Event: Public Affairs in a Global Information Environment

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”.

Guest Post: Must. Be. AWESOME!

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.

Continue reading “Guest Post: Must. Be. AWESOME!

Simple Advice for Dealing with the Media

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?

Should a presentation about promoting dialogue include time for dialogue?

Recently, I was briefed on the global engagement efforts of a three-letter government organization that has neither a "C" nor an "A" in its acronym. Unknown to me, and not mentioned at the beginning of the briefing, was that the back to back presentations would last about four hours. My expectation was for two hours at most so I scheduled one casual meeting (over cocktails) afterwards, which, fortunately, was easy enough to push (and, as it turned out, ultimately cancel).

I learned a fair amount and I was impressed by the breadth of the programs. Presentations were made by the principal actors, some of whom I knew, some I knew of, but many I didn’t know. This group is dynamic and trying hard to move up the metaphorical knife toward the pointy part.

Overall, I was impressed with their efforts and saw great potential. A question I frequently asked when they mentioned how they are tracking their success was to the effect of "So what are you doing with this knowledge? Does Congress or anybody else in USG know about your success?" Invariably, the answer was "no" which was sometimes coupled with a stare as if I had a third eye.

Besides not anticipating a 2p to nearly 6p meeting, the briefing very clearly was not a discussion. Granted they had a ton of information they wanted to present to me and there was not a moment when we dived into minutia, but answers to my questions were frequently followed by comments by the briefing chair that there was a tight schedule to keep.

There’s a certain irony that a presentation about dialogue itself stifles dialogue. I wonder if they saw that? I know they do now.

Guest Post: NATO and New Media: new landscapes and new challenges

Guest Post By Tom Brouns

The media landscape is quietly undergoing a revolution. NATO’s ability to remain relevant in this new media landscape as it evolves will significantly contribute to its success or failure in Afghanistan. Many observers characterize the internet as “underexploited terrain in the war of ideas” being waged – and according to some observers, being lost – over Afghanistan. Focusing only on the technology, however, overlooks a more fundamental change in the media landscape: the power to produce and disseminate information has irreversibly shifted from large organizations and corporations to the public. Technology has empowered the consumer as an increasingly equal partner in the production of information. The vital role of public perception in Afghanistan makes recognizing and adapting to this change critical to success in what is arguably the biggest test of NATO’s relevance in the 21st century.

Continue reading “Guest Post: NATO and New Media: new landscapes and new challenges

Defense Department contracts for public affairs AND public diplomacy

At what point will the Government, not just the Defense Department, understand that engaging global audiences, within the U.S. and outside, requires staff, understanding of and competency in the modern “now media” information environment? Walter Pincus writes in The Washington Post:

The Army wants a private firm to provide a seven-member media team to support the public affairs officer of the 25th Infantry Division, now serving as Multi-National Division-North in Iraq — at least three media specialists, two Arab speakers, a Web manager in Iraq and a media specialist stateside.

Continue reading “Defense Department contracts for public affairs AND public diplomacy

Change @ .gov

Briefly, at the tick of 12:00 yesterday, our new President was sworn in. At the tock of 12:01, our President’s tech-savvy team went online with a new WhiteHouse.gov website that includes a blog. Actually, it’s not a blog, without the ability to comment it’s simply a fancy public announcement system masquerading as blog.

This change is reflected elsewhere: check out State.gov. Note the subtitle under “U.S. Department of State”: Diplomacy in Action. Also, note the prominent placement of DipNote on the homepage as well as the social media bookmark feature.

At “R”, the following is available:

The Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs leads America’s public diplomacy outreach, which includes communications with international audiences, cultural programming, academic grants, educational exchanges, international visitor programs, and U.S. Government efforts to confront ideological support for terrorism. The Under Secretary oversees the bureaus of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Public Affairs and International Information Programs, and participates in foreign policy development.

With no link to CitizensBriefingBook.Change.Gov, where “the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government” meets social media, it is likely that any future citizen-input solicited by the Government will primarily come from individual Departments and Agencies. By the way, the public diplomacy topic is here and has received what nothing in the way of professional contributions. 

