Step Up 3: The Embassies

Looks like the State Department's ready to dance... or at least to use dance as a vehicle for cultural diplomacy. State's Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs and Brooklyn Academy of Music announced plans to launch DanceMotion USA to send dance companies on international tours. In a press conference on April 29, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Professional and Cultural Exchanges Alina L. Romanowski announced the three lucky dance companies that will begin the program in 2010:

1. Evidence, A Dance Company, based in Brooklyn, New York, will tour South Africa, Nigeria, and Senegal.
2. ODC/Dance, based in San Francisco, California, will tour Thailand, Burma and Indonesia.
3. Urban Bush Women, also Brooklyn-based, will tour Brazil, Venezuela, and Colombia.

Of course, these three dance companies weren't just lucky. They were chosen strategically to reflect values that the State Department wants to communicate through its cultural diplomacy. Both Brooklyn-based dance companies, for example, emphasize the experiences of African diaspora communities in the U.S. In its mission statement, Urban Bush Women states:

Urban Bush Women (UBW) seeks to bring the untold and under-told histories and stories of disenfranchised people to light through dance. We do this from a woman-centered perspective, as members of the African Diaspora community, in order to create a more equitable balance of power in the dance world and beyond...

The State Department's decision to create DanceMotion USA provides a global platform for these untold and under-told histories to be communicated.

Using Art to Build Long-Term Relationship

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said that “The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.” It is only reasonable for nation states all around the globe to use art to engage in cultural diplomacy and promote intercultural understanding and long-term relationships.

The overwhelming potential of art as a means to build relationships lies in the medium itself. It is an innate way to express ideas in an universally-spoken language that enables every country to build a bridge to another country and exchange ideas.

China provides a recent example of how a country can take advantage of art in the context of cultural diplomacy. On March 25, METROPOLIS NOW! -- an exhibition by the Meridian International Center, in partnership with the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) in Beijing, and the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China -- will open in Washington, DC.

"METROPOLIS NOW! is a compelling selection of 52 paintings, sculptures, mixed media, and video installations by 31 artists. Their works address the enormous changes taking place in China’s cities – specifically, the major art centers of Beijing and Shanghai. Visitors to the exhibition will experience the implications of urbanization and globalization as seen through the eyes of these extraordinary artists." (Meridian International Center)

For the Chinese artists this exhibition is a tremendous opportunity to shape the image of the country as cultural diplomats and underscore the urban and modern facets of their country. At the same time the exhibition offers US citizens to experience first-hand Chinese culture.

Cultural Diplomacy through Hollywood films

Exporting Hollywood films to other countries can promote a better understanding of the American culture. In our class discussion we touched the issue of film a couple of times in the context of soft power and cultural diplomacy. And yet, while the medium film itself has a great promise to capture an audience, there is another component that should not be overlooked. When screened in other cultural contexts, the impact of a film can alter from offering an insight to American culture to arousing negative emotions and, in the worst case, offending another culture.

Last week, a Hollywood delegation was invited to join the Iranian Cinema Association. AP reported on March 2:

The group includes the President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Sid Ganis; actors Bening, and Alfre Woodard; producer William Horberg; AMPAS Special Events Programmer and Exhibitions Curator Ellen Harrington; and Tom Pollock, the former Universal Pictures chairman.

Although, from a cultural diplomacy viewpoint, it was a valuable gesture to invite the Hollywood delegation to come to Iran, the meeting also provided an opportunity for Iranians to communicate specific problems that the culture has with some Hollywood movies.

An adviser to Iran's president has demanded an apology from a team of visiting Hollywood actors and movie industry officials, including Annette Bening, saying films such as "300" and "The Wrestler" were "insulting" to Iranians.

Without an apology, members of Iran's film industry should refuse to meet with representatives from the nine-member team, said Javad Shamaqdari, the art and cinema adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iranians mainly criticized two Hollywood films: 300 and The Wrestler.

The film "300," portrays the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., in which a force of 300 Spartans held off a massive Persian army at a mountain pass in Greece for three days. It angered many Iranians for the way Persians are depicted as decadent, sexually flamboyant and evil in contrast to the noble Greeks.

Iranians also criticized "The Wrestler" starring Mickey Rourke as a rundown professional wrestler who is preparing for a rematch with his old nemesis, "The Ayatollah." During a fight scene, "The Ayatollah" tries to choke Rourke with an Iranian flag before Rourke pulls the flagpole away, breaks it and throws it into the cheering crowd.

