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Three objectives of US's transformational public diplomacy
By Karen Hughes
Posted: May 14, 2006
During the Cold War we were trying to get information into societies that were largely closed, where
people were hungry for that information. Well, today in places like the Middle East there's an
information explosion and no one is hungry for information. What we are competing for there is for
attention and for credibility in a time when rumors can spark riots, and information, whether it's true or
false, quickly spreads across the world, across the internet, in literally instants.
Our government also retrenched in our outreach efforts, in our public diplomacy efforts, as you all
know, once we thought the Cold War was won and the battle of ideas we thought was over, and we
began to scale back. And so we are now faced with rebuilding as well as facing new challenges like
security, which in many places has caused our embassies and our personnel to have to retreat behind
guards. I hear people say sometimes that we look like Fortress America and that's a requirement as
we protect our personnel, but it's also a challenge for public diplomacy as we seek to reach out to
publics across the world....
[O]ur transformational public diplomacy is being implemented through a comprehensive strategy that's
based on three strategic objectives: first, that we must offer people throughout the world a positive
vision of hope and opportunity that is rooted in our belief in freedom, equality, justice and opportunity for
all. I saw an interview -- one of the things I've done since coming to the State Department is done
some research into what foreign publics value and what they care about. And I saw an interview with a
young man from Morocco who said, "For me, America represents the hope of a better life"....
Our second strategic imperative is to isolate and marginalize the violent extremists and confront their
ideology of tyranny and hate. We must undermine their efforts. They want to portray the West as in
conflict with Islam. That's the window into which they recruit. We have to undermine those by providing
platforms for debate, by empowering mainstream voices and by demonstrating respect for Muslim
cultures and contributions to our society and to world society.
That's why I've spent a great deal of time during my initial time at the State Department reaching out to
Muslim Americans to engage them in the discussion because I believe they're an invaluable bridge as
we discuss how to best counter ideological support for terrorism.
One of the points they've made very powerfully -- I reached out to them after Usama bin Laden's most
recent videotape and I convened conference calls regularly to discuss with them their thoughts of how
to best communicate. And one of their points, the lead points when Usama bin Laden came out with
the tape, was that leaders across the Muslim world have clearly stated and are stating more and more
that bin Laden's views do not represent the values of Islam....And I think it's very important that we
empower the voices of our fellow Americans to join us in saying that.
Our third strategic imperative is to foster a sense of common interests and common values between
Americans and people of different countries and cultures across our world. Now, that sounds pretty
simple but that actually came from a conversation I had with the beloved former Ambassador Frank
Wisner. And I know many of you know Frank well and have worked with him, and I was talking with him
when I first accepted this job and he said, "Karen," he said, "You know, I worry that at a time of war that
too often our foreign policy is viewed as being based on common threats. We have to more proactively
nurture a sense of common interests and common values." And they're meant for people everywhere,
our values are universal and we seek to promote them in a spirit of partnership and respect.
Now, you'll note that two of the three of the strategic objectives that I just outlined are not just focused
on the war on terror or communicating with Islamic communities, because America's public diplomacy,
despite what you read in the press, which sometimes focuses only on the Arab or the wider Muslim
world, that America's public diplomacy actually involves the entire world. Our relationships with our
neighbors in Latin America, for example, are extremely important and President Bush told me to make
that one of my priorities. Public diplomacy works to nurture and strengthen and our transatlantic
partnership with Europe, to build on our strengthening and strategic relationships with India and with
Pakistan, to reach out to people across an emerging China.
We also try to provide reliable information and establish relationships with people in different countries
even when we don't have relationships with their governments, in places like Cuba, in Iran....
Our transformation public diplomacy is fundamentally changing the way we do business to try to
become more effective in six key areas...
First of all, we're increasing funding for programs that we know work and making them more strategic
and more effective. And I can think of no better example than exchanges. There's no doubt in my mind
that our exchange programs have been our single most important and most successful public
diplomacy tool over the last 50 years, and as you travel the world and meet leaders who participated in
those exchange programs across the world, that's only underscored. Exchanges work and so we
sought increases in funding, up 70 million in the 2006 budget, up another 48 million proposed for the
2007 budget.
We are also seeking to make them more strategic, to reach out to young people particularly, and those
who influence them, like clerics and teachers and journalists. We've created several new programs.
The Edward R. Murrow Journalism Exchange just brought 150 international journalists to America a
couple of weeks ago. They spent three weeks studying at communications schools that were working
in partnership with them and the Aspen Institute....
Second, we're improving the way our government communicates. When I got to the State Department, I
realized we had a lot of different agencies of government monitoring the media, and usually what that
meant was a week later you'd get an editorial that ran in a newspaper, and that didn't help us respond
in a very timely fashion to what was making news across the world... We now have, up and running in
the State Department in real time, a Rapid Response Unit where we watch what's being said on the
pan-Arab stations, on media across the world. We monitor the blogs. And then we, every morning,
produce a one-to-two page report so the busy policymakers have time to -- can read and absorb it
quickly of what is driving news across the world and what is America's message, three or four points
on each one of those news stories.
