by Steven R. Corman

Yesterday, the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith McHale gave her first major speech outlining priorities in her new job.  My reaction to her remarks is mixed.  On the one hand there were some confusing definitions a key missing element.  On the other hand it contained some very promising themes, which on balance leave me optimistic about her tenure.

One thing that really puzzled me was a definitional exercise near the beginning of the address.  McHale said public diplomacy operates on two levels:

First, communication.  This is the air game, the radio and TV broadcasts, the websites and media outreach that seek to explain and provide context for U.S. policies and actions; and

Second, engagement, the ground game of direct people-to-people exchanges, speakers, and embassy-sponsored culture events that build personal relationships. (emphasis original)

This is an odd distinction for two reasons.  First, person-to-person engagement is just as much communication as is the “air game.”  In fact it is even more so, if we adopt a modern view that communication is not just the transmission of messages but a process of dialogue.

Second, it implies that person-to-person relationships cannot be developed through electronic media.  That may be true for mass media like radio and television, though what is said through those channels does impact the ability to establish personal relationships.  But it is surely not true for web-based interactive media like mobile messaging, web-based fora, and mobile messaging.  These can be used for engagement too, as examples later in the speech show.

I would not make so much of this were it not for the fact that it was emphasized so much in the speech.  It was flagged as a main organizing principle, with the two elements set off in boldface in the transcript (the only things that got such treatment).  This signals that it is a major conceptual distinction in the speech, that McHale sees these two aspects of public diplomacy as having different functions and calling for different strategies. On the contrary New Media are breaking down these kinds of distinctions.  And indeed in the remainder of the speech McHale seems to abandon the distinction, using communication and engagement interchangeably.

Another conceptual head-scratcher was McHale’s statement that

The national security implications of engagement have not been lost on our colleagues at the Department of Defense, which has become heavily involved in what we call public diplomacy and they call strategic communications. (emphasis mine)

That’s not exactly right.  What the DoD calls strategic communication is not just public diplomacy.  It also includes public affairs and (most importantly) information operations.  It is important to recognize this because information operations can involve deception operations–so called black propaganda.  If discovered these operations can have negative impacts on person-to-person relationship building, as can normal overt actions of military operations.  They can also cause domestic public affairs problems, as they did in the Lincoln Group scandal of  a few years back.  Speaking of public affairs, McHale did not take this opportunity to unpack apparent recent changes in that function at State.

The missing element in the speech was the emphasis that McHale’s predecessor Jim Glassman placed on communicating about the Bad Guys.  Glassman declared that–in contrast to previous Under Secretaries–he was going to make public diplomacy less about selling brand America and more about de-branding our extremist opponents.  If anything McHale’s speech moves back in the other direction, placing emphasis on winning friends and influencing people.  This is undoubtedly important, but so is capitalizing on the growing ill sentiment toward extremists in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan.  It would have been nice to have this affirmed.

All that said, there were a lot of things to like in McHale’s speech, and for me they outweigh the shortcomings just discussed.  She echoed a large number of themes we here at CSC have been advocating in recent years.  Among them:

• “We need to listen more and lecture less.  We have to learn how people listen to us, how are words and deeds are actually heard and seen.”  Hooray!  Our Under Secretary thinks of communication as dialogue, not transmission.
• “We need to explain our position and policies upfront and not after the fact when opinions have already been formed.”  This is further evidence of a move away from spin-meistering and toward dialogue.
• Throughout the speech McHale emphasized the importance of communicating in the languages of our PD audiences.  As anyone who has traveled abroad knows, speaking someone else’s language can open doors,  even it’s just a few words pronounced improperly.  Moving to fluent foreign language engagement in PD will have important benefits.
• She repeatedly emphasized the importance of New Media in public diplomacy efforts.  Though just using different channels will not change things, using them properly and in combination with the dialogic approach McHale is advocating is critical.
• She also discussed the importance of creating a culture of risk-taking and innovation.  This is of the utmost importance because public diplomacy operates on a rugged landscape.

Finally, for my money the most important thing McHale said in her speech is this:

At the top of my list is integrating public diplomacy into the policy process at every level, from formulation and implementation.  Our policy decisions must be informed upfront by sound research and perspectives on possible impacts.

Amen!  What a great thing to have on the top of the list.  If McHale can really accomplish this goal, it alone will be enough to secure her legacy (in my humble opinion).  She will have solved the number one problem of U.S. public diplomacy in this decade, that it has been treated as an after-the-fact effort to put lipstick on pigs.  Given institutional inertia that will work against this change, she has her work cut out for her.

by Bud Goodall, Angela Trethewey, & Steven R. Corman

President Barack Obama’s historic speech in Cairo yeserday represents a welcome break from the former President George W. Bush administration’s approach to strategic communication.  Bush’s rhetorical strategy was to divide the world into opposing forces of Good and Evil, and then demand that Muslims choose sides. By contrast, Obama tried to reframe the challenges facing America and the Muslim world as one of rejecting that division in favor of a story of shared progress.

