Operational Public Diplomacy: The Enduring and the New.

• Author: Bishop, Donald M.
• Position: Essay

The overseas Public Diplomacy conducted by the State Department received two big jolts after the turn of the new century. It's time, therefore, to examine what endures, and what's new, in this vital part of American diplomacy.

What were these jolts? First, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 made it clear that the United States now had to communicate with the young, the disaffected, and the religious. American diplomats had to learn the faith dimensions of other societies, counter the use of the internet for terrorist recruitment, and staff huge Public Affairs Sections in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

The second jolt came when Russia integrated disinformation, propaganda, bots and trolls, and attacks on democracy into their "hybrid warfare" against Estonia, Georgia, Crimea, and Ukraine. These were updates of the old Soviet "active measures," now turbocharged by the internet and spread by the new, well-funded Russian international broadcasting networks. RT (formerly Russia Today, motto "Question More") endlessly challenges plain facts, history, the findings of international investigations, and reliable journalism. Sputnik's motto, "Telling the Untold," means offering conspiracy theories and/or dark spin against whichever facts and narratives displease the Kremlin. Other authoritarian states--China and North Korea prominent among them--are adapting these tactics for their own purposes.

At first, this was happening in places far distant from America's domestic preoccupations. It was the Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election that revealed these tactics for most Americans. Foreign policy, communications, and cyber specialists all now agree that the Russian aim is to break down America's (and NATO's) confidence in democracy.

It was long in gestation, but the State Department has concentrated its response in a new unit in Washington, the Global Engagement Center, tasked to "lead, synchronize, and coordinate efforts of the Federal Government to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests."

Responding to the jolts generated hearings, studies, and proposals in Washington, but there hasn't been an equal focus on how Public Diplomacy is actually conducted overseas in U.S. embassies and consulates.

In retrospect, the overseas Public Diplomacy of the 1990s--after the end of the Cold War but before the jolts--was...