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45–580 PDF 2009

S. Hrg. 110–890 

A RELIANCE ON SMART POWER—REFORMING THE 

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY BUREAUCRACY 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, 

THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE, AND THE 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

SEPTEMBER 23, 2008 

Available via http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security 

and Governmental Affairs 

( 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

BARACK OBAMA, Illinois 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico 

JOHN WARNER, Virginia 

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire 

MICHAEL L. ALEXANDER, Staff Director 

BRANDON L. MILHORN, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

TRINA DRIESSNACK TYRER, Chief Clerk 

OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, THE FEDERAL 

WORKFORCE, AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

JOHN WARNER, Virginia 

RICHARD J. KESSLER, Staff Director 

JOEL C. SPANGENBERG, Professional Staff Member 

JENNIFER A. HEMINGWAY, Minority Staff Director 

THOMAS A. BISHOP, Legislative Aide 

JESSICA K. NAGASAKO, Chief Clerk 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statements: Page 

Senator Akaka .................................................................................................. 1 

Senator Voinovich ............................................................................................. 9 

WITNESSES 

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2008 

Christopher Midura, Acting Director, Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, U.S. Department of State, 

accompanied by Ambassador Scott H. Delisi, Director, Career Development 

and Assignments, Bureau of Human Resources, U.S. Department of State, 

Rick A. Ruth, Director, Office of Policy and Evaluation Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State, and Peter Kovach, 

Director, Global Strategic Engagement Center, U.S. Department of State .... 3 

Douglas K. Bereuter, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Asia Foundation .................................................................................................................... 20 

Ambassador Elizabeth F. Bagley, Vice Chairman, U.S. Advisory Commission 

on Public Diplomacy ............................................................................................ 22 

Stephen M. Chaplin, Senior Advisor, The American Academy of Diplomacy .... 25 

Ronna A. Freiberg, Former Director,Congressional and Intergovernmental 

Affairs, U.S. Information Agency ........................................................................ 27 

Jill A. Schuker, Fellow, University of Southern California, Center for Public 

Diplomacy ............................................................................................................. 29 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Bagley, Ambassador Elizabeth F.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 22 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 55 

Bereuter, Douglas K.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 20 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 46 

Chaplin, Stephen M.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 25 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 59 

Freiberg, Ronna A.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 27 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 63 

Midura, Christopher: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 3 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 41 

Schuker, Jill A.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 29 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 68 

APPENDIX 

Chart referred to by Ms. Schuker .......................................................................... 79 

Questions and Responses for the Record from: 

Mr. Midura ........................................................................................................ 80 

Ambassador DeLisi ........................................................................................... 91 

Mr. Ruth ............................................................................................................ 105 

Mr. Kovach ........................................................................................................ 112 

Ms. Bagley ......................................................................................................... 119 

Mr. Chaplin ....................................................................................................... 127 

Ms. Schuker ...................................................................................................... 143 

Page

IV 

‘‘Getting the People Part Right,’’ A Report on the Human Resources Dimension of U.S. Public Diplomacy, 2008, The United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy .................................................................................... 149 

‘‘A Foreign Affairs Budget for the Future, Fixing the Crisis in Diplomatic 

Readiness,’’ Resources for US Global Engagement, Full Report, October 

2008, The American Academy of Diplomacy ...................................................... 190 

(1) 

A RELIANCE ON SMART POWER—REFORMING 

THE PUBLIC DIPLOMACY BUREAUCRACY 

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2008 

U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT

MANAGEMENT, THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE, AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:29 p.m., in room 

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Daniel K. Akaka, 

Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Akaka and Voinovich. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA 

Senator AKAKA. I call this hearing of the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the 

District of Columbia to order. 

I want to welcome our guests today. Thank you so much for 

being here. 

Public diplomacy is an essential tool, as it was in the past, in our 

efforts to win the Global War on Terrorism. During the Cold War, 

public diplomacy helped spread our values of freedom and democracy to those who were struggling behind the Iron Curtain. After 

the Cold War, the need for public diplomacy to some appeared less 

certain. Political pressure to do away with the organizations of the 

Cold War increased and the U.S. Information Agency, along with 

two other agencies, was merged in 1999 into the State Department. 

The tragedies of September 11, 2001, renewed interest in public 

diplomacy as a means to convince foreign publics, especially those 

in Muslim countries, that we were friends and potential partners. 

An array of commissions urged improvements in our public diplomacy efforts and President Bush soon formed Policy Coordinating 

Committees at the National Security Council to better harmonize 

public diplomacy efforts. At the same time, others called for creating a new public diplomacy agency, dramatically increasing resources, encouraging more exchange programs, engaging in a war 

of ideas, and communicating across all types of media. 

There is now a clear consensus that our public diplomacy is a 

vital tool in America’s diplomatic arsenal and our use of it must be 

improved. A recognition of America’s need for more public diplomacy extends beyond its borders. In a recently published report by 

the Asia Foundation, both Asian and American leaders recommend 

2 

a new program of cultural, artistic, and intellectual interaction between the civil societies of both the U.S. and Southeast Asia. 

Southeast Asian representatives called for in particular the creation of new American centers to promote a better understanding 

of the United States. It is important that it is foreigners who are 

demanding to better understand the United States. 

In today’s hearing, I want to examine more closely the following 

issues. Is our existing public diplomacy strategy accomplishing its 

objectives? How well are agencies coordinating? What improvements need to be made to the public diplomacy structure in Washington and in the field? What role should the private sector play? 

And what are the State Department’s human capital and program 

gaps in public diplomacy? 

I also want to stress my belief that all of our diplomats, especially those who project our image to another Nation’s public, need 

to continue to develop a deeper appreciation and understanding of 

the culture within which they will work. 

The United States is a country that values democracy and freedom. For the United States to continue to recover its international 

reputation, it not only needs to live up to its values, but also share 

them in an effective manner with the rest of the world. 

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today, and I want 

to welcome you at this time. We have Christopher Midura, Acting 

Director, Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Department of State. We have Ambassador Scott Delisi, Director, Career Development and Assignments, 

Bureau of Human Resources, Department of State; Rick A. Ruth, 

Director, Office of Policy and Evaluation, Bureau of Educational 

and Cultural Affairs, Department of State; and Peter Kovach, Director, Global Strategic Engagement Center, Department of State. 

It is the custom of this Subcommittee to swear in all witnesses, 

so I would ask all of you to stand and raise your right hand. 

Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give to this 

Subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 

truth, so help you, God? 

Mr. MIDURA. I do. 

Mr. DELISI. I do. 

Mr. RUTH. I do. 

Mr. KOVACH. I do. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. Let the record note that the witnesses answered in the affirmative. 

Before we start, I want you to know that your full statement will 

be made a part of the record. I would also like to remind you to 

keep your remarks brief, given the number of people testifying this 

afternoon. 

Mr. Midura, will you please begin with your statement. 

3 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Midura appears in the Appendix on page 41. 

TESTIMONY OF CHRISTOPHER MIDURA,1 ACTING DIRECTOR, 

OFFICE OF POLICY, PLANNING, AND RESOURCES FOR PUBLIC DIPLOMACY AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT 

OF STATE, ACCOMPANIED BY AMBASSADOR SCOTT H. 

DELISI, DIRECTOR, CAREER DEVELOPMENT AND ASSIGNMENTS, BUREAU OF HUMAN RESOURCES, U.S. DEPARTMENT 

OF STATE, RICK A. RUTH, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF POLICY 

AND EVALUATION, BUREAU OF EDUCATIONAL AND CULTURAL AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, AND PETER 

KOVACH, DIRECTOR, GLOBAL STRATEGIC ENGAGEMENT 

CENTER, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 

Mr. MIDURA. Mr. Chairman, I wish to express my thanks for 

your invitation to testify here today on smart power and reform of 

the public diplomacy bureaucracy. Secretary Condoleezza Rice and 

Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs James K. 

Glassman look forward to continuing our close cooperation with the 

Congress to strengthen public diplomacy’s role as a vital national 

security priority. 

Under the direction of Under Secretary Glassman, we are reviewing, improving, and modernizing public diplomacy structures 

and programs in the State Department to build upon the government-wide public diplomacy leadership role assigned to the Under 

Secretary by the White House. Under Secretary Glassman has emphasized in several articles and interviews, as well as in testimony 

before Congress, that we are engaged in a war of ideas with violent 

extremists who seek to attack the United States and its allies and 

to recruit others to do the same. Public diplomacy professionals are 

being called upon for a renewed commitment to ideological engagement, designing programs and spreading messages to directly confront the ideology of violent extremism as practiced by al-Qaeda, 

the FARC in Colombia, and other organizations. 

We wish to amplify credible voices of moderation and to discourage potential recruits from joining terrorist movements. We can do 

this by combining our programs and technology to help build real 

and virtual networks among groups in affected societies who reject 

the terrorists’ world view with a special focus on young people. 

Under Secretary Glassman has sought to reorient public diplomacy toward these ends. Perhaps most visible has been his coordination of strategic communication in the interagency through his 

chairmanship of the Policy Coordinating Committee. The PCC comprises civilian and military communications leaders from the Departments of State, Defense, and the Treasury, the National Security Council, the intelligence community, and other agencies. 

As a complement to the work of the PCC, another of Mr. Glassman’s interagency initiatives has been the creation of the Global 

Strategic Engagement Center (GSEC), which serves as a subject 

matter advisory group for the Under Secretary and members of the 

PCC on topics relating to the war of ideas. GSEC staff are active 

duty military and civilians from the Departments of State and Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency and the director is a senior Foreign Service officer. 

4 

I would like to highlight here the increasingly coordinated way 

that State Department employees are working with their Defense 

Department and military colleagues around the world. Today, the 

emblematic projection of the American Government abroad is the 

Provincial Reconstruction Team, a flexible mix of military capabilities with our civilian-directed development, public diplomacy, information, education, economic, and social tools. This week, we at the 

State Department co-hosted the first ever worldwide synchronization conference for combined State Department and DOD strategic communication leadership. I think that is a glimpse of the future. 

One of the most prominent recommendations in the 2003 report 

of the Djerejian Group, of which now Under Secretary Glassman 

was a member, was the public diplomacy needed to establish a new 

culture of measurement within all public diplomacy structures. 

This criticism was echoed by the Government Accountability Office 

soon thereafter. The Department has since made major strides in 

establishing rigorous performance measurement and evaluation 

standards. The Evaluation Division of the Bureau of Educational 

and Cultural Affairs has been a leader in this field for several 

years by demonstrating the impact of exchange programs in building mutual understanding between Americans and people around 

the world. 

In order to bring evaluation and measurement for the rest of 

public diplomacy up to ECA’s high standard, the Under Secretary 

recently established an Evaluation and Measurement Unit (EMU), 

charged with development performance measurement instruments 

and executing detailed evaluations of the implementation and effectiveness of all State Department public diplomacy programs overseas. We intend to boost our investment in the work of the EMU, 

enabling us to better document the value of public diplomacy to the 

Department, the OMB, the Congress, and the American taxpayer. 

Winning the war of ideas depends on getting the right information to the right people, using the right technology. Our Bureau of 

International Information Programs has been a leader in taking 

public diplomacy to the Internet through its America.gov website. 

This site features six language versions, including Arabic and Persian, discussion groups, video content, and special events, such as 

the Democracy Video Challenge, in which foreign citizens are encouraged to upload their own video creations to complete the 

phrase, ‘‘Democracy is.’’ IIP’s digital outreach team blogs extensively on U.S. policy and society in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, giving us a voice in the growing realm of online conversations. The 

Bureau is also expanding into diverse areas such as online professional networks, social media, virtual worlds, podcasting, and mobile technologies. 

While global ideological engagement has necessitated greater 

focus on expanding and updating our information programs, we 

also remain committed to maintaining the excellence of the programs managed by our Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, 

which have for years formed the heart and soul of public diplomacy 

efforts. 

The Fulbright Program remains the unchallenged world leader 

among academic exchange programs, while the International VisVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:40 Oct 30, 2009 Jkt 045580 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\45580.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
5 

itor Leadership Program brings to the United States each year approximately 4,000 foreign professionals in a wide variety of fields 

for invaluable exposure to our culture, our society, and our policies. 

IVLP alumni have included 277 foreign heads of State. We will be 

looking to expand ECA’s English teaching and youth scholarship 

programs in the coming months to target successor generations of 

youth, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds and/or 

countries of strategic priority for the United States. 

To conclude, the modernization of public diplomacy structures 

and programs is a top priority of the Department Under Secretary 

Glassman. We are also working in ever-closer coordination with our 

interagency colleagues, particularly our strategic communication 

colleagues at the Department of Defense. With the support of Congress, we will continue to expand, carefully target, and rigorously 

evaluate our public diplomacy activities to meet the challenges of 

global ideological engagement. 

