- FEBRUARY 9, 2010
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To win hearts and minds, get back in the game
Posted By Richard G. Lugar
Friday, February 27, 2009 - 12:36 AM
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Why is the United States waging the battle of ideas with one hand tied behind its back?
By Richard G. Lugar
When people the world over want to learn French, they typically go to the local Alliance Française, a French language and culture center run by the government of France. To explore Germany's rich culture and take some German classes, they might stop by one of the German government's Goethe-Instituts. But for English, where do they go? They usually head to an outpost of the British Council, not to a U.S.-sponsored cultural center.
Why? Because nearly all of the popular "American Centers" that spanned the globe, attracting throngs of students and young people who immersed themselves in American publications and ideas, have been closed or drastically downsized and restructured thanks to policy decisions, security concerns, and budget constraints. The unintended result is that in the global contest for ideas, the United States is playing short-handed.
Winning that competition has been a top goal for U.S. policymakers since September 11, 2001, but it hasn't been easy. A recent poll in 21 countries showed that 43 percent of respondents had a negative view of the United States. Late last year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office listed "improving the U.S. image abroad" as one of the most urgent priorities facing the new Congress and administration. When publics feel unfriendly toward the United States, the seeds of anti-American extremism can more easily sprout.
Reaching out to the man or woman on the streets of Jakarta or Caracas or Cairo is the practice of public diplomacy, and the United States does it in a number of ways, from the Peace Corps to the Voice of America to the Fulbright program. But the United States doesn't have a worldwide equivalent to what Britain and France have, namely, facilities in major world cities with libraries, reading rooms, outreach programs, unfiltered Internet access, film series, lectures, and English classes that enable people to meet with Americans of all walks of life and hold two-way conversations on issues of mutual interest.
Not just America's friends, but America's opponents, too, are wielding this public diplomacy tool: Iran has spread a broad network of cultural centers, including many in the same Muslim countries that the United States is trying to reach.
The old American Centers had a good record of success. They attracted young people as well as community leaders, journalists, and policy experts who were the opinion shapers and future leaders of their countries.
But after the Cold War, the United States prematurely declared victory in the battle for hearts and minds, terminating the U.S. Information Agency, which ran the centers, and cutting the State Department's public diplomacy budget. Many thought the Internet and global satellite TV would render irrelevant the people-to-people exchanges fostered by the centers.
Separately, U.S. diplomatic facilities overseas became more isolated. Following the 1998 bombings by Al Qaeda of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 12 Americans and more than 200 Tanzanians and Kenyans, the United States embarked upon a major construction program to build new embassies protected against terrorist attacks. Many embassies are now far from city centers and impose time-consuming security procedures upon all visitors. Additionally, most U.S. civilian employees are required to work within the embassy perimeter.
Those security upgrades were necessary, but the result has been less day-to-day interaction between U.S. diplomats and locals. Stripped-down outreach facilities, now called Information Resource Centers (IRCs), are often located within embassy compounds and open to the public by appointment only. State Department statistics show that IRCs within embassy walls in the Middle East received only one sixth as many visitors as those off-compound. Clearly, reaching a wider audience will require creative adjustments to the United States' security approach, keeping in mind that the safety of U.S. personnel must be paramount.
The United States should not abandon this part of the public diplomacy field to others. Iran, for instance, has opened some 60 Iranian cultural centers in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe that offer Persian language courses and extensive library resources-and a platform for anti-American propaganda.
As part of a broader overhaul of its public diplomacy effort, the United States should reinvigorate the old American Centers concept-putting, when possible, new ones that are safe but accessible in vibrant downtown areas-support active cultural programming, and resume the teaching of English by American or U.S.-trained teachers hired directly by embassies. That would help draw people to the centers and ensure that students got some American perspective along with their grammar.
America's best players in public diplomacy have always been its people and its ideas. The United States should get them back into the game instead of standing on the sidelines.
Richard G. Lugar is a U.S. senator representing Indiana.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly advocated “obliterating Iran” in the defense of Israel when she was a U.S. Senator. Her admonition did not apply to any other country and her controversial and reckless statement was not challenged by her colleagues in the Senate, for they apparently overwhelming agreed with her and made her Secretary of State.
What would you think Senator Luger if a high ranking official of China had said their country would obliterate the United States if it interfered with its actions against Taiwan? Would such a statement by a Chinese official be considered controversial and reckless? Of course it would. Would that Chinese official be held in high regard and would we want to negotiate with that official if she became their Foreign Minister?
The best way to win hearts and minds is to follow the great advice of George Washington in his Farewell Address whose words are more modern and timeless than our geo-political ups and downs as documented in Stephen Kinzer's "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq."
Senator Lugar is absolutely correct that the United States needs to get back into the PD game. While his diagnosis of the problem is right, his remedy is wrong. Seeing the reinvigoration of American Centers as a palliative for the problem of the global public's negative view of the United States is like attempting to apply an old fashioned poultice to a viral infection. It will not work.
Effective public diplomacy does require respectful dialog and vigorous engagement at the level of ideas, not images as Senator Lugar rightly suggests. But if Americans do not convey that they know they live in a broader global society which shares the risks inherent in life on a single planet, America will not have soft power. An American Center strategy is far too self-referential. The more we highlight American identity, the greater the target we offer to those whose identity is formed by being “not-American.”
