Hard Power, Soft Power, and Paul Wellstone’s Legacy

 

Thursday marked the 10 year anniversary of the death of Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-MN), along with his wife Sheila, daughter, and several staff members and aircraft crew in a tragic airplane accident in the final week of a tough re-election campaign in 2002.

Wellstone, and his wife, are particularly important figures in my family. My wife, a policy director and lobbyist for the anti-domestic violence organization Futures Without Violence, and a former Chief of Staff for Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), worked closely with both Wellstones – and, since their deaths, their sons – on DV-related issues, especially the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). A couple of weeks before he died, he held my infant son at a fundraiser at a private home in  Washington and recalled the speech my wife had given in his honor a few days earlier about how he was a role model for us as parents. Our daughter, Paulina, born three years later, is named for he and his wife.

 

So the main point of this blog post is simply to remember a great man, a great Senator, a great American, a great father, and a great example of the importance of fighting for the less fortunate and for what’s right.

As my friend and former student Adam Conner (@adamconner) tweeted Thursday, “We miss you.”

But Paul Wellstone’s final months are not only a true profile in courage – he voted against giving President George W. Bush a blank check to wage war in Iraq despite the knowledge that doing so might cause him to lose to an already forgotten mediocrity like Norm Coleman – they are a reminder of the critical and all-too often ignored relationship between hard and soft power, a subject near and dear to this blog.

It’s such an obvious point at this stage that it would verge on pedantic to elaborate at length, but the Iraq War was not only a disaster from a hard power perspective (anyone who thinks the successful execution of hard power is defined solely as regime change needs to visit a library), it was at least of much of a debacle from a soft-power view.

Wellstone understood this, and made the point while presaging America’s ongoing difficulties resulting from the Iraq invasion in his blistering speech against war authorization on the floor of the Senate in 2002:

“Acting now, going alone, might be a sign of our power. Acting sensibly, and in a measured way, in consort with our allies, with bi-partisan congressional support, would be a sign of our strength. (The invasion could be) a costly mistake for our country.”

One of the standard catchphrases in the literature and histories of public diplomacy is the admonition from the former Director of the U.S. Information Agency, Edward R. Murrow, that PD must be present at the takeoffs, not just the landings. This was one of the more obvious failings of the war in Iraq: it is widely understood now that no serious planning went into what came after the inevitable removal of Saddam Hussein from power. As public opinion polls across the world, but especially in the Arab and Muslim world, show to this day, this mistake continues to haunt the United States.

The legacy of this mistake was evident in the third debate between President Obama and Governor Mitt Romney Monday night. For one thing, one notes that when Republicans talk, George W. Bush is the President-that-dare-not-mention-his-name. Even when discussing Iraq. It’s like Democrats, Jimmy Carter, and the economy.

Gov. Romney seemed to want to endorse, or at least not challenge, President Obama’s ending of the Iraq War, disagreeing instead with what to the American public must seem like arcane topics like the Status of Forces Agreement. Compare this to 2008, when then GOP-standard bearer Sen. John McCain wouldn’t mention Bush, but not only opposed ending the war in Iraq as Obama promised (and did), but strongly implied he wanted to double down on a war with Iran.

Is this progress? I suppose so, but only a little. One thing that was clear Monday night, and frankly for the last four years (five, if we count the 2008 campaign), is that Obama – and much of his administration, especially Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – have a much better sense of the power of soft power. One saw this in the early months of the administration when they tried to create a “whole of government” approach that put PD in the Oval Office, sent Obama out to give public addresses to the Iranians during their New Year and to all Muslims during his stunning Cairo speech, and other under- and above-the-radar initiatives.

At the same time the administration’s understanding of the limits of hard power is mixed. On the one hand, Obama ended the war in Iraq, and for that deserves endless praise. Put simply, John McCain would not have done this, and Obama had to do it over the endless objections of virtually all Republicans (and some Democrats). Similarly, the killing of Osama Bin Laden strikes me as not only just, but a sophisticated realization that by 2011 OBL was a marginal figure and Pakistani and al Qaeda outrage would be muted, short-lived, and not even come close to outweighing the benefits of the strike on myriad levels.

But at the same time two policy decisions complicate his record: the Afghanistan surge and Obama’s embrace of drones to combat terrorism. Full disclosure: I supported the former, and mostly support the latter as it’s been implemented thus far. At the same time, the Afghan surge has been, to me, not even the qualified and exaggerated success of its Iraq model (and I think it has been much exaggerated). I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that it was a noble failure, though I’m willing to be convinced otherwise and invite commenters and guest-bloggers to make the case.

