Tag Archives: Public Diplomacy

Smith-Mundt Retool is Great News for Voice of America

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Ronald Reagan spoke often through VOA during his presidency (via Alvin Snyder, no relation)

The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act recently went into effect, which has public diplomacy wonks and civil liberties experts worried about the loosening of the 1948 law that both established the Voice of America (VOA) and limited its ability to “propagandize” American citizens. (They may have forgotten for a moment that just as quietly the Defense Department began making available its own Armed Forces Network broadcasts on the Pentagon Channel, available now to most cable providers.)

But this domestic access is great news for the Voice of America, the embattled foreign broadcast arm of the U.S. government. Because now that American broadcasters, cable networks and satellite dish service providers – and who knows, Hulu? – can have access to VOA shows, the Voice will at last be able to build a domestic audience. And with that, a political constituency, which is critical to how the broadcaster survives and flourishes.

For those not familiar with the Smith-Mundt Act, the law established the Voice of America and several affiliated “grantee” entities – eventually Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Radio/TV Martí, and the Middle East Broadcasting Network – after World War II under the U.S. Information Service to broadcast news and commentary to parts of the world that either lacked a robust press or whose press was completely controlled by their governments. It is a sad state of affairs that VOA is still needed after the Cold War. But as a result it has a devoted audience of tens of millions around the world. In fact, in reach and languages, VOA and its contact affiliates, VOA rivals the BBC. The Broadcasting Board of Governors puts its audience at 203 million weekly in more than 45 languages.

But for those who know and love the BBC for its programming (I’m thinking of you, Downton Abbey fans), and were delighted to hear the BBC World Service on AM radio while abroad, there the similarities end. The BBC is virtually a media monopoly in Great Britain, and its foreign broadcasting arm takes full advantage of that position. VOA, on the other hand, is not even a foreign extension of PBS or NPR (themselves wholly independent 501(c)(3)s funded indirectly, and in part, by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting), and which hardly have the enviable position in the United States that the BBC has in the United Kingdom. But in this context, the VOA’s achievement abroad is all the more extraordinary.

Unfortunately, because it has no domestic presence, the Voice has virtually no public exposure – and as a result, no one willing to fight for it – in the United States. As an example, when I visited VOA headquarters in Washington as a tourist last year, I joined a group that included an American family from New England – NPR affiliate broadcasters, no less – and an Iranian-American couple who brought their in-laws from Tehran to visit. The New Englanders were hazily familiar with the Voice. The Iranian/American family were huge fans, particularly of VOA’s “Daily Show”-like weekly broadcast “Parazit”. This was the young couple’s third visit to the headquarters. If anyone would go to the mat for VOA, it would be the visitors from Iran. But they don’t have a vote in Congress.

State-side broadcasting could build that kind of fan base – a domestic, voting constituency – for the Voice in the United States. With more people watching and invested in VOA’s mission and programming, more resources will be in the offing. And with that, any concern about “propagandizing” will evaporate as well. The Voice has never been a propaganda outlet – it hires the best journalists in the world, and its reportorial mandate is above reproach – and it couldn’t give the BBC such a run for its money if it were. Anyway, an American audience would sniff out propaganda right away. But especially for the growing immigrant communities in the United States, who crave news from the old country, the Voice will provide them information they have a hard time coming by. That investment will help keep the Voice relevant and strong amid the increasing din of rumor and hearsay that constitutes international news coverage.

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Pretty Gr8, Embassy London

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I was recently forwarded this video, produced by the U.S. Embassy in London to promote to and educate the public about the G8 Summit hosted this week by Great Britain in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland. I don’t have an inside track about who produced it or how, but it surely deserves more views on its YouTube Channel. It demonstrates what a creative approach can do not just for public diplomacy, but for public education on major international issues.

Embassy London produced this short video to explain, literally, the who, what, where and why of the G8. Under normal circumstances, this would be a gold-clad snoozer, a bore-fest guaranteed to fetch a dozen or so views before expiring in Google’s cloud farm gulag.  But something great happened. This video is funny, relevant and informative. It doesn’t take itself too seriously. And the usual Embassy seal capstones aside, it doesn’t look or sound like any State Department official product you’ve ever seen. No wonder Macon Phillips, Director of White House Office of Digital Strategy, cited it as an example of department “best practice”.