For the techie in you, see also this post regarding the revised robots.txt file.

Symposium Audio: Glassman and Doran Keynotes

Complete audio for the 2009 Smith-Mundt Symposium will be available soon. The transcript will be available in about two weeks. Below, however, are mp3’s for the two keynotes.

I think many will find both interesting and very worthwhile to listen to sooner than later. Without comment (yet):

Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Jim Glassman’s keynote and questions & answers begins 13:45 into the mp3 at the link below. The beginning nearly fourteen minutes is my introduction to the Symposium.

http://mountainrunner.us/symposium/audio/smithmundtsymposium-glassman-011309.mp3 (54 minutes total, 13mb)

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Support to Public Diplomacy, now Special Advisor at the State Department, Mike Doran’s keynote and questions & answers may be downloaded at the below link.

http://mountainrunner.us/symposium/audio/smithmundtsymposium-doran-011309.mp3 (1 hour and 3 minutes, 15mb)

Virtual Briefing Pass

Briefly, check out State’s Facebook page eliciting comments on Sean McCormack’s Virtual Briefing initiative. As of now, there’s nothing there, but I expect comments to start appearing. Several of us were on a teleconference last week to share our thoughts on this with Sean. Look for more sooner than later.

Related, see ExchangesConnect Online Video Contest:

Enter your 3-minute video about what "My Culture + Your Culture" means to you for a chance to win an international exchange program!  The contest opens on December 1, 2008 and ends on January 26, 2009.

Also, see Assistant Secretary Goli Ameri upcoming (Jan 5) talk at UCLA titled The Challenges of U.S. Public Diplomacy in the 21st Century. Ameri leads the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). Ameri recently

Merging Public Affairs, PSYOP, IO

Briefly and without comment,

Press, "Psy Ops" to merge at NATO Afghan HQ-sources

29 Nov 2008 06:56:49 GMT

Source: Reuters

By Jon Hemming

KABUL, Nov 29 (Reuters) – The U.S. general commanding NATO forces in Afghanistan has ordered a merger of the office that releases news with "Psy Ops", which deals with propaganda, a move that goes against the alliance’s policy, three officials said.

The move has worried Washington’s European NATO allies — Germany has already threatened to pull out of media operations in Afghanistan — and the officials said it could undermine the credibility of information released to the public.

Seven years into the war against the Taliban, insurgent influence is spreading closer to the capital and Afghans are becoming increasingly disenchanted at the presence of some 65,000 foreign troops and the government of President Hamid Karzai.

Taliban militants, through their website, telephone text messages and frequent calls to reporters, are also gaining ground in the information war, analysts say.

U.S. General David McKiernan, the commander of 50,000 troops from more than 40 nations in NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), ordered the combination of the Public Affairs Office (PAO), Information Operations and Psy Ops (Psychological Operations) from Dec. 1, said a NATO official with detailed knowledge of the move.

The friction in the second paragraph is perhaps the most interesting. There is pressure to align the fences between the practices of PA, IO, and PSYOP. General McKiernan is doing what many want, and I know McKiernan’s PAO “gets it” as well.

Read the whole thing here.

More on the Al-Qaeda slur

From Evan Kohlman at the Counterterrorism blog:

Global reactions to Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri’s controversial condemnation of U.S. President-Elect Barack Obama as a "House Slave" (or, alternatively, "House Negro") have begun to pour in — including via the top jihad web forums used by Al-Qaida to disseminate its propaganda. Though hardcore Al-Qaida supporters have predictably dismissed any criticism of Dr. al-Zawahiri and are fiercely backing his choice of words, there is a rather ironic (if not entirely unfamiliar) twist to this issue. After observing international press reporting on the incident, these same supporters are now bitterly attacking the media for its "unfair" pro-Obama bias and for deliberately "confusing" the meaning of al-Zawahiri’s message.