Other commentators have already analyzed the political details of the speech.  In this post we look beneath the surface of what Obama said to comment on his message strategy.  We observe that while Obama’s policies are not so different from those espoused by Bush, there is significant shift in the  narrative framing of those policies.  In effect, his speech offered the Muslim world a new way of narrating a common U.S. and Muslim history centered on the idea of joint progress.

Acknowledging “tensions” in the world, Obama established tribal conflict as a backward way of dealing with cultural, political, and religious differences.  He said:

For human history has often been a record of nations and tribes subjugating one another to serve their own interests.  Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self defeating.  Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.  So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners of it. Our problems must be dealt with through partnership; progress must be shared.

As this quote indicates, Obama’s alternative storyline draws upon a theme of progress that operates as a narrative archetype.  He proposes  a progressive, forward-looking, historical scenario grounded in the Enlightenment.  It emphasizes a theme of continual improvement and development. This progress archetype manifests itself repeatedly in several themes in Obama’s speech.

He grounded “progress” in the very existence of the university setting from which he speaks:  ”As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam.  It was Islam–at places like Al-Azhar University–that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment.”  As Laila Abdel Meguid, Dean of the Faculty of Mass Communication at the University of Cairo expresses it, “The choice of Cairo University is also very significant; it represents a major hub for culture and science in Egypt and the Middle East and has always been a forum of dialogue between cultures and civilizations.”

Obama made progressive use of culture specific language.  He greeted Muslims in their own language with the  expression “assalaamu alaykum” (peace be upon you).  By using Arabic he establishes common ground through shared language, which undoubtedly was read as a sign of progress.  He also used three specific Koranic references throughout the speech, each one designed as an authoritative referent for his views.  This pattern of invoking the Koran for just such purposes is a widely understood rhetorical technique throughout the Muslim.  Again this represents “progress” through evolution of sacred authoritative texts used by American presidents.

Obama also tied his personal story to the progress archetype by emphasizing his Muslim roots, Kenyan father, years in Indonesia, and work with Muslims in Chicago.  This connection of the personal history to the shared culture and history of Muslims creates a sense of identification between speaker and audience that is amplified, no doubt, by his appearance as a Black man serving as President of the U.S.  Hence, he stands before the Muslim world as the literal embodiment of progress.

Obama announced a

new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition.  Instead, they overlap, and share common principles–principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

By focusing his address on what we share rather than on what divides us, Obama makes clear his progressive view that our nations and peoples work toward similar goals and hold the same values.

Obama also emphasized the relationship of Muslim history to American history, noting that Morocco was the first nation to recognize the United States, that the Founding Fathers recognized the importance of Islam in his country, and that individual Muslims have played important roles in America’s story.    By linking our history to the inclusion and contributions of Muslims, Obama incorporates all Muslims into the progress archetype, not as an invitation or an afterthought, but instead as a natural part of our historical progression.

Obama distinguished between “violent extremists” and Muslims, and accused the former of “exploit[ing] … tensions in  a small but potent minority of Muslims.”  From a Muslim world perspective, his ability to distinguish between all Muslims and those who choose violent extremism affords a progressive view of the complexities of identity associated with religious faith and cultural traditions.

In other parts of the speech Obama also invoked the progress archetype.  He focused  on the Palestine-Israel conflict as a nexus of tribal divisions that marks an outmoded way of thinking, and linked progress in resolving that conflict to support for two states.  In briefer segments dealing with nuclear proliferation, democracy, women’s rights, and economic development, there were less explicit but still clear appeals to progressive ideals.

What is strategic about these rhetorical choices is that Obama attempts to reframe Western and Muslim relations outside of the tribal conflict narrative and instead recapture the joint historical progress of Muslims and the Western world.  In practical terms, Obama uses this opportunity not to create an entirely new narrative but instead to remind listeners of an older and more powerful story that includes, rather than excludes, Muslims.

What remains to be seen is whether the target audience for this speech will embrace his storyline.  Obama’s progress archetype automatically resonates with Western audiences.  But it is  not necessarily embraced by everyone he was addressing.  Many Muslims feel threatened by modernity and its indifference to tradition.  Violent extremists and radical clerics play on this fear with stories like Sayyid Qutb’s New Jihiliyya, which portrays the West a a source of Islam’s gradual decay–not its partner in progress.

Such storylines are rooted in a picture of decline that “emphasizes deterioration … often coupled with a deep sentimental attachment to the ‘good old days’” (Zerubavel, 2003, p. 16).  Obama’s speech can be considered a strategic success if we begin to see evidence that his counter-narrative of progress is being embraced by the ordinary Muslims who were his primary audience.

UPDATE 12:30 MST

Here are some other notable comments on Obama’s speech:

• Obama’s New Beginning in Cairo: Now He Needs One in Washington (Jennifer Bryson)
  
• Jihadi Reactions to Obama (Jihadica)
  
• The Chicago View (Devid Brooks NYT)
• My First Take on the Speech (Marc Lynch)

by Steven R. Corman

Last week, while I was recovering from a long stretch of foreign travel, GAO released its latest report on public diplomacy.  Matt thinks it is “interesting and worth reading,”  while Kim says not so much. My own view is that the report is interesting (in a disturbing way) because it clings to a failed model of strategic communication effectiveness.  Like past GAO reports, it insists that if we only apply that model more diligently, then everything will be alright.