Thank you for your attention, and my colleagues and I would be 

glad to answer your questions at this time. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Mr. Midura. Thank you 

for your statement. I am so glad you had included some of your 

programs and especially programs with youth and to look at the future. In a sense, this hearing is one that is looking at the future, 

too. We will have a new Administration, whoever it will be, but we 

wanted to take an early step to begin to work on our diplomatic 

efforts. I personally feel it is so important for our country to let the 

rest of the world know our culture and who we are as well as to 

know their cultures so that we can work together with the other 

nations. 

In a sense, we use the word here and for this hearing, ‘‘smart 

power,’’ reliance on smart power, and I am looking at our witnesses 

as those who have had the experience in this area and will be able 

to offer some recommendations that we may be using as we try to 

reform the public diplomacy bureaucracy. 

Mr. Midura and Mr. Kovach, the June 2007, U.S. National Strategy for Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication was the 

first of its kind. Since the strategy was implemented, what measurable progress have you made in meeting the three public diplomacy 

priorities? 

Mr. MIDURA. Mr. Chairman, the three priorities that we had in 

that document, the three strategic objectives were America as a 

positive vision of hope and opportunity, isolating and marginalizing 

violent extremists, and promoting common interests and values. 

These strategic objectives are truly broad goals that give direction 

to our programs here and overseas. I believe that public diplomacy 

programs are leading us toward these goals, although we may 

never entirely reach them. 

This document has been valuable to us for a couple of reasons. 

Within existing resource limitations, it has given our overseas missions and our partner agencies here in Washington a common 

agenda and that has helped us establish a basis for better communication and cooperation through the interagency, and Mr. Kovach 

can talk about that in a moment. The document is simple, it is 

brief, it is easy to understand and use, and it even contains templates to facilitate planning in offices here and at posts overseas. 

6 

It has also given us an agenda for the priorities that we need to 

address. Many, in fact, have actually been implemented. Some of 

these include expansion of resources for exchange programs, which 

is extremely important to us; the modernization of communications, 

which has been a huge priority of our Bureau of International Information Programs; updating technology; creating regional media 

hubs, which is something that we are engaged in around the world 

for better messaging; creation of our Rapid Response Unit, which 

is our 24/7 office that monitors coverage of the United States in the 

media overseas and offers very quick guidance for responding to it. 

We have also had greater program cooperation between the public and private sectors. We have expanded our Office of Private Sector Outreach to try and bring in more of these. And we have had 

greater coordination within the interagency, and Mr. Kovach, if you 

want to talk about that a little bit. 

Mr. KOVACH. Yes. Thank you for having us here today. It is a 

great opportunity for an exchange at a very critical moment. I became the head of Global Strategic Engagement Center (GSEC) a 

month ago and I took the job—I had come back to Washington slated for another job—simply because of Mr. Glassman’s incredible 

energy and the feeling that I could carry over an important interagency structure into whatever comes next that would hold. 

I should back up 8 years because at exactly this stage of the second Clinton Administration, I was essentially doing the same 

thing. I was coordinating an interagency process that could break 

out into working groups around any crisis and to do strategic communication, and I can tell you, the culture has really evolved in 

these 8 years. Probably September 11, 2001, probably some credit 

to the Administration, people are really leaning forward. 

Now, at that time, the structure I ran was all State Department 

officers and we would reach out into the various other bureaucracies—DOD, VBG, USAID, the intelligence community—as needed 

to pull around a working group on a crisis. Serbian democracy was 

a crisis we worked. We worked on Sierra Leone some with both European and international organization partners. 

The office I run now is actually staffed by people from the intelligence community, the Defense Department, from our own Office 

of International Information Programs. So we both have reached 

out and we have reach in capabilities. My people are learning the 

State Department, my people from outside, and we are learning 

how to tap what we need in their bureaucracy. So it is a terrific 

model and I can only say I hope it continues. 

The one thing I wanted to add to what Mr. Midura said, being 

a field officer, is that the emphasis on youth programs is really a 

very new thing. I think 28 years ago when I came into the Foreign 

Service, we rarely looked at anyone younger than grad students, 

and now we have the Yes Program from some vulnerable youth 

countries in the Muslim world, from some other countries. It is a 

real sea change in our targeting and I just wanted to recognize 

that. Thank you. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. 

Mr. Midura, the 2007 PART assessment indicated that there is 

no strong evidence that interagency or private collaboration has led 

to meaningful resource allocation decisions. This surprises me, 

7 

since the U.S. Strategy for Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communications stated that, ‘‘all segments of the U.S. Government have 

a role in public diplomacy.’’ Do you believe that the 2007 PART assessment was accurate, and if so, what has been done since to correct the situation? The Program Assessment Rating Tool, which is 

PART, is an evaluation tool. 

Mr. MIDURA. And could you read the criticism again, Senator, 

what the PART said? 

Senator AKAKA. Yes. Well, my question to you was do you believe 

that this 2007 PART assessment was accurate? If so, what has 

been done since then to—if needed to correct the situation? Mr. 

Ruth. 

Mr. RUTH. Thank you, Senator. Yes. In fact, what the 2007 

PART assessment said, did have a great deal of truth to it. We engaged very diligently with OMB and, of course, with the Hill and 

with the Government Accountability Office and others over the last 

several years to bring about what I consider to be some of the most 

significant changes in the way public diplomacy is measured, 

frankly, in the history of public diplomacy. 

Like my colleagues, I have been in this business for quite some 

time, 33 years in this case, and I have seldom seen so much happen so quickly. Before Under Secretary Hughes came on board, and 

now under Under Secretary Glassman, there was, for example, no 

office dedicated to the evaluation of public diplomacy. Now, there 

is a full-time office, and as Mr. Midura indicated, Under Secretary 

Glassman has institutionalized this so that there is, in fact, an office in his own unit that is staffed by full-time and professional 

performance measurement experts and evaluators. 

We have also instituted two very significant steps that are global 

to address two simple-sounding questions that were posed to us by 

both Under Secretaries. One is ‘‘what,’’ and the other is ‘‘so what?’’ 

What are you doing around the world with all of that taxpayers’ 

money in public diplomacy, and what difference has it made? 

And so we have instituted, first of all, in answer to the ‘‘what’’ 

question, a new software system called the Mission Activity Tracker, which is a global system used by all posts around the world 

which can now record—in which they record in real time all public 

diplomacy activities with a great deal of specificity in terms of audience, strategic goal, venue, individuals engaged, even the gender 

and so forth, and this kind of data can now be analyzed back in 

Washington and reports produced that can tell the Under Secretary 

and other senior managers exactly what is being—what is happening and how the public diplomacy fund is being spent. 

So, for example, we could have certainly told you several years 

ago that we were doing programs in certain ways of certain kinds. 

Now we can say, for example, that under the topic of civil society, 

that X-percentage of programs involve this kind of audience, journalists, or educators. We can say whether they involve women or 

men, whether they involve parliamentarians or not, whether they 

are cooperative with local institutions. We have a wealth of data 

that public diplomacy senior managers have never had before. 

The second, in answer to the ‘‘so what’’ question, which is the 

most interesting, of course, I think for most of us and also the most 

difficult to get at, we developed what was called the Public DiploVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:40 Oct 30, 2009 Jkt 045580 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\45580.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
8 

macy Impact Project to precisely ask that question. What has been 

the aggregate impact of public diplomacy on the audiences we have 

engaged around the world? We conducted this program the first 

time last year and it sounds a little bit like a Supreme Court case 

because I refer to it as ‘‘Landmark v. Limited.’’ It is a landmark 

case, landmark study because it is the first time that the State Department ever undertook to analyze in a statistical quantitative 

way the impact of public diplomacy. 

But it is very limited because it has only been done once so far 

in a specific period of time with a certain sample size. We are now 

working on a second version, the Public Diplomacy Impact second 

version, so we can begin to move from a baseline and start to see 

if there are trends and changes in different directions. 

And so from my perspective, these have put real teeth, if you 

will, into what Under Secretary Glassman has referred to as the 

culture of measurement. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much for that response. 

Mr. Midura, State places great emphasis on engaging and 

leveraging the resources of the private sector for public diplomacy. 

In 2005, State strongly endorsed GAO’s recommendation to develop 

a strategy for engaging the private sector in pursuit of common 

public diplomacy initiatives. Has State developed this strategy? 

Mr. MIDURA. Well, Mr. Chairman, I can’t speak for the rest of 

the Department here, only for Public Diplomacy itself. We have our 

own Office of Private Sector Outreach and that office has been 

looking for ways to work with the private sector to expand our public diplomacy reach. These partnerships have occurred between us 

and businesses, NGOs, foundations, educational institutions, and 

others. We define these relationships as sort of a collaborative arrangement between the U.S. Government and our non-governmental partners in which the goals and the structure are set out 

beforehand. 

The Under Secretary’s office concentrates on building and maintaining new relationships with leaders in U.S. businesses, and an 

example of that that we have had recently was a U.S. marketing 

college that was held in conjunction with Novartis, Kraft, and eBay 

and was hosted at our Foreign Service Institute, and it combined 

strategic communicators from the interagency to listen to private 

sector experts on marketing and the kind of tools that the private 

sector uses to market products. While they realized that was an 

imperfect comparison in some respects with public diplomacy, it is 

a means of thinking outside the box and this week-long intensive 

course was so successful that we are going to work with the same 

organizations to do it again in January. 

These are the kinds of things that we have been able to do. Obviously, we would like to expand in this area even more. We have 

had some success in the past with humanitarian relief, but we 

would like to be able to use, to leverage, our contacts with the private sector to expand particularly in English teaching, but also in 

youth exchange and other similar programs. 

Senator AKAKA. Yes. This recommendation that I mentioned in 

2005 by GAO was included in a report entitled, ‘‘Interagency Coordination Efforts Hampered by the Lack of a National Communication Strategy.’’ From what you just mentioned, you have been 

9 

working on it and my question was whether you had developed a 

strategy for that. 

Mr. MIDURA. Yes. The national strategy that we were discussing 

earlier was directly related to that criticism and the need for getting a document out there that would allow the different agencies 

and the different posts to be working from the same sheet of music. 

I think this document does that. Obviously, it is something that we 

will probably want to update again in the not-too-distant future. 

But as you mentioned earlier, going into the Presidential transition 

period right now, it is probably a good time for us to be thinking 

about future directions of public diplomacy but perhaps not exactly 

producing a new national strategy for a while yet. 

Senator AKAKA. Well, let me call on my friend, Senator Voinovich, for his statement or questions that he may have for this 

panel. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize for 

not being here for your testimony, but we had Secretary Paulson 

before our policy luncheon. I wanted to hear from him about a few 

things, what he thinks we ought to do right now. 

As a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, I have had the 

opportunity to see firsthand the success and failure of our efforts 

to win the hearts and minds of world citizens and I remain concerned that our public diplomacy is arguably at its lowest point in 

history. I once described it as our President got elected and he 

thought he was talking to Texas. Then he realized he was talking 

to the United States, and then he realized he was talking to the 

world. Once that happens, when the water goes over the dam, it 

is hard to get it back up again. 

As a Nation, we must do a better job communicating our policy 

objectives and actions on the international stage. The solution to 

this challenge does not rest solely with the State Department, however, nor does it lie in the creation of a new government entity. 

Mr. Chairman, you and I have worked on some concrete tools to 

improve our public diplomacy, such as reform of the visa waiver 

program, combining security enhancements while also facilitating 

legitimate travel by some of our closest allies. In some of those nations over there, this is the most damaging thing that we had because they felt that they were being denied the opportunity of a 

visa waiver. 

Now we must ensure the State Department has the leadership 

capacity, the resources and people necessary to do the job we have 

asked them to do. Our men and women in uniform can no longer 

be responsible for foreign assistance and messaging. Secretary 

Gates, in July, called for increasing our investment in the capacity 

and readiness of the State Department. I think it was welcome 

news for everybody. 

Congress has had a number of thoughtful reports and recommendations to improve our global engagement, including the recent report by the Commission on Smart Power and the forthcoming report by the American Academy of Diplomacy. The Commission on Smart Power emphasized the fact that our success in 

public diplomacy depends in large part on building long-term peoVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:40 Oct 30, 2009 Jkt 045580 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\45580.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
10 

ple-to-people relationships. Given the short-term duration of our 

hardship posts, I am concerned about the ability of our Foreign 

Service officers to cultivate the relationships necessary to carry our 

message forward. 

According to the American Academy of Public Diplomacy, the 

number of State Department personnel responsible for public diplomacy is 24 percent less than in 1986. The Academy outlines a plan 

to meet this shortfall, which includes a focus on training. The 

Academy also recognizes the need to more effectively use the Internet to win the hearts and minds of broader audiences. 

The Subcommittee’s oversight work on radicalization shows that 

much work needs to also be done in that area. 

