Public diplomacy: time to debate change, continuity, and doctrine.

• Author: Bishop, Donald M.

The United States is entering a period when the very structure of international relations an order that heavily relies on effective American diplomacy, international rules, alliances, and strong U.S. military power--is challenged. So is American Public Diplomacy.

It's commonplace to say the times call for bold thinking about change. While there are new technologies and new opportunities in Public Diplomacy, there is also a tried and true array of programs, and Public Diplomacy has some evergreen principles. New thinking, then, must also consider continuity.

"Continuity" is not the same as "inertia." Inertia resists and delays change. Continuity of principles, however, strengthens any transition. To understand what needs to change and what is most valuable in its legacy, a discussion of Public Diplomacy doctrine may be helpful.

Some Macro Changes

Fundamental thinking about the future of Public Diplomacy must begin by acknowledging five major changes.

Diminished standing: The first change is that the State Department, the Foreign Service, and American Public Diplomacy now have a diminished share of America's engagement with the world. Here are some examples:

--At the time of the moon landing in 1969, thousands of Bengalis gathered outside the American Center in Dacca (now Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh). The State Department cables to the Embassy and the Voice of America delivered the news faster than any local commercial news sources. In 2013, in contrast, Bangadeshis receive news by satellite television. The moment for Public Diplomacy to be an important news provider has long passed.

--In Korea in the 1970s, the American Cultural Centers were important venues for studying English. Since students in uniform were forbidden to enter theatres--a distraction from their studies--the Centers were the only places where they could hear (in person or on film) unaccented American English. Forty years later, Korean students watch satellite television and Hollywood DVD's, and thousands of Americans teach English conversation in at schools and institutes.

--Once the American Center libraries were the only lending libraries in many countries, and their book collections provided knowledge about the U.S. and the world unavailable anywhere else. Now, who needs to visit a Public Affairs Section's Information Resources Center when anyone can start with Wikipedia and move to the immense knowledge resources on the internet? I was in a Caribbean country last year, and I found that PAS there had managed to maintain a truly attractive library with an excellent collection. It made me remember the glory days. It had some workstations too. The only problem with this well-maintained (and therefore expensive) library was that no one was using it except a few students who came to check their Facebook accounts on the library's computers.

So--Public Diplomacy has a shrinking share of the world's "bandwidth" focused on the United States or on international issues.

Larger ambitions: Even as Public Diplomacy's standing has diminished, its goals have become more expansive: to foster entrepreneurship around the world, to enhance the role of women, and to provide opportunity to the dispossessed among them. There seems a mismatch between Public Diplomacy's shrinking place in international conversations and growing list of new goals. This is a recipe for frustration.

It's time to be honest. If the agenda is social change, or dealing with deeply rooted problems, years of work will be required. Years to define the problem. Years to create awareness. Years to garner funds or to win the attention of development gatekeepers. Years for assessments and benchmarking. Learning how universal principles can fit into local culture. Seminars and workshops. Drafts of legislation. Carrots and sticks for the local government by the donors. Fending off those who profit from lack of reform. Research and studies. Pilot projects. Funding NGOs over the long run. And so on.

Public Diplomacy is too light to do this. Under Secretaries and directors of Public Diplomacy programs at universities and think tanks envision Public Diplomacy as able to deliver social change, but they're wrong. Public Diplomacy programs can play a supporting role, but Public Diplomacy's resources are too small to make a long-term impact. Because they're scattered over too many programs and too many goals in too many countries, there's never enough critical mass to make a decisive difference in any one. Thinking that a few Fulbrighters, a few Visitors, a few speakers, a few smallish conferences, or a few grants can make a real dent is a form of Public Diplomacy ... hubris.

Let me draw a military parallel. Think of the Civil War. Battles were won by masses of infantry helped by their supporting arms.

In social change, only USAID has the money and experience to work over the long term. They are the infantry.

That doesn't mean there's no role for Public Diplomacy. It just means that Public Diplomacy people have to understand what it can achieve and what it can't. Public Diplomacy with its light funding, its light arms, are rather the scouts and skirmishers that move ahead of the infantry. They report on the shape of the battlefield. Their fire can slow advancing enemy formations coming their way. But scouts and skirmishers only "prepare" or "soften" or "shape" the battlefield, and no infantry, no victory. Or no social change. Public Diplomacy is too light, as in "light infantry," to effect change on its own.

I editorialize that such understanding has been scant among Under Secretaries of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, who seem to have an unquenchable thirst for vignettes that prove how Public Diplomacy is tackling and solving the world's problems. Or, to be more cynical, how my Public Diplomacy people are tackling and solving the world's problems by taking my advice, following my lead, and implementing programs I have directed.

Bottom line: Public Diplomacy can't effect social change. It may be able to do some supporting work, focused on communication, but it can't by itself make a real dent. Public Diplomacy leadership needs to acknowledge this.

No money to match the dreams: These days Public Diplomacy seems to be channeling Wordsworth: "Bliss it was at that dawn to be alive." The possibilities for Public Diplomacy now seem endless. Yes, the daily drudgery of media work needs to be done. The Embassy's political section still wants press translations. But think of the new world that beckons: close the digital divide, open the new frontier with gastrodiplomacy, help the Ambassador be a star, create a new force of entrepreneurs, defeat censorship and unleash the internet, provide higher education to the millions through MOOCs, empower the powerless, raise the disadvantaged, end inequality, and save the planet.

For Public Diplomacy, all these good causes run into a reality: there's not enough money. Public Diplomacy officers have Lincoln's choices: Do some of the things everywhere. Do all of the things in some places. But it's not possible do all of the things in all of the places. Public Diplomacy is too light, and there will never be enough money.

I say it once again. I've often heard from colleagues, "just give us the money we've always needed, and we can do more Fulbrights, more Visitors, more English teaching, more speakers, more press, more sports, more performing arts, sprinkle in Facebook, and we'll do more good."

I say it once again. This is wishin' and hopin.' Public Diplomacy is not facing the fact that in the coming era of austerity, extra money and more people are not coming its way...