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 47 F O C U S O N P U B L I C D I P L OM A C Y A DDRESSING THE P UBLIC D IPLOMACY C HALLENGE ver since the amalgama- tion of the U.S. Information Agency into the Department of State on Oct. 1, 1999, there have been calls for a serious re-examination of that reorganization. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the clamor for rethinking the public diplomacy “challenge” became more urgent and more frequent. But except for some minor tinkering, noth- ing has been done. While the quality and cohesiveness of our public diplo- macy efforts have continued to deteriorate, over the past decade at least 40 govern- mental and nongovernmen- tal reports have examined the problem through many prisms and with many lenses. All of these studies agree on one thing: As cur- rently organized and prac- ticed, public diplomacy has become the weakest link in our national security. This is neither the time nor the place to re-argue the merits of the various propos- als contained in the many reports. Nor is it practical sim- ply to return to the status quo ante with a resurrected, “back to the future” United States Information Agency. Today, in contrast to the 1950s when USIA was created, there are many government and nongovernmental actors on the public diplomacy stage. Thus, we must look at what is missing in our public diplomacy and identify practical steps that can be taken to address those gaps. The Current State of PD The flaws in the present configuration of public diplo- macy’s “lead agency,” the Department of State, are not dif- ficult to discern. To put it bluntly, Foggy Bottom prides A NEW AGENCY OF THE D EPARTMENT OF S TATE — THE U.S. P UBLIC D IPLOMACY S ERVICE — COULD ENSURE BOTH CREATIVITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN PD OPERATIONS . B Y W ILLIAM P. K IEHL E William P. Kiehl is founding president and CEO of PD Worldwide International Consultants. He has taught diplo- macy at the Foreign Service Institute and was a diplomat- in-residence at the U.S. Army War College’s Center for Strategic Leadership and a senior fellow of the U.S. Army Peacekeeping Institute. During a Foreign Service career of 33 years, Kiehl served as principal deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Ed- ucational and Cultural Affairs and in numerous public diplomacy positions at home and abroad. He is the author of Global Intentions Local Results: HowColleges Can Cre- ate International Communities (CreateSpace, 2008), edited America’s Dialogue with theWorld (The Public Diplomacy Council, 2006), and has published many articles on public diplomacy. Doug Ross