Twitter Diplomacy: Preliminary thoughts on the Trump-Tsai phone call

First, a confession. I have no intention to engage here with the Tsai-Trump telephone conversation because I genuinely do not know what to make of it ... yet. I have avoided writing something since the news broke because I wanted to avoid joining the cacophony of experts, non-experts, and self-styled experts, all of whom had "something to say". I am struggling to identify the call's impact beyond its success in polarising global opinion and propelling Taiwan to the front pages. I have been advising Taiwan for 20 years how to raise its profile; Trump does it for them literally overnight, though it is a shame that this new and prominent discussion about Taiwan in the media is still framed in terms of cross-Strait relations. I believe there will only be reason to rejoice once Taiwan is reported in the news as a successful democracy and without mention of China. It is possible to argue that at least this attention raises awareness of Taiwan and forces a debate that would otherwise not occur. But how much of the media coverage actually contextualises the 'One China policy' or other intricacies of Taipei's relationship with Washington DC and Beijing? Is uninformed debate better than no debate at all?

Which brings me to Twitter ...  

As soon as the phone conversation between PEOTUS Donald Trump and President Tsai Ing-wen was announced, making the front pages of news media that otherwise ignore Taiwan as a matter of routine, the Twitterverse exploded with "experts" on Taiwan and China crawling out from the woodwork. The great thing about social media is that they give everyone a voice and every opinion counts. The problem with social media is that they give everyone a voice and every opinion counts. Reconciling this is a challenge we have yet to address in a meaningful way. Twitter especially encourages knee-jerk immediate reactions and uninformed debate, and Taiwan's political elite were wise to avoid responding prematurely to the outpouring of public opinion at home and abroad. For many Taiwanese - and some Taiwan watchers - Trump is suddenly a hero, while a more cautious and long-term perspective of the consequences for Taiwan of a Trump presidency is warranted. Taiwan's political elites need to reduce popular expectations at home, for Taiwan is heading at best towards disappointment or, at worst, something far more frightening to contemplate.                

Of course the telephone has long been used as an instrument of high-level diplomacy following the creation of the famous 'hotline' between the White House and Kremlin in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis. Moreover, the media have also been a method of open diplomatic communication, as demonstrated by my research on international radio broadcasting in the Cold War (Radio Diplomacy and Propaganda). The role played by the Voice of America and Radio Moscow in helping resolve the Cuban missile crisis is perhaps the most well-known.  What has changed, of course, is the development of the Internet, social media, and both the speed at which information flows, and the expansion of voices heard in every conversation.

There are other concerns.

It is clear that Donald Trump has yet to make the transition from private citizen to President Elect of the US and potentially the most powerful political actor in the world. He needs to learn, and to learn very quickly, that whatever he now says or does will have repercussions - intended or otherwise. A President Elect cannot and should not make and announce policy via Twitter; and when your discussion with another leader will be judged provocative, there are diplomatic protocols to follow. President Nixon was accused of making foreign policy in the Oval Office, bypassing the State Department. Will Trump be a Twitter President? Such behaviour undermines American public diplomacy activity and challenges US soft power at a time when their protection is more urgent than ever given the global uncertainty of what a Trump presidency actually means. Public diplomats should not have to spend their time explaining to audiences what the President Elect actually meant or intended in a Tweet.        

Baroness Warsi: 'Muslims will speak up for British values only when they know they will be heard'

The Observer has published an extremely important and perceptive article by Baroness Warsi, former Minister of State for Faith and Communities ('Muslims will speak up for British values ...'). When few British politicians and members of government - representing whichever party - have little understanding of the basic principles of communication, public diplomacy and the need to engage with aggrieved and marginalised communities, Baroness Warsi reveals herself an astute critic of current policies towards the UK's Muslim population.

The first problem she identifies is 'non-engagement': '

For nearly six years, firstly under Labour and then the coalition, governments have adopted a policy of non-engagement with a wide range of community organisations and activists. Many groups and individuals have been defined as "beyond the pale". Indeed, the coalition even set up a high-level committee to decide whether a group or individual was someone ministers could engage with.

In other words, there is not only evidence of a clear policy of exclusion, thus dividing further the very communities one wishes to reach out to, but what are the criteria for exclusion? Who decides which organisations are beyond the pale and according to which criteria? This should only be decided in consultation with members of the Muslim communities themselves. Only they will know which groups should and should not be included in dialogue, and by involving them in a conversation the government would be increasing the legitimacy of their policies.

