How to Build an Effective Public Diplomacy: Ten Steps for Change

Nancy Snow is a former USIA/State Department official and author. She is senior research fellow in the USC Center on Public Diplomacy and a professor of communications at California State University, Fullerton. 

Delivered to the World Affairs Council Palm Desert, California, December 14, 2003. 

[For educational use only.  Proper citation required.  Published in Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol. 70, Iss. 12, pp. 369-374.]

Abstract

American values of fair play, the Golden Rule, and the cherished Constitutional freedoms of religion, association, and press are held up to the world as part of a propaganda and public diplomacy campaign to win hearts and minds to American policies. These values are also seen as universal in appeal, but the rhetorical appeal of these values is not matched by America's actions in the world. In 2002, the US Congress initiated the Freedom Promotion Act to use international exchanges, Sister Cities programs, English language training, and international broadcasting to make US values a reality for others. In part, this is what President Bush is promising to deliver post-Saddam Hussein to the people of Iraq. Until and unless the world sees a commonality between what America says and what America does in the world, these efforts to promote freedom will be half-measures at best.

Ladies and gentlemen, we got him! This is a day for the history books, but not the end game in the war on terror. To counter Osama and Saddam, the U.S. deployed food drops, initiated short-wave radio broadcasts, and tasked a Madison Avenue veteran in advertising who formerly sung the praises of Uncle Ben's rice to do the same for Uncle Sam. What's not to like about us? We give the world superstars and super missiles, blockbuster films and bunker-busting bombs, not an easy campaign for the slogan engineers at J. Walter Thompson. A $15 million dollar paid advertising campaign to the Muslim world under the moniker, Shared Values, and staged by a U.S. State Department front group called the Council of American Muslims for Understanding (CAMU) about how nicely we treat Muslim Americans, failed miserably. The one formal press conference undersecretary of public diplomacy Charlotte Beers gave at the National Press Club in Washington exactly one year ago almost to the day (December 18, 2002) featured six American protesters who disrupted Beers address with a "You're selling war, but we're not buying" slogan of their own.

The question after 9/11. "Why does the world hate us?" spawned a lot of speculation, perhaps none more famous than the remark by Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) who asked rhetorically: How is it that the country that invented Hollywood and Madison Avenue has allowed such a destructive and parodied image of itself to become the intellectual coin of the realm overseas?

What would it mean to win the battle for hearts and minds, what some call the propaganda war, but which more often we in the United States refer to as public diplomacy? In reality, the United States, by its very influence and prowess, can choose to follow the advice of the United Nations and global community at will. Under President Bush and the Bush Doctrine, our international relations post/9-11 and in wartime are operating under the rubric, "The best defense is a good offense." Should the U.S., the last remaining superpower, be apologizing for its status as the number one nation in terms of cultural, economic, military prowess? To some, no. To others, we can ill afford not to engage the world in methods that are more than our own national interests. How can we take the power of American creativity and culture (film, television, pop culture) and transform it into something that does two things: (1) not only recognizes the increasing negative perception of us by so many in the world, but also (2) works to overcome it through ways mutually beneficial? We may have to start by walking our talk. American values of fair play, the Golden Rule, and our cherished Constitutional freedoms of religion, association, and press are held up to the world as part of a propaganda and public diplomacy campaign to win hearts and minds to American policies. These values are also seen as universal in appeal, but the rhetorical appeal of these values is not matched by America's actions in the world. In 2002, the U.S. Congress initiated the Freedom Promotion Act to use international exchanges, Sister Cities programs, English language training, international broadcasting, etc. to make U.S. values a reality for others. In part, this is what our own President is promising to deliver post-Saddam Hussein to the people of Iraq. Until and unless the world sees a commonality between what we say and what we do in the world, these efforts to promote freedom will be half-measures at best.

Diagnosis of the Problem

In American-led global communications, the phone is off the hook at three primary levels: (1) There exists a disconnect in the official propaganda campaign coming out of Washington between how the Administration shapes its motives in the world and how others see U.S. actions in the world play out. In part, the Washington "dialogue of the deaf is due to the reality that American values are incongruous with American interests. U.S. interests that emerge from Washington and New York are largely about economic access and advantage and using our global military presence to protect our economic interests. We need not wonder why the terrorists struck our economic and military heart. U.S. values are more political, cultural, and social. This battle, between interests and values, is a battle between Realpolitik (might makes right) and Soft Power (right makes might). So far, Realpolitik has always won, because a sole superpower can change the rules of the game at will. The United States is so powerful that it can be inconsistent in its foreign policy and get away with it. More than any other reason, this is why America is hated today. This is in part why John Brady Kiesling, a former career diplomat with the State Department, resigned his position before the outbreak of war. He wrote in a Feb. 27, 2003 New York Times op-ed: "The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security."

