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Recent
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April
7, 2003
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April 8,
2003
Why
Uncle Ben Hasn't Sold Uncle Sam
A Former Foreign Service Staffer on the Bush
Administration's Policies Failures
By JOHN BROWN
When a war isn't fully on course, blame ineffective
propaganda. That certainly was the message of the Washington
Post in its Sunday "Outlook" edition (March 30). Several
articles, including one by a British psychological warfare specialist,
underscored that the U.S. had not won hearts and minds in the
Middle East during its military campaign in Iraq. The it's-the-propaganda's-fault-stupid
syndrome was also in evidence in the media during the early stages
of the Afghan war, when the U.S didn't seem quite able to rout
the Taliban. Again in the pro-Iraq war Post (October 21, 2002),
Richard Holbrooke opined: "Call it public diplomacy, or
public affairs, or psychological warfare or - if you really
want to be blunt -- propaganda. But whatever it is called, defining
what this war is really about in the minds of the 1 billion Muslims
in the world will be of decisive and historic importance."
But the failures of "whatever it
is called" during the Bush administration go beyond particular
episodes of the armed conflicts it so willingly embraces. Indeed,
the administration's public diplomacy --in official State Department
parlance, U.S. government programs that engage, inform and influence
foreign audiences -- has been marked by one catastrophe after
another, from limp videos about Muslim life in America to simplistic
brochures on terrorism. Millions throughout the globe now demonstrate
against the U.S. and its policies.
Given this universally negative image
of the United States, unprecedented in our history, it's no wonder
that the head of the administration's public diplomacy effort,
Charlotte Beers, the marketing guru who brought us the Uncle
Ben ad campaigns, recently resigned, officially for reasons of
health. A successor has not yet been named.
Reasons for the failures of the public
diplomacy since Bush took office abound. First, public diplomacy
-- like diplomacy itself -- has been put on the back burner by
the White House and the Pentagon. What really matters for this
administration is force, not negotiations or communications with
foreign publics. Soft power, America's ability to influence the
world through its achievements and ideals, is passé to
Bush and his advisers. After 9/11, the president tells us, we
must focus on fighting terrorists, rogue states, and all those
who are against us. It's an eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth
world, with no room for the subtleties of diplomacy, traditional
or public.
Second, Bush's public diplomacy hasn't
been properly integrated in policy as a whole. The result: Messages
that are out of sync with or irrelevant to what the administration
actually does. As Peter Freundlich put it on an NPR program:
"We are sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to
make the point that might does not make right, as Saddam Hussein
seems to think it doesWe cannot leave in power a dictator who
ignores his own people. And if our people, and people elsewhere
in the world, fail to understand that, then we have no choice
but to ignore them."
The White House's Office of Global Communications
is supposed to fix this gap between policy and message, but the
world (and, I sense, the State Department's Public Diplomacy
and Public Affairs staff as well) is as confused as ever about
what the administration is up to. No wonder that conspiracy theories
about our Iraqi adventure abound. Is it for oil? Is it to avenge
Bush Sr. against Saddam's assassination attempt against him?
Is to redraw the map of the Middle East? Nobody knows for sure,
and who can blame them, since the policy and the message don't
gibe.
Third, the formulation of a downgraded
public diplomacy by Ms. Beers and company has been marked by
a singular lack of imagination. Ms. Beers may have been able
to understand why people hate dandruff (hence the success of
her Head and Shoulders commercials), but she was clearly incapable
of penetrating the mentality of people in countries other than
her own. The ability to empathize with other cultures -- which
is the aim of the vastly successful Fulbright educational exchange
program -- was clearly not her forte. Hence pathetic videos on
U.S. "values" that insulted foreign audiences by their
superficiality.
Let's briefly return to propaganda, which
so many erroneously confuse with public diplomacy, including,
evidently, Mr. Holbrooke cited above. Now there is nothing wrong
with propaganda per se. The best writers on the subject agree
that it is a morally neutral process of persuasion used (under
another name, rhetoric) since at least the ancient Greeks. It
would be naïve to think that propaganda is not an element
in public diplomacy. But the trouble starts when propaganda is
used stupidly and makes a mockery of public diplomacy. This is
what the administration has done, and it's the fourth reason
that its public diplomacy has failed.
