STATEMENT OF
LISA A. CURTIS
SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW
THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION
BEFORE THE HOUSE COMMITTEE
ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL
ORGANIZATIONS, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND OVERSIGHT
UNITED STATES HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES
APRIL 26, 2007
“EFFORTS TO DEAL WITH AMERICA’S IMAGE
ABROAD: ARE THEY WORKING?”
Mr.
Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me here today to
discuss U.S.
efforts to improve our image abroad. It
is an honor to address this Subcommittee on such an important issue and to share
my thoughts on how we might improve our public diplomacy efforts in the years
to come.
The
attacks of September 11, 2001, and their aftermath have renewed Washington’s focus on the importance of reaching out to
foreign audiences, particularly within the Muslim world, in order to boost
support for U.S.
values and policies. During the Cold
War, U.S.
policymakers understood the importance of the tools of public and cultural
diplomacy in foreign policy. President Ronald
Reagan defined public diplomacy as “Those actions of the U.S. government designed to generate support for
U.S.
national security objectives.”
Recent
polls show the image of the U.S.
is declining throughout the world and that large majorities of Muslim populations
believe the U.S.
seeks to undermine Islam as a religion. Defeating terrorist ideology requires that we
dispel such negative perceptions of America and that we engage more
actively and deliberately with the Muslim world. While we may never change the minds of
murderous terrorists who despise America
and its democratic ideals, we should reach out to those large segments of Muslim
populations that do not support violence against Americans, but who still have
mixed feelings about the U.S.
and its role in the world.
Efforts to Improve Public Diplomacy
Shortly
after 9/11, it became clear that merging the United States Information Agency (USIA)
into the State Department in 1999 had damaged overall U.S. public diplomacy efforts by cutting valuable
resources for programs and undervaluing the mission of public diplomacy in
supporting U.S.
national security objectives. The Bush
Administration has sought to address the shortcomings of U.S. public
diplomacy over the last five years, with some positive results. However, much work lies ahead.
In
the early days following the 9/11
attacks, the Bush Administration responded to the gaps in our public diplomacy
strategy by putting in place an Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, Charlotte
Beers, who had spent her career in the private sector as a well-renowned marketing
expert. The White House also instituted regular
White House-run inter-agency strategic communication meetings. Three years later, as opinion polls showed
America’s reputation continuing to plummet worldwide—and former Secretary of
Defense Rumsfeld asked his famous question about whether America was capturing
and eliminating more terrorists than it was creating—the soul-searching to
develop a better U.S. public diplomacy campaign continued.
In
September 2004, the Office of the Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology,
and Logistics released the “Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on
Strategic Communication.” The report concluded
that the U.S.
needed to transform its strategic communications efforts through a Presidential
directive to “connect strategy to structure” and improve interagency
coordination. The report called for
greater government–private sector collaboration and the creation of an
independent, non-profit, and non-partisan Center for Strategic Communication. In April of 2003, The Heritage Foundation
released a report titled, “How to
Reinvigorate U.S. Public Diplomacy,” which included recommendations that
the Administration and Congress restore public diplomacy’s independent
reporting and budget channels that were lost during the USIA/State merger in
1999 and return public diplomacy currently dispersed among other State Department
bureaus into one public diplomacy hierarchy.
The Bush Administration
has made several attempts since 9/11 to streamline the public diplomacy
bureaucracy and tighten strategic communications. Given the myriad and diverse public diplomacy
efforts of the U.S.
government, however, this has proved to be a far more difficult task than
anyone originally expected. In January
2003, President
George W. Bush formally established the Office of Global Communications (OGC)
to facilitate and coordinate the strategic direction of the White House and
individual agency efforts to communicate with foreign audiences. One year ago, President Bush established a new Policy Coordination
Committee on Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication led by the State
Department Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. This Committee is responsible for coordinating
interagency activities, unifying public messaging, ensuring all public
diplomacy resources are supporting the messages, and ensuring every agency
gives public diplomacy a high priority.
