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.

You Know, for Kids!

Remember when you were a kid and you used to beg your parents to drive you to the embassy? No? Neither do I, to be honest, but among the many embassy programs that have migrated online are youth outreach efforts. Not every country has a kid-friendly page on its website, but a quick tour around the Electronic Embassy Row uncovers some interesting finds.

The Kids Corner at the Embassy of Afghanistan, for example, includes photographs, an Afghan crossword and a slide show featuring handy facts about the country. Did you know Afghanistan is home to various nomadic tribes that traverse the country seasonally, called “Kuchis”? True! The Embassy of Chile offers "Basic Information" in English and Spanish for young visitors--or so they say. Both links took me to a Spanish-language site. Denmark and Ireland both go the educational route, providing school report-friendly facts for students and merit-badge seekers. One of the most impressive sites (in terms of interactivity, age-appropriateness, style and content) was Venezuela for Kids, which crams an astounding amount of information into an engaging, kid-friendly page.

If you're curious, the U.S. embassy has a kids page, too--but not directly. You have to follow a few links to the State Department and then to the youth page, which seems to be targeting U.S. youths more than foreigners. But there's a games page where Pat the Passport will guide you through some educational games (match the flags to the country!) and teach you why public diplomacy matters.

Many embassy pages contain information and presentations that, while not kid-specific, are suitable for young visitors. In terms of nation-branding, the kids pages reveal a lot about how the country wants to be viewed abroad. They almost universally eschew any mention of foreign policy, focusing instead on culture, history, geography and people. This is outreach without any agenda beyond basic education. All in all, however, this is an area with a lot of room for expansion. So let's say you've got a fancy grant and a cracker jack staff to help you out. What would you put on the U.S. for Kids page?

Embassy Overload

According to a recent Washington Post report, the Kabul embassy is straining at the seams, and new employees keep wedging themselves in like so many frat boys in a phone booth, taxing the embassy's ability to accommodate them and run effectively.

The ongoing demand for more personnel has meant that hiring orders are sometimes approved without designated jobs. In one case the inspectors cited, an agency had requested authorization "to create up to ten full-time positions in Afghanistan but had not yet decided what those positions would do when the employees actually arrived in country."

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that pulling ten embassy newbies into a war zone before you've got work for them to do is a poor use of resources. And how exactly do you fill a job position before it's been defined? Just hire somebody who looks reasonably competent and hope they're adept at writing memos and/or detonating mines, whichever need you decide you need met?

The situation's not much better in Iraq:

In Baghdad, the new embassy compound still crowds 1,100 people into 700 one-bedroom apartments. Christopher R. Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, said during a recent visit to Washington that those accommodations are better than the boxlike trailers where most civilian embassy personnel were previously housed.

"But in the long run," Hill said, "we're not going to be able to attract people when they're two to a one-bedroom apartment. . . . It's like college. And, you know, I didn't have that great a time in college."

On behalf of all Americans who didn't have that great a time in college, I hear you, Chris. One of the great joys of graduation is knowing your days of coming home to find a sock on your doorknob are over. It's bad enough you're asking these people to serve in a land with camel spiders; the least you can do is provide personal bedrooms.

The article doesn't spell out exactly where these problems stem from, although I suspect the technical term for it is "putting the cart before the horse." I'm all for expanding personnel where it's most needed, and doing it quickly, but a little logistical planning goes a long way. Our embassies do essential work. Let's give them the structural support they need to get that work done.