The drone program is more complicated, and I will address it more fully in a later blog post. But for the purposes of this essay, I think it is important to think about what Paul Wellstone would say about it were he still with us. I admit to having few issues with the vast majority of drone attacks that I’m aware of, which have decimated al Qaeda. I am aware of the fact, however, that my opinion is almost certainly colored by my partisanship – I am a strong Obama supporter and thus trust his judgment more than I would most Republicans’ – and my belief is strengthened by the President’s decision to not use a drone to take out bin Laden. To me this suggested an awareness of the limits of hard power because it would have almost certainly resulted in civilian casualties in a mission already fraught with problematic diplomatic implications.

I also have to grant that it’s easier for me to support the drone program as an American, and one who lived through 9/11 in a targeted city, than it would be if I lived in, say, Western Pakistan.

At the same time I can’t ignore the fact that the administration has never really given a particularly good explanation of how their approach isn’t laying the precedent for less responsible successors to use that power in ways that violate moral, legal, and Constitutional guidelines.

More to the point of this post, whether Obama’s use of drones is defensible, legal, or moral, there is little question that it is a public diplomacy nightmare for the United States. That, by the way, doesn’t mean America should abandon the program. Some short-term PD hits are sometimes necessary to ensure national security. But that rational is also too often a crutch, as the entire Iraq War fiasco shows, and as Paul Wellstone predicted.

More disturbing is the easy embrace Mitt Romney gave to the President’s drone program. There is simply no evidence that a Romney administration – or any viable Republican administration for that matter – would care about the soft power, or even hard power (much less legal or moral) – implications of the drone program as is, or in expanded form. One reason I say that is that there isn’t any viable Democratic administration that would be to the left of Obama in this area. Paul Wellstone, after all, could never have been president of the United States.

Indeed, we only need look back on the 2001-2008 period in American history to understand the damage to hard and soft power interests of the United States when U.S. political leaders panic in the face of a crisis and adopt a shoot (and torture) first/ask questions later approach to foreign policy.

Did President Obama or Mitt Romney learn these lessons about the limits of, and connection between, hard and soft power from the last 12 years? Sadly, Bob Schieffer did not ask any questions that would force the candidates to tell us at Monday’s debate. Thursday’s Washington Post, for instance, told us that the Obama Administration claims to care about the precedent they are setting in terms of drone attacks on alleged terrorists, including American citizens abroad. But I would have liked Schieffer to ask the President how he can assure us that those precedents wouldn’t open the door for a future George W. Bush to commit the same, or worse, blunders as before, but this time with legal protection. I would have also liked for him to ask Mitt Romney whether he thinks the Bush Administration’s policy of torture, war, wiretapping, and deportation strengthened or weakened the United States, and what he would do differently as president.

Instead, both candidates were allowed to express unqualified and unchallenged assertions of American hard power without any understanding of its connection to soft power or even America’s short and, especially, long term interests across many domains.

Would this have happened ten years ago? Given the persistent superficiality of journalistic questioning during presidential campaigns and debates (though Raddatz and Crowley were strong exceptions), and the press’s well-documented lap-dog approach to reporting in the two years following 9/11, probably.

But one thing is for sure: Paul Wellstone would have been there on the Senate floor, lacerating his colleagues, the media, and the White House for their short-sightedness and cowardice. Because one thing Wellstone understood better than perhaps any elected official of his generation is that strength doesn’t always come from the exercise of power; more often it comes from the restraint of power. And power itself isn’t demonstrated by sacrificing one’s principles in favor of short term security, it comes from defending those principals even at the risk of security, be that personal, national, or, in his case, electoral.

“We miss you,” indeed.

Helping the Truth Put On Its Shoes: Public Diplomacy and the post-Arab Spring

U.S. Fulbright Scholar Dr. Ana Gil-Garcia and members of the Fulbright Alumni Teacher’s Circle in Cairo
(Source: Fullbright Chicago)

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
         ~ Mark Twain (attributed)

Like many others, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks absorbed by Middle East events and wrestling with the many complex and difficult questions raised by journalists, analysts, and scholars:  How much of the tragic violence in Benghazi and elsewhere was a genuine reaction to that now-notorious anti-Muslim video, and how much is being promoted by specific actors for their own political aims?  Were Embassy walls breached in Cairo, Tunisia and elsewhere because the protests were uniquely powerful and emotional, or because some host-country governments, newly brought to power by the Arab Spring, hadn’t yet fully assumed the responsibility of protecting them?

