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Diplomacy in the Digital Age

March 10, 2012Middle East, public diplomacy, Social MediaLeave a Comment

Do a web search for the Egyptian Influence Network and what emerges is a visual depiction of the social network that helped bring down President Hosni Mubarak a year ago. The United States government knew about broad public discontent, but did not have a meaningful relationship with these new digital elites. It certainly underestimated their power.

Invisible Children's Jason Russel is trailing behind U.S. Policy

Earlier this week other digital actors released a dramatic film on the Lord’s Resistance Army, called KONY 2012. It instantly went viral; the State Department learned of it via the daughter of its Deputy Spokesman (in the interest of full disclosure, my former deputy). In this case, Jason Russell, the film’s producer, is trailing U.S. policy. The government months ago deployed military advisors to help improve the ability of regional governments to defeat the LRA.

Both cases underscore the dynamism of the digital age and the pressures it places on U.S. diplomacy. More and more people will have access to the kind and quality of information that was previously reserved for governments. Digital media do not fundamentally change the diplomatic process, but it expands the number of influencers, accelerates the process and can generate sudden shifts in public opinion.

As cell phones and other technologies become even more ubiquitous – equipped with cameras and connected to the Internet – everything we say and do will be increasingly visible. Government bureaucracies are going to struggle to keep pace and respond meaningfully in real time.

The State Department is already aggressively expanding its use of social media to communicate beyond governments directly to the people in multiple languages. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her first Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review has created a vision of a new breed of ambassador who will be more visible and more empowered than ever. Recently minted Ambassadors Robert Ford and Michael McFaul in Syria and Russia respectively are great examples of “early adopters” who have led significant engagement campaigns using social media.

But they are still the exceptions, not the rules. It will take some time to change bureaucratic culture whose first instinct is to carefully control the flow of information. But the global information infrastructure is simply too advanced to be controlled. The new digital elites must be engaged.

This will require both cultural and process changes to empower more leaders to willingly and effectively communicate with key audiences around the world. It will take a new generation of Foreign Service officers for whom information and communications technology is second nature. This will involve more engagement, more risk taking and greater focus on global public opinion.

Given what we are seeing in the Arab Awakening, public opinion will shape policies and diplomatic options in more countries of consequence to the United States. Policies are going to be more populist – the immediate impact of the Koran burning is another recent case in point.

Technologies are transformed much faster than cultures. They will change diplomacy, but it will take a while.

R we there yet? A look at the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy (and Public Affairs) (mountainrunner.us)
Public Diplomacy: Books, Articles, Websites #60 (IPDGC Home)
Kony 2012 – Activism that has our Attention (Take Five)

Learning Public Diplomacy in Europe — China: Still Center of Controversy

March 9, 2012public diplomacyLeave a Comment

In Paris, whenever I’m asked where I am from, I have difficulty in giving a short answer. I am a Chinese national, which is apparent from my Asian face, but I’m also on exchange to a French university from an American graduate school. For many, however, the fact that I’m studying public diplomacy (PD) in France, a fancy new subject that is coined by an American is more confusing than my trajectory of school life.

Here I am in Paris, attending a class called “Public diplomacy and international communication”. Unlike in the Elliott School where my classmates were mostly either from Asia or the US, here in my public diplomacy class in Sciences Po (Paris), the classroom is composed of students from all over the world including India, Canada, Columbia, Nigeria, France, Britain, the US, China, etc.

The benefit of a diverse class background is that I can always hear an insider explaining the public diplomacy of his or her country, as well as their views on China. These opinions, which arise in almost every class and form a fierce debate afterwards, however, have shocked me from time to time.

Controversy #1: “PD in a non-democracy never works.”

My first day of the class started with the comment “PD in a non-democracy never works” from an American classmate. I was sitting in the front row, blushed and shocked. I didn’t take it personally, but I was quite disappointed that in later classes, this sentiment was expressed repeatedly among my classmates.

When we covered the practice of nation branding in PD, the Olympics in Beijing was cited as an example. A Canadian classmate then negated China’s Olympics showbiz with reference to China dubbing the voice of the girl who sang a nationally reputed song. I was surprised to realize that for an emerging power like China, whenever it tries hard to prove itself, people in the west will still link its action with the governing ideology. Under such circumstances, they will be most easily impressed with the scandal the smears China’s entire image. Hence, China’s display of its ancient culture is swamped under such mindset.

Controversy #2: China + Syria = China’s failure in PD

Right after China vetoed the UN resolution to request the Syrian president to resign, every time I walked in the 13th quartier in Paris which is full of Arabs, I was afraid I would be kidnapped. This fear converts to the anxiety of being attacked verbally in my PD class. Neither of these happened, but China and Syria was constantly brought up in the class as well as the French media.

Once we had Bernard Kouchner as a guest speaker, who was the former French Minister of Foreign and European Affairs, who is certainty furious at how “our friend China” has obstructed the French active negotiation to pass the resolution on Syria, and under this comparison, China is easily depicted as the irresponsible, self-interested power. I’m not defending China’s stance here, but I have to point out that the fact that the world lacks knowledge about why China is against international action against Syria IS an example of China’s failure in public diplomacy.

Comics on China and Russia vetoing UN resolution on Syria France 24, the French international news channel. Retrieved on 03/03/2012.

