Image Source: “U.S. – Pakistan Relationship.” Chappatte Globe Cartoon, Chappatte in International Herald Tribune, 30 May 2012, www.chappatte.com/en/images/u-s-pakistan-relationship/.
Pakistan is the 7thlargest country in the world in terms of its population and a country that holds a negative view of the United States. The United States and Pakistan have been strategic allies on multiple occasions; however, the increasing distrust between the two countries due to conflict of national interests in the war on terror in Afghanistan has caused tensions in their pre-existing complex relationship.
The U.S. was among the first of nations to ally with Pakistan after its independence in 1947. The United States provided economic and social assistance to the newly independent country and still maintains vital military relations. In return, Pakistan proved to be a valuable strategic ally of the United States in the cold war against the Soviet Union and helped the U.S. in driving Soviet forces out of Afghanistan. Pakistan continues to hold a strategic position in the United States’ interests in the Central and South Asia region. However, unlike prior to 1980s where the relationship was based on mutual benefits and good will, the post 9/11 basis of partnership has been mainly transactional between the U.S. and Pakistani military, which is given aid by the U.S. to support its efforts in Afghanistan. This transactional relationship stemmed from a trust deficit caused by the both countries’ conflict of narratives as a result of their history regarding their national interests and motives in the region.
The growing perception of “Anti-Americanism” in Pakistan is primarily due to the U.S. security strategy concerns in Afghanistan and Pakistan that Pakistan feels undermine Pakistan’s efforts to fight terrorism, leaving the country feeling underappreciated by the U.S. This contributes to fostering a negative image of the United States in Pakistan. In current circumstances, with Pakistan being a strategic ally, the U.S. can use diplomacy in conjunction with public diplomacy to turn the tide in a relationship with Pakistan.
Currently, there is a decline in Pakistani public support of American cooperation with its military and for U.S. assistance and humanitarian aid in areas where extremist leaders operate. Also, there is less inclination towards the U.S. to continue providing intelligence and logistical support for Pakistani troops fighting extremism. Pakistanis feel that the U.S. doesn’t take Pakistan’s national interests into account and doesn’t give it sufficient credit for its contributions to the war in Afghanistan.
The U.S. led drone strikes are a major contributor to this sentiment. According to Pakistan, drone strikes targeting extremist leaders result in more collateral damage of civilians and are mostly carried out without the consent of the Pakistani government that threatens country’s sovereignty. Regardless of how the U.S. views drone strikes in North Waziristan area and how effective they are in targeting extremists, the collateral damage in form of civilian causalities and social structure raises questions about the outcomes of drone war on Pakistani soil. The unified objection of the unauthorized U.S. led drone strikes from the Pakistani government and the Pakistani military further fuels the Pakistani narrative that the U.S. only cares about pursuing its own objectives even at the cost of threatening country’s sovereignty.
To mitigate this major issue, the U.S. needs to work with the Pakistani government and its military on a new bilateral drone strikes strategy that considers both countries security concerns in mind so the major point of tension between them is resolved – the public diplomacy alone will not solve the problem. Despite of the U.S. and Pakistan history of distrust, consensus on drone strikes strategy may have a positive effect on their relationship. Once a consensus is reached, the U.S. can work with the Pakistani government to gain public support by communicating the drone attacks in a way that is transparent to the Pakistani public. The U.S. can also work with the Pakistani government to prevent civilian casualties or find/invest in alternatives to drone attacks such as Aware Girls to combat extremists, which instills a positive sense of perception in Pakistani public that the U.S. is not showing negligence in addressing their concerns. So far all the public diplomacy efforts made by the U.S. in Pakistan through bridging cultural gaps with programs like Fulbright Scholar Program and funding literacy education for underprivileged children or providing social and economic development opportunities to the private sector have been ineffective due to focus on the drone strikes. Mutual agreement of the countries on the use of drone strikes will pave the way for the better reception of the U.S. public diplomacy efforts in Pakistani public.
Over the years the relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan has been complex and ridden with distrust due to conflict of narratives regarding history and their roles in addressing security concerns in the region. The U.S. engagement in Pakistan is mostly highlighted in relations to the military, so every shift in that relationship affects the perception of the U.S. in Pakistani public. To counter the negative image building, the U.S. can use public diplomacy to mitigate Anti-Americanism caused by the U.S. foreign policies by reaching consensus on drone strikes with the Pakistani government and highlighting its role in social and economic development in Pakistan, thus signaling the desire for improving relationship to the Pakistani public.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author. They do not necessarily express the views of either The Institute of Public Diplomacy and Global Communication or The George Washington University.