Baroness Warsi then uses two words that are the core of any credible and successful public diplomacy  strategy: friendship and trust. As we know, building trust among your audience is crucial for both credibility and legitimacy. Baroness Warsi refers to friendship and trust when recounting the response to a letter sent by the Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles (whom I remember very well as the leader of Bradford City Council when I was growing up there in the 1980s) to more than 1000 mosques:

A letter out of the blue to a mosque that is potentially affiliated to an organisation like the Muslim Council of Britain - with whom the government has refused to engage - creates a climate where even the most benign of correspondence can become toxic.   

She then uses another word that is familiar to all of us researching and teaching public diplomacy:

It makes it appear as if the government is neither listening not genuine in its intentions. And it provokes a negative response, irrespective of the true motive. 

Listening is the key activity in any communication strategy. For one thing, listening to the very communities you wish to engage means you have a greater insight into how the members of those communities think and form opinions which can then inform your own communications with them. Listening also provides the basis for empathy and understanding that might make for better policy-making. It helps build trust, but unfortunately Baroness Warsi sees the persistence of a 'trust deficit':

We needed to bring more people into the fold rather than increasingly adopt positions which pushed groups and individuals out to the fringe. We will fight extremism better if we all feel like we are in the same team, where communities feel listened to, where answers are found collectively and where engagement with communities is broad and deep.      

I have written previously on the need for a more inclusive approach to relations with the UK's Muslim communities, and the urgency of downplaying the belligerent knee-jerk reactions that have encouraged the creation of a military-sounding 'taskforce' to 'confront' extremism (British Taskforce to confront extremism; A Marked Man in America). Baroness Warsi's perceptive understanding of the problems - residing mainly within government, rather than within the Muslim communities - and her approach to their solution, based on engagement, inclusiveness, listening and building trust, suggests that she is best placed to form a new strategy towards Islam in the UK.

Pew Research on China and the US: A Soft Power Dimension

To coincide with President Obama's trip to Asia, the Pew Research Center has released the results of its latest public opinion surveys undertaken in those countries he will visit (Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and Malaysia). The questions were designed to not only ascertain not only the popularity of, but also the strength of feeling about ties with the US and China. Finally, the survey tried to measure the impact of current territorial disputes with China on public opinion.

The results will make for sombre reading in Beijing, and should be of major concern to the state agencies in China responsible for strategic communication and international engagement.

The first interpretation of the data is that the 'power' - the political dimension - in 'soft power' matters.  As I have argued elsewhere (All fluff and no substance), and as USC's Philip Seib has also noted (Putting a hard edge on soft power), we are in danger of losing sight of soft power as a strategic enabler. In many ways, the core disciplines of international relations and communications have been seduced by the idealism inherent in soft power so that it has become a fashionable catch-all label for an activity that all governments must 'do' otherwise they are out of step with the times. There is a danger that the term has become an 'empty signifier' (Hayden, 2012: 47; Critchley and Marchart, 2004). The production and reproduction of discourses about soft power may ultimately be more important and possess more strength than the original meaning. So the questions about soft power - its meaning and application - must be: Power to achieve what? Over whom? How do the intangible benefits of outreach (international broadcasting, for example, or student exchanges) translate into discrete tangibles that advance the political and strategic agenda of the source?

This is important for the China's public diplomacy cadres studying the results of the latest Pew research. Despite Beijing's apparent confidence in the belief that 'to know us is to love us', its soft power push in three out of four areas surveyed is having little impact, even though the Asia-Pacific remains a primary target of China's endeavours to sell itself as a peaceful and responsible regional power (Malaysia is the exception, and I will defer to my colleagues who know far more about Malaysia's international relations to provide a possible explanation for this). The number of respondents who said it is more important to have strong ties with China rather than the US is shockingly low, making the political meanings of the poll quite transparent (again, Malaysia was the exception). Clues for reason are found in the responses to the question: How big a problem are territorial disputes between China and your country? Given the on-going disagreements about sovereignty of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, the results are not that surprising. Politics matters; and actions - how a state behaves at home and abroad - will always speak louder than words. Presentation is only as good as the policy it is designed to sell.   

