Obama’s Flowing Rhetoric Hasn’t Brought Real Change in Public Diplomacy
Helle Dale /
The National Security Council is priding itself on a successful first year for President Barack Obama in terms of strategic communications. In a blog posting on the White House Web site, Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communication Ben Rhodes gave President Obama credit for his “steady diplomacy” and renewing America’s moral authority on the world stage. It is of course not surprising that the administration should want to spin its achievements at the first year mile-stone, yet for others it is hard to see the justification for the chest-pounding. As far as strategic communication and public diplomacy are concerned, it has been a year of many speeches and little substantive change or accomplishment.
The way the National Security Council looks at strategic communication is instructive. Rather than seeing it as a tool of public diplomacy, strategic communication in the Obama administration means a concerted effort across government agencies to broadcast the same message globally on specific issues at specific moments in time. This means that rather than working toward institutional public diplomacy reforms that are desperately needed (and have been documented in report after report by the foreign policy community, ranging from The Heritage Foundation to the Brookings Institution to CSIS and many others), the administration is focusing on messaging surrounding the President’s speeches and specific issues, using, in particular, Web sites and new media technology to reach foreign publics.