Chinese students attend an Education Fair at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing to learn more about study abroad programs in the U.S.
U.S. public diplomacy efforts are about attraction, rather than coercion. A major variable in measuring “attractiveness” of the U.S. is through attitudes of potential foreign exchange students. The ability of the U.S. to attract bright minds from around the world has bolstered the country’s development since its inception and fuels the U.S. “melting pot” narrative. China is now the primary source of these foreign exchange students. The recent release of Institute for International Education’s 2016 Report revealed that numbering almost 330,000, Chinese international students comprise 31.5 percent of the total number of international students in the U.S. Sheer volume holds weight, but from a public diplomacy perspective, the numbers are less important than the attitudes behind them. Why do Chinese students choose to study abroad in the U.S.? Will this trend last? Research I conducted in 2015 concludes that unless the U.S. sees major education and public diplomacy policy shifts, we have reason to doubt it will.
In 2015, I completed an in-depth study of the evolution of Chinese students’ motivations to study abroad in the U.S. Its findings highlighted a need for the U.S. to foster policies that attract foreign talent as the web of international politics becomes increasingly multipolar. These conclusions ring true today.
The rapid influx of Chinese exchange students, who make up the majority of foreign students in the U.S., will play an unprecedented role in Sino-U.S. relations, as well as in the U.S. economy as potential future skilled immigrants. Through historical contextualization, observations at U.S. Consulate Guangzhou, as well as primary interviews of study abroad participants from the 80s, 90s, and today, my research concluded:
In comparison with students from the 1980s, 1990s, and even early 2000s, today’s Chinese students have a greater freedom of choice and the economic means to take advantage of that freedom of choice. To date, that choice has overwhelmingly been to study abroad in the U.S., but both quantitative and qualitative data suggest that trend is waning as students begin to consider other countries in place of or in addition to the U.S. as study abroad destinations.
Though modern-day students make the decision to study abroad out of desire for a better education and personal development, practical factors dictate which study abroad location and program students choose. Factors that may affect a student’s decision include the cost of a program and a country’s immigration policies, which may become even more important in the future as developed countries reach equilibrium in terms of education quality.
The student exchange trends described above call for the U.S. to adjust its education policies to continue attracting foreign talent, a factor that is crucial to the economy’s continuing success. Giving international student policies a more important role is not a betrayal to the “America First” rhetoric on the rise. In a recent interview, Thomas Friedman described his new book as a “manifesto for the eye people”. The “eye people” are those who thrive in the middle of the hubbub of globalization and interconnectedness and draw power from it. The “wall people” are those who withdraw into extreme nationalism. To thrive, the U.S. needs to maintain its status as a hub of global leadership. America’s largest group of international students is beginning to perceive the eye-to-wall shift. When will we?
(Source: Flickr/Photo Phiend – American and Taiwanese flags at the Chinatown gate in Washington, DC)
Since the severing of official diplomatic ties between the United States and the Republic of China (Taiwan) in 1979, U.S. policy towards Taiwan has stayed relatively consistent throughout the past six administrations by adhering to the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and President Reagan’s “Six Assurances.” Although the TRA continues commercial, cultural, and public exchanges under a de facto relationship, significant gaps remain. Much more can be done to strengthen the partnership between the U.S. and Taiwan.
The world has increasingly become more interconnected. However, Taiwan continues to be pushed out of the international community. Recently, Taiwan was excluded from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol), and a U.N.-affiliated meeting in New York on rare diseases. The United States should consider deepening its exchanges with Taiwan. Public diplomacy efforts are inextricably linked with American national security. As such, the U.S. should place greater emphasis on its people-to-people exchanges with Taiwan.
At a time when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exhibits increasingly assertive behavior in the South China Sea and East China Sea, the U.S. and its Asia-Pacific allies should highlight the positive role Taiwan plays in the regional architecture. U.S. strategy toward the region has taken a multifaceted approach that seeks to strengthen cooperation with like-minded nations to address shared challenges. In addition to commercial engagement, expanding people-to-people ties are essential for fostering goodwill and unity with our partners and allies.
