Putting the "Dip" in Diplomat

It's been a while since we here at manIC have nominated anybody for a GOB Award. The GOB, named for Will Arnett's character in Arrested Development, recognizes ill-conceived diplomatic actions and is awarded periodically to dips who "have made a huge mistake."

Today's candidate: The unnamed Russian diplomat Ireland booted off the island for identity theft. Read about it in the New York Times. Evidently this diplomat stole six Irish identities and handed them over to Russian spies in the U.S. in what is both a horrendous breach of diplomacy and really incredible set-up for an offensive ethnic joke. (So a Russian spy walks into a New York bar with an Irish passport....)

Kudos, anonymous Russian diplomat. This one's for you:

Domodedovo

Today's terrorist attack on the busy Domodedovo airport in Russia is a tragedy, and it highlights the challenges states face in protecting their citizens from malicious attacks. 

U.S.-Russian cooperation on counterterrorism in the past decade has included bilateral action, such as the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, and multilateral efforts. The nations have much in common, although their counterterrorism strategies are not always in sync.

In combating terrorism, it would behoove both nations to diversify their strategies, employing both hard and soft power resources. New and traditional public diplomacy tools should be directed at counterterrorism efforts. Terrorists have proven to be very savvy at using modern technology to spread negative information about their foes. While military and financial resources are essential components of foreign policy, soft power tools are particularly well suited to fostering dialogue, promoting goodwill and countering misinformation, and should be included in counterterrorism initiatives.

Of course, today's events don't represent the failure of public diplomacy or foreign policy. They are appalling, contemptible, criminal activities and should be treated as such. Stepping up public diplomacy efforts is not a panacea to end violence. It is simply a necessary, if insufficient, step in the right direction.

On Russia, With Love

In the home stretch of a semester, many graduate students find they become strangers to their friends, their beds, the finer points of hygiene, etc. Among the many end-of-term projects isolating me from high society over the past few weeks has been a collaborative examination of Russia's public diplomacy with my friend and colleague Lena, which culminated in a presentation and paper, both completed this past week. Huzzah!

Among the many discoveries this project has yielded is this: I am ridiculously enthusiastic about public diplomacy and international communication. I get embarrassingly animated when describing my research, which I do with the sort of fervor people normally reserve for extolling the merits of their grandchildren or fail-proof pyramid schemes. So I'll try to restrain myself here in sharing some of the highlights of my paper:

In 2005, shortly after a Kremlin-commissioned survey showed that the items Americans most associated with Russia included communism, the KGB, snow and the mafia, the Russian government started pumping money into a PD revitalization effort.* One aspect of this effort has been an attempt to re-brand Russia as an innovative, democratic nation with a strong economy and rich cultural history. But despite a massive information machine, cultural exports, language and education programs, exchanges, consulates, cultural centers and impenetrable fortress embassies, Russia's global reputation remains fairly negative.

Attempts to establish a new national identity have been undermined by competing interests that pull Russia toward both the past and the future. More than anything, Russia struggles to shake off its Cold War image--partly because Cold War imagery still colors much media coverage of the country, but also because Cold War attitudes still shape its interactions with the West and its neighbors.

With all the wisdom and confidence of a graduate student who's never set foot in Russia, I offer three suggestions for improving Russia's global brand:

1. Increase free information flows within the country, and offer more support to critical media and NGO groups.
2. Increase transparency and stamp out corruption.
3. Encourage public diplomats to promote stories and events that fly in the face of traditional Cold War narratives and confirm the "new Russia" identity.

For what it's worth, it couldn't hurt to dust off the welcome mat at the embassy either...

Russia's Public Diplomacy: Have You Ever Tried to Call the Russian Embassy?

The Russian Embassy welcomes you.

Not long ago, in the Huffington Post, John Brown lamented the difficulty of trying to reach the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. My own attempts to contact the Russian embassy have been similarly frustrating. I'm working on a paper about Russian PD in the United States, and I'd hoped to include some first-hand information on the embassy--so I decided to try to set up a meeting.

The embassy's website is in decent shape. The links work, the translations are good, the layout is modern, and the press releases in the "Latest News" section are all from this week. But every time I called the number on the website, I got a busy signal. I tried a number from an older website without much faith (it listed an incorrect address for the building) and found my doubt well justified. The phone rang. And rang. And rang. Eventually I hung up. Trying a different tactic, I called 411 and asked to be connected. After a brief pause, a fax machine started screeching in my ear. Clearly more decisive action would be necessary.

