Mr. Seidemann, a legal expert on Palestinian-Israeli relations in Jerusalem, has spent the past twenty years lobbying senior-level officials in Washington, Paris, London, Moscow, Cairo and both halves of Jerusalem to broker a two-state compromise which would, if not cure the cancerous conflict eating away at Middle East relations, at least put it into remission.

Cause of Death

“A surge of settlement activity the likes of which we have not witnessed since the early 1970s,” Mr. Seidemann explained, has enabled me “to project with a fair degree of authority what the map of Jerusalem will look like in two years time.”

From that projection two “unprecedented” conclusions can be drawn, he said. First, “the map of Jerusalem will be so Balkanized geographically and demographically that a political division of the city will no longer be possible.”

Second, the White House is for the first time in history completely beholden to Israeli leadership. “During the last six months, my Prime Minister Netanyahu has said in word and in deed, ‘President Obama you have no leverage over me on this issue. I know and you know you will not engage me publicly and probably not privately on these issues until probably after the November elections. I am at liberty to act with impunity.”

The United States’ February 18, 2011 veto of “its own language” on a Security Council resolution condemning settlement activity, together with the defunding of UNESCO a day after Palestine achieved full statehood membership there, reflect Washington’s “colossal trend of self-marginalization” in the peace talks, he said.

Next week, Mr. Seidemann plans to tell President Obama in person that if he chooses to cow to Israeli pressure and ignore the settlements issue until after the November elections, “by the time you get back there may not be anything left to talk about.”

But “short of catastrophe,” he added, “there is not going to be any engagement from Washington until after the elections. And maybe then none.”

A War of Rebirth?

“What I have described here is a state of acute disequilibrium in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Mr. Seidemann said while calling attention to the brewing war next door in Syria. “Having two states of disequilibrium simultaneously creates pressure along the tectonic plates. These things correct themselves in one of two ways: either a new robust political paradigm – which is not in the cards over the next several months – or an armed conflict. I have a feeling that there is a war waiting to break out there to realign things. It just hasn’t decided where it will break out and over what.”

Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Ammar Awad (A general view of a Jewish settlement known to Israelis as Har Homa and to Palestinians as Jabal Abu Ghneim is seen near Jerusalem November 16, 2011. Israel said on Tuesday it will invite bids soon for constructing 814 homes in occupied land it considers part of Jerusalem, pursuing a decision to speed up building in settlements after Palestinians won full membership in the U.N. cultural agency).

REUTERS/Deborah Gembara – Detainees participate in an early morning prayer session at Camp IV at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay

On New Year’s Eve, President Barack Obama signed into law the post-9/11 practice of detaining terrorist suspects indefinitely without charge. Shock and awe waves rippled through the blogosphere in response to the move, not least because Obama had threatened to veto an earlier version of the bill. Other grumbles included its lack of temporal or geographic limitations, which signaled to some the potential for military detention of anyone, anywhere, anytime.

But despite congressional approval of the well-worn practice, most rights wonks don’t expect any significant change in the frequency or type of indefinite detentions going forward. They do, however, maintain that the practice breaches international humanitarian law and undermines counterterrorism efforts.

One such expert, Martin Sheinin, professor of international law and UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism from 2005 to 2011, spoke with me about the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and its potential to derail US counterterrorism efforts.

The War on Law

To put the controversy in context, Mr. Sheinin explained why Washington supports indefinite detention:

“The NDAA builds upon the well-established rule in international humanitarian law (law of armed conflict) that during an international armed conflict combatants, i.e. soldiers of one of the states involved in the war, can be detained as prisoners of war until the end of hostilities. When there is an international armed conflict and when someone is a combatant, then such detention does not amount to arbitrary detention that would violate international human rights law.”

When the “global war on terror” was waged following 9/11, he said, the possibility of indefinite detention was extended to terrorism, “far beyond genuine situations of international or even non-international armed conflict. And it extends indefinite detention to persons who are not combatants. For instance, persons who are held to have provided substantial support to terrorism would be subject to indefinite detention.”

Against that background, Mr. Sheinan suggested several ways in which violating human rights in the course of countering terrorism can “backfire.” Rights violations can “add to causes of terrorism,” he said, “both by perpetuating ‘root causes’ that involve the alienation of communities and by providing ‘triggering causes’ through which bitter individuals make the morally inexcusable decision to turn to methods of terrorism.”

Further, “these kinds of legal provisions are always open for bad faith copying by repressive governments that will use them for their own political purposes.” Though such copying was found to be less common than expected, “repressive governments may do so for their own political purposes.”

“It is hard to see any practical advantage gained through the NDAA. It is just another form of what I call symbolic legislation, enacted because the legislators want to be seen as being ‘tough’ or as ‘doing something.’ The law is written as just affirming existing powers and practices and hence not providing any meaningful new tools in the combat of terrorism,” he concluded.