The main conclusion of the report is that the State Department has not been paying enough attention to earlier GAO reports and that it has failed to clearly enough define its purposes/goals, assess and manage risks, measure outcomes, and coordinate activities.

GAO Campaign Style Approach

In particular it faults State for lacking country-level plans that implement best practices from the “campaign-style approach” to strategic communication.  The ideal process as diagrammed in their report is shown in the figure at right.  Among the  assumptions underlying the diagram are:

• It presumes you can define your core messages independent of the people you will be communicating with, then launch the messages at them, like so many artillery shells.
• It assumes you can target particular audiences and deliver messages narrowly to them, without those messages leaking to other audiences.
• It assumes you can pre-plan your communication efforts and that if you do a good job things will probably go more or less according to plan.
• It assumes you can unambiguously assess the results of communication efforts in a short time frame and use this information to make minor adjustments that “fine tune” your communication efforts.

However, as we have argued, repeatedly, the diagram and its assumptions are derived from an outdated model of communication, and following it better will only make matters worse.  Communication is not a process of transmission of messages but of dialogue with an audience.  Modern media systems make exclusively targeting narrow audiences difficult or impossible.  Communication systems are so complex that planning is of limited use.  You can’t straightforwardly assess results and tweak your tactics, as if you were a strategic communication version of a forward artillery spotter.

The fourth section of the report says our problem is that U.S. strategic communication efforts are not coordinated enough.  This is a theme that has been repeated ad nauseum in reports over the last eight or nine years, and was the subject of multiple abortive attempts by the Bush administration to create coordinating offices at the executive level.

There is little doubt that presenting incoherent and contradictory messages is a bad idea. But on the other hand having everyone hammering on a few talking points in a “campaign style” effort is a bad idea too, and this is what I think the GAO has in mind.  The problem with that approach is that it presumes you already have the right messages and you can predict how your audience is going to react.  In other words, it presumes a simple strategic communication landscape.

In reality, the United States operates on a rugged landscape where things extremely complex and unpredictable.  In that situation we a more evolutionary approach, based on variation, selection, and retention.  Trying too hard to coordinate things only works against that goal by inhibiting variation.

The GAO also faults the State Department for not engaging the private sector more effectively.  This is another recurring theme in their reports (as they themselves note).  The presumption is that we have the best marketing and advertising minds in the world, and if we can only get them involved in public diplomacy things will improve.

But there is reason to question whether the knowledge of our admittedly first-rate marketing and advertising minds maps straightforwardly to public diplomacy.  Charlotte Beers was regarded as one of the brightest stars in the advertising business, but failed in applying her ideas to public diplomacy.  Karen Hughes made use of Disney’s production savvy in developing a video to be shown in embassies, customs control points, etc., but it’s not clear this had any impact on views of the U.S.  While the private sector has ideas to contribute, it is possible to take the analogy between business and public diplomacy too far.

There are some things to agree with in the report:  State is underfunded and understaffed with respect to its responsibilities, security concerns at its outposts has limited engagement with foreign publics, and efforts have begun to engage new media.  But on the whole, if you took the dates and references to the Obama admininstration out of this report, it would be pretty hard to distinguish from those from 2003 and 2005.

This leads me to suggest that maybe the GAO should reconsider its own communication strategy in preparing these reports.  The recommendations they are making are not sticking; they document this themselves.  Maybe this is because they are not really offering anything fresh or compelling in terms of perspective and recommendations.

The GAO would have more interesting things to say if they abandoned the old “command and control” framework for criticism that they have been applying all these years, and made recommendations that are better suited to the complex systems in which public diplomacy actually operates.

by Steven R. Corman

Judith McHale was sworn-in yesterday as Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.  Accordingly the Countup Clock that has graced these pages for the last several weeks has been retired.

The final reading was 129 days between President Obama’s inauguration and swearing in the new PD Chief.  As others have noted as well, that’s not much haste relative to the importance of the job, and it does not bode well for the priority that the Obama administration plans to give public diplomacy…at least via State.  As Alvin Snyder points out,  there may be a move afoot to duplicate DoS PD functions in the White House staff.  That would be a bad idea as it would create more complex interdependencies between those responsible for PD, making the strategic communication landscape even more rugged.

Matt says we now need a clock for “when the deeply problematic bureaucratic and functional division between public affairs and public diplomacy within the Under Secretary’s office will be eliminated.”  I would be happy to adapt the old one for that purpose, but I’m not completely sure when we would set the start date, nor what the exit condition would be.  So I think I’ll let Matt handle that one.

by Steven R. Corman

This weekend the mainstream media reported that Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen and former Secretary of State Colin Powell had come to the defense of the Obama administration’s plans to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.  They were reacting to recent statements by Republican political leaders opposing Obama’s plans.

