Lipstick on a Pig: America’s Soft Power is Recoverable

In international politics actions always speak louder than words. Governments claiming to exercise soft power do well to remember this, for how they behave will forever tell a far more commanding and convincing narrative than what they say. When successive US presidents have demanded and actively promoted the spread of democratic values around the world, and agencies representing the state have participated in activities that can be defined only as violations of human rights, America’s credibility suffers.

Such a clear discrepancy between rhetoric and behaviour also exposes the US to allegations of hypocrisy. Should we be surprised that China’s international television service, CCTV-America, has focused overwhelmingly on the events in Ferguson, Missouri, while almost ignoring entirely the clampdown against protestors in Hong Kong?

The publication of the US Senate report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation programme during George W. Bush’s presidency poses significant soft power challenges. It not only highlights the systematic torture undertaken in the name of national security, but also documents the embarrassing subversion of law and justice by a state that emphasises such values as the core of its foreign policy. We also need to remind ourselves that this is the same administration that asked repeatedly after 9/11: ‘Why do they hate us?’ The publication of the Senate’s report points us towards a possible answer.

            

Can the US recover its credibility? Yes it can. By following a clear communication strategy, the US can salvage its soft power without the present government having to distance itself in an unconvincing way from its predecessor. And the way to do this is by focusing more on the process of how the world came to know about these terrible acts and less on the acts themselves, as well as by outlining how the US intends to deal with the consequences.

The plan begins with culpability and humility. The CIA and key members of the Bush administration must hold up their hands and admit that these activities are wrong and inexcusable. Any attempt to justify them as part of an anti-terrorist strategy or as carried out in the name of national security has already backfired, and it is a defence that is no longer relevant when global public and media opinion is clear that two wrongs do not make a right.  A clear and modest, self-critical admission of guilt is required. CIA apologists must not be allowed to control the narrative and shape public opinion about the report, and they must not be allowed to employ alternative, less malignant labels such as ‘Enhanced Interrogation Techniques’ to describe acts of torture. When their voice is heard, when Vice-President Dick Cheney calls the report ‘full of crap’, the world needs to know that it is heard because America is a democracy and pluralism is encouraged. Within democracies disagreement is expected and can be healthy.

Second, President Obama himself must launch an investigation into the abuses documented in the report and commit America to bringing to trial those responsible. Obama’s response so far has been unsatisfactory: ‘Rather than another reason to refight old arguments,’ he said in a written statement, ‘I hope that today’s report can help us leave these techniques where they belong, in the past.’ This will not satisfy the US’s critics around the world who demand both answers and justice, not just promises that it will never happen again. For American soft power, this is too little, too late.  

The third component of the strategy requires the US government to marshal its entire public diplomacy machinery in a global communication campaign. There is an urgent need to highlight and explain to the world how the publication of the report reflects fundamental values of the American political culture: a commitment to accountability, transparency and scrutiny of government behaviour, as well as the checks and balances that the Founding Fathers built into their creation; and when government agencies break the law, the mechanisms are in place to make sure those responsible are brought to justice, regardless of position or status. This is not spin, a communication activity now tarnished in public opinion by its association with deceit. Rather, it is an understanding that the strengths of the American political culture have a valuable role to play in crafting a measured and accurate response to serious criticisms against it. But transparency and accountability can only be effective themes for public diplomacy if the government explains why only a redacted 525-page summary of a 6,700 page report has been released. There must be a communication strategy in place to deal with the inevitable question: What else are they hiding from us?    

In the modern information age, credibility is the currency of politics; and credibility is generated by building trust, authority and legitimacy, and by ensuring that how you behave is consistent with the values you profess. More importantly, when you are found out – when parts of the state machinery violate the constitution and international law, as well as the core principles you, your government and your nation hold dear and which you promote to others as an ideal to others around the world – how you respond is critical in helping to restore your credibility. Soft power depends on doing the right thing, and being seen to be doing the right thing. As President Obama has noted, ‘this report reminds us … that the character of our country is to be measured in part not by what we do when things are easy, but what we do when things are hard.’