With Washington simultaneously fostering democratic transitions across the Middle East and North Africa and gambling on military exits from Iraq and Afghanistan, such “backfires” may well hamper development of the rule of law and respect for human rights when they are needed most.

Credit: CNN

It’s now apparent that Tunis and the many newly-“Occupied” cities are virtual neighbors – not geographically, of course, but in the newly-aroused global Vox Populi Community. These “neighbors”, although in vastly different societies, have common fundamental demands: “justice”, “fairness” and “voice”.

In this historic year of 2011 something seminal seems to have entered the global ether. The successful October Tunisian elections remind us that what began in the January demonstrations in Tunis has spread throughout North Africa, the Middle East and, in the U.S., first to  “Occupy Wall Street” in New York and then to “Occupy” cities across the country and well beyond. Fundamentally, that “something” is the eruption of long-repressed and/or greatly frustrated citizenry demanding change – existential change of governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya (with Syria and Yemen in the wings) and systemic adjustment in many other countries.

The ultimate outcomes are varying greatly. Autocrats have fallen, economic systems are being shaken. Establishment leaders everywhere should wonder whether, truly, “this time it’s different” — whether the evolving global network society is not only transmitting, but also magnifying, the power of public opinion. (Mark Twain once wrote that some think of public opinion as “the voice of God.”)

Bridging The Divide

Our good friends at Bridging The Divide, the Washington D.C. based international non-governmental-organization linking civil society across international borders on behalf of peace, rights issues and good governance (www.bridging-the-divide.org), have put the case compellingly. David R. Holdridge, CEO: “Sovereignty is not what it used to be … Now the technologies and a youth fed up with war and despair are silently, but inexorably, creating a union … They are, in historic proportions, going on line. They are accelerating daily the great trade in ideas over The World Wide Web.”

The epic changes achieved in North Africa this year, once thought a quixotic mission, should give inspiration to the currently exercised vox populi in the U.S. Whether sitting in at “Occupy” sites or inactive but confounded by what appears to be a largely dysfunctional national government, these Americans might well consider a commitment to perhaps an equally quixotic – and yet seminal – mission,  “Get Special Interests Money Out Of Politics.”(Surely, to be sustainable, the “Occupy” movements must soon articulate a specific, focused message and a political destination that will resonate among the middle class and the political center.)

Americans For Campaign Reform

The “special interests” mission has, of course, been addressed in fits and starts for decades. But now, the great national attention being paid to perceived vast economic disparity in America – think, “the 99% vs. 1%” – presents an opportunity for renewed action and long-delayed impact. An epicenter for this admittedly Sisyphian effort may well coalesce around the non-profit Americans For Campaign Reform (www.ACRreform.org).

ACR, chaired by four prestigious former U.S. Senators – Bill Bradley, Bob Kerrey, Warren Rudman and Alan Simpson (two Democrats, two Republicans) – is a non-partisan organization championing public funding as an alternative to the special interests campaign finance well ingrained in U.S. national politics and magnified by last year’s Citizens United Supreme Court decision.

ACR has summarized this systemic national issue quite well: “Congress hasn’t solved the most pressing challenges facing our country…because our leaders must cater to the special interests that fund campaigns.” Championing public funding for federal races – President, Senate and House – ACR seeks citizen support for proposed legislation, The Fair Elections Act (S.752 and HR. 1826), to achieve what Senator Bradley envisions: “the power rest[ing] with voters, not with special interests.”

Or, to interpret this goal in another vernacular, ACR seeks the triumph of the marketplace of ideas over the influence of the dollar.

Americans can gain inspiration from those people abroad who, with courage and perseverance against all odds, are grappling with the momentous challenges they have generated, nothing less than evolving fundamentally new political systems to improve their quality of life.

——————————————————————————————————————————————-

John Paluszek, senior counsel at Ketchum, is APR, a Fellow of The Public Relations Society of America and immediate past-chair of The Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management.

“Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons”
~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Much has been made about how the late technology giant Steve Job “changed our lives”. The Discovery Channel, not to be outdone by all the media hoopla surrounding his death, will air a one-hour documentary on Sunday 30 October entitled, iGenius: How Steve Jobs Changed the World. The program description states, “Steve Jobs was a creative and technological visionary who quite simply changed society as we know it. As co-founder and CEO of Apple Computer, Jobs ushered in personal computing to the masses, which in turn led to new innovations which completely changed our way of life.”