In the absence of diplomatic relations, Taiwan has received diminished time and attention in Washington. Over the past ten years, the White House has not viewed it as a priority to support Taiwan and advance the unofficial bilateral relationship. This has affected the way everyday Americans and Taiwanese have come to view each other. According to survey results reported by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in 2014, only 28 percent of Americans would support sending U.S. troops to Taiwan in the event that the PRC invaded the island.[1] In sharp contrast, a 2016 poll in Taiwan indicated that over 70 percent of Taiwanese people believe that America would come to Taiwan’s rescue in the event of a Chinese invasion. It can be interpreted that—in addition to having a case of ‘war fatigue’ from 13 years of on-going conflict in the Middle East—this perception gap may be the natural result of many Americans having limited understanding of the TRA and the political complexity of cross-Strait relations.
Following the recent Trump-Tsai phone call, the misinformed American media further demonstrated a lack of concern and understanding regarding the nuances surrounding U.S.-Taiwan and U.S.-China relations. More exchanges, not only on the governmental level but also on the educational level, will allow for more Americans to understand Taiwan and its people better. Currently, the United States is struggling to establish a proactive international education policy and failing to meet its goal of 1 million Americans studying abroad by 2017. New and creative exchanges with Taiwan will boost U.S. foreign policy and security goals, and ultimately garner more public support on both sides of the relationship for stronger U.S.-Taiwan cooperation.
Current Public Exchange Programs
Despite the fact that the U.S. and Taiwan both have visa waiver programs that contribute to tourism on both sides—which may see a record high of over 1 million visitors this year—these types of exchanges are mainly short and business-driven. Long-term exchanges that seek to deepen people-to-people relations must be pursued as well. On the U.S. side, government-sponsored public exchange initiatives that have a Taiwan component include a variety of programs funded by the U.S. Department of State (International Visitor Leadership Program, Fulbright, Critical Language Scholarship, National Security Language Initiative for Youth, Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship, etc.) and Boren awards for international study. The U.S. Department of Education also has 118 universities that offer the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships (FLAS) to study abroad. Language exchange programs funded by nongovernmental organizations include the Blakemore and Freeman Foundations.
On the Taiwan side, the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) provide generous scholarship opportunities for foreign nationals seeking language learning, degree programs, or research (Huayu Enrichment Scholarship, Taiwan Scholarship, and Taiwan Fellowship, respectively.) The Taiwan government also sponsors the Ambassador Summer Scholarship Program for the Taiwan-U.S. Alliance, known as TUSA, which is a non-profit organization that focuses on building international friendships on the student-to-student level. In 2014, MOFA launched an international youth leadership program called Mosaic Taiwan, which is committed to better informing future American leaders through a three-week program filled with workshops and seminars in Taiwan. Finally, a unique initiative is the Taiwan Tech Trek program, which recruits young people of Taiwanese ancestry for an eight-week summer internship or research program, allowing Taiwanese-Americans to learn about Taiwan and its well-known tech industries. These programs ultimately seek to promote and improve U.S.-Taiwan relations and counter China efforts to stop Taiwan from participating in the community of nations.
Challenges With Current Programs
The U.S.-Taiwan pursuit to seek partnerships through educational and cultural exchange programs is laudable. There are, however, significant challenges with U.S. programs, particularly with the International Leadership Visitor Program (IVLP), that inhibit more meaningful exchange. IVLP is a three-week tailored individual or group program sponsored by the State Department that brings mid-career professionals and emerging foreign leaders to the United States. Former presidents Ma Ying-jeou and Chen Shui-bian are both alumni of this program. These leaders are nominated by U.S. embassies overseas, and in this case the de facto embassy known as the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), for meetings and opportunities to engage with Americans on global thematic issues. It is through collaboration with National Programming Agencies (NPA) that these projects are implemented. Due to fact that visits by Taiwanese officials in the U.S. are seen as highly political by Beijing (former President Lee Teng-hui’s visit to Cornell in 1995 sparkedthe Third Taiwan Strait Missile Crisis), it is protocol that Taiwan government representatives are barred from entering the Harry S. Truman Building of State Department, the White House, and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Another caveat with the IVLP is the small amount of funding available for Taiwan, in comparison to China. According to State Department statistics, the FY2016 budget only allowed for 16 visitors from Taiwan, while China had 112. The small amount of attention given to Taiwan negatively impacts U.S.-Taiwan relations. More can be done to support exchanges on the government and professional levels.
