How to Reinvigorate U.S. Public Diplomacy

Cold War Success, then Neglect

Since World War II, public diplomacy and foreign broadcasting have helped contain and defeat Soviet communism, promote democracy in many countries around the world, and expose foreign publics to American values. Both functions have roots in World War II efforts to counter Axis radio broadcasts, such as those by Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose, that were meant to demoralize occupied populations and allied troops. They flourished during the Cold War when information moved at a slower pace and little was known about America in closed societies behind the Iron Curtain or in developing countries where newspapers and radio were just beginning to reach important segments of the population. During this time, their purpose gelled into countering negative propaganda and presenting a favorable image of the United States.

Overseas press briefings made official Washington more accessible to journalists in foreign lands. Simultaneously, long-range aspects of U.S. public diplomacy programs like cultural and academic exchanges (about 700,000 to date) helped educate world leaders like Anwar Sadat, Helmut Schmidt, and Margaret Thatcher at early points in their careers about the United States and its values. Meanwhile, broadcasters like Willis Conover brought jazz and its musical message of freedom to listeners in the Soviet Union, and VOA and WORLDNET TV informed Chinese audiences about the pro-democracy movement that filled Tiananmen Square in 1989. These public diplomacy operations are now regarded as important foreign policy tools.

But that does not mean they are well-supported. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, public diplomacy and international broadcasting suffered from declining interest in the White House and among Members of Congress and U.S. opinion leaders. Key programs were eliminated, and the public diplomacy and foreign broadcasting budgets were slashed. In 1998, Congress passed the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act1 to cut costs. It ended a half-century of public diplomacy independence and spun off foreign broadcasting as an independent entity. Both institutions were still struggling to regroup on September 11.

United States Information Agency
For 46 years, the centerpiece of U.S. public diplomacy was the United States Information Agency (USIA), established in 1953 at the height of the Cold War to counter anti-American propaganda from the Soviet Union and coordinate foreign information dissemination programs.2 Its early directors included media pioneers like journalists Edward R. Murrow, Frank Shakespeare, and Carl Rowan. Charles Wick, the dynamic director during the Reagan Administration, prodded it into creating the first global satellite television network, WORLDNET.

But after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, lawmakers began to cut budgets without critically rethinking the mission. For instance, resources for the USIA mission in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, were slashed in half, according to Fred Coffey, Jr., a former public diplomacy director there. From 1995 to 2001, academic and cultural exchanges dropped from 45,000 to 29,000 annually,3 while many binational cultural centers with accessible downtown store-front libraries either were abandoned or became "information resource centers" stuck in spare rooms of fortress-like embassies.4

On October 1, 1999, USIA disappeared as an independent agency--as a result of congressional efforts to reduce foreign operations expenditures and merge the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) into the Department of State. With its multibillion-dollar budgets, USAID was the main target, but skillful advocacy by its administrator helped it to avoid the wrecking ball. USIA, barred by law from using any of its products intended for foreign audiences in the United States, never enjoyed USAID's level of domestic advocacy and easily succumbed to consolidation into the State Department--despite efforts by a coalition of liberals and conservatives to maintain USIA as a separate entity.5

International Broadcasting
In 1942, the Roosevelt Administration started the Foreign Information Service to counter anti-U.S. propaganda beaming out of Nazi Germany. By January 1943, it had 23 transmitters delivering news in 27 languages. Later known as the Voice of America (VOA), it grew into a network of 22 proprietary stations and 900 affiliates broadcasting in 53 languages. In 1978, it was folded into USIA, then known as the U.S. International Communication Agency.

Over the years, other services were added to support the political objectives of promoting democracy and human rights, avoid civil service personnel regulations that prevented flexible responses to new mission requirements, and adapt to the changing media environment. Critics argued that this resulted in a confusing structure like a house with "a wing here, a porch there, a shaky cupola on top, and some dormers jutting from the roof."6

As an example, the private networks Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were established in the 1950s and funded primarily by U.S. government grants. These "surrogate" services were not obliged either to influence audiences in favor of U.S. policies (unlike VOA) or to promote an appreciation of American culture, but were intended to foster democracy by providing access to balanced international news and independent internal reports from within countries held captive by authoritarian regimes--in this case the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. With contract and part-time linguists and writers as opposed to union-protected U.S. civil servants, such surrogates could more easily redirect efforts and respond to momentary needs to serve some countries and languages more than others. But as private entities, they are less controllable.

