Category: Public Diplomacy

State’s Diplomatic Security chief resigns

~ Matt Armstrong

State Department’s Diplomatic Security (DS) chief resigns:

Richard Griffin, the Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, announced his decision to step down at a weekly staff meeting, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, adding that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accepted the resignation, which is effective Nov. 1.

I find dark humor in Griffin’s resignation. This goes to my point that State doesn’t internalize their role in shaping and transforming opinions through their presence and actions. While Defense increasingly understands what their personnel on the ground are "the last three feet" of engagement through direct contact with people and indirectly through media, State pretends it’s on another level.

State is its own worse enemy here. Blackwater, on the other hand, is like most contractors (Custer Battles is a poster exception) and was just doing its job as a) the client instructed, and b) the client permitted. In all of the emotional rhetoric that’s increasingly distanced from reality on contractors, Jeremy Scahill being the prime example, lost is the hiring party’s culpability.

In the end, this is another example that the State Department, under the leadership of Rice and Hughes, fails to accept what it does, from moving around Baghdad to hiring private vendors, shape opinions. They’ve done such a bad job of managing their security provider that not only are they completely dependent on Blackwater, operations in Iraq and elsewhere are likely to come to halt again as contractors pull out, spurred by Iraq repelling CPA Order 17 in the wake of September 16.

See also:

State’s insular world

~ Matt Armstrong

A short while back I wrote about the cost the U.S. incurred by State’s unchecked desire to keep its principals off the ‘X’ and a while back I arranged discussions on the role of private military contractors play in public diplomacy. Nicholas Kralev, writing in the Washington Times, has more on State’s inept understanding of the environment in which it works.

The State Department cited legal reasons in turning down a 2005 request from Blackwater USA to install cameras in official U.S. motorcades protected by employees of the security contractor in Iraq, The Washington Times has learned.

Blackwater’s request is more than about protecting Blackwater, it is about the U.S. protecting itself and its mission. Blackwater is an agent of the U.S. and a representative of the U.S. This is about the U.S. participating in and countering enemy propaganda. State has systematically denied its role in the war of perceptions and this is just the latest example of how it rejects reality.

In contrast, the Defense Department provides massive amounts of video, a broadcast channel, even going so far as to create a YouTube account for MNF-Iraq. And don’t forget to count soldiers’ personal video recorders as well. (Of course, there are the differences in State and Defense’s approach to the blogosphere).

Instead of providing more information, State sticks to its 19th Century role of speaking privately and taking the corporate defense that less information is better (which is extendable to destroying data as soon the retention schedule permits it, or rather, when legally permissible to do so, which I’m sure will surface soon). State minimizes information so it can’t be held accountable — which is a false hope. Even if it shuts its eyes really, really hard, others saw the event and a vastly greater audience heard unchallenged reports of the event. Closing its eyes and pretending the world of information isn’t an adequate defense. For the criticisms of Blackwater, they knew the value of video recording.

Hell, even NATO is seeing the value of sharing video.

The imbroglio over contractors is good. It’s a discussion that’s long, long overdue. It’s unfortunate, however, that the spark was State’s failure to comprehend and manage its presence in Iraq. Information continues to come out how the tactics of Blackwater were encouraged and explicitly or implicitly condoned by State.

And while we’re talking about public diplomacy, where is Karen Hughes’ office in this? Are her bloggers still slinging "official government positions" in the comments sections of blogs? Hard to say, but not much to say to cover up a bad policy.

UPDATE: Iraq is moving to repeal CPA Order 17 and of yesterday (23 Oct 07), rumor has it Blackwater is "flying out 90-120" of its contractors a day, although that seems high.

See also:

NATO acks 21st Century info war, says time to copy Taliban’s PD strategy

~ Matt Armstrong

Briefly, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer moves NATO into the struggle of minds and wills in the Information Age. During a conference titled "Public Diplomacy in NATO-led Operations" (thanks Henrik), SecGen Scheffer was almost out of the box considering NATO and out in front of the U.S. in many ways:

…three basic facts that I think are clear to us all:

First, that we need to speak clearly and effectively to our public and Parliaments, not just to explain what we do, but to succeed at what we do.