It’s worth a few lines to take it apart and understand why this video works so well as an example of virtual public diplomacy.

Why It Works

It’s easy to miss because  the format is so simple. A man reads a text (in English) and a woman illustrates the lecture with a felt pen on a white board. That’s it. For all the high-tech whiz-bang of YouTube, desktop video and social media, you could probably do this at home with your kids and a chalk board.  And the producers have embraced and put those low-tech features to work to their advantage.

The text is fortunately pretty straight-forward and well-read (more on that in a moment). But it’s the felt-pen illustration that really makes this work, for two main reasons. First, obviously, it places pictures to capture the narration neatly and smartly in sharper focus. Just like a good political cartoon. This is NOT EASY – so more commendation to the artist and creative team, whoever you are! It’s obvious that a lot of creative thinking and planning went in to executing this. Coming up with snappy images to contextualize a complex international meeting is much harder than it sounds, and they do that with vim here. State’s got its own little Conrad and Walt Kelly working over there in London.

Second – and this is something else you may not notice on first watching – replaying the act of the illustration introduces a kind of comedic tension to the video.  You sit there, watching and wondering what the artist is drawing, where she is going with that line, and then, bingo, there it is! (You can see another, more graphically sophisticated example of this here.) It’s like watching a comedian set up a joke, and you lean in, waiting for the punch line, and then, WHAMMO!  It’s a clever use of the constraints of the medium.

Still…

It runs a little long. Explaining why the G8 is really the G7+2, or G9-1 (or whatever; it’s still a little confusing) could probably have been done with two or three sentences – organizational history is not really that interesting to the lay audience. Listing every country and international organization participating was no doubt the politic thing to do, but I bet 30 seconds could be saved by listing the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization by its universally recognizable acronym, UNESCO, and the same could probably go for the rest of that virtually interminable (and perfectly pronounced) list. But the accompanying graphic is really impressive, with anonymous faces crushing in around a too-small table labeled “G8” – it demonstrates that “G8” is really a misnomer and that the table is in fact a grand forum for far more countries and international organizations to come together and discuss major issues of common concern. (Just like NATO.)

Finally, since this is an American product, I would expect the Embassy to articulate the U.S. position on issues relating to the G8. Maybe they decided that’s not exactly what they wanted to do with this, that they didn’t want to use an educational product to make a hard sell. But even articulating what’s on the table would not only demonstrate why the G8 is so vital, but what’s really at stake when all these countries and organizations sit down to talk to one another. That, when you think about it, is the real purpose of public diplomacy.

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Coming in October: “The United States and the Challenge of Public Diplomacy”

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9780230390706I’m pleased to announce that Palgrave Macmillan USA will publish my book, The United States and the Challenge of Public Diplomacy in October 2013.

Based on my six years’ experience in public diplomacy at NATO and more than 15 years in strategic and political communications, Challenge explores the experience of public diplomacy and makes recommendations for improving American PD policy and practice.

Importantly, the book focuses on practice as the critical ground to cover — the “last three feet” in the words of Edward R. Murrow — in order for our public diplomacy to succeed. I look at not just the traditional modes of public diplomacy such as educational exchange, cultural engagement and international broadcasting but propose launching an arts restoration initiative, reforming military communications, expanding the definition of public opinion, reconsidering the Internet, and partnering with civil society.

I’ll launch the book with Palgrave Macmillan when it’s published but I hope you’ll look for it when it’s on book shelves and online after the summer.

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“Lithuanians Value Deeds”

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Old Vilnius, Lithuania (via National Geographic)

I’m happy to share an interview with a former NATO colleague published in the current journal of the UK Speechwriter’s Guild, The Speechwriter. Neringa Vaisbrode is Lithuanian and after she left the International Staff remained in Brussels to write for prominent personalities in her home country in English and Lithuanian (which are not the only languages she speaks!). Her perspective on writing and communicating in the complex cultural and linguistic environment of modern Europe is very interesting and her interview is worth reading.

As a language Lithuanian joins Hungarian and Albanian among Europe’s linguistic “black sheep” (written with affection for my Lithuanian, Albanian, and Hungarian friends!).  Unlike the Romance or Slavic languages, Lithuanian shares little in common with its neighbors and can be traced back directly to its oldest Indo-European roots. No more than 3.5 million people speak Lithuanian, but it is in no danger of dying out. Lithuanians protect and preserve their language with great pride, particularly given their country’s long history.

