The Foreign Service Journal, December 2005

12 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 5 Public Diplomacy in the Spotlight Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes’ high-powered “listening tours” to the Middle East and Muslim Asia, including her gaffes on Saddam Hussein’s gassing victims and other missteps, have received lively press attention worldwide. But getting “out there” with America’s message speaks to only one aspect of Washington’s much-studied public diplomacy crisis. Even more critical, perhaps, is to break through the structural and orga- nizational problems that have kept PD on the sidelines ever since USIA was abolished and folded into the State Department in 1999. Hughes addressed some of the underlying problems on Oct. 14, when she keynoted a forum on the future of public diplomacy, “America’s Dialogue with the World,” co-spon- sored by The George Washington University’s Public Diplomacy Insti- tute, The Public Diplomacy Council and the American Academy of Diplomacy. There, in the second half of her talk, she shared “a few of the tactical specifics of what we’re doing” with an audience of 300, mostly PD professionals. (The transcript on Amb. Hughes’ remarks is available online at http://www.state.gov/r/us/2005/ 55165.htm .) “First of all, we’re bringing public diplomacy to the policy table and inte- grating it into every aspect of the State Department,” Hughes stated, explain- ing that she or one of her senior staffers attends Secretary Rice’s first meeting every morning and last meet- ing every night, and many in between. In an unprecedented move, she has already created a deputy assistant sec- retary for public diplomacy position in each regional bureau, who reports both to Hughes and to the regional assistant secretary. “We’re also speaking at all the seminars for new ambassadors,” states Hughes, “emphasizing that public diplomacy is now part of the job description of every single ambas- sador and every single employee at the State Department.” Further, Hughes plans to attend each of the chiefs-of-mission conferences, and has directed the ambassadors to bring their public affairs officers to these meetings. In the discussion following her talk, Hughes spelled out yet another C YBERNOTES Site of the Month: Audit of the Conventional Wisdom In this age of relentless media hype and information overload, where there is a premium on byte-size packaging of ideas and events, no matter how com- plicated, the essay series launched by MIT’s Center for International Studies in May offers welcome relief ( www.mit.edu/cis/acw.html ). T he essays “audit” the conventional wisdoms that underlie U.S. foreign policy, putting them to the test of data and history and exploring their effects on American policy. By “conventional wisdoms” CIS means the folk axioms, bromides, platitudes and generally superficial explanations that, once entrenched, go unchallenged. Whatever the source and whoever the supporters, when conventional wisdom in foreign policy is mistaken, it can be damaging to U.S. interests and to global peace and stability. Take the case of the “free market” economic policies fostered globally by the United States. Though insisted upon by the U.S. and known, ironically, as the “Washington Consensus,” many economists point out that “structural adjust- ment” and similar marketization schemes have failed time and again to allevi- ate the problems of low or no growth in developing countries. So far, the series includes such provocative titles as “All Weapons of Mass Destruction Are Not Equal,” “The United States as an Asian Power: Realism or Conceit?,” “U.S. Military Power: Strong Enough to Deter All Challenges?” and “Iran: Rogue State?” “By subjecting particularly well-accepted ideas to close scrutiny, we hope to start an argument, or to re-engage policy and opinion leaders, on topics that are too easily passing such scrutiny,” states the MIT Center for International Studies. “We do so as academics, rather than as policy-makers, by accepting complexity, marshaling historical evidence, offering new or overlooked data, and providing fresh analysis.” CIS hopes this will lead to “something we can all agree on: better foreign policies that lead to a more peaceful and prosperous world.” At least it can help to keep the debate honest. — Susan Maitra, Senior Editor