Public Diplomacy Front Line Letter to Principals

~ Matt Armstrong

The posts (notes in Facebook lingo) by the Facebook group “Public Diplomacy Officers for Change” are required reading. In their words, past reports on the future of public diplomacy fail to “truly identify what we as the next generation of public diplomacy officers need to be effective in our jobs. What we don’t need is a return to USIA. What we need is a new foundation for public diplomacy professionals to build on.”

Excerpts from “Public Diplomacy Front Line Letter to Principals” and “WHITE PAPER, "Public Diplomacy: A View From The Front Line" are below.

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Al Shabab, Minneapolis in the news again

~ Matt Armstrong

US Special Forces killed Salah Ali Nabhan, the man Somali-Americans who traveled to fight for the Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist organization identified as one of their trainers. The coverage of this ‘made for the movies’ attack should draw attention to the not-neutral territory of Minneapolis where Al Shabab has shown significant success in recruiting.

This is as a good a time as any to reread my Censoring VOA article at ForeignPolicy.com:

Earlier this year, a community radio station in Minneapolis asked Voice of America (VOA) for permission to retransmit its news coverage on the increasingly volatile situation in Somalia. The VOA audio files it requested were freely available online without copyright or any licensing requirements. The radio station’s intentions were simple enough: Producers hoped to offer an informative, Somali-language alternative to the terrorist propaganda that is streaming into Minneapolis, where the United States’ largest Somali community resides. Over the last year or more, al-Shabab, an al Qaeda linked Somali militia, has successfully recruited two dozen or more Somali-Americans to return home and fight. The radio station was grasping for a remedy. …

Read the rest here.

Quick reference: GAO report notes State staff shortfall, interagency failures

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Some highlights regarding the Department of State from the GAO report “Actions Needed to Address Stakeholder Concerns, Improve Interagency Collaboration, and Determine Full Costs Associated with the U.S. Africa Command” (GAO-09-181, 1.4mb PDF, from February 2009)
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Interagency failure: DHS detains VOA reporter for 10 days

~ Matt Armstrong

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security detained a Voice of America reporter for 10 days. The man, Rahman Bunairee, had the proper visa and documentation to show he was coming to the US for a year – the primary reason of which was to escape Taliban threats. But the DHS completely disregarded both the paperwork and the requests – including formal petitions – from the Broadcasting Board of Governors to release Bunairee.

Even after his release – helped by intervention from the State Department – DHS revoked his ability to work here, leaving a critical member of America’s information team to counter Taliban and Al Qaeda information on the sidelines. Worse, the BBG nor any other part of the Government can help him financially because of DHS’s decision.

The situation has not changed after a month. Imagine if DHS made what amounts to a unilateral decision on a member of our military – uniform or civilian? The is beyond a failure of interagency cooperation.

This beyond-boneheaded decision undermines not only our ability to engage in the struggle for minds and wills played out primarily in AM and FM in Afghanistan and Pakistan – the “market” Bunairee used to work and had to physically escape from – it also sends a message to other reporters currently and potentially working for America.

I recommend you read Jeffrey Hirschberg’s column in The Washington Post for more.

Die Wahrheit zuerst

~ Matt Armstrong

Die Wahrheit zuerst.pdf, September 2009, at PRMagazin (German).

„Amerikanische Public Diplomacy trägt Kampfstiefel”, mäkelt
auch Matt Armstrong, Gründer der Agentur Armstrong Strategic Insights
Group und viel gelesener Public-Diplomacy-Blogger auf mountainrunner.
us. Er vermisst eine klare, vom Außenministerium statt vom Pentagon vorgegebene Linie. „Unsere globale Kommunikation ist nach wie vor unterfinanziert, schlecht strukturiert und wird zu wenig eingesetzt”, so Armstrong gegenüber dem prmagazin.

Hitting Bottom at Foggy Bottom at ForeignPolicy.com

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 3 Comments

My article “Hitting Bottom at Foggy Bottom” is online at ForeignPolicy.com:

Discussion over the fate of Foggy Bottom usually focuses on the tenure of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the troubles of public diplomacy, and the rise of special envoys on everything from European pipelines to Afghanistan and Pakistan. But Americans would benefit more from a reassessment of the core functionality of the U.S. State Department.