Though this is quite sad, I have found that people regardless of their nationality have formed their opinions on current affairs based on media coverage. Criticism against China is prevailing in the western media, while China’s voice of defense is usually ignored or given limited coverage. In fact, every non-Chinese I have talked to has a duplicated mindset of what’s on the media, that is, China is letting civilians dying in Syria while holding its vested geopolitical interests. In the United Nations, every country has been acting on behalf of itself, while concerned with the safety of others in the world. Do the western powers like France, which has been trying to reestablish itself internationally and the US have no individual agenda in mind?

I try to explain things in China to my classmates when they express hostile opinions. Their overwhelmingly negative evaluation of China is due to China’s Communist root (usually perceived as contrary to democracy), one-party system, and the lack of a strong, credible international media. As an exchange student studying abroad, I myself is part of the practice of public diplomacy. And at present, I’m enjoying my role that transcends Chinese media such as CCTV (China Central Television) English and the 24-hour English Channel CNC (China Xinhua News Network Corporation) who are perceived to be propagandists among those who have heard of them.

Kony 2012 – Activism that Has Our Attention

March 7, 2012Uncategorized3 Comments

If you haven’t been visited Twitter or Facebook recently, you may have missed the news: The Kony 2012 campaign has set the Internet on fire. While in its early stages, it’s fascinating to see how much attention the movement has garnered and to speculate as to where its headed.

Kony 2012 has lit up Twitter and Facebook over the past few days

The movement is the latest and most public undertaking of Invisible Children, an NGO founded by Jason Russell and Laren Pool with the mission of ending the campaign of violence perpetrated by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Central Africa. Kony 2012 is a social media campaign engineered to draw attention to one man in particular: Joseph Kony, the LRA’s leader. Kony was indicted by the International Criminal Court in 2005 for war crimes, which include the brainwashing of thousands of children into child soldiers, rape, and mutilation.

This is the logic of the campaign. To bring Joseph Kony to trial at the ICC, he must first be captured by the Ugandan military. In order for them to catch a man who has been a guerrilla fighter for more than 20 years, they need military and technical support that was publically first provided by the United States in 2010. For Congress to authorize continued US involvement in Uganda during a time of economic crisis, they must be pressured by the American people… but for the people to pressure Congress they must first know who Joseph Kony is. Despite his notoriety with international justice bodies, the average American has no idea who the leader of the LRA is or what he has done over the past two decades.

Jason Russel is Co-Founder of Invisible Children and producer of the Kony 2012 Campaign Video

Kony 2012 seeks to mobilize public attention by gaining the attention of two groups: “culture makers” and “policy makers.” 20 celebrities, actors, talk-show hosts and athletes were targeted as social media amplifiers, who will theoretically campaign for public awareness of the issue. Pop star Rihanna has already mentioned the campaign on her twitter account. The second targeted group, the policy makers, are a group of 12 current and former officials ranging from Condaleezza Rice to Bill Clinton who will hopefully exercise their influence within Congress for the cause. The movement also calls for a poster/sticker/word of mouth campaign, scheduled to climax on April 20th, when involved activists are instructed to “Cover the Night” and launch a massive poster campaign designed to get the attention of everyone not already clued in by social media.

The source of this energy and enthusiasm? One very well produced internet video.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc]

The goal of the campaign is to achieve “500,000 shares” within the span of its lifetime, and its producers are well on the way to achieving that goal. At the time of this writing, the video has already achieved more than 3 million views, with the vast majority of those occuring over the past two days. It’s an Internet firestorm, and its sudden surge of popularity has sent the Kony 2012 website reeling off and on.

While the movement is certainly gaining attention and notoriety, it also has its critics. Mark Kersten argues that the Kony 2012 campaign is awash with an “obfuscating, simplified and wildly erroneous narrative” that implicitly places legitimacy with the official Ugandan government. That sort of support is ill-placed, states Kersten, because the Ugandan government is similarly guilty of “collective torture” and “blurring of the perpetrator-victim binary”. From the the perspective of the Kony 2012 detractors, the campaign is a viral oversimplification of an extraordinarily complex conflict, and the simple idea of “making Kony known” is hardly the means to stop a war when both sides are guilty of harming civilians.

Said Laura Seay in one impatient twee t: “My basic premise is that the awareness of American college students is NOT a necessary condition for conflict resolution in Africa.”

Kersten believes the makers of Kony 2012 are biased towards the Ugandan government

Others are critical of Invisible Children’s methods – Samual Gebru, president of the Ethiopian Global Initiative, argues that it is the Ugandans on the ground who should be supported, not an NGO primarily involved with building schools and only minor direct influence on the conflict. Others challenge the idea that even killing Kony will be effective since the atrocities of the war are rooted in the structure of the conflict, rather than a single individual.

Time will tell whether this initial burst of attention – enthusiastic on one end and critical on the other – will translate into action at the congressional level. But in terms of simply focusing the world’s attention on an issue, the campaign should already be considered a success.

In his video, Invisible Children founder Jason Russell makes the argument that the way that social networks and activism have the power to change the way that national policy is created – transferring influence from a limited few with great resources to a like-minded and mobilized collective. If true, it has staggering implications for the way the world works in this new era. We’ll be watching the playing out of this viral activist campaign with great interest.

Patiently Build a Narrative for Military Action against Iran

March 6, 2012public diplomacyLeave a Comment

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.

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