Second, that the information environment has changed profoundly from what it was just ten years ago – not just in terms of technology, but speed, access, audience and in fact who is generating news.

Unfortunately, the third fact is that we in NATO are not doing nearly well enough at communicating in this new information environment. And we are paying a price for it, not least over Afghanistan.

The whole speech is smart and should be required reading for those interested in the role of public diplomacy in national security and information operations in general. Video is here.

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Interesting metric on (not) engaging hearts and minds

~ Matt Armstrong

Newsweek has an interesting story on that gives anecdotal evidence on the gap between the occupied and occupiers. From the outset, the US built self-contained bases (unlike the British) and limited contact with the population (as is the case with delayed US Embassy in Baghdad). The result was links to the population were denied, except in very few cases.

This is not just a different kind of war, it’s also a different kind of American military than existed 40 or 50 years ago—one that may talk about engaging hearts and minds, but spends many of its resources trying to keep them at a distance. The insistent demands of “force protection” and the insidious efficiency of the insurgents’ bombs and booby traps have isolated the American soldier from the population he or she was once tasked to liberate. We may not lament the lack of bars, dance halls and whorehouses for today’s troops. But in Iraq there’s hardly any human contact at all that isn’t at the point of a gun.

The real Diplomacy of Deeds

~ Matt Armstrong

Actions speak louder than words. Not only do you learn that growing up, but it’s reinforced in your daily life. You trust particular stores not because of their ads, but because of their product and their treatment of you (ok, maybe just one or the other). You trust friends, colleagues and bosses not because they say they have your back or your best interest in mind, but because they show it.

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People’s diplomacy

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

From the New York Times, a story about a grassroots propagandist:

Unlike Mr. bin Laden, the blogger was not operating from a remote location. It turns out he is a 21-year-old American named Samir Khan who produces his blog from his parents’ home in North Carolina, where he serves as a kind of Western relay station for the multimedia productions of violent Islamic groups.

Filed under public diplomacy… foreign thought brought in from the "outside" and broadcast internally, if coordinated or not.

Question: is this kid like late-1940’s U.S. communist "sympathizers" standing on their soap box?

See also

America Should Hire al-Qaeda’s PR Agent

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

While we can easily retake the high ground and can easily own the media through active engagement and managed discourse, we don’t. GOOD Magazine published a short article of mine comparing the public diplomacy of Al Qaeda to that of the U.S. State Department.

Iraq has become a stage on which terrorists, insurgents, and Coalition forces compete for a global audience. YouTube, blogs, and all other forms of citizen media ensure that every GI Joe and Jihadi has at least a bit part in the theater of public opinion. The result is a new public diplomacy that insurgents understand, and the U.S. State Department doesn’t.

…As the enemy shapes itself into a more and more fearsome force, America’s failure to understand or to participate in the war over public perception is not a noble act, but one of implicit suicide. Insurgents can now measure their success in terms of money, supplies, safe houses, and recruits—all of which come at the expense of trust in the United States and its influence on the people. The Administration must stop thinking of foreign audiences as sympathetic and become smarter about how to wage information campaigns. That means realizing that military action is diplomacy, and that embassies are advertisements.

Read the whole thing at GOOD.

Two images that didn’t make the cut are below. The one on the left is insurgent propaganda available easily available on YouTube. It was almost hard to pick the best picture, and painful to go through the footage. It was an exercise in why we must do better in this conflict. The picture on the right is a recent AP photo of the embassy compound. "It’s like Fort Apache in the middle of Indian country, except this time the Indians have mortars."

video still- IED in Iraq us_embassy_baghdad_460- AP Photo

Also see

Congress Votes, Turkey Listens

~ Matt Armstrong

Guest poster (and blogless friend of MountainRunner) LeftEnd comments on HFAC’s recent decision.

Yesterday’s move by the House Foreign Affairs Committee to recognize the Armenian Genocide is chock full of consequences. Today, Turkey recalled its ambassador for consultations back in Ankara. The Turks are careful to point out that this is not a permanent recall of any kind, but instead is par for the course after a “development” such as this one.

