American public diplomacy: Enduring characteristics, elusive transformation

The Hague Journal of Diplomacy

Volumn 6, Issue 3-4, 2011, Pages 351-372

  Gregory, Bruce ^a  

^a GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

engagement; multi stakeholder diplomacy; Obama administration; opinion research and evaluation; public diplomacy; social media; strategic communication

Indexed keywords

EID: 80053993768     PISSN: 18711901     EISSN: 1871191X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/187119111X583941     Document Type: Article

References (95)

1. Quoted in Michael Hirsh, ' "Get In There and Mix It Up": Hillary Clinton on Obama, Iran, and a World of Troubles', Newsweek, 23 April 2010, available online at http://www.newsweek.com/2010/04/22/get-in-there-and- mix-it-up.html.
2. BBC World Service Poll, 'Global Views of the United States Improve while Other Countries Decline', 18 April 2010, available online at http://www.globescan.com/news-archives/bbc2010-countries/.
3. Pew Research Center, 'Obama More Popular Abroad than at Home, Global Image of US Continues to Benefit', 22-Nation Pew Global Attitudes Survey, 17 June 2010, available online at http://pewresearch.
4. Hillary Rodham Clinton, 'Leading through Civilian Power: Redefining American Diplomacy and Development', Foreign Affairs, November/December 2010, p. 16.
5. Her essay framed key themes in Leading through Civilian Power: The First Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), a report issued by the US Department of State in December 2010, available online at http://www.state.gov/ s/dmr/qddr/.
6. For an explanation of these terms, see the Obama administration's 'National Security Strategy', May 2010, available online at http://www. whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss-viewer/national-security-strategy.pdf, (hereafter 'National Security Strategy');
7. 'National Framework for Strategic Communi cation', President Barack Obama's report to Congress, 16 March 2010, available online at http://www.fas.org/man/eprint/pubdip.pdf.
8. For an attempt to create a new 'master concept of 'strategic public engagement' that goes beyond public diplomacy and strategic communication, see Kristin M. Lord and Marc Lynch, America's Extended Hand: Assessing the Obama Administration's Global Engagement Strategy (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, June 2010), p. 11.
9. Jan Melissen, 'The New Public Diplomacy: Between Theory and Practice', in Jan Melissen (ed.), The New Public Diplomacy: Soft Power in International Relations (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 11.
10. 'National Security Strategy', p. 14; US Department of State, 'American "Smart Power": Diplomacy and Development are the Vanguard', Bureau of Public Affairs Fact Sheet, 4 May 2009, available online at http://www.state.gov/ r/pa/scp/fs/2009/122579.htm.
11. The term 'multi-stakeholder public diplomacy' can be used in a variety of ways. It can describe multiple actors who implement public diplomacy within governments. It can describe multiple actors, understood as governments, regional and international government organizations, sub-state actors and non-state actors that act independently or in association. Multi-stakeholder can also describe multiple publics, local and global, that are affected by public diplomacy. In this article, the term refers primarily to multiple public diplomacy actors within the US government.
12. For a discussion of stakeholder issues and the profusion of diplomatic actors, see R. S. Zaharna, 'The Public Diplomacy Challenges of Strategic Stakeholder Engagement', in Ali Fisher and Scott Lucas (eds), Trials of Engagement: The Future of US Public Diplomacy (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2011), pp. 201-229;
13. Geoffrey Allen Pigman, Contemporary Diplomacy: Representation and Communication in a Globalized World (Cambridge: Polity, 2010), pp. 17-105.
14. Sources on global trends and power shifts, with particular relevance to public diplomacy, include Joseph S. Nye Jr., The Future of Power (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011);
15. Alex Evans, Bruce Jones and David Steven, Confronting the Long Crisis of Globalization: Risk, Resilience and International Order (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 26 January 2010);
16. Andrew F. Cooper, Brian Hocking and William Maley (eds), Global Governance and Diplomacy: Worlds Apart? (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008);
17. and US National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, November 2008, available online at http://www.dni.gov/nic/PDF-2025/2025- Global-Trends-Final-Report.pdf.
18. This distinction borrows from Monroe Price, Susan Haas and Drew Margolin, 'New Technologies and International Broadcasting: Reflections on Adaptations and Transformations', in Geoffrey Cowan and Nicholas J. Cull (eds), Public Diplomacy in a Changing World: The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 616, March 2008, pp. 160-162. In adaptation, institutions update and perform traditional tasks more efficiently. Transformation comes to grips with fundamental change, and it can be turbulent.
