Category: State Department

Looking for blogs by Foreign Service Officers?

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

I have to admit that I’ve been lax (to put it mildly) on maintaining my blog roll. Once upon a time it was something I minded very carefully. Now, to be honest, I’m not even sure who is on it as I haven’t looked at in a very long time. In the past, the platform that managed my blog reading also managed the lists on this site (there were two, a “short list” of essential reads and a longer list of recommended reads). After that service was discontinued, I hard coded the lists and moved them to their own page and promptly forgot about them.

Why am I telling you this? Because if you’re looking for a recommended list of blogs, at this time MountainRunner is not your resource, but I do have a suggestion for you.

If you seek blogs by Foreign Services Officers, go to Life After Jerusalem (LAJ). I met one of the authors – Digger – recently and we had a great chat about blogging (while insisting I have a beer while we talked) and she actively collects blogs by members of the Foreign Service. LAJ now has 200 blogs (active and inactive), not including those on a “Future FSO” list. So if you’re looking for first-hand thoughts and accounts, check out LAJ.

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Comment by Phil Seib draws comment by Jim Glassman

~ Matt Armstrong

Last week, Phil Seib, professor of journalism and public diplomacy at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and director for the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, posted a short diatribe on the new State Department ‘framework’ for public diplomacy created and shared by the Office of the Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Phil’s post, his second on the framework, followed a (too) short conference call with Judith McHale the day after a Senate hearing chaired by Senator Kaufman (D-DE) that included Judith and three of her predecessors (Lieberman, Hughes, and Glassman). Also on the call where Spencer Ackerman, Helle Dale, Mark Dillen, and myself.

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The VOICE Act: Victims of Iranian Censorship

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Senator Ted Kaufman (D-DE), chairing a hearing with four past and present Under Secretaries for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, mentioned the VOICE Act in his opening remarks. From my experience, unless you’ve sat in on one of my presentations sometime in the last eight months, odds are you don’t know what it is. The VOICE Act is a product of Senators in the Armed Services Committee: John McCain (R-AZ), Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT), Ted Kaufman (D-DE), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Robert Casey (D-PA).

(Interesting note: Senators Kaufman and Wicker – plus Senator Jim Webb – are the only Congressman (House or Senate) that are on both an armed services committee and a foreign relations (Senate) or foreign affairs (House) committee. These two Senators chaired the recent Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing titled The Future of Public Diplomacy.)

The VOICE Act, also known as the Victims of Iranian Censorship Act, was passed by the Senate in S. 1391 on July 23, 2009. It passed the conference between House and Senate armed services committees on October 8, 2009 and with the President’s signature on October 28, 2009, it became Public Law 111-84: the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010.

The VOICE Act is a notable (and rare) example of Defense Department-focused entities – the armed services committees – authorizing substantial funding for the State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors. However, the $55 million (details are below) authorized is not yet funded. In what could have been a very visible demonstration of putting his money where his mouth is, to the best of my knowledge, the late Congressman John Murtha (D-PA), chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee, did not push to fund the VOICE Act despite saying the State Department should be doing more.

The VOICE Act is on the books, but it lacks funding.

So what does the VOICE Act authorize? On his website, Sen McCain touts the VOICE Act as “bipartisan legislation that will help strengthen the ability of the Iranian people get access to news and information and overcome the electronic censorship and monitoring efforts of the Iranian regime.”

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Judith McHale’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee discussing public diplomacy

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Below is the prepared testimony of Judith McHale, current Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, before the the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 10, 2010. Alternatively, download the 274kb PDF. A list of Under Secretaries for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs and their tenures may be found here.

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Jim Glassman’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee discussing public diplomacy

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Below is the prepared testimony of Jim Glassman, former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, before the the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 10, 2010. Alternatively, download the 408kb PDF. A list of Under Secretaries for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs and their tenures may be found here.

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Karen Hughes’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee discussing public diplomacy

~ Matt Armstrong

Below is the prepared testimony of Karen Hughes, former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, before the the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 10, 2010. Alternatively, download the 234kb PDF. A list of Under Secretaries for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs and their tenures may be found here.

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Evelyn Lieberman’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee discussing public diplomacy

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Below is the prepared testimony of Evelyn S. Lieberman, former (and first) Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, before the the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 10, 2010. Alternatively, download the 86kb PDF.

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Public Diplomacy: Strengthening US Engagement with the World

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 12 Comments

image On March 10, 2010, the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs is expected to unveil her strategic approach for the State Department’s public diplomacy efforts at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing titled “The Future of Public Diplomacy.” Judith McHale will be preceded by three of her predecessors: Evelyn Lieberman, Karen Hughes, and Jim Glassman. (Note: the noon ET event will now be in Dirksen 430.)

Titled “Public Diplomacy: Strengthening US Engagement with the World” (PDF, 2.2mb), it is described as a “strategic framework” that “will serve as the foundation for public diplomacy’s FY 2012 budget request. It is

intended to be a roadmap for Public Diplomacy, ensuring its alignment with foreign policy objectives, and bringing a strategic focus to how Public Diplomacy programs, resources and structures support those objectives.