(2) There is a major disconnect between American news coverage as a whole and international news coverage. To a large extent, we are no longer experiencing the TV war of Vietnam or even the CNN effect from Gulf War I but the Internet and Al-Jazeera War, where the U.S. is unable to control and manage both the messenger and the message. If you compared the U.S. and international news coverage during the hot months of the war this spring 2003, you would have found several different wars underwayOperation Iraqi Freedom on Fox News Channel, Showdown with Iraq on CNN, and America's Imperial War for Domination and Occupation not only beaming into the living rooms of Lebanon but also across Asia, and Europe.

(3) In true Hollywood fashion, U.S. interests and American power in the world come across as the triumph of good over evil. Any ambiguity in a truly complex world is dismissed. Instead, America's propagandists hand down the Manichean dichotomy - "us and them," "good and bad," "those who are for us and those who are against." In that context, this may be "a clash of civilizations" as Samuel Huntington claims, but even more, there is, or will be soon, a clash of propagandas and perceptions between what is perceived as "America's Imperial War" and "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

Australian sociologist Alex Carey writes in his book, Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty: "The propagandist in the United States starts with advantages deriving from independent features of American society which predispose its members to adopt-or accept-a dualistic, Manichean world view. This is a world-view dominated by the powerful symbols of the Satanic and the Sacred (darkness and light). A society or culture which is disposed to view the world in Manichean terms will be more vulnerable to control by propaganda... for acknowledgement of ambiguity, that is, a non-Manichean world where agencies or events may comprise or express any complex amalgam of Good and Evil-demands continual reflection, continual questioning of premises...the kind of evangelical religious belief to which American culture has always been held hostage provides habits of thought formed to accommodate the Manichean world-view. The Manichean dichotomy that has been most powerful -as a means of social control-in respect of both domestic and foreign policy issues of the U.S. is not God/Heaven versus Devil/Hell but the second equivalent of these: Spirit of America, the Purpose of America, the Meaning of America, the American Way of Life-the transcendent values by which the United States is represented to the world as the Manifest Destiny of the world in Piety and Virtue. In addition, U.S. society has a pragmatic orientation. This is a preference for action over reflection."

In his 1958 book, Brave New World Revisited, Huxley describes two kinds of propaganda at work in modern democracies. (1) Rational propaganda in favor of action that is consonant with the enlightened self-interest of those who make it and those to whom it is addressed; and (2) Non-rational propaganda that is not consonant with anybody's enlightened self-interest, but is dictated by, and appeals to, passion. Propaganda dictated by passion and the impulses that are below self-interest offers false, garbled or incomplete evidence, avoids logical argument and seeks to influence its victims by the mere repetition of catchwords, by the furious denunciation of foreign or domestic scapegoats, and by cunningly associating the lowest passions with the highest ideals, so that atrocities come to be perpetrated in the name of God and the most cynical kind of Realpolitik is treated as a matter of religious principle and patriotic duty.

At one time, those of us who advocate for universal literacy and the free press thought that there were only two possibilities that existed around the nature of competing propaganda-the propaganda might be true or it might be false. The reality is that in a Western capitalist democracy we have developed a mass communications industry that is to quote Huxley, "concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, (we) failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions."

Huxley's warning to us is two-fold: (1) "A society, most of whose members spend a great part of the time, not on the spot, not here and now and in the calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those who would manipulate and control it." (2) In propaganda today, dictators who live by the sword and those who dictate through manipulation of public opinion with the threat and use efforce, rely for the most part on repetition of catchwords that they wish to be accepted on their face value without critical scrutiny, suppression of information that goes against those catchwords, and rationalization of their cause to arouse passions that may be used in the interest of the state or party.

The global antiwar protests of 2002 that followed the anti-economic globalization protests of 1999-2001 suggest that the world's citizens are responding in record numbers to governments that have failed them, governments that are increasingly bankrupt in moral leadership and resources. The message of many of these protesters for the commercial and government propagandists is that the emperor has no clothes. To paraphrase Margaret Mead, governments will have to stop doubting the ability of people to change the face of global society, from one of clashing civilizations, preemptive strikes, to talking and walking together.

