Come Together

I'm not exactly cross-posting, but I am lifting liberally from the Occasionally Clever blog today: 

I've been doing a lot of research on Israel's public diplomacy this month, and one thing that's struck me about it is its almost exclusively unidirectional nature. Neal Rosendorf makes a similar observation in a recent blog post, saying that "Israel needs to engage directly with the region's increasingly politically empowered peoples."

As Rosendorf notes, Israel's PD often targets U.S. and European audiences, a focus emphasized in a 2009 study on Israeli public diplomacy led by Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Neaman Institute for National Policy Research. That same study tends to characterize Arab countries not as potential audiences but as creators of counter-messages.

This attitude underscores what I see as the chief drawback of Israel's public diplomacy, namely a heavy focus on message transmission (hasbara, or "explaining"), and an undervaluing of dialogue and collaboration. Rosendorf recommends engaging neighboring communities by promoting the development of Arab civil society and entrepreneurship, and by fostering "a widespread sense of regional interdependence, in which peace and prosperity are embraced by the great majority of citizens as a common good."

My classmates and I are drawing up our own recommendations for Israel's PD for a paper we're presenting next week, and we're still hashing out our ideas. But I think the lack of engagement stems from some underlying flaws in Israel's public diplomacy strategy, so in addition to Rosendorf's suggestions, our preliminary recommendations include the following:

1. An articulated PD strategy to guide the government's actions and identify their targets, objectives and methods;
2. Better coordination with private sector, civil society, academia and the media;
3. More listening, research and dialogue;
4. More relationship-building and collaboration;
5. Policies, branding efforts and programs that reflect an awareness of the nation's PD strategy and attention to the information gathered through its listening and research efforts.

In Defense of Culture

The main goals of U.S. public diplomacy are to promote foreign policy and national interests, protect national security, and create harmonious relationships between the United States and citizens of other countries. But it's awfully hard to harmonize if you're the only one singing.

This truism seems to have been overlooked in the strategic PD approach from Judith McHale's office, which emphasizes a uni-directional message approach and gives only passing attention to the importance of collaboration and dialogue with foreign publics. Last week, I mentioned Neal M. Rosendorf's support for cultural public diplomacy, and I'd like to return to his argument here. Rosendorf suggested the following as potential improvements to cultural PD outreach:

• Increase funding to support cultural PD.
• Erase war imagery from official speech.
• Make embassies, consulates and libraries more accessible.
• Make traveling to the United States easier for foreigners.
• Scale back broadcasters with a propagandistic reputation (like Radio Marti) and replace them with a beefed-up version of the VOA, based on a BBC model.
• Re-engage the United Nations.
• Encourage Hollywood to export U.S. values.
• Promote Internet freedom.
• Encourage free travel of journalists.

Some of these bullet points have been addressed since the essay was published. In general, remarks by high-ranking U.S. officials are less bellicose today than they were five years ago. And U.S.-UN relations have certainly grown more collegial. But many of these areas have not yet been addressed. U.S. public diplomacy remains underfunded, particularly in comparison to the nation's military budget. And many foreign embassies, consulates and libraries are still difficult to access. Of course, security concerns prevent these locations from being fully accessible to all people at all times, but greater openness could improve the balance between security and effectiveness. Improving information flows, particularly those related to Internet freedom, is an issue of increasing importance to USPD, and one which has been frequently in the news this year.

Some people will disagree with Rosendorf's prescriptions. Encouraging media companies to export U.S. values, for example, will strike some as inappropriate and potentially propagandistic government meddling in private affairs. And some will argue, justifiably, that the success of such measures is unsure. Even the best public diplomacy cannot satisfy all audiences. For some individuals and groups, opposition to U.S. policy is insurmountable. But the U.S. government clearly recognizes that cultural diplomacy has some value.

Judith McHale's recently published PD strategy acknowledges the importance of personal connections, and recommends the following tactics for improving people-to-people relationships:

•Revitalize and establish American Centers/Corners as spaces for Public Diplomacy activities and engagement. Identify the best means of upgrading and maintaining publicly-accessible, secure American Corners/Centers. Design models for new American Centers as venues for programs beyond fortified compounds and as symbols of our desire to engage.Actively seek private sector partners in making these places showcases for American culture and technology. For example, Embassy Jakarta is developing plans for an American Place in a shopping mall.

•Reinvigorate cultural programming to drive engagement and collaboration. Scale up cultural programming that presents American art, theater, music, dance, and literature to create apolitical space for building relationships and to counter negative stereotypes about American culture. Extend American culture’s collective reach by facilitating the overseas work of other public and private cultural institutions and organizations (e.g. the Smithsonian or regional arts councils), using technologies to multiply linkages (e.g. online arts management courses taught by U.S. experts or online fora for sharing artistic content), and encouraging artistic collaboration as a springboard for enduring relationships.

The document also recommends expanding the ECA budget, increasing cultural and educational outreach, and increasing partnership with NGOs and the U.S. private sector. But the framework, for all its strengths, doesn't emphasize the importance of collaborative partnership with other countries. Whereas Rosendorf's cultural PD strategy focuses on making the U.S. more open and accessible to foreign publics, McHale's strategy emphasizes exporting the U.S. message abroad. The difference lies in their attitudes toward interaction and dialogue, an essential element of PD that is largely absent from McHale's framework.

Dr. Strangelove v. the Culture Club

Are European nations moving beyond a military solution towards Afghanistan, and will a policy of cultural engagement work? Al Jazeera explores the question in this video.

Cultural engagement, of course, is a broad net that covers diverse activities like photography, writing, dance, theater, music, sculpture, architecture, sports and cooking. Some of the discussants also included activities like counseling and hosted dialogue as part of the process. Kenyan youth leader George Gachara reflected on his efforts at cultural engagement following post-election violence:

We came together as young people and decided that as a country we have come to the brink of collapse, we have seen how bad things can get, but then we stepped back and get a chance to rescue and save the soul of our nation. So we decided to come up with very simple and creative projects that create a safe space for engagement amongst young people from different communities where they can reflect, they can dialogue and they can also enroll in activities that reconcile their own activities.

Gachara seemed hopeful that such collaborations would forestall future violence in his country. But will it work in Afghanistan? Ahmad Majidyar suggests that coalition forces could achieve greater success by developing locally-based solutions, instead of importing solutions from D.C. which aren't compatible with the local culture. Robin Davies of the British Council also emphasized the importance of local input. In response to a Facebook query asking why culture, ideas and opinions should be forced on others in a democratic society, Davies noted that cultural dialogue is a multi-directional, collaborative process:

Cultural dialogue and cultural relations is a relationship. It's a two-way process. It is not the imposition of one culture onto another culture.... This is a dialogue, this is mutual understanding, this is educating, sharing and connecting with people.

Neal M. Rosendorf would certainly agree. We recently read "A Cultural Public Diplomacy Strategy" for class. In it, Rosendorf argues that cultural diplomacy is essential to U.S. foreign policy and reputation reform. One point Rosendorf raises that does not come up in this video is the issue of financing. Currently, the U.S. government allocates considerably more money to the nation's military budget than it does to its diplomacy budget, indicating a lack of appreciation for the benefits of skillful cultural diplomacy. But as Rosendorf (and General Stanley McChrystal) would argue, military victory is impossible without the support of the other nation's citizens. Sure, sure, the best things in life are free--but some of the really essential things cost a mint. And they're worth investing in.