Years of neglect and marginalization, as well as a dearth of long-term vision and strategic planning, have left the 19th-century institution hamstrung with fiefdoms and bureaucratic bottlenecks. The Pentagon now funds and controls a wide range of foreign-policy and diplomatic priorities — from development to public diplomacy and beyond. The world has changed, with everyone from politicians to talking heads to terrorists directly influencing global audiences. The most pressing issues are stateless: pandemics, recession, terrorism, poverty, proliferation, and conflict. But as report after report, investigation after investigation, has highlighted, the State Department is broken and paralyzed, unable to respond to the new 21st-century paradigm. …

Read the rest at ForeignPolicy.com. Originally titled “Fixing State” (my title was too staid and the “State of State” was taken), it highlights forgotten or ignored structural and capacity issues at State that contributed to Defense leadership in foreign policy and public diplomacy.

Related Posts:

Preparing to Lose the Information War? is a related post that gets into some detail where “Hitting Bottom” is high level.

Comparing the Areas of Responsibility of State and Defense gives a bit more detail on converting State to a regional actor.

USAID challenges reflect greater problems at the State Department looks at the importance of development. (See also The Intended ‘Psychological By-Products’ of Development on the psychological effects of the Marshall Plan; and from last year, USAID and Public Diplomacy.)

House Appropriations Concerned Pentagon’s Role in Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy examines the theory of House Appropriations and Walter Pincus that “State should be doing this”.

Defense Department Plan on Strategic Communication and Science and Technology is a report that noted a need for leadership and coordination in strategic communication programs earlier this year.

American public diplomacy wears combat boots from May 2008 highlighted the leadership in basic engagement the Defense Department was exercising in the absence of an effective alternative.

Developing a National Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy Strategic also from May 2008 highlights Congressman Adam Smith’s (D-Wash) effort to get the country’s efforts in global engagement on track.

The Cost of Keeping the Principal off the X from October 2007 is particularly relevant post on State’s view of the world. This issue resurfaced with the recent “outing” of the behavior of both the contracted Kabul security and the lack of action by the Department. See also an event I put on October 2006 titled American Mercenaries of Public Diplomacy.

Defense and Strategic Communication: what did Congress ask for before the recess?

~ Matt Armstrong

Much has been made of made of Congressional concerns over the Defense Department’s role in strategic communication and as the de facto leading public diplomat in policy, engagement, and personnel. At first the lack of informed media coverage – and shallow or error-filled when it exists – is ironic considering the subject, but there it is part of a trend when considering that in general public diplomacy and the laws governing it are also subject to misinformation and misinterpretation (PDF, 140kb).
When The Washington Post reported on July 28 on the House Appropriations decision to slash $500 million from the estimated Defense budget request for strategic communication programs – for 10 (ten) programs which should have been “IO” (information operations) programs, a minor difference – Walter Pincus mentioned requests from the House and Senate Armed Services Committees (HASC and SASC, respectively) that preceded the House Appropriations – Defense Subcommittee (HACD) action. For your reference, the actionable items for the Defense Department in the area of strategic communication from the reports of the HASC, SASC, and HACD are below.

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Hitting Bottom at Foggy Bottom

~ Matt Armstrong

Hitting Bottom at Foggy Bottom by Matt Armstrong, 11 September 2009, in ForeignPolicy.com.

Discussion over the fate of Foggy Bottom usually focuses on the tenure of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the troubles of public diplomacy, and the rise of special envoys on everything from European pipelines to Afghanistan and Pakistan. But Americans would benefit more from a reassessment of the core functionality of the U.S. State Department.

