I watched a Brookings Institution forum on CSPAN, “The Propaganda
War” [full transcript], which aired on January 16. It is part of their project on the role of the press in the anti-terrorism campaign. The panel included: Christopher Ross, Special Coordinator for the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs; Joe Duffey, Former Director, United States Information Agency; Thomas A. Dine, President, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Inc.; and Karen De Young, Associate Editor, The Washington Post.
Now, of course, 3 out of 4 members of the panel are either current or former members of the government propaganda apparatus, either employed in the government proper or in the case of Mr. Dine employed by a corporation which is directly funded by the US Government. The 4th member of the panel Karen De Young, is an Associate Editor of one of the largest mainstream news outlets, The Washington Post. Due to the composition of the panel one could hardly expect to hear anything halfway decent or informative. It mostly resembled a commercial for the American position tailored to the demographic with college degrees. However, there were some interesting things worth noting. One thing worth mentioning is the subtle hint that the US may seek to push the educational systems of nations around the world to support the US viewpoint:
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(from the transcript)
MR. ROSS: I would answer from a slightly different vantage point, Steve, to say that the new Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Charlotte Meers [ph], has now been on the job a matter of a few months and has been very conscious of the point that Tom made that there is an absolute necessity for a guiding strategy. She is currently involved in crafting such a strategy and is consulting within the government and outside the government, is soon to travel abroad to consult our embassies there and to touch base with local opinion leaders. What she’s sketching out at this point is a strategy of total communication on three essential themes.
One is to re-present the basic American values that unite this country. The second theme is to present democratization and openness as a vision for a better future, a future which does not require people to resort to terrorism. And a third theme which hits at what we are coming to consider increasingly to be perhaps the most important audience for our work, young people, those who are going to create the future who’s world views and mind sets are not yet fully formed. The third theme focuses on them through a look at educational systems and how they are structured.
So you have values, you have democratization and openness, you have education as three focal points of a total communications plan that would mobilize the resources of public diplomacy in all their aspects both on the information side and on the educational and cultural exchange side. …
MR. HESS: But Karen De Young is taking notes like mad over there. And when she…
MS. DE YOUNG: I was just writing down the three themes…
MR. HESS: She writes that, you will write your story tomorrow on what U.S., the strategy of U.S. public diplomacy, what’s your lead going to be?
(Laughter)
MS. DE YOUNG: Gosh. This is knee-jerk on my part. I just write things, so it goes in here, comes out here.
What would be the lead on that? I think, the lead would be how they’re going to go about trying to influence the education systems in other countries.
Senator Levin made a statement the other day about something that’s not new, but about Saudi Arabia, saying that in their education systems they teach people to hate. He said some fairly extreme things. The Saudi Ambassador, Prince Bandar, who happens to be in Saudi Arabia at the moment where he seems to have been most of the time since this started, but issued a statement this morning and said we don’t teach anybody to hate in our school, our schools conform to our own values and our own traditions, and basically said I like Senator Levin but he’s completely off base and please stay out of our education system.
And I guess my question would be how are you going to do that? How is that a matter of public diplomacy? I would ask more about how you’re going to go about that.
MR. ROSS: It’s one of the aspects of, it’s one of the sectors in which our existing educational and cultural exchange program has always been active. Of course the resources available in that program are minuscule compared to the task. So part of this strategy involves encouraging other agencies within the U.S. government that have much greater resources to work along a common task to focus on this problem.
It’s essentially an effort to make sure that educational systems, particularly in the current campaign against terrorism, particularly in the Muslim and Arab countries, evolve in a way that provides to young people the tools needed for modern life so that they are not attracted to the apocalyptic kind of vision that Osama bin Laden and others have proffered.
We recognize it’s an enormous task, but the fact that it’s enormous doesn’t make it not worth pursuing. As a matter of fact there are some government officials in the region who have already expressed an interest in seeking our help on this point.
MS. DE YOUNG: And this would be primarily bringing students here for visits, or helping them form their own school systems there?
MR. ROSS: It would depend very much on the results of consultations with those foreign government officials who are seeking this kind of assistance. We have nothing to impose. It’s a collaborative process…