In the educational realm, there are many U.S. exchange initiatives in place that give exposure to Taiwan. However, the amount of students that go to Taiwan pale in comparison to the number of those who go to the PRC. From statistics provided for the 2013-14 year, the Institute for International Education (which is an NPA) reported that 13,763 American students studied in the PRC, while only a diminutive 801 went to Taiwan. Many American students are naturally drawn to China’s rich cultural heritage, strategic importance, and economic power (something which relates to future career prospects). However, U.S. policies and officially-expressed attitudes toward Taiwan and the PRC influence the choices made by young Americans as well. Many do not see value in learning traditional Chinese characters and view Taiwan as only a subsidiary to the PRC.
China Factor
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has worked hard to win the hearts and minds of the American people through its vigorous overseas propaganda efforts. Its Confucius Institutes are but one example. Confucius Institutes, which are operated under the PRC Ministry of Education, are an extension of the CCP. They have nearly 100 partnerships in the United States, with the stated goal of promoting Chinese language and culture. These institutes provide attractive financial packages to universities seeking Chinese language learning resources.[2] However, their programs engage in censorship and only allow for Party-approved rhetoric and policies to be heard. In 2014, the University of Chicago ended its partnership with the Confucius Institute due to concerns regarding censorship and limitations to academic freedom.
All American students deserve the right to freely discuss issues like the Tiananmen Square Massacre, U.S.-PRC relations, and the futures of Hong Kong, Tibet, and Taiwan. Yet, a Government Accountability Organization (GAO) report found that 12 overseas American universities in the PRC have challenges operating in a restrictive environment. Internet censorship and self-censorship are listed as two main problems. While Confucius Institutes offer generous funding to American educational institutions, the continuation of these engagements perpetuate the CCP’s authoritarian interests and leads to further marginalization of Taiwan’s influence in the world. While education initiatives between the U.S. and the PRC are important to the bilateral relationship, they tend to impact and diminish opportunities for greater American understanding of Taiwan. U.S. relations between the PRC and Taiwan should not be viewed in zero-sum terms, but the reality is that they are.
Recommendations: Innovative Exchanges To Strengthen U.S.-Taiwan People-to-People Relations
More innovative solutions are needed to re-emphasize the importance of people-to-people exchanges with Taiwan. The Taiwan Travel Act, proposed by Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), calls for more exchange between Taiwanese and American leaders at all levels. This could alleviate the protocol challenges for Taiwanese visitors. Additionally, some bottom-up approaches are needed to tackle the challenge of current institutional practices in place that continue to discourage American students from pursuing Taiwan exchanges, including the student-run Taiwan-America Student Conference (TASC). The program, currently making plans for its fourth annual conference, was founded on the premise that American students need to think critically about the strategic and cultural value of Taiwan, and Taiwanese students need to think globally and address where they fit within the international community. Every year, students come together at TASC for dialogue and discussions on ways to confront global issues facing their respective societies. These include issues such as environmental sustainability and modern issues in education, among others. This is an excellent model for more future citizen diplomacy exchanges, given the aforementioned constraints.
(Source: Taiwan-America Student Conference – Taiwanese and American students building mutual trust and understanding through an exchange program)
Another recommendation is the establishment of a foundation that seeks to strengthen U.S.-Taiwan educational and cultural exchanges, much like the U.S.-China Strong Foundation. The U.S.-China Strong Foundation is a nonprofit organization that seeks to strengthen U.S.-China relations by investing in the next generation of leaders. Its principal goals are to increase the number of American students in the PRC and to strengthen Chinese language learning opportunities in the United States. A U.S.-Taiwan Strong Foundation would be at the center of bilateral educational exchanges. It could house programs modeled off of TASC, establishing chapters in universities and high schools, and striving to increase the number of American students in Taiwan and vice versa.
Beijing’s influence operations continue to drown out Taiwan’s voice in the United States. Taiwan’s democratic society is full of Chinese culture and increasingly diverse. The island nation is a paradigm of pro-American progressive values. When it comes to learning Mandarin, the PRC is far from the only option. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter stated that a more inclusive security architecture is needed. Emphasizing Taiwan’s role in Asia is smart policy. Advancing exchanges with Taiwan requires a willingness to employ all the available tools, especially the establishment of a new foundation dedicated to this mission. Doing so will add tremendous value to U.S. foreign policy and national security outcomes in the years ahead.
This article was first published through the Asia Eye, the official blog of the Project 2049 Institute, a Washington-based think tank focused on security issues and public policy in Asia.
