There’s been a whole and interesting discussion on public diplomacy going on at the “smaht kid” blogs, Abu Aardvark, Mountain Runner, et al.
Note that I think that public diplomacy – meaning stepping up and engaging in the war of ideas and the stories and images that express those ideas – is one of the Bush Administration’s greatest failings (and I’m no johnny-come-lately to that bandwagon. Here’s what I wrote in March, 2003:
But Bush has failed to sell this war in three arenas.
He has failed to sell it (as well as it should have been) to the U.S. people. The reality of 9/11 has sold this war, and our atavistic desire for revenge is the engine that drives the support that Bush actually has.
He has failed to sell it diplomatically. Not that he could have ever gotten the support of France or Germany; as noted above, even with an AmEx receipt for the 9/11 plane tickets signed by Saddam himself, France would find a reason to defer this war. But he should never have let them get the moral high ground, which they have somehow managed to claim.
He has failed to sell it to our enemies, who do not believe today that we are serious about achieving our stated goals. This is, to me the most serious one, because the perception that we are not deadly serious is a perception that we are weak; and we will have to fight harder, not because we are too strong, but because we will be perceived as too weak.
I won’t try and summarize the discussion. Just start here, then go here, then go here, then go here,then go here, and finally, here.
Let me add my “dumb guy” spin to the discussion however.
Reading it, one interesting thought popped into my head, which was encapsulated well in this comment on AM’s first post:
McCain appears less interested in public diplomacy than in what we used to call advocacy and is now called strategic communication. His interest is in the “war of ideas” and advancing American objectives in the global information battle-space.
The author, it appears, was Donna Marie Oglesby, a counselor for USIA in the Clinton Administration. Here’s the dumb-guy question:
If the purpose of public diplomacy isn’t to ‘advance American objectives in the global information battle-space’ – what the hell is it?
Here’s the dilemma as I see it.
I’ve been arguing for a long time that modern Leftism (as opposed to, say pre-1968 “Old” Leftism) has roots in the Romantic, anti-Enlightenment “Bad Philosophy” movement. There has been a whole lot of discussion among we “decent” lefties about how much of the Left today – and much intellectual life today – is defined simply by blind opposition to America and Western society and values – which are seen as uniquely dangerous and evil.
Here’s the rub. To the extent that the above is even partially correct, we have this problem: The people who are supposed to be doing the fighting in the realm of ideas on our behalf may not believe much in what we stand for – and instead believe that we are uniquely evil, or that there is no substantive difference between Abu Ghreib as it was run by Saddam and – at an extreme – Guantanamo – are we really sending the right people into battle? And what do we expect to happen when that battle is joined?
In basic, I think we need to resolve some of the core values questions in order to engage in the battle. And since we need to win this battle in order to minimize the other, harder-to-clean-up kinds of battles we may have to fight otherwise (or, more accurately, that my son may have to fight), I think it’s important that we start dealing with these core issues of values right about now.
Update: I put the wrong quote from myself in; fixed it.
The problem is ultimately about visions for America. Should it be a super-European fountain of swag, showering benefits on the populace after taxing them into the ground? Or should it be a bastion of liberty, where people are free even if it means having the freedom to make bad choices and suffer the consequences?
The problem is that many lefties now identify not with their countries, but the benefits that are bestowed on the citizenry as “rights”. If the benefits package is inadequate, they don’t want to be identified with their country.
This bleeds into public diplomacy since many lefties now identify more with foreigners and their “critiques” of American economics, culture, and identity than they identify with their country.
A fact of sales is if you don’t believe in your product, you won’t sell it well. Since public diplomacy is about selling a positive vision of America, modern lefties won’t do it well since they don’t believe in it.
Foobarista –
Very good point. I think that on one hand the ‘people’ have discovered they can vote themselves goodies bestowed from the government and do so. I think that is the basis for what happened in Europe. But the underlying reason may be the hangover of the soul as a result of WWII. I mean an experience like that that is continent wide HAS to be world view altering. It would make one numb to stupid ideas because of the residual pain felt by the civilization during that war. I hope I said that right.
