Reinventing Organizations: An Illustrated Invitation To Join The Conversation On Next-Stage Organiza

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Jul 10, 2024, 1:33:48 PM7/10/24

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Harold Pachios: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the monthly meeting of the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. I am Harold Pachios, Chairman of the Commission. To my left is the Vice-Chairman, Charles Dolan of Virginia. To his left is Commissioner Marie Elena Torano of Florida, to her left is the former Commissioner Walter Roberts who is a consultant to the Commission and is a 42-year veteran of Foreign Service in USIA and one of the senior and most knowledgeable people in the area of public diplomacy. Our Staff Director is Matt Lauer who is sitting a couple of chairs away to my right. Many of you know Matt. I want to welcome all of you journalists and guests and friends from other places in the State Department and the Undersecretarys office, from the GAO, Inspector Generals office and other interested people. For those of you who may be watching this through the miracle medium of television, we in public diplomacy always call it a miracle medium, the Commission was established by Congress in 1948 to evaluate and report on the effectiveness of U.S. public diplomacy programs, that is, programs that it designs to influence foreign publics and promote the interests of the United States throughout the world. It has continued to exist since that time. Commissioners are appointed by the President, subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate. The monthly meetings usually involve reports from people in the Department of State and the Defense Department, from government radio, from NGOs and from other people who are involved in telling Americas story abroad. The Commission, as many of you know, regularly issues written reports. We are fond of observing over the last eight or nine months that in recent years, probably in the last decade, many of the recommendations of the Commission went unheeded. And now if you read the Press and read the reports of others and see some of the suggestions about beefing up our public diplomacy program, we would like to point out that if you went back through Commission reports, probably through the Reagan administration, Bush one and Clinton administration, this Commission has pretty much put in its written reports recommendations which are now being made regularly since September 11.

I want to just briefly bring the Commission up to date on some of the things that have happened since our last meeting; primarily things that I have done and have not had an opportunity to fill you in on. Yesterday, for instance, I was invited with Matt to meet with Congressman Adam Smith who has the new caucus, I think fairly new caucus in the Congress of 74 Democrats of the New Democratic Coalition, I think it is called. They are interested in developing foreign policy positions, and are particularly interested in public diplomacy. So, the Congressman just wanted to chat about what the Commissions findings were over the last few months and a little bit about the Commissions history. We want to do that, and I think we all agree it is something we want to do. We are hoping that other caucuses in the Congress that are interested in foreign affairs and taking positions on foreign affairs issues will invite us to have similar discussion. Chuck (Charles Dolan) is going to report a little later in the meeting on what is happening on the Hill with respect to public diplomacy.

Reinventing Organizations: An Illustrated Invitation to Join the Conversation on Next-Stage Organiza

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We also met with the senior staff of AID yesterday. One of the issues that they raised is whether the story of what American taxpayers do around the world when it comes to foreign aid is really told and really understood by foreign publics. We also talked about the schools and hospitals programs and what it means to have some schools around the world that were build by AID that are essentially American colleges and serve local populations and how it is a substitute, in some respects, for exchanges and a very effective one in many ways. I know that the Undersecretarys office is working very closely with AID and coordinating their efforts to your efforts, and I guess they have a new interest on public diplomacy. We encourage that.