References:

Hayden, C. (2012), The Rhetoric of Soft Power: Public Diplomacy in Global Contexts (Lanham, MD: Lexington)

Critchley, S. & O. Marchart (eds.) (2004), Laclau: A Critical Reader (London: Routledge)

Soft power and social entrepreneurship

Today I was introduced to a whole new literature that will provide an interesting framework for my future understanding of soft power and public diplomacy. Dr Albert Chu-Ying Teo of the National University of Singapore Business School delivered a fascinating presentation at Chengchi University, Taipei, on social entrepreneurship and Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), and the value of this approach to soft power is quite striking. I still have to attack the literature to fully appreciate the concept, its nuances and implications, but Albert's synopsis is a useful start. He identified 6 Principles of social entrepreneurship as a tool to aid development:

#1: Understand the aspirations, dreams and motivations of the the community. In communications terms, know your audience and align one's intervention with their aspirations.

#2:  Understand that priorities are not the same as needs. A community may have many needs, but only one priority. The fulfilment of short-term needs may not have lasting impact. Again, understanding the context in which one is operating provides the conditions that may facilitate development.      

#3:  Move beyond a needs-based approach to development which, by channelling external resources to meet the needs of the community, can reinforce identity and self-identity of communities as deficient in knowledge and resources, and incapable of addressing their own problems. In short, the needs-based approach does not encourage self-reliance or empowerment, but rather frames interventions from external sources as the actions of saviours which in turn can lead to a cycle of dependency. Of course addressing needs provides short-term soft power capital; interventions can be framed as helpful and highlight the humanitarian capacity of the state, organisation or individual. However, this is designed for the short-term interests of the source, not the recipient who may have different needs and priorities (recall the arguments against the kind of assistance offered to the victims of the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s). Helping long-term interests can have long-term and more meaningful soft power benefits

In contrast, Asset-Based Community Development identifies, maps and mobilises the assets and strengths of communities and recognises them as opportunities. Assets can be tangible (schools, market places, religious organisations, natural resources) and intangible (family and kinship networks, experience, memory, etc.). For public diplomacy, targeting your message and using the resources that are already available inside the community will help the success of the message. Both tangible and intangible resources can be mobilised for policy promotion.

#4:  Obtain buy-in from the community which in turn encourages local participation. Do not try to impose change and development from above. The two essential components of any public diplomacy activity are listening and discussion, and doing so in way that avoids creating a vertical flow of communication and action.  

#5:  Likewise buy-in from relevant stakeholders can provide a stream for the acquisition of resources.

#6:  Strive to create the conditions for members of a community to empower themselves and to live and work with dignity. Do not try to 'save' a community, but instead understand that ABCD is a facilitator and a catalyst. The belief that a social entrepreneur can empower a community can be regarded as arrogance. As Albert noted in his presentation, 'True empowerment occurs when the social entrepreneur creates the appropriate conditions for the community members to empower themselves.' How much of the literature on soft power and international communications (especially touching upon the the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) addresses the issue of arrogance and how the belief in salvation, liberation and democratisation - and of course regime change - is resented by the very communities affected by such interventions and who otherwise should be considered stakeholders? The paternal attitudes and misplaced "good intentions" of much public diplomacy/humanitarian activity can have long term negative consequences      

Above all, ABCD provides the foundations for community engagement. Albert emphasised that social entrepreneurs tend to be innovative thinkers, while governments and NGOs can be stuck in particular mind-sets and routines that prevent their success. Again, this is applicable to our understanding of communicative engagement which likewise requires innovation, but too often faces bureaucratic inertia.

I look forward to delving deeper into these ideas and the associated literature, and I would like to thank Dr Albert Teo for introducing the concept of social entrepreneurship to me. This is a perfect example of how interdisciplinarity can lead to new and exciting approaches in the way we tackle our own research areas.