Here the old socialists just used the enticing arguments of the Marxists to sell the ideas of PC and muliculti. They know that if they continue the divide and conquer tactics of identity politics that eventually the less astute will give in. That appears to be what we now have happening. We have allowed our core values to fall by the wayside because they do not seem ‘cool’ or ‘hip’ in the mirror that we have held up to our society.
*of American economics, culture, and identity*
I am not sure what American Economics are any more. especially in light of the Feds recent moves to inject socialism into the a very inept and corrupt Wall Street. The dance that the Fed has been doing, under the guise of “Freeing up Credit” to prop up businesses that should go under for some really dumb moves astonishes me.
Today, the Dollar, bonds and equities all went down. The latest 200 Billion debt shell game is not going to work, because the government cannot shore up some of these companies without taking on the mantle of lender of *first* resort and deal directly with the credit markets without what we now see as pretty hopless middlemen like Bear Sterns, Goldman, Citibank and other Investment Banks on the Street.
As far as culture is concerned, Shopping seems to be the culture and by this I do not mean consumerism, I mean shopping. It appears to me that the whole of American culture has become shopping. Identity, well there used to be civics classes in high schools which at least exposed students to the structure of government and the constitution. I doubt now if one in on hundred americans have ever read it.
I am not a lefty. Could you please tell me what exactly you think American economics, culture and identity are? Don’t tell me free market capitalism it is not and the current administration has had a share in destroying that. That it is Jazz. no one has listened to it in 50 years, or the entermercials Hollywood turns out. Identity has degraded into a bunch of politicians spouting we are the greatest country in the world and not much more.
It is easy to blame the Lefties, but we Republicans have held the Presidency for 20 of the last 28 years and 28 of the last 40. There is plenty of blame to go around and pointing fingers at lefties is glib but not very effective or enlightening.
Anabel, please advise if you want us to shift your last post to not broadcast your email address. You might be better off choosing a different nickname.
Regards,
Nort
For my part, a basically libertarian attitude to most things domestic would be “American economics”.
Unfortunately, Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” was definitely not this; Reagan was far better on this score. Personally, I supported Bush on the War and opposed pretty much all his domestic policies other than tax cuts (although I would have eliminated corporate taxes and had dividends be ordinary income) and his willingness to at least bring a discussion of SS reform to the table. As for “American culture”, it’s like porn: I know it when I see it 🙂
Anyway, getting back to my point, without a definition of “Americanism”, what does public diplomacy promote? What is the “product” it’s trying to sell?
Politics is the means to a philosophical end; and a necessary prerequisite for a debate about how to best achieve some end, is to first identify it. A clear and consensual definition of what constitutes _”… Justice, … domestic Tranquility,… general Welfare, and … the Blessings of Liberty”_ is needed, but absent. Only after these goals are made operationally explicit, can a rational debate about how to achieve them begin.
I think that this hits it right on, but misses another aspect. The Left passes its ideology intergenerationally, but not its goals. That is, the Left — I should probably say “progressives” here, but I suspect it goes beyond that and into the hard-core communists and so on as well — started in the 1890s with the idea that we were unjust because we hadn’t met their demands to move far enough from a nearly absolutist individualism to a larger role for the state. At the beginning, this larger role was seen as not having people starving in the street, or kept from a public life because of their skin color or country of origin, or in general taken advantage of by the combination of forces unleashed by laissez-faire economics and industrialization. I have to say that, with the exception of the income tax and the direct election of Senators, I think that the early progressives were largely on the right track.
The ideology of “we haven’t gone far enough away from individualism” was passed on after we had largely achieved the initial goals, but if we hadn’t gone far enough, the only answer was to pick further goals. Given that by the 1930s, we had essentially created a very statist system, and by the 1960s, individualism was broadly seen as almost un-American, what could we do (so long as the ideology is operating) but reject everything that America, and then everything the West, stands for? And more and more, that is becoming exactly what the Left wants us to do: surrender our culture — not just our art and our literature, but even our very attachment to liberty — and our means to defend ourselves, and let those more “worthy” take over.