Lithuania was once a dominant power in northeastern Europe. But following a series of wars, plague and famine, Lithuania came under the influence of Russia and was eventually occupied first by the Czars and then by the Soviet Union. The Russians suppressed education and publishing in Lithuanian to assert political control. But Lithuanians kept their language alive underground while also developing a healthy skepticism for official rhetoric during Communist rule, which lasted until independence was achieved in 1991. As a result of this foreign influence, Neringa notes, “if we spot good rhetoric, we suspect a hidden agenda.” Practically speaking, this places the modern politician, and the speechwriter, in a difficult spot. How do you communicate effectively and professionally if the public views those attributes as a fault?

Neringa also has good, simple counsel for writing for multilingual audiences — the typical audience in official Europe today — which tracks closely my advice for speaking to English as a Second Language learners. (Writing for them, she says, shouldn’t be a test of English vocabulary and grammar.) And her mark of good writing appears to apply in any language: it should stand on its own, self-evident, without elaboration or annotation.

Without summarizing all of Neringa’s interview here, I would add that it’s always a pleasure to discover my friends’ favorite books and guides that I’ve not yet read. Neringa lists among hers Jose Saramago, Susan Jones and Philip Collins.

Special bonus: don’t miss The Speechwriter‘s turgid outtakes from the Bank of England Governor’s recent speech following Neringa’s interview.

You can read all of The Speechwriters by visiting the UK Speechwriter’s Guild here and clicking on “blog”.

My thanks to Neringa for her permission to reprint (and promote) her interview here!

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12 Articles on Public Diplomacy Practice

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In the spirit of T.E. Lawrence I published a feature article on public diplomacy practice in the summer 2013 issue of USC’s Public Diplomacy Magazine. You can read the article online here or download the pdf version.

A previous interview with PD Magazine in the Summer 2009 edition is available here.

I extend my sincere thanks to the editors at Public Diplomacy Magazine for accepting and publishing my article.

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An Assault on Joseph Nye, Part Three: Keeping It Real

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U.S. Air Force C-130 drops relief supplies over Kenya, June 2010 (U.S. Department of Defense)

In my previous two posts, I’ve argued how the hard power/soft power Hobson’s Dichotomy of Joseph Nye fails at the level of language and on the level of theory. Here I will contend that Nye’s very popular international relations theory also fails as a predictive, policy or practical theoretical standard. In short, it simply cannot anticipate, nor accurately reflect, actions taken by states in the real world. This is the quintessential yardstick of international relations theory, and it fails by any reasonable standard.

Nye works especially well in the academic world, where his bifurcated nomenclature provides two big classification buckets to throw theory into. So we see dozens of papers and conference presentations that categorize what does or does not constitute hard or soft power solutions to all the world’s problems. But those who actually work to solve those problems never use these terms. “Soft power”per se doesn’t help the U.N. in Congo, or get power to Kabul, or end the war in Syria, or set up a government in South Sudan, or reduce CO2 emissions, or end AIDS, or eliminate piracy.

But Brazilian peacekeepers can, and so can plugging into the Uzbekistan power grid, or threatening a no-fly zone, or issuing USAID good governance contracts, or implementing Europe-wide carbon-trading, or spending on a massive scale to bring down drug prices, and deploying naval vessels to escort commercial vessels. In other words, States use modalities – means, tools, usually people and things – to exercise power over other states and non-state actors.  And good theory will more accurately predict which of these modalities will be employed to solve these various problems. Nye’s theory, while primarily prescriptive, simply can’t do this job.

Nye places enormous and undue faith in “soft” implements that cajole and convince adversaries and reluctant allies alike. But he conflates the individual elements of national power – aid, diplomacy, national forces or strategic communications – while fetishizing the rather mundane modalities of international politics with a kind of sorcerer’s magic.

In a normal diplomatic parley, for example, all of these tools would be either arranged or arrayed for maximum advantage over the interlocutor. The most powerful negotiator is the one with the most tools in play, the one who can give the most away for the maximum national interest in exchange. An excellent example of this was the perpetual sticking point over the reduction or elimination of strategic nuclear forces between the United States and the Soviet Union. The United States kept missile defense off the table and the Soviets, who were convinced this would lead to a consumptive new  arms race, refused to enter into an agreement. In other words, the U.S. had something the Soviet Union wanted, so the long-term advantage went to the United States which, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, kept missile defense and negotiated START with Russia and the post-Soviet successor states anyway.