I want to comment on one element of this:  Whether the existence of the prison has served as a strategic communication tool for al Qaeda, especially in support of recruiting. This weekend Mullen and Powell said that it had. Mullen said Gitmo “has been a recruiting symbol for those extremists and jihadists who would fight us,” and continued “It’s my judgment that (Guantanamo) has had an impact (on recruiting). And it’s time to move on.” For his part, Powell said “Guantanamo has become a major, major problem … in the way the world perceives America.”

They were reacting to recent statements by Republican leaders who oppose Obama’s plans.  One is former Vice President Dick Cheney, who in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute on May 21 said:

Another term out there that slipped into the discussion is the notion that American interrogation practices were a “recruitment tool” for the enemy. … This recruitment-tool theory has become something of a mantra lately, including from the President himself. And after a familiar fashion, it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do. It’s another version of that same old refrain from the Left, “We brought it on ourselves.”

Arizona Senator John Kyl, appearing on a Sunday talk show, concurred with Cheney, saying he doesn’t believe people sit around in coffee shops saying that because of Guantanamo they will become terrorists, and that Obama had failed to provide any evidence of this.  He asserted:

I mean, it’s palpably false to suggest that the existence of Gitmo created terrorism, and yet the president gets away with that.

Perhaps there is no evidence about coffee shop conversations (in open source, anyway).   Perhaps, as some sources claim, Cheney and Kyl are saying these things not because they think they’re true but because they see Guantanamo as am effective political wedge issue.

But palpably false?  It’s hard to understand how Cheney and Kyl could make statements like this with a straight face given that Gitmo is such a repeated and strong theme in al Qaeda’s strategic communication.   And as we know their communication efforts are all about creating converts and sympathizers to their cause.

Since there has been a call for evidence, I present here, for their and your reading enjoyment, a handy compendium of quotes from al Qaeda’s chief ideologues on the subject of Guantanamo (through January 2008).  Note that in many cases Guantanamo is mentioned in the same breath with Abu Ghraib, which as far as I know nobody is defending:

