Last week the Heritage Foundation, the conservative, Washington-based think tank, held a discussion titled “Public Diplomacy: Reinvigorating America's Strategic Communications Policy.” The panel included presentations by Colleen Graffy, the State Department's Deputy Assistant Secretary (DAS) for Public Diplomacy (PD) for Europe and Eurasia, Michael Doran the Department of Defense's Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Support to Public Diplomacy, Tony Blankley, former press secretary to Newt Gingrich and currently a Heritage Visiting Senior Fellow in National Security Communications, and Joseph Duffey, a former director of the now defunct US Information Agency. Helle Dale, Director of the Foreign Policy Studies department at the Heritage Foundation and a columnist for the Washington Times, moderated.
The event can be viewed by clicking here.
Heritage President Ed Fullner began the discussion by highlighting the significance of PD in fighting the war on terror. But he lamented that the US has not been doing a good enough job communicating itself. In fact, all panelists (except for the State Department official) underlined that past PD efforts have been hampered by a lack of leadership, strategic thinking and resources. Indeed the event's goal was to lay the groundwork for a new way forward; design a PD strategy that could be offered to the incoming Presidential administration. Dalle mentioned that this aim is part of a year-long effort at Heritage, which she will spearhead. (To view a policy proposal she published two days before the event, click here).
In contrast to the many gloomy assessment of State's PD efforts presented at the event, Deputy Assistant Secretary Graffy (pictured at left) aimed to brighten the picture by offering the group some examples of the Department's recent successes. Graffy countered, “Today, we are actually not doing so badly. But the title of this event–“RE-invigorating America's public diplomacy” is a good reminder that most people don't know what we have already done to invigorate public diplomacy. In addition to doing public diplomacy, we also need to communicate what we are doing on public diplomacy. We need to do more PD on our PD!”
Graffy said that a central success was the fusion of PD with the policy-making side of the equation. That is, the State Department has been restructured to include a DAS to oversee PD functions over the entire bureau, side by side with the designated policy-maker. As well, PD desk officers are embedded into the staff of each of geographic regional policy team. Rather than “being at the receiving end of information,” Graffy said, “they are now a part of the policy team, doing PD right there from the 'take off'”.
Other PD success of the recent past included the creation of a new media hubs‚ offices where PD officers liaise with foreign journalists‚ in Brussels, London and Dubai. She announced a new Senior Adviser on Muslim Engagement position whose deals with issues relating to integration, assimilation, Democracy and Islam. Additionally, she reported that translating “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown” into Ukrainian was a big hit.
But Graffy's talk wasn't all sunshine and smiles. She did weigh in on an ongoing debate about whether the now defunct US Information Agency (USIA) should be resurrected to house a revamped PD bureaucracy. Such calls have been heard ever since President Bill Clinton decided to fold USIA into the State Department in 1999. More recently, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested that a new, USIA-esque “21st century agency for global communications” be created.
Graffy, on the other hand, was alarmed by calls for revival of USIA, as she felt USIA kept PD activities “too separate from the policy community.” Graffy felt that even the hybrid model of a new quasi-independent entity responsible for PD activities, such as that recommended by the CSIS Commission on Smart Power's recent report, “would pull public diplomacy away from the power base of US foreign policy and diminish its influence.”
However Tony Blankley's presentation made a key point about the potential rearrangement of the PD infrastructure. He remarked: “We must be honest with ourselves. To face the kind of danger we’re facing and to marshal the resources that we [need], we feel so constrained by current mentalities that all we can do‚ with the best of our intentions‚ is to shift one little category of our bureaucracy form point A to point B on the chart. That's not going to solve the problem.” He suggested that rather than incrementally changing the bureaucracies that encapsulate the US’ PD activities: “We need to think much more radically.” (If you agree with Blankley's point, perhaps you’d like to join the Tony Blankly fan club).
We’ll look forward to future discussions on the future of PD as the year-long Heritage project unfolds.
