Posted on: Sunday, January 16, 2005

THE RISING EAST

By Richard Halloran

A Pentagon advisory board has produced a searing indictment of the White House, Congress and the State and Defense departments for failing to fashion a communications strategy intended to burnish the tarnished image of America around the world.

America's ability to persuade other nations "is in crisis," says a task force report from the Defense Science Board, "and it must be transformed with a strength of purpose that matches our commitment to diplomacy, defense, intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security.

"Policies will not succeed unless they are communicated to global and domestic audiences in ways that are credible and allow them to make informed, independent judgments," the board says. "Messages should seek to reduce — not to increase — perceptions of arrogance, opportunism and double standards."

Those messages are carried in public diplomacy, through American cultural centers abroad and exchange programs that bring foreigners to the United States and public affairs offices that address the foreign press. In addition, strategic communications include broadcasts by the Voice of America and information operations that can involve controversial psychological warfare.

Missing from these efforts are "strong leadership, strategic direction, adequate coordination, sufficient resources (funds) and a culture of measurement and evaluation," the report says.

While the assessment did not name President Bush or the secretaries of state and defense, the authors left no doubt about to whom their appraisal referred. The Bush administration has long been criticized for not persuading allied, friendly and neutral nations of its intent, especially in the war on terror and the incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq.

The task force's analysis was directed largely at the inability of the Bush administration to overcome negative attitudes toward the United States held in Muslim nations such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan. "Islam's internal and external struggle over values, identity and change is the dominant political arena in which strategic communication takes place," the report says.

This study, however, was not limited to the Islamic world. "The contest of ideas is taking place not just in Arab and other Islamic countries but in the cities and villages of Europe, Asia, Africa and the western hemisphere," says the task force of scholars, researchers from think tanks, officials within the government and private citizens.

The task force noted that the Defense Science Board, which advises the Pentagon not just on technical issues but has a wider charter, issued an earlier report shortly after the terrorist attacks in New York and on the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, urging that U.S. strategic communication with other nations be given priority.

Since then, about 15 other assessments have come from private institutes such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the conservative Heritage Foundation, the liberal Brookings Institution, and from several congressional committees and investigative offices. Like the Pentagon board, they have advisory influence, not operational authority.

"So far," this most recent report says, "these concerns have produced no real change. The White House has paid little attention. Congressional actions have been limited to informational hearings and funding for Middle East broadcasting initiatives." The State Department's public diplomacy has languished, and the Defense Department has focused on the U.S. press and television.

Consequently, little has been done to counter the daily barrage of anti-American propaganda that issues from the likes of Al Jazeera, which was founded in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar in 1996 and has since become the Muslim world's best-known TV network.

More TV stations and publications, although less known in the West, "are creating the frames within which people understand and misunderstand events and U.S. political goals," the report says. Add to that cell phones, wireless handhelds, video, camcorders, digital cameras and the Internet (even though its use in the Middle East is the lowest in the world).

The task force recommended a thorough overhaul of the government's communications apparatus, including appointing a senior official in the National Security Council to oversee the effort and establishing an independent, nonpartisan Center for Strategic Communication as a joint government-private venture.

The task force warns, moreover, that "we will not succeed in revitalizing strategic communication if we tinker around the edges. Given the enormous challenges we face, we can succeed only if we use all the instruments of national power." It proposes changes in the departments of State and Defense, in U.S. embassies everywhere, and in the military's combat commands.

This history of the Bush administration's indifference to strategic communications over the last five years, however, does not give rise to the prospect that much will be done.

Richard Halloran is a Honolulu-based journalist and former New York Times correspondent in Asia. He wrote this article for The Advertiser.