• “The entire world testifies to the Guantanamo farce and the unlawful detention of hundreds in the United States without trials.” (Ayman al Zawahiri, October 2002)
• “God both privately and publicly, and to implore Allah and beseech him to accept our repentance and relieve us of our distress. O Lord, give us your blessing in this world and in the next, and protect us from the fires of Hell. We beseech Allah to free our captives from the hands of the Americans and their accomplices – foremost among them Sheikh ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman and Sheikh Sa’id ibn Zu’eyr and our brethren in Guantanamo – and to strengthen the Mujahideen in Palestine and other Muslim lands.” (Osama bin Laden, February 2003)
• “The tape also tells those ‘working or cooperating’ with the United States that America is too weak to protect either itself or its allies. If the United States should prosecute those being held at Guantanamo, the speaker says, ‘it is sentencing its own people.  We don’t expect any justice from America,’ the voice says. (report on statement by Ayman al Zawahiri, August 2003)
• “O God, help release our brother prisoners in the prisons of tyrants in America, Guantanamo, occupied Palestine, Al-Riyadh, and everywhere.” (Osama bin Laden, October 2003)
• “It is consistent with tormenting prisoners in the cages of Guantanamo and torturing Muslims in the prisons of our leaders, the friends of the United States.” (Ayman al Zawahiri, commenting on the French hijab ban in February 2004)
• “The fathers and mothers of the US soldiers should remember the crimes of America in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kashmir, Guantanamo, and in the prisons of the US friends each time they receive a coffin returning to the homeland.”  (Ayman al Zawahiri, February 2004)
• “When the crusader US campaign was launched, the traitor Musharraf surrendered to the FBI and evicted hundreds of them to Guantanamo and US prisons to be imprisoned, tortured, or killed.” (Ayman al Zawahiri, March 2004).
• “Did not Bush say that Iraq is one of the states of the axis of evil? To the Christians, this description means that we are infidels and useless. This explains their occupation of our land and their killing of us. This also explains the atrocities that their soldiers committed in Abu-Ghurayb prison, Guantanamo, and elsewhere against our brother prisoners; atrocities which moved the whole of mankind.” (Osama bin Laden, December 2004).
• “Three years have passed since the first batch of Muslim prisoners was sent to the Guantanamo detention center after thousands were betrayed in Mazar Sharif after an agreement was reached with them. They were later bombed by planes in Qala-e Janghi after they refused to surrender. One might ask: Why all this interest in Guantanamo while there are thousands of Guantanamos in our countries under US supervision and control? In my opinion, and God knows best, the answer is that it [Guantanamo] reveals the reality of reform and democracy which America claims that it seeks to spread in our countries. This reform will be based on US detention centers — like Bagram, Kandahar, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghuryab — bombing with cluster bombs and missiles, and installing people like Karzai and Allawi.”  (Ayman al Zawahiri, February 2005)
• “It [the U.N.]  also remains silent about its full collusion on what is happening in Abu-Ghrayb, Guantanamo and Bagram and the treatment of Al-Qa’ida and Taliban prisoners, where they disappear from the face of the earth and no one knows anything about them.” (ayman al Zawahiri, September 2005)
• “The torturing of men has reached the point of using chemical acids and electric drills [to pierce] their joints. If they [those who torture them] become desperate with them, they drill their heads to death. If you like, read the humanitarian reports on the atrocities and crimes in the prisons of Abu Ghurayb, Guantanamo, and Bagram.” (Osama bin Laden, January 2006).
• “The video entitled: ‘Interviews with the Escapees from Bagram Prison,’ began by announcing that the interview in this video was with the ‘mujahid Faruq al-Iraqi.’ This was followed by an excerpt from an old video message by Ayman al-Zawahiri talking about ‘the hypocrisy of the Crusaders,’ and the conditions in their prisons. While footage of Guantanamo Bay prison appeared on the screen, a voiceover spoke off-camera about the conditions of the mujahidin in such prisons.”  (report on an as Sahab video released in February 2006)
• “Bush called on us to respect human rights while he is establishing secret prisons everywhere, exercising dirty torture in Bagram, Abu Ghurayb, and Guantanamo, and sending Muslims to be tortured in the prisons of his friends.” (Ayman al Zawahiri, March 2006)
• “And then I call to memory my brothers the prisoners in Guantanamo — may Allah free them all — and I state the fact, about which I also am certain, that all the prisoners of Guantanamo, who were captured in 2001 and the first half of 2002 and who number in the hundreds, have no connection whatsoever to the events of September 11th, and even stranger is that many of them have no connection with al-Qaida in the first place, and even more amazing is that some of them oppose al­Qaida’s methodology of calling for war with America.” (Osama bin Laden, May 2006)
• “I call on every Muslim in Palestine to stand by the causes of his nation in Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Guantanamo even if it be with words, calls, or encouragement.” (Ayman al Zawahiri, June 2006)
• “My Muslim brothers in Kabul, the latest US aggression against you was preceded by a long series of the killing of innocent people in Kabul, Khost, Uruzgan, Helmand, Kandahar, and Konar. This aggression was also preceded by torturing Muslims in Kandahar and Bagram and at the prison of darkness in Kabul. This was also preceded by insulting the holy Koran in Bagram and Guantanamo and by the Danish, French, and Italian mocking of the noblest prophet, God’s peace and blessings be upon him.” (Ayman al Zawahiri, June 2006)
• “The invasion of Iraq and the Guantanamo prison provide a clear example here. They terrorized people, humiliated them by the power of fire and iron, and treated presidents the way slaves are treated.” (Ayman al Zawahiri, June 2006)
• “This ignorance, which causes the people of the West to rapturously applaud when Israel perpetrates wholesale slaughter of Muslims in Lebanon and Palestine and leads them to give their assent to the atrocities their governments commit in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Muslim world, and makes them voice their approval when their armies desecrate copies of the Koran in Guantanamo, and their yellow press and televangelists insult our Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon Him.” (Azzam al Amriki, September 2006)
• “I also congratulate my captive brothers everywhere: in Guantanamo and the secret and open prisons of America; in Bagram, Abu Ghrayb, al-Ha’ir, and al-Ruways; in Tura, Abu Za’bal, and the desert prisons of Algeria; and in Shatanuf, bin Aknun, and all the prisons of the Crusaders, Jews and their agents, the traitorous rulers of the lands of Islam.” (Ayman al Zawahiri, December 2006)
• “And we reaffirm to the families of the Guantanamo captives, who are demonstrating these days in Cuba, that we - with Allah’s permission - have not and will not forget our captives, and that their liberation is a debt on our necks, and that the Americans must expect to pay the price for everything they have done to them.” (ayman al Zawahiri, January 2007)
• “I also greet my brothers in shackles everywhere, chief among them our perseverant reward-seeking Shaykh Umar Abd-al-Rahman and all our patient brothers in Guantanamo, America’s secret prisons and the dungeons of its agents in our countries.” (Ayman al Zawahiri, February 2007)
• “It is the Jihad of the confined captive who has swallowed lump after lump of humiliation, insult, suppression and severity at the hands of the worshipers of the Cross and their hirelings, in Abu Ghrayb [Abu-Ghurayb], Guantanamo, Bagram, Jordan, the Arabian Peninsula and elsewhere, all the while patient, seeking his reward, and awaiting the day of your victory and hour of your success to receive the reward of his sacrifice in safety and jubilation, not in worry and fear.” (Abu-Yahya al-Libi, March 2007)
• “And the entire world has seen those disgraceful acts which make the brow sweat and which are perpetrated inside their jails and in the middle of their prisons against the pure and good, and the pictures of our captives in Abu Ghurayb, Guantanamo and Bagram continue to be present in the mind of every Muslim in whose limbs the spirit of faith creeps, and what was hidden was even bitterer.” (Abu-al-Layth al-Libi, May 2007)
• “They are the ones who test the latest achievement of the American diabolic mind in weapons of mass destruction against us, and they are the ones who continue to incite their allied regimes to pursue and eliminate our Muslim youth, and they are the ones who fight Muslims in their daily struggle to survive, and they are the ones who plunder Muslims’ resources and show creativity in their humiliation of Muslims even on their television screens as they did in the Nazi-Zionist detention in Guantanamo and as they are doing today in Iraq.” (Ayman al Zawahiri, July 2007)
• “The diplomatic immunity and freedom from arrest and prosecution behind which you hide and which international law theoretically sanctifies apparently did not apply to Mullah Abdul-Salam, ambassador of the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan, in Islamabad, whom you forced out of Pakistan so you could arrest him and send him off for torture and humiliation in the dungeons of Guantanamo Bay.”  (Azzam al Amriki, August 2007)
• “And today, more than ever before, America’s military and intelligence services are guilty of the most atrocious forms of torture and arbitrary and unlawful detention of innocents in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and elsewhere, including on American soil.” (Azzam al Amriki, January 2008)