However, there is no escaping the fact that at the end of the day, the best means for maintaining credibility is not to commit the crimes in the first place. The Senate report on CIA torture will cause ripples of indignation around the world and damage American soft power abroad in the short term. If its publication also encourages a period of introspection and critical questioning in the US, there remains hope for America’s otherwise tarnished image in the longer term. Revelations about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programme and the repeated violations of national sovereignty by drone strikes suggest that there is still work to do, and that the US’s soft power is far from guaranteed.    

Monocle's soft power survey 2012

I have just bought the December/January issue of Monocle (vol.6, no.59) to read the results of its annual soft power survey. You can listen to a report on the survey here Monocle soft power survey 2012.

While there is much to enjoy in the survey, one can't help but feeling a little dissatisfied. The measures used to determine the top thirty are not explained or assessed; and while students of public diplomacy and soft power do tend to moan about the inadequacy of attempts to measure impact and effectiveness of strategies, it does seem that practitioners are paying far more attention than in the past to finding a solution. The latest offering is by Tara Sonenshine, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, who spoke about Measuring Public Diplomacy at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC (3 December 2012). You can read her speech here Tara Sonenshine. In addition, scholarship in business and marketing studies can offer some guides to measuring intangibles, the best I have read so far being Robert S. Kaplan & David P. Norton (2004), Strategy Maps published by Harvard Business School. So it is a little frustrating to find surveys still using arbitrary measures of effectiveness and impact.

In the Monocle Top 30 soft powers , the UK is number 1. This is not surprising given that we are now ending a year of celebration which included the Olympics and Paralympics, the Queen's Jubilee and the recent announcement that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are expecting their first child. However, I do question whether the events of 2012 do measure the UK's soft power or the attraction of London? During the Olympic Games, the expected surge in trade and tourism for the rest of the country did not materialise. In other words, 2012 was good for London, but not necessarily for the UK.
I agree with Monocle's assessment: 'Yet just because Britain has soft power does not mean it necessarily knows how to use it. Cuts to both the Foreign Office and the BBC World Service will continue to chip away at the UK's overseas clout.' Regular readers of this blog will know my passion for the BBC World Service and my contempt for those who fail to recognise its strategic value (see BBC World Service).
The survey is also correct to question Britain's 'unappealing "Little Englander" attitude', but does so only in terms of the UK's relations with its European neighbours. More worrying are the policies enacted by the present Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government to make it far more difficult for overseas students wishing to come to the UK to obtain visas and limiting the time they can stay in the UK after graduating; and most shameful of all was the way the UK Border Agency revoked London Metropolitan University's status and paid no attention to the problems of the current students there (for a reminder of this story see London Metropolitan student visa rights revoked). Deliberately or not - in an otherwise landmark year for the UK's pulling-power - the British government sent a signal around the world that foreigners are not welcome. These measures come at a time when the economy is still in a mess (thanks to Con-Dem policies) and the spending power of overseas students would be most welcome.

The US is, of course, number 2 in Monocle's survey - no surprises there. But I did not know that the US has only 2 'cultural missions', compared to the UK's 184 and Germany's 142. In fact the US has the same number as Sweden ('The Swedes do soft power effortlessly', says the survey). There is no explanation of what the term 'cultural mission' means, and it could refer to a range of activities that are not necessarily carried out in the equivalent of the British Council or the Goethe Institute. Nevertheless, it does seem odd that such a huge and powerful country as the US does not consider culture as part of its formal soft power strategy. Perhaps the Americans think that exporting Hollywood movies, The Big Bang Theory and American Idol is sufficient?    

I found India's omission from the list rather peculiar, and Monocle does not explain why India has been left out. The Indian diaspora is a major audience for soft power, and given its size and influence, especially in the UK, one might expect this would work in India's favour when it comes to ranking. Moreover, the survey states that it has considered cuisine: It is difficult to avoid Indian food in the UK where curry is now the official national dish. 

Also missing from the survey are any Arab countries; in fact there are no Middle Eastern countries included at all except Israel whose soft power has taken a beating in the last few weeks following its attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. It would be very interesting to know whether the Arab Spring did help to bring any soft power cachet for Egypt and Tunisia (though the former is suffering now due to President Morsi's apparent grab for absolute power); and how does Al-Jazeera affect Qatar's soft power? Few people know about Qatar's repressive political system (and there have been worrying reports in the last few weeks about suppression of press freedom), yet knowledge of Al-Jazeera is universal. Has Al-Jazeera's growing credibility rubbed-off on Qatar at all? 

