Propaganda: Inbound - Bad; Outbound - Necessary (But It Mustn't Look Like Goebbels)
(Photo source: USIA archived webiste, University of Illinois at Chicago)
First of all, I don't know what "America's Message" is. Democracy is good? (But maybe not always, especially if the results go against perceived US interests. See Elections in Palestine, won by Hamas). Market capitalism is for everyone? (Usually - so much so that privatization was the first order of business in CPA-ruled Iraq - even before the place had electricity. See "Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein and "Imperial Life in The Emerald City" by Rajiv Chandrasekaran). Let's say that The Message is going to be constantly modified, depending on circumstances and on who is running the United States.
But as to who delivers American messages - and to what audiences - that is very much The Question going on in public diplomacy, strategic communication, information operations, and place branding circles. My recent post The News From (and To) America: NPR, VOA, Democracy Now!... Or Army STRATCOM? garnered a modicum of comment from people who make a living thinking about such questions. Dr. Juliana Geran Pilon, of the Institute of World Politics and National Defense University, has written extensively on one important aspect of the debate, the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and its restrictions against propagandizing the American citizenry (as opposed to foreign populations, who are generally considered fair game).
It [Smith-Mundt] prohibits domestic dissemination of information designed for foreign consumption, ostensibly so as to ban "domestic propaganda." Yet in this age of instant and global communication, expecting to prevent such public information from reaching Americans is unrealistic and technologically impossible. In the war on terrorism, this restriction is worse than an anachronism: It amounts to self-sabotage. Until Congress relegates this piece of legislation to the dustbin of history, the U.S. cannot expect to conduct public diplomacy effectively.
Dr. Pilon's most persuasive argument is the "so what?" aspect of Americans' peeking at websites, publications, and listening to/watching broadcasts destined for foreign audiences
If a few Americans happen to overhear, so much the better.
She also cites the general ignorance of the American public's knowledge of some of the good news stories in foreign affairs, like its woeful misunderstanding of development assistance and its place in the firmament of spending priorities (see this for a study of how Americans overestimate the amount they think foreign aid plays in federal budgets). And how about those foreign audiences who should know about US generosity?
In 2003, the Djerejian Commission, a bipartisan advisory group on public diplomacy, reported to Congress:
When we asked the administrator of USAID how much of his budget of $13 billion goes to public diplomacy, [the USAID administrator] answered "Almost none." He explained that AID is generally prohibited to disseminate information about its activities--a restriction that the Advisory Group recommends be ended immediately.
Contrast USAID's reticence with the advertising campaign of the Kuwait Fund, which regularly highlights its development projects on such planetary TV channels as BBC World and CNN International - even I know their theme music - in a very slick effort to make you forget their profiting from sky-high oil prices.
Is Propaganda Public Diplomacy a Core Military Competency? Get Thee Back To Thy Foxhole
I also tend to agree with Dr. Pilon that it's fruitless to think that Googlingly inquisitive cyber-junkies will stumble upon "Magharebia" or "Southeast European Times" ("strategic communications" websites run by the US military to convince audiences, respectively in North Africa and the Balkans, of the advantages of the American Way and the evils of the Al Qaeda and/or Serbian nationalistic paths) and will be expected to divert their eyes. But the difference between "overhearing" and being a target audience is considerable, and it is here that the debate over Smith-Mundt's relevance must be engaged.
John Brown, a fellow former Foreign Service Officer now with Georgetown and USC, and who publishes the USC Center on Public Diplomacy's "Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review," has written on Donald Rumsfeld's forays into manipulation "strategic communication," which has remained in the military lexicon, despite the "outing" of its news efforts in Iraq.
Brown, who left the State Department over the Iraq war, and is more qualified than most observers to comment on the ethics and efficacy of public diplomacy, is organizing a symposium this year on the 60th anniversary of the Smith-Mundt Act, which - though mostly remembered for its anti-(domestic) propaganda restrictions - was also the founding act for the US Information Agency (USIA, killed at Senator Jesse Helms' insistence and folded into the State Department during the Clinton administration). Writes Brown, in his circular proposing the symposium:
Smith-Mundt’s “firewall” between foreign and domestic information dissemination has been institutionalized in the US while other industrialized countries, such as the U.K. and France, do not make this distinction. The BBC, for example, broadcasts its programs both at home and abroad, while the Voice of America (VOA) can only be directed to foreign audiences.
The Smith-Mundt Act is particularly relevant today at a time when the US find itself committed to a global struggle for the minds and wills of men as it was during the Cold War. Scholars and practitioners of public diplomacy argue about the need to update or modify the Smith-Mundt Act in our age of the Internet, when differentiating between domestic and foreign news is becoming increasingly artificial. There is a rough consensus in the United States, however, that the USG is not in the business of pushing propaganda on its own citizens.
But to my mind, of equal importance to the question of whether Americans should or should not be the target of government propaganda (I tend to tilt towards the latter, consensus, view), is the question of who performs "good" propaganda, or public diplomacy. The best kind is citizen public diplomacy, of the kind practiced by such organizations as "Business for Diplomatic Action" (see right-hand column → under "Diplomacy Links") and "American Voices" (a choral group that brings the best of the American spirit to audiences abroad). Here's what John Ferguson, Executive Director of American Voices, has to say about American funding priorities:
We are especially interested in working more in Africa and the Middle East, but the funding for cultural programs is also rapidly dwindling from almost non-existent to zero in favor of democracy-promotion and other post 9/11 necessities. and current climate for these countries is quite a challenge. State Department
Just think of that: spreading an American cultural good news story to "Africa and the Middle East" (respectively, "Areas of Responsibility" (AOR) of AFRICOM and CENTCOM, under well-funded four star generals) is jeopardized by dwindling State Department funding. Read and weep. Next thing you know, the Defense Department will be putting on cultural programs...
When the US Government needs to tell its story - a natural function, shared by all governments, businesses, charities, etc. - it should have the services of a dedicated organization. It used to have that in the US Information Agency. Whether that entity is revived or something else comes into being, that "something else" should be civilian, not military. The US military - the sharp instrument that needs to be kept honed for essential national defense - should not be so abundantly, extravagantly funded that it thinks up of cool ways of influencing foreign audiences. No, that is the job of the civilians. Mr. MBA President: please use a little of your Business School 101 and get the US military back to its core competency - defense - and take their (secret) press badges away.