Regardless, this could pose a huge problem for U.S. foreign policy. Turkey – perhaps more than any other country in the region – has the ability to soft balance against the United States. Because of the unpopularity of the planned invasion of Iraq, they – along with the Saudis – refused the U.S. request to use their territory for American ground troops. As Robert Pape describes, while it didn’t affect the outcome of the invasion, it did force the Pentagon to alter strategy.

Now the United States needs another favor from the Turks, and yesterday’s vote ain’t gonna help.

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A role model for DipNote?

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

Joshua Keating at Foreign Policy’s Passport suggested a role model for State’s DipNote:

AfghanUKamb As Blake noted yesterday, the U.S. State Department’s disappointing new blog Dipnote does not mean that the new genre of diplomatic blogging has no potential. To see how it’s done right, check out the site of Sherard Cowper-Coles, the UK’s ambassador to Afghanistan.

Cowper-Coles has been blogging regularly from Kabul since Sept. 26, including four self-made YouTube videos. He has conducted interviews with a British military commander and the staff of an Afghan TV station, and shared some of his observations on Afghanistan’s culture and current events. Cowper-Coles is an engaging writer and comes off as genuinely excited by the potential of the medium.

Is it just PR? Of course. But Cowper-Coles proves that public diplomacy doesn’t have to be limited to boring photo-ops and go-nowhere initiatives. The UK Foreign Office currently has six officials blogging, including Foreign Minister David Miliband, though none of the others seems to update as regularly. One hopes they’ll take a page out of Cowper-Coles’s book.

Interesting. Then again, the UK is a place where it’s common form to use your own voice and minimize agentry of spokespersons. For example, do you know who the UK Prime Minister’s spokesperson is, alternatively known as PMS or PMOS? Is this person a man or woman? There’s an ownership of words that the UK accepts that we do not (ever watch the PMQ?). It would be great to see the FCO model here, but there’s a cultural divide, and fear of mistake, at work here.

I haven’t put much thought into how that might be addressed or bridged. Have you?

Noting DipNote’s Noteworthiness (Updated)

~ Matt Armstrong

The Department of State’s DipNote, a function of the Public Affairs section of Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes, isn’t half bad and has quickly found a rhythm. However, and this really isn’t a knock on the blog, it isn’t more than half good either. This limit is a function of the beast. Over a coffee earlier this year, a blog master of one of the many blog projects of a certain K Street think tank noted the bureaucracy lurking behind each post that would probably resonate with DipNote’s blog master. So, in truth, I’m actually impressed with what DipNote is putting out. To be sure, Foreign Policy’s Passport Blog found the DipNote bureaucracy to be agile enough.

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Mercenaries: Useless and Dangerous? It is a matter of choice

~ Matt Armstrong

As much as I hate to hear Machiavelli’s warning against mercenaries regurgitated without so much as a fundamental understanding of the realities of the time and place it was written, recent revelations that the Department of State willingly allowed Blackwater to use aggressive tactics to “keep the Diet Pepsi from spilling” resonates deeply with the real intent of the Secretary. The irony almost drips from the media reporting on State’s culpability in Blackwater’s tactics that virtually incited the Iraqi public against the mission.

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DOD Approved Strategic Communication Plan for Afghanistan

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 3 Comments

dod_afghan_sc_plan_p1 An interesting document made its way to MountainRunner: DOD’s approved Strategic Communication Plan for Afghanistan (which I’ve made searchable) approved by Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England.

In order to augment our ongoing efforts in Afghanistan, the Department of Defense has developed the attached DOD Strategic Communication (SC) Plan for Afghanistan. This SC plan supports and complements NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) operations.

This SC plan directs all DoD organizations to begin execution immediately according to their specified duties and responsibilities. The plan is dynamic, and will continue to be updated and modified as Coalition efforts in Afghanistan evolve. To ensure the successful execution of this plan, DoD leaders are requested to provide the appropriate support to the designated lead organizations. Please review the attached SC plan to identify your responsibilities.

The DoD Strategic Communication Integration Group (SCIG) Secretariat stands ready to work with you and your staff on this important effort.

