The Foreign Service Journal, April 2004

A P R I L 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 15 F acing an implacable enemy, with the fate of the world and the future of Western democ- racy at stake, the most powerful coun- try in the world seems unable to sway world opinion in its direction. Sound familiar? It’s all about ter- rorism, Iraq and radical fundamental- ist Islam in the post-9/11 era, right? Wrong. It happened more than 50 years ago and the implacable enemy then was Soviet Communism. Re- viewing commentaries of the late 1940s and early 1950s, one can see eerie echoes of the panic in today’s media about Islamic terrorism and American impotence in winning hearts and minds. In particular, the thrashing about for a solution to America’s latest “image problem” has an apt parallel in the 1953 creation of the U.S. Information Agency to address the threat of Soviet propagan- da by telling America’s story to all the world. More than anything else, that ini- tiative reflected the vision of Presi- dent Dwight Eisenhower and Secre- tary of State John Foster Dulles. As a former military commander, Eisen- hower understood the value of non- lethal persuasion, while Dulles recog- nized the need to free the public diplomacy function from the tradi- tion-minded machinery of the State Department — and vice versa. To accomplish those goals, the new agency consolidated the government’s tools of influence into a single entity that reported to the president while taking foreign policy guidance from the Secretary of State. USIA was the perfect solution for its time, and it lasted nearly half a cen- tury. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the agency was dis- missed as a Cold War relic and even- tually merged into the Department of State on Oct. 1, 1999. Proponents of the reorganization pledged it would keep the public diplomacy function at the center of foreign policy. But the aftermath of 9/11 demonstrates that in the post-USIA era, public diplomacy has become perhaps the weakest link in America’s foreign policy arsenal. Fixing the Problems The amalgamation of the public diplomacy function into the State Department hasn’t worked very well for a number of reasons. These include: differences in the cultures of the two organizations; some resent- ments over past clashes between State and USIA; a poorly organized division of the bureaucratic “spoils” among State bureaus; and a mass exodus of experienced public diplomacy profes- sionals who “hadn’t signed up to be part of the State Department.” But an equally important reason is a fundamental misunderstanding of what public diplomacy can and should accomplish. Just as in the early 1950s, many in America once again see everything in terms of a single strug- gle: Islamic radicalism (expressed through terrorism) vs. Western demo- cracy. But by focusing single-mindedly on the Islamic world, as we have been doing, at best we may have some lim- ited success there while allowing anti- American currents to flourish in the rest of the world. Instead, America’s current “image problem” must be addressed not just with an infusion of money and pro- grams for a single region but with a planned and structured approach to public diplomacy as a whole. Rec- tifying the failures of the current structure of public diplomacy should be the State Department’s top prior- ity. Fortunately, a number of thought- ful solutions have already been proposed in recent years by entities across the political spectrum, ranging from The Heritage Foundation to the Council on Foreign Relations (twice) and from the General Acc- ounting Office to the USIA Alumni Association. Each study notes or im- plies that there are chronic and sys- temic problems within the Depart- ment of State that must be addressed in any renewal of American public diplomacy. The Weakest Link in Our Foreign Policy Arsenal B Y W ILLIAM P. K IEHL S PEAKING O UT Rectifying the failures of the current structure of public diplomacy should be the State Department’s top priority.