by Steven R. Corman

Hi there.  Long time, no blog.  That’s in part because I was attending a conference entitled Strategic Communication for Combating Terrorism sponsored by the NATO Center of Excellence for Defense Against Terrorism in Ankara, Turkey.  The workshop featured 15 experts on strategic communication, including fellow blogger Matt Armstrong of MountainRunner.

Considering that we did not coordinate our subject matter in advance, there was a remarkable amount of  convergence among the presentations.  I summarize six main themes here for your reading enjoyment, as a way of documenting the current thinking on the main problems of strategic communication against terrorism.

Engagement

The strongest theme had to do with engagement.  Speakers stressed the importance of increased engagement with strategically important audiences and communication channels.  The four aspects of this theme were:

• The need to view strategic communication as a two way process of communication.  This contradicts the traditional view that communication is a one-way process of transmission and highlights the importance of strategic listening and dialog, and resonates with our white paper on 21st century strategic communication.
• The importance of personal contact between NATO personnel and target audiences and populations, so as to better understand their views, interpretations, and culture.
• The need for NATO communicators to improve familiarity and engagement with the New Media.
• The critical factor of engagement with policy formulation, treating policy as an aspect of strategic communication rather than the traditional system that treats strategic communication as a way to “sell” policy that is often unpopular with strategic audiences.

Media Landscape

Many speakers addressed the radical changes in the media landscape over the last decade that have changed the role of the traditional media and created many new types of media. These changes represent an increase in the overall importance of the media and a growing need for engagement with the full spectrum of media channels. Adapting to the new landscape is critical to the success of NATO strategic communication efforts.

New media has been a hot topic in strategic communication for some time.  Next week I will be speaking at a conference entitled Legitimising the Discourses of Radicalisation:  Political Violence in the New Media Ecology sponsored by the University of Warwick International Security Initiative.  I will endeavor to post a report on the discussion there.

Complexity

Numerous speakers noted the revolutionary increase in the complexity of 21st Century strategic communication systems due to factors like globalization and the burgeoning media landscape already mentioned.  These changes not only make the strategic communication system more complicated but provide opponents with the ability to adopt more complex and agile organizational forms.

Control

In the past best strategic communication practices were concerned with control of messages.  But new realities create a system with levels of uncertainty that make control impossible (another theme in the white paper linked above).  Treating 21st century systems as simple and controllable when they are not leads to negative outcomes and strategic communication failures.  This presents a significant challenge for NATO communicators because their practices and systems were developed in the last century, when control-based communication was more practical, and are proving slow to change.

Narrative

Many speakers discussed the growing importance of narrative in strategic communication, which forms an important basis for interpretation of action by strategically important audiences.  NATO nations are doing a poor job of making their narratives clear, and are taking actions that contradict their narratives, thus undermining their credibility.  At the same time they must do a better job of understanding and countering the narratives of their opponents.

Narrative appears to be an ascending topic in strategic communication.  On my UK trip next week I will also be attending a conference devoted to the subject in London called Reframing the Nation: Media Publics and Strategic Narratives, sponsored by the Open University.

Organizational Inertia

Inertia in the command systems of NATO and its member nations inhibits the change mandated by the five foregoing themes.  While there is widespread agreement among theorists and operators that strategic communication practices must evolve to meet new challenges, political and organizational structures of the status quo work against these changes, keeping the alliance in an underperforming posture that reproduces outdated practices.  This is perhaps the keystone problem in NATO strategic communication, because it inhibits adaptation to the new realities discussed at the workshop.

by Steven R. Corman

I just ran across this interesting release from Gallup.  It cross-analyzes data from Gallup’s Communications Index “which measures the extent to which respondents are connected via electronic communications” and approval of U.S. leadership. The results are not too encouraging.  Basically, the more wired the respondents are, the less inclined they are to approve of U.S. leadership and vice versa.

Gallup reckons that the “vice versa” (i.e. approve) results are skewed by sub-Saharan Africa, where communications infrastructure is underdeveloped.  Once that data is removed, the approve levels don’t significantly differ with increasing levels of wiredness.

