by Craig Hayden

How do you justify public diplomacy in a global public forum? In an era when U.S. political candidates can casually suggest war with another country and say that leadership instincts over expertise are necessary for managing national security – it’s hard to imagine much of a national (U.S.) constituency for the ambiguous benefits of public diplomacy as a strategic priority. Why bother emphasizing a nuanced communication strategy, when your discourse implies that the only thing adversaries understand is decisive force? Plus, when it’s relatively common knowledge the global public opinion about the United States is pretty negative – how do you “sell” public diplomacy?

Enter James Glassman, the likely last public diplomacy czar for the Bush administration. On a recent trip to the UK – he made some telling remarks about how to argue about public diplomacy. In response, Wandren PD offers up an interesting evaluation of James Glassman’s recent comments about the goals of U.S. public diplomacy. But first, what did Glassman actually say?

In an interview, Glassman was forced to acknowledge that the rhetoric of U.S. policies were part of the problem, but, that the U.S. had made great strides in adapting (or perhaps attenuating) its rhetoric to address concerns over U.S. policy. “Overtime, we’ve gotten it right,” he said.
But this begs the question: gotten what right? Glassman offers that while the ‘standing’ of the U.S. makes it easier to achieve its foreign policy goals, “improving our image is not an end in itself.” To some, this might sound like a moving of the goal posts for judging PD. Actually, it reflects a more or less consensus position articulated in numerous advisory reports since 2001. PD is important because public opinion and understanding of U.S. policies matter – but popularity and standing are not the ultimate goals. Put another way, it is better to be understood than liked.

And yet, Wandren’s concern is that the very call to action for a global effort to combat extremism runs into problems when Glassman, speaking for the U.S., indicates that its goals are actually the world’s goals. It is the way in which Glassman’s rhetoric articulates the mission of public diplomacy as both a national strategy and global project to combat violent extremism that Wandren finds troubling. For Wandren, this rhetorical move conflating U.S. with foreign interest is endemic of a larger problem facing U.S. PD:

Misunderstanding is also a problem for the construction of US Public Diplomacy. The failure to nuance rhetoric so that it supports and is part of a collective effort, rather than constructing a national narrative and claiming it as a global public good, demonstrates a misunderstanding what is useful to local communities that go toe to toe with groups seeking to target civilians.

Yes, U.S. public diplomacy efforts, including partnerships with local democracy advocates and programs designed to deter youthful involvement in extremist organizations are indeed hampered by association with the United States. This is a symbolic problem, or as rhetorical/literary theorist Kenneth Burke might have said, a “consubstantiality” issue. If the U.S. is indeed engaged in a “War” of “ideas” – and Glassman was clearly making this distinction in his view of the strategic mandate for PD – then what happens when ideas that have deep diachronic roots like “democracy,” “freedom,” and “liberalism”, are irrevocably linked to a very unpopular U.S. government? To reassert a point made over and over – America’s “diplomacy” of deeds has made efforts to evangelize value alternatives to extremist movements highly problematic. Words like “Democracy” are now, through mediated strategies of persuasion amidst extremist networks, consubstantive with events such as “Abu Ghraib.”

And so, Glassman seems to understand the ethos problem – and suggests that the U.S. “walk softly” with its far-reaching policy rhetoric, and work through proxies and global partners to achieve the goal of deterring extremism. Not a terrible idea. Yet in promoting this strategy – he treads the line between a paternalistic view of America leading PD with describing it as an inclusive enterprise amongst actors who share the same interests. I don’t think he implies a U.S. monopoly on the virtues of liberal, democratic culture – but maybe it still comes off as a U.S. – led endeavor – at least to Wandren. For Wandren, Glassman’s promotion of public diplomacy emphasizes too much a “national narrative” of U.S. public diplomacy leadership.

To which I respond – not a tremendous problem for speaking about public diplomacy in the United States. Consider what Glassman faces in the sphere of political talk at home. My question for Wandren is this: how would you reconcile the “national narrative” with the rhetorical burden of crafting an inclusive global audience for coordinated public diplomacy?

Let’s contextualize Glassman’s remarks a bit further. There is certainly nothing new about rhetorical attempts to universalize American political virtues as synonymous with the imagined community of [western] civilization around the world. From stern jeremiads to invocations of righteousness (“city on a hill” anyone?) – U.S. rhetoric has had its moments of sweeping and inclusive grandeur, often to stir domestic support. I don’t say this to excuse the U.S. nor Glassman. I just say this to suggest that Glassman speaks to multiple audience: domestic and foreign. In this world of widely appropriated global media and information networks he is exposed and sticks to a managed script.

But what about promoting public diplomacy to both a domestic and foreign audience? To correct the rhetoric of U.S.-lead public diplomacy would be to highlight the historical partnerships and collective action in previous decades of what could be construed as public diplomacy. Glassman, however, navigates multiple audiences – as well as the historical inertia of how policy-makers justify public diplomacy int the U.S.. I think Wandren does a good job here, actually, of tracing the connection between the symbolic content of foreign policy rhetoric and its constitutive relationship to policy itself. Put another way, policy rhetoric is a resource that constructs as much as reflects the policy milieu. The question remains, how do we make our rhetoric perform the kind of end-goals we want for a public diplomacy. How does it hail global partners in such a way as to unite allies behind a common purpose, rather than to highlight the parochial imperatives of rhetoric for a national audience?

For Wandren, I think he finds this kind of conflation of national and global interest divisive. For the students of global media and information networks, I would argue it is doubly dangerous to be divisive in this perhaps unintentional way – where messages are easily appropriate, interpreted, and repackaged through news frames to justify enduring narratives of U.S. congratulatory exceptionalism.

I whole-heartedly agree that if “the end goal is communities empowered to face a common challenge, using rhetoric which damages that goal should be avoided, however tempting it is to promote the ‘national.’” Perhaps, following Wandren, the U.S. can begin by mapping out an inclusive public face by the way it addresses global publics. I still believe, however, that judgment of Glassman’s rhetoric must be tempered by recognition of his institutional position and his domestic constituencies.