It has also been a good year for Bhutan, and although Monocle does consider 'Bhutan's plan to become the first country to go completely organic is its trump card', it does not make the final 30. Yet Gross National Happiness, championed by Bhutan for forty years, finally made in-roads at the United Nations this year. As I discussed in my blog posting in April (The soft power of happiness) this may have generated very positive soft power results for Bhutan, and for this reason alone I think it should have been ranked by Monocle.

OK, so perhaps I am being too harsh. Like an X Factor judge it is easy to criticise and there will always be someone else out there who could have made the cut if only they had not sung a medley from Annie; and I am sure you will have your own ideas about the survey and which countries should or should not have been included. Please do listen to Monocle's podcast and leave your comments here. I look forward to reading your opinions.     

John F. Kennedy's "soft power"

Last night the Ilkley Literature Festival hosted a talk by Sir Roger Carrick about his recently published memoirs, Diplomatic Anecdotage: Around the World in 40 Years (Elliott & Thompson, 2012). Sir Roger's first diplomatic posting was in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1962. He then spent time in Washington DC, Chicago, Paris, Singapore and Jakarta, before retiring as Her Majesty's High Commissioner to Australia.

Sir Roger talks in his fascinating book about the reaction in Bulgaria to President Kennedy's assassination in November 1963:

'The queue to sign the American legation's book of condolences was huge, perhaps a kilometre long and three or four deep. ... the terrible tragedy had so gripped the Bulgarians as they had heard the news on the radio, that they had flocked to express real grief and sympathy ... Now, the Bulgarians, of all repressed and depressed people, spontaneously, and in impressively large numbers, had made a singular and singularly important gesture and demonstration of genuine feeling' (p.15).

Nick Cull's masterful and definitive study of The Cold War and the United States Information Agency (CUP, 2008) also references global reaction to the news of Kennedy's death: 'USIA surverys of editorial opinion around the world revealed a surge of sympathy for the United States at the time of Kennedy's death' (p.229).

Listening to Sir Roger read from his book made me question the significance of President Kennedy as a symbol of America's values, principles and hopes at the start of the 1960s - what we may today call 'soft power'. Sir Roger provides a hint of an explanation in his book: 'We were of the generation,' he says, 'that, despite incipient, even growing cynicism, saw Jack Kennedy as a hope for the succeeding generations, the young people of the world, and not just the then Free World.'

I can't explain it, and I invite comments from readers who might have more insight into the reason for this swell of grief behind the Iron Curtain. We are all familiar with the Kennedy myth - youth, charm, Camelot, a sense of renewal and optimism, the New Frontier - but is this a narrative constructed with the benefit of hindsight and because of the way Kennedy was killed at such a young age? How widespread was this narrative accepted in those parts of the world that were ideologically opposed to the US and everything it stood for? My library on Cold War history is surprisingly quiet on this subject, though I did find the following passage in Michael R. Beschloss's Kennedy v. Khrushchev (Faber & Faber 1991): 'Peking schoolchildren applauded when told of the assassination. A Chinese editorial cartoon showed the President lying on his face, his necktie stamped with dollar signs: KENNEDY BITING THE DUST' (p.676). Beschloss tells us that it was a 'personal tragedy' for Khrushchev; Moscovites praised Kennedy and grieved that such a good man had been murdered; Russian poets penned their own eulogies; and Tatyana and Yegenya Scherbakov of Bryansk wrote, 'Let the thought that the grief is shared by one hundred million Russian women help Mrs Kennedy to survive her grief' (Beschloss, p.677-680).

Both Beschloss and Cull describe the aftermath of the assassination: The former recounts the need for the Johnson administration not only to continue Kennedy's style of managing US-Soviet relations, but also to capitalise in a strategic way on the shared grief in Moscow; Cull reveals how the United States Information Agency managed American public diplomacy to help create the Kennedy legend and present the Johnson administration as a credible successor.

