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A different look at the issues ...
In a paper published earlier this year, the Rand Corporation took a fresh look at the public diplomacy challenge facing the U.S., rather than critiquing current programs and previous history. The result is a stimulating and readable report that challenges many of the assumptions brought to the table by public diplomacy professionals and other observers.
The paper distinguishes between commercial marketing and public diplomacy, which Wolf and Rosen contend have very different goals. Because of the important differences between the public objectives of public diplomacy and the private objectives of commercial marketing, adapting the tools and techniques of commercial marketing to public diplomacy will be difficult to achieve. The authors then identify the most promising constituencies for U.S. public diplomacy, based on the extent of shared values and outcomes. And they identify the adversaries - the ones on whom we should not waste our resources - based on the same paradigm.
Wolf and Rosen then analyzed the writings of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, looking for clues in the rhetoric of those inspirational leaders for reaching out to potential allies and challenging adversaries.
The authors recommend that U.S. public diplomacy take greater advantage of non-governmental resources in the business and academic world, while still emphasizing the "public goods" nature of the objectives and message. They use the loaded and unfortunate term "outsourcing" to describe this process; the word "collaboration" would be more accurate and appropriate.
An electronic version of the report is available from the Rand Corporation Web site, and a hard-copy version is available for a fee.
We thank Greg Garland, PAO in Maputo, for recommending this report.
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