The Foreign Service Journal, October 2006

44 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 n a typical day, former FSO John Brown’s blog from the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy summarizing comment about the United States’ global image contains more than 50 articles, many of them decrying a “failed” U.S. public diplomacy effort. Public diplomacy, which used to attract little media attention, has in recent years been the subject of scores of blue-ribbon studies — a sure sign that it’s the Sick Man of U.S. statecraft. The blogs, op-ed pieces and articles on Brown’s com- pendium offer no consensus on what’s wrong (see http://www.uscpublicdiplomacy.com/index/php/news room/). U.S. and European observers, Arab commenta- tors, Israelis and Indians and other pundits all take shots at U.S. policies using public diplomacy as a foil. Advo- cates of broadcasting or the arts urge more funding for their favorite PD activity. Because there is no agreement about what public diplomacy should be expected to deliver for the taxpay- ers who fund it, it is tempting to rely on measures of pub- lic opinion as the standard. But opinion polls by them- selves set a standard that cannot be met, because those numbers go up and down for all kinds of reasons. And that is a problem for the practitioners. If you cannot define success, you’ll never succeed. As a former public diplomacy officer, I know exactly how my col- leagues in the field are advancing American interests, often working under very difficult conditions. Concrete examples of progress abound, and PD officers deserve credit for their accomplishments. That’s why measure- ment and evaluation of results in terms of a coherent strategy is the single most important element in success- ful public diplomacy. Yet to date, the PD community has not been able to offer its own independent benchmarks of effectiveness, or even a fully accepted strategy. This is a point that the Government Accountability Office has made in several analyses of the public diplo- macy apparatus over the past few years. GAO’s most recent report, issued on May 3, focused on resources, programs and strategy for the Muslim world — an arc of 58 countries with a population of 680 million. The report (GAO-06-535) found posts in the region were operating without guidance on how to implement the strategic framework established this past year by Under F O C U S O N P U B L I C D I P L O M A C Y H OW D OES P UBLIC D IPLOMACY M EASURE U P ? H ERE ’ S A LOOK AT WHAT POLICY IMPERATIVES AND TECHNOLOGY TRENDS MEAN FOR PROGRAMS IN THE FIELD . B Y J OE J OHNSON O Joe B. Johnson worked in every major public diploma- cy and public affairs function during a 33-year career in the Foreign Service. He now works as a consultant for the Computer Sciences Corporation, which hosts the Voice of America’s Web site. His office works with public diplomacy and other sectors of the State Department.