Getting The U.S. Message Out Abroad
Joseph Nye, writing in The Ripon Society journal, looks at the challenge facing Karen Hughes in terms of “soft power.”
Karen Hughes, the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, has a daunting task. The United States spends only a little over a billion dollars a year on public diplomacy to get our message out, about the same as Britain or France though we are five times larger. We spend nearly 500 times more than that on our hard military power.The U.S. Information Agency (USIA) was abolished during the Clinton Administration. Proponents argued that giving its functions to an undersecretary in the State Department would integrate them more closely with overall diplomacy. But this change neglected the low value attributed to public diplomacy in the traditional culture of the State Department. The job Hughes now occupies was left vacant for nearly half of the four years of the first Bush Administration. The priorities in Bush’s first term were on America’s hard power, not its soft or attractive power.
Read the whole thing to learn more about one view of the problems and challenges…
2 Responses to “Getting The U.S. Message Out Abroad”
Thanks Joe for suggesting this write-up on US diplomacy. Joseph S. Nye teaches at Harvard University and is the author of Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, and The Power Game: A Washington Novel. He is much respected in the academic circles.
However, this piece made me nostalgic. I didn’t tell you but for about a year I worked as a Senior Editor with the SPAN magazine at the American Centre in New Delhi in the early 1990s.
The English edition of SPAN has a proud 45-year history of providing a glimpse into American life and society, and highlighting areas of U.S.-India collaborations in all spheres of activity: government, business, the social sector, the arts, culture, science and technology.
Until a decade and a half ago it had a readership that spanned all the hues of the political spectrum, and even the elite in all walks of life. It also attracted wellknown writers and had a few members of the staff drawn from the mainstream media.
But about a decade and a half back the priorities in the US diplomacy began to change. The body blow came with the decision to abolish the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) during the Clinton Administration.
Says Joseph Nye: “Proponents argued that giving its (public diplomacy)functions to an undersecretary in the State Department would integrate them more closely with overall diplomacy. But this change neglected the low value attributed to public diplomacy in the traditional culture of the State Department.”
However, the decline had begun nearly a decade and a half ago when the American Centre/SPAN were made a visible part of the American Embassy.
Thus the hard work that was put in by the American diplomats/academics/officials and the Indian staff to gain credibility for these institutions as autonomous units, was undone in a jiffy. As we all know that, generally speaking, the functioning of the embassies is very bureaucratic with little scope for creative activity.
To quote Joseph Nye again: “America’s strength lies in our civil society. Even when our policies are unpopular, our ability to be self critical as a free society can earn us grudging praise.
“Our diversity is our strength. Only when we manage to unleash this type of soft power and combine it with our hard power will we be successful in meeting the challenge of jihadist terrorism. Then we will be a ‘smart power’.â€?
I agree with Joseph Nye when he says: “Karen Hughes, the present US Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, has a daunting task. The United States spends only a little over a billion dollars a year on public diplomacy to get our message out, about the same as Britain or France though we are five times larger.
“We spend nearly 500 times more than that on our hard military power.
“The job Hughes now occupies was left vacant for nearly half of the four years of the first Bush Administration. The priorities in Bush’s first term were on America’s hard power, not its soft or attractive power.”
Let’s hope that Joseph Nye’s advice is given the importance it deserves.
Karen Hughes is sending kids from around the world to the World Cup.
Is that money well spent? Sure the kids will enjoy it and it is good for Germany’s image…