19. On concerns about the need to go beyond discourse in US public diplomacy, see Kenneth A. Osgood and Brian C. Etheridge (eds), The United States and Public Diplomacy: New Directions in Cultural and International History (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2010), pp. 1-14;
20. and Melissen, 'The New Public Diplomacy', pp. 6-10.
21. For a discussion of the 'traditionalist critique' and problems associated with it, see Paul Sharp, Diplomatic Theory of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 270-275.
22. On public diplomacy and traditional diplomacy, see Walter R. Roberts, 'The Evolution of Diplomacy', Mediterranean Quarterly, summer 2006, pp. 55-64.
23. On 'listening' as a constituent element of public diplomacy, see Nicholas J. Cull, 'Public Diplomacy: Taxonomies and History', in Geoffrey Cowan and Nicholas J. Cull (eds), Public Diplomacy in a Changing World: The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 616, March 2008, pp. 32, 37-38 and 43-44;
24. Ali Fisher, 'Four Seasons in One Day: The Crowded House of Public Diplomacy in the UK', in Nancy Snow and Philip M. Taylor (eds), Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy (New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 252.
25. On public diplomacy understanding as 'intelligence'. see Daryl Copeland, Guerrilla Diplomacy: Rethinking International Relations (Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 2009), pp. 9-10.
26. The 'double contingency' model is discussed in Steven R. Corman, Angela Trethewey and Bud Goodall, A New Communication Model for the Twenty-First Century: From Simplistic Influence to Pragmatic Complexity, Consortium for Strategic Communication, Arizona State University, Report no. 0701, 3 April 2007, p. 10.
27. For R.S. Zaharna's views on understanding in public diplomacy, see Battles to Bridges: US Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy after 9/11 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 115-122.
28. Conversation with Dawn McCall, Coordinator, Bureau of International Programs, US Department of State, 28 January 2011; 'IIP Announces Changes to Strengthen its International Programs and Products', US Department of State, 28 January 2011, available online at http://www.state.gov/r/iip/index.htm;
29. Tijana Milosevic, 'Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy Examines Evaluation Tools', Alliance for International Educational and Cultural Exchange, 21 July 2010, available online at http://www.alliance-exchange.org/policy- monitor/07/21/2010/advisory-commission-public-diplomacyexamines-evaluation- tools.
30. 'National Framework for Strategic Communication', pp. 2-5.
31. 'National Security Strategy', pp. 11-12.
32. Historical studies include Akira Iriye, Cultural Internationalism and World Order (Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997);
33. Frank Ninkovich, The Diplomacy of Ideas: US Foreign Policy and Cultural Relations, 1938-1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
34. For conceptual studies, see Giles Scott-Smith, 'Mapping the Indefinable: Some Thoughts on the Relevance of Exchange Programs within International Relations Theory', in Public Diplomacy in a Changing World: The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 616, March 2008, pp. 173-195;
35. R.S. Zaharna, 'Mapping out a Spectrum of Public Diplomacy Initiatives: Information and Relational Communication Frameworks', in Nancy Snow and Philip M. Taylor (eds), Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 86-100.
36. 'National Security Strategy', p. 12. In speeches as Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs late in George W. Bush's administration, James Glassman observed similarly and with little elaboration that educational and cultural exchanges are 'the crown jewels of our public diplomacy'. Following this 'to be sure' remark, however, he focused most of his attention on 'winning the battle of ideas' in a war against terrorism.
37. See, for example, 'Public Diplomacy in the Twenty-first Century', a speech delivered at the Council on Foreign Relations, 30 June 2008.
38. Joseph S. Nye Jr, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004), pp. 33-71.
39. On the strengths and limitations of dialogue in public diplomacy, see Geoffrey Cowan and Amelia Arsenault, 'Moving from Monologue, to Dialogue, to Collaboration: The Three Layers of Public Diplomacy', in Public Diplomacy in a Changing World: The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 616, March 2008, pp. 16-20;
40. Cull, 'Public Diplomacy', pp. 33-51.
41. Kristin M. Lord, The Perils and Promise of Global Transparency (Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 2006), p. 47 and pp. 45-56, passim.
42. Quoted in Scott-Smith, 'Mapping the Indefinable', p. 182.