In related news, Zawahiri’s audio statement also appears to have created a palpable, tense confrontation between Al-Qaida and a significant cross-section of African-American Muslims. Several U.S.-based Muslim organizations immediately held press conferences or issued statements to strongly criticize al-Zawahiri and his manipulation of the words of the late Malcolm X. Conversely, these conferences and statements of response have not gone over well within the jihadi community, with some Arabic-speaking commentators issuing angry rants about the apparent treachery of American Muslims, including specifically the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). One Al-Qaida supporter cautioned his quarrelsome online colleagues, "Brothers, this does not apply to all American Muslims. Do not forget our brother [Adam] Yehiye Gadahn, a naturalized Muslim and U.S. citizen."

See also:

USAID: Why the Story that U.S. Foreign Assistance Is Working Must Be Told

USAID: Why the Story that U.S. Foreign Assistance Is Working Must Be ToldForeign aid, from humanitarian relief to reconstruction and stabilization programs, are at their core public diplomacy missions. They communicate interest, respect, and generate understanding of both sides. They are also absolutely essential in today’s global struggle for minds and wills. The mother of all reconstruction and stabilization programs, the Marshall Plan, included the “standard” rebuilding but also incorporated education programs, cultural exchanges, and rebuilding civic society.

However, foreign aid has little in the way of a domestic constituency. Like public diplomacy’s international information programs, there’s little awareness within the United States not just about the effectiveness of these overseas endeavors but that anything is being done at all.

USAID just released a significant and interesting report on how it needs to improve engagement both overseas and here in the United States.

Unfortunately without comment (time constrained), I highly recommend this report. ‘Tis the season for reports on changing America’s voice, so if you have limited time, I recommend this be very near the top of that pile.

Foreign assistance is at the center of the most comprehensive reformulation of this nation’s strategic doctrines in more than half a century. The development community will play a key role in meeting the nation’s unprecedented challenges.

Our own well-being as a nation is closely linked to events in developing countries on fronts including trade and investment, infectious diseases, environmental protection, international crime and terrorism, weapons proliferation, migration and the advance of democracy and human rights, among others.

Americans, however, have only a rudimentary understanding of the design, scope and impact of U.S. foreign assistance programs. Public opinion is characterized by misconceptions and prejudices that must be countered if we are to sustain the foreign assistance commitment that our humanitarian and national security objectives require.

Detect a bit of Smith-Mundt in there? You should… The Act was passed largely because America’s “whisper” was inadequate to support the mother of all foreign aid programs: the Marshall Plan. Despite the American role in liberating the continent, “knowledge of the United States [was] being systematically blotted out” by Communist information activities that were compared to a “tremendous symphony orchestra” playing all the time. The Smith-Mundt Act was passed to make known what we were doing and to counter distortions and misinformation propagated by the enemy. Together, the Marshall Plan and the Smith-Mundt Act constituted a denial of sanctuary program central to Kennan’s containment that was not, contrary to many modern believes, based on force of arms but on the force of ideas and deeds.

In other words, USAID should be very interested in returning to the principles, purposes, and intent of the Smith-Mundt Act.

Download the report here.

See also:

Bacevich, The Limits of Power

From the History Department at US Army Combined Arms Center comes the following recommendation for Andrew Bacevich’s book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism: 

Andrew J. Bacevich, The Limits of Power (Metropolitan Books, 2008), should be on everyone’s reading list over the holidays.  Of special interests are his criticisms of how we view our current operating environment and how we are preparing for it. 

For example, discussing the 2003 invasion plan, Bacevich writes:

"For starters, it was devoid of political context. Narrowly focused on the upcoming fight, it paid no attention to the aftermath. Defining the problem as Iraq alone, it ignored other regional power relationships and made no provision for how war might alter those relationships, whether for good or ill. It was completely ahistorical and made no reference to culture, religion, or ethnic identity. It had no moral dimension. It even failed to include a statement of purpose." (166-167)

His book hits at the heart of what we teach here at CGSC.  While you may not agree with his argument, it will cause you to think about what we are doing here in a new light.  It should be on the Chief of Staff’s reading list.