(Source: Google photos)

With praise like this, surely we will be seeing this tech demi-god’s face on Mount Rushmore in a few years. No, I am not a Steve Jobs or Apple “hater”.  Truth be told, I consider my IPad to be my most trustworthy non-human companion and I am enamored with all the other ultra-cool products in the Apple products pantheon. However, I have grown frustrated observing the extent to which our tech obsessed society celebrates “cool” gadgets and the super-rich entrepreneurs who bring them to market. Is it just me, or are we missing the real story and opportunity that contemporary tech breakthroughs offer to a world that confronts chronic challenges that threaten our collective prosperity and security? While the developed ‘West’ distracts itself with innovative gadgets, reality T.V. shows, new means of connectivity, and the other toys of modernity, the ‘Rest’ of the world (you know, that large swath of humanity in the blind spot of much of the West’s consciousness) wallows in the muddy waters of poverty, disease, exclusion, and hunger all while staring at a blank wall of hopelessness.

Friends, when will we see a shift in focus from iGeniuses and their gadgets to eDevelopment solutions that promise to transform the way the world feeds, shelters, cures, educates, and shares? Here are a few statistics related to the Rest that should serve as warning flags for us in the West.

• According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world.

• Number of children in the world, 2.2 billion – The number in poverty 1 billion (every second child).

• Close to half of all people in developing countries suffer at any given time from a health problem caused by water and sanitation deficits.

• Indoor air pollution resulting from the use of solid fuels [by poorer segments of society] is a major killer. It claims the lives of 1.5 million people each year, more than half of them below the age of five: that is 4000 deaths a day. To put this number in context, it exceeds total deaths from malaria and rivals the number of deaths from tuberculosis.

•  Survival for children Worldwide:

- 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (same as children population in France,   Germany, Greece and Italy)
-  1.4 million die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation

(Source: UNICEF)

Indeed, there remains lots of work to be done to create a more equitable world. Can some of the tools we take for granted in the West be leveraged to help to ameliorate some of these problems? The answer is an unequivocal ‘Yes’.

(Source: Google photos)

Thankfully there are non-profit organizations and even public ones like the U.S. Department of State that appear committed to harnessing all types of technology to help partner countries to confront the most vexing global challenges. Last October, at a Science and Technology event in Bogota, Colombia, Ms. Maria Otero, Under Secretary for Democracy and Global Affair  stated,   “We live in a world of increasing interdependencies and thus of shared global challenges- the challenges of economic development and growth, of providing our youth with a promising future, of improving health care for all our citizens, of sustainable agriculture, of energy security, of clean accessible water, of environmental conservation and of climate change effects. We live in exciting times where the scale of challenges being discussed here today is being matched by human ingenuity. Investment in S&T to provide joint technological and policy answers that mitigate the impact of global issues is therefore imperative. Every country’s competitiveness, development, prosperity, and stability will depend on having the capacity to fully participate in the knowledge-based economy of the 21st century.”

Bravo U.S. Department of State! I hope in the near future our increasingly tech centered society will begin to open our eyes to how technology can be used to bring about profound “society altering” transformations throughout the world. Perhaps private business, indeed all of us, will awake to the reality that it is good business (and good global citizenship) to extend a helping hand to the Rest as they struggle up their respective development Mount Everests. I am hopeful that all tech producers, as well as consumers, will collectively form a global coalition of partners, indeed a network, to harness technology to really “change the world”.

By the way, although I will be watching the iGenius documentary I plan on helping to write the eDevelopment story – its so much cooler!

McHale began by saying that power must be thought of using a more accurate metaphor, such as an inverted pyramid, a mass of active social participants crushing a single strongman. Her main argument touched on two important points: adaptive measures for the future and mistakes of the past. The second – and perhaps the more self-evident of the two- concerned U.S. reaction to the Arab Spring. In Tunisia, she argued, the U.S. was unable to engage effectively with the public. Years of policy norms dictated diplomacy was to be conducted through specific channels- between leaders, the elite, and a few key actors.

“Only months ago,” she said, “the set of actors who mattered in Tunisia was extremely limited. Whether in business or politics, a small group held the keys to power. Broader outreach was virtually impossible. And our Embassy and programs were largely designed to operate effectively in that world.” The government’s fault has been to ignore those that are driving change

McHale’s first point touched upon how the U.S. must reorient its own conceptions of foreign policy to adapt to this changed environment. Diplomacy must include some form of public engagement from the beginning, in order to reach past governmental channels and communicate more directly with society. Changing our attitude and approach to diplomacy is necessary not only to aid an unrepresented public, but also to improve U.S. image and broaden U.S. influence in hard to reach places.

Here McHale’s argument became hazier. She suggested that the U.S. must go on a public diplomacy offensive in order to effectively “contend with” various international influencers. Yet this view posits the U.S. as a weak player vying to influence the powerful masses, as if it were a game, dependent on who is the most technologically savvy in “the internet age.” McHale argues for using the same techniques as activists, working with the media as a product would target a consumer. (She indeed uses the metaphor of “a marketplace of ideas”).