          

King Canute versus the tide

Twenty years ago, when I was a naïve but ambitious 23 year old second-year student in the final stages of my PhD, I embarked on the hunt for my first academic position. Since being a teenager besotted by the world of shortwave radio international broadcasting my work has always been located at the intersection of international politics and communications. I was convinced then, and remain so today that it is impossible to discuss politics and international politics in any meaningful way without also understanding the role of communications, information and the media. Despite the war against Iraq in 1991 (Gulf War I or II? Surely the Iran-Iraq conflict was the first Gulf War?) and the advent of 24/7 live broadcasting from the front which had a profound impact on how the war played out - and introduced the CNN Effect which suggests foreign policy can be driven by media coverage and popular opinion - I still met a shocking amount of resistance in reputable politics departments where earnest academics dismissed such work as Mickey Mouse studies. Such ignorance.
            Fast forward twenty years and, despite the Internet and social media having transformed political processes and empowered millions of people across the world; despite the acceptance by all governments that public diplomacy and the exercise of soft power are essential tools of statecraft; despite militaries begging us to teach them how to adapt to, and survive in the information age; despite governments trying to find innovative ways to manage the public and private conversations their people are having, while some are resorting to good-old fashioned techniques of censorship to control access to information; and despite communications panels almost taking over the major academic conferences in politics and international relations, we are still facing denigration by academics who refuse to see the essential and fundamental impact that communications have upon political events, institutions, agents and processes. Satellite broadcasting, the rise of pan-regional media organisations like Al-Jazeera, citizen journalism, tweets, blogs, Facebook and social networking have all transformed the way governments and militaries speak to journalists and audiences, and how publics speak to each other.

It is sad that the ignorance I encountered twenty years ago persists. As recently as last year I was again told that my work is not considered 'mainstream', whatever that means anymore. I also remember my intervention at a conference last year when I realised how my work on communication can undermine the more militaristic approach to international relations that prefers to kill and maim human beings rather than persuade them that there might be alternatives to hard power (A note so subtle reminder ...). As Joseph Nye wrote, militaries (and too many academics working in IR and security studies) prefer 'something that could be dropped on your foot or on your cities, rather than something that might change your mind about wanting to drop anything in the first place' (Nye, 2011: 82).

Consider the events of 11th September 2001 when audiences were led to believe they watched the horror of 9/11 unfold live on their television screens. However, it is only by sheer luck that we have any footage of the first hijacked plane hitting the North Tower of the World Trade Centre WTC) at 8:46 am local time. In the neighbourhood were filmmakers James Hanlon and the Naudet brothers making a documentary about a probationary New York fireman. When American Airlines Flight 11 flew by, Jules Naudet turned his camera to follow the plan and taped only one of three know recordings of the first plane hitting the WTC (the others being a video postcard by Pavel Hlava filming a visit to New York to send home to family in the Czech Republic, and a sequence of still frame CCTV photographs by artist Wolfgang Staehle). In this way, the biggest and most momentous news event of recent decades was captured and recorded by 'accidental journalists' who just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
          Seventeen minutes later at 9:03 am, a second plane hit the WTC's South Tower. This time the collision was broadcast live on television, captured by professional camera crews circulating the burning North Tower in helicopters. The level of media literacy within Al-Qaeda had been demonstrated very clearly: the organisers of the hijacking knew that the first collision would not be reported live, do delayed the second attack to generate media interest and coverage. In this way, the events of 9/11 confirmed that the media, communications and information landscapes had changed beyond recognition, and they continue to change.

The power of information since 9/11 and during the inappropriately named War on Terror has not been overlooked. In 2007, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates noted, 'It is just plain embarrassing that Al-Qaeda is better at communicating its message on the Internet than America. Speed, agility, and cultural relevance are not terms that come readily to mind when discussing US strategic communications.' Gates recalled how one US diplomat had asked him, 'How has one man in a cave managed to out-communicate the world's greatest communication society?' Four years later, Washington's political elite were still pondering the US's incapacity to compete in the communication landscape: In March 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted in testimony to the Senate's Foreign Affairs Committee that 'We are in an information war and we are losing that war.' It seems that policy-makers, unlike many academics, recognise the urgent need to understand how communications, the media, politics and strategy are now permanently entwined.
       
