Amb. Thomas Pickering (right) engages in conversation with Frank Sesno (left), director of the School of Media and Public Affairs, for the 3rd Annual Walter Roberts Lecture. Credit: Alexei Agaryshev.
On Tuesday, distinguished ambassador Thomas Pickering spoke at GWU’s School of Media and Public Affairs (on his birthday, no less!) about his experience on the advisory panel that investigated the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, as well as Russia, Iran, and the future of U.S. public diplomacy.
The talk was part of the Third Annual Walter Roberts Lecture, which brings in prominent figures in public diplomacy practice and academia to speak on relevant issues of the times.
Tara Sonenshine, who spoke at the Second Annual Walter Roberts Lecture, responded in a blog post on her sentiments in introducing the ambassador. Former Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and current Professor of Practice at GWU, PJ Crowley, was also in attendance, as well as Frank Sesno, director of the School of Media and Public Affairs, who led the conversation with the ambassador.
Some tweets from the event:
Happy birthday, Amb. Thomas Pickering! #PickeringPD The room is singing!
Ambassador Tom Pickering @IPDGC: Domestic politics turned #Benghazi from a diplomatic tragedy into a catastrophe. #PickeringPD — Philip J. Crowley (@PJCrowley) November 5, 2013
Q: “You speak of making international promises we [USA] can’t keep, what is an example of this?” TP: “The Cairo Speech.” #PickeringPD@IPDGC — Miles Hayward (@miles_hayward) November 6, 2013
Ambassador Tom Pickering @IPDGC: By relying too heavily on military action, we have lost sight of the value of diplomacy. #PickeringPD
I was proud to be an American last night and honored to say a few words about Ambassador Thomas Pickering on the occasion of his delivering the Third Annual Walter Roberts Lecture at GW’s School of Media and Public Affairs which houses the Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication.
It was Ambassador Pickering’s birthday and he was in fine form as he answered tough questions from Frank Sesno director of the School of Media and Public Affairs. With a diplomatic career spanning more than four decades, Tom Pickering is the quintessential American diplomat–the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former ambassador to Russia, India, Israel, El Salvador, and beyond. In 2000, he retired from the State Department as the Under Secretary for Political Affairs and co-chaired the panel which investigated the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi.
Ambassador Pickering minced no words in describing the serious “blow” that Benghazi was and the seriousness with which the Accountability Review Board approached issues of embassy security. He also decried the politicization of the tragedy and the lack of accurate, factual reporting that has accompanied the entire story.
What I found most surprising about the interview with Ambassador Pickering was how positive he is about the prospects for a deal with Iran. Pickering believes that Rouhani, the new president of Iran, is serious about the outreach to Washington and has the green light from the Supreme Leader to make a deal.
Let’s hope he’s right.
Editor’s note: Catch up on the Twitter conversation from the lecture at #PickeringPD!
Tara Sonenshine is a fellow at the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University. In February, she delivered the second annual Walter Roberts Lecture on cultural diplomacy. Previously, she served as the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy following a distinguished career in government, non-profit organizations, and the media.
NBC news carried an interesting story last week highlighting a decision by the U.S. Department of State to return a million-dollar cultural artifact to Iran that had been seized by U.S. Customs a decade ago. The return of the Persian Griffin, long sought by Iranian officials, may not seem like a big deal against the backdrop of the recent exchange of letters and phone conversation between President Obama and Iranian President Rouhani. I have no idea whether this particular gesture will resonate in Iran, but we should not underestimate the significance of such cultural heritage for people around the world.
Some of the most undervalued tools in the public diplomacy toolkit explicitly recognize the fact that more often than not, a nation’s sense of self is closely connected to its cultural heritage. The value of a particular cultural monument, an example of historic architecture, or a specific artifact in a museum goes well beyond its retail or tourism value, but instead is truly priceless in the eyes of those who consider it a part of their national identity. There are well-known examples of how disputes over ownership of such culture, including the Elgin Marbles or the Preah Vihear Temple, have led to tense international relations and even armed conflict. Few are aware, however, of how we routinely use cultural heritage to our advantage in public diplomacy.