From a strictly theoretical standpoint, it’s not even entirely clear whether this would be an execution of hard or soft power. Missile defense as articulated in the 1980s was merely an idea. But it was an idea that cut to the heart of the problem in the Soviet Union, which was an economy that spent an estimated 25 percent of its GDP (perhaps higher) on defense; in effect the Soviet economy was building tanks to feed itself. Gorbachev knew he could never drive perestroika toward a consumer economy unless he could reduce defense spending and the military’s control over resources. Missile defense guaranteed an indefinite arms race and virtually unlimited control over the Soviet economy by the military. There was nothing soft about the American threat at all, or its effect on 200 million Soviet subjects, for as abstract as missile defense seemed at the time.

Most middle-power states – which defines virtually all of America’s allies along with the BRICs – view diplomacy not as a “soft” means to influence other countries but as a deadly serious business, a zero-sum gambit where the national interest reigns paramount. There is nothing to give away; no effort is sacrificed to advance or protect sovereign needs or rights. This is effectively war by other means because, with the national interest so thinly protected, there is very little else worth fighting for. It is a very hard business with high risks and very little margin for error.

Under these circumstances, only a very rich and powerful country like the United States can afford to be “soft” – that is, giving, charitable and big. Our allies enjoy American generosity and, quite contrary to their public portrayal, work hard to match it in their own ways.  But our adversaries, at least at the government level, are not influenced by our generosity or charity. They do not understand it because they simply cannot, under any circumstances, afford to give something away without an equally valuable quid pro quo.  At worst, they see our generosity as a weakness or a threat; more usually it is viewed with incomprehension or just drunk up like free booze at the company Christmas party: the only  people dumber than those giving it away are those not drinking. In any event, this “soft” aspect of our national power is not nearly as influential with governments – and may in fact be far more detrimental – than Nye maintains.

I’ll admit that this discussion does not address the real locus of power, which is public opinion, and I am strongly inclined to believe that the moral aspects of generosity, charity, bigness and support do go far to help sway the public.  (Indeed, one of the most frustrating points I had to argue when I worked overseas was that contrary to public misperception, Americans are the most generous people in the world in real and per capita terms.  That people think the opposite is the result of perhaps the most successful whisper campaign ever mounted.) That will always help us in the long run, particularly in repressive states like Russia, China and Iran that lie to its people about us to maintain control. But Nye’s theory functions in the existing state system, more or less, and that is where we must leave it. That is also where it fails.

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An Assault on Joseph Nye, Part Two: “Power and Violence are Opposites”

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“Down with Milosevic!”, Belgrade, 1999 (via BBC)

In a previous discussion, I attacked Joseph Nye’s “soft power/hard power” theory at the level of language, effectively calling his terms unclear and mealy-mouthed substitutes for clearer, more precise terms we can use like force and coercion, sanctions or diplomacy. Nye has made international relations theory less clear and transparent for the application of his two terms and I tried to reverse that trend with my own replacements.

At the same time, Nye’s ideas don’t work as theory, either. Nye has offered a Hobson’s Dichotomy, a false choice that doesn’t exist in the real world. A Hobson’s Dichotomy poses us with two falsely opposed choices that may not offer a solution to the problem set. That is what soft and hard power effectively presents us. It is a trick of language that also gives us an untrue sense of mastering reality. The reality of international politics is far too complex for that. To put this simply: as a Hobson’s Dichotomy, Nye’s idea is a narrows that squeezes out rather than includes alternative or opposing means to achieve political change.

In political reality, decision-makers don’t choose from one quiver labeled “soft power” and another labeled “hard power” when taking action. If their judgment is keen, they look for the best tools available to them to achieve the most desirable outcome. If they are lucky, and their country is truly powerful (like ours), they will have a wide variety of means available to apply to what will be a unique, complicated, and dynamically evolving situation and environment.

Nye’s theoretical failure goes beyond the toolkit available to decision-makers. “Soft power” fails to take into account civil society, international movements, and faith groups. For Nye, there is nothing like the Roman Catholic Church, Islam, or Buddhism.  For Nye, there is nothing like the Freeze, or the Civil Rights Movement, or the Color Revolutions, or the Arab Spring.  Each of these has had profound international political effects – in other words, by his own definition they are powerful — but they simply can’t be accounted for by Nye’s political theory.