Congress must recognize its responsibility by making careful 

choices among the many domestic and international funding priorities to ensure the State Department has the tools necessary to 

meet new realities and emerging challenges. Our budget situation 

demands that we allocate scarce resources to areas where the 

United States can achieve the greatest return on investment. 

Again, I am sorry that I wasn’t here for your testimony, but are 

you at all, any of you, familiar with the recommendations that are 

coming from the American Academy of Public Diplomacy or are familiar with what Joe Nye and Richard Armitage did in terms of 

smart power. I would be interested in what you think of those recommendations. 

Mr. MIDURA. Yes, Senator, if we can talk about them separately. 

I think that the smart power recommendations are—public diplomacy was only a part of that and I believe that the report was 

pointing in the right direction. Obviously, there are resource issues. 

While we support the President’s budget, I think I would be untruthful if I didn’t say that if we had more public diplomacy resources, we could probably do more and could probably move the 

needle a bit farther, as you implied. 

The Advisory Commission report was largely focused on personnel issues. As we have here, the Director of our Office of Career 

Development and Assignments in the Bureau of Human Resources, 

I think it might be good for Ambassador Delisi to address that one. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you. We have heard from the folks 

that have been—a lot of those folks, Tom Pickering and others, 

have had some good experience, but you are the ones that are on 

the firing line and I would really like to know just how you feel 

about it, and if we had the capacity to do it, do you think what 

they are recommending in the area of human resources is adequate 

to get the job done. 

Mr. DELISI. I will try to answer some of that, Senator. Thank you 

for the question and thank you for the chance to be here. 

I have spent most of my career in the field, and I came back 

about a year ago and became the Director for Career Development 

and Assignments. This is my first time dealing with some of the 

resource implications of our business, and it is frightening when we 

look at it. Right now, when we look at our Service as a whole, we 

are probably short at least 1,000 officers just to fill the jobs that 

we have. But even then, when we are filling these jobs, we aren’t 

giving them the training that they need. We wouldn’t have enough 

11 

bodies to do the training, give them the linguistic skills, and address all of the other challenges they are going to face out there. 

So to give them that training, it means that some of these jobs 

are going to go unfilled even if we had that extra 1,000 bodies. 

Now, this is in the Foreign Service broadly. I will talk about public 

diplomacy, as well. 

But when we look at it, we also recognize that in the past few 

years, increasingly, we don’t need to just fill those 1,000 jobs that 

we are short. We need to fill more. We need to be creating additional positions. We need to be doing more in China, in India, in 

the Middle East, in parts of Africa, and in Indonesia. The demand 

to get our people out there is greater and greater, there are greater 

challenges, and we just don’t have the resources. 

On the public diplomacy side of the house right now, I think it 

is even—there is some positive news, but it is a grim picture overall. When I look at the mid-level up, from our Foreign Service 02 

ranks and above, we face deficits in every single one of those 

grades, including in our senior grades, most heavily at the 02 and 

01 level. A lot of that is because right before the merger, USIA’s 

hiring, as I understand it, had really dropped off. USIA’s hiring 

was low. 

Since then, we had a surge, as you know. We had the Diplomatic 

Readiness Initiative and we brought in a number of folks, and that 

has helped. At the lower grades, we have a group of new young 

public diplomacy officers who are coming along and that is good. 

And when we looked at DRI, we brought in a greater proportion 

of public diplomacy officers than officers in some of our other skill 

codes. So that is helpful. 

But in the past 4 years, we basically have been hiring again at 

attrition. So we aren’t able to really get ahead of this curve, and 

even as it is, if we bring these folks up—right now, on the public 

diplomacy side of the house, we probably, in raw numbers, we have 

a 64-officer surplus. That is our latest figure. But again, they are 

at the wrong grades, and while you have 64 extra officers—by the 

time we put them into training slots, give them the linguistic training, 2 years in Arabic, 2 years in Chinese, what have you—we are 

still considerably short to fill the jobs we have, and we want to be 

filling even more. 

So we have a real challenge on our hands. For this coming year, 

we are able to hire 186 more officers—186 above attrition. We will 

bring in a greater percentage of public diplomacy officers within 

that group of 186 than in our other cones—than in political, management, economic, etc. But still, we have to bring in officers in all 

of our cones. So we have a considerable way to go. 

The good news is that while we have these gaps in the senior 

ranks among the public diplomacy officers, in a service that is 

made up of generalists, right now, for example, we have 136 Foreign Service officers who are not public diplomacy officers but who 

are filling public diplomacy jobs. The bulk of them are political officers, many economic officers and also consular and management. 

We are seeing that they get the training and, let us say, in today’s 

world, all of us have to be public diplomacy officers. I mean, I am 

a political officer. That is what I grew up as in the Foreign Service. 

But you learn very quickly. We all have to have these skills. 

12 

And I think there is a much greater emphasis these days on ensuring that our officers get these types of training, even if they 

aren’t PD officers, that they at least get fundamentals of public diplomacy training early in their career, and if we are going to put 

them into public diplomacy, we really make every effort to ensure 

that they get the training. And the biggest constraint on that is 

just sometimes it is a function of timing. Again, given the lack of 

resources, sometimes we have to choose between filling the positions and giving them the full range of training, and it is a balancing act and we usually consult closely with the geographic bureau and the embassy and public diplomacy colleagues and say, 

what is the trade-off here? Where are we going to get the best 

value? 

Senator VOINOVICH. Are you familiar with the recommendations 

from the Academy of Public Diplomacy? 

Mr. DELISI. I am not, sir. 

Senator VOINOVICH. I would like you to become familiar with 

them because we are going to be dealing with this next year and 

I would like to have their recommendations verified from those of 

you that are on the firing line and get your best opinion on it. 

Mr. DELISI. Their recommendation—was this in terms of additional numbers—— 

Senator VOINOVICH. It was human capital. They are talking 

about the core diplomacy. They are talking about public diplomacy. 

They are talking about economic assistance. They are talking about 

restructuring, of helping governments to restructure. You also have 

the initiative that we have back from Secretary Condoleezza Rice 

where she is talking about adding more people, I think, what, 500 

in the State Department and 500 throughout other Federal agencies and then another volunteer corps that would be available to 

deal with—we have a lot of problems that deal with our public diplomacy. So I am anxious to get your best thoughts on those recommendations. 

I think the last thing I would like to mention is the issue of the 

change of the guard over there. You had Charlotte Beers, then you 

had Margaret Tutwiler, and then you had Karen Hughes, and now 

James Glassman. Does anybody want to comment on how that 

doesn’t work, impedes your ability to get things done? 

Mr. MIDURA. I think it is fairly obvious that quick turnover at 

the Under Secretary level is not particularly helpful in terms of developing a coherent long-term strategy and progression for public 

diplomacy. I think that there are certain commonalities to all of 

them. I believe that every Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy favors increasing exchanges and working with the Congress on exchange programs. 

Under Secretary Glassman’s particular focus, as we were mentioning earlier, is on the war of ideas. That is, if not unique to him, 

at least a focus that he has chosen to make during the short time 

that he has remaining in his tenure. It is an item that was part 

of the National Strategy. It was the second of the three. But he is 

a strong believer that this is an area in which public diplomacy can 

make a very great impact, and so that is how he has chosen to 

focus most of his attention during the remaining time here. That 

doesn’t mean we aren’t still working for improved mutual underVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:40 Oct 30, 2009 Jkt 045580 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\45580.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
13 

standing or working with our partners on exchanges, but it does 

mean that we are investing more of our resources right now in programs that are information-based and that are intended to establish a hostile climate for violent extremists. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Well, I was just mentioning to Senator 

Akaka, how would you like to get together and draft a resume of 

the next person? Would that be inconsistent with your job? 

Mr. MIDURA. Senator, yes, I think you could say that. [Laughter.] 

Yes, it would probably be inconsistent. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Well, I am serious. I think that one of the 

problems that we have is that we don’t pay enough attention to the 

people that we hire for these jobs, and I think that the better we 

have—I am on the Foreign Relations Committee. The more information we have about what it is, the kind of characteristics that 

we are looking for, the better off we are going to be. And instead 

of waiting for them to send somebody up, to send something over 

there and say, this is a very important post. Our public diplomacy 

is at the lowest it has ever been probably in this Nation’s history. 

This is a very important job and here is the kind of individual that 

we think you are going to need in that job if we are going to turn 

this thing around, including the next President and how he handles, or she handles their job. 

Mr. MIDURA. Yes, I appreciate that, Senator. Obviously, our focus 

is going to be primarily on the structure of the public diplomacy 

cone itself and whether we are doing the right things in terms of 

the structure of our overseas posts, whether we are doing the right 

things in terms of strategic planning, and what we could do better 

in the future, and then discussing this with the transition team. I 

will leave the selection of the next Under Secretary to the next Administration and to you. 

Senator VOINOVICH. If you would do me a favor, with or without 

attribution, to define what you think we should be looking for in 

that position. With or without attribution. Mr. Kovach. 

Mr. KOVACH. If I could speak to that, I have worked with all four 

Under Secretaries that you mentioned and I have to say the turnover has not been ideal, but all four of them, I think, brought an 

important component to the job. 

Charlotte Beers, coming from Madison Avenue, was frankly appalled at how anecdotal, impressionistic our baselines were. When 

we looked at PD communication problem, we saw a foreign audience that we were trying to move more toward our position or to 

support of our position or at least to dissonance so they wouldn’t 

support, let us say, violent extremism, and she really brought a 

strong sense of that culture of measurement, and I think some of 

our initial attempts to define measurement that I took part in happened on her watch. I think that is a very important set of skills 

in a leader. 

Margaret Tutwiler, who was our spokesperson, understood public 

affairs and understood the domestic political arena, went over and 

was our very successful ambassador in Morocco and she came back 

and she has kind of got street smarts. Most of my career has been 

in the Arab world. She understood that some of the people we most 

had to address were not only the youth, not only elite youth, middle-class youth, but we had to go—for any of you who have ever 

14 

been to Rabat, Morocco, across the river there, there is a huge, 

what they call in French, a Bidonville, that we would call a slum, 

and that was really the recruiting ground for potential jihadists in 

Morocco. And she came up with this great idea of access English 

programs, where if we could give them 2 hours of English after 

school on the high school level with some kind of follow-up that the 

best students would be tracked into other scholarship opportunities, we would have a very successful program, and that program 

has flourished throughout the Muslim world since. A huge contribution, in my view. 

Karen Hughes—I was in Pakistan as the PAO, the public affairs 

officer, the year of the earthquake and the private sector partnership she and four other CEOs cobbled led to, I think close to $150 

million of private American corporate aid going to Pakistan, well 

publicized by my team. And what was really touching, I think what 

some editorialists picked up on, was that some of that aid was not 

from the companies, it was from the employees of the companies 

who contributed. That was a huge—I mean, you talk about private 

sector participation in public diplomacy. She brought that, and 

then she brought us a much greater awareness of how effective exchanges are and how that needs more support. 

Mr. Glassman is terrific. Under Secretary Glassman, he has such 

vision. He is such an experienced communicator, connections in the 

world of publishing and the world of ideas. All four of them bring 

great resumes, and I could say any combination of those skill sets 

as you look to confirm the next Under Secretary would be great. 

I just wish that we had a longer time with each of them. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you, Senator Voinovich. 

On paper, the public diplomacy area officers report to regional 

assistant secretaries and through them to the Under Secretary of 

State for Political Affairs. But I understand that these officers actually take policy guidance and get resources from the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Does this 

arrangement happen with only the public diplomacy function, and 

if so, why is that? 

Mr. MIDURA. Senator, I don’t know if it is entirely unique. It is 

a little different in the case of public diplomacy because the public 

diplomacy offices located in each of the regional bureaus, depending 

on the needs of that particular bureau and the arrangements that 

have been reached and the staffing, are all a little different in 

terms of their relationship with the regional bureaus. But as you 

said, they do report to their Assistant Secretary. They are considered to be part of those bureaus and the relationship with the 

Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy is a policy-related one, not 

a direct line of authority. 

That said, we do have the resources at our disposal that are used 

for public diplomacy programs. My office transfers these resources 

both in terms of dealing with base budgets at the beginning of the 

year, but also to answer specific program requests during the year. 

So we have an extremely close relationship with these offices. The 

Under Secretary meets on a weekly basis with the Public Diplomacy Deputy Assistant Secretaries from each of the regional bureaus and we in our office also meet with the public diplomacy ofVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:40 Oct 30, 2009 Jkt 045580 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\45580.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
15 

fice directors once a week. So we know what their resource concerns are. We know what their policy concerns are. 

And although the relationship is not absolutely direct in terms 

of lines of authority, it works for the context of the Department, 

and in a manner of speaking, it is also the same relationship that, 

say, a political officer working in the European area would have 

with the Under Secretary for Political Affairs. Although that line 

of authority may be a little bit more direct than with public diplomacy, they still report to the Assistant Secretary and that is still 

the head of the office that they work for. So it may not be entirely 

unique. 

