Winning the world's hearts and minds

Some in Washington are trying to polish America's image with communication and humanitarian assistance strategies.

With world public opinion of the US the lowest it has been in decades, there is little the Bush administration can do to change global perceptions at this point. The same cannot be said for the "permanent government," as the Washington bureaucracy is sometimes called.

This effort is not exactly brand new; the seeds of a new attitude toward global outreach were sown several years ago. But with the winds of change blowing through Washington in anticipation of a new administration next year, thought and action on these fronts are picking up steam.

Two documents emblematic of enhanced US outreach efforts are worth noting. The first, a report from the Pentagon's Defense Science Board, released in September 2004, calls for the development of a national strategic communication strategy and the establishment of an independent Center for Strategic Communication to support the US National Security Council in its efforts to win the world's hearts and minds.

The other, also emanating from the Pentagon, is Department of Defense Directive 3000.05, issued in November 2005, which states that addressing the basic human needs of civilians is "a core US military mission that the Department of Defense shall be prepared to conduct and support. They shall be given priority comparable to combat operations."

The fact that both of these documents originate with the Department of Defense is significant. Increasingly, both communication and humanitarian efforts are being funded and supported by the US military.

On the communications side, the US Army's 95th Civil Affairs Brigade provides public diplomacy support to US embassies worldwide. As for humanitarian efforts, US soldiers, sailors and marines can be seen in Asia, Africa and South America doing everything from digging wells and building schools to teaching journalism skills.

The most significant reason for the Pentagon's emergence in these areas is money: Civilian foreign assistance programs run by the Department of State and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have been starved for cash in recent years, while the DoD is flush.

But DoD's predominance in foreign assistance also has a downside. DoD-run efforts typically involve short-term and isolated projects unconnected to strategies coordinated with civilian agencies. DoD public diplomacy and humanitarian projects are often directed principally at making the presence of the US military more palatable to local populations.

As a result, current US efforts at public diplomacy and humanitarian assistance tend to be fragmented. What is now beginning to change is the movement toward strategy and coordination. Some experts fear that US outreach efforts will fail otherwise.

Creeping militarization

The Pentagon's leadership in public diplomacy and humanitarian assistance has elicited the consternation even of US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. In a speech he delivered in Washington on 15 July, Gates noted that "America's civilian institutions of diplomacy and development have been chronically undermanned and underfunded for far too long."

"Even outside Iraq and Afghanistan," he added, "the United States military has become more involved in a range of activities that in the past were perceived to be the exclusive province of civilian agencies and organizations. This has led to concern…about…a creeping militarization of some aspects of America's foreign policy."

Proponents of change are seeking to evolve US public diplomacy and humanitarian efforts into a more strategic and coordinated framework.

"During the Cold War, we knew there was an ideological component to the struggle," Representative William "Mac" Thornberry, a Republican of Texas and a proponent of a national strategic communication strategy, told ISN Security Watch. "Since then, the recognition of that element of the struggle has receded, much to our detriment."

It took Thornberry five years, but he recently succeeded at inserting language in the 2009 US Defense authorization bill that would require the development of a national strategic communication strategy and the coordination and delineation of rolls between the Departments of State and Defense. That legislation is far from becoming law, as the US Senate has yet to adopt the same measure.

"This is not about writing a catchier slogan or telling the world how great we are," Thornberry noted. "This will be an effort to synchronize diplomacy with military psychological operations to develop an overarching concept of creating the right message for the right audience delivered in the right way to help shape perceptions."

For Thornberry, US government communication must be "reasonably consistent" in order to prevent "information fratricide" and "dissipating the effectiveness of the message."

He endorsed the recommendation of the Defense Science Board to establish an extra-governmental institute to help shape US government communications. "We should make it separate from government to make sure it has a long-term focus and is not driven by the poll numbers of the moment," he said.

Strategic rationale

A short-term focus can be said to be ailing US humanitarian relief efforts run by the US military. Although undertaken as part of a clear Pentagon strategy, they are not coordinated with civilian relief agencies, and as such are not part of a US national assistance strategy.

Humanitarian assistance provided by the US military has grown dramatically over the last several years. In 2002, 5.6 percent of US government foreign assistance funding was allocated to the Pentagon, according to a study undertaken by the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based think tank. That proportion reached 22 percent, or US$5.5 billion, in 2007.

But civilian agencies do not consider what the military is doing as "real development work," according to Reuben Brigety, an assistant professor of government at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia.

"Military humanitarian projects are similar to those conducted by civilian aid agencies and non-governmental organizations," he told ISN Security Watch. "The difference lies in the strategic rationale with which these projects are selected and chosen by the military, rather than the principal focus on humanitarian need and sustainability that is held by civilian development experts."

This has been borne out by the experience of the USAID.

"I have worked with military officers who acted as development officers in Afghanistan," Elisabeth Kvitashvili, deputy assistant administrator in the Bureau of Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance at USAID, told ISN Security Watch. "They performed very well in short-term, one-off projects such as building school and clinics. But these projects have not been tied to a deeper, long-term strategy. They have not linked facilities to a ministry that can assure that they are regularly supplied and staffed. Too often, the community was left with no lash-up to a central project or to support."

That the provision of humanitarian assistance is a strategic Pentagon priority was highlighted by the launch of the US Africa Command, or AFRICOM, in 2007. "As with other regional commands, AFRICOM will have responsibility for US military operations with a particular area of responsibility," said Brigety. "Yet it is distinguished from other regional commands because its primary mission will be conducting non-military operations."

For Brigety, the civilian-led method of humanitarian assistance largely pursues a development objective, while the military-led method seeks a security aim. For US humanitarian assistance efforts to work in the long run, he said, both military and civilian efforts must support three key missions: promoting stability, serving morality and enhancing security.

What is still missing, as with US communications efforts, is an overall strategy which would coordinate fragmented humanitarian relief efforts.

In 2005, the State Department created a process for evaluating development and humanitarian assistance programs to ensure they are supporting strategic objectives. Military humanitarian spending is not constrained by this process. The military prefers to rely on the judgment of its field commanders.

But in a sign that some real changes may be coming to Washington, the Pentagon may voluntarily take a back seat to the State Department in coordinating humanitarian assistance efforts.

"When it comes to America's engagement with the rest of the world," Defense Secretary Gates said, "it is important that the military is, and is clearly seen to be, in a supporting role to civilian agencies. Our diplomatic leaders must have the resources and political support needed to fully exercise their responsibilities in leading American foreign policy."


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