WORLDNET, VOA's satellite television service, began within USIA in 1983 with a single press conference and expanded to include daily programming and interactive teleconferences between Washington policy experts and local colleagues or journalists. Initially, WORLDNET experimented with soft news programs like "America Today" beamed to Europe. But Congress cut funding, skeptical that an audience existed. Thereafter, it slowly built programming around more modest public affairs programs beamed to embassies and then placed on local television, particularly in developing nations. Teleconferencing made news at first but eventually settled into low-level exchanges that declined in impact after the novelty wore off.

Radio Martí began broadcasting to Cuba in May of 1985 and was joined by its sister outlet, TV Martí, in 1990. Funded and managed by the U.S. government, they were supposed to disseminate international news and reports from independent journalists inside Cuba as well as present American culture and explain the policies of the United States according to the VOA charter.7 Radio Martí did so at first, until the Clinton Administration transferred Cuban Broadcasting offices to Miami, Florida, where programming strayed from the charter and began to imitate the formats of commercial stations belonging to members of Miami's Cuban exile community.8 Because of Cuban jamming, TV Martí has had little penetration on the island.

With the end of the Cold War, static budgets resulted in more programming cuts for such regions as the Middle East and Latin America, while international broadcasting continued its topsy-turvy evolution. The International Broadcasting Act of 1994 consolidated foreign transmission efforts within USIA under a new bipartisan Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) that included eight members from the fields of mass communications and foreign affairs, plus the Secretary of State as a non-voting member. Congress funded Radio Free Asia, a surrogate service that opened in 1996 with broadcasts to China, Vietnam, Tibet, Burma, Laos, Cambodia, and North Korea despite overlapping efforts by VOA. In 1998, the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act made foreign broadcasting, once again, an independent U.S. government entity.

Hostile Takeover and Reshuffling

The consolidation of public diplomacy functions into the U.S. Department of State was both a curse and a blessing. USIA was a small, generally well-managed independent U.S. government organization with an efficient finance and personnel system. It was folded into a "troubled cabinet agency" where travel vouchers sometimes take six weeks to process, budgets of small offices are often raided by larger bureaus, and hard assets and personnel are gobbled up more through internal political designs than by senior management decisions or congressional intent. While the Clinton Administration's foreign affairs reinvention plan merged public diplomacy assets into the State Department, it left the department itself largely untouched.9

State Department negotiators were not familiar with the USIA mission and regarded some of the Agency's assets as scrap to strengthen State's own bureaus. USIA's area offices were consolidated into State's geographic bureaus and lost their independent budgets and reporting channels. The Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) swallowed USIA's media reaction and opinion analysis division. The Public Affairs Bureau (PA) absorbed USIA's television production facilities and the Foreign Press Centers in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles, while the Office of Strategic Communication--an important message-coordinating entity--was abolished.10

Silver Lining
On the bright side, folding USIA into the State Department made it clear that modern diplomacy was not only a matter of discrete negotiation, but also a task of communicating with foreign publics. Because public diplomacy directorates were placed in the State Department's geographic bureaus, their inputs were finally able to influence the "takeoff of policies, not just the occasional crash landing"--addressing a hope USIA Director Edward R. Murrow had expressed 40 years ago. Pairing State's ailing Public Affairs Bureau with Public Diplomacy elevated its status and suggested the need for State's personnel to develop core competencies similar to those of public diplomacy officers.

Independent international broadcasting brought more creativity and strategic planning based on research into the BBG. Despite management upheavals, just six months after the September 11 tragedy, it established the Middle Eastern Radio Network (MERN) and Radio Sawa broadcasting 24 hours a day in Arabic on AM, FM, shortwave, digital satellite, and the Internet. Although criticized for content heavy on pop music and light on news (only 10 to 20 minutes out of 60), it began to appeal to youthful audiences in eight Arabic countries including Iraq.11 Radio Farda ("Radio Tomorrow" in Persian) began transmitting into Iran with a similar mix of music and news in December 2002 on AM, shortwave, digital satellite, and Internet from studios in Washington, D.C., and Prague, Czech Republic.12 Hoping to capitalize on the success of these efforts, President Bush proposed spending $30 million to create an Arabic-language satellite television network in his FY 2004 budget.