Under Secretary of State for Public
Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes has moved forward with developing a
unified strategic communications apparatus, but progress has been slow, and she
will have to persevere in her efforts to corral the disparate efforts. Hughes’ office has also had some success in
boosting the role of public diplomacy in our overall diplomatic and security
policies, but this also has proven to be a bureaucratic challenge.
The most notable progress in
developing unified messaging efforts has been in the establishment of a rapid
response team that follows newscasts around the world and offers talking points
on breaking international news to rebut negative media stories about the U.S.
in the Muslim world. The State
Department has also tasked 15
overseas posts to develop country-specific communications plans to better focus
efforts to counter terrorist ideology.
Funding for public diplomacy is
increasing, and will likely continue to do so as we ramp up public outreach, foreign
exchange, and scholarship programs, as well as public diplomacy training for
State Department officers. The State
Department requested almost $1 billion for public diplomacy efforts around the
world for fiscal year 2008 and increased public diplomacy spending in the last
two years in key regions like the Middle East (25 percent) and in South Asia
(nearly 40 percent). The State Department has also revived the Fulbright
Scholarship Program, but experts say it will take time to re-establish its
effectiveness, since it had been so grossly under-funded throughout the
1990s. The State Department created the
Global Cultural Initiative last year to coordinate all government-backed art,
music, and literature programs abroad and increased the number
of participants in State Department educational and cultural programs to nearly
39,000 this year.
In early January of this year, the State
Department held a major conference with over 150 participants, including senior
U.S. executives, to discuss
how American companies can help improve the U.S. image abroad. The conference represents a significant step
in meeting a key recommendation raised by the General Accounting Office in May, 2006, which called on
the Secretary of State to develop a strategy to promote the active engagement
of the private sector beyond international exchanges. The conference
included intensive breakout sessions to generate specific ideas on how the U.S. private
sector can get involved in public diplomacy.
Recommendations for U.S. businesses with operations overseas included
making public diplomacy actions a corporate
officer’s responsibility; becoming part of the local community through employee volunteerism; greater engagement
with responsible non-governmental organizations (NGOs); and creating “circles of
influence” through relationships with organizations, chambers of commerce,
journalists, and local business leaders.
During the conference, James E. Murphy, Chief Marketing and Communications
Officer of Accenture, reported that U.S. private giving to developing
countries exceeds $70 billion annually. This
includes gifts from foundations, corporations, private organizations, and
individuals. Most of the world is
unaware that Americans are providing this level of private and corporate giving
to developing countries.
One
example of effective private–public partnership to address the
most pressing international problems is the U.S.
corporate response to the devastating South Asia
earthquake on October 8, 2005. Shortly
after the earthquake—which killed over 74,000 people and displaced tens of
thousands—U.S. private sector executives from GE, UPS,
Pzifer, Xerox, and Citigroup agreed to lead a nationwide effort to raise
awareness and resources to help survivors of the earthquake rebuild their lives
and communities. The group has raised
over $100 million for the earthquake victims.
The State Department’s recent
establishment of the Office of
Private Sector Outreach to engage and work with businesses, universities, and
foundations on public diplomacy issues should also help to identify opportunities
and implement various projects that foster cooperation between the U.S. public
and private sectors in their overseas missions.
Expanding U.S.
Soft Power
While
strategic communication is an important element in influencing foreign populations’
opinions of America, it is equally important to promote deeper, more frequent cultural
engagement, people-to-people exchanges, and targeted development assistance
programs to assert America’s soft power.
In a recent Washington Post
op-ed, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said it well:
Moreover, this war cannot be won by arms
alone; “soft” power matters. In these
ways, our current struggle resembles the Cold War. As with the Cold War, we must respond
globally. As with the Cold War, ideas
matter as much as armaments. And as with
the Cold War, this war requires our patience and resolve.
