strategic Corporals. The second post will look at justifying the robots based on what can be done according to Western notions which creates, counter intuitively, an engagement model that is too permissive and detrimental to the mission as a whole. Certain acts, justifiable under international law, could backfire if the information effects are not anticipated, planned for, and managed effectively.

Read Robots as Strategic Corporals at CTLab.

Isolated Overseas: Diplomatic Security Creates Challenges for American Public Diplomacy

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 5 Comments

Guest Post By Mitchell Polman, originally posted at Understanding Government

When Congress voted to abolish the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) in 1999, America’s public image abroad suffered a significant blow. This decision – inspired by the desire to shrink government and the predominant belief that USIA was an ineffective bureaucracy – closed many USIA-run American libraries and cultural centers around the world that were helping to promote better understanding of American culture and society. These gathering places – located in embassy buildings or in libraries and cultural buildings of host countries – were an important tool for U.S. public diplomacy. They organized English language classes, discussions about American society and politics, films, and other cultural events. Local residents had safe and accessible places to read American books and periodicals, find out about educational exchanges, take U.S. college entrance and language exams, and interact with American citizens.

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The Kitchen Debate of 1959: more than just two guys talking

~ Matt Armstrong

I recommend listening to NPR’s story this morning on the “Kitchen Debate” between Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Vice President Richard Nixon at the 1959 American exhibition in Moscow. The reporter, Gregory Feifer, notes the “hostility and distrust toward America and Americans among ordinary Russians is much stronger than it was when Nixon debated Khrushchev 50 years ago.” Those that participated in the American exhibitions, Feifer continued, “believe they can be a useful model for President Obama as he seeks to improve ties with Moscow.”

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It sure is quiet around here… a few links and musings during the silence

~ Matt Armstrong

I’m still around, just encountered some unexpected turbulence that broke the blogging cycle. Posting will resume shortly. There are a few posts sitting in the wings, including a couple of guest posts.

In the meantime, check out CTLab’s online symposium covering Peter W. Singer’s Wired for War. I’ll be posting a few entries over there (as well as here) over the next week. See my article Combat Robots and Perception Management published in Serviam magazine last year (my post on the article is here).

Also, for an organizational chart of unmanned warfare units, see Project ACORN from 2007.

On the subject of public diplomacy, it appears “imminent” is a relative term when it comes to nominating Judith McHale as Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy. Last week I rushed to post “Future of Public Diplomacy” after a DC paper declined because I was sure the rumors were true that McHale’s nomination would be announced any minute. But alas, her official status has not changed. Congress begins a two week recess this Friday, so if she’s not nominated this week, the numbers on the chart at Whither Public Diplomacy will grow significantly. You don’t suppose they’ll do a recess appointment?! Please no… Why won’t the Secretary at least announce McHale?

See also

The Future of Public Diplomacy

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 4 Comments

The world increasingly operates on perceptions created by the “Now Media” environment. Governments must fully take into account these perceptions in the forming and conducting of foreign policy. From the perspective of the United States, the simple and essential fact is that everything we say and do both at home and abroad, as well as everything we fail to say and do, has an impact in other lands. This isn’t a new idea but an observation originally made by a certain general running for president in 1952.

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