There’s a lot in this document, including hits and misses. Addressed only to the DOD members of the Strategic Communication Integration Group, and not the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, it identifies key elements of strategic communications, including those in which DOD is not the lead.

For example, Provincial Reconstruction Teams are listed as "strategic communicators and listeners".

  • Assess benefit and availability of Afghan, U.S., Allied, and coalition PAOs for assignment to PRTs
  • Assess requirements to expand PRT Executive Steering Committee into an effective coordinating body
  • Assess cost and feasibility of incorporating/adjusting PA/SC predeployment training and in-theatre distance learning for basic, tailored public affairs training for U.S. and non-U.S. PRT officers

Other tools and enablers include:

  • Senior Afghan Government, DSG, and NATO officials as strategic
    communicators
  • DoD Regional Centers as strategic communicators
  • NATO Media Operations Center as a strategic enabler

I encourage you to take a look at the plan and comment. As I noted above, there are "misses" in the document, but I’ll hold my comments until later.

IED as a Weapon of Strategic Influence: Creating the Blackwater Nightmare

~ Matt Armstrong

Abu Muqawama has a smart post on IEDs as Weapons of Strategic Influence, something I’ve talked about before. However, what he and others have missed is the role IEDs have had not just on American military force posture — using armored Humvees and MRAPs (scroll down to find reference) — but also of the entire Coalition, including private military contractors, highlighted by recent events that have dramatically altered the narrative and focus of the entire mission in Iraq, as well as the tools used in the execution of that mission.

The Blackwater incident of September 16th is a direct and successful result of the effectiveness of IEDs to influence the posture and response of our security forces, including of our own military, to threats. The effort to “stop the bleeding” back in 2003 took a turn toward our expertise (technology) and while failing to address the root causes and purposes of the attacks in the first place. The result: failure. Now you can subscribe to YouTube channels to watch new IED footage (as MountainRunner has) while more money is spent on jammers and armor. The former causes a technology race toward the bottom with diminishing returns and the latter insulates both physically and morally the Coalition from the population.

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BBG Boosts Broadcasts to Burma…er, Myanmar

~ Matt Armstrong

Guest poster (and blogless friend of MountainRunner) LeftEnd comments on American broadcasts & Myanmar:

Interesting story from the AP. Looks like the Bush Administration is putting its money – or at least its airtime – where its mouth is, and turning up the broadcasting heat on the junta in Myanmar. Both Voice of America and Radio Free Asia are upping their broadcasts, providing the Burmese people with more comprehensive coverage of what is happening in their own country.

There doesn’t seem to be any downside in increasing broadcasts into Myanmar, especially when the country appears to be teetering on the edge. As Voice of America itself is reporting, the U.S. government is demanding that the junta cease its violent crackdown on Burmese civilians, and Myanmar’s Asian neighbors have labeled the government’s actions there as “revolting.”

In a lot of ways, this can be public diplomacy at its best. You see an opportunity, and because you’ve planned ahead, you have the communication vehicles in place to react quickly.

But there is of course a lot more to it than that.

American broadcasters must step lively here. Latest reports are that at least nine people have been killed, and as the Telegraph tells us, we may never know how many people will die in the ongoing violence. One hopes that the powers that be at VOA and RFA understand how important their discretion will be to the safety of the Burmese people. Lessons from Hungary and Poland remind us that it is one thing to keep the public informed, it’s quite another to give them false confidence that the United States is willing to take any further action.

VOA and Radio Free Asia are doing a great service – a service that hopefully will, among other things, position the United States as a beacon of information and enlightenment in the minds of the Burmese public. What we do not want, however, is for the average guy on the street to interpret the protests of U.S. leaders as a sign of tangible support in the near future. It’s safe to assume that such support is not on the way.

Is a Blog a News Service? Smith-Mundt on DipNote (Update)

~ Matt Armstrong

No time for a deep analysis, so a superficial commentary will have to do. One of the more interesting aspects of Smith-Mundt was its opposition to a USG-owned news service in light of recent memory of not only Nazi Germany’s propaganda machine, but also of the Creel Commission, or Committee on Public Information (CPI). The prohibitions against internal propagandizing in Smith-Mundt focused on the point of dominating information channels to the public. Argued as First Amendment violations and as a potential infringement on the free press, Smith-Mundt prevented the USIA from becoming a domestic news service.