The U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) has become more involved in public diplomacy
after the 9/11 Commission reported to Congress that some of the largest
recipients of U.S.
foreign aid had very strong anti-American sentiment among their populations. Establishing a State–USAID Policy Council and
a Public Diplomacy Working Group has helped USAID to establish closer ties with
the Department of State to publicize America’s humanitarian and
development aid initiatives.
The
U.S. response to the South
Asia earthquake in the fall of 2005 and its positive impact on Pakistani
attitudes toward the U.S. demonstrates
that humanitarian assistance can influence popular views of America. I visited Pakistan
to attend the International Donors’ Conference on November 19, 2005, as a
staffer for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and saw first-hand the
change in the Pakistani population’s views of the U.S. because of our rapid and robust
humanitarian response to this monumental disaster. Even our harshest critics admitted that America had come through for Pakistan at its greatest hour of
need. The U.S. Chinook helicopters that
rescued survivors and ferried food and shelter materials to the affected areas became
a symbol of America’s
helping hand.
The
U.S.
response was well-coordinated among the State Department, Department of Defense
(DOD), and USAID. DOD established mobile
medical units in remote areas of the Northwest
Frontier Province
and makeshift schools in the badly affected capital of Azad Kashmir, giving the
Pakistanis a new perspective on the U.S.
military and demonstrating U.S.
interest in the well-being of the Pakistani people.
Polling
shows that U.S. earthquake
relief efforts doubled the percentage of Pakistanis with favorable views of the
U.S.
from 23 percent to 46 percent from May 2005 to November 2005. This figure had dropped to 27 percent by
2006, however. Similarly, the U.S. response to the tsunami disaster had a
positive impact on public opinion of America
in Indonesia. Favorable views of the U.S. went from
15 percent to 38 percent. The point is
that providing humanitarian assistance is not only an act of goodwill, it can
reflect positively on the U.S.
image in the region where people are benefiting from the aid.
Engaging with civil
society and local religious leaders on issues such as human rights, political
and economic reform, and religion in society also will help build greater
understanding and help defeat misperceptions of the U.S. Twelve years ago as a Political Officer
serving at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, I participated in a USIA-sponsored
program to bring together female U.S.-based Islamic scholars and Pakistani
female lawyers, human rights workers, and NGO leaders to discuss the role of
women in Islam. I felt then—and even
more so now—that it was one of the more worthwhile activities I was involved in
as a diplomat. The U.S. has an
important role to play in facilitating these kinds of open exchanges and in
supporting human rights, democracy, and economic development at the grassroots
level. The State Department should
encourage officers’ initiation and participation in such programs on a broad
scale.
Recent
Polling
We
clearly have our work cut out for us. Recent
polls tell us that opinions of America
have declined markedly—to all-time lows in some countries—over the last few
years. Some of these polls have revealed
additional information for consideration.
Recent polling on views of the U.S.
role in the world released by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, for
example, shows that most countries reject the idea of the U.S. as pre-eminent world leader; however, majorities
in these countries still want the U.S. to participate in
international efforts to address world problems. At the same time, this poll showed that many
publics view their country’s relations with the U.S. as improving.
A recent Gallup World Poll, “How Citizens
of the U.S.
and Predominantly Muslim Nations View Each Other,” shows that Muslims generally
admire the West for its advanced technology and democracy and admire their own
societies for their respect for Islam and its teachings and their own family
values. In January 2007, 57 percent of
Americans reported “not knowing much” or “nothing” about Islam. Although perhaps not the role of the State
Department, it seems clear that we as a nation need to learn more about the
Muslim faith and get to know and respect its traditions and practices. The Gallup World Poll also concluded that Muslims
and Americans generally agreed on the need to control extremism. The polling shows that not only do we need to
think about the messages we are sending to the Muslim world, we also need to
search for practical ways to engage with it and to build upon our shared
values.
