The Foreign Service Journal, October 2006

But given the fact that the Bush administration, even in the face of flagging domestic support for the war, is sticking to its guns (so to speak), the more important ques- tion for the Foreign Service, partic- ulary State Department public diplomacy officers, is: Can we help them understand us, or at least temper the damage, when U.S. policy is at fundamental odds with foreign public opinion? “We’ve made the assumption for five years now that everyone wants Western-style democracy and capital- ism,” says Anthony Quainton, a former director general of the Foreign Service and ambassador to Peru, Nicaragua, Kuwait and the Central African Republic. “Well, the reality is that that assumption may be wrong, and then you are really swimming upstream.” Still, for the first time since the 9/11 terrorist attacks put public diplomacy back on the State Department radar, America’s front lines of public relations have a well- placed, and serious, political leader: Under Secretary Karen Hughes, a former Texas television reporter who has worked for President Bush since he was governor of Texas and is, by all accounts, one of his closest and most trusted advisers. Her task is a huge one: To turn the tide of public opin- ion in the Muslim world, public opinion that is now so negative that millions of people there empathize more with Osama bin Laden than with the United States. A year into her tenure, Hughes is getting better reviews than either of her short-lived Bush administra- tion predecessors: Madison Avenue advertising executive Charlotte Beers and Republican public relations opera- tive Margaret Tutwiler. But Foreign Service officers remain deeply skeptical of whether Hughes is doing enough to tap the expertise around her. They fear that she is trying to run the public diplomacy apparatus as she would a political campaign. The criticisms primarily come on two fronts. First, Hughes remains wary of the Foreign Service, and has largely surrounded herself with political appointees. Second, she’s focused overwhelmingly on media outreach — a tactic that might work in a political campaign, but one that public diplomacy officers see as just a single piece of the puz- zle in turning around anti-American attitudes abroad. Part of the tension comes from the less-than-perfect fit between public affairs and public diplomacy, which State has combined into one bureau. Most public diplomacy officers would define public affairs as aimed at domestic audiences, getting messages out to American decision- makers and the American public at large. Public diplo- macy is conducted overseas, reaching audiences in dif- ferent countries using a variety of informational, educa- tional and cultural tools. Hughes, according to her critics, is placing a dispro- portionate amount of attention on news media outreach, and too little attention on the types of long-term outreach efforts — such as foreign exchanges and educational pro- grams — that public diplomacy experts say are equally important. The payoff for those efforts, of course, will only be felt in years to come, when foreigners who come to America on exchanges in their youth become influen- tial figures in their own countries as adults. No matter what the mix of public diplomacy tactics, though, it remains unclear whether PD alone can make a significant difference in foreign attitudes when U.S. pol- icy decisions are so unpopular abroad — an unfortunate result, some say, of the Bush administration’s failure to lis- ten to the Foreign Service’s public diplomacy experts in the first place. If there is to be success, it will be evident in years, not months. Hughes faces three main challenges. First is the con- tent of U.S. public diplomacy. Hughes is a master at framing a political message. She, second only to Karl Rove, is credited with engineering Bush’s presidential election wins. But can she sell not only American poli- cies, but also our values, in regions where it’s unclear if they are shared? Second, Hughes must rebuild the State Department’s public diplomacy apparatus, which was dismantled in 1999 when Congress merged the highly regarded United States Information Agency into State, on the ill-fated assumption that public diplomacy wouldn’t be a crucial skill after the demise of the Soviet Union. It’s clear from interviews with PD officers that this is where Hughes’ performance has been weakest. One PD specialist says F O C U S 20 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 6 Shawn Zeller is a senior staff writer for Congressional Quarterly and a frequent contributor to the Journal. Millions of people in the Muslim world empathize more with Osama bin Laden than America.