Problems Remain
While public diplomacy (PD) area directorates became features in State's geographic bureaus, the merger substantially weakened field operations. PD/PA directors in State's regional bureaus now report to State's regional assistant secretaries below the Under Secretary for Political Affairs. Thus, public diplomacy field reporting that once went swiftly through proprietary channels to senior public diplomacy decision-makers must now endure lengthy embassy staff and ambassadorial reviews that are standard procedure for State's political reporting. Public diplomacy lost its separate budget, control over representational housing, cars, and specialized computer and communications equipment. To support field initiatives, public diplomacy area directors must persuade State regional assistant secretaries with little familiarity or interest in overseas communications to share resources.

The institutional expertise that skillfully managed information programs for foreign audiences and opinion leaders no longer exists. Public diplomacy's domestic counterpart (public affairs) is still largely dedicated to reactive press briefings, although it has developed a useful Web site and has facilitated some press encounters with State's senior leaders. Staffed by civil servants historically denied opportunities for public relations training or overseas experience, it was relegated to organizing press conferences and distributing lengthy speeches by senior officials in the 1990s.

Media and public opinion research is misplaced in State's intelligence bureau, which analyzes classified material for State's political decision-makers. It should be in the public diplomacy hierarchy where public diplomacy officers can drive its activities and immediately access data to shape communications strategies. The Foreign Press Center and television production staff now sits in the domestically focused Public Affairs Bureau, which has little experience in dealing with foreign audiences or making video products for overseas distribution. Key programs curtailed in the 1990s, such as U.S. government-supported libraries in foreign countries, remain virtually extinct. The already decimated educational and cultural exchanges, including Fulbright fellowships, will be cut by an additional 2,500 slots next year.

The Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act made foreign broadcasting independent and strengthened the Broadcasting Board of Governors, giving it authority to act as "a collective CEO" in the words of Board member Norman J. Pattiz.13 This had disastrous consequences when, shortly after September 11, 2001, the new BBG appointed a Bush Administration candidate to direct the VOA and some BBG members then allegedly undercut his decisions, resulting in a resignation and needless public scandal.14 The new BBG structure also presents opportunities for conflict of interest. Sitting board members serve part-time and may continue as executives in their real-life businesses. While that brings welcome expertise to the Board, there is little to keep members from directly hiring business associates to work in subordinate agencies.

Congress has steadily reduced the budget for international broadcasting from $844 million in FY 1993 to a proposed $560 million for FY 2004, necessitating cuts in services targeted to regions such as the Middle East and Latin America at a time of growing upheaval. In 2001, the BBG dropped Portuguese-language radio service to Brazil, the world's eighth largest economy. Yet the BBG's confusing organization and collection of services, stations, affiliates, and surrogates still waste money with ineffective and overlapping efforts.

Surrogates Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty still receive substantial U.S. funding although they no longer broadcast to captive nations. Radio Martí has lost effectiveness by catering to Miami's Cuban exile community, while TV Martí is hardly seen. Radio Sawa and Farda reach new listeners with pop music and balanced news as if they were surrogates, but the BBG plans to cut VOA transmissions with editorial content that could address extreme anti-U.S. propaganda in Middle Eastern media.15

The Bush Administration is seeking approval of an ambitious $30 million effort to start a Middle Eastern satellite television service, but the planned 24-hour operations may not be cost-effective considering its unknown impact in a region where satellite TV is still banned in two large countries (Saudi Arabia and Iran) and faces stiff competition from Arab networks in other countries. Elsewhere, the Voice of America continues shortwave broadcasts even though listenership on that bandwidth is disappearing. WORLDNET TV wastes some of its potential on innocuous public affairs shows and old science documentaries dubbed in foreign languages.

Finally, civil service personnel rules continue to enshrine a static workforce that keeps VOA from flexibly expanding and contracting according to critical needs, necessitating the use of surrogate outlets.

Disarray at a Critical Moment

Arriving in office, the Bush Administration was uncertain about playing the public diplomacy hand dealt by the Clinton Administration. Aware of the decline in America's image among foreign publics, it sought new tools to win the hearts and minds of potential adversaries. Initially, the White House created an Office of Global Communication to coordinate messages to foreign audiences and nominated a former advertising executive, Charlotte Beers, as the new Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in the State Department.

Meanwhile, the DOD Defense Science Board commissioned a task force on "managed information dissemination" that found U.S. public diplomacy programs to be understaffed, underfunded, poorly coordinated, and insufficiently integrated into national security planning and implementation processes. It prepared a detailed report that recommended the creation of a National Security Council policy coordinating committee on international information dissemination and that both State Department public diplomacy programs and DOD foreign communication programs be strengthened along traditional lines.16

Rude Awakening
On September 11, 2001, when America was attacked by foreign terrorists in hijacked airliners, it became apparent once again that the United States had enemies in the world. The Bush Administration tried to clamp down on the bad news by asking U.S. television networks to limit replays of Osama bin Laden tapes, urging Qatar's government to do the same with their popular al-Jazeera TV channel, and firing a VOA director who permitted an interview with Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. Critics reasoned that America needed to fight back with its own communication efforts.

