Public diplomacy . . . deals with the influence of public attitudes on the formation and execution of foreign policies. It encompasses dimensions of international relations beyond traditional diplomacy; the cultivation by governments of public opinion in other countries; the interaction of private groups and interests in one country with those whose job is communication, as between diplomats and foreign correspondents; and the processes of intercultural communications.
—Edmund Gullion, who coined the term public diplomacy in 1965
In early July 1997, USIA director Joseph Duffey called me in Brussels and asked me to return to USIA as counselor. It was the USIA’s most senior management position, but I would be the last counselor. I was flabbergasted. In two years the agency was slated to become part of the Department of State. Exchange programs and other USIA components would fall under the direction of the department’s new undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. I was fully aware that my USIA colleagues were justifiably concerned about the assimilation of USIA’s mission into the Department of State and that the transition would be painfully uncomfortable. I could not believe Duffey wanted me to take on that task.
Once I agreed, I received a call from Assistant Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy, who seemed almost too enthusiastic as he congratulated me on my new assignment. I was skeptical, but I appreciated his reference to my being a consensus builder. Pat Kennedy and I had collaborated on the colocation issue of USIA offices in embassy buildings in the past. We were always cordial in our discussions, despite USIA’s heightened concerns of restricted access to foreign publics that came with colocation in embassy buildings. Standalone USIA foreign operations welcomed the public, whereas heavy security around embassies made visiting difficult. We made accommodations both agencies accepted. USIA and State, however, were two very different organizations, with two very different cultures.
To be effective advocates for U.S. government positions abroad, Edward R. Murrow, the first USIA director, said the agency needed to be present “at the takeoff,” when policy decisions were being made, not just at the landing. Too often, however, USIA public affairs counselors were tasked with advocating for policies with minimal advance briefs and little to no contributions.
This “merger” was not going to be easy. I made every effort to select the most knowledgeable and objective USIA officers to coordinate with State on personnel, budget, and regional and functional bureaus. I researched the successes and failures of major corporate mergers. Since I was recovering from major surgery shortly after receiving my new assignment, I had time to do the research while I was in Brussels. The effort proved beneficial in my initial exchanges with State colleagues. None of us at USIA were pleased with the merger. Brian Atwood, the director of USAID, fought hard against the amalgamation, but USIA director Duffey did not contest it. The loss of a forty-year institution with a track record of success in building relationships in the global community remains a bitter subject among many former USIA officers.
Think tanks and academic institutions have written scores of studies examining the pros and cons of this merger, and many chronicle the value of USIA programs in the world’s conflict regions. Others identify the need for educational and cultural exchanges that were the lifeblood of effective public diplomacy during the Cold War. I would venture to say, they are still the lifeblood of diplomacy in today’s terror-filled world.
Imagine sixty-six hundred anxious USIA employees tasked with new responsibilities in the State Department, where the relationship was already strained. Distrust, dislike, and in some cases disdain filled the atmosphere. Pat Kennedy and I traveled to several regional public affairs officers’ conferences abroad to be totally transparent on programmatic, administrative, and personnel operations once the merger was complete. Our candid discussions with embassy staffers at these meetings diminished much of the apprehension, but not all.
To mesh the staffs of the two agencies with minimal disruption was stressful, to put it mildly. I managed with the incredible help of USIA’s senior policy officer, superb area directors, and dedicated administrative officers, including Kenton Keith, ambassador to Qatar, 1992–95. Miller Crouch, Steve Chaplin, Rick Ruth, Stan Silverman, and a host of colleagues provided realistic recommendations and comprehensive briefs on each aspect of the integration. In the majority of integration issues, their dedication to excellence and openness brought mutually acceptable results.
The politics inside USIA and in the Department of State made the Greek and Turkish conflicts I dealt with for seventeen years pale in comparison. The absence of reorganization legislation, continued budget cuts, requests for details from the State Department and other U.S. government agencies, ambassadorial and deputy chief of mission assignments, and frequent inquiries from Congress gave me daily opportunities to exhibit the conflict resolution skills I learned while at Fletcher. They also gave me ample opportunity to call upon the consensus-building skills that I gained from my Greek and Turkish assignments.