This recent example underscores the impact of cultural predispositions on the way films are perceived and interpreted and shows that cultural diplomacy is never just about show casting a blockbuster. One problem lies in the few options to control this process. “Neither movie was shown in Iran”, states the AP coverage. And yet, new technologies and communication structures have made it possible for Iranians to access the movie.

Hollywood movies are produced for a mass audience which is first of all an American audience. In a second step the movies are exported to other countries – and this mainly for profit and not for diplomacy reasons. While Western countries, such as Germany, might have a similar cultural background and therefore share some overlapping values and reactions to the movies, other countries, which are more different from the US, might refer to a different value system and therefore react differently to the films.

Overall I think it is a complex process. Hollywood movies offer a great promise to bring American culture to other countries; however, they can also reinforce negative impressions and perceptions that other cultures have about the US.

Leitmotif : Accessible Foreign Policy for Everybody

While researching on Germany’s international broadcasting Deutsche Welle I came across this interesting Web site called Atlantic Community. It is conducted by Atlantic Initiative - a non-profit organization based in Berlin, Germany, that aims at promoting the transatlantic cooperation and strengthening the German foreign policy culture.

The Atlantic Community is an open think tank where members (you have to sign up, but it is free) can discuss and debate on recent policy issues. The founders of the project “recognized the need for a new English-language venture that would strengthen European-American ties and thus reinforce the idea that today’s transatlantic agenda is global.”

In detail the goals of Atlantic Initiative are:

• Spread the message that today's transatlantic agenda is global: International challenges like terrorism, the energy crisis, and the rise of new powers in Asia demand a unified Western policy.
• Promote frank debates and collaboration between Europe and North America on issues of globalization and foreign policy.
• Cultivate and improve intellectual exchange across the Atlantic through increased networking opportunities between decision-makers, senior experts, as well as a new generation of students and future policy professionals.
• Promote and advance the future generation of decision-makers.
• Analyze foreign policy and the challenges of the twenty-first century in such a way that everybody can understand them. Our leitmotif is: Accessible Foreign Policy for Everybody!
  (source: http://www.atlantic-initiative.org)
  

The issues dealt with are in direct relation to our course discussions and the contributing authors include Rüdiger Lentz, the head of the Deutsche Welle Washington office (he is also the head of the Atlantic Initiative in the US) and scholars who research in the field of transatlantic relations.

What I liked about the Web site is the approach to open the discussion to a wider public and make the issue of foreign policy accessible to those who are not as much engaged on a regular basis, but have their own visions and opinions.

The fact that such an online portal enters the foreign policy discussion is also characteristic for the current stage of public diplomacy. As discussed in class and described in the Gilboa reading "Searching for a Theory of Public Diplomacy," more and more new players engage in international affairs, investigate PD activities and become active themselves.

The Next Step

In my blog post A new Era of Transatlantic Relations? two weeks ago, I focused on how President Obama’s election raises hope for an improved transatlantic cooperation. However, I concluded, that there are more steps to follow in order to have a continuous impact.

At the security forum in Munich, Germany last week, we saw one next step in this direction. As already mentioned in YuanYuan’s post We will engage. We will listen. We will consult. "--Joe Biden, Vice President Joe Biden not only attended the conference in Munich on behalf of the new U.S. Administration, he also gave a keynote speech, emphasizing the new perspectives of the U.S. public diplomacy, the ways to improve relations between NATO and Russia, nuclear proliferation, and the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea.

I think it was crucial for Biden to attend the Munich conference for three core reasons: First, Biden’s appearance at the conference is a visible effort by the U.S. administration to show engagement and the will to change transatlantic relations. Second, Biden was able to address the new U.S. foreign policy direction in his speech, thereby signaling that the lack of cooperation, which has been vividly criticized by Europeans in the last years, will have an end.

And third, the fact that key politicians with a high interest in learning about the new directions of U.S. foreign policy were among the 300 guests of the conference provided an opportunity for a dialogue and therefore also underscores the importance of Biden’s appearance and speech. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, and NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheff all came to Munich. Eventually, it is a dialogue and a cooperation that has to be aimed at when it comes to transatlantic relations.

Using smart power to solve foreign policy struggles

In her recent feature article for The Star, Lynda Hearst takes a look at how a smart power approach can advance the international cooperation and built a first step towards solving the current foreign policy struggle of the U.S.