While the State Department set about preparing a $15 million advertising campaign to showcase Muslim life in America to Islamic nations, the Pentagon established the Office of Strategic Influence to provide a harder sell with a combination of public affairs and information warfare. Although details were never revealed, the office would have been engaged in a broad range of activities, from dispensing truthful news releases to planting stories through outside contractors to conducting cyberattacks against enemy computer networks and Web sites.

Some senior officers complained that it would ruin the credibility of legitimate public affairs. (See text box, "What Is Public Diplomacy?") Media critics charged that false news planted in foreign news outlets could end up in the American press, violating a ban on government propaganda activities in the United States.17 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld closed the office in 2002 and eventually replaced it with one to coordinate combat information activities along more traditional lines.

Meanwhile, only four Islamic nations aired the State Department's television ads touting Muslim tolerance in the United States, and critics like Mamoun Fandy, an Egyptian media analyst who served briefly as a consultant to the campaign, charged that it seemed expedient, insincere, and likely to inflame anti-American sentiments.18 On March 7, 2003, Charlotte Beers resigned as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.

Congressional Action
The Bush Admin-istration has not been alone in trying to improve the government's foreign communication efforts. The Freedom Promotion Act of 2002 (H.R. 3969), introduced by Representative Henry Hyde (R-IL) and co-sponsored by Representative Albert R. Wynn (D-MD), took a comprehensive approach, seeking to refinance and restructure public diplomacy as well as streamline foreign broad-casting's disparate management elements and broadcast outlets. Among its major provisions, H.R. 3969 (which ultimately died in the Senate) would have:

• Amended
  the State Department Basic Authorities Act of 1956 to make public diplomacy a key element in planning and executing U.S. foreign policy,
• Created
  a "reserve corps" to augment public diplomacy activities during critical circumstances overseas,
• Emphasized
  recruiting State Department officers with mass communications skills,
• Expanded
  career-specific training for new public diplomacy officers,
• Increased
  attitude research to evaluate the effectiveness of public diplomacy efforts,
• Strengthened
  exchange programs in the Muslim world, and
• Amended
  the International Broadcasting Act of 1994 to reorganize foreign broadcasting elements under a U.S. International Broadcasting Agency.

While such measures attempt to repair and strengthen the machinery of overseas communication efforts, however, Congress must further address lingering structural deficiencies in public diplomacy's placement at State, deal with weaknesses in public diplomacy's sister public affairs bureau, revise the outdated 1948 Smith-Mundt Act that prohibits the dissemination of materials produced for overseas audiences in the United States, and define the roles that the White House and the Department of Defense should play in foreign communication efforts.

Conclusion

In the information age, it is remarkable that the United States government has been hesitant to embrace and effectively implement mass communication to support America's defense and foreign policy goals. In recent times, only the Reagan Administration consistently factored communication strategies into meeting its domestic and international political challenges. Now, when Washington wants public diplomacy to come to the rescue, it seems to expect public diplomacy to deliver goodwill instantly among foreign publics without first establishing the necessary foundation of mutual trust and understanding.

Instead, reflex should become habit. Public diplomacy is effective only when it builds on long-term relationships that identify common interests between people and capitalize on them. It must be strategic, consistent, and flexible in its use of channels and, above all, must encourage two-way communication.

In 1999, after years of decline, the bulk of public diplomacy was folded haphazardly into the State Department, with international broadcasting remaining independent. To its credit, this "reinvention" finally integrates traditional and public diplomacy at the most basic level. Now the resulting structures must be adjusted to make them work. Both public diplomacy and foreign broadcasting should be strengthened and made more efficient. Some programs, like exchanges that were cut, should be restored; others that have fulfilled their purpose, like some broadcasting operations, should be phased out.

Public diplomacy is an important leadership tool. Its mission flowered during the great international conflicts of the 20th century, but its philosophical roots go back to America's founding. In his farewell address, President George Washington counseled, "as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion be enlightened."23 The same could be said of U.S. diplomacy and foreign views of America.

Stephen Johnson is Senior Policy Analyst for Latin America in, and Helle Dale is Deputy Director of, the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies at The Heritage Foundation.