And that's my way of -- it now goes to every Cabinet secretary, to the White House, to ambassadors
across the world, to our military leadership across the world, my way of trying to get our federal
government kind of on the same page, quite literally. We're also unleashing our ambassadors with
new rules. When I arrived, the rule was an ambassador had to have pre-clearance from Washington
before engaging in a media interview. Well, as you all know, that became a convenient excuse for
ambassadors not to engage in media interviews, because, gosh, it would take a couple of days to get
approvals from Washington. And the journalists here know, a couple of days is a lifetime in today's
rapid media environment. So now our ambassadors -- we've totally changed the paradigm.
Our ambassadors are now expected to speak out and they don't need pre-clearance from
Washington...
Third, public diplomacy is helping to shape policy. That was again one of the recommendations of all
the reports. I'm very involved at the State Department and all of my -- as my staff is and all the
secretaries' senior-level meetings. We're participating in all the working groups on all the different
issues. We've raised the presence of public diplomacy in the regional bureaus, which as you know,
develop much of the policy for the State Department at the earlier stages...
Fourth, we're forging significant new partnerships with the private sector... We've convened a University
Presidents Summit to work with university presidents. The first time this has ever been done to market
America as a higher education destination and we've got teams going out across the world this
summer to make that case; that we want young people across the world to come to America to study.
We're working with the travel and tourism industry in partnership to try to make our airports welcoming.
I've been reminding people you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and we're
making some pretty bad first impressions right now....
Fifth, we're enhancing our use of technology. And I'm the first to say that this is probably one of our
biggest challenges and we've got a long way to go. Government does not tend to be a trend leader;
they tend to be a trend lagger. And so we have to be better about technology and we're working to do
so and that's one of the things I've charged our Bureau of International Information Programs with
looking at ways that we could use things like MP3 players to deliver messages or text messaging or to
improve the quality. We've got a couple of new web-based programs that we're trying to become more
active and engaged on the internet.
And sixth, we're -- and finally, we're working to de-legitimize terrorism. I like to say we need to do for
terror what was done to slavery. Slavery went from being an international accepted norm to becoming
an international pariah. And the antislavery movement actually sprang from religious convictions about
the worth and value of every person, convictions very similar to America's belief in the dignity of every
human being.
In 1833, one of every seven adults in Britain signed a petition against slavery and that was twice the
number of people who were eligible to vote at the time. It was the largest public petitioning of
parliament ever to that date. Today we would call that a grassroots citizens campaign. And I've
meeting with interfaith leaders and challenging them to try to launch a similar movement across all
faiths and continents, to clearly state that no grievance, no complaint, no matter how justified, can ever
justify the targeting and killing of innocent civilians....
We need to match the commitment that enabled us to prevail in a previous generation when
Communists denied freedom to millions of the world's citizens. Today, the struggle have shifted to
new regions and different threats in many, many places across our world.
I was in Dallas last Friday, to meet with Bono and talk about the work he's doing to fight poverty and
AIDS and how it intersects with what I'm trying to do as we discuss across the world the compassion of
America. I've never heard Bono's band in person, but I heard him give a speech Friday night and I
realized he's a fabulous communicator even without music. He speaks very eloquently about America
and it's interesting to watch this Irish rock star speak very eloquently about America. "Being more than
a country," he says, "America is an idea." And people around the world want to look to that idea. He
talks about the idea -- the inspiration of America in ways that occurred to me that too often we as
Americans don't. He heralds the good that we're doing around the world, even as he challenges us to
do even more, makes the point that -- he asked me, "Isn't compassion one of the best ways to
demonstrate your values, to communicate your values and isn't it an investment in a safer world?"
And so it caused me to imagine for a minute what the world without America would be like. And I want
you to think about that, what would the world be like without America? Not just on the front of human
rights or dignity or the values we stand, not just for -- not just because of our military might, but just
think about the strength and the breadth and the reach of our compassion. I submit the world would be
a far bleaker and less compassionate place, from the camps in Darfur, home to two million displaced
people where more than 85 percent of the food aid, more than 85 percent that those people have
received has come from the United States of America; to the Palestinian territories where we are
helping and committed to helping the Palestinian people despite our disagreements with their
government....
Public diplomacy is my job, but it's also our shared American challenge. I hope you'll join me in
sharing with the world America's story of hope and health as we work to extend freedom, extend
compassion and expand the circle of opportunity across our world.
### ### ###
Karen Hughes is the US Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. This is an edited
version of her speech released on May 10th.