Today I decided to storm the embassy. Leaving my derelicte-style grad fashions in the closet, I dusted off my glad rags and set out for the Northwest quadrant.

The embassy is an imposing building, made all the more inviting by a thick iron fence. A barrier greets cars with the welcoming message: STOP. Undaunted, I marched up to the gate and pressed a buzzer. A voice greeted me in Russian. "Hi," I said. "Hello," said the voice. I explained that I'd like to speak with somebody at the front desk. There was silence.

I waited for a response, or for somebody to materialize and open the gate, or for a buzzer to sound, indicating that I could enter. Nothing. I waited a few minutes, strolled around the gate to see if there was another entrance, then tried again. This time, nobody even responded to the buzzer. After several long minutes in the balmy D.C. sunshine, I gave up and headed to campus.

The embassy, of course, is not the only destination for the PD-curious. A visit to the Russian Cultural Center a few weeks ago proved much easier. My colleague and I marched right up to the entrance and received a friendly tour. But it's not totally unreasonable to expect an embassy to open its doors--or is it? Mr. Brown questions whether U.S. diplomats and their Chinese counterparts are afraid to mingle with the natives, but the Closed Door Policy isn't simply the province of U.S. and Chinese embassies.

(Sub)Cultural Diplomacy

There are benefits to acknowledging shortcomings. It demonstrates openness, confidence and self-awareness. But failing to present them with a critical eye can be problematic, as this odd report on Russia Today demonstrates. The tone of this report on Russian criminals falls somewhere between informative and fawning, with plenty of information on cool tattoos and respect, and very little on the societal cost of mafia activity. Even the title ("Smooth Criminals") suggests a giddy schoolboy fascination with the underworld. What, exactly, is RT trying to accomplish with this piece? As my friend Lena has noted before, RT is a reliable source for laughs--but not always a reliable source for hard-hitting news analyses.

So how does RT contribute to Russian public diplomacy? Let's just say it's not the sharpest tool in the Russian PD shed. In Soft Power, Joseph Nye notes of Cold War-era Soviet PD that it relied on methods such as promoting high culture, broadcasting and launching disinformation campaigns. These efforts were supported by the nation's considerable economic, military and technological hard power. Ultimately, however, Soviet soft power was undercut by the closed government, failure to effectively use pop cultural diplomacy and its own propaganda, which was undermined by its inconsistency with government policies.

Today, high culture still features prominently in Russian PD. Its writers, musicians, dancers and artists are renowned around the world. But the nation's pop culture impact is still minimal. The Russian film industry, for example, has produced few global blockbusters over the past decade, although Night Watch, Russia's highest-grossing film ever, made nearly $34 million internationally. And changes to the Russian film industry are creating buzz beyond the country's borders.

Collaborative ventures could boost Russia's film cred abroad, but funding cuts could harm the industry and decrease its ties to the government, making it less reliable a tool of cultural diplomacy. For a nation that once had an international film festival at its disposal to promote its political and cultural values (full disclosure: this blogger worked at said festival for five years, well after it had reverted to Czech ownership) reducing its industry to a handful of under-financed films is a major change. Without proper financing, Russian pop culture can't hope to compete with more lucrative foreign competitors. And, clearly, cultural diplomacy is a task Russia's foreign-language news services can't carry alone.

And the GOB goes to...

Here's a good rule of thumb for foreign relations amateurs: Don't offend an entire culture.

This week's GOB award (named for Will Arnett's hapless character on Arrested Development, and awarded to an individual, group or insitution that's "made a huge mistake" in international communication) goes to Russian ice-skating duo Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin. As reported here and here, Domnina and Shabalin have offended Australian aboriginals with their loin-clothed interpretation of a native aboriginal dance, inviting the condemnation of indigenous leader Bev Manton for disrespectful, exploitative behavior.

It seems unlikely that offending the minority population of a foreign country was among the pair's main objectives, but it's hard to imagine who approved this idea. And given Domnina and Shabalin's Olympic hopes, it's fair to expect a little cultural awareness and sensitivity in their public performances. But perhaps we're overthinking this. Is it possible that Shabalin was simply looking for an excuse to staple a fake marijuana leaf to his forehead? Oksana, Domnina, this is for you.