We Americans must better understand the world in which we yield so much awesome power. We need to see the world with honest eyes, as it is, with all of its messiness and ambiguity. We need to strive for consistency, both in our celebration of diversity and protection of human dignity. We need to do this even if the short-term impact suggests that hard and difficult choices have to be made. If we Americans can live with this war now, we can certainly live with higher prices for oil, for example, and fewer military bases dotting the globe. We Americans need to listen better, decry arrogance, and cultivate humility - all difficult work requiring a major cultural change. Here are 10 steps for change to revitalize our public diplomacy, open to your consideration, debate, and review:

(1) Public diplomacy cannot come primarily from the U.S. government or any official source of information. We are misunderstood and increasingly resented by the world precisely because it is our President and our top government officials whose images predominate in explaining U.S. public policy. Official spin has its place, but it is always under suspicion or parsed for clues and secret codes. The primary source for America's image campaign must be drawn directly from the American people. First, it's the private citizens of the United States who are more comfortable with acknowledging with some degree of humility that the U.S. has made mistakes in its past. Government officials seem to have a hard time with that one. Open criticism of a country's policies tends to embarrass government leaders. Over time it can be the trump card in the deck of negotiating a peaceful (and lasting) settlement of international conflicts. The American people can better illustrate that we are a people willing to learn from our mistakes and can redirect our dealings with other nations to mutually beneficial ends, not just purposes that serve official Washington. Second, it's the American people who can better initiate direct contact with people in other countries whose support and understanding we need on the stage of world opinion. The American public is the best ad campaign going for the world. We've got the greatest diversity in people and culture and it shows in our receptiveness to learning, our generosity, and our creativity. We need to magnify these qualities to the world, but in the same spirit, listen more, talk less.

(2) It is the American patriotic duty of dissent that can best illustrate to the world what a free society means. Senator J. William Fulbright wrote in The Arrogance of Power: "To criticize one's country is to do it a service and to pay it a compliment. It is a service because it may spur the country to do better than it is doing; it is a compliment because it evidences a belief that the country can do better than it is doing... My question is whether America can close the gap between her capacity and her performance. My hope and my belief are that she can, that she has the human resources to conduct her affairs with a maturity which few if any great nations have ever achieved: to be confident, but also tolerant, to be rich but also generous, to be willing to teach but also to learn, to be powerful but also wise." Senator Fulbright wrote this at a time when as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee he vigorously opposed President Johnson on America's involvement in Vietnam. American citizens who took to the streets to denounce U.S. policy in Vietnam heavily influenced his opposition. We need to carry this message of what a free and open society represents to all corners and not let our government leaders dictate America's brand campaign on their own.

(3) We need a public diplomacy for peace. We need perpetual thinking about perpetual peace. In other words, we need more propaganda, not less. Ours is an age of propaganda, an age of manipulation to this cause or that cause. People are joiners; they choose sides, so why not make peace a side to choose? If so, then we need to keep advocating for peace, and not the peace that it is just something that is not war. Peace is not the absence of war. Peace is coexistence, mutual interdependence. Peace is a requirement of the nuclear age. How might we establish a public diplomacy for peace? For starters, why not reflect upon every public diplomacy program on its value to furthering not strictly national interests but in addition, global security interests. This would require a stronger emphasis on cultural mediation and mutual understanding initiatives like cultural diplomacy, cultural and educational exchanges, strengthening sister city partnerships and civic and neighborhood organizations.

In his book, Munitions of the Mind, Philip Taylor writes in the epilogue: "In a nuclear age, we need peace propagandists, not war propagandists-people whose job it is to increase communication, understanding and dialogue between different peoples with different beliefs. As much of the truth as can be, must be told. A gradual process of explanation will generate greater trust and therefore a greater willingness to understand our perspective. And if this is a mutual dialogue, greater empathy and consensus will emerge. We might not always like what we see about others, but we need to recognize that fear and ignorance are the principal enemies of peace and peaceful coexistence."

(4) If we were to propagandize for peace, we would need to accompany this increase in propaganda with an increase in youth education and youth exchange. Our young people and all of us who are lifelong learners need to understand how propaganda is used to promote war, how it has been used throughout modern history, and how propaganda functions to mediate information and opinions from power centers of government, corporations and media to populations and public opinion segments of society. Two, we need to understand what the war message is and how to counter it with a just-as-powerful and just-as-persuasive message of peace. Propaganda, whether for war or peace, is about communicating something or persuading people to do something. We need to study what is being said, how it is being said, the techniques used, and where education can be of the greatest service.