[1] Americans Affirm Ties to Allies in Asia. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Pg. 2. October, 2014. <http://www.thechicagocouncil.org/sites/default/files/2014%20Chicago%20Council%20Survey%20-%20Asia%20Report.pdf>
[2] Soft Power in a Hard Place: China, Taiwan, Cross-Strait Relations and U.S. Policy. Pg. 510. Fall, 2010. <http://www.fpri.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/delisle.chinataiwan_01.pdf>
Janet Steele (far left) at the launch event of her book, “Email Dari Amerika” in Indonesia, August 12, 2014.
What’s the secret to public diplomacy and how do you measure its impact?
Although I spent the summer in Indonesia working on my project on journalism and Islam, I’ve also been up to some public diplomacy – most recently two weeks ago, when I launched a collection of my Email Dari Amerika columns at @America – an outpost of the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy located in a fancy shopping mall in Jakarta. It was a lot of fun. Here’s a link to the video, but the photos are more interesting because they’re in English 🙂 The Deputy Chief of Mission spoke, which added a nice note of gravitas to what might otherwise have been a discussion of snow, Valentine’s Day, and my parrot.
Email Dari Amerika is not an academic book, but writing those weekly columns for three years took a lot of effort, and I’m proud of what I accomplished. I had met Dhimam Abror, the editor of Surya newspaper, on a U.S. Government speaking trip back in 2006, and we became friends. Later, he asked if I’d write a weekly column, and I said no – that my Indonesian wasn’t good enough, that I didn’t want to offer superficial commentary on current events, and that I wasn’t a very fast writer. Dhimam observed that I wrote emails very quickly, and suggested that I write a weekly “Email From America” of 600 words about my life in the U.S. So I did.
I’m certainly an unusual American, but the column turned out to be fun to write, and I developed quite a fan club. The real challenge was filtering complicated ideas through my limited vocabulary. I tried to think up topics that Indonesians would find interesting – what snow is like, Valentine’s Day, what it was like to be on the Mall during Obama’s inauguration.
I had a great editor who fixed up my grammar but didn’t change my sentence structure or syntax, so it still sounds like me. It all ended shortly after Dhimam left the newspaper, but Yayasan Pantau, a journalism training institute in Jakarta where I’ve been teaching workshops for the past 14 years, decided to publish a collection of them after I posted a translation of my “Valentine’s Day” column on Facebook. The fatwa against celebrating Valentine’s Day really annoyed me – as you know, in the U.S. Valentine’s Day is hardly an excuse for vice; in fact, the people who probably enjoy it the most are school kids.
There’s no secret to Public Diplomacy; it’s really connecting people to people, being sensitive to others, and demonstrating that all of us have far more in common than we realize. The problem is that when budgets get tightened, public diplomacy programs are among the first to go. In recent years, I’ve been told countless times “we’d love to have you as a speaker, but we just don’t have the budget.”
The U.S. government investment that led to Email Dari America was two days of speaker honorarium plus travel expenses from Jakarta – well under $1,000. As one former Public Affairs Officer with whom I’ve worked put it, “Glad we could send you on speaker and Fulbright programs to Indonesia, Malaysia and beyond. You have increased the value of our modest investments exponentially!”
It’s often hard to measure the impact of public diplomacy, but as the Press Attaché who invited me to Surabaya eight years ago recently wrote, “You have made my day! Now that is a real tangible impact! Seriously!”
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, center, Malaysia’s Minister for Transport Hishamuddin Hussein, left, and director general of the Malaysian Department of Civil Aviation, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, deliver a statement on the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner on Mar. 15, 2014. Credit: Associated Press via WSJ.com
Malaysian Flight 370—specifically how the Malaysian government has handled the crisis to date—shows the negative side of public diplomacy, and reminds us why crisis communications matters.
From the moment the airplane disappeared from radar in the early morning hours of March 8, , the government in Kuala Lumpur faced a challenging task of communicating with its own citizens and citizens overseas. With passengers from a dozen countries on board—most of them Chinese—the public diplomacy assignment required careful, consistent, and credible information sharing.
That never happened. The result was conflicting stories, shifting narratives, and an overall picture of confusion. Now it will be difficult for the Malaysians to re-establish credibility.
The first rule of public diplomacy is to establish trust with your audience. Leaving aside the rules and procedures around an airline disaster, where victims need special handling, the basic goal of public information campaign is for government officials to disseminate information even when there is little to come by. The Malaysians needed to take hold of the situation and manage the flow of news in a 24/7 world where a cable operation like CNN might, as turned out to be the case, broadcast around the clock news about the event—dispatching reporters and cameras around the globe.
