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Winning the War of Ideas
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During my
confirmation hearings in January, I said that it seems I have been preparing my
whole life for the job of undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. Even
so, seven months ago, when I was nominated, I had not thought deeply or broadly
about what would be my primary responsibility in the job: the war of ideas. In this, I
was probably not much different from many, many others -- in and out of
government. While I accepted the notion that, in the global war on terror, a
war of ideas is at least as important as military action, I wasn't sure what
the war of ideas was. Even the term "war of ideas" is broadly
disliked, most of all by its practitioners, who, by the way, have no good
substitute -- as they will readily admit. I was sworn
in on June 10, six months, almost to the day, from the date I was nominated.
One of the advantages to such a long waiting period is that you can take time
to get educated about the post you are going to take. And that is what I did.
That education included much reading of the work that you do here at The
Washington Institute, as well as discussions with those, here and elsewhere,
who have thought long and hard about the issues I would face. Probably
more than any other individual, Rob Satloff has helped shape the views on the
war of ideas that I presented, in a form of a Strategic Vision Statement, at my
first interagency meeting on June 24 -- the launch, or re-launch, of the Policy
Coordinating Committee that had met only twice in the preceding 12 months. The views
that I will express today are my own, of course. I take full responsibility.
But, on the war of ideas, I would not have arrived where I have arrived without
the wisdom and insights expressed by Rob and his colleagues here at The
Washington Institute. So let me begin with my thanks. It is no accident that I
decided to give my first address in Washington as Under Secretary right here at
The Washington Institute. The under
secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs has a big portfolio. One part
of the portfolio is to be, in the words of Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who
introduced me at my confirmation hearing, "the supreme allied commander in
the war of ideas." I will be concentrating on just that -- the war of ideas
-- because I believe the war of ideas needs urgent attention. In fact, I
am convinced that, unless we get the war of ideas right, we will never succeed
in meeting the most significant threat of our time. Unless we get the war of
ideas right, the safety of Americans and the future of America's way of life
will be in continuous peril. Before I get
to the war of ideas, let me start with context. Public diplomacy is diplomacy
aimed at publics, as opposed to officials. Public diplomacy, like official
diplomacy -- and like kinetic actions, when they become necessary -- has as its
mission the achievement of the national interest. Public diplomacy performs
this mission by understanding, informing, engaging, and influencing foreign
publics. Ultimately, it is the last word, "influencing," that counts
most. Our aim is
to influence foreign publics to make it easier to achieve U.S. foreign policy
goals -- both short- and long-term. The key goals today are to diminish the
threat to Americans and the rest of the world posed by violent extremism and
weapons of mass destruction and to help people around the world achieve
freedom. These goals are linked, according to our National Security Strategy:
"Championing freedom advances our interests because the survival of
liberty at home increasingly depends on the success of liberty abroad.
Governments that honor their citizens' dignity and desire for freedom tend to
uphold responsible conduct toward other nations, while governments that
brutalize their people also threaten the peace and stability of other
nations." During the
Cold War, after a slow start, we became good at public diplomacy, with such
institutions as the Congress of Cultural Freedom and Radio Free Europe. But
starting in the early 1990s, the United States, in bipartisan fashion, began to
dismantle this arsenal of persuasion. It was an act the Djerejian Group, of
which I was a member, called "a process of unilateral disarmament in the
weapons of advocacy." Beginning shortly after 9/11, the tide began to turn
again but slowly. In its 2003
report, the Djerejian Group, which studied U.S. public diplomacy for Arab and
Muslim societies, would call, in desperation, for "a new strategic
direction -- informed by a seriousness and commitment that matches the gravity
of our approach to national defense and traditional state-to-state
diplomacy." Today, the
environment has changed. Budgets have risen. Backing is bipartisan. One of the
biggest enthusiasts for public diplomacy in government is the secretary of
defense. There's a lot of talk -- as usual in Washington -- about restructuring
public diplomacy. Structure is important, but two things are far more
important: will and strategy. I can report
to you today that the will now exists. Does the seriousness and commitment
match that of our approach to national defense and state-to-state diplomacy?