One of the best such tools is the Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation administered by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau for Education and Cultural Affairs. Under this program, public diplomacy officers at U.S. embassies and consulates all over the world work with local partners to identify worthy cultural heritage preservation projects and submit proposals for review and approval in Washington. Each year a few dozen of the best proposals are funded at a total cost of about $7 or 8 million. In terms of bang-for-your-buck, it is hard to find a better investment of public diplomacy resources. Perhaps every day somewhere in the world, a U.S. Ambassador is visiting an archaeological site, a museum, or some other cultural venue to cut a ribbon or otherwise celebrate a project that tangibly demonstrates U.S. respect for local culture and traditions. In my experience, these events are widely covered by the local media and generally resonate with the local population in a way that signing ceremonies or diplomatic speeches can never hope to match.
I will cite just one example from my own personal experience. In East Timor, a newly-independent country in Southeast Asia, traditional “sacred” houses all across the country were destroyed during the Indonesian occupation of that territory up until the late 1990s. Several years ago, the Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation approved a U.S. Embassy project to work with the new Timorese Ministry of Culture and local villages to rebuild several of these houses. Over the course of a few years at numerous nationally-televised groundbreaking and ribbon-cutting events, the U.S. Ambassador and the Timorese Secretary of State for Culture celebrated the “rebuilding” not only of these cultural landmarks, but also the Timorese nation itself. At the cost of a tiny fraction of other more expensive development initiatives, this simple project showed all of the Timorese people that we respected them and their culture and were working to help them rebuild their country.
As the U.S. Department of State fact sheet last week on the decision to return the Persian Griffin stated — “The return of the artifact reflects the strong respect the United States has for cultural heritage property — in this case cultural heritage property that was likely looted from Iran and is important to the patrimony of the Iranian people. It also reflects the strong respect the United States has for the Iranian people.” The return of that artifact, of course, does not appear to have been the result of a particular preservation program or even particularly costly, but it makes good public diplomacy and policy sense. As for our other public diplomacy programs, like the Ambassador’s Fund, even in an era of limited resources, let’s not be penny wise and pound foolish! We would do well to continue to invest in such programs that help us build the mutual understanding and respect that we depend on to advance our policy goals around the world.
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.
President Barack Obama, in his first inaugural address in 2009, said “the world has changed, and we must change with it.” The extent of a transformed domestic and international landscape was clear in his second inaugural address this week. Inaugurals are important opportunities for public diplomacy and his message will appeal to international audiences, but it was clearly tempered by four years of real-world experience. Obama talked at length about ongoing need to achieve equality and opportunity here at home, but gone was much of the soaring rhetoric targeted abroad that captivated international audiences four years ago.
Unlike previous second-terms where Presidents have been challenged politically at home and tried to pad their legacies abroad, Obama’s domestic is clearly going to animate his final four years in office. He outlined an ambitious agenda – a grand bargain on the budget that preserves social equality and promotes economic opportunity, enhanced gun regulation and immigration reform. These issues, along with energy and the environment, have important international dimensions as well.
If engagement was the international watchword four years ago, this time it was collaboration and the need to continue to strengthen the capacity of the international community to tackle major global challenges. He reemphasized a commitment to end a decade of war, rejecting the notion that U.S. security requires “perpetual war.” He renewed America’s support for democracy in a dramatically transformed international landscape.
Those pledges will be tested over the next four years in places like Syria, Mali, Iran, Pakistan and Egypt.
Saying “no one has a greater stake in a peaceful world than its most powerful nation,” President Obama committed to continued emphasis on collective action through formal alliances, major international organizations, regional structures and informal groups of like-minded nations. The past four years revealed the strengths and limitations of such an approach, with decisive international action in Libya but severe constraints in Syria. Patient and determined action with regional partners appears to be paying off in Somalia. That is a potential model for action in and around Mali, but more resources will need to be committed, and quickly.
Obama said four years ago that his national security strategy involved the “prudent use” of American power. The weight of effort against extremist groups shifted from large-scale deployments of U.S. ground forces to the aggressive use of technology, from unmanned drones to a computer worm. This strategy netted important accomplishments, such as the elimination of Osama bin Laden, but has generated international concerns regarding overly secretive actions that may be rewriting the laws of war and setting potentially far-reaching precedents. The administration is said to be codifying its approach within an American “playbook,” but it remains unclear to what degree this involves genuine partnerships with admittedly weak allies like Pakistan or Yemen.
Obama in his inaugural address encouraged resolving “differences with other nations peacefully, not because we are naïve about the dangers we face, but because engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear.” This approach will surely be tested in the coming months regarding the U.S. approach to Iran and whether sufficient time will be devoted to what will undoubtedly be a lengthy and difficult negotiation.