Unrelated to the book review, the US Army CAC “blog collective” is a poster example of a new dynamic in the U.S. Army to educate and empower new media engagement. The Foreign Service Institute should explore this as should must the State Department as a whole. From DipNote to America.gov to embassy sites should also think about implementing a “collective” model as the FCO is doing.

Reforming U.S. Public Diplomacy for the 21st Century

Required reading for today: Heritage’s latest titled Reforming U.S. Public Diplomacy for the 21st Century by Tony Blankley, Helle C. Dale and Oliver Horn. (also required: President-elect Obama, we need a new kind of public diplomacy by Heritage’s Kim Holmes.)

Margaret Thatcher once said that America is the only nation in the world "built upon an idea." This idea–liberty–has transcended geography and ethnicity to shape American identity and to inspire political discourse, both domestic and foreign, since the nation’s founding nearly two and a half centuries ago. Indeed, John Adams wrote that the American Revolution occurred first "in the hearts and minds of the people." Ideas lie at the very core of this country.

It is therefore both frustrating and ironic that the United States should have such difficulty conveying ideas today. Seven years into the war on terrorism, it has become apparent that final victory must be won not only on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in the hearts and minds of people.

Margaret Thatcher also said that the media is the oxygen of the terrorist. The same is true of the counterterrorist and the counterinsurgent. Being able to communicate ideas and counter misinformation and distortion has always been essential to peace, stability, and national security in general. Understanding that everything we say and everything we do is linked and shapes perceptions is, fortunately, becoming vogue.

Continue reading “Reforming U.S. Public Diplomacy for the 21st Century

Ayman al-Zawahiri’s racial epithet

MountainRunner friend Spencer Ackerman nails it on Zawahiri’s use of "House Negro" in Al-Qaeda’s latest propaganda:

With an American president as loathed as George W. Bush around the world, it’s easy for Al Qaeda to portray the U.S. as venal and stupid and brutish as he’s proven. Obama complicates the narrative significantly: the very color of his skin, precisely what Al Qaeda mocks, symbolizes America’s willingness to change. That’s exactly what Al Qaeda fears most. …

Still, as Ilan Goldenberg notes at Democracy Arsenal, "Al Qaeda’s narrative is now under siege and it’s clearly uncertain about how to react." That sort of disruption is precisely what the U.S. needs to rapidly exploit. In both policy and public-diplomacy terms, the clay is still wet. Why haven’t we seen the State Dept.’s blog hit the Zawahiri "House Negro" tape yet?

I have all the respect for the DipNote staff, and America.gov for that matter, but they just don’t have the agility or flexibility to respond to this message. Of course the argument could be made that a response highlights the attack. But in this case, as with most, we know the message is being received and a reply like Spencer’s strikes at AQ’s vulnerability. AQ is losing the struggle for minds and wills and this very message highlights that they will grasp at anything to attempt to regain control of the narrative.

DipNote and America.gov should be one of the many platforms used to post accessible responses. Reposting the above is out of the question, but at a minimum a short response echoing or linking to Spencer is better than silence and would get traction. I can think of several @state.gov people that could bang out a credible response.

State’s foreign media hubs are one thing, but what about online? I’ll wager Defense has already started to respond to this the Zawahiri message on the Internet. State needs to respond both to U.S. audiences (ostensibly DipNote’s mission) and abroad (America.gov’s mission). Seriously, even China is implementing an agile response capability.

I don’t think we’ll see anything from DipNote or America.gov on this. It would be great to be wrong. Prove me wrong.

See also:

Communicating with the public

Sometimes understanding the difference between public diplomacy, public affairs and strategic communication can be challenging. This is especially true in the absence of accepted principles and practices. The result is confusion on the roles and responsibilities and misaligned titles.

The below quote is real and from a conversation I had a while ago about an setting up an event to communicate directly with the public, bypassing mainstream media. The person in question could not green light the event, because, as the person said,

I have to run it by public affairs because I don’t do public diplomacy.