Take the so-called "justifications"
for the war in Iraq, which so clearly failed to convince the
world. They show all the marks of crude propaganda:
* The repetition of unconnected words
and slogans--weapons of mass destruction, regime change, he gassed
his own people--instead of presenting a coherent and credible
argument;
* The demonization of everyone, from
the Iraqi to the French, who disagree with the president's policy
- instead of providing a solid and logical refutation of
their views;
* The appeal to atavistic emotions -
fear of the other, suspicion of the unknown -- instead of making
a honest case through serious intellectual discussion.
Propaganda is a bad word in America,
so "branding" was a much used phrase during Ms. Beer's
tenure. It's not surprising that the expression would be so popular
among the administration. After all, when asked by a New York
Times reporter last year why Bush's war plans were fully announced
only after Labor Day, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card
replied that "from a marketing point of view you don't introduce
new products in August."
Public diplomacy is not branding for
the simple reason that public diplomacy deals with a country,
not a product. But, even from a branding, marketing perspective,
the administration's public diplomacy has been a disaster. Jack
Trout, an advertising man who began working for the State Department
last fall, is quoted in an article in the Christian Science Monitor
(March 24) as saying that "America had one idea attached
to its brand. We presented ourselves as the world's last superpower.
And that was the world's worst branding idea." Bush's strategy,
says Trout, "was a moving target. In the world of marketing,
you pick one idea and it's what you do."
Finally, the Bush administration has
failed in its public diplomacy because it has not remedied the
Clinton administration's mishandling of it, which included the
closing of open-access libraries overseas, the underfunding of
educational and cultural programs, and the consolidation of the
United States Information Agency (USIA, established in 1953 to
carry out U.S. government information and educational programs)
into the State Department in 1999. The small-scale USIA, for
all its faults, was nimble and flexible enough to react quickly
to public diplomacy challenges such as rapidly changing overseas
opinion. The State Department, a bloated bureaucracy, is all
too often incapable of doing this effectively. The loss of USIA
is especially felt at the field level, where public diplomacy
officers feel cramped by the excessive rules and regulations
of the State Department hierarchy, which looks down at them for
being engaged in what it considers non-priority activities.
What is to be done? Since 9/11 there
have been many recommendations on how to improve our failed public
diplomacy, including a lengthy report by the Council on Foreign
Relations which outlines in detail what steps should be taken.
As a former practitioner of the trade, I would suggest four ways
to bring public diplomacy back on it feet:
First, "attitude lobotomy,"
in the words of Thomas Friedman. The administration, if it's
capable of it, must simply get out of its parochial shell and
view the world in a more nuanced way.
Second, we need what I'd call preemptive
public diplomacy - planning and implementing information,
educational, and cultural programs that go beyond the immediate
needs of the moment but are based on our long-term interests.
Third, we should increase U.S. government
artistic presentations in countries where American culture is
viewed unidimensionally as vulgar Hollywood-produced violence.
Finally, instead of having foreign service
officers who like pawns on a chessboard move from one country
to another every two or three years, we should develop area experts
who become thoroughly familiar with a particular part of the
world--and especially, at this time, with Muslim countries. With
knowledgeable people in the field who are listened to in Washington,
public diplomacy programs can be shaped effectively to promote
American national interests.
Of course, no public diplomacy will fix
poor policy. So no matter how much propaganda is used to support
the war on Iraq, the U.S. stands to lose much in this tragic
conflict, even with a so-called military "victory"
that can be achieved only at the cost of enormous devastation
and the loss of international good will toward the United States.
John Brown
recently resigned from the Foreign Service to protest the Bush
administration's war plans. The title for this article comes
from a piece by Richard Tomkins in Financial Times on line (March
5, 2003). He can be reached at: jbrown@counterpunch.org
Yesterday's
Features
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell's Shame
John
Chuckman
Was Einstein Right About Israel?
David
Krieger
The Meaning of Victory
Tom
Gorman
The Mantra of the Troops: Support
or Treason?
Adam
Federman
The Absence of War
Vijay
Prashad
There Are No More Arguments
Tom
Stephens
The End of the Innocence
Mickey
Z.
Makes Me Sic (Sic): Copy Editing
Bush Speak
Pierre
Tristam
War Coverage: a Dishonest Reality
Show
Hammond
Guthrie
The Deadly Mihrab
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/04
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