What makes these movements all the more interesting – and possible – is the flow of information, inspiration and support across borders. There would have been no revolution against Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia without Solidarity, and there would have been no uprising in Tunisia without Serbia, and no Cairo without Tunisia. To Nye, this does not account for soft power, or any kind of power for that matter, because it is not enabled by a state — even though these movements peacefully changed the means of government and the norms for governing in more than a dozen countries.

Boston, April 15 (via The Telegraph)

Nye’s theory also fails to account for terrorism. He dispenses with terrorism as “depending on soft power” (my emphasis) without defining terrorism per se as either hard (force) or soft (as I have defined it before, power qua power). Reading between the lines, then, Nye’s theory cannot really accommodate terrorism: it simply does not belong in Nye’s universe.

If we take most observers’ understanding that terrorism is a tool of the weak – a meansof  the un-powerful – even if they are state-sponsored — then terrorism falls away from this discussion entirely. Nye may get partial credit for recognizing terrorism requires other tools to succeed, but it is not a tool of power or the powerful in and of itself. Nye’s theory of two “buckets” does not have enough room for either political movements or terrorism — which pretty much defines the political dynamism of the previous decade.

An effective theory of power will take into account terrorism and the power wielded by ordinary people through collective action, whether in faith groups, civil society, or international movements. Power, in the end, is mass, and mass can really be found in the minds of millions or billions of individual human beings. Only military theorists really understand the importance of this collective mind in political affairs, and even then the American military tradition has been slow or loath to understand the relationship of the public to the political.

Clausewitz for example wrote about the “moral forces” in war affecting public opinion as “among the most important”. T.E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) wrote about “the crowd in action,” dating the phenomenon back to ancient Greek warfare. David Galula, writing about insurgency, noted that the guerrilla could “still win” with “no positive policy” but “good propaganda” — that is, directly influencing the population. David Petraeus, drawing off all these shrewd observations, argued that military communications could be the “decisive logical line of operation” by communicating directly with the public in counterinsurgency operations.

We still struggle to understand the motivations and goals of terrorism. The attack on the Boston Marathon is the most recent expression of this ambivalence, but almost daily bombings in Afghanistan and Pakistan should remind us of the continuing struggle as well. Theoretically we wrestle to understand whether terrorism is an effective political weapon.

Nonetheless as a theoretical matter it should be clear terrorism is violence, not force, and  as a practical measure it should be clear that terrorism is a tool of the weak, that it leverages political entities that are not as powerful when measured against the mass movements outlined above. Hannah Arendt has written precisely that “power and violence are opposites”. This is probably the most mordant indictment of Nye’s theory, since it quite simply excludes terrorism from any consideration by Nye. It fully supports my contention that Nye’s theory constitutes not an expansive analysis of power but an exclusive narrows.

The real pain extracted from bombings or mass attacks can mitigate that inherent weakness. Violence can, on a macabre balance sheet, equate to political power but only if state authorities or the public mind are willing to allow it. Still, as violence, terrorism is only relegated to simply another tool – like economic sanctions, or diplomacy – which states or non-state actors use to affect international affairs.  This by no means justifies terrorism, but it does account for the practice. So far, that is more than what Joseph Nye can do.

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Misreading International Public Opinion…Again

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(Korean Beacon)

Public opinion is like screen resolution: the more data points you have, the more accurate your picture is likely to be. This came to mind reading Washington Post foreign affairs blogger Max Fisher’s latest post about South Korean public opinion on the eve of a visit by South Korean President Park Geun-hye to Washington. Fisher notes that South Korean approval of President Barack Obama, as measured by the Pew Research Center’s recent poll, has never been higher – at 77 percent, enviously nearly double his current 45 percent approval rating domestically.

While the President’s approval ratings are a decent barometer – a thumb’s-up endorsement of an individual at a particular point in time – they shouldn’t be substituted for a comprehensive understanding of public opinion. Our relationship with other countries is simply too complex and dynamic for the political equivalent of a movie review blurb. Fisher alludes to this at the top of his blog, but then sidesteps the obvious points – such as the dramatic change in South Korea’s approval of the American president came with a dramatic change in presidents in 2008. That occurred almost everywhere in the world at the same time. Whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, it’s a fact of public opinion and political science: the world swooned for Barack Obama. Huge number spikes – dozens of points in many cases between Bush and Obama – were not strictly or even partially explained by a prospective overnight change in U.S. foreign policy.