To make this a hat trick, the speaker was a Director of Strategic Communication. Some readers will look at this and say, “huh?” while others will get it (and even say “OMG!”). The only way this could get more convoluted is by adding Information Operations or PSYOP to the sentence.

The purpose of this anecdote isn’t to mock the person in question but to highlight that we still have a way to go to get on track.

You must be agile to be effective in the global information environment

The presidential campaign was a close-to-home example of how speed is essential to modern campaigns of informing and persuading. You must be quick and adept in your response lest your adversary beat you with an effective blow, truthful or not. Truth may be the greatest ally in any struggle for minds and wills from presidential politics to countering Al-Qaeda propaganda in Iraq. But truth is useless if you can’t get the word out.

A barrier to getting the word out includes not having “public affairs authority” to release a statement, or video to counter, or even preempt, adversarial narratives of all sorts of engagements. Only when the media, or the media consumer, is hostage to you does this work. If they have an alternative, even an adversary with a questionable or non-existent track record on the use of facts, they’ll go. The cause is most often a zero-defect approach to information, which is laudable, but this can be costly.

Today, I had the “pleasure” of again witnessing the challenge of not having PA authority. A request for interview came to me. I wasn’t the guy (not geographically desirable, plus there are better people to speak on the subject) so I forwarded the time-sensitive request to others. Of the several key individuals I pinged, all were well-qualified and eager to talk but unable to go on the record within the required window of time because they lacked PA authority. (Another was temporarily geographically undesirable, so that person doesn’t count here.) The result: the requestor went with someone else. In this case, the ‘someone else’ is fortunately a very knowledgeable and smart person that will give a top answer, however this person is tangential to the subject matter and not the preferred respondent. In other cases, we may not be so lucky.

These people were all educated, equipped, and (to some degree) encouraged to communicate (they were at least interested or enthusiastic). What they lacked was empowerment. We can debate the merits of centralized messaging, as well as the demerits, however in the fire hose of the global information environment, the ability to respond swiftly (and of course accurately) matters.

Briefing 2.0 – Answers

Ask questions and you get answers. Assistant Secretary of State Sean McCormack announced a new program to engage the American public in fulfillment of the his mandate “to help Americans understand the importance of foreign affairs.”

Sean took a different route – a hybrid route – than his boss and the Department of Defense, both of whom bypassed the Fourth Estate and went after the proto-/pseudo-/pamphleteering media of the Fifth Estate with their own Blogger Roundtables where the discussion was propagated by the bloggers. Instead, Sean used new media – YouTube, Facebook, and State’s own blog DipNote – to field questions from the general public and respond directly within the host format. Also unlike the Roundtables, where the principal comes to the table with at least one topic to discussion (i.e. is proactive), Sean the Public Affairs Officer is completely reactive: answers are limited to the questions, although the skill of the speaker creates opportunities to go beyond the question.

A few of us thought this interesting, but we did not envy Sean and thought he was a bit optimistic to think what he was about to do would be, as Sean put it, “fun.”

Continue reading “Briefing 2.0 – Answers

Kristin Lord on DOD’s $300m “Public Diplomacy” push

The Brookings’ Kristin Lord asks why the DOD is getting resources for public diplomacy in the Christian Science Monitor:

Today’s public diplomats wear boots, not wingtips. Increasingly, the Defense Department is at the forefront of US efforts to engage public opinion overseas. While the State Department formally leads the effort, the Pentagon has more money and personnel to carry out the public diplomacy mission.

This trend is risky. The message foreign publics receive – not the message the US sends – changes when the Pentagon is the messenger. Putting our military, not civilians, at the forefront of US global communications undercuts the likelihood of success, distorts priorities, and undermines the effectiveness of US civilian agencies.

The Pentagon should play an important role in public diplomacy, but as a partner – not the principal. For its part, the Congress should give public diplomats the tools they need to do their jobs, and then hold them accountable.

Read the whole article here. The first line should sound familiar