In other words, the Left is fine with any idea, any ideology, any movement, any person or country that would humble America and make us see the error of our ways. The biggest problem being, no matter how much we move in that direction, the Left will always see it as not being far enough, because they have the ideology but not an end state goal. Until there is zero left of American and Western culture and philosophy, there will be no end to the demands to destroy that culture and philosophy from within.
Now, fortunately, the Left as I think of it (as opposed to the small-l left) is pretty small. Unfortunately, it is also very influential in the war of ideas that the Left is fighting, which is emphatically not the war of ideas that AL is suggesting we should be fighting. In other words, Reynolds’ observation that “they’re not anti-war, they’re just on the other side” largely still holds.
I’ve struggled with this alot lately. As a ‘lefty’ I think most americans, in their hearts, mean well. But I think there are two major problems with where we’re headed:
1) Media saturation: I think all western nations are headed towards an idealized state of being, not too far away from Farenheit, or Brave New World. We’ve become a me-first culture dependent on Possessions and credit, and totally oblivous to long-term planning. This is true both on individual levels, and goverment planning levels.
In the meantime, national focus is more on britney spears than constitutional law, more roger clemens talk than earmarks, more pollitical namecalling, less actual debate and compromise. I see it all as related, and rotting american focus on where we’re headed.
2)Lobbyist control: Most americans mean well, but politicians, in order to survive, must eat at the trough of lobbyist dollars. Being a lobyist is not necessarrily a bad role, but it’s a biased role. Goverment officials need to weigh multiple sides of all decisions to come to the best answer. Right now, key lobbyists have basically blocked most americans out of the political process.
I really see a system has set itself up to banish (or corrupt) those with good intentions, and promote those that will take political ‘bribes’. I thought the Iowahawk post you linked put it well.
The end result is that most of our govermental ‘policy’ is decided around the benefits of lobbyists. This amount of control is scary, and prevents our goverment from making honest decisions about anything, including “what role america has in the modern world”?
I would love to focus on big picture stuff, but until we fix our own goverment, we’re going to accomplish bupkis.
Alchemist,
Full disclosure: I am a Democrat that has be trending right the last several years. So, hopefully, it won’t be rude for me to point out that…
If the government was smaller, took in much , much less in taxes, and was less intrusive, then there would be much, much less reason for folks to pay lobbyists and for craven politicians to cling to power.
This is a fundamentally conservative idea, I know, but does it really mean that it is entirely without merit?
We’ve become a me-first culture dependent on Possessions and credit, and totally oblivous to long-term planning.
Cheer up Alchemist, that’s been true for all nations/cultures since the dawn of time.
For example, the great pyramids were built not to provide future generations with a tourist attraction, but so those selfish pharaohs could get a leg up in the next world.
Imagine if they’d used the enormous resource cost those things took to instead improve public health care or education. The world would look…probably just like it does now.
Long range planning (40+ years) is all garbage anyway. Since no one can possible predict the coming paradigm changers out that far it’s all just wishful thinking glued to hot air.
As for me, I’ll worry when politics becomes more important than Ms. Spears, because that’ll be the day when politics has become bad enough people are forced to pay attention. Until then the majority verdict is that it ain’t that bad.
A.L.
I think Bush’s decission of proceeding against Saddam’s Iraq was personal, adviced by an inner circle and taken against the interests of powerful lobbies: from the international point of view, the war would have been sold as a non-justified agression in any case.
Robohobo (#2)
_I think that is the basis for what happened in Europe. But the underlying reason may be the hangover of the soul as a result of WWII. I mean an experience like that that is continent wide HAS to be world view altering. It would make one numb to stupid ideas because of the residual pain felt by the civilization during that war. I hope I said that right._
Perhaps in Britain. However, in Continental Europe, Democracy was dead before WWII, and that was it as a result of a process begun many decades before by German chancellor Bismarck and Socialist Lasalle, as Mises “http://www.mises.org/etexts/mises/og/chap1.asp”:wrote in order to avoid a full [classic] liberal revolution.