The second rule of public diplomacy is, if you don’t have an answer to a question, be candid and say, “We don’t know.” No information is better than bad information.
Lastly, be mindful of the power of the Bully Pulpit—a phrase coined by former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt to reflect the influence of the White House messaging platform. Deploying the Prime Minister of Malaysia needed to be strategic. There was no reason to put Prime Minister Najib Razak in the position of informing families that their loved ones were gone forever absent any wreckage of the plane to prove it.
To compound the error, the Malaysian government used social media incorrectly. It sent a text message to the families that read: “Malaysia Airlines deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board survived. As you will hear in the next hour from Malaysia’s Prime Minster we must now accept all evidence suggests the plane went down in the Southern Indian Ocean.” Without a debris field, the message seemed hollow.
Now, with the help of Australia, there is a chance to get Malaysia’s public diplomacy back on course. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott just met with the Malaysian Prime Minister and one hopes they will improve the information flow about the ongoing search and investigation.
In the end, the answer is training. We need to train government officials on how to communicate before, during and after a crisis, and how to use public diplomacy effectively. In a world of citizen journalism, news, and global information, the alternative is chaos.
Released on January 17, the film is about a squirrel on a mission to break and enter a nut store for the winter. Credit: Redrover Co., Ltd. (2013)
I took my kids this weekend to see the latest blockbuster animated film, The Nut Job. It wasn’t until the film ended, however, and an animated Psy appeared to lead the cartoon cast in a Gangnam-style dance routine alongside the rolling credits that I realized that there was major Korean support for the movie.
In fact, the South Korean government provided substantial financial support for the joint Korean-Canadian production that featured the voices of Will Arnett, Liam Neeson, and Katherine Heigl and ultimately cost over $40 million to produce. According to news reports, moreover, this is one of a series of several films that the South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism has supported from a fund of that is expected to grow to over $21 million for 2014 alone.
Few would question the influence of film as a medium of soft power, particularly as exemplified by Hollywood, Bollywood, and many other countries. Public diplomacy, moreover, makes frequent and explicit use of film as a tool of cultural diplomacy to promote mutual understanding and cross-cultural collaboration. Having already demonstrated the international reach and positive impact of its own cultural offerings in other areas, especially pop music, it seems only logical for South Korea to venture into international filmmaking…
Which is why I am a little puzzled by The Nut Job. The film is set in a nondescript American town in the recent past, the characters are voiced by major Hollywood actors, and the plot consists of a squirrel that tries to pull off a bank-style robbery of a nut shop. There was nothing about the film that was even remotely Korean at all and I missed the Korean connection altogether (although in retrospect there was a scene in which the music to “Gangnam Style” featured briefly). Psy’s cameo didn’t come until after the film had ended and the credits were rolling.
The film was mildly entertaining and the credits were amusing to watch, but I fail to see how this does much to leverage Korean soft power or advance Korean public diplomacy, despite the not-inconsiderable official Korean investment.
In my humble opinion, Korea would do well, instead, to choose its future film projects with an eye towards vehicles that feature Korean actors, settings, narratives, or themes. We all love Psy, and he could certainly help market other Korean cultural products, but his cameo was largely wasted in The Nut Job, a film I will remember only as a major missed Korean public diplomacy opportunity.
The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the State Department or the U.S. government. The author is a State Department officer specializing in public diplomacy, currently detailed to the IPDGC to teach and work on various Institute projects.
The disaster left in Tacloban City, the Philippines after Typhoon Yolanda. Credit: theaustralian.com.au
Of course, one cannot compare the typhoon that has left 4,000 dead and 12,000 injured in the Philippines with the tornadoes in the U.S. which resulted in less death and damage this weekend. But the common ingredient is the critical importance of timely information before, during and after a crisis. Natural disasters come quickly. How prepared people are for the onslaught of deadly winds and bad weather is often directly related to how much accurate and timely information they received beforehand.
If ever we doubt the role of governments in providing information, think about what happens if local, provincial, state, federal, national or international information is lacking. An individual with an iPhone is important, but the view is limited. We need the local weatherman and local radio supported by the national weather service. Individuals can assist, but also important is an organized large-scale governmental response, rescue and assistance coordinated by local, state and federal officials with—when necessary—militaries capable of doing the heavy lifting, literally and figuratively.
We need good public diplomacy and public affairs to reach people with good information. That takes resources, training, and professionalism. We need to keep investing in that architecture and personnel today and tomorrow.