This image is problematic. While the U.S. should alter its diplomacy to reflect wider channels, McHale’s argument for active public diplomacy comes off as pure propaganda. Indeed one of the core arguments surrounding public diplomacy is whether it can be effectively conducted through the state. Should public diplomacy be just that- public on both sides?

At 9:30 tomorrow morning (June 29^th), Under Secretary McHale will engage in the State Department’s efforts towards global diplomacy in action: a first ever international “Twitter Q & A.” (Information about submitting questions can be found here.) Perhaps a broad engagement with the public is what the State Department needs to show that their effort in public diplomacy is more than a propaganda project.

While most events were future-oriented, focusing on new tactics and strategy, using

Not Your Average White Band

social media to greatest effect, and showcasing cutting edge products and designs, several sessions provided a historical perspective on this region in transition for the mostly under 35 crowd in attendance.

Of particular interest was the screening of a recently released documentary, “Bijelo Dugme” by Serbian film director Igor Stoimenov, chronicling Yugoslavia’s most successful rock band, called Bijelo Dugme (White Button), whose sensational 15 year run paralleled the final decade and a half of Yugoslavia itself.

Back in the 1970’s and ‘80’s, while kids behind the Iron Curtain were secretly recording the Beatles and Rolling Stones from Western radio stations broadcasting on mostly jammed shortwave signals, Yugoslavia had a home grown rock group that brought its youth out en masse, filling concert halls and outdoor venues in unprecedented numbers.

As the 90 minute film documents through interviews with surviving band members, film directors and critics, and archival footage, in 1974, shortly after Tito’s government announced a constitution that gave greater powers to the constituent Yugoslav republics and autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina within Serbia, five guys from Sarajevo burst on the music scene singing,  “If I were a white button on your shirt…” to a driving beat and terrific guitar riffs.  Lacking a name, they decided to call the band “White Button,” after the song.

They soared to the top of the charts and soon, kids all over the country, in cities, towns and villages, went crazy over their music, a synthesis of rock and folk, with shades of Led Zeppelin, that seemed to speak to everyone.

One hundred thousand showed up for an outdoor concert in Belgrade in the summer of 1977.  Another performance in the city’s largest sports stadium in September, 1979, which this writer and her husband attended as young diplomats posted to the Yugoslav capital, felt like Woodstock, East European style.

Where's Tito?

At the height of their popularity, Bijelo Dugme played up their bad boy rock group reputation: drugs, sex, wild parties, all duly covered in the country’s tabloid press.  But the government did not hesitate to make an example of the band when things went too far: as a warning to youth on drug use, the band’s drummer was incarcerated for three years in Yugoslavia’s harshest prisons for possession of a small amount of hashish. He later committed suicide.  At another point, to atone for their decadent lifestyle, the band engaged in physical labor outdoors in the best tradition of communist youth brigades, all dutifully publicized by the media.

When in 1981, a year after Tito’s death, Kosovo Albanian students demonstrated and voiced calls for independence within Yugoslavia, Bijelo Dugme wrote and sang a song in Albanian in an effort, as they described it, to show support for the protestors’ desire to be recognized.  (Band member and songwriter Goran Bregovic was quoted as saying, “After so many years living together with them, why not try to learn a few Albanian words?”)

But as separatist sentiment grew in the late 80′s, Bijelo Dugme’s audiences took to chanting nationalist slogans in unison as they waited for concerts to begin, something the band members found quite distressing.

By 1989, disillusioned by what was going on in the country and musically running out of steam, the band broke up.  A year later, independence movements gained strength, beginning a new chapter in the region’s history.  Bijelo Dugme defined an era, and died with it.

[Click here to listen to one of their best known songs, “Bitanga i Princeza”  (The Tramp and the Princess).]

Some bloggers and commentators have criticized WikiLeaks for editing the 39 minutes of the engagement down into a much shorter 17 minute version that was then entitled “Collateral Murder.”  Left out of the shorter version were nearby movements of armed individuals.  Others take the Pentagon to task for failing to grant Reuters’ request that the tape be released to them under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in the first place.  (Reuters itself has been tentative at times in describing the version of events it received from the Pentagon.  One wonders why.)

Even given this fog of war and perception, some lessons emerge.

What we are witnessing, besides a lapse in judgment by young servicemen in charge of elaborate and deadly mobile weaponry, is a profound misunderstanding by senior military of the rules of accountability, not engagement.  When mistakes occur with deadly weapons, the public and its representatives (in both countries!) have a right to know exactly what happened.  That was the purpose of the U.S. FOIA when Congress voted it into law after Watergate.  Never again could the government keep information under wraps just because it was convenient to do so.  Unless there was a national security or legal reason to keep information secret, the government was supposed to make it available.