Years of neglect and marginalization, as well as a dearth of long-term vision and strategic planning, have left the 19th-century institution hamstrung with fiefdoms and bureaucratic bottlenecks. The Pentagon now funds and controls a wide range of foreign-policy and diplomatic priorities — from development to public diplomacy and beyond. The world has changed, with everyone from politicians to talking heads to terrorists directly influencing global audiences. The most pressing issues are stateless: pandemics, recession, terrorism, poverty, proliferation, and conflict. But as report after report, investigation after investigation, has highlighted, the State Department is broken and paralyzed, unable to respond to the new 21st-century paradigm. …

[A]tomizing the State Department would ultimately prove dangerous and further the militarization of foreign policy. The Pentagon needs a counterbalance, a vertically integrated State Department that the president, Congress, and the U.S. public can count on. Change, rather than creative destruction, is what Foggy Bottom needs.

Envision a State Department capable of leading whole-of-government initiatives with a strategic focus instead of one hidebound department geared by structure and tradition to execute state-to-state diplomacy. This “Department of State and Non-State” would be as deft at tackling stateless terrorist networks and hurricanes as it would be at fostering and upholding alliances with foreign ministers. To transform Foggy Bottom in this way will require breaking the rigid hierarchy, stovepipes, and bottlenecks which make the Pentagon look lean and dynamic in comparison.

 

Preparing to Lose the Information War?

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 11 Comments

It has now been eight years since 9/11 and we finally seem to understand that in the modern struggles against terrorism, insurgency, and instability, the tools of public diplomacy are invaluable and essential. We live in a world where an individual with a camera phone can wield more influence than an F-22 stealth fighter jet. The capability of engaging public audiences has long been thought of as the domain of civilians. But for the past eight years, the functions, authorities, and funding for engaging global audiences, from anti-AIDS literature to soccer balls to development projects, has migrated from the State Department to the Defense Department. It seems whole forests have fallen over the same period on the need to enhance civilian agencies – be it the State Department or a new USIA-like entity – to provide a valid alternative to the Defense Department who most, even the detractors, agree was filling a void left by civilians who abrogated their responsibility for one reason or another.
This summer may be a turning point. Some in Congress have unilaterally decided that 2010 is the year America’s public diplomacy will stop wearing combat boots. Sounds good, right? This is the future most, including analysts and the military, have wished for. The military has been the unwilling (if passionate once engaged) and often clumsy surrogate and partner for the State Department in representing the US and its interests in Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere around the world through what the House Armed Services Committee now calls “military public diplomacy.” In some regions, State is almost wholly dependent on Defense money and resources to accomplish its mandate.

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Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and/or/not Public Affairs?

~ Matt Armstrong

Some readers may have noticed that I italicize part of Judith McHale’s title, as in Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. I’ve done this for over year now to draw attention to a bureaucratic reality. While State’s organizational chart shows the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs – now P.J Crowley, Sean McCormack before him – reporting directly to the Under Secretary, the reality is something less (although I’m told the relationship between the A/S and U/S today is closer than it has been). The media and others tend to focus on the Under Secretary’s primary and most public job and almost always list the titled as simply “Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy.” But today, an odd thing happened, Elizabeth Dickenson of ForeignPolicy.com gave Judith McHale a new title:

Replying to an e-mail regarding a different article, the press office resent a statement, sent separately last week by Undersecretary of State for Public Affairs Judith McHale to FP, on the U.S.-Africom relationship …

Under Secretary for Public Affairs? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that one before…

Public Diplomacy: Books, Articles, Websites #47

~ Matt Armstrong

Courtesy of Bruce Gregory, Professor of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University.

September 9, 2009
Intended for teachers of public diplomacy and related courses, here is an update on resources that may be of general interest.  Suggestions for future updates are welcome. 
Bruce Gregory
Adjunct Assistant Professor of
  Media and Public Affairs
George Washington University
(202) 994-6350
BGregory@gwu.edu

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Whither Strategic Communication? A Survey of Current Proposals and Recommendations

~ Matt Armstrong

Whither Strategic Communication? A Survey of Current Proposals and Recommendations by Christopher Paul, 2009, at RAND Corporation

Countless studies, articles, and opinion pieces have announced that U.S. strategic communication and public diplomacy are in crisis and are inadequate to meet current demand. This paper reviews contemporary thinking regarding the advancement of U.S. strategic communication, cataloging recent recommendations and identifying common themes and the frequency with which they are endorsed. …findings indicate that four core themes capture consensus recommendations: a call for “leadership,” demand for increased resources for strategic communication and public diplomacy, a call for a clear definition of an overall strategy, and the need for better coordination and organizational changes or additions. This paper also discusses specific recommendations for strategy elements or resource targets that made frequent appearances in the literature and during interviews.