Just as stated in the Gilboa reading we discussed in class, Hearst defines the smart power approach as an “integration of hard and soft power, maintaining military strength while using persuasion and example to seed democracy, human rights and other Western ideas throughout the world.”

Arguing that hard power alone will not secure global security Hearst underscores the need to find the right combination of the two approaches.

"Although an aggressive campaign against Al Qaeda and its kin remains central, it must form only part of a broader strategy, one that offers something to societies struggling to resist the rise of extremism and to overcome underdevelopment, health crises, and environmental degradation."

Hearst sees high potential in implementing citizen diplomacy tactics as a soft power component to the overall strategy; however, the multiple opportunities to engage are “scattered throughout government, with nothing linking them with military power into a grand, unified approach to the rest of the world.”

The challenge for the Obama Administration therefore lies in finding a way to unify the soft power opportunities and integrating them into the overall foreign diplomacy approach. Especially in countries where the U.S. military has been very present during the last years, the public will remain skeptical towards the new foreign policy approach.

As a conclusion, Hearst refers to Brian Kutilis who sees Pakistan as the first country where the smart power approach should be implanted: “Pakistan – with its first democratically elected government in more than a decade but ongoing security threats within and from without – will be the initial test of the new strategy.”

Badminton Diplomacy?

In class last night, we talked about Culls article and the facets of PD. A story in the news this week highlights cultural/exchange diplomacy in an interesting way.

The United States women's Badminton Team was denied visas to enter Iran for an International tournament coming up in March. According to their foreign minister, the visa process was just too "time consuming" thus the team would not receive them in time. See FP Passport for their blog on it, which brings up a sexist angle as well.

The relationship between Iran and the US is increasingly in the spotlight as the world waits to see how our new president will act. According to an NY Times article yesterday,
"While Mr. Obama is expected to soften the Bush administration’s line against talking to Iran, the aides said, he may also seek to toughen sanctions."

While Badminton tournaments may not be on the top of Mr. Obama's list of grievances against Iran, this particular snub of our public diplomacy does show an unwillingness to engage with the US.
If even the most benign form of PD, allowing our teams to compete in their country, is rejected then it seems difficult to forsee how or where the US and Iran will ever diffuse tensions.

Innovation and Shortcomings in US Public Diplomacy

Then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, Colleen P. Graffy, contributed an article to the Washington Post entitled, "A Tweet in Foggy Bottom." In this article, Graffy speaks to several of the themes touched upon during the first meeting of this course. Namely, the world of public diplomacy is shifting to meet the demands of the 21st Century because government-to-government, diplomat-to-diplomat exchanges are no longer sufficient. Among the innovations, Graffy lists:

• Green Diplomacy;
• A Brussels "media hub";
• Enhanced embassy websites; and
• Facebook pages for embassies.

These new measures are the first steps in bolstering the traditional tools of journalist, musicians, and other "cultural envoys." A key contribution of Graffy's article is her mention of the lack of publicity surrounding the efforts and creativity across the more than 200 U.S. diplomatic missions abroad. Going forward, measures such as Facebook pages and "media hubs" - which aim to improve the quality of the presentation of information about the U.S. - will be essential in addressing this shortcoming. This is very important in today's international system due to the emphasis on multilateral relations and notions of "winning hearts and minds." As Graffy puts it, "public diplomacy is the art of communicating a country's policies, values, and culture."

In this light, a key role for public diplomacy in the context of the overall institution of U.S. foreign policy can be establishing a "constituency" for the State Department. A common thread through many conversations regarding the disadvantage of the State Department in comparison to other agencies and departments, e.g. the Department of Defense (DoD), is the lack of a domestic constituency, that is, a dedicated set of Americans that are directly reliant on the actions of the Department. For instance, DoD has everything from major commercial interests to large military populations inside and outside of the U.S. that are directly reliant on the "business" of the DoD. While it is not realistic to expect the State Department to develop a similar constituency, in size or type, it could be useful to consider the role of public diplomacy in informing the U.S. population and engaging it more fully in the "business" of foreign policy. In other words, the new U.S. administration's notion of a dialogue and teamwork must aim inward as much as it does outward in restoring, but also transforming, America's image. So much of the talk surrounding public diplomacy as a key part of U.S. foreign policy is limited to "winning hearts and minds" of "them." As with most things, there must be a compromise between "us" and "them" in order to establish a lasting way forward for both camps.

That said, public diplomacy has a long way to go and many obstacles to overcome in finding something closer to a true or right role in the U.S. foreign policy structure.