My daily interactions involved meeting with senior leaders in the Department of State, many of whom were political appointees. When I returned to USIA, my senior collaborators were career Foreign and Civil Service officers. Each group had a different perspective on the merger. Consequently, my approach to State was designed to provide immediate solutions while my USIA colleagues took a long-term view of the merger’s effects on USIA programs. It was harder to change the mind-sets and perceptions of the career USIA officers than those of my new colleagues at State. For State officers, policy formulation was critical. How USIA articulated or promoted that policy was secondary. Few at State considered early policy deliberations with USIA area directors worth their time. Faced once again with the takeoff-versus-landing analogy, I attended each meeting armed with the best evidence to illustrate the importance of USIA officers being present when policy decisions were made. We would have welcomed being present when the George H. W. Bush administration contemplated the war in Iraq, when we could have presented approaches to developing messages for foreign audiences more likely to open dialogues with the United States, no matter how unpopular our actions might be in the affected regions.
Very few State officers understood the strategic planning involved before USIA mounted a cultural or educational event in a county. We conducted public opinion poll research before we crafted a new program. Before the detailed discussions that we held during the transition period, I am not sure many of our State officers realized how valuable such advance research could be for influencing and promoting the success of a policy initiative. When State colleagues became aware of the detailed work involved in mounting public diplomacy programs, they became far more interested in our approach.
Although the expression public diplomacy had existed since the mid-1960s, the term did not really take hold until the transition of USIA into the State Department. Public diplomacy was coined in 1965 by Dean Edmund Gullion at my alma mater, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. It deals with the influence of foreign public attitudes on the formation and execution of our foreign policies. It encompasses the dimensions of international relations beyond traditional diplomacy, such as the cultivation by governments of public support for their policies in other countries; interaction of private groups and interests in one country with those of another; local media reporting on foreign affairs and its impact on policy implementation; communication between those whose job is communication, as between diplomats and foreign correspondents; and the process of intercultural communications.
In the State Department there were four specialty career tracks for Foreign Service officers: political officers, economic officers, consular officers, and management officers. During the transition discussions, we established a new career track for Foreign Service officers entitled public diplomacy. A deputy assistant secretary for public diplomacy was designated for each geographic bureau. These geographic bureaus are responsible for directing what ambassadors do at our embassies and what priorities they embrace in every country where we have an embassy. Getting public diplomacy directly involved in this structure was our “aha” moment.
I found it enlightening. I attended State Department senior meetings four days a week, which Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and Ambassador Thomas Pickering chaired. They often gave me a bemused look when I spoke about public opinion research or press analyses in conflict regions. They probably expected superficial reporting from me on speaker or performing artist programs. I remember early on in my USIA career the reactions of some State colleagues who indicated they saw minimal value in a speaker or a performing arts program. Yet many of them were anxious to have their top contacts get tickets for such events. What better way to develop a relationship with a valuable contact than through social events and cultural outreach?
To this day, there is a misperception that public diplomacy is synonymous with public relations. Many political appointees, because they come from the private sector, often think that the terms are interchangeable. This misunderstanding has led to attempts at “branding” embassies and “marketing” America. Charlotte Beers, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, was convinced the Madison Avenue marketing approach would win friends and influence people, but America and its values are not products to be marketed. They involve complex institutions and belief systems that cannot be explained in sixty-second commercials. Advertising is not the right strategy for effective public diplomacy programs.
Meetings with State’s senior leadership allowed me to highlight the value of speaker programs, ethics in journalism workshops, rule of law seminars, panels on civil society and women in government or entrepreneurship, and the all-encompassing American studies conferences. As I offered summaries of field reports that spoke of more positive U.S. press coverage, comprehensive political reports, and heightened credibility with contacts, I could see a change in State’s view of USIA’s work. Joseph Nye coined the term soft power in the late 1980s, but it took on greater meaning in the twenty-first century, especially since the 9/11 tragedy. For years, my USIA colleagues and I knew that our work was based on this concept. Soft power is considered the ability of a country to influence others to do what it wants through persuasion instead of force or coercion. We hear it frequently in foreign policy debates. We heard it often in former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s testimony before foreign relations committees. In fact, she might be credited with coining the term smart power as a combination of soft and hard power.