43. 'National Security Strategy', pp. 11-12. For an analysis of the Obama administration's engagement strategy. see Thomas Wright, 'Strategic Engagement's Track Record', The Washington Quarterly, July 2010, pp. 35-60.
44. Historical case studies that illuminate a close relationship between public diplomacy and politics can be found in Osgood and Etheridge, The United States and Public Diplomacy. See especially Michael L. Krenn, 'Domestic Politics and Public Diplomacy: Appalachian Cultural Exhibits and the Changing Nature of US Public Diplomacy, 1964-1972', pp. 315-343.
45. Zaharna, Battles to Bridges, pp. 146-155.
46. Office of the Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Public Diplomacy: Strengthening US Engagement with the World, February 2010, PowerPoint slides nos. 13 and 28, available online at http:// uscpublicdiplomacy.org/pdfs/PD-US-World-Engagement.pdf.
47. Iriye, Cultural Internationalism and World Order, pp. 3-12.
48. National Security Strategy', p. 12.
49. US Center for Citizen Diplomacy website, online at http://www. uscenterforcitizendiplomacy.org/.
50. For a discussion of the rise of non-state actors in diplomacy and issues of accountability and legitimacy, see John Robert Kelley, 'The New Diplomacy: Evolution of a Revolution', Diplomacy & Statecraft, vol. 21, no. 2, 2010, pp. 286-305.
51. See also Sharp, Diplomatic Theory of International Relations, pp. 288-292.
52. On distinctions between communication as consensus-based deliberative dialogue and interest-based strategic action, see Danielle S. Allen, Talking to Strangers (Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 53-68;
53. Michael Walzer, 'Deliberation and What Else?' in David Miller (ed.), Thinking Politically: Essays in Political Theory (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 134-146.
54. British Council, Climate Change website, online at http://www. britishcouncil.org/new/climate change/.
55. I have benefited here from the analysis in Lord and Lynch, America's Extended Hand, pp. 12-14.
56. 'National Framework for Strategic Communication', p. 16;
57. United States Information Agency Strategic Plan, 1997-2002, available online at http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/usia/abtusia/stratplan/pland.htm.
58. Henry R. Nau, At Home Abroad: Identity and Power in American Foreign Policy (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2002);
59. Michael Mandelbaum, The Ideas that Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy and Free Markets in the Twenty-first Century (New York: PublicAffairs, 2002).
60. Anne-Marie Slaughter, The Idea that is America: Keeping Faith with our Values in a Dangerous World (New York: Basic Books, 2007), pp. 1-16.
61. Bruce Gregory, 'Public Diplomacy and National Security: Lessons from the US Experience', Small Wars Journal, 15 August 2008, available online at http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docstemp/82-gregory.pdf;
62. Kathy R. Fitzpatrick, The Future of US Public Diplomacy: An Uncertain Fate (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2010), pp. 15-78.
63. According to the non-partisan Henry L. Stimson Center, the US defence budget since 2001 grew 'from $335 billion to more than $700 billion proposed for FY 2009. While foreign affairs' spending has grown from $20 billion to just under $40 billion, it is still one-seventeenth the size of the defense budget'; see online at http://www.academyofdiplomacy. org/publications/FAB-report-2008.pdf.
64. Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, 'Top Secret America: A Hidden World, Growing Beyond Control', The Washington Post, 19 July 2010. 'The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001', Priest and Arkin concluded, 'has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work'.
65. The two traditions often collide, especially on issues such as nation-building and long-term troop commitment. 'It is a perennial problem in American foreign policy that Wilsonians often write checks that Jacksonians do not want to cash'. See Walter Russell Mead, Power, Terror, Peace and War: America's Grand Strategy in a World at Risk (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), p. 154 and passim.
66. US Department of Defense, Report on Strategic Communication, December 2009, pp. 2-3, available online at http://www.carlisle.army.mil/dime/documents/ DoD%20report%20on%20Strategic%20Communication% 20Dec%2009.pdf.
67. Inter-agency Working Group on US Government-Sponsored International Exchanges and Training, FY 2010 Annual Report, p. 28, at http://www.iawg.gov/ rawmedia-repository/44c4ac01-4486-4a6c-8f03-f6bcb696eda5.
68. Allison Stanger, One Nation under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 56-83;
69. Kathy R. Fitzpatrick, 'Privatized Public Diplomacy', in Philip Seib (ed.), Toward a New Public Diplomacy: Reinventing US Foreign Policy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 155-172.
