Whither Public Diplomacy In A New Trump Administration?

When I was a diplomat, but especially after I retired, I would sometimes tell people that I spent a career in government "as a propagandist." It was mostly sarcasm but technically true. I served 30 years in what is now called "Public Diplomacy," exactly half of it in the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) and half of it in the Department of State.[1]

USIA was founded in 1953 and absorbed into the State Department in 1999.[2] It was one of a series of international affairs agencies that grew out of two wars – the Second World War and the Cold War – a path trodden also by the Central Intelligence Agency (founded in 1947 but roots in the OSS from 1941), the U.S. Agency for Global Media (whose roots begin with the Voice of America in 1941) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which was founded in 1961 but was an outgrowth of earlier projects like the Point Four Program launched in 1949.

I do not think the CIA is disappearing anytime soon. Much has been written about USAID recently, including by me,[3] but I am more interested in thinking about the Public Diplomacy function, which still exists within the Department of State (under the "R" Undersecretariat), at the Public Affairs sections in our overseas missions, and in the broadcast and online media organizations grouped under USAGM aimed at foreign audiences.

What is Public Diplomacy (PD)? The classic definition from 1965 says: "Public diplomacy... deals with the influence of public attitudes on the formation and execution of foreign policies. It encompasses dimensions of international relations beyond traditional diplomacy; the cultivation by governments of public opinion in other countries; the interaction of private groups and interests in one country with another; the reporting of foreign affairs and its impact on policy; communication between those whose job is communication, as diplomats and foreign correspondents; and the process of intercultural communications."[4]

So, PD – both PD officers, broadcasters, and support offices in Washington (the ECA and GPA Bureaus under "R") – are in the business of influencing foreign audiences in the service of U.S. foreign policy. That can mean many things – it means working with the foreign media, working with foreign cultural, academic, and political institutions that help shape public opinion (and elite public opinion). In my years (1983-2015), it mostly meant combating the influence of the communists and then later the Islamists overseas. If this all sounds a bit like espionage it is no surprise that the origin of USIA, before its founding, had roots in the same Second World War institutions – the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COCI) and Office of War Information (OWI) – that birthed the CIA. The difference is that PD work is – almost always – overt, if at times discreet.

Whether the U.S. Government should continue to spend close to a billion dollars a year to fund media organizations (VOA, RFE/RL, MBN, RFA, OCB, OTF) under USAGM is an interesting question. The Trump Administration has already named a new head for VOA and nominated a new director for USAGM.[5] In my view, USAGM tends to be a confirmation of Conquest's Second Law of Politics: "Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing."[6]

But what of PD operations in State? Such operations are, of course, tiny compared to the now defunct USAID. The biggest single line item for PD are the State Department's various exchanges programs (such as the Fulbright Program that brings foreigners here to study or teach and sends Americans overseas to study or teach) in Washington.[7]

"Exchanges," essentially training or outreach programs, range from a few weeks (or even a few days) to months. They can be programs created by Washington or created by embassies to satisfy local needs. I personally know of writers or intellectuals who changed from being hostile to friendly toward the United States after participating in a program. But it did not always work out that way. When I served as Public Affairs Officer at the just opened U.S. Embassy in Kabul in 2002, I established an outreach program to send four or five Islamic scholars to the U.S. (the "Mullah Program") on a junket on "religious tolerance." The program seems to have continued for years after I left in 2003. Whatever long-term effect it had, it seems like the Taliban "program" may have been a better one. 

A good PD officer in a foreign mission should know the language and culture of the country very well, going deep into the society and culture and also be able to articulate and defend U.S. foreign policy effectively. They should know the ideological or intellectual lay of the land – who are the most influential figures in the country? How can I influence key audiences? In Syria, for example, with Assad's military off limits, we sought to forge contacts as much as possible with members of Assad's Alawite sect, whether they were poets or academics or actors, in order to gain insight on that group's thinking and try to influence it.