Reading The Obamas by Jodi Kantor recently one got the sense of an almost alternative reality for the First Family during the President’s first term – berated and despised at home, adored and celebrated abroad. The German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Trends put his approval rating among Germans at messianic levels – 92 percent in 2009, merely supermenschen at 79 percent in 2012. His approval numbers remain above 65 percent on average for the European Union and Western Europe even today.

That said, when people around the world think about the United States, they think about a lot more than just the President. The Pew polls, whose depth Fisher unfortunately ignores in his post (possibly because Pew is doling out their 2013 data set incrementally), take this complexity into account. People think about Americans, American culture, the American way of doing business, American science and technology, American ideas and customs, American democracy, and other considerations about America and Americans. Pew has polled on these questions across more than three dozen countries for more than a decade.

So South Koreans like our President, and they like us, and our technological prowess. They like our way of doing business, too, and our democracy (and at rates that would make our Congress envious). But importantly, they are considerably less enthusiastic about our culture, ideas and customs. It’s an interesting contradiction: how can you like Americans without liking who we are and what we do as a people? But that’s the way it is.

Such contradictions are rife in polls like these, but they are what make them interesting and worth learning more through other sources (Gallup, for example, and the Transatlantic Trends). They should also give us pause about making categorical judgments about how people around the world view us, because that view is decidedly mixed, fluid and contradictory. Depending on differing values and histories, people can enjoy or disdain our culture, like or dislike us, admire or reject our democracy. Every region and country is different, and people within those regions and countries are different and contradict one another.

Those are the data points that help make the whole picture. It’s a complicated, changing picture to be sure and it’s what makes international politics so volatile — but also enjoyable and hopeful.

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An Intellectual Assault on Joseph Nye: Part One

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Joseph Nye’s theory and advocacy of “soft power,” articulated in the early 1990s and developed during the last 15 years, have been a touchstone for virtually anyone studying or writing about international relations. It’s been impossible, particularly, to write about public diplomacy without having to throw it obligatorily into the custom-made “soft power” box that Nye built. In summary, Nye believes the fundamental aspects of effective power are changing; that this has become more “soft” in recent decades; and for the United States to remain dominant in global affairs it must adapt to wielding this “soft power” more effectively.

I’ve long found Nye’s theory troublesome but it took me some time to understand why. I don’t think he understands power, force and coercion and the nuance of their employment in foreign affairs. The strange dichotomy of “soft power” versus “hard power” long bothered me because it seemed to try to articulate something very complex by using mutually complementary contrasts, like trying to describe a Picasso using only “light blue” and “dark blue”.

What follows is the first in a series of assaults on Nye’s theory. By assault I mean I intend to take territory and to replace what I hope to destroy in the process.

I’ll start from a position of strength: Nye’s theory fails at the level of language. Briefly put, the “soft power/hard power” paradigm clutters more than it clarifies. In an attempt to provide a simple differentiating factor between aspects of national power, Nye has only blurred important distinctions beyond measure.

The absurdity of Nye’s apparent dichotomy is inherent in the words he applies, which pairs opposing modifiers to the same underlying object; specifically, he discusses power which may be “hard” or “soft”. To give a sense of what I mean, we may as well be using “More Power” and “Not-Power” or “Less Power” for all the additional clarity his distinction brings. There is a whiff of Orwellian Newspeak to this. Orwell’s 1984 philologist Syme would have liked “soft power”: Why try to articulate or describe this in more precise language when “power” and a modifier (“smart” comes to mind) serve the purpose just as well? The result, as Orwell has argued elsewhere, defeats complex thought.

This is no post-modern critique. It demonstrates at a practical level the problem of the language involved. What should bring more clarity makes this subject more obscure because it begs the question of what, exactly, power is (a specific point I hope to bring up in a later post). And in this case – which damns Nye the most in my eyes – he is willing to acknowledge that “hard power” is the equivalent of force but then won’t simply use the term, which is much more precise and accurate. But also inconvenient. When is hard power not force? When it’s paired with soft power. Which in turn is what, exactly?