I was reminded of these issues last night when I watched at the local cinema a wonderful documentary called We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks (2013, dir. Alex Gibney).  Anyone who is still blinkered to the effect of communications on political processes and institutions should see this film. At its core is the belief that information is power, and that withholding the publication of information is a political act designed to serve a specific political agenda. Anyone with any understanding of basic politics will uncover in this film issues about authority, transparency, legitimacy, accountability, political ethics, the appropriate level of force in war, national security and fundamental questions about democracy; and all these issues are framed against the transformation of private and public space by the media and new communications technologies. The film, and the whole Wikileaks saga in general - just like the recent revelations about GCHQ's use of the PRISM surveillance data - provides a valuable case-study for students trying to unravel the theoretical and empirical complexity of modern politics. It compels us to confront difficult philosophical questions, and come to terms with the somewhat uncomfortable realisation that there is no right or wrong; no black and white, just gradations of murky grey. Adrian Lamo, the hacker who turned-in Bradley Manning to the authorities at the height of the Wikileaks story, even justified his actions in classic utilitarian terms: the good of the many outweighed the good of the few, or in this case, the one. (Discuss.). What an exciting way to stimulate students' interest in normative ethics. Moreover, we are compelled to think about and test the boundaries of what is and is not permissible in the new communications ecology: What do we mean by freedom of speech? Who has responsibility for what is posted on the internet and the consequences for doing so? Who decides what is and is not acceptable, why and by what criteria? I short, the modern communications landscape calls for a (re)consideration of the most basic of political questions: What is power, and how is power distributed and exercised? 

Academics who continue to deny that communications and the media are at the heart of modern 'mainstream' debates about politics are like King Canute trying to hold back the tide. Real-world politics have moved on; it is a shame that there are still academics who refuse to accept it.


[Mr Justice Openshaw, a Crown Court judge in Woolwich, UK, presiding over the trial in May 2007 of three young Muslims accused of distributing propaganda over the internet in support of Al-Qaeda, confessed during the proceedings: 'The trouble is I don't understand the language. I don't really understand what a website is.' The judge then 'paid close attention as Professor Tony Sams, a computer expert, explained in detail how the internet works'.
         'What's a website, asks judge at internet trial,' The Telegraph, 18 May 2007]

References

 

Joseph Nye (2011), The Future of Power (New York: PublicAffairs).

 

Japan declares propaganda war

On 8 February 2013, Pravda.ru published a report with an intriguing title: 'Japan declares propaganda war on China, Korea and Russia' (Japan declares propaganda war). The report is mainly concerned with competing claims over the Kuril and Senkaku islands.

Given that Russia and Japan are in conflict over the Kuril islands it is no surprise that Pravda uses a very confrontational discourse in reporting this news, as revealed in its free (and interchangeable) application of the terms 'propaganda' and 'information war.' There is little in the report to support the casual use of these labels: We are told that the Japanese government has established a 'special unit' - we learn nothing more except the unit is composed of 'officials and independent experts' - to 'study and thoroughly analyse the positions of other countries on the territorial dispute.' Shouldn't such research be a priority for any government involved in difficult diplomatic negotiations with another power? It is a huge leap from engaing in such research to the launch of an 'information war'. Moreover, the report then refers to Japan's urgent need to 'communicate its position to the international community'. This is public diplomacy, hardly the basis for an information war or propaganda campaign.

Beyond the rhetoric, the Pravda report does identify some interesting challenges for Japanese public diplomacy. In particular, it reinforces the existing evidence that the Japanese believe there is a strong correlation between the dissemination of its culture and the capacity to shape the international conversation in its favour, or modify attitudes and behaviour towards Japan (although of course the Japanese are not alone in placing their faith in the power of culture to meet international aspirations).

Research on Japan's JET programme of cultural and educational exchange demonstrates that there is no guaranteed correlation between participation in such a programme and sympathy/empathy for Japan. Participation may increase knowledge about Japan and help one's familiarity with the language, but such outreach can encounter cognitive dissonance among audiences socialised into perceiving a Japanese threat (either historical or contemporary). China is understandably very suspicious of Japan because of their traumatic shared history, yet the Chinese remain major consumers of Japanese pop culture products (Yoshiko, 2008). Writing on the JET programme of cultural and educational exchange, McConnell (2008: 24-7) reveals that, when interviewed, '[M]any alumni were at great pains to separate their love of Japanese culture and people from their views about the Japanese state, and, in their minds, deeply critical views of Japan often co-existed with positive elements.' McConnell also references the 'last three feet' of public diplomacy when he describes the 'face-to-face' interpersonal 'dimension of human exchange'; and he concludes that the JET programme 'is not teaching people to like Japan, so much as teaching them to communicate with Japanese' (McConnell, 2008: 30). This is an important distinction, though it is often overlooked.

