The Foreign Service Journal, October 2006

Hughes leads: the Policy Coor- dinating Committee on Public Diplomacy and Strategic Com- munication. But it will be an uphill fight to convince the broadcasters, who closely guard their inde- pendence, of the need for clos- er coordination. Indeed, veter- an employees of the U.S. broadcasting entities say that any hint of State Department control will undermine their credibility. “I believe international broadcasting and public diplomacy should be two different activities,” says Kim Andrew Elliott, an audience research analyst for the International Broadcasting Bureau, who noted that he was speaking only on his own behalf. “Public diplomacy is really public relations on an international scale. It has a persuasive purpose, an advocacy purpose. Broadcast- ing has a different purpose. People tune in to get infor- mation that is more credible than what they get in their own state-controlled media. Credibility is the be-all and end-all.” But is U.S. broadcasting effective under the current, sometimes tense arrangement with State? That’s the million-dollar question. The GAO has reported that in many cases the broadcasts have suffered from poor audi- ence attention, and limited transmission capabilities. As yet, no comprehensive study has been conducted on how much U.S. broadcasting affects foreign public opin- ion. Judging from the limited data that are available, many of the findings are not good. A recent survey of univer- sity communications students in the Arab world, con- ducted by a researcher at Queens University of Charlotte, N.C., found that young people who listened to Radio Sawa or watched Alhurra Television actually grew less sympathetic toward U.S. foreign policy. The BBG has dismissed the study as unscientific, because respondents were not selected at random and the total sample size was small. But the results are still disquiet- ing. The Role of Management State’s public diplomacy team has also suffered from poor attention to evaluation of existing programs and limited ability to interact directly with target populations because of security concerns, according to the GAO. Most embassies are now, by necessity, hardened facilities with little or no public access. Initiatives such as the American Corners program, which sets up Ameri- can reading rooms and comput- er access in cooperation with local partners, are still only in the beginning stages. The budget for international exchanges, meanwhile, is up 11.3 percent this year from 2005. Spending could hit $474 million in 2007, but it is still inadequate, accord- ing to many analysts. State has received an influx of cash for public diplomacy, with the budget hitting $630 mil- lion in 2006 from $520 million in 2004. But, as the GAO has noted, State hasn’t been able to fill even all of its existing public diplomacy positions with qualified appli- cants. Approximately 15 percent of PD positions over- seas are currently vacant. Better management, exercised consistently, will help alleviate these problems. But Michael Schneider, a for- mer USIA deputy associate director for policy and pro- grams, argues it’s unlikely that even that will solve the public diplomacy dilemma once and for all. Even very effective selling of policies that are objectionable over- seas can only take you so far, he says. And that may be a challenge that even a very effective public diplomacy operation — one that provides a serious advisory role for PD officers — cannot overcome, because, as the war continues to boil in Iraq, it just may be too late. “The missing ingredient in U.S. national security pol- icy is the lack of a strong, consistent, advisory role for public diplomacy,” says Schneider, who is now a profes- sor at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. “People who know the culture, languages and societies should not just have been asked, but been required to play a stronger role in policy development. What we hear from our leaders is that we need a stronger voice, but we can’t be effective if our policies don’t benefit from the people who deal with public opinion and social and cultural concerns. We need to craft those policies with a more consistent and a more clear-cut view of what are the possible results.” F O C U S 26 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 If reshaping State’s culture weren’t enough of a challenge, an equally daunting task may be integrating its PD efforts with those of other agencies.