This negative identity and the political power that flows from it require an inflated image of the United States to shove away from. As a matter of effective global communication strategy we should not contribute by building edifices in our honor. This self-referential focus works against our credibility as moral leaders in an age of globalization.
For decades Senator Lugar has justly championed nuclear non-proliferation and the reduction of existing stockpiles of nuclear weapons including our own. Let this issue -- on which he has been an outstanding leader -- be one of those anchoring a reinvigorated public diplomacy. If we can get the policy right with respect to our own stockpiles and nuclear strategy and if we can partner with Russia in a mutual draw down working together to tie down loose nukes, we might have credibility when we speak about Iran.
Understanding what nuclear capability symbolizes in the context of Iranian society – with its own history and politics – is the job of public diplomats. Bringing that awareness back to the policy discussion is the job of public diplomats. Designing and implementing a strategy of communicating (explaining) American policy to foreign publics is the job of public diplomats. Measuring the effectiveness of that communication effort and adjusting for the political realities on the ground as the message is received is the job of public diplomats.
Yes, we need to get back into the game of public diplomacy but that does not mean getting back into old buildings with old ideas. Our shared future on this planet is far to important to succumb to nostalgia.
Donna Marie Oglesby (DMO) was Counselor of Agency (USIA) from 1993-1996.
It may be best to wait a while and see what US FP is going to be before trying to start selling America again. I suspect the low poll ratings has nothing to do with closed cultural centres and more to do with the reality of US actions and positions. Obama’s election has given the US a temporary benefit-of-the-doubt window to show that the US propensity to start wars on false charges, calls for regime change, reversal of decades of leadership on human rights & international law were an aberration that the US has rectified permanently rather than a something we will see again in four years. US forces cover the globe and the world is wondering if they are a force for good or evil? The US is launching missiles into Pakistan and killing Pakistani citizens this is clear casus belli and yet the US seems to think it acceptable. One wonders how well an attack on the home of an American family in Huston killing everyone would go down if initiated by Venezuela because they believed it had been used by someone involved in the attempted coupe. Would this not be equally justified? If the current occupants were completely innocent and the intelligence was out of date would it be fine if Venezuela just did not comment and tried again in Dallas next week?
Change the policies, behave like the principles in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights still meant something and that all men are still equal even if not Citizens of the United States and then you will have no problems selling the message.
American Centers and Public Diplomacy
I am so heartened to read Sen. Lugar's recent piece on the important role that a U.S. cultural presence, through a worldwide network of re-instituted American Centers, can play in changing perceptions of the United States and its people.
For seven years, beginning in the summer of 2001, I worked in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the Department of State. Sen. Lugar, Vice-President Biden and their counterparts in the House were the most steadfast supporters of exchanges that we had. Had it not been for their commitment, these non-academic professional and cultural exchanges might have disappeared completely.
One example among many: on one of my visits to Istanbul, where I regularly accompanied groups of American artists participating in a major international cultural program, the Turkish staff of the IRC at the new Consulate expressed great sadness at the loss of their library and the American Center at the Palazzo Corpi, the former U.S. Consulate in the center of the city. The inability of Turkish citizens to conveniently visit the IRC (combined with a lack of interest, as these IRCs don't offer much to inspire the mind and nothing to delight the eye - particularly not for young adults), greatly discouraged the staff, all long-time, loyal employees of the U.S. Government.
On the flipside, had the U.S. Consulate been in its former location on Istiklal Cadessi in the fall of 2003, many of these people too might have died in the same bombings that destroyed the British Consulate nearby. Security is a legitimate concern, but it shouldn't be allowed to trump all.
The U.S. should explore new means of supporting and managing its public diplomacy and cultural progamming overseas. One possibility might be to endow an independent NGO to operate a network of centers at an arms length from the USG, offering all that Sen. Lugar describes; employing a staff combined of knowledgeable foreign nationals and U.S. citizens experienced in their respective fields. More than one problem would be solved by this construct: culture and the arts particularly, have never occupied a valued position within the Department of State (the lauded Arts in Embassies program is part of Overseas Building Operations and technically, interior decoration), and as a result do not attract leadership from among the first ranks of the diplomatic corps; the relevant bureaus within State do not recruit arts and humanities professionals to staff career positions; and most sadly, the absence of long term commitment to the success of a program (division, office, etc.)on the part of foreign service managers just passing through and inordinately risk-averse anyway, merely serves to produce the kind of amateurish, uninspiring programming that inevitably invites criticism from both cultural leaders and politicians alike. Finally, an independent NGO could raise funds in the private sector to complement the government's contribution, something that can only be accomplished from within government with great difficulty.
Where culture and the arts are concerned, the world is fully and interestingly globalized. The young man at the (still in business) American Center in Yangon knows who his favorite American artist is; he has identified the work from the art magazines on hand, and searched for every image from the available online resouces. What that young man (a real person, by the way) yearns for now is to meet that artist, to experience the work and the person directly.
Kudos to Sen. Lugar. Next step is to make it happen.
January/February 2010
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