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Upcoming meeting of the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy

~ Matt Armstrong

The next meeting of the US Advisory Committee on Public Diplomacy will take place Monday, March 15, 9:00a to 11:00a in the conference room of the International Forum for Electoral Systems (IFES) located at 1850 K Street, NW, Fifth Floor.

The public may attend this meeting as seating capacity allows. To attend this meeting and for further information, please contact Carl Chan at (202) 632-2823; email: chanck@state.gov.

Presenting will be Rosa Brooks of the Defense Department, Walter Douglas of the State Department, and myself.

Glassman on “Strategic Public Diplomacy”

~ Matt Armstrong

The world is in turmoil – so to is America’s public diplomacy, strategic communication, or if you will, global engagement. How – and even why – the United States shapes and supports foreign policy with words, deeds, and understanding remains elusive in a vacuum of leadership. This is particularly ironic given that we are over a year into the Obama Administration, an administration that was elected in large part because it grasped the power of engaging and empowering individuals.

Tomorrow, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee reasserts itself in the turmoil of equipping – at least doctrinally – the State Department so that it might become an effective leader in America’s foreign policy. Senator Ted Kaufman (D-DE), a former member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, will chair a hearing with current Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith McHale and three of her predecessors: James K. Glassman, Karen P. Hughes, and Evelyn S. Lieberman.

In an advance reading of Jim Glassman’s testimony, Jim describes the purpose of the hearing and asserts the importance and centrality of public diplomacy, as well as its uncertain future.

This hearing asks four of us who have served or are serving in the latter post to address the future of public diplomacy. That future, in my view, is in doubt. …

[H]ere is the problem with public diplomacy: It is not today being taken seriously as a tool of national security by policymakers. Will it be in the future? Perhaps only in a desperate response to a terrible crisis. Such delay is unacceptable.

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Establishing the Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy Caucus

~ Matt Armstrong

By Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX)

On September 11th, 2001, America changed.  Since then the United States has been at war with violent Islamic extremists who plot and plan against us every day.  We have sent American troops to Afghanistan and Iraq to defeat them in combat.  Our intelligence and special operations forces have fanned out across the globe to disrupt terrorist networks and deny them safe havens.  And we have cooperated with friends and allies to reinforce existing counterterrorism resources and build new coordinated capabilities.  While these actions are necessary to defeat the jihadist threat against the United States, they are not sufficient to do so.

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This week: The Future of US Public Diplomacy

~ Matt Armstrong

This week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hear from Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith McHale, and three of her predecessors: James K. Glassman, Karen P. Hughes, and Evelyn S. Lieberman. Chairing the hearing is Senator Kaufman, former member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Testimony should be available on the SFRC website the day of the hearing. Date/time/room: March 10, 2010; 3p; Dirksen 419.

The testimony should be worthwhile. This would be a good time for the current Under Secretary to unveil a strategic approach for the 21st century and how her office will strengthen US engagement with the world.

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The Global Impact of Brown v. Board of Education: Use of the ruling in Cold War foreign relations

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 6 Comments

To those who think public diplomacy is something that done outside America’s borders or that cultural relations do not have a direct impact on foreign relations, I strongly recommend Mary Dudziak’s Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy. Dudziak documents the impact of domestic policies in the global ideological struggle to US-domestic interventions by the State Department and USIA to affect domestic policy and practice. For an example of this reality unknown or forgotten by too many, see Dudziak’s essay at SCOTUS Blog, a blog on the Supreme Court of the US. An excerpt is below:

In May 1954, Brown v. Board of Education made headlines, not only in American newspapers, but also around the world.  “At Last! Whites and Black in the United States on the same school benches,” was the headline in Afrique Nouvelle, a newspaper in French West Africa (now Senegal).  In India, the Hindustan Times noted that “American democracy stands to gain in strength and prestige from the unanimous ruling” since school segregation “has been a long-standing blot on American life and civilization.”  For the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia, Brown would “go a long way toward dissipating the validity of the Communist contention that Western concepts of democracy are hypocritical.”

The global reaction to Brown was also noted in American news coverage.  The decision would “stun and silence America’s Communist traducers behind the Iron Curtain,” argued the Pittsburgh Courier, an African American newspaper, for it would “effectively impress upon millions of colored people in Asia and Africa the fact that idealism and social morality can and do prevail in the Unites States, regardless of race, creed or color.”

… When major Supreme Court cases are covered in the world press, they inform the understanding of peoples of other nations about the nature of American democracy.

… The Cold War balance of power itself seemed to turn on the faith of other nations in the benefits of democracy.  Yet in the world’s leading democracy, citizens were segregated by race, and African Americans were sometimes brutalized for attempting to exercise basic rights.

The Soviet Union took advantage of this American weakness. …

We may think that sending our legal ideas overseas helps others, but in this example American justice aided American diplomacy.

I strongly recommend you read the whole article at SCOTUS as well as pick up a copy of Dudziak’s book.