As difficult as it is to admit mistakes — and wartime mistakes are the most consequential of all — the effort to cover them up almost always turns out badly.  Look at Abu Ghraib, or Pat Tillman.  Because such wounds to the military’s reputation can only be healed by exposure to daylight, the way forward is to reveal them.  And, since such problems get revealed sooner or later, those in authority almost always find themselves not just defending their original behavior, but their subsequent efforts to cover it up or bury it in the bureaucracy.  Just ask the Vatican.

The news for the media is also quite distressing.  The victims of this attack, in a country where journalism is the deadliest of professions, were Iraqi citizens.  There was nothing virtual about their form of journalism, the kind that is all too rarely practiced by the remaining news gathering organizations here in the U.S.  They were on the ground, collecting facts, not opinions.

I had the privilege last week to meet with a visiting group of Iraqi editors and correspondents as the Wikileaks story broke.  At least one of them knew the victims of the helicopter attack.  For these Iraqis, the discussion of whether this constituted a war crime was slightly academic.  It was a scandal, one said.  When our discussion turned to what they had observed in the United States, one Iraqi remarked on the lack of international news on most U.S. news channels.   Like other groups of media and young professionals I’ve met with who were visiting the U.S. as guests of the State Department, these Iraqi journalists were struck by how scant CNN’s international news coverage was for American viewers compared to the CNN International programming they viewed via satellite back home.  I told them, without much enthusiasm, that more people had viewed the activist WikiLeaks footage than had seen the CNN prime time newscast the previous night.  I noted the august list of American news organizations that were listed as Wikileaks legal supporters (Associated Press, Hearst, Gannett, Scripps, ASNE, etc.).  Ironically, some of these very news groups have cut back on their foreign reporting in recent years.

Journalists, at their best, provide insight through first hand reporting.  Until shown otherwise, I will accept that the two Reuters staffers were just doing their job when they became targets of misdirected weaponry.  Still, is it not odd and disturbing that this story comes to us not via any news medium, not via any first-hand messengers?  Might it be that, here too, we have gotten in media precisely what we have asked for — drama first, dispassionate content a distant second?

The NYT and Post stories mainly deal with the Michael Furlong case now being investigated at the Pentagon.  Furlong, a senior civilian Defense Department employee, is alleged to have diverted funds intended for information-type programs in order to gather intelligence in Pakistan for military targeting.  Even if Furlong is cleared of any misuse of funds, there is a larger issue of establishing how the Pentagon’s very broadly defined “information” contracts are to be devised, reviewed and overseen.

Pincus cites a Pentagon internal review of these contracts:

Purchases of products and services made through major contracts included “military analysts, development of television commercials and documentaries, focus group and polling services, television air time, posters, banners, and billboards,” the inspector general reported. Smaller individual purchases under information-operations programs included “magazine publishing and printing services, newspaper dissemination, television and radio airtime, text messaging services, internet services and novelty items”…

The central concern here is not that the Pentagon is doing information outreach in certain countries and environments.  This may at times be well advised.  The problem is when the work is done without appropriate oversight or coordination with the State Department — which has lead responsibility for foreign public diplomacy and public affairs work.  Worse still is when the work is consigned to contractors who have no contact or accountability with State,  and who have every incentive to add superfluous information activities as extra “billable items.”

Undersecretary of State Judith McHale is putting great emphasis on coordination between State and the Department of Defense, and the “potential rebalancing of the respective roles, responsibilities, and resources of State and Defense in the public diplomacy and strategic communications arenas.”  One hopes that this effort will encompass the murky world of Pentagon contracting for foreign “information” activities, where clearly more oversight is needed.  To use the popular phase of the moment, there should be no “daylight” between State and Defense on what should be done, and a bit more daylight cast on what is taking place.

Judging by what’s been said so far, the news is less about grand strategy for an entire century than how to return public diplomacy to a prominent place in the country’s foreign policy.

What the State Department is trying to do, ten years after swallowing up the U.S. Information Agency, is to put some added impetus and authority behind its efforts to communicate with and influence foreign publics.  The job titles of some key public diplomacy positions in Foggy Bottom will be upgraded, and some of the public diplomacy turf that the State Department had ceded to the Pentagon in recent years will be reclaimed.

These changes may seem modest but, if implemented, they will be the first good news in quite a while for State’s public diplomacy officials, who have grown accustomed in recent years to frequent turnover in leadership in Washington and reduced influence and authority at U.S. embassies overseas.

As for field operations, McHale told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that her model for State’s work in public diplomacy would borrow from the sort of full-court approach now underway in Pakistan, called the “Pakistan Plan:”

The Pakistan Plan has four broad goals:  expand media outreach, counter extremist propaganda, build communications capacity, and strengthen people-to-people ties.  Our plan links elements of traditional public diplomacy with innovative new tools.  For instance, recognizing that extremist voices dominate in some of Pakistan’s media markets, we instituted a rapid response unit and a 24-hour multilingual hotline for the Embassy to respond to attacks, threats, and propaganda from the Taliban, al Qaeda, and their sympathizers…

As we strengthen our people-to-people ties with Pakistanis, our aim has been to increase positive American presence on the ground in Pakistan.  To do this we are focusing on more exchanges, more presence, more Lincoln Centers, more face-to-face meetings with engaged citizens in Pakistan, and more non-official contacts between Pakistanis and Americans in Pakistan.