From the acknowledgments:

I owe my friend and colleague Matt Armstrong a considerable debt of gratitude for his support of this effort. Matt helped arrange and conduct many of the interviews used in this research.

Understanding and Engaging ‘Now Media’ professional development course

~ Matt Armstrong

The professional development course “Understanding and Engaging Now Media” examines the convergence of “new media” and “old media” into “now media” with the purpose of educating and empowering the student to be a more effective information actor. Today, news and information is simultaneously instant and persistent, global and local, as it seamlessly moves between print, broadcast, cellular, and social media. Increased access to information changes the relationship between producer and consumer of news and information which in turn creates, engages, and empowers new communities and communications pathways that empower journalists, bloggers, analysts, activists, diplomacy, terrorists, insurgents and nearly everyone else. Understanding this environment, the tools, techniques, and purposes is essential in the modern information environment.

Yours truly, Matt Armstrong, will teach this course over three consecutive evenings, 6p-9p on November 10, 11, and 12 in Alexandria, VA (2 blocks from a Metro stop).

More information and registration can be found at the AOC website.

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Qualified Support from Congress of DoD Strategic Communication

~ Matt Armstrong

For your reference, the below citations are from reports of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees from before the summer recess in support of Defense information activities commonly referred to as strategic communication. As far as the House Appropriations Committee, Defense Subcommittee, there is nothing in support of DOD information activities, as you may already know. The numbers in parentheses at the end of each citation is the page number of the report.
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The Intended ‘Psychological By-Products’ of Development

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

On June 5, 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall delivered a "routine commencement speech" at Harvard University that would change the course of history. On that day, the retired General of the Army (5-star) proposed a program for Europe based on building local economic strength, governance, and self-confidence. 

It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.

The program, called simply the "Marshall Plan" by the media, was based on the recommendations of Marshall’s Director of the Policy Planning Staff, George Kennan. In a declassified (formerly Top Secret) supplement to a July 23, 1947, Report of the Policy Planning Staff titled "Certain Aspects of the European Recovery Problem from the United States Standpoint," Kennan succinctly explained that success of the proposed plan would be determined by the Europeans themselves as they felt self-empowered and secure.

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Guest Post: The Rosetta Stone for Strategic Communication? More like Speak ‘N Spell

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 19 Comments

By Matt Morgan

In the most recent issue of Joint Forces Quarterly, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, has put his name on a short commentary that states, "It is time for us to take a harder look at "strategic communication."

The apparent point of the piece is that the admiral believes the military has walked away from the original intent of Strategic Communication, allowing it to "become a thing instead of a process, an abstract thought instead of a way of thinking."

The article presents a number of reasonably good points, most notably the conclusive statement that we need to pay much more attention to what our actions communicate. Unfortunately, the overall effect of the essay makes the Chairman appear late to the game in the eyes of those most engaged in SC concept development. For the most part there is little here to disagree with. But the central argument offers very few substantive observations not already addressed in the USJFCOM Strategic Communication Joint Integrating Concept. Furthermore, it doesn’t so much as bother to acknowledge the DoD’s own SC principles [PDF 1.5Mb], which include — among others — Dialogue, Understanding, Credibility, and Unity of Effort; all key themes presented more or less effectively by the Chairman.

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Sister Cities: the quintessential and yet underappreciated public diplomacy program

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 10 Comments

On September 11, 1956, three years after creating the United States Information Agency, President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched the People-to-People program within USIA by saying:

I have long believed, as have many before me, that peaceful relations between nations requires understanding and mutual respect between individuals.

Indeed, in May 1947, in testimony to Congress in support of pending legislation on the promotion of comity among nations and information programs, Eisenhower stressed that

real security, in contrast, to the relative security of armaments, could develop only from understanding and mutual comprehension.