No. Not yet, but we're swiftly moving in the right direction. Our intention is
to help build a strong foundation for a program of vigorous public diplomacy
for the next administration -- a public diplomacy endowed with both adequate
resources and with intellectual seriousness. But at the same time, we plan to
accomplish a great deal in the six months left in this administration -- real,
substantial accomplishments. As for
strategy, you will have to begin to judge from what I have to say to you today
-- and, ultimately, from results over the next half-year. Before
getting to the war of ideas, let me talk briefly about the more traditional
tools of public diplomacy. Until June 10, I chaired the Broadcasting Board of
Governors, which supervises taxpayer-funded U.S. international broadcasting. I
still sit on the board as the secretary of state's representative. The state of
our broadcasting effort is healthy. Every week, 175 million adults around the world
tune in to programming -- in a total of 60 languages -- from Voice of America,
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Alhurra, Radio Sawa, Radio and TV Marti and
Radio Free Asia. That is a 75 percent increase in audience since 2002. Of the
75 million new listeners and viewers, about half are Arabic speakers. The BBG
is having an impact in places like Tibet, Burma, Kenya, North Korea, Cuba, and
Iran. In Iran, VOA Persian TV broadcasts seven hours a day and reaches more
than one-quarter of adult Iranians by satellite. Alhurra has a bigger audience
than al-Jazeera in Iraq and is viewed each week by more than half the adults in
Syria. One reason the broacasting effort works is that it has a clear and
limited mission. It is effective, but it is only one tool. Within the
State Department itself, the crown jewels of public diplomacy are our
educational and cultural exchange programs, where we spend the majority of
State's diplomacy funds. To the rest of the world, higher education is
America's greatest brand, and, despite tighter visa requirements since 9/11,
the school year 2007-08 produced a record number of international students
coming to the U.S. to study, about 600,000 of them -- a dramatic recovery. The
U.S. is far and away the most desirable destination in the world for learning. With the
leadership of Goli Ameri, the talented Tehran-born American who is assistant
secretary for education and cultural affairs, we are focusing on English
teaching programs, especially reaching disadvantaged young people in Muslim
nations. Other exchanges bring 4,000 international visitors to America,
including talented people on the way up. Graduates have included more than 200
heads of state or government, including Tony Blair and Hamid Karzai. The other
traditional public diplomacy effort of the State Department is the information
part -- we send 800 American experts in science, public policy, and other key
fields abroad every year and hold dozens of video conferences to talk about
America and its policies. We maintain multi-lingual websites like America.gov
to spread the word, and, more and more, these efforts are becoming interactive
and technologically sophisticated. Our aim is not to preach but to encourage
interaction that will lead to understanding of American principles and
policies. Our credo in information dissemination is summed up in the National
Security Strategy: "Freedom cannot be imposed; it must be chosen." The war of
ideas draws on the work of traditional public diplomacy, but it is both broader
and narrower. The under
secretary is dual-hatted: I run the part of public diplomacy, as I outlined to
you just now, that resides at State, and I run the government-wide effort on
the war of ideas -- which includes coordination with the private sector as
well. In April 2006,
the president designated the under secretary of state for public diplomacy as
the interagency lead in this effort. I head a Policy Coordinating Committee
with members from a wide variety of government agencies, but the main ones are
State, Defense, the Intelligence Community, Homeland Security, Treasury,
Justice, USAID, and BBG. The focus of
today's war of ideas is counterterrorism. As the National Strategy for
Combating Terrorism of 2006 puts it: "In the long run, winning the War on
Terror means winning the battle of ideas." So let me be
specific. Our mission today in the war of ideas is highly focused. It is to
use the tools of ideological engagement -- words, deeds, and images -- to
create an environment hostile to violent extremism. We want to break the