The Pravda report reveals that the Japanese 'information war' is likely to mobilise manga, anime and other cultural products that appeal especially to the youth of East Asia and in Russia (which is 'currently going through the Japanese boom'). This conforms to a new strategy in Japanese public and cultural diplomacy which was designed by the government's Public Diplomacy Department in 2004 to project 'Cool Japan'. This strategy made four mistakes:

1.  It assumed that simply disseminating culture was the route to success and failed to reference the audience in a way that would identify whether and how these products were consumed. Does Japanese pop culture reach beyond East Asia? It may have some effect in helping the government realise its ambitions in its neighbourhood, but more research is needed to understand the global audience for such cultural products. There is possibly an issue of cultural dissonance here: manga and anime are extremely popular in East Asia, and it is usual to see adults in cafes, bookshops and on buses and trains reading such books. In the west, however, there is still some suspicion of manga and anime as 'cartoons' (despite their critical success and their often dark, adult and disturbing content - just watch Miyazaki's 2001 Oscar-winning Spirited Away) which means they are seen primarily as entertainment for children (you are more likely to see an adult on the London tube unashamedly reading Fifty Shades of Grey than an animated book).  

2.  The strategy confused public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, soft power and even nation-branding. Again, Japan is not alone in this. The absence of precision in terminology merely confuses strategy and the capacity and instruments required to implement the strategy. It also means that Japan had no starting point: what was the strategy designed to achieve?

3.  By using culture as an entry point Japan overlooked the research that demonstrates there is a negligible correlation between interest and consumption of Japanese culture in East Asia and sympathy/empathy towards the Japanese nation and government.

4.  Japan also failed to notice that the British Labour government's attempt to brand the UK 'Cool Britannia' in the late 1990s failed (and was something of an embarrassment). This strategy was artificial and contrived. Tourists still flock to the UK to breathe its history and tour Britain's castles, stately homes, the Tower of London and to watch the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace . It is possible to argue that interest in Japan is similarly based on its history and cultural memory. Why change what works? Is this an example of Japan throwing the baby out with the bathwater?


References

Yoshiko, N. (2008), 'Shared memories: Japanese pop culture in China'

and

McConnell, D.L.M. (2008), 'Japan's image problem and the soft power solution'

are published in Y. Watanabe & D.L. McConnell (eds.), Soft Power Superpowers: Cultural and National Assets of Japan and the United States (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe).

Jeh Johnson and the Fight against Al-Qaeda

Jeh Johnson, General Counsel for the US Department of Defense, has announced that the end of the armed conflict against al-Qaeda is fast approaching. He foresees how responsibility for engaging with terrorism will pass to 'the police and other law enforcement agencies.' Johnson has said: "... we must be able to say to ourselves that our efforts should no longer be considered an armed conflict against al-Qaida and its associated forces, rather a counter-terrorism effort against individuals who are the scattered remains of al-Qaida … for which the law enforcement and intelligence resources of our government are principally responsible." (See The Guardian's report  US heading for point when 'military pursuit of al-Qaida should end')

There are several points to challenge in Jeh Johnson's assessment. The first is his optimism about the trajectory of the conflict with al-Qaeda, and draws attention yet again to the inadvisability of using the term 'War on Terror' to describe the response to 9/11. On this point, Johnson says:

"I do believe that on the present course there will come a tipping point, a tipping point at which so many of the leaders and operatives of al-Qaida and its affiliates have been killed or captured, and the group is no longer able to attempt or launch a strategic attack against the United States, such that al-Qaida as we know it, the organisation that our Congress authorised the military to pursue in 2001, has been effectively destroyed."

I do not need to repeat here the criticisms of claiming to launch a war on anything so ephemeral as a kind of terrorism whose perpetrators live and operate within decentralised networks. The organisation that carried out the atrocities on 9/11 may no longer be as much of a threat as it was in 2001, but this does not mean that the kind of terrorist activity undertaken by al-Qaeda and affiliated or sympathetic organisations/individuals do not remain a distinct possibility. You can't win a war on terror by simply killing terrorists, especially when you also kill civilians while hunting your quarry. Destroying homes, schools and devastating the land in executing 'war' is not only morally reprehensible, but also counter-productive: What feeds terrorist organisations and mobilises sympathy and recruitment more than the actions of their enemies against civilians? The actions taken in the name of the 'War on Terror' have merely reinforced al-Qaeda discourses that emphasise the crusader objectives of the US and its allies.  These issues have been discussed fully in the literature, and particularly useful is Steven R. Corman, Angela Trethewey and H.L Goodall (eds.), Weapons of Mass Persuasion: Strategic Communications to Combat Violent Extremism (Peter Lang: 2008).

