by Craig Hayden

It’s now been many many days since the event at George Washington University, New Approaches to U.S. Global Outreach: Smart Power on the Front Lines of Public Diplomacy. The event, put on by the Institute for Public diplomacy and Global Communication, was interesting and frustrating at the same time. I had planned to blog about it earlier, and I am doing so now with the alacrity of a 19th century conversation by post. At any rate, here is my two cents… to no one’s surprise, the panelists reiterated the most pressing need: leadership. And right now, the opportunities for public diplomacy to capitalize on the energy of the Obama presidency are swirling in the bowl, so to speak.

Bruce Gregory’s eloquent introductory keynote (including an unsolicited shoutout to yours truly) neatly summarized the point at which the U.S. public diplomacy community currently resides. The culmination of numerous reports, white papers, email arguments, blogs, and commissioned studies point to the singular observation that there is no real leadership on PD. Instead, there is a wealth of related efforts cross-branded as public diplomacy or strategic communication, but little ability or effort to link these programs into a coherent process of management and strategic direction. There is a “tribal” division between public diplomacy and strategic communication, reflecting the different attitudes and motives of the State Department and the Department of Defense. But even that’s not the real problem. As the Africom joint operation demonstrates, there are novel experiments in crafting productive interagency efforts.

No, the problem is strategy, accountability, and responsibility. I’m not talking about the need for a coordinated message strategy. In a pluralistic, complex, global media ecology – there is no need (or place) for a monolithic Cold War contest of ideology. I don’t mean the Center for Strategic communication style intervention that Senator Brownback suggested last year. I mean policy and program leadership that can effectively assess what is being done and coordinate the interagency responsibilities for what we loosely call public diplomacy.

I’m not saying anything new here. Mark Taplin at GW nicely summarized the event here, and followed up with thoughtful comments on Gregory’s speech here. But there may be a brewing discontent with the current point of stasis that now defines the public diplomacy policy apparatus and community of attendant commentators. If you don’t believe me, just read this.

I guess my own moments of clarity at the event came when the excellent Dan Sreebny admitted to the State Department’s own inability to even have an inventory of what is being done for public diplomacy, let alone a kind of accounting (both in terms of resources, costs, and effectiveness). Then, Rosa Brooks of the DoD offered that her office is also trying to get a handle on what is being done. As she admitted, this takes time. But let me reiterate again – the U.S. government doesn’t appear to have a solid handle on what it is doing for public diplomacy and strategic communication. At least at a coordinated, strategic level. And this is, needless to say, a problem.

What the U.S. government appears to have are well-trained, passionate, and intelligent people doing public diplomacy and strategic communication. At a “tactical” or “grass-roots” level, this is a positive development. I was struck by the fantastic presentation of State’s Aaron Snipe’s experience in Iraq on a PRT mission, where he describes himself getting involved in local cultural practices (like his time participating in a sheep dip alongside Iraqi tribesmen), and on getting the Iranian-backed religious channel to start covering U.S. on-the-ground public diplomacy efforts. Amazing, encouraging, and something we can learn from.

In sum, I think the event was a great snapshot of where the government is going in terms of coordinating an interagency process of public diplomacy. More importantly, I think future events should focus in depth on the practices of PD “in the field” – that can help to focus and energize efforts at the strategic level to provide leadership and direction of U.S. public diplomacy.