Today, there’s lots of discussion on the role of the New Media: the blogosphere. While there is some interactivity, blogs are alternative, and too often superior, news sources than traditional media.

Thus the question: is State’s new blog, when used to provide news or timely commentary or analysis, a modern equivalent of the Four Minute Men of the CPI?

This question isn’t too suggest that State should stop blogging. On the contrary, they should blog and, by the way, welcome to the 21st Century experts on Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy.

No, this is to suggest that the misplaced and overreaching application of Smith-Mundt is selective at State, and the rest of USG. If State were to be rigid on their application of Smith-Mundt, as they have overly been, then it is is easily argued their blog crosses the line into the realm of a news service and in competition with the press and is thus prohibited under Smith-Mundt.

What to do? First, remember what Smith-Mundt was intended to cover, allowing for perversions in later amendments to the Act, and stop over-applying it. Continued overly-broad application would mean the blog has to go. That’s bad, and wrong. Second, change or dismantle Smith-Mundt altogether. 

Update: Responding to a reader’s email, I want to emphasize that I don’t think the blog is covered by Smith-Mundt. As the reader points out, "pertains to activities funded primarily in [Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP)], not the [Bureau of Public Affairs (PA)], which is the source of the blog. … [Karen Hughes] can use PA resources to address a domestic audience without violating [Smith-Mundt]."

I know that, the reader knows that, but many don’t, including too many in USG. For example, I’m told Karen Hughes only recently learned DOD believes itself to be covered under Smith-Mundt, which it has for some time. The recent RAND report by new friends of MountainRunner captured this.

The purpose of this post and others like it is to emphasize that more people need to know and understand the purpose and limits of Smith-Mundt. There is more on this topic to come.

Wednesday Mash-up for September 26, 2007

~ Matt Armstrong

David Axe, at Wired’s Danger Room, reminds us of the importance of creating a secure environment, especially after kicking out the bad guys. We saw the longing for the "good ole days" of safety even if it meant oppression in post-Soviet Russia and Iraq, just to name two place.

"The best antidote to terrorism, according to Horn of Africa analysts, is stability in Somalia, which the Islamic Courts had provided," according to one Nairobi paper:

As in other Muslim-Western conflicts, the world undoubtedly needs to engage with the Islamists to secure peace. … The objective for the United States … is simply to prevent Somalia from being an unwilling haven for terrorist groups linked to Al-Qaeda. To pursue that objective, the United States is handicapped by the fact that state authority is limited to only portions of the country. The United States has everything to gain from the formation of a broad-based all inclusive government and a stable Somalia.

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Rescinding CPA Order 17

~ Matt Armstrong

Iraq’s Parliament is considering rescinding CPA Order 17 that protects PMCs from Iraqi law. (BBC and AP stories here). Nice story but bad for the PMCs and incompatible with their mission. If the private military companies, especially the private security companies, are augmenting, or at times replacing US military forces, they must not only be fully integrated into the mission at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels, but also protected accordingly. The risk of not doing so is political. By definition, these firms operate in less than secure geographies (no, I’m not using the word state) with weak or absent legal, judicial, and police systems and any action against them such as rescinding CPA Order 17 may be suspect.

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State Department Starts a Blog

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Very quickly, from the Associated Press:

The normally hushed corridors of diplomacy are about to get a jolt.

The State Department’s first-ever blog was to go live on the Internet late Tuesday in a launch timed to coincide with the buzz surrounding the U.N. General Assembly. It upgrades U.S. foreign policy to Web 2.0 interactivity for the new electronic information age.

"Dipnote" aims to give Net surfers an insider’s view of diplomacy and diplomats with informal, chatty posts from key senior players in Washington and abroad as well as a younger generation weaned on e-mail for whom traditional cable traffic communication is foreign

A swell outreach. I wonder how much discussion they had on imaginary Smith-Mundt prohibitions against the blog and how many rules are in place to bifurcate overseas and domestic content.