70. David Paull Nickles, Under the Wire: How the Telegraph Changed Diplomacy (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
71. Once engaged, however, the United States became the only nation to sponsor two forms of government broadcasting. The Voice of America broadcast news and information about the United States to countries around the world in one network of language services. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Radio Marti separately transmitted news and information about events within many of the same countries as 'surrogate broadcasters'.
72. Shawn Powers and Ahmed El Gody, 'The Lessons of Al Hurra Television', in Philip Seib (ed.), Toward a New Public Diplomacy: Reinventing US Foreign Policy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 49-66.
73. Jesse Lichtenstein, 'Digital Diplomacy', The New York Times Magazine, 12 July 2010, pp. 24-29;
74. and Statement for the Record, by Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith McHale, US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 10 March 2010.
75. Amelia Arsenault, 'Public Diplomacy 2.0', in Philip Seib (ed.), Toward a New Public Diplomacy: Reinventing US Foreign Policy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
76. US Government Accountability Office, US Public Diplomacy: Key Issues for Congressional Oversight, GAO-09-679SP, May 2009, p. 21, available online at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09679sp.pdf;
77. Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication, Washington, DC, January 2008, pp. 52-62, 82-84 and 89-93, available online at http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/ADA476331.pdf;
78. Kristin M. Lord, Voices of America: US Public Diplomacy for the Twenty-first Century (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, November 2008), pp. 21-22, available at online http://www.brookings .edu/~/media/Files/rc/reports/ 2008/11-public-diplomacy-lord/11-public-diplomacy-lord.pdf.
79. Conversation on the record with Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith McHale, 23 July 2010;
80. comments on the background by senior US State Department officers.
81. 'National Framework for Strategic Communication', pp. 5 and 14. In saying the 'National Security Staff currently sees no need to establish a new, independent, not-for profit organization', the Framework seems clearly resistant to this approach. However, in saying that a number of reviews, including the State Department's Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, are examining the issue of publicprivate partnerships, the drafters of the Framework appear to leave the door open to change.
82. For a summary of proposals to create an independent organization, see Kristin M. Lord, America's Voices, pp. 51-54.
83. Strengthening America's Public Diplomacy Engagement, a project sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2010-2011, available online at http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic-id=641608&fuseaction= topics.home.
84. Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (New York: Penguin, 2008), pp. 24 and 149.
85. Ali Fisher, Mapping the Great Beyond: Identifying Meaningful Networks in Public Diplomacy, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, CPD Perspectives on Public Diplomacy, paper no. 2, 2010, pp. 12-30, available online at http://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/publications/perspectives/CPDPerspectivesMapping Networks.pdf.
86. Copeland, Guerrilla Diplomacy, pp. 205-236.
87. US Department of State, 'Using Social Media', Foreign Affairs Manual, 5 FAM 792.3(a), 10 June 2010, available online at http://www.state.gov/documents/ organization/144186.pdf.
88. For numerous other questions, see US Government Accountability Office, US Public Diplomacy: Key Issues for Congressional Oversight, GAO-09-679SP, May 2009, pp. 33-34;
89. and questions in a survey sponsored by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, July 2010, online at http://mountainrunner.us/2010/07/survey. html.
90. Evgeny Morozov, 'The Future of "Public Diplomacy 2.0" ', ForeignPolicy.com, 9 June 2009, available online at http://neteffect. foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/06/09/the-future-of-public-diplomacy-20.
91. Lichtenstein, 'Digital Diplomacy', pp. 26-29.
92. See Joseph S. Nye Jr and Anne-Marie Slaughter, Report of the Working Group on Foreign Policy Infrastructure and Global Institutions, The Princeton Project on National Security, 27 September 2006, pp.1-28, available online at http://www.princeton.edu/~ppns/conferences/reports/fall/FPIGI.pdf.
93. Lord and Lynch, America's Extended Hand, pp. 36-50.
94. Josh Rogin, 'State Department Budget Request may be Dead on Arrival on Capitol Hill', The Cable Blog, Foreign Policy, 14 February 2011, available online at http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/02/14/state-department- budget-request-may-be-dead-on-arrival-on-hill.
95. Wright, 'Strategic Engagement's Track Record', p. 41.