Mr. DELISI. In my current position, we don’t really get into this. 

Speaking as someone who has been out in the field dealing with 

this, for us, what we have found is that the Under Secretary’s office 

had the money. They had the resources. They had the programs. 

And they provided us with kind of the big picture and the global 

vision and here are the broad themes that we want to sound and 

we are going to make these programs available to you to advance 

this goal. 

We still, though, would engage with our assistant secretary and 

our public diplomacy office in the Africa Bureau, in the South Asia 

Bureau, because each of these programs, while the vision remains 

the same, depending on where you are and how you implement 

that vision, the context of the program is going to be a little bit different and it has got to reflect the policy considerations for Eritrea 

or whatever country you are in. 

And so we found it worked reasonably well. I mean, I never had 

real problems in balancing our engagement with the Under Secretary’s folks and getting their idea of the broad directions we 

wanted to go in and balancing and making that reflective of the 

specific policies unique to the countries we were serving in. It 

worked pretty well. 

Senator AKAKA. I also understand that the Public Diplomacy 

Area Office Directors, the directors attend meetings with regional 

assistant secretaries and deputy assistant secretaries. I just wonder about whether the attendance at these meetings translated into 

policy outcomes. Mr. Kovach. 

Mr. KOVACH. I was the Director of the East Asia Office for 21⁄2

years and I can tell you that they did. I had a respected voice. We 

were dealing—this is 2003 to 2005. We dealt a lot with how to, I 

think, put certain security programs in Southeast Asia to Muslim 

majority countries or to Muslim media directed at Muslims. We instituted public diplomacy in the Pacific Islands, an area where the 

Chinese were exerting more and more soft power, and we came up 

with a formula to do that. We talked to the Chinese about reaching 

out to their Muslims to give them more of a sense of global connection, supplied speakers at, I believe, the 600th anniversary of Islam 

in China, which a group of Chinese Muslim intellectuals were celebrating with seminars and historical reflections. 

So yes, there was a lot of that. Then day-to-day issues would 

come up, Burma and how pronounced we should be about our feelings about the regime there, publicly versus through private diplomacy in APAC and the Southeast Asia Organization. 

16 

So yes. I mean, public diplomacy and reorganization started with 

a proposition that we would have a seat at the policy table and I 

think that has been gained by having those offices in the regional 

bureaus that spearhead our main product, which is bilateral diplomacy. And I think that at the same time, even then in probably 

a less perfect iteration of structure, I regularly saw the people from 

the Under Secretary’s office and we regularly had a dialogue on resources. I got a line budget, but I also was able to compete for discretionary money against the originality and relevance, policy relevance, of projects I would put forward. So I thought it was a great 

perch. 

Senator AKAKA. Yes. Well, can you give me an example, and my 

question is whether any of these policy profiles were used, such as 

what impacts have public diplomacy offices had on issues like 

NATO enlargement, national missile defense, and Georgia? 

Mr. KOVACH. Well, those were not issues in the East Asia Bureau, but I truly believe that the way we put our policies forward, 

especially—I mean, look at the main issue of this decade, has been 

counterterrorism and the global war. Some of the ways we—some 

of the agreements we crafted with countries in that region might 

get the backs of moderate Muslims up, and I think that we were 

at the table not only in figuring out how to structure those agreements, but how to publicize them, what should be in the public domain and what should remain in the domain of diplomatic discourse. I think we had a very important seat at the table in determining that and those in some ways were our major diplomatic 

products of that mid-decade period. 

Senator AKAKA. Yes. Well, Mr. Midura and Mr. Ruth, the public 

diplomacy area offices are apparently designed to be the field’s window on Washington and Washington’s window on the field. In this 

age of instantaneous e-mail communications, I am concerned that 

this arrangement may not add value. For example, if an officer at 

the post has a problem relating to the Fulbright program, why isn’t 

it more efficient for that officer simply to reach out directly to the 

appropriate office in the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs? 

Mr. MIDURA. Mr. Chairman, they do routinely. In fact, I can 

vouch for that one personally because as the Cultural Attache in 

Prague, I had a substantial Fulbright program, a substantial number of International Visitors, U.S. Speakers and others, and we coordinated routinely with ECA and IIP on these programs. We obviously let our desk officer know what was going on with these, as 

well. But the desk officers had a lot of responsibilities and particularly within the PD area. Many of these desk officers are responsible for more than one country. So as long as the concern was with 

an individual program, it was much more likely that I was going 

to get a problem resolved by going directly to the bureau that ran 

that program. 

We worked with the desk officers primarily on resource issues, 

on policy issues that needed the support of the bureau, and ad hoc 

things that came around where we did not necessarily know where 

to go in the Department and were enlisting the support of the desk 

officer to find the right person. But when it came to programs from 

the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs or IIP, we had contact people within those bureaus and we went to them directly. 

17 

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Kovach. 

Mr. KOVACH. If I could give you an example, my last overseas 

tour was in Pakistan and during my time, we negotiated the largest student Fulbright Program in history, and this was not an easy 

negotiation because there were three funding groups, including the 

Government of Pakistan using, I believe, World Bank money, and 

USAID and the State Department. If my regional public diplomacy 

office hadn’t had good contacts with the branch of ECA, the Academic Programs Branch, because the politics were very tricky, and 

it is not only the Academic Programs Branch, but it is the Board 

of Foreign Scholars and what their attitudes are because this was 

a program that had some interesting features to it, let us just say. 

Without those cues from that desk, I don’t think I ever could 

have pulled this off with the State Department, with my own agency, believe it or not. It was vital to have them there as intermediaries. It would not have happened. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. Senator Voinovich. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Would you agree that our public diplomacy 

is at a low point? 

Mr. MIDURA. I don’t really know how to answer that, Senator. I 

mean, my experience goes back for 20 years, and from the perspective of the individual officer, I think people are pretty much doing 

the same things they have always been doing. Now, whether the 

resources have kept up with the needs or not is another question. 

Senator VOINOVICH [presiding]. I think we know that they 

haven’t. 

Mr. MIDURA. We try and work with what we have got. I mean, 

that is really the—the posts know they have a certain amount of 

money each year. They know that, we in the Under Secretary’s office, have a certain amount that we are going to try and get them 

as much as we can. In the case of countries where there are immediate crisis needs, we work with our Congressional partners for 

supplementals. It would be nice if we had more in the way of resources, but at the same time, I am not certain that we would be 

able to handle a huge influx of new resources right now without 

also reviewing our staffing patterns and other things. I think all 

of these things are of a piece and we probably have to look at the 

whole picture for the next Administration and we know how that 

is going to go. 

I mean, speaking as an individual PD officer, I don’t feel any 

lower or higher than I did 10 years ago. I think we go out there 

and we try and do the best we can with what we have. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Did anybody sit down and say, like Karen 

Hughes or Jim Glassman come in and say, hey, I think we have 

a problem. Let us get all you folks together and let us develop a 

strategic plan on how we can do better. Is there such a plan at all 

in existence? 

Mr. MIDURA. Well, I mentioned earlier that with the transition 

coming up, we are certainly going to have to look at revising the 

strategic plan that we have got right now. It is the sort of thing 

that we would definitely want to look to do in the future, to see 

whether the one we have from 2007 is appropriate to the coming 

Administration and the needs of PD in the future. We will update 

that document. It is just a question of when. 

18 

Senator VOINOVICH. One of the things that we have tried to do 

is we have a high-risk list that the GAO puts together, and Senator 

Akaka and I have tried to work on getting OMB and GAO to sit 

down and develop a strategic plan on how we are going to get them 

off the high-risk list and develop metrics in determining whether 

or not progress is being made. It would seem to me that with a new 

Administration coming in, that would be really good for the State 

Department to look at that area and look at the human resources 

that you need, but also here is where we are and here is where we 

want to be, here are the problems, and try and develop a real plan 

on how to do better than what you have been able to do. 

Mr. MIDURA. I absolutely agree. As far as the evaluation piece 

is concerned, that is something that I think we are going to make 

good progress on fairly quickly. Mr. Ruth mentioned PD impact 

earlier and how we are attempting to aggregate data and look at 

the impact of public diplomacy programs worldwide. We have had 

a good start on that, but due to resource constraints, we were only 

able to do a limited number of sample posts at the beginning. 

While OMB was very pleased with the measures that we used and 

the indicators, the response that we got was, OK, this is good, but 

we need a lot more. We need a much larger sample. 

And, in fact, we have invested a substantial amount of this year’s 

resources in expanding that sample. We have the contract for that 

coming up soon and we will expand that to other posts so that we 

can get a better baseline view of exactly how effective these programs are. I think that will help a lot. 

We have already discussed the human resource issues. That is 

something we are definitely going to have to look at. It is being reviewed. And we do have the good news that people are moving up 

in the ranks and we are going to have a lot more 02 public diplomacy officers in the not-too-distant future than we do right now. 

So the huge deficits that we have been facing will disappear. So 

there are optimistic elements to this. 

Senator VOINOVICH. If we provide the money. 

Mr. MIDURA. Well, some of them are there already. I mean, a lot 

of these people right now are at the junior officer level, or entrylevel officer. They are doing consular tours in many cases and they 

will move into public diplomacy when they have completed those 

tours. So we should have more of these people for the future. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Are there any benchmark programs out 

there? I mean, is there a consensus of what country is doing the 

best job in the area of public diplomacy right now? 

Mr. MIDURA. I don’t know if we have that done by country. We 

tend to do evaluation more by program. Mr. Ruth, if you want to 

address that. 

Mr. RUTH. Thank you, Senator. No, there is no ranking country 

by country of who is considered to be doing the best job. There are 

now, as I mentioned, that we have the information and the Mission 

Activity Tracker, it is possible for the Under Secretary, and, in fact, 

any State Department manager or policy maker, to look and see exactly what each country, in fact, is doing, which audiences they are 

engaging on which topics and in what format, and that gives us a 

large leg up in terms of transparency and accountability and the 

ability to make decisions about resource allocations in the future. 

19 

The kinds of formal evaluations that we undertake are generally 

program by program and not country by country. 

Senator VOINOVICH. I have no other questions. I don’t know if 

Senator Akaka wants to ask any more questions. 

Senator AKAKA [presiding]. Yes. Well, thank you very much, my 

friend, Senator Voinovich. 

I want to thank this panel very much for your experience, I think 

even wisdom on how we can work on our diplomatic areas in the 

future of our country. I would tell you that I am very interested 

in my friend’s suggestion about resumes—— [Laughter.] 

As something that can really help determine the type of person 

we need in the office. And so that is something that we need to 

work on. 

I want to thank this panel very much for your responses and 

your testimony here and ask you to continue to be close to us as 

we continue in this effort and look forward to working with you in 

the new year. 

Again, I want to say thank you very much for your statements 

and your responses. 

Mr. MIDURA. On behalf of my colleagues and myself, thanks to 

both of you and thank you for your support of public diplomacy. We 

really appreciate it. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. 

Now, I would like to welcome the second panel of witnesses, the 

Hon. Douglas K. Bereuter, President and CEO of the Asia Foundation, and a former U.S. Congressman; Ambassador Elizabeth 

Bagley, Vice Chairman, U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, Washington, DC; Stephen Chaplin, Senior Advisor, the 

American Academy of Diplomacy, Washington, DC; the Hon. Ronna 

Freiberg, Former Director of Congressional and Intergovernmental 

Affairs, U.S. Information Agency; and the Hon. Jill A. Schuker, 

Fellow, University of Southern California, Center for Public Diplomacy. 

As you know, it is a custom of this Subcommittee to swear in all 

witnesses, so I ask all of you to please stand and raise your right 

hand. 

Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give this Subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, 

so help you, God? 

Mr. BEREUTER. I do. 

Ms. BAGLEY. I do. 

Mr. CHAPLIN. I do. 

Ms. FREIBERG. I do. 

Ms. SCHUKER. I do. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. Let the record note that the witnesses answered in the affirmative. 

Before I start, I want you to know that your full written statements will be part of the record. I would also like to remind you 

to keep your remarks brief, given the number of people testifying 

this afternoon. 

It is great to see a friend, my former colleague in the House, Mr. 

Bereuter, and it is good to have you here. May I ask you to begin 

and proceed with your statement. 

20 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Bereuter appears in the Appendix on page 46. 

TESTIMONY OF DOUGLAS K. BEREUTER,1 PRESIDENT AND 

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, THE ASIA FOUNDATION 

Mr. BEREUTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Voinovich. It 

is nice to be here today. And thank you for the opportunity to testify. As I understand the focus of the Subcommittee’s inquiry, it 

builds upon the widespread recognition that America needs to increase its public diplomacy efforts and especially to make its public 

diplomacy far more effective than it is today. 

