Mark Lynch may be onto something!

Earlier today in his Blog, Mark Lynch bemoaned the lack of progress in public diplomacy on the part of the Obama Administration. After such great starts and clever symbolic moves and inspiring rhetoric-- nothing. He wonders why. As Mark stated:

"I don't know why it has proven so difficult for the U.S. government to mount public diplomacy and strategic communications campaigns in support of key administration policy goals. Is it something about the organization of the government, leadership, or the allocation of the resources? Is it that deeds have not kept up with words, harming the credibility of such communications campaigns? Is it the cultural clash between traditional public diplomacy and the demands of goal-oriented strategic communications?"

The answer is obvious, at least to those of us who have practiced public diplomacy for decades in Washington and overseas. It is in part an organizational problem and we know how to fix that--by moving public diplomacy out of the State Department or at least by giving it unity of organization and some degree of autonomy within State. Leadership must come from the President on down. Unless the White House is solidly behind PD, no one will really pay any attention. And the resource issue is another obvious point for improvement. I and many others have called for a tripling of resources for PD (not in new money I hasten to point out but rather in re-programming of DoD funds which attempt to do strategic communication through the use of highly paid, unreliable and ultimately incompetent contractors.) Maybe we can't solve our PD problem by re-creating USIA but we can improve our PD posture enormously by unifying public diplomacy, making it more distinct from traditional diplomacy in State, adequately funding it and putting some of the power of the White House behind it. For more details check out my article in the upcoming October issue of The Foreign Service Journal.