Moving
Forward
The worldwide polls revealing declining support for America are
discouraging. But polls change. And with the right public diplomacy
strategies and with perseverance, ingenuity, and decisiveness in asserting U.S. soft power, the U.S. can begin to win support from
moderate Muslims. Our message needs to
be unified and consistent with our actions or it will not be credible. To improve U.S. public diplomacy, we should:
·
Continue
to raise the status of public diplomacy as a key element in fighting Islamic
extremism and protecting U.S.
national security. Under
Secretary Hughes has made progress on this front by empowering Ambassadors to
speak more frequently to the media and by including public diplomacy as a key
job element in senior State Department officers’ evaluations. There has been resistance within the State
Department bureaucracy to having officers spend more time on public diplomacy
activities, which has led some outside experts to conclude that a separate
public diplomacy entity like USIA needs to be re-established. Given Under Secretary Hughes’ steady progress
in raising the mission of public diplomacy at the State Department, it may be
too early to make a decision in this regard.
The transformation of the State Department may take some time, but in
the end, it may be more beneficial to have a large corps of public
diplomacy-savvy diplomats and an integration of U.S. foreign policy and strategic communication.
·
More
clearly link the mission of USAID and the role of development and humanitarian
assistance to core national security objectives and ensure close coordination
between USAID and State Department on programming for aid projects. The bureaucratic stove piping of
resources has often made us our own worst enemy. The establishment of a new Director for U.S.
Foreign Assistance at the State Department and new initiatives to address the
lack of strategic focus in our assistance programs are steps in the right
direction. This bureaucratic
reorganization should strengthen, not diminish, the role of U.S. assistance
in foreign policy. While officials in Washington will set the
aid priorities, they should incorporate input from USAID staff that possess
detailed knowledge and insight into civil society in recipient countries. If we are trying to reach out to these
communities and build support for American values and policies, we will have to
break down bureaucratic barriers that inhibit efficient communication and
operational cooperation between the State Department and USAID. As we seek to promote democratic and economic
reform, USAID should play a prominent role in the planning and implementation
of projects aimed at reaching all levels of society.
·
Consider
establishing a semi-governmental entity to conduct public opinion research
in individual countries to allow us to tailor our messages to different
audiences and to give U.S. public diplomacy efforts a solid factual
foundation. The Intelligence and Research Bureau
of the State Department has conducted limited public polling and there are
several credible non-government entities like Zogby International, the Pew Research
Center, and WorldPublicOpinion.org
that conduct international polls on a regular basis. However, it would be useful to have a semi-governmental
agency that would be responsive to government tasking and whose staff could
interact closely with government officials.
·
Re-establish the once-popular American
libraries in city centers to supplement our efforts to reach people through the
internet and electronic media and reinvigorate the book translation program. Foreign interlocutors have emphasized their
positive experiences visiting the libraries in the past and the strong
impression these experiences left with them about America. Libraries could help reach audiences that do
not have access to the internet and offer a traditional forum for reaching out
to the local population. The Bush Administration
should also revive USIA’s once-robust book translation program, which now
operates sporadically and mostly in Spanish. Expanded offerings on U.S. history, economics, and
culture should be directed at essential target audiences in Arabic, Urdu,
Hindi, Russian, and Chinese and involve private foundations and industry in
donating and distributing materials.
·
Revitalize U.S. international broadcasting leadership and
recommit resources and funding to Voice of America. Members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) have at
times been inefficient in their decision-making and focused more on their own pet
projects instead of providing policy guidance to staff directors. Congress should consider making the BBG more
of an advisory body and granting executive power to a chairman who would be
responsible for strategic planning and implementation of international
broadcasting programs. Although the BBG increased
America’s
presence over Arab airwaves by creating Radio Sawa and Al-Hurra TV, it did so
by taking resources from the Voice of America. As a result, U.S.
programming in South Asia, Africa, and Latin America
now lacks content, lively discussion, and airtime.
If we are to isolate and defeat the extremists’ hateful and totalitarian
ideologies, we will need to focus more U.S. foreign policy attention and
resources on soft power strategies that seek to win support from moderate
Muslims worldwide. Right now the score
is not in our favor. However, with a
sustained and focused strategy, and with some patience and perseverance, we
should begin to see the fruits of our labor in the years to come.