About two or three weeks ago, I was invited to the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton to talk about public diplomacy. I will just share a couple of things. Essentially what I did is discuss views that I think are more or less consensus views. I wasnt speaking for the Commission but I the things I talked about are recommendations that all of you have promoted and discussed, so I didnt get too far afield. I will just go over briefly what I told them and I think you will find it consistent with the positions that we have taken in the past. First, I discussed at length the need for a coordinating mechanism, a government-wide coordinating mechanism. I said that the discussion was either that the center of coordination would either be the Undersecretarys office or the AIC. I didnt make a choice. I talked about establishing a very strong secretariat to support this coordinating apparatus. I talked about some organizational reforms at the State Department. I mentioned making public diplomacy the full time responsibility of Deputy Assistant Secretary in each bureau in order to increase the visibility, power and leverage of the public diplomacy apparatus in the department. And also something we talked about two or three times, requiring at least one public diplomacy assignment in order to advance to the Senior Foreign Service. I also talked a little bit about the lack of training in the area of public diplomacy and the need for recruitment efforts; a fact that we have all discussed. The State Department until this administration, frankly until Undersecretary Diaz arrived here, didnt pay any attention to recruiting people who have the aptitude for public diplomacy. Finally, we talked about radio and that we, the Commission, recommended expanding the use of the State Departments multi-language Internet websites, and talked about how effective websites were during the War in the Balkans, and we talked about satellite TV and FM broadcasting channels. We talked a little bit about that last night after dinner. Then, in terms of leadership, and this is certainly something happening in this department, was the Secretary and the Undersecretary happening to be uniquely involved here and having some unique expertise in public diplomacy, making it clear that public diplomacy is central to the work of all ambassadors.

We will have other business and reports from Commissioners. I know Marie Elena is going to make a report on PAO Conference and a couple of more items, I think on youth programs and DOA. And Walter, as always, you are encouraged to chime in.

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to introduce our guest because I have known him for just about fifty years, and that upsets both of us to know it has been that long! Graham Fuller is former Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Consulate, CIA, and he is currently an independent writer, consultant and political analyst. He received his BA and MA degrees at Harvard University in Russian and Middle Eastern studies. He served twenty years in the Foreign Service, mostly in the Muslim World, and he worked in Germany, Turkey, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, North Yemen, Afghanistan and then finally Hong Kong. In 1982, he was afforded the National Intelligence Officer for Near East and South Asia at CIA. In 1986, he became Vice-Chairman of the National Intelligence Council at CIA with overall responsibility for all national level strategic forecasting. Between 1988 and 2000, he was with Rand Corporation where his primary work was on Middle East, Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia and ethnic problems with the former Soviet Union. His studies for Rand include a provocative 1991 study on the Geopolitical Implications of the Palestinian Interfada, a series of studies of Islamic Fundamentalism in Turkey, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Algeria, the survivability of Iraq and one called the New Geopolitics of Central Asia After the Fall of the Soviet Union. He is the author of many, many books, and those of us who keep up with public diplomacy, and we do get all the clips, recognize the fact that Graham is a prolific top hit page write. We see many of his pieces in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers across the country. We are very excited to have Graham. He is provocative. He has strong opinions. Hes very familiar with the Middle East, and the Department of State, consistent with its aim of getting credible people to go to the Middle East and conduct public diplomacy by presenting knowledgeable Americans who have frank opinions and engage them in discussion with those who may disagree with us, Graham just returned from a State Department sponsored trip to the Persian Gulf States.

We have asked him to come here and report back to us. We are obviously particularly interested in public opinion in these states and comparing it to his experience in prior years, twenty, twenty-five and thirty years ago in the Middle East, meeting with old friends and new friends, and getting a sense of how things have changed and what the perception of the United States is. Graham, thanks so very much for being with us, and if you dont mind, we will have some questions for you.

Graham Fuller: Thank you, Harold, and good morning ladies and gentlemen. I am very happy to be here to discuss a serious problem with the Commission that has mattered very much in affecting, hopefully, the policy of the State Department and other policy organizations in Washington on this very, very critical area of the world. I wish I was happy about the message that I bring with me on my return from the Gulf Area. I was away three weeks and visited every single Gulf country, spent about three days in each one, involved in giving speeches, seminars, private meetings, press interviews, lunches, dinners, etc. with a whole variety of people. It was an extraordinary opportunity to meet a lot of the important people very quickly, as arranged by our Embassy. I would like to say I am very proud of our country, that it does afford the opportunity for people who are not necessarily fully in support of all aspects of American policy, to go and hold forth in the Middle East or other parts of the world where it really matters. Now, let me get immediately to the issues and to the reports and details I would like to present you with here this morning.