Saturday, March 30, 2013

Becoming part of the conversation... literally.

Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Tara Sonenshine's latest speech on Public Diplomacy and Counterterrorism mentioned projects in which the U.S. government are activelly engaging in discussions on Al-Qaeda online forums. This is an attempt to get the "other side of the message" out. According to Sonenshine, the logic behind this approach is this:

"By targeting the hardliners, we are really trying to reach the middle grounders, the fence sitters, the sympathizers and passive supporters."

That seems plausible if it weren't for this - if someone has gone through the trouble of finding said forums and engaging there, they are probably past the point of being "fence sitters", and it would be, arguably, far more unlikely that adding a different perspective would change their hearts and minds.

What is the actual success rate of approaching this kind of group, or rather, how can one measure whether opinions have changed? The U.S. government should focus on ordinary citizens - those, it seems to me, are actually far more likely to change their minds about terrorism and the way they perceive the United States. 

These online forums can be useful for intelligence gathering and pin-pointing actual members of terrorist organizations, but they just don't seem like the best place for conducting public diplomacy.

Friday, March 29, 2013

Zimbabwe Poets for Human Rights




Our class discussion on cultural diplomacy reminds me of conference I attended last month where I was introduced to Zimbabwean slam poetry artist, Michael Mabwe.

One of the State Department’s cultural diplomacy initiatives is the International Visitors Leadership Program (IVLP), a program that facilitates professional exchanges between the U.S. and other countries. Through my internship, I had the pleasure of attending a conference in February honoring the work of past IVLP participants where I met Michael Mabwe. Having participated in the IVLP in 2008, he took the “best practices” he learned during the exchange to advance his cause back home in Zimbabwe in his organization, Zimbabwe Poets for Human Rights. As a human rights activist, Mabwe organizes community arts forums to promote tolerance and encourages discussion of controversial topics such as corruption, media freedom, democracy, and good governance. Among other things, Mabwe volunteers his time as the Director of the Zimbabwe-United States Alumni Association, where he works to dispel myths about the U.S. prevalent in Zimbabwe. The State Department invited him to return to the U.S. in February where he performed and spoke of his work at home.

Michael Mabwe presents and exceptional case where exchanges can advance bilateral goals of mutual understanding. The first minute of the video clip captures a beautifully crafted poem from his organization. Certainly, I encourage you to watch it in its entirety, but if you can only watch a little bit, watch the first few minutes to get a taste of the emotional appeal of cultural diplomacy.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Emphasizing the “Public” in Public Diplomacy

Yesterday, President Obama gave a speech in Jerusalem to a mostly college-age audience.  The speech is noteworthy primarily because it is an example of the American President bypassing direct communication with Israeli heads of government in order to directly speak to the Israeli public.  President Obama’s terse relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is widely publicized.   Despite efforts to portray a seamless alliance between their respective nations, Obama and Netanyahu continue to clash on issues pertaining to nuclear capabilities, Iran, Syria, and of course Palestine. 

 
Thus far, heads of state have not been able to remedy Israel’s most salient problems, which are obviously of great consequence to the U.S. as well.  So, who might be best equipped to address these problems?  Obama’s direct appeal to Israel’s youth seems undergirded by a recognition that the best means for change and influence is through foreign publics; specifically young foreign publics.  Such an appeal represents the crux of Public Diplomacy efforts today.   

Whereas personal strife may hinder direct communication between Netanyahu and Obama, the Israeli public is always accessible to the President via satellite television, social media, and other technological advances.  Such easy access has created the condition that publics now expect to be acknowledged and directly addressed. 

Speaking specifically on the need for a more flexible approach to negotiating with Palestinians, Obama said that Israeli and Palestinian leaders “will never take risks if the people do not push them to take some risks. You must create the change that you want to see. Ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things.”    

In addition to exercising the full meaning of Public Diplomacy with foreign publics, President Obama has also extended his PD outreach to domestic publics. He has made extensive use of Twitter and other social media outlets to get the voices of the American people heard. 
 