I will not neglect your invitation to give you my thoughts on the 

subject of desirable administrative and structural reforms. The 

views I offer today are not the position of the Asia Foundation, but 

strictly my own. I wrote my own testimony based upon 26 years 

of serving in the House and 20 years of that on the Foreign Affairs 

Committee, 10 years on Intelligence, now the last 4 years chairing 

the Asia Foundation, which is, I think, the premier development 

organization working in Asia. 

I feel it is my duty to tell you today as a citizen with that experience base that although administrative and structural changes in 

the bureaucracies of our important departments and agencies surely could bring positive changes in the effectiveness of America’s 

public diplomacy, a more fundamental reorientation of our public 

diplomacy effort and emphasis is far more important. 

I think it is a common mistake or misunderstanding repeated 

over and over again when our government or advisory groups seek 

to improve the American public diplomacy structure. It is a failure 

to recognize that while bureaucratic reorganization and better 

management practices can bring improvements, the most important American public diplomacy assets are, (a) the American people, and relatedly, (b) the opportunities for foreigners to see demonstrated or otherwise experience those characteristics of our country and our people which the world traditionally has most admired. 

The world has admired American openness, its system of justice, 

popular culture—generally, and unmatched environment of opportunity. They admire, above all, the practices, principles, and values 

undergirding America’s tradition of democracy, pluralism, rule of 

law, and tolerance, which Americans embrace as universally applicable. It is only when we seem to have strayed from those principles, practices, and values that we disappoint the world and we 

are seen as hypocritical. 

Today, while there is still some confusion and uncertainty, a misplaced sense of priorities and ineffective practices in the public diplomacy of the country, it is fortunately recognized increasingly 

and accepted that public diplomacy cannot just be regarded as a job 

of the Nation’s diplomats, high-level State Department spokesmen, 

or other governmental officials. A major impediment to improving 

America’s public diplomacy, in my judgment, has been the prevalence of the view that improving our Nation’s image and influence 

abroad is primarily a direct governmental function. One might say 

to emphatically make a point that the implementation of effective 

public policy and public diplomacy specifically is too important to 

be solely or primarily the responsibility of government officials. 

21 

I looked at the recommendations of eight high-level task forces, 

commissions, committees convened in the aftermath of September 

11, 2001. I found a very strong consensus that it is in our national 

interest to not only emphasize public diplomacy, especially in the 

Islamic world, but also that such an effort should be implemented 

with a very major role for non-governmental organizations, credible 

high-profile individual Americans, and the private sector in general. 

Ambassador Edward Djerejian had something to say about that 

and he certainly endorses that kind of view. He said the United 

States should recognize that the best way to get our message 

across is directly to the people rather than through formal diplomatic channels, and I have a cautionary note on page three of my 

prepared statement about the use of American business expertise 

in public diplomacy. I am not going to go into that in detail because 

of the shortness of time. 

I also suggest on the bottom of that page and on page four, as 

well, that some of the views of one of the country’s noted scholars 

and programmatic and practical advisors on the subject, Dr. Nancy 

Snow of the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University has a lot to say that is very valuable. I take four 

of her 10 points there and I specifically call them to your staff’s attention and to you. 

So there is nothing really new about the U.S. Government conducting some of its public diplomacy programs through non-governmental organizations. We, at the Asia Foundation, do a lot of that. 

We have a whole range of things that I mentioned on the bottom 

of page four that, in fact, are public diplomacy, and we use USAID 

funds, we use from private donors, we use from other governments 

who also are trying to encourage democracy, pluralism, tolerance, 

citizen participation, and they help reinforce the principles and values which Americans embrace, as I said, universally. 

I call to your attention, as Senator Voinovich has mentioned, the 

CSIS Commission on Smart Power. I was there when they released 

its report. Two of your Senate colleagues served on the body, two 

from the House, former Senator Nancy Kassebaum, and that report 

emphasizes that the American public, drawn from every corner of 

the world, constitutes the U.S.’s greatest public diplomacy asset, 

especially those citizens who beneficially volunteer, study, work, 

and travel abroad, if their conduct reflects those things which foreigners have long admired about America and our country. 

As I said, in my judgment, the American people and the positive 

features of our whole American experience, observed abroad and 

here at home by example or direct contact, are our two greatest assets. They make our case better than any government agency ever 

can. Our public diplomacy officers abroad should not have the view 

that they directly deliver public diplomacy. They should employ 

Americans and the experience in America, even if that experience 

is demonstrated in Asia or Africa or elsewhere in the world. That 

is their duty, to use those resources not directly, but to use the best 

resources of the American people. 

So I looked at about 10 specific categories of proposals that various organizations and people have made. I am going to make very 

candid comments about them, I think things that are realistic from 

22 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Bagley appears in the Appendix on page 55. 

2The report submitted by Ms. Bagley referred to above appears in the Appendix on page 149. 

a Congressional point of view as to what can be accomplished. You 

can take items from No. 2 and No. 6 and No. 9 and No. 10 that 

make sense in my judgment. 

But I would like to conclude, Chairman Akaka, Senator Voinovich, and Members of the Subcommittee, by saying that the primary message I give to you today is to emphasize that for a truly 

effective public diplomacy effort, America must return to—and I 

say return to, and then reinforce and remind people throughout the 

world by example what they have especially admired about our 

country and our people. That won’t be accomplished by an improved governmental relations campaign, by governmental reorganization, or only by adding more State Department public diplomacy officers in our embassies or consulates or Washington, DC. 

However, greater good will, respect, credibility, and support for our 

country can be regained. Changes in policies and emphases, a 

smarter variety of public diplomacy, and perhaps some governmental reorganization are only part of the answer. 

The primary orientation of your effort must be to remind people 

abroad and reinforce by example and our direct experience what 

they and their leaders traditionally have liked and admired about 

America and our country. We have done it well in the past. We can 

and we must do it again. 

Thank you very much for this opportunity. 

Senator VOINOVICH [presiding]. Thanks very much. Ms. Bagley. 

TESTIMONY OF AMBASSADOR ELIZABETH F. BAGLEY,1 VICE 

CHAIRMAN, U.S. ADVISORY COMMISSION ON PUBLIC DIPLOMACY 

Ms. BAGLEY. Thank you, Senator Voinovich. Thank you for the 

opportunity to appear before you at this hearing on reforming the 

public diplomacy bureaucracy. I am honored to represent the U.S. 

Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy this afternoon and to 

brief the Subcommittee on our 2008 report entitled, ‘‘Getting the 

People Part Right: A Report on the Human Resources Dimension 

of U.S. Public Diplomacy.’’ 

At the outset, Commission Chairman William Hybl and I would 

like to ask the Chairman’s permission to enter the entirety of our 

report in the record.2

Senator VOINOVICH. Without objection. 

Ms. BAGLEY. Thank you. Just over a year ago, the Commission 

reviewed the extensive recent literature on U.S. public diplomacy 

and determined that few, if any, observers had ever sought to look 

under the hood and study the impact of internal human resource 

practices and structures on our Nation’s efforts to communicate 

with foreign publics. We decided to explore this basket of issues because, in the final analysis, as Congressman Bereuter just said, 

people are the key to success of our Nation’s public diplomacy. 

Over a one-year period, the Commission met with scores of State 

Department officials and outside experts on Public Diplomacy (PD) 

human resources issues, and we learned a great deal in the process. Our 2008 report contains our findings and recommendations. 

23 

In this short statement, I would like to highlight our key conclusions. Later, I will be happy to elaborate, if necessary, and answer 

any questions the Members of the Subcommittee might have. 

In sum, Mr. Chairman, we found that the State Department recruits smart people, but not necessarily the right people for the PD 

career track; tests candidates on the wrong knowledge sets; trains 

its officers in the wrong skills; and evaluates those officers mostly 

on the wrong tasks. 

In terms of personnel structures, State has a PD bureaucracy in 

Washington that hasn’t been critically examined since the 1999 

merger and that may or may not be functioning optimally. Its overseas public affairs officers are spending the majority of their time 

administering rather than communicating with foreign publics. 

And meaningful integration of public diplomacy into State Department decision making and staffing remains elusive. In short, Mr. 

Chairman, we are not getting the people part right. Let me now 

take up each of these points in a little more detail. 

On recruitment, very simply, the Department of State makes no 

special effort to recruit individuals into the public diplomacy, or 

PD, career track who would bring experience or skills specifically 

relevant to the work of communicating with and influencing foreign 

publics. No serious Presidential or Congressional campaign or private sector company would hire communications personnel who 

have no background in communications, but to a large degree, that 

is exactly what the U.S. Government is doing and we need to 

change that. 

Turning to the Foreign Service examination process, we found 

that the Foreign Service Officer Test and Oral Assessment do not 

specifically test for public diplomacy instincts and communications 

skills. Since we neither recruit for nor test for these skills, it is 

thus possible for candidates to enter the PD career track, and for 

that matter the other four Foreign Service career tracks, without 

having any documented proficiency in core PD-related skills. This 

is problematic. The Commission believes we need to modify the 

exam, particularly the Oral Assessment, to include more substantive PD content. 

In terms of public diplomacy training, though there have already 

clearly been some improvements in recent years, a number of conspicuous and serious blind spots persist. For one, we make virtually no effort to train our PD officers in either the science of persuasive communication or the nuts and bolts of how to craft and 

run sophisticated message campaigns. The Commission believes we 

need to rectify this. We would like to see more substantive PD offerings at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute, including a rigorous 9-month course analogous to the highly regarded one 

currently offered to economic officers. 

With respect to the State Department’s Employee Evaluation Report (EER) form, the essential problem is that it lacks a section 

specifically devoted to PD outreach and thus contains no inherent 

requirement that State Department employees actually engage in 

such outreach. Until it does, PD officers overseas will continue to 

spend the overwhelming majority of their time behind their desks 

administering rather than out actually directly engaging with foreign publics. The Commission wants to see outreach built into the 

24 

EER form, and we also want to see at least one substantive PD 

communication task built into the work requirements of every PD 

offices in the field. A one-line change in the EER form of the type 

we have proposed could result in thousands more outreach events 

per year than we are seeing now. Now is the time to put direct outreach at the center of American public diplomacy, right where the 

current and previous Secretaries of State have said they believe it 

should be. 

Let me now turn to the public diplomacy area offices. At present, 

the mechanism by which public diplomacy considerations are ostensibly brought into State Department policymaking is the PD area 

office, about which you already talked with the previous panel. 

This is a self-standing office within the six regional bureaus. The 

Commission looked at this structure and concluded that though PD 

now has a higher profile within the State Department than it did 

some years ago, the jury is still out as to whether that higher profile has been translated into appreciable services and policy outcomes. The current bureaucratic arrangement is anomalous in two 

ways. First, Washington-based PD officials take policy direction, as 

we talked about before, not from the official to whom they nominally report, and that is the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, 

but rather from an official to whom they do not formally report, 

namely the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Second, PD is the only substantive function not permanently 

represented on the county affairs desk, the focus of Department 

policymaking. We think it is time to revisit the current arrangement to see if it is working as it should. 

With regard to the role of public affairs officers (PAOs), at post, 

particularly at large posts, the Commission was surprised to find 

that notwithstanding the job title, most PAO responsibilities were 

inwardly, not outwardly, oriented. In short, our PAOs are essentially administrators, not communicators. The Commission recognizes that program administration is an important component of 

public diplomacy that will always be a part of the job. Nonetheless, 

we would like to see the Department take a critical look at the 

PAO position, particularly at large posts, to see if these senior officers are playing the role they ought to be playing and if this expensive managerial layer is cost effective and adding value. 

Finally, a few words about the integration of public diplomacy officers into State Department staffing. The stated goal of the 1999 

merger of the USIA into the State Department was to integrate PD 

considerations and PD personnel more fully into the mainstream of 

State Department planning and policy making. The Commission 

has found that this integration remains largely elusive, and concomitantly that PD officers continue to be significantly underrepresented in the ranks of the Department’s senior management. As 

we put in the report, ‘‘the PD career track is no longer ‘separate,’ 

but it certainly is not yet ‘equal.’ ’’ If the Department is to attract 

and retain first-rate PD officers, then it needs to demonstrate that 

these officers will be regarded as capable of holding senior Department positions. 

Let me conclude. Getting the people part right can go a long way 

toward enhancing the overall effectiveness of America’s outreach to 

the world. As our report suggests, there is much work to be done. 

25 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Chaplin appears in the Appendix on page 59. 

2The report submitted by Mr. Chaplin appears in the Appendix on page 190. 

That said, most of the needed fixes are feasible. With some political 

and bureaucratic, and perhaps some Congressional attention—they 

can be made. We certainly hope they will be. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you very much again for this opportunity. 

I look forward to responding to any questions you may have. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you, Ms. Bagley. Mr. Chaplin. 

