Foreign Service Journal - October, 2009

FOCUS

At the same time that USAID

eign citizens into direct contact with the military through ship tours, band performances and other public outreach.

These examples demonstrate that the U.S. military understands the value of having its personnel engage local populations directly to show the “softer side” of American military power and to cultivate positive attitudes toward military personnel. The public diplomacy value that accrues to the military, and by extension to the U.S. and the American people, is much more significant as a result of having this people-to-people interaction.

With that model in mind, how can the Foreign Service practice public diplomacy more effectively? Clearly, there must be deep structural changes in the way foreign aid is administered before we can go back to the USIA-era best practices of focusing on “monuments” and “people on the

ground.” And that obviously will not happen overnight. However, we should begin devoting a certain percentage of U.S. assistance to the establishment of universities and libraries in the developing world. Spending just 5 or 10 percent of our current aid budget this way would have a lasting impact on education there — and on bilateral relations.

Second, public diplomacy prac-

titioners must have more autonomy in decision-making and planning programs. As with development assistance, PD has increasingly become a matter of administration and contract management, rather than having Americans do the work directly on the ground. Under USIA, programming was much more field-centered; it was understood that Washington supported overseas posts, not vice versa. Now the reverse is increasingly the case. To change this, more decision-making should devolve to the