That bad news is that the disapprove relationships still holds even with the least wired group taken out of the sample.  Gallup is careful to say that this doesn’t necessarily show a causal link between communications access and disapproval of U.S. leadership.

True, this might be a spurious correlation, like the well-known correlation between ice cream sales and swimming pool drownings. On the other hand, it might not.  Given the equally well-known pattern of plummeting U.S. approval ratings over the last decade or so, I think it’s pretty reasonable to rule this out.  Additionally

Gallup also compared other factors, such as income, education, and age, to American approval ratings, but the relationship was not as clear as with communications.

So they at least checked demographic factors that could explain the results. The simplest explanation, then,  is that the better informed people are and the more connected they are to social networks, the less they like what they see in the U.S.

One caveat is that the release isn’t completely clear about whether “U.S. Leadership” means our leaders per se or a collective attribute of the country.  Wording in the release suggests it’s the former, and if so the fact that the data were collected in 2008 may be a reflection of disdain for the former administration.

In that case it’s possible that the same mechanisms underlying the relationships in this Gallup study could work to our advantage with Barack Obama.   He is popular with international audiences and is widely preceived to be off to a good start in communicating with the world. Gallup, please repeat this analysis in six months or so.

by Steven R. Corman

I just ran across this “Washington whisper” item in USNWR:

President Obama has nominated longtime national security expert Philip J. “P. J.” Crowley as assistant secretary of state for public affairs, a move that suggests that the department’s public diplomacy with foreign nations will be stepped up. Crowley, currently a senior fellow and director of homeland security at the Center for American Progress, is expected to play more of a background role, explaining U.S. diplomatic moves to the foreign media and nations rather than handling the daily briefings. He is widely respected in the press and among military and diplomatic officials for his past government service and his steady advocacy while at the progressive think tank. During the Clinton administration, he was the spokesman for the National Security Council and a Defense Department communicator. He is a retired Air Force colonel who has also worked with NATO. If he is confirmed, as expected, it will help Secretary Hillary Clinton build on her public diplomacy program, say State Department officials. As one source put it, the goal is to “narrow the perception gap between what we say and what we do.

This is confusing.  I know definitions in this domain are kind of fuzzy, but I always thought public affairs was targeted primarily at domestic audiences.

To wit, publicdiplomacy.org says that public diplomacy

seeks to promote the national interest of the United States through understanding, informing and influencing foreign audiences.

Public affairs, on the other hand:

seeks to foster understanding of these goals through dialogue with individual citizens and other groups and institutions, and domestic and international media. However, the thrust of public affairs is to inform the domestic audience.

(my emphasis in both quotes).

Yet the announcement above says Crowley will be “explaining U.S. diplomatic moves to the foreign media and nations” and that he is going to “help Secretary Hillary Clinton build on her public diplomacy program.”

So is this a PA post or a PD post?  If Crowley will be doing PD, what will McHale be doing?  And who will be doing PA?

by Steven R. Corman

Today the White House announced its intent to nominate Judith McHale as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs (h/t Matt).

Obviously the Obama administration couldn’t withstand the unrelenting pressure of the Count-Up Clock.  I can only imagine the meetings that must have taken place over the weekend.  Had I known it would be so effective, I would have put it up months ago.

Yet we’re not quite ready to take it down.  There is still a confirmation process to follow, so The Clock will come down once that process is complete.

by Mark Woodward*

Arriving at the Polls

It has now been nearly eleven years, and three general elections, since the chaotic days of the Indonesian democratic transition of 1998. At that time many observers questioned the viability of the new democracy, particularly in light of the fact that the transition took place in the midst of an economic and political crisis that left millions with out steady jobs and in which thousands died in outbreaks of ethnic and religious. Some western pundits questioned whether democracy could work in the world’s most populous Muslim nation because of the supposed incompatibility of Islam and popular sovereignty. Some Islamist radicals vowed to do everything possible to keep it from working.

Fortunately the naysayers were wrong. A decade later Indonesia is well on the way to being a consolidated democracy, if it is not already one. Friday was Election Day. The polls opened at seven in the morning and closed at noon.  In the neighborhood where I live election officials began announcing results over a public address system at 12:41. PM.

Voting

Complete results will probably not be known for several weeks but the process apparently worked remarkably well. The election was well organized, efficient and quiet. There were no demonstrations, no violence and, in accordance with Indonesian law, no elections signs or other forms of campaigning within sight of polling places.  There were scattered incidents in remote parts of the country and in some places the election was postponed because ballots were not delivered. This is unfortunate, but not surprising in a country with more than half a million polling places.

Because Election Day is a national holiday, most shops, schools and businesses were closed. People came to be polls in large numbers. Because there is no absentee voting some people traveled long distances to cast votes in their native villages. Others took advantage of the long weekend to take vacations because tomorrow in Good Friday and that is also a national holiday.

Purple Thumb

While there will certainly be charges and counter-charges, I did not see any signs of  obvious voting irregularities. Voters were required to present their national identity cards, which were checked against an official list. All the ballots were marked by hand and counted by members of the local branch of the election commission. Each voter was required to dip a thumb or finger in purple ink to prevent multiple voting.