The small pots of money at hand – "PD funds" – and exchanges from Washington can be used by a creative Public Affairs Officer (PAO) in a variety of ways – to meet some interest or need of the ambassador's or some other priority. For example, in 2000 in Amman, I brought paleoconservative intellectual Paul Gottfried out to Jordan to speak on the New American Right because I wanted to interact with a nationalist subset of Jordanian politics (also, to be frank, because I admired Dr. Gottfried).

Through the years, we have used PD funds to underwrite the publishing of books or support anti-regime radio stations (I did the latter in Sandinista-ruled Nicaragua) or to hold seminars or to have people attend conferences. You are only limited by your creativity, which means you can do good things but also – without a doubt – given the leftist political madness of the past decade, PD probably funded all sorts of woke nonsense as well. The tools you have are only as good as the people who wield them. 

But what of today? Is there a role for PD in a Trump Administration, in a Marco Rubio-run State Department? The honest answer is... maybe. A problem with PD that I have written about in the past, long before the new administration, is that PD is not only about countering an adversary, say the influence of China or Iran in the Global South.[8] But also, it is about being for something, for a certain narrative of America and Americans. During the Cold War and even the Global War On Terrorism, that was more or less understood. But how do you "sell" America if you believe, as many among our elites have in recent years, that America is evil?

While I am happy about the foreigners I know who became friendly (or less hostile) toward the U.S. in the 1980s and 90s, I actually know of Arabs who traveled to America in recent years and were repulsed by the anti-American discourse they encountered by Americans at American institutions. One Gulf Arab contact told me in recently that "they were worse than our own Islamists."

The problem of promoting America is, of course, compounded if PD officers are themselves drawn from America-hating institutions and have bought into those narratives. How do you convince others in the rightness of U.S. policy if the America you believe exists is that of the 1619 Project rather than that of 1776? At the very least, the training of young diplomats needs to be reconfigured along different lines to empower them with the right arguments.[9]

There is a nationalist, sovereigntist case for America that can and should be made and no better administration than the Trump Administration to do so, but the case actually has to be made, propagated through the bureaucracy and effectively followed up.[10] That did not happen in the first Trump Administration. Ideally, such a case would be made within the ranks by someone in Trump World along the lines of a young Steve Bannon.[11]

PD's ability in (small) funding, articulating, and convening can be very useful in diplomacy but it has to be tied to a compelling, well-articulated vision of America's place in the world very different from the shopworn nostrums of Left/Liberalism and of the Neocons seeking to remake the world in their image.

Do PD offices in countries like Spain or Germany or France have friendly ties with right-wing sovereigntist parties, along with every other party? Do they include them in the yearly International Visitor Program or are they considered beyond the pale? Would State's WHA Bureau, which includes Latin America, convene conferences with right of center Latin American parties and European allies like Spain's Vox party? How does the same bureau and USAGM combat the noxious influence in Latin America of Chinese or Iranian proxies like HispanTV?[12] Do PD officers today have the intellectual breadth to talk to foreign audiences about American figures like Russell Kirk or Albert Jay Nock (or Paul Gottfried)? Would the State's EUR Bureau even think of supporting right-of-center publishing houses like Spain's Homo Legens or cooperate with right-thinking academic institutions like France's ISSEP (connected to Marion Maréchal)? These questions are more illustrative than exhaustive.

If the Trump Administration should axe Public Diplomacy at State, it will likely cause far less of an uproar than the demise of USAID did. The reason that USAID was able to fend off being absorbed into State in the 90s while USIA succumbed is because USAID was far better connected, even then, with the liberal elite's subculture. PD is not only a lot smaller, poorer, and less well-known, without the massive toxic global ecosystem funded by the USAID, it also (ideally) deals with issues – propaganda, ideology, "hearts and minds," culture, media – that always made the real powers that be among State's career officers – the POL/ECON "cones" – rather uncomfortable. It could be a useful tool if someone knew what it was for and how to wield it. That has rarely happened.  

*Alberto M. Fernandez is Vice President of MEMRI.