The Foreign Service Journal, October 2009

O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 27 downsized and dismantled during the 1990s. But on May 19, the Senate unanimously passed S. Res. 49, which calls on the Secretary of State to consider re-es- tablishing publicly accessible American Centers and consider more accessible locations for public diplomacy facilities worldwide. The Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act mandates collocation of all fa- cilities except those run by the Peace Corps. Unless State can obtain a waiver, this initiative will have to focus on partnerships with local institutions rather than build- ing programs, in most cases. PD Force Multiplication ... Or Duplication? Two years after Congress merged USIA into State, ter- rorists struck the United States, and public expectations changed. The ensuing funding increases for government information and cultural programs were ad hoc and spread across several agencies, while interagency coordination was weak. As a result, State is laboring to recover leadership in public diplomacy. In one of her first appearances after confirmation, Under Secretary Judith McHale said at the Center for a New American Security: “The national security implica- tions of engagement have not been lost on our colleagues at the Department of Defense, which has become heavily involved in what we call public diplomacy and they call strategic communications.” The Associated Press reported earlier this year that over the past five years, according to Department of Defense budgets and other documents, “the [amount of] money the military spends on winning hearts and minds at home and abroad has grown by 63 percent, to at least $4.7 billion this year. That’s almost as much as it spent on body armor for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2004 and 2006. This year, the Pentagon will employ 27,000 people just for recruitment, advertising and public relations — almost as many as the total 30,000-person work force in the State Department.” The figures are not comparable, but DOD’s sponsor- F O C U S