The Paradox View

NationBranding.info offers some handy advice on branding your nation: Mine the paradox.

In an essay posted March 24, Saher Sidhom argues that "a country brand should start with a coherent brand and attitude but allow for paradoxes." Contradictions in cultural characteristics are inevitable, and highlighting them makes a nation's brand "more surprising and lively."

Sidhom cites Sweden as an example, noting that the country is progressive, but values preservation. Personally, I think a greater Swedish paradox is that their furniture looks sleek and basic, but tends to require an advanced degree in physical logic and a six-pack to assemble, but I am no expert in country branding, so I'll defer to Sidhom's judgment.

In general, I think Sidhom's advice is sound. Most nations and cultures do contain paradoxes, and it's better to acknowledge them upfront than to wait for your detractors to point them out, but it needs to be done with care and finesse. Otherwise you get something that looks like this:





There is some danger in defining a nation's characteristics according to its inconsistencies. But, of course, the act of reducing one's national character to a symbolic brand is an inevitably dangerous enterprise. As Shana Alexander notes, "the paradox of reality is that no image is as compelling as the one which exists only in the mind's eye."

Nation branders beware!

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?

News Bits

The More Things Change: A Heritage Foundation analysis of three recently published U.S. government PD documents suggests that major institutional changes are unlikely. News that government bodies have failed to articulate any significant changes, opting instead to stick with mildly tweaked version of existing policies, may shock as many as two people.

PD on the QT: A U.S. News & World Report op-ed suggests that public negotiations will harm U.S.-Israeli relations: "If issues are to be resolved, it will happen only through private channels and private dialogue." Because nothing derails international communication faster than open, transparent interactions, evidently.

Love the Player, Hate the Game: Global enthusiasm for President Obama hasn't translated into foreign policy success, according to the Wall Street Journal. Popularity-diminishing rumors that he dated that weird girl from third period have failed to improve the situation.

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.

Phone Home

About two and a half years ago, a new student walked into my mother's music classroom. In a region with high mobility, new students are hardly unusual--but the girl's behavior was. When my mom started playing the piano, the girl was riveted by the sound. She had clearly never heard one before. How does a child get to be five years old without ever hearing a piano? Mom went to find out, and discovered that the girl's entire family had recently been moved from a refugee camp in Tanzania. The family (two parents, four children under the age of ten) had no English, no jobs, no work experience and little education. They had access to all the government services available to refugees--but no idea how to access them.

Fortunately, they had help. They had the organization that had resettled them in the United States. And they have also received support from their church, their neighbors, the school system, the county, the state, about half a dozen volunteers from the D.C. metro area and my mother, who has managed, over the past two years, to get most of her friends and family to help out as well. This network has worked ceaselessly to keep the family afloat, and today the kids are happy and healthy and learning to read. They wear Dora and Diego sneakers. They ask for help on the monkey bars. They know all the words to "Happy Birthday." They make paper chains at Christmas and roast turkey at Thanksgiving. They are a typical American family.

I mention their story because yesterday marked the thirtieth anniversary of the U.S. Refugee Act, under which tens of thousands of refugees enter the United States every year. Many of these refugees struggle, as this family has struggled, to find work, pay their bills and adjust to U.S. culture. Some of them thrive in their new environment. Some fail to adjust. Some have supportive networks. Others fall through the cracks. The fates of these families and individuals, and all immigrants to the United States, is important to all Americans. As U.S. residents, refugees, asylees and immigrants are citizen diplomats who provide unique and direct links between the United States and their native countries. For many people living in other countries, immigrants may be their only link to the United States. And people are certainly more likely to accept the opinions of their former colleagues, friends, neighbors and families than those of a foreign government. The America they see is the America they will represent to the people they've left behind. Therefore, there is a justification for supporting new Americans that extends beyond the basic humanitarian impulse to protect and support those citizens and residents who cannot protect and support themselves.

As Eric P. Schwartz noted in an address yesterday, "the protection of the most vulnerable must be at the center of policy-making – due to the moral imperative, and the simple goal of saving lives; due to our government’s interest in sustaining U.S. leadership and building sustainable partnerships, which enable us to drive the development of international humanitarian principles, programs, and policies like no other government in the world; and due to the importance of promoting reconciliation, security, and well-being in circumstances where despair and misery not only threaten stability, but also critical national security interests of the United States."

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.