(5) Increasing propaganda for peace must also be accompanied by an increase in access to information and media, upon which educated opinions can be formed. Modern forms of communication, particularly the mass media, are major instruments of propaganda. It is the monopoly concentration in media that allows the propaganda refrain, "war is inevitable," to stick in our minds. It's like a song lyric you want to forget. We need to replace that lyric with something else, whether it's "peace is a possibility," or "peace is permanent, war is temporary." It is no longer acceptable to allow public opinion and public judgment to be bombarded with news and views from a restricted number of sources, particularly when these sources carry us from ABC's reality show Joe Millionaire to CNN's Showdown Iraq to tomorrow's weather all in a breathless minute.

Propaganda need not remain a tool of mass persuasion in absolutist regimes, totalitarian societies, under Stalin's brutish lead or Nazi dictatorship. Who among us can doubt that Gulf War II was waged in part due to a very efficient management of military-media relations on the part of those who wanted war, but also by a failure among our media institutions to challenge government leadership? Peace propaganda needs the same amount of diligence and hard work. If we spend too much time worrying about using propaganda for peace, we will continue to subject ourselves to governments and other interest groups who are more than willing and able to utilize propaganda methods for their own causes. If yours is the cause of peace, then utilize communications responsibly, truthfully, and effectively. This is a call to arms, to arm ourselves with knowledge, content, and context generated from open and diverse channels of communication. White House news conferences and CNN should not be watched in a vacuum separated from the world's people. If so, then the world will remain in the hands of the war propagandists.

(6) We need to strengthen the soft power side of foreign policy. Last month I wrote an op-ed for the Birmingham News in which I anticipated the confirmation of Birmingham-native Margaret Tutwiler as the next undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, replacing Charlotte Beers. In the article, "Diplomat Needs Some Steel Magnolias," I wrote that political leadership in Washington keeps scratching its head in wonder why the leading country in the world in advertising, public relations and marketing cannot seem to do an effective job on itself. It is precisely because U.S. public diplomacy is being conducted from an uptown, top-down, and inside-the-beltway perspective that we aren't making headway. Marketing public diplomacy in commercials, slick packaging, fancy language, or status reports won't improve America's image in the world and will probably just reinforce negative perceptions.

We need to get back to basics that people hold in common-friendliness, openness, and putting people at easea Southern charm offensive. It needs to be based on discussion and dialogue with those people who are at times skeptical toward the United States and with others who are downright hostile. We need to listen and learn, more than dictate and declare. As Tutwiler herself pointed out in her confirmation hearing: "Much of what I learned about our country, from listening, engaging and interacting with Moroccans from all walks of life, was troubling and disturbing. I would never have known how our country is really viewed, both the positives and the negatives, had I not been serving overseas for the last two turbulent years." Tutwiler needs to call on not only the South but all private citizens who are willing to help to get involved in a "Welcome to the Neighborhood" campaign that builds upon the well-intended but poorly run "Shared Values" campaign of the Beers' tenure. The United States holds no patent on democracy or freedom, but we are part of a larger and majority neighborhood of global and civic-minded nations that cherish the democratic process and democratic ideals over tyranny and dictatorial control. We need to roll out our welcome sign of inclusiveness that what the world most admires about us (productivity, entrepreneurial spirit, education, freedom to practice religion, free speech) is what we want to share and help them build on in their own community. This means our public diplomacy in Iraq must be led with an attitude of respect for individual dignity that we are guests in the homes of the Iraqi people, not the other way around. I'm confident in the expertise of Margaret Tutwiler and am relieved that in her congressional hearing she said that when it comes to tackling the complex reality of winning hearts and minds, "There is not one magic bullet, magic program or magic solution. As much as we would like to think Washington knows best, we have to be honest and admit we do not necessarily always have all the answers."