So it seems that a considerable amount of American soft power was invested in Kennedy, and a huge quantity of resources was devoted to American public diplomacy in the immediate aftermath of his death. But what made this soft power so successful? His relations with the Soviet Union were stormy to say the least; he was responsible for the Bay of Pigs fiasco; and he was the reason the United States became involved in Vietnam. So is the explanation simply that he was Jack Kennedy - that it is all about the man and the fact the he generated a wave of hope and optimism among supporters and critics alike? Is it, as I have long suspected, because this youngest ever President was only 46 when he was murdered during his first term in office? I look forward to reading your views.

When the legend becomes fact, print the legend

(The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962)          

Sesame Street in Pakistan

Regular readers of this blog will know of my love for the American children's TV programme, Sesame Street, and my conviction of its role in international outreach. Its role in developing educational programmes around the world has been one of the greatest public diplomacy (or education diplomacy) success stories, mainly for two reasons: (i) it demonstrates the importance of acting positively and creating new opportunities and relationships with audiences (the importance of actually doing something, rather than just talking about it); and (ii) by encouraging local media organisations to create their own versions of Sesame Street that are embedded within local cultural contexts, the producers demonstrate a sensitivity to their audiences: "The US government thought it was on to a winner when it gave $20m (£13m) to fund a Pakistani version of the show, hoping it would raise the country's woeful literacy rates and help turn a young generation away from the siren call of religious extremism."

A report in yesterday's Guardian newspaper is therefore quite disturbing (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/05/pakistan-sesame-street-funding-withdrawn?INTCMP=SRCH). It seems that the US Agency for International Development is withdrawing funding for the Pakistani version of Sesame Street, Sim Sim Hamara, because of 'financial irregularities', mismanagment and even corruption. Obviously the local prodcers, Rafi Peer, have denied the allegations.

Whatever the reason this is a very regrettable episode, and over above the soft power interests of developing a local version of Sesame Street, the only losers are Pakistan's children trapped in illiteracy.  
   

Promised Land, Crusader State

I am still refining my understanding of Taiwan's public diplomacy and its location within approaches to soft power (western and non-western). Every time I speak to colleagues, present my ideas in seminars and cover the new literature I seem to take one step forwards and two steps back, thus challenging my own approaches again and again. While this is an exciting intellectual exercise, it can also be frustrating.

Following a discussion with Caitlin Schindler, a PhD student I am co-supervising with Robin Brown and who is tracing the history of American public diplomacy since Colonial times, I began to think that perhaps I need to interrogate a different literature for a while. So I decided to follow her trajectory and read about how the founders of modern America engaged in international communication and projected the new American identity abroad. This literature is based on the main thesis of my research, namely that Taiwan is communicating the wrong theme in its public diplomacy - culture (and traditional Chinese culture to boot) rather than the more exciting and appealing story of Taiwan's democratisation. However, I might benefit from understanding better how other "new" democracies have engaged in public diplomacy, and where better to start than post-Revolutionary America.

On Caitlin's advice I picked up a copy of Walter A. McDougall's Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776 (Mariner, 1997). This is proving a wonderful read and I am learning so much that I can apply to my own understanding of not only American and Taiwanese public diplomacy and soft power, but also Chinese approaches. For example, we learn that question we heard so often immediately after the 9/11 attacks - Why do they hate us? - is long-standing and has been directed equally, if not more, to friends rather than the US's foes: McDougall states that 'It's the contempt of our friends that really gets our goat' (p.9). And nothing caused more concern than the 1823 Monroe Doctrine which, said Otto von Bismarck, was 'a species of arrogance peculiarly American and inexcusable' (p.57). Sound familiar?

In Hamilton's "Original Major Draft" of George Washington's Farewell Address which established the notion of the Great Rule of American Unilateralism I detected parallels with Chinese public diplomacy. This may be a stretch, and perhaps I will come to regret making such statements; but there is talk in the Draft of cultivating harmony with all nations, the importance of sovereignty and not being entangled in foreign alliances. Moreover, commercial relations should always take precedence over political relations. All of these have been characteristics of Chinese foreign policy and themes in Chinese public diplomacy at one time or another.

In tackling this literature I may have taken a slight diversion from my East Asian interests, and I do not yet know how much this historical approach will inform my understanding of Taiwan's soft power and public diplomacy. However, it has re-awakened in me the sense that sometimes going off on an intellectual tangent can be very rewarding and is recommended from time to time.