The concern about the discourses and the very labels used to explain and justify the use of military action leads to the next problem in Jeh's assessment, namely the absence of any mention of public diplomacy. The so-called war against terror is really an information war or competition of narratives. Joseph Nye (The Future of Power, 2011: 19) makes this point very clearly:

'In an information age ... outcomes are shaped not merely by whose army wins but also by whose story wins. In the fight against terrorism, for example, it is essential to have a narrative that appeals to the mainstream and prevents its recruitment by radicals.'

Passing responsibility to law enforcement agencies and intelligence organisations is an insufficient strategy in this environment. If the US is serious about defeating terrorism, Mr Jeh should be making room for the role of information, communications and public diplomacy. There should be an explicit recognition that dialogue is essential with communities in the affected areas, but also in the principal recruiting grounds of the terrorist networks - and especially the US and UK. There needs to be greater attention to addressing the issues that push young Muslims into believing that there is no solution to their problems other than violence, and this means coming to terms with the poverty, unemployment, alienation and general dissatisfaction that many feel with their lives. Bringing the Muslim youth into a conversation about problems and solutions would be a step forwards. I wrote about some of these issues in my 23 March 2011 blog post, A Marked Man in America. It is disappointing that, eighteen months on and at a time when senior members of the US administration are seriously discussing the end of the military phase of the battle with al-Qaeda, apparently there is still no room for understanding the role that public diplomacy and genuine dialogue and discussion can play.           

Digital Diplomacy

The Economist this week  (22-28 September) includes a brief discussion of what it calls 'virtual relations' and 'digital diplomacy'. The article reviews how 'Foreign ministries are getting the hang of social media.' We are told that the US State Department has 'spawned 194 Twitter accounts and 200 Facebook pages':

About 20 British ambassadors are now on Twitter. Russia's foreign ministry is said to have more that 40 Twitter accounts. Israel has announced it will make more use of e-diplomacy. Even China, which heavily censors social media at home, is interested in using them as a diplomatic tool abroad.
       [Barack Obama's Twitter audience] of nearly 20m followers dwarfs the one of Venezuela's autocratic Hugo Chavez (3.4m) and Russia's prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev (1.5m).

I remain an e-agnostic. For one thing, these statistics tell us nothing about content: in public diplomacy does size really matter? I understand the motivation for wishing to participate in an already overcrowded information landscape, and I do not agree with critics who claim social media are another 'Trojan horse' for cultural or political imperialism. This is a naive argument that gives the social media too much power. Besides, audiences will always interpret messages in ways that may surprise the source and contradict the original motivation for the communication. In soft power, the power is rarely in the hands of the source and almost always resides with the audience.

When it comes to diplomatic activity and communications, I believe that we must be cautious in advocating the use of social media. Mere presence in the virtual sphere is meaningless without substantive content. Just as public diplomacy is not a panacea for bad policies, e-diplomacy is not a solution for poor presentation and communication. Governments looking to participate in the world of the social media must identify first the reasons for doing so, and second the expected outcomes.  Mere presence in an overcrowded information environment is an insufficient reason. As Joseph Nye wrote in The Future of Power (2011: 103): 'Plentiful information leads to scarcity of attention. When people are overwhelmed with the volume of information confronting them, they have difficulty knowing what to focus on. Attention, rather than information, becomes the scarce resource, and those who can distinguish valuable information from background clutter gain power.'

Sifting the 'background clutter' is not easy when we are faced with both information overload and time scarcity. Gone are the days when we could casually 'surf' the internet in response to Microsoft's question, 'Where do you want to go today?' Authority, trust and credibility of information is far more important than ever before and training users of the internet - especially diplomats - to think critically about the authenticity of both the source and the message is more urgent than at any time in the past. Most of us access very few websites every day and tend to rely on established print and television media - even if we no longer buy a newspaper from a vendor but instead access it online - for our news and information. We will still depend on 'old' media to guide us: Wikileaks was most valuable when its cables were republished in the Guardian, the New York Times, El Pais, Le Monde and Der Spiegel. The second tranche of cables which were not published in the press met a more muted response: the newspapers were able to contextualise the information for its readers, analyse it and explain its importance. We had time and space to digest what we read. Without this process of mediation, the relevance of such information is lost.