As a public diplomacy practitioner, I’ve also been thinking about the people in the Muslim world who are most genuinely and deeply disturbed by the perceived insult — and am wondering, yet again, how best we can try to bridge the apparently yawning gap between their perceptions and those of Americans, for whom the positive value of free speech self-evidently outweighs the risks from insult.

It was through this lens that I took another look at “You Talkin’ To Me?,”  Ralph Begleiter’s still-invigorating 2006 article about international perception.  Begleiter describes a video dialogue between Lebanese and American university students in which a “common base of popular culture…did not mask notable differences in the way students at both ends of the videoconference saw charged political issues [such as] the publication of political cartoons lampooning the Muslim prophet Muhammad, including significant gaps in understanding of how the news media in each region relate to governments. In fact, understanding that media-government relationship proved to be a pervasive theme reflecting differences between the U.S. and Middle Eastern cultures [emphasis added].”

What does this tell us (beyond the fact that some things have definitely not changed since Begleiter first penned these words)?

For one thing, it is a reminder that dense thickets of factual misinformation currently impede mutual understanding on this issue of media-government relationships, and it suggests that more work on clearing away such thickets is needed before debates about principles can take place in a productively open field.

What do I mean by this?  What is an example?

Again and again in commentary from the Arab world about the current anti-Muslim controversy, including in comments posted by young people on U.S. Embassy Facebook pages, the point is made that America is being hypocritical because “the West” prohibits Holocaust denial and similar speech related to protection of certain religious groups.

For example, a recent New York Times article quoted a “spiritual leader of Egypt’s mainstream Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, [declaring] that ‘the West’ had imposed laws against ‘those who deny or express dissident views on the Holocaust or question the number of Jews killed by Hitler, a topic which is purely historical, not [even] a sacred doctrine.’”

American readers may impatiently skip over such comments, thinking “that’s not true, our laws protect speech even as condemnable as denying the Holocaust!”  We might also fail to see any legitimacy in the error, because many of us are unfamiliar with the fact that in Europe there are indeed laws prohibiting Holocaust denial.

And we may also fail to realize that such seemingly minor, in-the-weeds misunderstandings can have a big impact, for as Begleiter also notes, “‘double standards’ is one of the biggest reasons foreigners give for resenting the United States.”

Of course it’s not true that the U.S. free speech laws are applied selectively to different religions, but if people in the Muslim world widely believe that to be true, based on actual knowledge of certain European laws misapplied to the U.S. context, then our power to persuade people of the legitimacy of our free-speech position will be dramatically weakened.

Here is another example: public commentary on the current crisis reveals a mutual misunderstanding about numbers of people involved: earnest young peace-makers in the Arab world explain on Facebook that “only” 10% of Americans even saw the film in question, while bridge-building Americans comment online to the effect that “only” 10% of Muslims are violent extremists.  If both sides knew the figures were perhaps closer to .0000001% in both cases, how much of the super-structure of blame, fear, and anger might dissipate?

So, returning to the public diplomacy challenge, what can we do?

First of all, we should accept that there will be no overnight transformations.  The work of countless experts in communications tells us it is difficult to change peoples’ minds about what they think they know.  Innovative thinkers from Walter Lippman onwards have shown how human beings are programmed to filter out information that doesn’t fit with our preconceptions, and furthermore that the source of new information is a powerful factor in whether or not we listen and accept it.

Therefore, secondly, we need to remind ourselves of what public diplomacy practitioners and scholars have long emphasized, which is that how we present information, and how we establish ourselves as trusted voices, is enormously important.  Facts and statements by themselves, no matter how often repeated or at what level, won’t make nearly as much difference if we have not built two-way relationships through which to share them, and if we haven’t built credibility over time through our consistency in conveying – and accepting — reliable information.

Edward R. Murrow knew this when he famously said, “It has always seemed to me the real art in this business is not so much moving information or guidance or policy five or 10,000 miles. That is an electronic problem. The real art is to move it the last three feet in face to face conversation.”

It is in this last three feet that a big portion of the public diplomacy toolkit is usefully and productively employed.  For example, convincing influential local journalists (or religious leaders, or influential think-tankers) is easier if we take time to develop a track record of providing useful information targeted to their particular interests and cultural outlook.  If we have also invited the journalist (or religious leader or think-tanker) to the U.S. on a study tour, she or he may have a clearer understanding of what our policy statements mean in context, and also some genuine appreciation for the travel opportunity.

