The Foreign Service Journal, December 2012

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2012 41 BOOKS The Longest Yard The Last Three Feet: Case Studies in Public Diplomacy (Public Diplomacy Council Series) William P. Kiehl, editor, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012, $14.99/paperback, $4.99 Kindle Edition. Reviewed by Patricia Kushlis As editor William P. Kiehl points out in his introduction to The Last Three Feet , not a single one of the countless vol- umes written about American public diplomacy since the demise of the U.S. Information Agency in 1999 and the 9/11 attacks has focused on what public diplo- macy officers actually do in the field. This small, readable volume seeks to fill that gap. The Last Three Feet is not about Washington operations, or what academ- ics think public diplomacy is. It simply explains how some experienced State Department public diplomacy officers have dealt with PD challenges all over the world. Several of these case studies are atypi- cal, to be sure. How often is the consul general located in a city where a world expo is about to open, only to find herself faced with an intransigent Washington bureaucracy and politicians hesitant to move outside an outdated congres- sionally limited funding box? How many embassies make a small youth exchange program a top priority? And how often does a U.S. mission transfer public affairs from the military to Foreign Service offi- cers with a civil war still in progress? In all three cases, the answer is: rarely. Even so, most of these studies usefully discuss how embassy public diplomacy officers have used, or attempted to use, social media to reach across fortress embassy walls, despite the loss of many American Centers in the 1990s. Truth be told, I think the cen- ters’ closures have proven to be a penny-wise, pound- foolish approach, especially consider- ing their potential for communicating with local youth. Their replacement by American Corners, or other small instal- lations without American staff—consist- ing of books, periodicals and Internet access ensconced in someone else’s library, or even a shopping mall—just doesn’t cut it. As cultural affairs officer in the Philip- pines from 1992 to 1994, I evaluated a raft of such installations just as fewer resources became available to devote to them. The ultimate solution, imple- mented after I left post, was to close the popular U.S. cultural center in the heart of Manila’s commercial district and donate its 30,000 well-read volumes to a private suburban university. This was done, I understand, for financial, not security reasons. The result? An 85-percent drop in use of the facility’s remaining offerings: a tiny col- lection of reference works, a skeleton staff and some Internet-accessible computers. By then Filipinos already had the Inter- net, but not books or current American periodicals. The main thread that runs through this book is the fact that social media (providing social media are important in a country) interactions cannot be handled “staff-lite.” They require at least one full-time American officer and two locally hired staff with sophisticated knowledge of U.S. policy and the ability to rapidly articulate it, both in writing and orally (think YouTube), in the coun- try’s vernacular. These case studies also make a com- pelling argument that embassy care and feeding of the social media should not be spread around like grass seed in the fall on already overworked public affairs officers, with the low priority of watering it as time permits. Furthermore, social media units cannot be hamstrung by cumbersome bureaucratic clearances. Blogging, tweet- ing, interacting and listening are the crux of the job in today’s high-speed media environment. Of course, this kind of flex- ibility and nimbleness requires faith on the part of risk-averse senior officers, as well as policy and cultural savvy on the part of the staff. Kudos to the Public Diplomacy Council for supporting this book, to the speakers and interviewers whose work is included—and, most of all, to editor William P. Kiehl for producing this badly needed volume. If you want to know what public diplomacy officers do—and you should if you’ve gotten this far—read this book. Patricia H. Kushlis was an FSO with the U.S. Information Agency from 1970 to 1998. A longer version of this review is available on Whirled View, the world politics, public diplomacy and national security blog she co- writes with former FSO Patricia Lee Sharpe. Many of these studies usefully discuss how to use social media to reach across fortress embassy walls.