(7) We need to continue to tell our stories to one another and support people-to-people dialogue and exchange, efforts that are based on mutual learning and mutual understanding. What this means is a Marshall Plan for International Exchange, a ten-fold increase in programs like the Fulbright, International Visitor Program, Arts exchanges, and programs like the new Culture Connect that sponsored the Iraqi National Symphony's visit to the Kennedy Center. I make no apologies for being heavily biased in favor of exchanges, having been a Fulbright scholar to the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1980s. It is a cliche to say, "it changed my life," but guess what, it did, and still does. Dean Geoffrey Cowan of the USC Annenberg School for Communication told me that his motto at the Voice of America was "moving from monologue to dialogue." For too long, and perhaps in part due to our incredible comparative advantage in communications technology, the United States has emphasized amplification over active listening, telling America's story to the world over promoting international dialogue. After twenty years of devoting my adult life to public diplomacy both inside and outside Washington, D.C., inside and outside the federal government, and inside and outside this country, I am convinced that anti-Americanism and general ill will toward the U.S. is driven more by the perception that we talk first before we listen. For a change, it wouldn't take much for us to listen first, talk second. It certainly wouldn't make things worse if we tried harder to be citizen diplomats in our relations with our overseas counterparts. This is what international educational and cultural exchanges expect from those who travel across national boundaries. Why haven't we tapped these alumni as citizen ambassadors? We're simply not doing as much as we could.

(8) There is so much we still don't know, and we need to unite partnerships between government, the private sector, and universities to study social influence, changes in mindsets, how to teach tolerance and mutual respect, and methodologies that will measure current public diplomacy programs in an effort to find best practices. We could start by undertaking efforts to identify the best practices used by other countries. Some of the world's leaders in soft power diplomacy include the Scandinavian countries like Denmark and Norway, as well as the Netherlands, Japan and the United Kingdom. I'm happy to report that there is a most exciting effort about to be launched at the University of Southern California with measuring effectiveness as its centerpoint. The USC Center on Public Diplomacy has just been established as a joint partnership between the Annenberg School for Communication and the School of International Relations. As a senior research fellow and roving ambassador for the Center, it is my job to work with our new executive director to create an online public diplomacy website, which we hope will become the place to come for all interested in global public diplomacy efforts. We plan to initiate curricula in public diplomacy, international broadcasting, public opinion measures, public diplomacy history and philosophy, all with an eye on not just what will serve U.S. interests but rather what will serve the global civic community.

(9) To have a lasting and effective public diplomacy, the U.S. must consider its legacy of strategies of truth. The short-lived and ill-conceived Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) was a here-today, gone-tomorrow debacle, but I'm concerned that some within the Department of Defense would just as soon continue to use the strategies of deception. It is one thing to use deception against the enemy, but the OSI sought to use deception to plant false stories in reputable overseas news markets. Any approach based on falsehoods and deception will not have long-lasting, enduring outcomes but only short-term, tactical advantages. My experience at the U.S. Information Agency and my research has convinced me that the more transparent and genuine U.S. public diplomacy strategies are, the better off our national security and long-term strategic interests will be. Therefore, as John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt write, "truth must be the polestar of American strategic public diplomacy."

(10) As someone deeply involved in building a global civic society, I know that any effective public diplomacy must establish greater outreach with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), or what Alvin and Heidi Toffler call "deep coalitions." Global civic society is immersed in American-oriented values of democracy-building, human rights promotion, and social, political and economic growth and development. Some NGOs will not want to form any partnerships with governments, with whose policy they disagree. The best strategy is to reach out to those who partnerships are the most congenial to the American position. If there is widespread opposition across reputable NGOs to some American policy position, then perhaps it might be a good time to open dialogue about the policy itself. A perfect example of how pressure from outside government served the government's public diplomacy efforts in the end is the global civil society movement to ban landmines. The U.S. has not given in entirely to the movement's demands, but the lesson from the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams is that it is better to listen and learn from our civil society compatriots than to increase efforts to dismiss movement claims altogether.

Finally, I'd like us to consider the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski who wrote recently: "It is important to ask ourselves, as citizens, whether a world power can provide global leadership on the basis of fear and anxiety. Can we really mobilize support, even of friends, when we tell them that if you are not with us you are against us? [This] calls for serious debate about America's role in the world, which is served by an abstract, quasi-theological definition of the war on terrorism....We should cooperate not only with each other at home, but with our allies abroad."

In his spirit, when it comes to public diplomacy efforts, we are a paramount power, but we are not omnipotent. We need our allies, Europe, Japan, Canada, the Netherlands, South Africa, Mexico, wherever they may be, because there is much more we share in values and interests even when we disagree. We cannot strengthen our alliances if we continue to dictate over dialogue. Our public diplomacy must lead with the ideal that it is better to strengthen our position through dialogue rather than defend our position through a monologue.