In short, Nye’s language obfuscates. It refuses to name what we are really talking about, which is power and force. When we use language like this, it is far more clear what we are discussing. True power is not attractive, as Nye posits, it is conductive, and can for example include a wide array of (painful) economic and diplomatic tools. The full array of national power includes the organized, destructive and denying tools of military and paramilitary violence. Force can be coercive, punitive and destructive – aspects Nye strangely ignores in his description of power.

And that explains the false comfort we find in “soft power,” which as we will see here is not very soft at all. Nye makes quite a case for attracting and convincing countries, but that is simply another way of talking about diplomacy. Nations talking to one another can come to agreements based on mutual interests or previously unknown commonalities. In addition to forgetting this plain fact of international political history, Nye ignores the nuanced realities of foreign relations, which can also resemble parliamentary “horse-trading” — the barter in trade of deals that have been the staple of international diplomacy for centuries. (Most countries today see America’s ability to give away something for nothing as idiocy, not benevolence. The rest of the world simply can’t afford that kind of charity without an explicit quid pro quo.)

But beyond that we are talking about coercive if nominally peaceful means, non-violent tools that are powerful nonetheless. Coercion short of force can be almost as destructive as warfare and certainly as disruptive. We need look no further than the collapsing economies of the European Union and the power of the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund (for some) and the stronger economies (Germany foremost) have to wield over them to reform. This is simple power and there is nothing soft about it for the people living under it.

Nye has carved out an advantage for himself, of course, by wrapping up virtually every non-military aspect of national power in the non-threatening mien of “soft power”. But enlarging the basket and giving it an anodyne label should make us all the more suspicious. Because it is the difference among the tools in the various baskets, and the consequences of using them – or not using them – that has real effects for real people. And perhaps Nye, as well as his defenders and detractors, have forgotten that those real people are the ultimate source of power in political life.

I would replace Nye’s soft power language with this: there is only power – the full combined measure of a nation to act on the world — and force is a subset of national power; we have alternative tools of national power that are no less coercive but less destructive such as trade barriers, economic countermeasures, and sanctions. These are rightly labeled power because some countries have greater power (and more tools) than others. We have means to induce, cajole and convince without coercion and these are called diplomacy, public diplomacy, communications and (sometimes) propaganda.

There is nothing to be gainsaid from simplifying to the point of simple-mindedness. That is what, in part, Nye has done. We can use language to describe, accurately and with precision, exactly what power and force are and can do among nations.

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Smile! How to Talk with ESL Speakers

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original_open-english-mission-1aobcdrI was in the emergency ward at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Northern Virginia recently when I witnessed one of those daily heroic events that usually pass without notice. A young mother and her two daughters were trying to negotiate the Emergency Room. The younger girl had broken her right arm. She held it out in front of her, wrapped in a shirt. Pain and fear wracked her sallow face. She couldn’t have been more than eight years old. Her mother was a mask of worry and confusion. Leading her sister and her mother was the older daughter, probably 10 years old, who with a mixture of bravado and reserve navigated the front desk and then the parade of nurses and doctors on the ward.

I met them when the older sister asked to use the telephone in to our bay. They were barely six months into the United States from Jordan, the older sister explained to me. She was using the English she had learned at school in her home country and whatever she had picked up in the half-year since. It was strong, but she was still just a girl. Her mother was taking English as a Second Language (ESL), and she proudly if tentatively tried out a little of what she learned with me. I told her daughter to keep studying hard but not to forget her Arabic. She repeated what I said to her mother, who smiled and gave me a thumb’s-up.

Any hospital under any condition is intimidating enough. Can you imagine entrusting your ten-year-old to navigate the Emergency Room for you in a foreign language?  I couldn’t explain to the girls or their mother at the time how I felt for them, but their experience was not far removed from my own during six years in Belgium and Luxembourg, where I negotiated the Belgian medical and legal systems. There, many people did speak English but often enough the only language we had in common was French, which I speak without confidence. (I speak it so haltingly I was once mistaken for Flemish.)

Especially for an adult, navigating and negotiating a different language environment can be frustrating and humiliating. What used to be natural and simple – going to the post office, buying groceries, talking to your children’s teacher – can become a bewildering ordeal. Compound that with a medical crisis or an encounter with authority (I was summoned to court once after Belgian police sent a traffic violation to an old address) and you can imagine how fraught even routine interactions can become.