linkages between groups like al-Qaeda and their target audiences. The war of
ideas is not a radical departure from overall public diplomacy strategy. It is
an integral part of that strategy. In fact, the 2007 strategy paper issued last
year by my predecessor, Karen Hughes, listed three objectives, among them:
"With our partners, we seek to isolate and marginalize violent extremists
who threaten . . . freedom and peace." There has been much activity in the
war of ideas throughout the government over the past few years, including, at
the State Department, the launch of the Rapid Response Unit, Counterterrorism
Communications Center, Digital Outreach Team, and media hubs in London,
Brussels, and Dubai, plus dozens of specific programs in the field. What has
been lacking is focus and emphasis. Unlike
traditional functions of public diplomacy like education and cultural
exchanges, the aim of the war of ideas is not to persuade foreign
populations to adopt more favorable views of the United States and its
policies. Instead, the war of ideas tries to ensure that negative sentiments
and day-to-day grievances toward the United States and its allies do not
manifest themselves in the form of violent extremism. Let me put
this another way. In the war of ideas, our core task is not how to fix
foreigners' perceptions of the United States. Those perceptions are important
-- and I would be happy to address the issue of America's image in the
question-and-answer period. But America's image -- indeed, the United States
itself -- is not at the center of the war of ideas. Instead, we
need to recognize that there is a complex, multisided battle going on in Muslim
societies for power. This is a battle in which we cannot be a bystander if we
wanted to. We cannot step aside and simply watch Muslims slug it out among
themselves. Instead, the battle within the Muslim world for power affects the
United States directly and was responsible for the deaths of 3,000 people seven
years ago. In this battle, our main role is to support constructive
alternatives to violent extremism. Our priority
is not to promote our brand but to help destroy theirs. Think of
America's values and political system as orange juice; think of the al-Qaeda
system of violent extremism as lemonade. Our job for the short term is not to
put all of our efforts into getting people to drink orange juice, but to get
them not to drink lemonade. They can drink anything else they want:
milk, ginger ale, tomato juice, Coke. We are confident that, ultimately, they
will come around to orange juice or something close to it, but in the meantime,
we want them to stay away from lemonade. The effort
is to help show populations that the ideology and actions of the violent
extremists are not in the best interests of those populations. As Rob
Satloff wrote in November, "The 'battle of ideas' is not a popularity
contest about us; it is a battle for political power among Muslims, in which
America's favorability rating is irrelevant." It is the
fact that the battle is going on within Muslim society that makes our role so
complicated and that requires that we ourselves not do much of the fighting.
The most credible voices in this war of ideas are Muslim. Here is our
ultimate goal: A world in
which the use of violence to achieve political, religious, or social objectives
is no longer considered acceptable; efforts to radicalize and recruit new
members are no longer successful; and the perpetrators of violent extremism are
condemned and isolated. How do we
achieve such a world? Three ways: First, by
confronting the ideology that justifies and enables the violence. We try to
remove the fake veneer on the reputation of extremists and allow publics to see
the shame and hostility of life in terrorism. That is what worked in al-Anbar
province in Iraq, as well as in Jordan and Morocco. In fact, as David Pollock
shows in his Washington Institute report, Slippery Polls, support for suicide
bombing throughout the Muslim world has dropped sharply. The proportion of
Jordanians with "a lot of confidence in Osama bin Laden" has fallen
from 56 percent in 2003 to 20 percent in 2007; in Kuwait, from 20 percent to 13
percent. This is an
effort that requires credible Muslim voices to work effectively -- especially
voices of those, like Dr. Fadl, born Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, whose story was
told recently by Lawrence Wright in the New Yorker. Dr. Fadl helped
build the al-Qaeda ideology and now repudiates it for its wanton violence.