One of the most dramatic changes that has taken place in Indonesia over the last decade in Indonesia is that most people are no longer afraid of the police. They do not need to be. There were no signs of intimidation. There were unarmed police at polling stations, most of whom sat chatting and joking with voters snacking, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes. One of the officers asked me to sign a guest book and encouraged me to talk with voters and photograph the voting. Given the country’s totalitarian past, the behavior of the police was remarkable.

Chatting with Police

Today was the first of two rounds of elections. People chose local, provincial and national level legislators from among thirty-eight parties and hundreds of candidates There were four very long ballots that some people found excessively complicated. But this is democracy. Despite regulations intended to limit the number of parties, thirty eight, ranging from fundamentalist Muslim and Christian parties to left leaning populists to centrist secular nationalists qualified, and all contested the election. The second round, in which the President and Vice President will be chosen is  scheduled for July 8th.

Indonesian Politics is Now Local

The most important change in this year’s election is that voters now choose individual candidates, not party lists. This has increased the importance of local issues, and decreased the importance and power of national party elites. For the first time voters can “spit” tickets. This has changed the nature of election campaigns. In the past campaigns were conducted primarily at the national level. Local campaigns were primarily “get out the base” efforts based as much on patronage and party loyalty as issues. It is still the case that some candidates, especially those from Muslim and Christian parties, appeal primarily to “primordial loyalties” of ethnicity and religion.  The new electoral rules have, however, meant that many voters chose candidates who they know personally, or by reputation. Candidates featured local as well as national celebrities in their print and television ads, and some appeared in distinctively local ethnic costumes. In Yogyakarta this meant that some appealed to the city’s history as a center of Islamic modernism, and others to royalist sentiments that are still powerful here.

Patronage is still very important. In Yogyakarta incumbents boasted about the services that they had provided for their constituents. Challengers promised to do even more. Campaigns also included a much higher level of face to face interaction than in the past. In Indonesia is the called sosalisasi (socialization) which means roughly getting to know the people. At the national and provincial level this means formal meetings with local leaders. At the local level it means meeting people in their homes In both cases it is fund raising in reverse. It is seeking supporters by demonstrating that one has the ability to be an effective patron.

This is how it works at the local level. One evening in February a was visiting a couple who I have known for at least a decade. One teaches at one of the local universities, the other runs a small business. They are middle class, but by no means wealthy. Their house is a meeting place for friends, relatives and students. On any given weekend twenty or more often pass through in the course of a day. Everyone sits and chats, snacks, drinks coffee and most of the men smoke cigarettes.

On this particular evening a candidate for the local level legislature, who runs a small restaurant near the University campus, dropped in unannounced.  He was of the same general religious orientation (Progressive Islam) and ethnic background as my friends. He brought a stack of campaign literature, including instructions on how to find his name on the ballot, and enough food for at least a dozen people, which he had his driver carry to the kitchen, seemingly to avoid the impression that he was bringing a rather expensive gift. We sat for about an hour, snacked on fruit and cassava chips, drank coffee, smoked cigarettes (only the men, very few Indonesian women smoke) and talked about politics in general and the importance of Islam as a moral, rather than explicitly political, force in Indonesian life. After he excused himself and went on to his next stop we all sat around on the floor and enjoyed a very nice and completely unexpected free meal. Several people commented that this was probably “corrupt food.” No one really cared.

The candidate was not so naïve as to think that he was buying votes. Votes can be and are bought in Indonesian elections, for as little as 5,000 Rupiah (50 cents).  Buying votes is not the way to win elections because there is no way to be certain that the person you pay will actually vote for you. Indeed, I know people who brag about the fact that they have sold their votes to several candidates, and not actually voted for any of them.  He was trying to win support from people he believed, correctly, to be influential in the community and who he hoped would encourage others to vote for him. In this case, it did not work.

Most Indonesians recognize that in a country this large and this diverse there are only two possible governmental systems: democracy and authoritarian rule. Some are frustrated with the slow pace of change, the fact that the economy has yet to fully recover from the collapse of the late 1990s and the fact that many political leaders are more interested in their own power than in the people’s wellbeing. Very few, however, would welcome a return to the authoritarian past. Pre-election polls and preliminary results indicate that the most likely winners are secular and progressive Islamic parties and radical Islamists will garner less than ten per cent of the vote, despite mounting very high profile and expensive campaigns.

Indonesian democracy is not perfect. Democracy is not perfect anywhere. I learned about how democracy and political campaigns work in Chicago in the early 1970s when His Honor Richard J. Daley (the first) was mayor. Compared to those elections, today’s vote in Yogyakarta was remarkably, free, fair and clean. It is now after three in the afternoon and they are still counting votes. It is not clear who will be elected. This was certainly not the case in Chicago in the 1970s.

*Mark Woodward is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University.  He is currently Visiting Professor of religious Studies at the Center for Religious and Cross-Cultural Studies, Gadjah Mada University and Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University, both in Yogyakarta Indonesia.