The United States will continue to support democracy “because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom.” But emerging democracies like Egypt will have a much different look and feel. The United States should help guide Egypt regarding vital elements of an enduring democracy – building effective institutions, protecting minorities, including all segments of society including women, tolerating and encouraging political dissent and peacefully transferring power following free and fair elections. But the United States will have to be patient, recognizing that the path forward will not be a straight line. The final construction should be consistent with long-term U.S. objectives, but will not have a stamp that says “made in America.”
Earlier this week, Jackson Diehl’s column in the Washington Post argued that the Obama Administration’s early diplomatic approach to Syria, coupled with its failure to intervene militarily during the ongoing civil war, represented a “catastrophic mishandling” of the crisis. Diehl, like others who have blamed the Administration for not intervening, lay the blood of the more than 30,000 civilians killed in the conflict on the hands of Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Leaving aside the merits of the arguments for intervention (which, like Diehl’s, seem to take the ahistorical view that the U.S. can simply break up fights like Mike Tyson at a kindergarten recess), they point to the complexities of understanding the intersection of social media, diplomacy, and militarism in an era of Responsibility to Protect (R2P).
Ever since social media became a major part of the story of the Green Movement protests in Iran in 2009, many have argued that new media technologies not only have the power to help bring down dictators, as in Egypt last year, but also to pressure the international community to intervene and stop a regime’s violent oppression of its people. The dissemination of online videos depicting these abuses, spread via Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms, are supposed to not only rally citizens in those countries, but make it impossible for major powers in the West, especially, to turn a blind eye to the slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians.
As former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said during those 2009 Iranian protests, “You cannot have Rwanda again because information would come out far more quickly about what is actually going on and the public opinion would grow to the point where action would need to be taken.”
Brown was widely ridiculed for his hyperbole. The Register’s Chris Williams wrote, “We’d like to see him try Twittering that to people in Sudan, or Northern Sri Lanka, or Somalia.” Today, one could add Bahrain and Syria to the list.
Yet Brown’s Rwanda allusion raises the issue of R2P and its relationship to social media-driven protests. At the 2005 United Nations World Summit, world leaders agreed in principle that the international community needs to be prepared to take military action to prevent a State from committing genocide or other crimes against humanity perpetrated against its people.
The Rwandan genocide weighed heavily on the Summit’s adoption of R2P as a guiding principle of international statecraft. The 1994 bloodletting, as well as the similar dawdling during the Balkan wars of the same decade, were seen as examples of diplomatic and military failures that led to the deaths of more than a million innocent people.
One of the reasons those genocides were allowed to happen, some felt, was because of the difficulty of documenting the atrocities in real time. There were, for example, very few journalists in Rwanda during the massacres, and according to former reporter and current scholar Allan Thompson, only one clandestine video of anyone actually being hacked to death was ever recorded. This is why Rwanda has been called a “Genocide without witnesses.” The assumption since then has been that had people seen the brutality in real time, world leaders in Paris, Washington, and elsewhere would have been pressured to intervene. As PM Brown’s comments 15 years later indicated, social media would provide those witnesses.
If this were true, it would dramatically reshape diplomacy. Some saw evidence of this in Egypt last year, when the Obama Administration initially responded to the protests in Tahrir Square tepidly – some said, too diplomatically – because Mubarak had been such a strong ally of the U.S. over the years. But those diplomatic ties snapped under pressure from Twitter and Facebook, according to this telling of events.
Shortly thereafter, the Administration invoked the spirit of R2P to join an international coalition to prevent Muammar Gaddafi from carrying through with his promise to massacre the residents of Benghazi through the implementation of a no-fly zone and other military actions.
In an era of social media, the story went, we would never again have a genocide without witnesses. Foreign governments in the West and elsewhere would not be able to withstand the public outcry that would come from seeing and reading first hand accounts of regime brutality. Diplomacy would be forever altered.
And yet… not so much.
Widespread documentation of violence has not prompted U.S. intervention in Bahrain or Syria.
Just taking the United States as an example (though we could easily choose others), well-documented and horrific regime violence has not prompted the Obama Administration to intervene in Bahrain or Syria, to name two examples.