TESTIMONY OF STEPHEN M. CHAPLIN,1 SENIOR ADVISOR, THE 

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF DIPLOMACY 

Mr. CHAPLIN. Senator Voinovich, thank you for the opportunity 

to appear here today to testify on what can be done to improve 

public diplomacy’s performance in achieving foreign policy objectives. I spent a 32-year career with USIA, was a member of the 

Senior Foreign Service, and acted as a member of the steering committee at USIA on the consolidation of the Department of State. 

Today, I represent the American Academy of Diplomacy and the 

Stimson Center, which together have produced a new report entitled, ‘‘The Foreign Affairs Budget for the Future: Fixing the Crisis 

in Diplomatic Readiness.’’ I served on both the advisory group and 

the working group that prepared the report, which will be issued 

next month.2

I think the best description of why this report is necessary are 

some words in the foreword from Ambassadors Ron Neumann, 

Thomas Pickering, Thomas Boyat of the Academy, and Ellen 

Laipson, President of Stimson, ‘‘The study is intended to provide 

solutions for and stimulate a needed conversation about the urgent 

needs to provide the necessary funding for our Nation’s foreign 

policies. We need more diplomats, foreign assistance professionals, 

and public diplomacy experts to achieve our national objectives and 

fulfill our international obligations. This study offers a path forward, identifying responsible and achievable ways to meet the Nation’s needs. It is our hope that the Congress and the next Administration will use this study to build the right foreign affairs budget 

for the future.’’ 

Now, many fine studies have been published in recent years that 

have recommended institutional reorganization of foreign affairs 

agencies, offered guidance on how U.S. foreign policy should be conducted. This report is different. Its purpose is straightforward: Determine what the Secretary of State requires in terms of personnel 

and program funding to successfully achieve American foreign policy objectives. Based on informed budgetary and manpower analyses, the Academy and Stimson report provide specific staffing and 

cost recommendations. 

My colleague, Stanley Silverman, a longtime USIA Controller, 

and I focused on public diplomacy. This is what we found. Despite 

recent increases, public diplomacy in the State Department is 

understaffed and underfunded. The fiscal year 2008 PD budget is 

$859 million. The PD’s current staff of 1,331 Americans is 24 percent less than a comparable figure of 1,742 in 1986. According to 

State data, public diplomacy in early fiscal year 2008 had a 13 perVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:40 Oct 30, 2009 Jkt 045580 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\45580.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
26 

cent Foreign Service vacancy rate. That is equivalent to 90 man 

years. 

To have a reasonable chance to accomplish its objectives, PD 

needs to cover an employment shortfall, establish additional positions, obtain greater program funding, and significantly expand 

training. We believe that our recommendations for the 2010–2014 

time frame will significantly improve PD’s capability. 

We are all familiar with international public opinion surveys 

showing extensive dissatisfaction with many U.S. global policies 

and the disagreement of U.S. allies with certain U.S. decisions. 

However, these survey results don’t fully convey foreign attitudes 

toward the United States. More than any Nation, the United States 

is looked to for ideas, innovation, and opportunity. In much of the 

world, the United States is viewed as a society that recognizes individual initiative and rewards talent. Given these factors, public diplomacy, properly funded and staffed, can make a difference. 

Before I mention our specific recommendations, I want to stress 

that PD field officers still successfully deal in traditional programs 

such as exchanges, lectures, media placement, and cultural events. 

However, in 2008 and beyond, they and the Washington support 

units must reach out to broader audiences to what I would call the 

Internet generation of 20- to 40-year-olds with credible information, 

and in many instances, entertaining Internet media, which are essential to reach these audiences. 

Whether it is traditional programming or Internet-based programming, public diplomacy’s success results from a long-term 

commitment of staff effort and funding. Our report recommendations cover exchanges, advocacy of U.S. foreign policies and informational and cultural programs about American society, institutions, and values. 

Briefly, they include: Increase permanent American staff by 487 

and locally-employed staff by 369; increase academic exchanges 

over this 5-year period by 100 percent, international visitor grants 

for rising foreign leaders by 50 percent, and youth exchanges by 25 

percent; expand the capacity of PD English and foreign language 

advocacy websites aimed at experts, young professionals, and students, and hire additional specialists in website design and program content; establish 40 American cultural centers to broaden 

the daily U.S. worldwide cultural presence where security conditions permit; reengage the U.S. Binational Center network in Latin 

America of over 100 centers and 100,000 members who desire closer ties with the United States; expand other programs, particularly 

overseas staff and operations, to increase PD effectiveness. 

In total, from fiscal year 2010 to fiscal year 2014, the staff increases we recommend will cost $155.2 million and program activities $455.2 million. Overall funding increases will total $610.4 million in 2014. 

Finally, while training recommendations are located in another 

section of the report, they call for substantially increased training 

opportunities for PD personnel. PD Foreign Service officers, in particular, need more extensive training in foreign languages and area 

studies, technology applications, public speaking, and resources 

management. 

I will be very happy to respond to your questions. Thank you. 

27 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Freiberg appears in the Appendix on page 63. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you, Mr. Chaplin. Ms. Freiberg. 

TESTIMONY OF RONNA A. FREIBERG,1 FORMER DIRECTOR, 

CONGRESSIONAL AND INTERGOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, U.S. 

INFORMATION AGENCY 

Ms. FREIBERG. Thank you, Senator Voinovich. As a veteran of 

USIA, I have a continuing interest in the effectiveness of the Nation’s public diplomacy and our ability to adapt it to the demands 

of the 21st Century. My remarks today reflect my own views and 

not those of any organization. 

It is no secret that our public diplomacy apparatus needs reform. 

Creating a consistent and coherent outreach to foreign publics 

must be a high priority for the next Administration. In the past 

few years, as others in this room have said, we have been flooded 

with reports from numerous high-level task forces studying what 

should be done and to reinvigorate and to strengthen public diplomacy. The report that Mr. Chaplin just described is the newest addition and it contains some valuable information as well as valuable recommendations. 

Some of the reports have also suggested creation of an independent or quasi-governmental organization to perform all or part 

of this function. Although the ideas have merit, it is still unclear 

to me how a new entity would interface with the State Department 

and how it would operate in the field. For this reason, I have focused my testimony on improving State Department’s current public diplomacy organization and operations. 

In his book on soft power, Joe Nye described public diplomacy as 

not only conveying information and selling a positive image, but 

also building long-term relationships that create an enabling environment for government policies. The consolidation of USIA into 

the State Department in 1999 has not made it any easier, I think, 

to sell a positive image or to build long-term relationships. The 

merger, in my view, has been less than successful for public diplomacy, which continues to be plagued with underfunding, lack of 

interagency coordination, a culture that still undervalues and 

marginalizes it, and the encumbrances of a large bureaucracy. 

Since this is the situation that the next President will inherit, I 

don’t advocate recreating the old USIA. The question is, how can 

we make public diplomacy better? I have seven recommendations 

for reform, and since some of these have been mentioned by other 

witnesses, I will not go into great detail in these few minutes. 

First, we do need to clarify and strengthen the role of the Under 

Secretary. We have talked about the sort of bifurcated situation 

that now exists with personnel in the regional offices and in the 

field reporting to regional Assistant Secretaries and to the Undersecretary for Political Affairs. I believe that the regional PD offices 

need to be able to report directly to the Under Secretary for Public 

Diplomacy. Or, we need to create a bureau for field operations. I 

can go into that in the question period if you would like. 

Second, we need to increase public diplomacy resources. Better 

minds than my own, including that of Secretary Gates and my colleagues at this table, have made the same point, that if we are seVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:40 Oct 30, 2009 Jkt 045580 PO 00000 Frm 00031 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\45580.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
28 

rious about our commitment to public diplomacy, we must find the 

resources to expand it in a number of areas, some of which are detailed in my written testimony. Among those options, I would focus 

on expanding exchanges, augmenting the size and technology of the 

Bureau of International Information Programs, and restoring some 

of the positions and facilities in the field that were lost in the 

1990s, such as American Centers. 

Third, we have to, I think, restore the country plan. Prior to the 

consolidation, area offices developed detailed country plans which 

defined communication strategies and set objectives for overseas 

programs. The country plan would bring additional coherence to 

the policymaking process and encourage greater coordination between regional bureaus and PD field operations. 

Fourth, develop a plan for private sector engagement. That 

theme has been repeated on numerous occasions recently and during the last hour-and-a-half. Several of our witnesses, I think, 

agree on that point. The current State Department Office of Public 

Diplomacy does have an Office of Private Sector Outreach. That office should produce a detailed strategy for the next Administration 

on how to leverage private sector and nonprofit resources and expertise in the coming years. If we opt to create an outside organization for public diplomacy, one of its central objectives should be to 

encourage and better utilize this private sector input. 

Fifth, bring coherence to the management of interagency coordination. Too many departments and agencies, Defense and USAID, 

just to name two of them, engage in public diplomacy or strategic 

communications activities, resulting in inconsistent messages and 

lack of accountability. The next Administration should inventory 

these activities government-wide, consider consolidating some of 

them, and at a minimum, decide at what level and how to make 

them work together. That includes the possibility of elevating the 

NSC Policy Coordinating Committee on Strategic Communication 

and Public Diplomacy to a body on a par with the NSC, the HSC, 

and the NEC at the White House. 

Sixth, strike a balance between security needs and public access 

to programs abroad. Current security arrangements at posts, 

though necessary, in many cases hinder efforts by public diplomacy 

officers to interact and engage with both media and citizen groups 

at post. 

And finally, this, I believe, is the most important thing we can 

do moving into a new Administration, and that is we must launch 

a major government-wide international education effort. Both our 

national security and our international competitiveness demand it. 

It will require interagency and certainly Congressional support. 

Such a campaign would have three elements. 

First, attract and welcome more international students to this 

country. The university environment fosters interaction with our 

values, our political system, and our citizenry. Further refinements 

in visa policy and cooperation with institutions of higher learning 

are needed. Other nations have created comprehensive national 

strategies to attract students, and we are competing with those 

other nations. Our lack of such a strategy works to our detriment. 

Second, find ways to make our own students more aware of the 

world beyond our borders by increasing the number and diversity 

29 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Schuker appears in the Appendix on page 68. 

of students who have the opportunity as undergraduates to study 

abroad and the diversity of locations available to them, particularly 

in the developing world and emerging economies. Study abroad 

should not be an opportunity limilited to the wealthy. 

The third element of an international educational strategy, is to 

expand funding for international educational exchange programs, 

beyond the increases of the past 5 years, which have gone largely 

to the Middle East. Participants and alumni of these programs are 

vital public diplomacy assets. 

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, our success in foreign policy depends on our ability to engage and influence foreign publics 

through the power of our values, our institutions, and our national 

character. It depends also on understanding our audiences and 

building the kinds of relationships that outlive the policies of any 

one Administration and sustain us during times of international 

crisis. 

Yes, it is about message, but it is also about people-to-people programs. Yes, it is about mastering communications techniques and 

state-of-the-technologies. But it is also about translating our Nation’s positive attributes into realities that others can experience. 

Too often, people associate public diplomacy with public relations. 

That is only a piece of the puzzle. The art of salesmanship is transient. The art of fostering understanding and good will becomes the 

work of many generations. 

Thank you. I am happy to answer questions. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you, Ms. Freiberg. Ms. Schuker. 

TESTIMONY OF JILL A. SCHUKER,1 FELLOW, UNIVERSITY OF 

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, CENTER FOR PUBLIC DIPLOMACY 

Ms. SCHUKER. Thank you very much. Senator Voinovich, Mr. 

Chairman, and the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to 

address you today on the important organizational challenges facing public diplomacy in this new century. 

Through your hearings on smart power, this Subcommittee has 

been in the forefront of forward thinking on this issue and capturing the urgency and attention it deserves. Twenty-first Century 

U.S. public diplomacy is at a crossroads of both challenge and opportunity and it will be a centerpiece issue for the next Administration taking office in 2009. As the Smart Power report concluded, 

public diplomacy is indeed a companion for effective U.S. foreign 

policy. It is an opportunity, if effectively shaped and executed, to 

create new levers of influence that will ultimately make better use 

of hard power when needed and provide diplomatic alternatives to 

mutual threats and challenges. 

Simply put, public diplomacy must be intimately involved in effectively identifying and promoting our national interests and informing smart power policy. But public diplomacy problems lie in 

both expectations and structure. 

First, the United States is expected to lead by example, as you 

have said, and this becomes a key measurement for effective public 

diplomacy abroad. Poll after poll tells us that we are at a low point 

in moral authority globally. 

30 

Second, 10 years ago, mistakes were made in the rush of ‘‘jerrybuilt’’ architecture for public diplomacy that, in my view, in part, 

threw the baby out with the bathwater, leaving gaps in our public 

diplomacy readiness and effectiveness. Many of these challenges 

have been mentioned. The multitude of serious public diplomacy reports over the last years share the same main message of change, 

and that change is needed both structurally as well as for the role 

of public diplomacy and how it plays in the policy process. 