Secretary Clinton’s October 2009 visit to Pakistan was planned and executed in coordination with the themes of our strategic plan.  Her focus on issues of education, jobs, and reliable electric power responded to what we had identified as central concerns of Pakistanis.  Her extensive series of public engagement activities carried out the Plan’s emphasis on rejuvenating our personal, face-to-face diplomacy.  Her visits to historical and cultural venues underscored American respect for and desire
for partnership with the people of Pakistan.  Perhaps the most telling moment came during a press conference during which Pakistani Foreign Minister Qureshi stated that the Secretary’s visit had been a success precisely because it had manifested “policy shift” toward a focus on “people-centric” relations.  This was and is precisely our message.

This kind of analytical and strategic approach has many precedents in the annals of U.S. public diplomacy.  It represents the kind of seamless connection between diplomacy and public diplomacy that was supposed to result naturally from the consolidation of USIA into the State Department.  However, this synergy and coordination were often missing, hamstrung by a lack of leadership and funding.

An upgraded, integrated and well-funded public diplomacy will not overcome all obstacles or satisfy all critics.  In Pakistan, U.S. drone aircraft missions transgress the country’s sovereignty and reportedly kill innocent civilians.  Public diplomacy is hard pressed to deal with the consequences of such secret operations.  Still, President Obama and Secretary Clinton have done an exceptional job so far of reaching out to world publics overall, and now, at last, there’s a sense that the cadre of professionals charged with supporting the President and Secretary in their public diplomacy efforts may finally get the authority and resources they need to do that job.

But what of the protests and conflict in Gaza and the West Bank?  A few months earlier, during a two-week long Israeli military operation in Gaza, more than a thousand Palestinians were killed.  By all accounts, most of these casualties were civilians.

Just as traditional journalism was restricted by Iranian authorities in the aftermath of the June Iranian elections, Israeli authorities placed severe restrictions on Western journalists trying to cover the Israeli incursion in Gaza in 2008-2009.

In fact, just as non-traditional media were and are critical to getting the word out on what was happening in Teheran, the same kinds of media are essential to bearing witness as to what has transpired — and continues to transpire — in Gaza and the West Bank.

One of the few scholars doing real research on the role of new media and technology in the occupied West Bank and Gaza is Charmaine Stanley, a graduate student at the University of Toronto.  She spoke last week at the International Studies Association convention in New Orleans.  You can listen to my interview with her here.

One of the striking aspects to Stanley’s findings is the way that smart phone technology not only communicates “actuality” about events — video recordings and “tweets” — but also serves to organize political protest.  This technology has been instrumental in linking Palestinians and Israeli Jews who advocate peaceful change.  During the Gaza incursion by the Israeli military, Stanley reports, the Israeli peace movement managed to give Palestinians video cameras they could use to record and transmit video images of the violence.  Eventually some of these images found their way into mainstream media.

In response, Stanley notes, the Israeli military gave their own forces cameras so that they could themselves record incidents that implicated Palestinians.  Since Israeli authorities had clamped down on foreign media access, they couldn’t hope that foreign correspondents would get that story.

Iranian authorities have shown a capacity and a willingness to shut down access to the Internet, but eventually citizen journalists find a work-around.  Israeli authorities also have the capacity to control Internet access and monitor, trace and track the many Palestinians they suspect of disloyalty.  But here too peaceful protesters have shown enough courage and commitment to get their message out.

We can’t yet foresee how these new media measures and counter-measures will end, only hope that they may lead those contemplating large scale violence to think again.

It would be great if the proliferation of digital recording devices and access to Internet served to deter violence.  Better still if the only weapons drawn in Gaza and the West Bank were smart phones and cameras.

…U.S. media have gone all out to “promote” the “Google issue” and American politicians repeated great “noises” in accusation of China’s internet management policies and insinuate the nation’s restriction on “internet freedom”…These words and deeds, which have taken no heed of reality, are definitely aimed to impair or tarnish China’s image

It is not difficult, however, to see the shadow of the US government behind the highly politicized “Google” case. Shortly after Google threatened to quit [China], Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton issued a statement and chastised China on its censorship …

Some U.S. political figures would defend in a high-profile manner the “internet freedom” as the “diplomatic strategy,” whose goal is to meddle in other nations’ affairs on the one hand and to consolidate American hegemony in cyberspace on the other hand….