Diehl and others see this as a “catastrophic” failure. Yet the reality is far more complicated, on many levels
Start with the fact that social media’s role in shaping international policy responses to Egypt and Libya are still poorly understood. My colleagues Henry Farrell, Deen Freelon, Marc Lynch and I recently released a report funded by the U.S. Institute of Peace that found social media’s role in the Arab Spring protests of 2011 were probably greatly exaggerated. At least when it came to Twitter and other mechanisms for sharing links to reports of violence and protests, social media didn’t appear to have as much of an impact within those countries or in the region as some expected. They did, however, generate a lot of discussion around the world. Hence, we argued, these social media appeared to behave as less of a rallying cry than a megaphone.
This raises the possibility, however, that all of that retweeting of horrific videos of regime violence could lead to pressure on governments to intervene. Deen, Marc, and I are currently investigating whether that has been the case in Syria. Our interviews with policymakers and others will hopefully shed light on how much impact new media played in shaping diplomatic and military responses to those earlier Arab Spring crises, as well.
But there are reasons to be skeptical that social media can lead governments to intervene when they wouldn’t have in the absence of these technologies. To begin with, there is the simple fact that the U.S. hasn’t intervened in Syria militarily, much to the dismay of Diehl and others. Coupled with its relative silence during the Bahrain protests, this suggests an explanation familiar to international relations scholars and observers: States make foreign policy decisions based on their perceived interests, and these are much less susceptible to public pressure than domestic policy decisions. In the U.S. this is especially the case, in part because Americans don’t know (or care) much about foreign affairs, and press coverage of the topic is correspondingly, and vanishingly, scant, superficial, and episodic. (In general; clearly there are great foreign correspondents doing work that deserves greater exposure than their parent organizations will provide them.)
Ideally, States also make decisions based not on mismatched historical analogies (“Look! Hitler!” or “It’s just like Libya! Intervene!” or “No, wait, it’s just like Iraq! Run for your life!”), but rather based on the specifics of the case at hand. (In fact, however, researchshows that policymakers frequently employ convenient historical examples to justify policy decisions they’ve already come to.) One question to ask would be, will intervention actually accomplish the goal at hand? Another might be, at what cost? And a third would be, how do we do know?
So where does that leave us in terms of understanding the intersection of social media, diplomacy, and intervention?
First, social media can create global witnesses to regime violence and genocide. If world leaders are going to take R2P seriously, then this could be an important tool in making that doctrine more than empty words. If nothing else, this witnessing can be crucial to accountability and justice in, say, war crimes trials, but also in not letting leaders off the hook for craven failures to act.
Second, diplomacy and policymaking can be greatly enhanced by social media. For instance, the growing sophistication of crowdsourcing verification of online videos and other means of what Patrick Meier calls “information forensics” can help separate truth from propaganda. It can also be used as a tool for diplomats to pressure regimes, by brandishing documentary evidence of their abuses, or to pressure others in the international community to join coalitions to stop those abuses.
At IPDGC’s “The Last Three Feet,” Rachel Graaf Leslie, recently a Public Affairs Officer in Bahrain, spoke on the U.S. Embassy’s experience interacting with Bahrainis on Facebook.
Third, social media can aid diplomats in their effort to connect with citizens in other countries. We saw this in the creative and aggressive way that Amb. Robert Ford and the U.S. Embassy staff in Syria used social media to document abuses by the Assad regime before Ford was forced to leave the country. We also saw it in the way that the U.S. Embassy in Bahrain used their Facebook wall to host and engage in spirited conversations with people from different sides of that conflict. This is an important way in which social media are helping to more fully integrate public diplomacy into traditional diplomacy.
Finally, however, we are left with the limits of social media’s impact on diplomacy and policymaking. In the Syrian crisis, for instance, we still have problems with verification and propaganda in the online public sphere. And traditional questions about national interests and, especially, feasibility undercut interventionist sloganeering.
What that means is that social media have probably not fundamentally altered the foreign policy decision making process of world leaders to force intervention, but rather merely contributed to the range of data diplomats have at their disposal. This, however, is not always a bad thing, since intervention is one of those things that’s easier said than done. In fact, it could simply mean that effective diplomacy is all the more important.
As social media becomes increasingly apparent in the lives of citizens throughout the world, its place in domestic and international political, social, cultural and economic affairs is also expected to become more prominent. There has already been much debate about the role social media played during the Arab Spring, and as various world events unfold in the years to come, social media’s capacity to incite change will undoubtedly continue to be a part of the analysis.
One such event that may act as a future case study is that of “Israel Loves Iran,” a campaign started by Israelis who believe that the “Israeli Iranian conflict has no real ground,” and is based on “nothing.” The group’s Facebook page, which was created less than two weeks ago on March 19, 2012, already has over 46,000 likes on Facebook.