"Oh, you young people," he warns, "do not be deceived by the
heroes of the Internet, the leaders of the microphones, who are launching
statements inciting the youth while living under the protection of intelligence
services, or of a tribe, or in a distant cave or under political asylum in an
infidel country. They have thrown many others before you into the infernos,
graves, and prisons." Again, let
me quote Rob Satloff: "We should focus on identifying, nurturing and
supporting anti-Islamist Muslims, from secular liberals to pious believers, who
fear the encroachment of radical Islamists and are willing to make a
stand." But we
ourselves should not shrink from confidently opposing poisonous ideas -- even
if they are rooted in a distorted and twisted interpretation of religious
doctrine. To this end,
we are working to develop the contemporary analogue to Problems of Communism,
an important journal of the Cold War. The new journal will appear in both
electronic and paper form and will also serve as a platform for conferences and
discussions. Second, we
achieve our desired goal by offering, often in cooperation with the private
sector and using the best technology including Web 2.0 social networking
techniques, a full range of productive alternatives to violent extremism. The
shorthand for this policy is diversion -- powerful and lasting diversion,
the channeling of potential recruits away from violence with the attractions of
entertainment, culture, literature, music technology, sports, education,
business and culture, in addition to politics and religion. While
winning hearts and minds would be an admirable feat, the war of ideas adopts
the more immediate and realistic goal of diverting impressionable segments of
the population from the recruitment process. The war of ideas is really a
battle of alternative visions, and our goal is to divert recruits from the
violent extremist vision. Going beyond
diversion, we seek to build countermovements by empowering groups and
individuals opposed to violent extremism -- movements (using both electronic
and physical means) that bring people together with similar, constructive
interests, such as mothers opposed to violence (built on the MADD, or Mothers
Against Drunk Driving, model), believers in democratic Islam, even electronic
gaming. Our role is
as a facilitator of choice. Mainly behind the scenes, we help build networks
and movements -- put tools in the hands of young people to make their own
choices, rather than dictating those choices. Again, in the words of the National
Security Strategy: "Freedom cannot be imposed; it must be chosen." The third
means to achieve this safer, freer world is to create a broad awareness of the
war of ideas throughout the U.S. government, business, academia. But more than
the war of ideas itself. We want to spread a culture of "active
understanding," that is, to spread research-based information on the
aspirations, frustrations, and perceptions of audiences in areas where violent
extremism has taken root. We have
already done a major reorganization -- both at State and the interagency -- to
help in the overall effort. I have listed as the five focal points of our
programs: Muslim society, especially involving young people, at the grassroots;
Middle East elites, who involve themselves in ideology and religious doctrine;
foreign fighters, who have poured into Iraq and Afghanistan; Iran; and private
sector expertise. And I want
to stress that we are on the lookout for measures that marry the traditional
means of public diplomacy with the war of ideas effort. One idea: a far more
robust alumni network -- encouraging social networking by Internet among the
one million alumni participants in our educational and cultural exchange
programs. If they wish to help, these alumni will be credible voices, pushing
back against violent extremism and offering alternatives. In addition,
the war of ideas must be broadly international. It has to extend beyond the
Middle East. Latin America and Africa and much of East Asia must be an
important focus of our attention -- along with Europe, Central Asia, and other
areas with high concentrations of Muslims who might be susceptible to the
extremist message. This is a long-term effort, and it is nearly impossible to
pinpoint the geography of the next threat. As Sen.
Lieberman said, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy is an allied
commander. Europeans, especially, are trying to use the tools of the war of
ideas to combat an insidious ideology that is an internal as well as external
threat. We work as well with partners in the Middle East. While they may
disagree with some of our policies in their region, they agree that policies
like diversion can make their own nations safer. In the
current issue of Commentary, Max Boot, a military historian, looked at
this question: "Are We Winning the War on Terror?" He cites the
comments of CIA Michael Hayden: "near strategic defeat of al Qaeda in
Iraq, Near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks
for al-Qaeda globally . . . as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their
form of Islam." Peter Bergen
and Marc Sageman are among the analysts who have changed their views and now
believe that al-Qaeda has suffered severe setbacks. All true. It is no accident
that there has not been an attack on America in nearly seven years. Kinetic
action has been working and so, even in its nascent stages, has the war of
ideas. Still, there
is no one involved in this battle who thinks the war is close to being won.
There is a widespread belief in Muslim nations that the United States and other
Western powers want to destroy Islam and replace it with Christianity. This
root belief underlies much of the passive support for the violent extremism of
al-Qaeda and similar groups. The flow of new recruits has not stopped. Our work
is ahead of us. In the end,
the mission of twenty-first century public diplomacy is to tell the world of a
good and compassionate nation and at the same time to engage in the most
important ideological contest of our time. This engagement must, by its nature,
involve non-Americans that we nurture, support, and encourage. Our goal in this
war of ideas is to create an environment hostile to violent extremism. It is an
urgent task. The will, as
I said, now exists. As for strategy: I think that, with your help, we have it
right. This is a contest that we have now engaged vigorously -- a contest we
will win. Thank you. http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC07.php?CID=408 |
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