Sister Cities International and People-to-People are products of Eisenhower’s citizen diplomacy initiative launched over fifty years ago. The mission of Sister Cities is to foster direct engagement between US cities and communities abroad with the purpose of creating cultural understanding and awareness through direct person-to-person contact by inspiring private citizens to travel abroad and to host citizens from outside America. It was, and remains, a quintessential public diplomacy program. 

Today, despite its impact, Sister Cities is underappreciated. Today, the over 650 US communities that partner with more than 2,000 sister cities in 135 countries do more than just student, culture, and art exchanges. The members of Sister Cities operate extensively in the areas of humanitarian assistance, economic and sustainable development, education, and technical assistance. This includes helping locally elected officials in Iraq develop city budgets to providing assistance to Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Afghanistan and Iraq to post-disaster assistance. In other words, the Sister Cities network does the work of the State Department and USAID, but at the municipal level. 

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Pushing Humpty Dumpty: the rebuilding of State

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 4 Comments

There are few that would question that the US State Department is a dysfunctional organization. The structure, fiefdoms, and bureaucratic knots have many knowledgeable analysts whether it is possible to bring State into the 20th century, let alone the 21st century. I believe it is possible, indeed absolutely essential but doing so requires major Congressional intervention as State cannot or will not revamp itself, regardless of the leadership of the Secretary of State or of her Under Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries (many of these critical leadership positions, by the way, remain empty).

Yesterday I asked whether the State Department is so full of problems today that it must be rebuilt from scratch if there is to be effective civilian leadership of America’s foreign affairs? The question was came out of my latest conversation with a colleague who, like many others, wants to break apart the State Department because of the because the impression the present structure is incapable of change. Different constituencies want different things, but the general idea is to break it into smaller pieces, like pushing Humpty Dumpty and don’t him back together again: create an independent USAID, independent USIA-like entity, remove or dramatically revise INR and so on.

Spencer Ackerman (a fine judge of intellect, by the way) is rightly concerned whether there is a constituency or motivation to rebuild State in Congress or elsewhere. 

There is no congressional constituency in Congress for destroying the State Department to create some fantastical super-totally-capable-New State Department. If there’s a constituency at all for destroying the State Department, it’s a constituency that wants to weaken diplomacy as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy. See, for instance, Newt Gingrich’s long-forgotten 2003 rant about the State Department representing a fifth column within the Bush administration. … My suspicion is that overhauling the State Department will miss the point in the same way that the post-Vietnam era military purge of counterinsurgency capabilities missed the point or the period calls to abolish the CIA miss the point.

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Question: is it time to rebuild the State Department from scratch?

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 6 Comments

Is the State Department so full of problems today that it requires rebuilding from scratch if there is to be effective civilian leadership of America’s foreign affairs? From the recent report on the dysfunction within the Africa Bureau (which ignored the failure of intra-agency integration), the militarization of foreign aid and situation with USAID, to the continuing problem of the militarization of public diplomacy and strategic communication underlying the question of who represents America to the world, are we seeing more of the iceberg?

If change is necessary, are the Secretary of State’s authorities and leadership enough to push the necessary changes without creating a paralyzing backlash from within? Must change come from Congress in a modern (and more sweeping) version of the Goldwater-Nichols Act (which would beg the question of who would be the modern Goldwater)?

What are your thoughts?

Related:

USAID challenges reflect greater problems at the State Department

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 3 Comments

A primary pillar of US engagement with the world in the modern era is foreign assistance. Institutionalized under the Marshall Plan and later the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 that created the US Agency for International Development, development aid was and continues to be a means of denying ideological sanctuary to our adversaries that prey on poverty and despair as well as focusing on developing the capacity for self-governance through economic and other development.

In March 2008, General Anthony Zinni (ret.) and Admiral Leighton Smith (ret.) told Congress

the ‘enemies’ in the world today are actually conditions — poverty, infectious disease, political turmoil and corruption, environmental and energy challenges.

USAID’s mission today is as important as ever and yet it remains leaderless with declining morale and shrinking funds as increasingly America’s foreign development aid wears combat boots, just like its public diplomacy.

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