What Europe is today, its Socialism, is not the result of chance, but of a carefully planned political strategy, that only the white star tanks dared to somewhat modify.
I think one thing our goverment needs to decide (at the liberal & conservative parties at heart are really fighting over this now) is the purpose & function of the american government. To me, the purpose of the government is to do things that individuals alone cannot: create institutions of learning and law, build infrastructure and create incentives to build and grow the economy. Also (& I consider this one very important) to monitor for national safety in the ways an individual cannot (ie FDA, EPA, OSHA ). I think
I think we can agree that the American government currently has a very low efficiency in these tasks, or in some cases makes these problems worse. However, I don’t think shrinking the government will always reduce the problem. Already, the FDA basically has no power in enforcing health related problems. Contaminated meat, for example, can only be removed from stores by a ‘voluntary’ recall. Lobbyist organizations can & do actively push congress and the white house to manipulate drug approval decisions.
In these cases, the size of the government is less important than industries ability to manipulate government to their advantage.
Treefrog: Point taken. But it we’re ever going to have a better government, it’s going to require a more active populace.
Alchemist,
“I think one thing our goverment needs to decide (at the liberal & conservative parties at heart are really fighting over this now) is the purpose & function of the american government. ”
The difference in belief over the purpose and function of government is precisely why there are liberal & conservative parties. I think it is the defining feature of the difference between the two outlooks.
Like you, I am not afraid of more government, and like you, I believe that more government doesn’t necessarily lead to bad government or bad situations. I have spent a lot of time in countries that have little government, and they are not places that I’d like to live. I’m partial to well-paved roads, working traffic lights, regulated banks, public schools, air traffic controllers, licensed hunting, child labour laws, pollution laws, civil rights laws, & public libraries. While charity is great thing, I don’t recommend a society depend upon it to take care of the unfortunate.
In these cases, the size of the government is less important than industries ability to manipulate government to their advantage.
But doesn’t public choice theory say that this will almost always be the case? Democratic governments will be unduly influenced by the industries they regulate as regulated industries have much greater motivation to lobby for favorable treatment than the general public has in neutral policies.
If you accept that, the more power you give to government, the more opportunities the public has to be screwed.
And while you don’t have to accept public choice theory, it is largely consistent with observed results.
While charity is great thing, I don’t recommend a society depend upon it to take care of the unfortunate.
Fair enough. But believing that government should provide for the unfortunate doesn’t imply that government should also provide for those who aren’t unfortunate.
Europe cannot buy into anything America sells because American values are the opposite of Europe’s. In Europe power flows from the government, in the USA the people reign. In Europe the few dictate to the masses, I’d like to think this isn’t true in the US despite Havard and the DNC (with its RINO allies).
Europe doesn’t cotton to America’s idea of merit. Unfortunately many Americans seem to have abandoned merit and excellence as well in favor of the European system.
In short America will never sell Europe or other socities on the merits of the American system or goals any more than Haiti, North Korea or Suadi Arabia can sell their socities values here, or France and Germany for that matter.
SG (#14)
I agree.
ThomasJackson (#15)
_In Europe the few dictate to the masses_
If it were just that…
_Europe doesn’t cotton to America’s idea of merit._
The sentence is true, but I think it is not well explained. Europe loves merit as long as it is developed inside the adequate structures, usually the government or big state or state-related companies, as any Socialist economy. What is hated most, is the free entrepreneur, the free challenger: rather than merit, the question is freedom.
_In short America will never sell Europe or other socities on the merits of the American system or goals any more than Haiti, North Korea or Suadi Arabia can sell their socities values here, or France and Germany for that matter._
I don’t think so. And the proof that I may be right is the ferocious antiamericanism that it is fostered in Europe (I recall the Iowa primaries being portrayed as some kind of town contest between the woman, the black and the bible teller). I think the idea sells and would prevail if it were not done everything to stop it.