The fact that most such discussions now take place online does not change the equation, with an important caveat:  If the interlocutors know each other, then email, Facebook and now Twitter communications certainly qualify as contemporary “face to face conversation.”

And thirdly, creativity in opening minds to new ideas is essential.  Ambassador Cynthia Schneider makes great points about promoting cultural understanding via the “Oh I Didn’t Know That” Factor  – where presenting something eye-catchingly different from what the viewer expected opens the door to a reconsideration of many cross-cultural assumptions.

Finally, a very thoughtful perspective from Cristina Archetti (a U.K. scholar and former visiting lecturer at GWU’s School of Media and Public Affairs) in her 2010 piece, “Was Murrow Right About the Last Three Feet?”    Archetti asks,

“Given that interpersonal communication is normally regarded as far more persuasive than other modes of communication, is this really the hard part?  I’d be tempted to argue that the hard part is actually closing the distance to the last three feet, figuring out who you should be talking to, finding them and getting them into the same room.  Alternatively it could be that finding the money to hire the people to do the talking is really the hard part [or, your blogger would add, finding the money to create sufficient exchanges and other collaborative opportunities for you to find the right people and ensure that they are in the room and are open to listening]. Or it could be trying to ensure that you are not forced to defend the indefensible.”  

All excellent points.

Going “The Last Three Feet” From 35,200,000 Feet Away

When former USIA Director, Edward R. Murrow, talked about going “the last three feet” in cross-cultural communication, he meant one person talking to another, through personal contact. But what if that’s not always possible? Travel to remote parts of the world can be difficult—which often makes those last three feet the hardest to reach.

Enter social media.

As a project to complete my Global Communication Master’s degree, I was able to support a direct form of global communication through the State Department’s Virtual Student Foreign Service (VSFS) e-internship. Since October 2011, I helped facilitate face-to-face communication between Americans and young Tajikis by organizing Skype web-chats for the Embassy’s American Corners located throughout Tajikistan. This kind of e-diplomacy micro-tasking expands and enhances our cross-cultural contact, and creates new and diverse channels of communication.

Communicating face-to-face via Skype is nothing new. Many people use web-chats to connect with friends or family abroad every day. In terms of public diplomacy, however, the idea of empowering many young people to connect with people abroad virtually, to learn from each other from thousands of miles away, is a relatively new concept.

The VSFS program began in 2009, as a way for the State Department to diversify its virtual diplomacy. The program selects American students for online internships with U.S. Embassies abroad and allows them to become citizen diplomats and help create web pages, blogs, and Facebook pages to support students abroad in learning about exchange and study abroad programs, as well as fellowships and scholarships. Virtual interns also help with different types of outreach and engagement online or help raise awareness for cultural events or conferences.

Harnessing the energy of the generation that grew up with MySpace and Facebook is the ideal way to facilitate cross-cultural communication for the future—young people are curious about the world around them and are happy to make new friends.

Social media is the engine that allows our generation to go “the last three feet” from 35,200,000 feet away.

This year, the U.S. Embassy in Dushanbe selected four virtual interns (including myself): Ben Lingeman, a Masters student in Syracuse University’s Maxwell School; Courtney Myers, a substitute teacher working on a Master’s in teaching; and Melissa Etehad, a student at UC San Diego majoring in International Studies.

Ben and I were tasked with using our personal and professional contacts to find Americans interested in speaking with Tajiki youth. Courtney and Melissa focused on reaching out to teachers and school principals. The objective for both projects was the same—to facilitate communication and to bridge the gap between Americans and Tajiki youth.

Sadly, not many Americans can name the capital of, say, Turkmenistan, and many others don’t even realize that Central Asia is a fascinating, vibrant, and significant part of the world. Consequently, building people-to-people relationships and expanding avenues of communication with isolated nations in Central Asia is very important.

To further this goal, we were able to organize more than 12 Skype web-chats in over six different locations throughout Tajikistan. These chats produced frank face-to-face discussions and question and answer sessions on anything from hobbies to holidays, to tuition costs and university life. Students from Tajikistan were able to practice their English while interacting with Americans and Americans were able to learn more about Tajikis. The resulting conversations were truly inspiring—two very different cultures were able to come together to talk about what they have in common (it turns out students are stressed out everywhere).

There are roughly 35,200,000 feet between Washington, DC and Dushanbe, Tajikistan—yet when you’re sitting on your couch and interacting and chatting with someone that you see face-to-face in real time, you’d never notice.