IIP responds to Pat Kushlis on IIP’s “Creative Destruction”

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 3 Comments

On February 4th, I posted a provocative comment sent by fellow blogger Pat Kushlis that drew a parallel between Microsoft’s “Creative Destruction,” as described by a former Microsoftie in The New York Times, and the State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs. Pat is a retired Foreign Service officer who was with the US Information Agency from 1970 to 1998. Several people in today’s IIP worked for Pat.

That post drew a response from Dan Sreebny, also a friend but more importantly a senior foreign service officer who is now Acting Coordinator for the Bureau of International Information Programs:

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Quadrennial Strategic Reviews

~ Matt Armstrong

Strategic review time.

Here is the Defense Department’s website for its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), a “legislatively-mandated review of Department of Defense strategy and priorities.” On February 3, DOD hosted a blogger roundtable discussion on the QDR with Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs Michael Nacht and Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Forces Kathleen Hicks.

Here is the Department of Homeland Security’s website for its Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR), a document that “offers a vision for a secure homeland, specifies key mission priorities, outlines goals for each of those mission areas, and lays the necessary groundwork for the subsequent steps.” DHS is hosting a teleconference roundtable (this blogger was invited but cannot attend) February 5 with DHS Assistant Secretary for Policy David Heyman to discuss the QHSR. (Good outreach.)

Here is the Department of State’s website for its Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR)… wait. Never mind. There’s nothing substantial at State’s website except the July 10, 2009, press release and a related blog post at DipNote four days later. It is due this month, possibly within days, a State Department spokesman told Federal News Radio. No word if State will host a discussion like DOD or DHS to reach out beyond the ‘traditional’ media in the press room.

Stay tuned…

Alan Heil: Challenges ahead for U.S. international broadcasting

~ Matt Armstrong

Alan HeilRecommended: Alan Heil’s The Ever-Expanding Global Electronic Town Meeting: Challenges ahead for U.S. international broadcasting at Layalina’s Perspectives:

Imagine an electronic town meeting of person-to-person communications, writ large. So large, in fact, that it encompasses the entire planet, digitally. Entering this arena is the primary challenge to U.S. publicly-funded civilian overseas networks in a new decade, as 21st century international broadcasting approaches its adolescent years amid unpredictable geopolitical and technological challenges. …

As outlined below, agenda items in the new decade could include a review of broadcast priorities, increasing coordination among networks, exploring the use of social media and information sharing, expanding training programs, pursuing a public-private partnership, and strengthening protections for objective and accurate journalistic standards. …

The bottom line: international broadcasting can set the record straight instantaneously (as in real-time news reporting of events in Iran, China, Burma, Haiti, and terrorism’s deadly toll). But it is also long-range; listening to and reflecting over time countless conversations of "collective groups" about how to improve individuals’ lives in an ever-expanding global electronic town meeting. It can enrich the blogosphere in this lively marketplace of ideas, while empowering publics as never before. May the new leadership of U.S. international broadcasting seize the moment. The 21st century adolescent years of their trade can truly be a time of renewal central to the growing global engagement that America seeks.

Read the whole essay here.

What does Microsoft and State’s Bureau of International Information Programs have in common?

~ Matt Armstrong

In today’s The New York Times, Dick Brass, a former Microsoft Vice President (1997-2004), describes a corporate paralysis that stifles the release of relevant and innovative products in his op-ed, Microsoft’s Creative Destruction.

As they marvel at Apple’s new iPad tablet computer, the technorati seem to be focusing on where this leaves Amazon’s popular e-book business. But the much more important question is why Microsoft, America’s most famous and prosperous technology company, no longer brings us the future, whether it’s tablet computers like the iPad, e-books like Amazon’s Kindle, smartphones like the BlackBerry and iPhone, search engines like Google, digital music systems like iPod and iTunes or popular Web services like Facebook and Twitter. …

Microsoft’s huge profits — $6.7 billion for the past quarter — come almost entirely from Windows and Office programs first developed decades ago. Like G.M. with its trucks and S.U.V.’s, Microsoft can’t count on these venerable products to sustain it forever. Perhaps worst of all, Microsoft is no longer considered the cool or cutting-edge place to work. There has been a steady exit of its best and brightest.

What happened? Unlike other companies, Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation. Some of my former colleagues argue that it actually developed a system to thwart innovation. Despite having one of the largest and best corporate laboratories in the world, and the luxury of not one but three chief technology officers, the company routinely manages to frustrate the efforts of its visionary thinkers. …

What does Microsoft’s “Creative Destruction” have in common with the State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP)? According to Pat Kushlis of the public diplomacy blog Whirled View, too much. Pat drew my attention to the Dick Brass op-ed and had these comments, published here with permission:

Read the last paragraphs in particular and just substitute the initials IIP because that’s precisely what happened to a forward thinking bureau when State took over.

If the [International Broadcasting Bureau, the administrative and marketing arm of the Broadcasting Board of Governors,] were functional, I think I would argue that IIP should be transferred out of State and put into a functional international broadcasting entity (like VOA) since the line between electronic media has changed so dramatically.  Unfortunately the IBB is dysfunctional too.

Is this a viable, even preferred, alternative to reconstituting the United States Information Agency?