The Foreign Service Journal, October 2004

Edward R. Murrow famously warned that public diplomacy needs to be in on the take-offs, not just the crash landings. Imagine if in May 2003 someone had proposed what New York Times columnist Tom Friedman belatedly suggested a year later — transforming Saddam Hussein’s noto- rious prison into the “Abu Ghraib Technical College for Computer Training,” with equipment donated by Dell, Hewlett Packard and Micro- soft. Now try to imagine whether our current public diplomacy structure and environment would support this kind of vision. A Two-Way Street True integration should be a two- way street, but a survey of who rides the shuttle bus between SA-44 and Main State underscores the lopsided- ness of the relationship. Public diplo- macy officers within the geographic bureaus, tied down with that work known throughout the department as “substantive,” are reluctant to make the trek across town to serve on ECA panels determining how millions of dollars will be spent on university or other partnership programs. The Regional Program Office in Vienna, a major public diplomacy asset for over 50 years, is on the verge of being sac- rificed to the department’s need to find occupants for a large facility near Frankfurt. Other public diplomacy centers and programs find them- selves having to justify their space and costs against criteria that often ele- vate short-term needs at the expense of long-term goals. When program- matic push comes to administrative shove, there is no bureau to stand up for the public diplomacy function as, for example, the Bureau of Consular Affairs does for its programs and offices. Public affairs officers in the field report that much of their time is now devoted to internal issues instead of programs that build understanding. O C T O B E R 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 S P E A K I N G O U T