By Karen Hughes
Posted: May 14, 2006
During the Cold War we were trying to get information into societies that were largely closed, where
people were hungry for that information. Well, today in places like the Middle East there's an
information explosion and no one is hungry for information. What we are competing for there is for
attention and for credibility in a time when rumors can spark riots, and information, whether it's true or
false, quickly spreads across the world, across the internet, in literally instants.
Our government also retrenched in our outreach efforts, in our public diplomacy efforts, as you all
know, once we thought the Cold War was won and the battle of ideas we thought was over, and we
began to scale back. And so we are now faced with rebuilding as well as facing new challenges like
security, which in many places has caused our embassies and our personnel to have to retreat behind
guards. I hear people say sometimes that we look like Fortress America and that's a requirement as
we protect our personnel, but it's also a challenge for public diplomacy as we seek to reach out to
publics across the world....
[O]ur transformational public diplomacy is being implemented through a comprehensive strategy that's
based on three strategic objectives: first, that we must offer people throughout the world a positive
vision of hope and opportunity that is rooted in our belief in freedom, equality, justice and opportunity for
all. I saw an interview -- one of the things I've done since coming to the State Department is done
some research into what foreign publics value and what they care about. And I saw an interview with a
young man from Morocco who said, "For me, America represents the hope of a better life"....
Our second strategic imperative is to isolate and marginalize the violent extremists and confront their
ideology of tyranny and hate. We must undermine their efforts. They want to portray the West as in
conflict with Islam. That's the window into which they recruit. We have to undermine those by providing
platforms for debate, by empowering mainstream voices and by demonstrating respect for Muslim
cultures and contributions to our society and to world society.
That's why I've spent a great deal of time during my initial time at the State Department reaching out to
Muslim Americans to engage them in the discussion because I believe they're an invaluable bridge as
we discuss how to best counter ideological support for terrorism.
One of the points they've made very powerfully -- I reached out to them after Usama bin Laden's most
recent videotape and I convened conference calls regularly to discuss with them their thoughts of how
to best communicate. And one of their points, the lead points when Usama bin Laden came out with
the tape, was that leaders across the Muslim world have clearly stated and are stating more and more
that bin Laden's views do not represent the values of Islam....And I think it's very important that we
empower the voices of our fellow Americans to join us in saying that.
Our third strategic imperative is to foster a sense of common interests and common values between
Americans and people of different countries and cultures across our world. Now, that sounds pretty
simple but that actually came from a conversation I had with the beloved former Ambassador Frank
Wisner. And I know many of you know Frank well and have worked with him, and I was talking with him
when I first accepted this job and he said, "Karen," he said, "You know, I worry that at a time of war that
too often our foreign policy is viewed as being based on common threats. We have to more proactively
nurture a sense of common interests and common values." And they're meant for people everywhere,
our values are universal and we seek to promote them in a spirit of partnership and respect.
Now, you'll note that two of the three of the strategic objectives that I just outlined are not just focused
on the war on terror or communicating with Islamic communities, because America's public diplomacy,
despite what you read in the press, which sometimes focuses only on the Arab or the wider Muslim
world, that America's public diplomacy actually involves the entire world. Our relationships with our
neighbors in Latin America, for example, are extremely important and President Bush told me to make
that one of my priorities. Public diplomacy works to nurture and strengthen and our transatlantic
partnership with Europe, to build on our strengthening and strategic relationships with India and with
Pakistan, to reach out to people across an emerging China.
We also try to provide reliable information and establish relationships with people in different countries
even when we don't have relationships with their governments, in places like Cuba, in Iran....
Our transformation public diplomacy is fundamentally changing the way we do business to try to
become more effective in six key areas...
First of all, we're increasing funding for programs that we know work and making them more strategic
and more effective. And I can think of no better example than exchanges. There's no doubt in my mind
that our exchange programs have been our single most important and most successful public
diplomacy tool over the last 50 years, and as you travel the world and meet leaders who participated in
those exchange programs across the world, that's only underscored. Exchanges work and so we
sought increases in funding, up 70 million in the 2006 budget, up another 48 million proposed for the
2007 budget.
We are also seeking to make them more strategic, to reach out to young people particularly, and those
who influence them, like clerics and teachers and journalists. We've created several new programs.
The Edward R. Murrow Journalism Exchange just brought 150 international journalists to America a
couple of weeks ago. They spent three weeks studying at communications schools that were working
in partnership with them and the Aspen Institute....
Second, we're improving the way our government communicates. When I got to the State Department, I
realized we had a lot of different agencies of government monitoring the media, and usually what that
meant was a week later you'd get an editorial that ran in a newspaper, and that didn't help us respond
in a very timely fashion to what was making news across the world... We now have, up and running in
the State Department in real time, a Rapid Response Unit where we watch what's being said on the
pan-Arab stations, on media across the world. We monitor the blogs. And then we, every morning,
produce a one-to-two page report so the busy policymakers have time to -- can read and absorb it
quickly of what is driving news across the world and what is America's message, three or four points
on each one of those news stories.