In addition to the report that was mentioned that is about to 

come out, a new one is about to emerge, I think on October 1, from 

the Brookings Institution that was funded also by Congress, which 

I think will have some very interesting things to say. 

Others testifying here today as inside-government public diplomacy practitioners have spoken more expertly and directly about 

the viability of specific present office structures, personnel, and 

portfolios, but let me enumerate quickly my thoughts given my own 

expertise both inside and outside of government. 

First, while U.S. public diplomacy clearly is directed to a global 

audience, effective public diplomacy must begin at home. This demands a more aware and better educated U.S. public, ensuring 

that at every level of our society and government we are structurally geared to preparing ourselves for the 21st Century challenges, such as shifting demographics. 

Targeted public diplomacy and the training of our professional 

civil service in all departments must be given an integral place so 

that all sectors, be it health, housing, the arts, sciences, etc., have 

both accountability and an awareness and an expertise in public diplomacy. The recent Washington Post article highlighting a new intelligence forecast looking to 2025 reportedly being prepared for the 

next President predicts that our increasingly competitive flat world 

will enable the United States to remain preeminent, but ‘‘its dominance will be relatively diminished because of the rise of everyone 

else.’’ Public diplomacy needs to prepare for and navigate this successfully. 

Overall, public diplomacy needs recognition of the professionalism of the public diplomacy function, the independence of its 

work, the quality professional corps, and deeper resource and financial support that is needed, and the reality that effective public 

diplomacy means long-term planning, outreach, and engagement, 

which is now missing. 

The dismantlement of USIA, which I am not asking to have reconstituted, but the dismantlement of USIA and its transfer into 

the Department of State continues to have repercussions. This 

transfer caused serious disruption with the departure of many professionals and the resistance by and to a new culture, whatever the 

good intent. Lessons should be learned from this experience about 

how to reinvent government more successfully. The President sets 

the tone and agenda, but State runs the function. 

Day in and day out, it is the cadre of professionals who need and 

must have adequate resource support, funding, training, and respect, which is not always there. An appreciation by the Foreign 

Service of public diplomats’ expertise is too often taken for granted 

by regional bureaus, and in the conflict of shifting directives from 

the regional bureaus, the ambassador if abroad, and the Under 

31 

Secretary. This must be better rationalized and the independent 

public diplomacy role respected. 

It is also important to recognize that the role of the public diplomat is intrinsically, in my view, separate from that of a spokesman or press officer, and this has gotten lost in translation. Public 

diplomacy is definitionally a two-way street, seeking to reach out 

and dialogue with the street beyond traditional networks of officialdom, the basic diplomatic focus of the State Department. This 

is actually one of the oddities of public diplomacy being based at 

State. 

The seige mentality that has overtaken much of our diplomatic 

in-country outreach since September 11, 2001, clearly also has hurt 

the effectiveness of public diplomacy. So many of our embassies 

have become armed camps, cut off from the countries in which they 

reside and their publics. How to find a better balance between security and contact is a major challenge that needs to be addressed, 

and this includes visa reform, as well, which you have also mentioned, which would enable better reverse public diplomacy in 

terms of students and cultural exchanges. 

Public-private partnerships also are very important to optimize 

effective public diplomacy engagement. They need to be more aggressively and successfully pursued to embrace the reach and resources they can provide outside of government, impacting public 

diplomacy in ways that cannot be successfully accomplished by government alone. 

Some of the dollars, which is in my testimony, that the private 

sector has, for example, Citigroup’s budget in 2007 in 100 countries 

was $81.7 billion. In 180 countries, this was nine times the amount 

that the State Department is dealing within its entire budget. 

We also need better training and mastery of the new media by 

our public diplomats. These provide a different way to social network and inform citizens of other countries about United States’ interest and values. This ranges from the Internet to blogging to all 

modern public diplomacy vehicles which, in addition to traditional 

skills, we need to encourage new information, technology-savvy 

public diplomats. 

Priority must also be attached to the nomination and confirmation process for the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy. The 

short-tenured revolving door of this particular job has swung often 

since the reorganization of the late 1990s and added to its woes. 

The reasons need to be assessed by this Subcommittee. Public diplomacy’s troops have not had the full, consistent, internal integration and direction needed and required for full success. 

Specific programs face problems, as well, including Alhurra and 

even Radio Sawa and programs being run through the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Too often, they are viewed as propagandistic rather than as hard news or providing an honest broker 

perspective. If we are going to put money and muscle into broadcasting, then we should look at what has worked for us—Voice of 

America, for example—and not diminish or undercut or dilute 

these structures. Does cutting out VOA to India, as has been done 

recently, I gather, or cutting it back in former Soviet republics really make sense for our long-term smart power interests? Are we letting specific short-term policy and low funding run public diploVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:40 Oct 30, 2009 Jkt 045580 PO 00000 Frm 00035 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\45580.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
32 

macy before public diplomacy can do the job? This is unproductive 

and a challenge for Congressional consideration. 

We also need to bring into government public diplomacy talent 

we have either been ignoring or discouraging from outside of government, including skilled immigrant Americans who have language skills and geographical and cultural knowledge. One of our 

country’s strengths is our diversity and it is one of the most identifiable ways to demonstrate tangibly abroad what we mean when 

we say public diplomacy begins at home. 

On funding, which has already been mentioned, funding is minuscule relative to funding for similar activities at the Defense Department, which indeed both Joe Biden recently, as the Chairman 

of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as well as Secretary of 

Defense Bob Gates have mentioned, and those have been addressed 

already in testimony. 

Two final points quickly about the structure of public diplomacy. 

Both our Presidential candidates have mentioned the importance of 

ideas such as AmeriCorps, America’s Voice Initiative. I think these 

would be very useful. 

Last, and I mention this in my testimony, I would recommend serious consideration by the next President of having a senior advisor 

in the White House responsible to the President with responsibility 

for public diplomacy, sending an immediate signal abroad. This 

would not be the running of day-to-day public diplomacy, but it 

would add a dimension that I explain in some detail in the testimony. Thank you very much. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you. 

The American Academy of Diplomacy, Mr. Chaplin, has done, I 

think, a pretty good job of making some recommendations. It was 

interesting, I was over at John Kerry’s house and there was a presentation between Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft about bipartisan 

foreign policy and I asked the question, what about the human resources that you are going to need to implement the policy, and not 

very much in the book about it? 

I think one of our big problems here is that, at least on this side 

of the government, there is not enough appreciation about the fact 

that you need the people in place to get the job done. So the real 

challenge, I think, is if we are going to change this around and do 

a better job of public diplomacy, we are going to have to make the 

commitment in terms of the resources that are necessary, also to 

try and make sure that we get the right individual in, as I mentioned. Some of you were here for the previous panel, but what is 

the job description for the individual that ought to head up this 

part of the State Department? 

It gets back also to the issue of even the State Department in 

terms of management. I think that Dick Armitage and Colin Powell 

did a pretty good job of stirring some esprit de corps back into the 

State Department. Condi had lots of things to do. In my opinion, 

Bob Zellick should never have gotten the job. That wasn’t the job 

for him. So having the right people in the right places at the right 

times makes a big difference. 

I think all of you in your respective roles should keep working 

on trying to get this across to whichever candidate you are supporting, or your organization can make that available to them. 

33 

The big issue, again, is the funding. Mr. Bereuter, you spent a 

lot of time here. Now you are with the Asia Foundation. You have 

also headed up the NATO Interparliamentary Group. Do you believe that the fact that we are kind of taking care of the rest of the 

world in terms of our military prowess, and if you look at the budgets, that of the NATO nations that they are supposed to be coming 

up with their 2 percent, they don’t come up with that money at all. 

We are doing it for them. As a result of that, I think we are pouring so much more money into defense where we should be putting 

it more into the public diplomacy area. 

I would like all of your observations. Which countries are doing 

a better job than we are in public diplomacy? Are there any benchmarks out there that we can look to? 

Mr. BEREUTER. Thank you, Senator Voinovich, for that question. 

Well, I have always thought that, unfortunately, we seem to have 

to do the heavy lifting, and for many parts of the world, we come 

across as the heavy in that respect. I have always thought it would 

be nice to be, for example, a Scandinavian country and focus most 

of your resources on soft power and present this image to the 

world. 

But we do have some advantages yet because people around the 

world still admire our people, our country, our system, when we 

live up to the principles and values, so we have those advantages. 

We have shown in the past we can do it (public diplomacy) very 

well. 

I will come back to resources, if I may, in just a second. The 

number of public diplomacy officers we have today is not an insignificant number. It has been increased substantially. The problem, 

in my judgment, is that they spend only a small amount of their 

time really on that role, and you heard from a very distinguished 

member of the Foreign Service, Ambassador Delisi, what I thought 

was the fundamental problem, and the fundamental problem is 

they are still talking about resources as if our public diplomacy officers must have this incredible variety of language training and 

other skills—highly desirable, no doubt about it, but it is not their 

responsibility, in my judgment, nor the effective way to regard 

themselves as responsible for the direct delivery of public diplomacy. They have to understand how to manage the resources we 

have in the American people and the experience that we can give 

the foreign public here and abroad. That magnifies our resources 

tremendously if they have that attitude. 

But to believe that public servants, people in our government primarily are responsible for the direct delivery of public diplomacy 

fails to take advantage of the resources and the expertise we have. 

So that is my point. I guess I have made it before, but we have 

those advantages. We took advantage of them in the past when we 

had USIA, to a greater extent. 

Let us take a look at public libraries today, U.S. libraries abroad. 

There are very few today. They are behind security. They are inaccessible, largely. Our American Corners facilities too are few and 

far between. We deliver in the Asia Foundation over a million 

books a year abroad, all donated by our American publishers, and 

they are located in some 43,000 locations in Asia. We get some 

USAID assistance to help us move them across the ocean, but we 

34 

certainly, could use more resources. This is a way of taking the 

American experience through books and materials to an extraordinary number of people. 

Muhammad Yunus, for example, a Nobel Prize winner, said, ‘‘I 

first had my look at America, my experience, by looking at books 

that you delivered to me in Bangladesh when I was a boy.’’ So 

within the problems of security we have today with our embassies, 

we need to look at other alternatives in that specific area, for example. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Ms. Bagley, you mentioned that from your 

Commission’s point of view, that we are recruiting the wrong kind 

of people. What kind of people should we be going after and where 

do we find them? 

Ms. BAGLEY. I think, Senator, it goes back to what Mr. Bereuter 

was saying, and others about the kinds of people that we want to 

have and those are those who have communications skills. You can 

worry about management. You can talk about managing your programs, which is the IV Program, the Fulbright programs, all the 

wonderful cultural and exchange programs, which I do agree 

should probably be increased, but there is so much more that a 

PAO should be able to do overseas. 

I think the kind of person you want is someone who has communications skills already, who understands how to communicate with 

the public, who understands how to look at polling and use that as 

an expression of whatever the sentiment is in that particular country. That is on the overseas part. 

At the State Department level, and that goes back to the kind 

of holistic approach which the Commission has endorsed, and that 

is to start with the testing, we have two tests. The Foreign Service 

exam does not test to any communication skills or any kind of 

strength that would be natural to the PD career track. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Well, you could look for people that do have 

communications. There are great schools—— 

Ms. BAGLEY. I know. Exactly. 

Senator VOINOVICH. My alma mater has the Scripps School and 

they do a bang-up job at producing people. 

I think maybe the State Department would be saying there are 

some folks there that could be—I mean, it is amazing to me. My 

chief of staff, when I was governor my last 2 years, was out of communications, a great manager, but he knew how to communicate. 

I mean, that seems it is a no-brainer, I would say. 

Ms. BAGLEY. It is not rocket science, no, and that is something 

they don’t really do yet at this point and I think that was one of 

our big recommendations, was that with the Foreign Service Exam, 

especially the Oral Assessment, just to begin with communications. 

When they talk to a Foreign Service applicant, they never ask 

them if they have ever had communications training. They don’t 

test them on their speech making or before a board to talk about 

press inquiries. There are a lot of things you could test them on 

that they are not tested. So we are hoping—and that was one of 

our recommendations—that just to begin with, the testing should 

require some sort of communication ability for the PD officer, in 

particular. 

35 

Senator VOINOVICH. We are getting those people in, but today, 

we have a lot of political appointees that have gone in and there 

is no requirement that they speak the language of the country in 

which they are going into. I have seen the professionals and I have 

seen the appointees, and some of them are really great and some 

of them are—— 

Ms. BAGLEY. Right. I know. 

Senator VOINOVICH. I mean, these are the people representing 

the United States of America. I think more careful work should be 

done in deciding who we are going to send overseas to get the job 

done for those political appointees. 

Mr. Chaplin, I haven’t finished the report that the Academy has 

done, but I have heard, and I keep hearing, that this exchange of 

individuals, of sending our people overseas and bringing people 

here to this country has been something that has been very good 

for us, and we see evidence of that over and over and over again. 