Around the “Google” incident, the United States has not only focused on the commercial interest of domestic companies and safeguard its own national security and interests rights, but also is trying hard to limit China’s cyberspace. This is something totally unacceptable…To date, Google executives have expressed the hope to go on negotiating with the Chinese government and continue to stay in China, and Google has perhaps come to realize that China could do without it, whereas Google will definitely have no future without China [emphasis added].

Among the fascinating and disturbing aspects to this commentary is the way it resembles the rhetoric of the Cold War era, in which a nefarious and “hegemonistic” Washington is depicted as acting in lock step with American corporate interests.  The State Department and Google team up to “meddle” in Chinese affairs and monopolize China’s “cyberspace.”  The Chinese people are told to be indignant.

But the larger point at issue appears to be the unfettered access to the Internet in China.  Several years ago, Google agreed to allow some censorship in exchange for the right to run its search engines in China.  As a result, more people use Google in China than in any other country except the United States. Google made a profit and many Chinese have more access to information.

But this was also a bad deal because it established the precedent of the Chinese government having the right to censor the Internet.   Clinton put it this way in her own remarks:

In the last year, we’ve seen a spike in threats to the free flow of information. China, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan have stepped up their censorship of the internet. In Vietnam, access to popular social networking sites has suddenly disappeared. And last Friday in Egypt, 30 bloggers and activists were detained.

As the NYT reported (as also noted by FPA blogger Chris Dolen), the most effective way for the Internet to be censored is through cyber attacks against the computers that support Google’s search engines.  This is precisely what happened earlier this month and resulted in what the Times called “[this] ugly exchange of accusations between Washington and Beijing.”

No one outside of China knows exactly what happened in the cyberattack against Google’s Chinese computers — only that the “footprint” for the attack was inside China.  Perhaps the Chinese authorities had nothing to do with it, but regardless we are faced with the fragility of the the world of Internet-based access to information.  If governments may overtly censor topics they consider sensitive, they may also covertly attack the very institutions that make that information available to millions of people.

As Plouffe put it today in his first email to Obama’s net-roots followers since the end of the campaign, “We’ve hit some serious bumps in the road recently in our march toward change. We always knew it would be difficult, but this past week has definitely been a hard one, for all of us.”

Besides the Massachusetts debacle, Plouffe must have in mind the Supreme Court’s sweeping decision last week on corporations and campaign finance.  That decision appears to allow unlimited corporate contributions to individual election campaigns — beginning immediately.  McCain-Feingold limitations are out the window, and the grassroots, small-donations-by-individuals-via-the-Internet approach to campaigning could be made irrelevant.

Suddenly, the United States is faced with speculation about a new political dynamic in Washington — especially on Capitol Hill — as well as new ground rules for how one gets elected.  If Plouffe can improve White House communication with the American public, he may not only rescue the White House’s political agenda, but also help restore faith that it is citizens, not corporations, that decide elections.

Plouffe’s first task comes Wednesday with President Obama’s State of the Union address, which Plouffe will introduce via conference call to thousands of groups of Obama’s erstwhile campaign volunteers across the country.  It is, as Plouffe says, a “pivotal moment.”  It’s hard to quarrel with that assessment.

The Whole World Was Watching

Obama followed George W. Bush, whose tenure had coincided with a marked drop in U.S. prestige in much of the world. By year’s end, as Obama’s popularity fell at home, his – and America’s – popularity overseas recovered from the “Bush effect.” At home, Obama’s winning the Nobel Peace Prize was controversial; overseas, for many, it was an expression of hope. Obama and Hillary Clinton were an unlikely couple, perhaps, but they “re-set” relations and engaged the world. To achieve this much was a public relations success, one that must now be followed by real political results. Unfortunately, 2009 did not see much progress in more traditional forms of public diplomacy, whether government run, or people-to-people. This should be a focus in 2010.

Person of the Year:

Barack Hussein Obama, 44^th President of the United States and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

(runner up: Greg Mortenson, author of “Stones into Schools”)

Most Unexpected Event:

The uprising (though predictably and brutally supressed) in Iran

What to Watch for in 2010:

Revival of U.S. international broadcasting

When I was growing up in India, the U.S. Information Services used to serve as ambassadors of American culture, ideas, and ideals.  That entire approach to diplomacy was shuttered after the Cold War and even after 9/11 remains moribund.

– Fareed Zakaria, “The Post-American World”

Since 9/11, the U.S. military for the first time has dramatically expanded its effort to communicate with foreign audiences.  But this has created new problems…[and] this “mission creep” has gotten way out of hand.

– Amb. William Rugh, “Repairing American Public Diplomacy”

I have been looking for a succinct description of where U.S. public diplomacy stands.  These two quotes, I think, do the job rather well.  The first comes about midway in Fareed Zakaria’s bestseller, the second is from a publication of the American University in Cairo, a lucid analysis by a former U.S. diplomat.

