The best part of the amendment is that it calls for a "definition of the roles of the offices within the department of State and the Department of Defense that are engaged in message outreach to audiences abroad." Right now, there is overlap, and potential for more overlap if the Defense Department fulfills its ambitions for international communications activities. This wastes money, and can result in mixed messages being sent to the world.

Back on 3 March, I worked out on a napkin that 1) the public diplomacy agency (I think it should stay under State de jure, because it will always be de facto) will advocate and officially explain U.S. policies everywhere outside of the United States, 2) military information operations will persuade and inform enemy forces and affected civilians within areas of combat, and 3) international broadcasting will provide reliable news where that news is not available domestically.

Rep. Smith's amendment has all sorts of exciting language like "strategic planning," "research based, targeted approach," "new media platforms and social research technologies." Sort of like a social-scientific, logical-positivist V2 rocket, but I don't think it will get people to change their minds about U.S. policies and actions that they are opposed to.

The amendment calls for a study to look into establishing "an independent, not-for-profit organization responsible for providing independent assessment and strategic guidance to the Federal Government on strategic communication and public diplomacy." I don't know: in Washington, you can't swing a cat without hitting the front door of an institution, foundation, society, or research center, most of whom sooner or later hand out advice about public diplomacy at no cost to the taxpayers. Do we need a new government funded instrumentality to crank out more such reports, which would be placed on closet shelves in government offices, and duly forgotten? The United States has never been especially good at international communication, but we excel in creating new bureaucracies for international communication.

It is comforting to note that international broadcasting is nowhere mentioned in this amendment. If this was intentional, good. If this was because the drafters mistakenly believe that international broadcasting is part of the State Department's public diplomacy effort, bad.

The amendment is based on a report by the Strategic Communications and Public Diplomacy Coordinating Committee, and that does mention international broadcasting. That report has all sorts of tasks for U.S. international broadcasting, such as "U.S. government broadcasting should ... be encouraged to cover America’s development assistance, education and exchange programs with feature programs and interviews with recipients." Unfortunately, none of those tasks correspond with the task set out by its audience: just give us the reliable news that is lacking in our own countries, so we can make up our own minds.

U.S. international broadcasting can provide the content desired by it audience, in which case it will have an audience. Or it can create the content devised by strategic planners in Washington, in which case it will be a tree falling in the forest.

I read as many memoirs of World War II as I can, looking for references to international communication. During the war, there were all sorts of black and gray radio stations, such as Gustav Siegfried Eins and Soldatensender Calais, as well as talking tanks, pamphlets shot by artillery, etc. By and large, people were not fooled or influenced by these (unless they were ready to surrender and needed to know where and how). In the memoirs, the one international communicator that is mentioned over and over is the BBC. The BBC was not saintly during World War II, but the main product of its European broadcasts remained reliable news. That straightforward news confounded the Axis propaganda more than any "strategic communication" efforts of the Allies.

Back to post.