A NEW VOICE FOR AMERICA
By Guy W. Farmer and Fred LaSor
A six-member panel of foreign policy and social media experts recently issued a report on how our government should respond to the use of social media by the Islamic State (ISIS) and other radical Islamic terror groups to recruit murderous jihadists for deadly attacks against the West. Although the State Department has declined to release the study, the Washington Post reported that the expert panel questioned the U.S. government’s ability to serve as a credible voice against terrorist propaganda.
This criticism was directed at State’s underfunded Bureau of Public Diplomacy, which was created from the remnants of the old U.S. Information Agency (USIA) when USIA was merged with the State Department in 1999. Those of us who served in USIA when its overarching mission was to promote freedom and democracy and counter Soviet propaganda watched with trepidation as our former Agency was dismantled and exiled to the State Department basement. Today’s public diplomats are hidden from view and rarely heard.
President Bill Clinton signed USIA’s death warrant, but three high-ranking officials were primarily responsible for the demise of an effective public diplomacy agency: Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright; the late Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who was known as “Senator No,” and USIA’s last Director, Dr. Joseph Duffey, an ivory tower academic who quit as our Agency was struggling to survive. None of them understood the bureaucratic cultural clash between State and USIA.
Back in the USIA era public diplomacy (PD) had a seat at the policy table and played a little known but significant role in winning the Cold War. President Kennedy’s highly respected USIA Director, legendary broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow, got it right when he said public diplomacy “needs to be in on the takeoffs, not just the crash landings.”
From its inception in 1953, USIA was a federal agency without a domestic constituency. That was because the legislation that created USIA prohibited it from distributing its products to domestic audiences for fear of “propagandizing” our fellow Americans. That irrational fear worked against USIA when Helms targeted our Agency; we had no domestic champion to stand up for us.
Helms and others thought there was no need for USIA and public diplomacy after we won the Cold War. We now know better. Those of us who toiled in the PD vineyards in those years understood the necessity of defending our values and countering those who wished to destroy us and our way of life. We fought and won the battle against Soviet Communism; today’s enemy is radical Islam. We disarmed 17 years ago in the ongoing propaganda wars, but our president refuses to name today’s enemy.
USIA’s mission was popularly defined as “telling America’s story to the world,” and that’s still a valid mission, even as the Obama administration appears to apologize to the world for our history. Many of us old public diplomats were heartened two years ago when President Obama named respected Time magazine Managing Editor Richard “Rick” Stengel as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy. Now Stengel has gone mute. When he was sworn in Stengel recognized that we should tell America’s story to the world and defend our values, but cautioned that “we have to debate that story.” Perhaps, but we don’t have to conduct a worldwide apology tour. We were surprised by Stengel’s wishy-washy statement.
The expert panel that recently examined U.S. public diplomacy called attention to “the continued turmoil in the Obama administration’s effort to erode the online appeal of a terrorist group (ISIS) that has used a massive social media presence to attract recruits, radicalize followers and incite attacks against the West.” The panel concluded that American public diplomacy “is in disarray.” That’s apparent to everyone, even out here in Flyover Country.
Stengel argued that State’s messaging operation is “trending upward.” We recognize that pitch: throw more money at a failing program. That isn’t very reassuring when we recognize that ISIS is recruiting hundreds of bloodthirsty followers on social media — followers like the radicalized husband and wife team that massacred 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., last month.
The study group’s report coincided with the departure of Rashad Hussain, who had directed State’s Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC). His predecessor, Amb. Alberto Fernandez, a former USIA officer, had pushed CSCC to take a more combative line in the propaganda wars, and was criticized for “tweeting at terrorists.”
We think the panel’s report makes the case for a drastic redefinition and/or reorganization of State’s Bureau of Public Diplomacy. The White House should downsize an ineffective and mostly invisible bureaucracy and outsource much of the PD operation to experienced social media specialists who know how to reach a massive worldwide audience with aggressive campaigns to counter radical Islamo-fascist propaganda. In USIA we had a special unit dedicated to countering Soviet propaganda, and we did so with considerable success. A similar media campaign should be launched to combat ISIS.
If we can outsource our space program, we should be able to do the same with our failing public diplomacy programs. In our opinion we need to establish a strong, focused PD operation outside the State Department before we lose the propaganda war. This is a crucial national security issue that demands immediate attention.
Guy W. Farmer and Fred LaSor, who live in Northern Nevada, are retired U.S. Foreign Service officers who worked for USIA, mostly in Africa (Fred) and Latin America (Guy).