It is ten years since the U.S. government reorganized its public diplomacy effort, but we have yet, it seems to me, to arrive at a version of U.S. public diplomacy that is truly effective in both long-term relationship building and rapid transmission of political ideas.  Instead, our relationship-building effort relies heavily on academic exchanges while our most noteworthy efforts at getting political information out quickly are taken up by the Pentagon, rather than the State Department.

Academic exchanges — better put, foreign study programs — are important.  Every year, the Open Door analysis put out by the Institute of International Education makes the case in statistical terms.  Millions of foreign students studying in the United States, and millions of American students studying abroad, have created long-term bonds of understanding and influence that go well beyond academic and economic benefit.

But the U.S. government has nearly abandoned any effort to project the cultural values of the American people through cultural presentations or full-fledged libraries, relying almost exclusively on provision of informational material via the Internet.  Even the laudable “American Corners” — for all their value — are but small parts of larger institutions, such as local libraries, that have their own missions.  They can never present American culture the way that USIS libraries and centers once did.

Meanwhile, when policy-related outreach is called for, especially to foreign media and government officials, the response is usually too slow and now increasingly directed by the Pentagon, rather than the State Department.  Last summer, the House Appropriations Committee took the DoD to task for expanding the budget of its “Information Operations” programs — though that was partly a mistake in Pentagon accounting.  As Politico reported in October:

[Rep. Jack] Murtha’s preference is that the State Department take more of the lead, although he admits State can’t ramp up fast enough to handle the task this coming year.

“They’re going to have to depend on the Defense Department,” he said. “The problem with the Defense Department is they’re not only willing to take care of it; they will push you right aside in order to take care of it.”

This is not what Congress intended when it decided to allow the integration of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) into the State Department ten years ago.  The consolidation of foreign information and cultural work into the State Department was supposed to result in more rapid and politically savvy responses by U.S. embassies overseas.  Instead, field budgets were slashed, staffs cut relentlessly, and political direction left to a revolving-door succession of Clinton Administration and Bush Administration placeholders.  The best known among them, Karen Hughes, took months to assume her duties, then left after barely two years in the job.

Similarly, the establishment of a Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) in 1994 was supposed to result in a more professional, more effective approach to international broadcasting.  Instead, the BBG began its ill-conceived TV broadcasts to the Middle East via its Alhurra program and canceled broadcasts by radio to countries were it was (falsely) assumed that a free media environment had been safely established.

Although hard to measure due to the institutional change, in the past ten years the budget for foreign public diplomacy conducted by USIA and (now) the State Department has essentially remained static at something less than $1b per year.  (Given the decline of the US dollar over this period, this amounts to a serious decline in overseas resources.)  Defense may spend as much for its Information Operations programs alone, without considering related spending categorized as “public affairs.”

The outlook is not entirely bleak.  The Obama Administration has recently nominated a first-class public intellectual, Walter Isaacson, to run the BBG.  President Obama himself has made an enormous difference in how the world perceives the United States.  The U.S. military “gets it” — but that’s not enough.  America still lacks a non-military institution that articulates her ideas and ideals overseas and provides timely tactical advice to advance foreign policy goals.  Ten years after the end of the U.S. Information Agency, it is fair to ask how so many people could have allowed this to happen.

]]> http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2009/12/08/why-no-change-ten-years-on/feed/ 2 http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2009/11/20/take-a-bow/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=take-a-bow http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2009/11/20/take-a-bow/#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:22:09 +0000 Mark Dillen http://publicdiplomacy.foreignpolicyblogs.com/?p=329 Now that the big Asia trip is history, it’s natural to judge it on the basis of known results from its biggest portion — Obama’s three days in China.  For the American president, there were no obvious breakthroughs on exchange rates or trade, climate or human rights, so maybe this visit was not the most successful.  On the other hand, viewed in the context of America’s recent history with East Asia, there was a certain welcome absence of drama.  Expectations were managed, there was no brinkmanship.  Maybe that could be considered an achievement.

What is disturbing, though, on the face of it, was the lack of open transmission of the President’s own message to the Chinese people while he was in their country.  You can say that the Chinese leaders are determined to control their media environment, but to essentially shut down broadcasts of a U.S. President’s communication with students shows a real gap in understanding.  Even Gorbachev understood that an advanced society could not control communication if it wanted to make the most of its potential.  During the U.S. President’s visit at least, China stood to gain internationally by showing openness rather than its opposite.  What they did instead was unnecessary.

By the same token, Obama’s exaggerated bow to Japanese Emperor Akihito in Tokyo was also a misstep.

A Bow Too Low

In our digital age, images stay around, and this one will.  If Americans were feeling self-confident about their role in the world at this point in time, the bow would have been seen as an act of protocol, courtesy and even magnanimity.  In our current times of American insecurity, it will seen back home as weak.  Moreover, even Japanese found it inappropriate.