It is interesting that Sean McCormack, who works for Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes is the face of this. Has the view of Smith-Mundt become so intrusive as to create the internal impression that Karen Hughes should remain focused externally? Can anybody shed light on the internal politics going on here?

Dipnote is the latest in a series of innovations blessed by Rice and set in motion by McCormack’s office to bring the State Department into the mainstream of 21st century information technology.

The department has already vastly expanded its Web presence and multimedia coordinator Heath Kern has set up a State Department YouTube channel, where special briefings and interviews with officials on key issues of the day are posted.

I’m curious that if State has adopted Smith-Mundt wholeheartedly as they apparently have, have they fully ignored the news service aspect of Smith-Mundt? How is the blog not more like a news service than including images on a powerpoint shown to a US audience that were included in overseas literature?

More lipstick from State…

State’s Dipnote can be found here. As of this writing, DipNote is down so I haven’t seen it….

No Applause for State’s Digital Outreach

~ Matt Armstrong

imageThe article in Saturday’s New York Times on State’s Digital Outreach Team by Neil MacFarquahar paints an overly positive picture of State’s engagement with foreign grassroots media. MountainRunner buddy Kret at Soft Power Beacon reads the NYT article with a certain amount of optimism, preferring to see a glass that’s half full, and Roger Alford at Opinio Juris is downright enthusiastic about Hughes’ so-called "bloggers". Call me a pessimist, but I don’t see a glass even being there as the methods of the Digital Outreach Team don’t even hold water.

Besides the fact that Karen Hughes’ "four or five" bloggers (and here) has apparently been winnowed down (there are other explanations), the program is more accurately titled than Neil, Krek, or Roger want to believe. Apparently imagining their audience is disaffected Republicans in New Hamsphire, this outreach team can do little more than that. Not surprising, they have received some sarcastic responses, including "an Arab in Germany" commenting they were trying to "put lipstick on a pig." I think the Arab in Germany had it more right than he realized.

Brent E. Blaschke, the project director, said the idea was to reach “swing voters,” whom he described as the silent majority of Muslims who might sympathize with Al Qaeda yet be open to information about United States government policy and American values.

The countering misinformation policy of State is not only dominated by a faulty and over-expansive adoption of Smith-Mundt, it is guided by a misunderstanding of the audience, their issues, and an fundamental understanding of discourse on the web (and elsewhere). Self-censoring out of fear of offending either the immediate audience or the US public (if so, stop mirroring the enemy), they offer sterile official government statements. In an audience driven or motivated or informed by religion (pick your point on the slider), it’s implausible they can imagine they ignore the wholesale American adoption of the enemy’s grammar, such as jihadi.

Mr. Jawad and Mr. Sufi say that in their roughly two dozen weekly postings they avoid all religious discussions, like whether jihad that kills civilians is legitimate. They even steer clear of arguments, instead posting straightforward snapshots of United States policy.

Targeting the wrong people, the outreach team goes to posts comments instead of feeding information. By virtual definition, they are attempting to be post hoc change agents. Better would be the Defense Department Blogger’s Roundtable that targets influential nodes to inform, and thus influence, the creation and original interpretation of news and commentary. Restricting their contributions to comments on discussion boards and the comments sections of blogs ignores the leaders who likely don’t have a lot of time to read the comments (Tom Barnett, for example, made it a point to tell his readership that he doesn’t read past the first three — MountainRunner doesn’t doesn’t suffer his burden…), let alone the tendency to tune-out and mock commentary from left field.

One thing I don’t get in the NYT article is this:

Some analysts question whether the blog team will survive beyond the tenure of Karen P. Hughes, the confidante of President Bush who runs public diplomacy. 

Why might it not survive? Will the next CIO be even more limited in his/her view of public diplomacy and restrict themselves to being a news service to insert official government statements into the blogosphere?

On the plus side, at least the staffing will increase:

The department expects to add seven more team members within the next month — four more in Arabic, two in Farsi and one in Urdu, the official language of Pakistan.

Overall, what American public diplomacy needs is not outreach but engagement with thought leaders. The outreach team isn’t doing that. Nice try though.