The more I read in preparation for teaching my UCF students, the more I saw multiple references to public diplomacy successes in the State Department and the Department of Defense. For example, U.S.–North Korean relations warmed up, albeit briefly, when the normally anti-American regime allowed the 2008 performance of the New York Philharmonic at a Pyongyang theater along with a broadcast of the concert on North Korean television.
For two tense years, I worked closely with my State colleagues to put in place a viable new structure within the department. My strongest and most trusted advocate in this process at State was Ambassador Marc Grossman. Marc and I had served together in Turkey in the early 1990s. We developed a positive working relationship from that assignment, which lasted throughout the rest of my diplomatic career. Whenever I had a particularly challenging issue, I would seek Marc’s counsel. He appreciated USIA’s programs throughout his career, and I was comfortable requesting his counsel.
Some bureaus in the State Department integrated USIA’s officers directly into their activities. Other bureaus were less interested. The more skeptical State employees accepted the new former USIA colleagues as long as those officers did not compete with them for advancement. I was reminded of my arrival at State from the White House.
Miller Crouch suggested that we begin with USIA’s Western European director, Brian Carlson. Not only did Brian possess the right temperament, but he was one of the most highly respected area directors in USIA. Brian worked with Marc Grossman to have an area director for public diplomacy housed in State’s geographic bureau and help craft public diplomacy programs for the regions. That approach became the model for other bureaus to follow. It was a success mainly because of Marc’s and Brian’s intellects and personalities and their mutual respect. Having State and USIA staffers working in concert ensured well-targeted programs. USIA officers were at the “takeoff.”
During the consolidation and with the steady support of my deputy Mark Jacobs, we wanted to ensure the viability of our respected training program. State agreed that USIA had an efficient training program for new, midlevel, and senor USIA officers. That integration went smoothly, no doubt because of the personalities of Dr. Katherine Lee, our director of training, and Ambassador Ruth A. Davis, then director of the Foreign Service Institute. USIA required a month-long course for press and cultural attachés to learn the historical and cultural landscapes of their new assignments. They arrived at post confident and prepared to navigate their new surroundings. Former USIA officers continue to teach effective public diplomacy courses at the FSI.
With area directors gradually becoming integrated in the State geographic bureaus, with our training program well integrated, and with the personnel systems moving toward total integration, a new undersecretary was announced. Evelyn Lieberman became the first undersecretary of public diplomacy and public affairs after the consolidation. She came on board a few months before the formal ceremony took place. Lieberman, Secretary Albright, and I presided at the final “handing over of the keys” ceremony. (The event took place two days before I married Wilfred Thomas.) The ceremony’s venue was in front of the former USIA headquarters, which is now State Building #44 at 301 C Street SW. The entire city block in front of the building was closed to traffic. It was filled with USIA colleagues. We made our remarks, we placed the State Department emblem on the building, and the real work of integration began.
In the last fifteen years, nine political appointees have been the undersecretary of public diplomacy and public affairs. No undersecretary has stayed at the job longer than two years, and many stayed for only one. The undersecretary has almost no authority to do anything, making it difficult to make public diplomacy a vital aspect of foreign policy. Public diplomacy happens in the field under the authority of ambassadors who pay attention to the undersecretary or not, as they choose.
The undersecretaries have been respected journalists, former White House press secretaries, and media moguls, and some have been advertising and marketing gurus. However, even the best communication expert could not present America and its foreign policy goals as marketable products. Much of the world believes our interests abroad are motivated by a need for oil, other natural resources, and political and economic stability in a region.
To change human behavior and opinions requires patience and genuine dialogue. Flashy marketing approaches do not work. Correcting misperceptions about America requires cultural sensitivity, patience, relationship building, and trust. Contrary to popular belief, America’s advanced technology, celebrated universities, military might, and economic stability do not win the hearts and minds of others. I quickly learned that most world cultures value their long histories. They respect the lessons of their past. They rely on historical precedent in making decisions. Citizens of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Western Europe often remind us of how young we are as a nation. Americans have a great deal to learn from other countries. We work best when we work in partnership.