Hence, it pays to be cautious and not be too optimistic about the contribution of the social media to the gathering of intelligence, especially about public opinion. Reading China's Weibo may offer a far more raw, accurate and thorough insight into how its users think and feel about certain topics than any of the official mainstream media. The Economist article calls this 'diplomatic preparedness.' While it will remain difficult to predict events, despite what the article thinks, monitoring seriously the social media does provide the extra information that can supplement the intelligence diplomats should be gathering from elsewhere. However, there is still a need to contextualise the information and understand its source: how representative is Weibo if the majority of its users are young, University educated Chinese living on the eastern seaboard? Diplomats will never find a perfect substitute for leg-work, for getting out into the streets and talking to people face to face. It sounds simple and easy: I wonder how many diplomats actually still do it?

A thorough discussion of how American diplomats use the social media as a source of information, and to facilitate public diplomacy activities, is provided in William Kiehl's edited volume, The Last Three Feet. See my blog http://wwwpdic.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-last-three-feet-ed-william-kiehl.html.
    

A not so subtle reminder ...

My friend and mentor, Phil Taylor, often explained to me why, despite being criticised for being 'inside' the system, of being too close and involved with his research subjects, he developed a close working relationship with the British and US militaries. For him, communications were a way of saving lives. It is always better to persuade and inform than to coerce and kill. Whenever a member of the British or US psyops teams was killed in action in Afghanistan or Iraq, Phil became depressed and withdrawn; he took each death personally.

Phil had been inspired when, during his PhD research, he found a record of an encounter at the end of the First World War between Lord Northcliffe, Director of Enemy Propaganda at Crewe House, and a General who asked Northcliffe what he had done during the war. Northcliffe replied, 'propaganda, that sort of thing.' The General growled, 'Filthy business,' to which Northcliffe replied, 'While you were piling up the casualty lists we were trying to cut them down. If I can persuade one German to throw down his rifle, I have deprived Germany of a soldier, without also having to kill the man.'

This had a profound impact on Phil and became the philosophical framework for his intellectual pursuits. All members of the military who paid tribute to him after he passed away remarked on his commitment to 'propaganda for peace.' His good friend, Professor Stephen Badsey, recalled how, on a visit to the Tyne Cot World War One Cemetery, Phil was angered by the sight of rows of white headstones: 'This just shows how important psyops are for us now,' he said.

I was reminded of Phil last week as I attended a wonderful conference organised by my colleagues in Taiwan Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) London on the theme Globalisation and Security Across the Taiwan Strait. One panel was devoted to military matters and, following a theoretical paper about the possibility of conflict and an interesting discussion by American colleagues on cyberwarfare, an academic working in an American military academy took to the podium. His paper was little more than a salute to military hardware, and his powerpoint presentation showed a succession of photographs of the planes, trucks and missiles that Taiwan's military might use to defend itself in the event of an attack from the PRC. I became increasingly disturbed and ran through a gamut of emotions - distressed, nauseous, angry, repulsed - as we were told 'some arms races are affordable' and 'mines are beautiful.' Some of my fellow participants looked decidely uncomfortable. I decided to challenge the paper presenter about his comments.

I thanked the panel for reminding me how important it is to continue working on communications, soft power and public diplomacy so we can try to avoid having to use such hardware. I told the presenter that military hardware is not 'beautiful'; the pictures he had shown were of ugly, brutal machines designed to destroy, maim and kill humans. Children in parts of Africa, Central America and South East Asia who stand on landmines left over from conflicts in the last three decades see no beauty in the devices that wound or kill them. His failure to mention casualties at all in his presentation was a serious omission. Moreover, no arms race is affordable; every $1 million spent on such military hardware is $1 million that could have been spent on a hospital, a school, or improving the lives of the most vulnerable in our society. Which is more effective, someone asked, an F15 or an F16? Which should Taiwan prioritise? When you are the target of its missiles, is there really any difference?

This conference was a stark reminder to me that despite the often abstract and critical discussions we have about soft power, public diplomacy, and international communications in general, they can and do have an impact: such proccesses can play a central role to play in policy-making; in persuading governments that there really is an alternative to hard power; and that the academic labels we attach to such communicative activities is less important than their application and the recognition that it is always preferable to persuade than to coerce. I left the conference realising that it is more important than ever that we continue Phil's work and for the same reasons. Not such a 'Filthy business' after all ...