As stated by Ellen Huijgh in her article Changing Tunes for Public Diplomacy: Exploring the Domestic Dimension, “for better or worse, [Ministries of Foreign Affairs] have learned through experiences that domestic public support for a government’s international policy choices and positions is crucial to the MFA’s legitimacy at home and abroad” (64).  Domestic PD efforts do not yet seem to be as institutionalized as foreign PD, but it may prove to be a pertinent strategy in the years to come.

The Team: Sports Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution


We are familiar with the Olympics and other large sporting events as an opportunity for of cultural diplomacy.  Dr. Geoffrey Pigman discusses some of the benefits of sports diplomacy in his article, “Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage!: Moving Forward In the Scrum of International Sport and Public Diplomacy.” He explains that sport can be used as an opportunity for nation branding or security-related objectives along the line of haute politique. Of interest in this post, he states, “In a more troubled diplomatic relationship, governments may choose to communicate to a foreign public as part of a strategy, seeking to influence a population’s government” (pg. 82).

Only governments? Only states? I feel that the world of public diplomacy is expanding beyond the traditional governmental framework. Not only are governments that are capitalizing on the diplomatic aspects of culture, but non-profits are too.

One particular instance of this is the award winning television and radio series, “The Team,” created by Search for Common Ground (SFCG). SFCG is a non-governmental organization (NGO) specializing in conflict resolution and reconciliation. They noticed the global love for soccer, or football, and have cultivated it for the purposes of peace-building. In particular it has been designed with the goals of encouraging dialogue as opposed to violence, increasing tolerance, cooperation, and national unity in conflict weakened societies, and finally developing the capacity of local writers. Correspondingly, it focuses on topics such as corruption, xenophobia, religious tolerance, and citizen, civil society, and government collaboration. The series is developed on a country-by-country basis, and is specifically designed to address the conflicts that are pertinent to the community.  

Through “The Team” and other programs, SFCG is recognizing the potential that sports and other aspects of culture play in the societies with which they are working. Through employing the unifying aspects of sports, SFCG is encouraging dialogue and track II diplomacy by cultivating tolerance in areas where ethic groups experience deeply troubled diplomatic relations.

Check out this clip from The Team (Cote d'Ivoire): 

Friday, March 8, 2013

Harlem Shaking Tunisia


I was watching Fareed Zakharia on GPS last Sunday, and he ended the program with a bit on the way the recent “Harlem shake” fad is impacting Egypt and Tunisia, calling it a “potent symbol of protest, revolt and defiance”. While it has no connection with Harlem or the original Harlem shake, this version, recorded by a Brooklyn DJ last spring, has taken on a significance of its own in Tunisia, prompting government action.

Tunisian students posted their own version of the shake online, provoking a violent backlash by conservative Muslims, including the Minister of Education who condemned the videos. It has become a symbol igniting the battle between secularists and Islamists as they determine how the post-revolutionary country will move forward. (source)

This phenomenon, driven by the youth and social media in the country, is reflective of the way social media was used to push forward the revolutionary political movement the country experienced a couple years ago, gaining international attention. This speaks to our class discussion on the central role media play in shaping discourses.

Although no one is certain how long this fad will last, it does raise questions concerning American culture and how it is decontextualized once it crosses borders and new meaning is attached to it. 

The Pope as Diplomat

A recent article in Foreign Affairs, The Pope as Diplomat, reviewed Pope Benedict XVI's tenure through a diplomatic lens. It discusses that during his time as Pope, Benedict established full diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, Malasia, Montenegro  South Sudan, Russia, and Botswana. He appointed the first Vatican envoy to Vietnam, a step towards full diplomatic relations. One of his goals was to engage in better Catholic Muslim Dialoge. As part of this he moved towards a "genuine encounter" with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia who personally visited the Vatican. While Saudi Arabia is not open to full diplomatic relations with the Vatican and still does not allow Catholic churches, last year King Abdullah formed a foundation to improve inter-religious understanding.