Back at Inova Fairfax, I had watched closely how the understandably harried admission nurses handled this little family of three. Of course, the nurses likely wouldn’t speak Arabic, and they couldn’t possibly speak all of the languages represented in their service the area. Admirably, at least one of the five I saw on station spoke Spanish – a large demographic in Northern Virginia.

But their communications skills, even with English speakers, could improve. They didn’t speak directly to patients. Their language was unclear, discursive, or filled with jargon. They seemed indifferent.  For anyone, entering the ER is difficult and traumatic enough. For ESL speakers, disorientation is only compounded by unclear communication. And just looking around the ER, I would guess that would apply to recent immigrants from East and West Africa, the Arab countries, South Asia, East Asia, and Central and South America.

We need to adapt to this reality. Today, 20 percent of American citizens speak a language other than English at home.  All of them either were raised in a bilingual household or passed a test of English to become naturalized, so that number doesn’t include legal residents and immigrating relatives who are here as well. All of them, too, presumably are learning English in order to naturalize. But that also suggests there are now, and will be, far more foreign-language speakers in the United States than the 20 percent number indicates. In high-immigration areas like Northern Virginia, Southern California, Chicago and New York City, those numbers are substantially higher. Ten years ago, half of the Brooklyn Congressional district I worked for spoke Spanish, but the fastest-growing linguistic groups were from Eastern Europe – particularly Poland, Russia and Ukraine.

So here is some advice for people working with that public – a linguistically diverse, dramatically changing public – whether at home and abroad, to help two-way communication go more smoothly:

1)   Smile! It’s a universal sign of good will and it goes a long way to establish trust and a bond of communication. Recognize the heroic effort somebody with limited English is making to communicate with you. Meet them at least half way by trying to understand their intent and to help them articulate what they want to say. If you get this right they will appreciate you for it. Any indication you give that they are a burden or annoyance is humiliating to them, or worse, frustrating and angering.

2)  Make eye contact. (You can type or take notes later or in between interrogatories.)  This shows attention and respect in most cultures. (You can even explain why you are doing it.)  More practically, it makes it easier for you to hear the person you are talking to – and to be heard. The person can see your face and read your expression, which are crucial non-verbal cues that aide comprehension. Similarly, you will be able to read their non-verbal communication as well.

3)  Speak simply, literally, clearly and directly. We live in a metaphorical age and we speak a language littered with dead horses, old dogs, bad seeds, busy bees, flying pigs, little birds and elephants in the room. ESL speakers are learning a very basic, literal language where object follows verb follows subject. You don’t have to speak to them as a child because they already have one (and probably more) language(s) available to them. But they are learning an entirely new language and culture to apply to things and ways of living that once were very straight-forward and simple. This is extraordinarily disorienting, often embarrassing and can be humiliating to a proud adult. If you can help them navigate this new language universe with some dignity they will appreciate it.

4)  Avoid discursive or irrelevant remarks and interjections. This relates to the previous point. Maintain a straight narrative track as much as possible, and avoid straying from this track, which can be confusing. Americans particularly are prone to abrupt interjections, OK? You know what I mean? You know what I mean. And then continuing their thought. For someone learning English this is incredibly disruptive and can be very disorienting and frustrating.

5)  Use appropriate inflection.  Make declamatory statements that sound like statements. Should you ask questions that sound like statements? Of course not! Emphasize when emphasis is necessary! Americans have a tendency in casual speech to use “uptalk” – probably to maintain your attention? – that can sound like an interrogatory. Again, for an ESL speaker, this can be diverting, confounding, and frustrating.

6)  If you think you are not being understood, do not necessarily repeat yourself. (Do not try speaking more loudly. This is an aural cue of escalation that communicates anger, not clarity.) Try to rearticulate what you said in a different way. If you speak another language – Spanish, or French, for example – think about how you would articulate what you want to say in that language, in literal terms, and try that out in English.

In the end, if you try all this and you still fail to communicate, you at least will have preserved the dignity of the person you are talking to. That is of immeasurable worth.  Keep a list of available languages handy and an interpreter service on speed dial, if those services are available to you.

George Orwell , who served in Burma and wrote for the BBC’s South Asia arm during the war, once wrote that English is a very easy language at the basic level but a very difficult language at its most complex, which may explain both why there are so many students of English but so few truly brilliant English writers and speakers. Keep that in mind the next time you are talking to somebody learning the language of William Shakespeare, King James, and Walt Whitman.