In the report, how much emphasis was placed on that? On other 

words, if you have resources, you can bring people in the State Department. You have got X-number of dollars and you allocate resources. If this is something that is really good but is the kind of 

thing that doesn’t pay dividends like that, it is one of those things 

that pays dividends over—— 

Mr. CHAPLIN. Long term—— 

Senator VOINOVICH [continuing]. Fulbrights and so forth, I can’t 

recall, did you get into that? 

Mr. CHAPLIN. Yes, sir, Senator. I think you are right. First of all, 

the investment in exchanges is a long-term investment, and you 

just have to wait and see the results. But if you choose people wisely based on their competence and the abilities you think they have, 

it can pay off in lots of ways. 

We recommended on two major exchange programs. On the Fulbright Program and programs affiliated with Fulbright, we recommended a 100 percent increase, and that would bring several 

thousand people more. I think a couple of points on Fulbright—it 

has a proven track record, but foreign governments also contribute 

a part to it and that has been one of the geniuses, I think, of a 

program as designed by Senator Fulbright. They have a stake in 

this and so they want to be sure they send qualified people. 

Second, the fact that you are bringing over a number of either 

students or scholars from other countries who have not had experience in the United States previously, and I think this opens their 

eyes in many ways. They learn about the values of American people as well as the fact that we are a consumer society and all the 

other things we can show off, and that is important because they 

take that back with them. And I think during times when we may 

have difficulties with certain countries, there is still a reservoir of 

good will towards the United States in these particular groups that 

can resurface once things improve. 

So we think that well-organized and well-executed programs can 

pay dividends. The International Visitor Program, the other major 

program, and that is spotting leaders as they are rising. It was 

pointed out earlier today that 277 former heads of state have gone 

through that program, but also writers, labor leaders, economists, 

journalists, a lot have gone through, and this is an investment. A 

36 

committee within the embassy which selects the people they think 

are going to really rise and be important in that society, and that 

has paid off, as well. And again, you are talking about these are 

kind of friends for life. They may be critical of us on individual 

policies, but their basic feeling about the United States is a positive 

one. 

So I think the more that we can do on that. There obviously are 

private sector programs which are also very effective, university-touniversity programs, other student exchanges. The more of that 

can be done, when people see America firsthand and when they 

deal with Americans firsthand, those are kind of the major advertisements I think we have for our society. 

Senator VOINOVICH. One of the observations is that, too, is using 

our private organizations in the country more fully to try to figure 

out how we can integrate them into this whole process, the NGOs, 

what you are doing, Mr. Bereuter, and your organization. There are 

others out there—a better coordination. 

I am going to finish on this, Senator Akaka. One of the areas 

that I think we don’t do a very good job on, and it is something 

that carries over from my days when I ran for president of the student body at Ohio University, and I engaged a guy named Mong 

Sah Min, who was from Burma, to be my campaign manager with 

the international students because they had a right to vote, and my 

observation was is that these students, and I don’t know if it is the 

case or not, maybe from your observations getting around to universities, is they come to the universities and they all hang out together and there is no effort to try and get them out or get people 

at the university to spend time with them. 

I got elected and Mong set it up and we had these folks going 

out to fraternities and sororities and to the dormitories to have dinner and to talk about their countries and answer questions and 

really got something going there. And I just thought, I just wonder 

how many universities today have the same old thing. They all get 

together, and how often do they intermingle with the other students there, and are the students there taking advantage of this 

wonderful resource to get to know somebody from another country, 

or do they just go on with their own sorority and fraternity or dormitory work. 

Mr. CHAPLIN. In my case, just from anecdotal experience, I think 

you are probably right. Times have changed in that. But universities which can organize host family activities and others to try to 

get people engaged often do pay off, but it takes some effort by the 

university, I think, to organize these outings and bringing them 

closer with American families. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Well, I just think that I am going to really 

look into it to find out what is really being done. I mean, we have 

in Cleveland the international organization. My folks used to bring 

in kids, adults from the School of Social Work at Case Western Reserve and they would stay with us for a month and they got a 

chance to get to know a family and we got to know them. I would 

think there is a tremendous opportunity here if somebody really 

started to pay attention to it and probably could do it without a 

whole lot of money. 

37 

Mr. CHAPLIN. I want to just mention one thing, sir. The pro- posals that we recommend that total $610 million, $410 million are 

devoted to exchanges. We either need the resources to bring people 

over to the United States or we need the public diplomacy infrastructure to support the programs abroad. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you. Senator Akaka, I have taken up 

too much time. 

Senator AKAKA [presiding]. Thank you very much, Senator 

Voinovich. 

I want to say at the outset thank you very much, Mr. Bereuter, 

for this book, and to mention that on pages 52 and 53, you have 

a statement there pointing out the blunder of reducing USIA and 

the need to come back with better programs. 

I just want to say that we will be facing four votes that were supposed to happen at 4:30, but it hasn’t yet, and that I intend to adjourn this because it will take about one hour for us to do that. 

I have questions that I am going to submit for all of you to respond to, but I have two questions, one to Mr. Bereuter, and this 

in particular is about the U.S. Marketing College. How do you feel 

about the U.S. Marketing College, the State Department’s new 

partnership with the private sector? 

Mr. BEREUTER. Thank you, Senator Akaka. I am happy to deliver 

that report to you, by the way. It is interesting. As you pointed out, 

the views it contains come from Asians making this recommendation to us, and Senator Voinovich, I brought one for you, too. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you. 

Mr. BEREUTER. I don’t think we have enough experience to really 

know, but my cautionary note on, I think it is the top of page three, 

about marketing, there is great expertise in marketing and public 

relations in our private sector, extraordinary, the best in the world. 

But public diplomacy is not like selling toothpaste. So we need to 

take that expertise, particularly the kind of surveys that they have 

expertise in conducting, and realize that that is an expertise that 

is important to public diplomacy, but it is only an element in our 

arsenal and you can take it too far. 

I was concerned, for example, what I heard mentioned earlier 

about strengthening the White House’s role in public diplomacy. 

That seems natural, yet public diplomacy is not selling the foreign 

policy du jour of an Administration. Administrations come and go. 

Presidents come and go. But what we are talking about, as you 

heard before, in part is long-term investment and building the relationships with the foreign publics. Sometimes that only will pay off 

in a generation or two. 

So I think it is an interesting step. It can be a very positive step. 

I just give you the cautionary note that I explain more fully in my 

testimony here today. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. 

Ambassador Bagley, in your testimony, you recommended that 

the State Department should review its public diplomacy area office staffing structure to determine if the current arrangement is 

functioning optimally. In your experience, can you please explain 

this issue in a little more detail? 

Ms. BAGLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, the area offices, as 

the previous panel of State Department officials has already noted, 

38 

come from the 1999 merger where they basically—my view—kind 

of plunked the USIA structure into the State Department without, 

I think, a lot of thought as to whether it would really work well. 

So you have a PD office within, say, EAP Asia, and the PD officer 

reports to the DAS, the Deputy Assistant Secretary, and then to 

the Assistant Secretary nominally, but then really reports to the 

Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Policy. So while 

he or she is working within that area office, he is not really responsible to that office in itself. He or she is responsible to the Under 

Secretary. 

So it makes for a kind of difficult arrangement because from 

what we have found talking to a lot of these PD officers, they don’t 

really feel that they are part of the policy formulation. Although 

they report to the Deputy Assistant Secretary, they don’t really feel 

that they are really part of the team because ultimately they are 

reporting to the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy. 

So it is an amalgam that doesn’t, I don’t think, seem to work, although on this particular point, I am speaking for myself. The 

Commission has not taken a position on it. Basically, on the Commission, we have each had differing positions and we came to the 

conclusion that it needed to be looked at again. It needs to be analyzed. Perhaps it is not working. Perhaps you don’t even need a PD 

officer in the area offices. It might be better to have them in on 

the country desk where all the policy formulation begins. 

The bottom line is if you want to integrate the PD function into 

the State Department, we are not doing a very good job within that 

context. So I think it needs to—and the Commission’s recommendation is that we need to look at it. The Congress needs to look at 

it. The State Department needs to review it to see if this is really 

an effective use of the public diplomacy officer. 

Senator AKAKA. Well, thank you very much for that. 

I wanted to follow up with anybody from the panel who wishes 

to comment, whether you agree with Ambassador Bagley’s comment about the public diplomacy area offices. Ms. Freiberg. 

Ms. FREIBERG. Yes, Senator. I do think there needs to be some 

clarification of what these relationships are. I would like to suggest 

that the PD area offices report to the Under Secretary for Public 

Diplomacy and make it that simple, although I realize none of this 

is simple at all. I think when you are being reviewed by one set 

of offices and you are getting your policy direction and your resources from another office, it can make life confusing. Although 

there may be Foreign Service officers in this room who would disagree with me on that, it is the feed back I have received from 

many practitioners. As I said in my testimony we need to strengthen the role of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy. 

Senator AKAKA. Any further comments on this? 

[No response.] 

Well, thank you very much. I just want to ask you for your top 

three recommendations for improving the effectiveness of U.S. public diplomacy. It is not that simple, is it? 

Ms. BAGLEY. Could I answer? 

Senator AKAKA. Ms. Bagley. 

Ms. BAGLEY. I think for the Commission, our top three priorities 

would be, first, training at FSI. We should do a better job of trainVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:40 Oct 30, 2009 Jkt 045580 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\45580.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
39 

ing our PD officers. We are recommending that there be a substantive training course of 9 months or so at FSI, the Foreign Service Institute, that would be similar to the one that they give to the 

economics officers, which is very highly regarded. So that is our 

first point. 

Second point, outreach. We need to build PD outreach into the 

standardized Employment Evaluation Report (EER), so that we actually know that in the work requirements, there is a requirement 

for communications skills. That would encourage or incentivize the 

public diplomacy officer to actually do more communications and 

develop those skills because he or she would be evaluated on that 

as part of their work requirement. 

And finally, PD area offices. As Mr. Chairman, you already dealt 

with and asked the question both of the previous panel and of us, 

we do need to undertake an honest zero-based assessment of the 

PD area offices to see if they are functioning optimally, or if they 

are not, how they should function. We have some ideas about that, 

but we are not making a judgment as to whether it works. We just 

think it should be reevaluated. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BEREUTER. Senator, your question took me back a little bit, 

but I will try to take a stab at it. I heard Secretary Glassman elsewhere today say we spend basically the same amount on the 

Broadcasting Board of Governors as we do on public diplomacy. 

Broadcasting is important, but I think more resources are needed 

for other forms or methods of delivering public diplomacy. 

Second, I think that the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs funds should be put in the hands of your public diplomacy officers in the regions. 

I believe that—third, I would say that more of the USAID programs, development programs, ought to have integrated within 

them the objectives of trying to bring practical experience in democracy and pluralism to the foreign publics as an integral part of 

those USAID programs. That might be my top three. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. Ms. Schuker. 

Ms. SCHUKER. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would say three 

points, and this relates to some of the other comments already 

made. First, is the understanding that public diplomacy has a longterm responsibility, that it is not just a byproduct or related to specific short-term policy goals. I think this is where we have been 

running into a lot of trouble during certainly these last years in 

terms of both the perception abroad of the United States and the 

role of public diplomacy, and it has sort of become a handmaiden 

to policy, a specific policy, as opposed to informing the policy and 

having a longer-term profile. That gets back to values and principles. 

Second, in terms of the organization of public diplomacy, I think 

there has got to be an understanding that there is a very unique 

function for public diplomacy. It is a two-way street. It is ‘‘to the 

street’’ and not directly to officials, which is the sort of meat and 

potatoes, so to speak, of the State Department. This is part of, I 

think, the confusion of the locus of public diplomacy, although I am 

not, as I said in my testimony, suggesting that it be totally changed 

40 

at this point, but it certainly needs to be addressed in terms of how 

the public diplomacy function is organized and respected. 

And that gets directly to the money, the resources. It is very difficult for the State Department, I think, to run effective public diplomacy or to run public diplomacy effectively when its budget is 

basically a minuscule amount of what, for example, the Department of Defense has in terms of public diplomacy. If you are going 

to run an interagency function and are going to basically sit at the 

top of the food chain and be able to be effective interagency, you 

have to have both the imprimatur as well as the resources to put 

your money where your mouth is in terms of the work. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much. 

May I ask that others of you please respond. We are going to 

send these questions to you and have you respond to this. 

I want to thank all of you as witnesses today. You have proposed 

some exciting and new ideas to make our public diplomacy more 

effective. I hope the next President will give them priority. I plan 

to do what I can by bringing them directly to the new President’s 

attention. 

I want to thank you again. The hearing record will be open for 

one week for additional statements or questions other Members 

may have, and I have already told you I will send you my questions 

for your responses and look forward to your responses. 

Thank you very much for being here, and this hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:54 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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Æ 


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