And that's my way of -- it now goes to every Cabinet secretary, to the White House, to ambassadors
across the world, to our military leadership across the world, my way of trying to get our federal
government kind of on the same page, quite literally. We're also unleashing our ambassadors with
new rules. When I arrived, the rule was an ambassador had to have pre-clearance from Washington
before engaging in a media interview. Well, as you all know, that became a convenient excuse for
ambassadors not to engage in media interviews, because, gosh, it would take a couple of days to get
approvals from Washington. And the journalists here know, a couple of days is a lifetime in today's
rapid media environment. So now our ambassadors -- we've totally changed the paradigm.
Our ambassadors are now expected to speak out and they don't need pre-clearance from
Washington...
Third, public diplomacy is helping to shape policy. That was again one of the recommendations of all
the reports. I'm very involved at the State Department and all of my -- as my staff is and all the
secretaries' senior-level meetings. We're participating in all the working groups on all the different
issues. We've raised the presence of public diplomacy in the regional bureaus, which as you know,
develop much of the policy for the State Department at the earlier stages...
Fourth, we're forging significant new partnerships with the private sector... We've convened a University
Presidents Summit to work with university presidents. The first time this has ever been done to market
America as a higher education destination and we've got teams going out across the world this
summer to make that case; that we want young people across the world to come to America to study.
We're working with the travel and tourism industry in partnership to try to make our airports welcoming.
I've been reminding people you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and we're
making some pretty bad first impressions right now....
Fifth, we're enhancing our use of technology. And I'm the first to say that this is probably one of our
biggest challenges and we've got a long way to go. Government does not tend to be a trend leader;
they tend to be a trend lagger. And so we have to be better about technology and we're working to do
so and that's one of the things I've charged our Bureau of International Information Programs with
looking at ways that we could use things like MP3 players to deliver messages or text messaging or to
improve the quality. We've got a couple of new web-based programs that we're trying to become more
active and engaged on the internet.
And sixth, we're -- and finally, we're working to de-legitimize terrorism. I like to say we need to do for
terror what was done to slavery. Slavery went from being an international accepted norm to becoming
an international pariah. And the antislavery movement actually sprang from religious convictions about
the worth and value of every person, convictions very similar to America's belief in the dignity of every
human being.
In 1833, one of every seven adults in Britain signed a petition against slavery and that was twice the
number of people who were eligible to vote at the time. It was the largest public petitioning of
parliament ever to that date. Today we would call that a grassroots citizens campaign. And I've
meeting with interfaith leaders and challenging them to try to launch a similar movement across all
faiths and continents, to clearly state that no grievance, no complaint, no matter how justified, can ever
justify the targeting and killing of innocent civilians....
We need to match the commitment that enabled us to prevail in a previous generation when
Communists denied freedom to millions of the world's citizens. Today, the struggle have shifted to
new regions and different threats in many, many places across our world.
I was in Dallas last Friday, to meet with Bono and talk about the work he's doing to fight poverty and
AIDS and how it intersects with what I'm trying to do as we discuss across the world the compassion of
America. I've never heard Bono's band in person, but I heard him give a speech Friday night and I
realized he's a fabulous communicator even without music. He speaks very eloquently about America
and it's interesting to watch this Irish rock star speak very eloquently about America. "Being more than
a country," he says, "America is an idea." And people around the world want to look to that idea. He
talks about the idea -- the inspiration of America in ways that occurred to me that too often we as
Americans don't. He heralds the good that we're doing around the world, even as he challenges us to
do even more, makes the point that -- he asked me, "Isn't compassion one of the best ways to
demonstrate your values, to communicate your values and isn't it an investment in a safer world?"
And so it caused me to imagine for a minute what the world without America would be like. And I want
you to think about that, what would the world be like without America? Not just on the front of human
rights or dignity or the values we stand, not just for -- not just because of our military might, but just
think about the strength and the breadth and the reach of our compassion. I submit the world would be
a far bleaker and less compassionate place, from the camps in Darfur, home to two million displaced
people where more than 85 percent of the food aid, more than 85 percent that those people have
received has come from the United States of America; to the Palestinian territories where we are
helping and committed to helping the Palestinian people despite our disagreements with their
government....
Public diplomacy is my job, but it's also our shared American challenge. I hope you'll join me in
sharing with the world America's story of hope and health as we work to extend freedom, extend
compassion and expand the circle of opportunity across our world.
### ### ###
Karen Hughes is the US Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. This is an edited
version of her speech released on May 10th.
| (c) 2006 New Criterion Foundation, London |
| Security. Ideologies. Multiculturalism. |