What does this have to do with Public Diplomacy? Pope Benedict's formal background was that of a scholar, not a political statesman like several of his predecessors. As the article points out, this lead to his having a different approach to foreign affairs, and at times lead to political missteps and misunderstandings. Despite snaffles, Pope Benedict found a way to open relations with other countries and areas. Through this action he served as the center in what Ali Fisher discussed in his article Looking at the Man in the Mirror as the hub or star of a leadership network. In this model, the metaphor of a wheel is used to convey the idea of a core "hub" person or people that connect one group of people to another. It is not a hierarchical structure, rather the hub is just an access point that must be opened in order for communication to be better enabled. Often when people, myself included, think of the Catholic Church hierarchy is one of the first things that comes to mind. This is a bit different, though. Using the Pope as a way to open up diplomatic relations is a way to open up a massive group of people, such as Catholics, to issues that the Pope has decided to pursue. In this case more envolved Muslim-Christian dialogue .

Moving from Monologue to more Monologue…and Staying There.

This past Tuesday, I chit chatted with a few of my classmates as we waited for our Global Perspectives on Public Diplomacy class to begin.  In the midst of our spirited discussion about the measly percentage of the U.S. budget allotted to the State Department (we are students of international studies after all…), one of my classmates looked at her phone in surprise and informed the rest of us that Venezuelan President, Hugo Chávez, had died.

While I generally knew about Chávez, his revolutionary tendencies, and his disdain for the United States, I found myself interested in his leadership style and in the way such a style affected Venezuela’s public diplomacy.  After doing a quick internet search, I came across a NY Times article on 10 MemorableHugo Chávez Moments.  One of the top moments occurred on Chávez’s weekly television show, Aló Presidente!  According to the article, this show is the only one in the world in which a head of state regularly invited cameras to follow him as he governed. The show featured Chávez singing, dancing and interacting with supporters for hours at a time. The only television show in the world in which a head of state regularly invited cameras to follow him as he governed, it often featured singing, dancing and interaction with supporters.

During this particular taping of the show, BBC journalist John Sweeney asked “Chávez’s TV show Aló Presidente!  Chávez’s TV show Aló Presidente!  10 Memorable Hugo Chávez MomentsWhy does Venezuela not spend its money in Venezuela?”

Mr. Chávez responded, “That is a stupid question. I cannot answer a stupid question because whoever tries to answer a stupid question would sound stupid.”  Mr. Chávez then pointedly told Mr. Sweeney that only “someone stupid would ask such a stupid question.”


I was incredulous at Chávez’s audacity and his complete disregard for being politically correct; a practice I see as customary for good public diplomacy. 

Even beyond his obvious outrageousness, Chávez’s weekly television show was a wider example of how “the nature of the global communications environment makes it inevitable that (sometimes for better, sometimes for worse) one-way messages are transmitted on a daily, hourly, and even minute-to-minute basis.”  These are the words of Geoffrey Cowan and Amelia Arsenault in their article Moving from Monologue to Dialogue to Collaboration: The Three Layers of Public Diplomacy (p. 13). 

Depending on the context, Cowan and Arsenault argue that one-way communication is often necessary when “a nation wants the people of the world to understand where it stands.”  The implication is that one-way communication is one tool in a larger effort to also engage in dialogue and collaboration with other nations.

The public diplomacy model incorporated by Chávez however, disregarded these other two layers of public diplomacy, especially when they pertained to the United States and its allies.  After being called “stupid” on such a public platform, I doubt Mr. Sweeney left Venezuela with any positive perceptions of Chávez.  Surely such treatment does not open a path for dialogue and collaboration between Venezuela and the UK.  Now that Chávez is gone, it will be interesting to see whether Venezuela maintains or abandons the public diplomacy culture initiated by Chávez.