The initiative, “Iranians, We Love You,” has surfaced at a time when the discourse around the two countries is centered on Iran’s nuclear progress and whether a preemptive strike by Israel against Iran is imminent. With Iran’s nuclear program looming and negotiations between various government officials taking place, these citizens have decided to take a visible, public stance opposing violent action and showcasing the need for soft diplomacy. Through this endeavor, Israel Loves Iran is shifting the focus from the respective governments to the Israeli people—the people who love Iran.
The group’s website is largely forum-based; it seeks stories from individuals that convey favorable feelings about Iran and asks for testimonies and stories about “the real Iran.” Although negative comments sometimes flare up, the discussions are primarily positive in tone. This outlet allows people of different nationalities to convene in a centralized location and find the beauty within each culture. The site also has pages entitled “Iran loves Israel,” “America loves Iran and Israel,” “Germany loves Iran,” and “Jews of the World love Iran,” which each feature testimonies and links to articles, videos, music, religious verses and stories about the mutual love shared by each of these groups.
Dispersed throughout the pages, one can find comments expressing the appreciation for the site’s creation:
“We love Israel too. No war!”
“This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”
“Give peace a chance; all we need is love…”
The Israel Loves Iran campaign is a public display of anti-war outcry. The cause behind this movement has the ability to gain vast momentum from the public, but–even with a strong backing–would it have ability to change the course of government action? Does it have the potential to change public perception?
The group’s members certainly hope so. As Ronny Edry, one of the individuals responsible for the “Iranians, We Love You” initiative told PBS Frontlinereporter Neri Zilber, “We don’t want war. No matter what the governments are saying, on both sides, we are against it, since we are the ones fighting it…I think it is important that we raise our voices.” Through social media, Israel Loves Iran is trying to avert war and promote a lasting peace between the two nations.
President Obama bought some time in his meeting this week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to see if diplomacy and sanctions can pressure Iran to change course. This time would be well spent to build if not a regional consensus for military action, at least broader public acceptance of the need to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon. To do that, the administration should draw some lessons from past interventions, lessons to be both followed and avoided.
The first is to recognize that Iran can’t be Libya. U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder and Supreme Allied Commander Europe Admiral James Stavridis termed Libya a “model intervention.” It was, but as we have seen with Syria and most likely with Iran as well, it may be a one-off that will not soon be repeated. The Arab League is not likely to support a military strike against Iran publicly, even though many regional governments will privately welcome such a step. Prospects of a UN Security Council resolution are uncertain. But it will be vital to achieve the strong sense of legitimacy that gave the Libya intervention its strength.
Kosovo is a better model to consider. Russia blocked an authorizing UN Security Council resolution, so the Clinton administration sought authority from NATO to force Serbia out of Kosovo. In the end, former UN Secretary General Kofi Anan called the operation “illegal but legitimate.” Regarding Iran, the IAEA can help validate that Iran’s failure to meet its international obligations and that Iran is moving towards a breakout capability.
Military force must be viewed as a last resort to be credible. In upcoming negotiations, the so-called P5+1 must be viewed as the reasonable actor. Recall the power of the last-minute negotiating session in Geneva between Secretary of State James Baker and his Iraqi counterpart Tariq Aziz prior to the First Gulf War. The international community was viewed as going the extra mile to avoid conflict.
That did not happen with the Second Gulf War. The Bush administration put significant pressure on the United Nations to uphold a series of UN Security Council resolutions, and it netted meaningful concessions from Iraq including the reintroduction of UN weapons inspectors. But the United States appeared to the rest of the world to be rushing to war, which ultimately undercut its legitimacy.
More than anything else, patience will be vital as the United States and the international community works through his complex challenge. It needs to build a convincing narrative that Iran poses a clear danger not just to the United States and Israel, but to the region as a whole; that Iran is in fact determined to build a nuclear weapon, not just generate civilian energy; that it is taking action that the Ayatollah himself termed a “sin”; that the international community has patiently attempted to resolve this through diplomacy and sanction; and if necessary military action is necessary and limited.
The President said this week there is too much “loose talk of war.” He was right to quiet the drumbeats for the time being, but now he must lead a sustained and patient dialogue with a newly energized and empowered “street” across the Middle East that military action, while the last resort, may be necessary to resolve this problem once and for all.
