films that are truthful or telling, and to say something that matters, will be irresistible.

About the third way of providing content-that of working with TV-makers abroad, to create the shows about America which interest them—I am most positive. Imagine a broad-based program that invited them here, introducing them not only to the technical tools of our industry, but especially to its free, creative environment. We all instinctively know that just the experience of working together, sharing expertise, learning from each other, will have positive effects in the public diplomacy arena: people to people, not government to government. Whatever we would be teaching them, they would be teaching us what images work for the audiences in their countries. Imagine, for example, that the result of such co-creation was a soap opera-a popular form in the Middle East, as I've mentioned-about the family life of Arab-Americans. Let the family face genuine difficulties, even prejudice. We aren't telling the truth unless we're showing the struggles. And we would by virtue of that very truthfulness be saying something that could make an immense difference right now: that there is a system called democracy, under which you can live freely, and practice your religion, and at the same time pursue for yourself and your family those advantages of modernity and prosperity which truly are advantages-a good education, decent health standards, and a great chance at life for your sons and daughters.

I've described three kinds of programming-new, old, and foreign_co-creations. The changes that can be wrought by such ventures will not be worked quickly, but their ultimate, cumulative force would be immense. I repeat that we have truth on our side as well as the shared humanity of the globe, and the commonality, the universality, of the pleasure that all people take in story and image.

Chairman HYDE. I cannot help interject that if resonance had any meaning, it certainly occurred when you mentioned Amistad, because I think Anthony Hopkins' closing argument to the Supreme Court was magnificent, a lesson in the Bill of Rights. It was powerful and unforgettable.

Mr. ROMANO. In World War II, when the old WI was gathering its forces, people like Archie Maglease said let's show them race riots. Let's show them labor struggles. I don't think it was a great way to fight Nazism, but it might be a way of saying to people we are not just riding in shiny cars having a good time. There is a kind of freedom that underwrites that. We have a problem and then we have a speech by Anthony Hopkins. I think that is a very humanizing, human face sort-of message.

Chairman HYDE. Yes, indeed. Well, thank you so much. We will now go to questions from the Members. I want to admonish you to try to be brief. We have a practice of 42 minute questions, and then 20 minutes answers, and we don't get to everybody who would like to ask questions. So out of deference to your colleagues, I plead with you to be brief. And that has no particular reference to Mr. Lantos.

Mr. Lantos.

Mr. LANTOS. I appreciate that, Mr. Chairman. I want to commend the panelists' very valuable points. I shall try to be very concise and stay within my 5 minutes. First, Mr. Chairman, I would ask unanimous consent to put into the record an extraordinary analysis of public diplomacy in the Middle East by Dr. Robert Satloff.

Chairman HYDE. Without objection.

[The information referred to follows:]

POLICYWATCH #579

October 30, 2001

Analysis of Near East policy from the scholars and associates of THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE

DEVISING A PUBLIC DIPLOMACY CAMPAIGN TOWARD THE MIDDLE EAST: PART I-BASIC PRINCIPLES

By Robert Satloff

(Part I of this two-part PolicyWatch discusses the principles that should govern_a public diplomacy campaign for the Middle East; tomorrow, Part II will address the core elements such a campaign should include.)

The appearance of senior U.S. officials on the Qatari-based al-Jazeera satellite news channel is the first sign that Washington is taking seriously the need for enhanced "public diplomacy” as a vital component in the war against terrorism. In this arena, however, urgency needs to be tempered with realism. Rushing to enhance public diplomacy efforts without a clear understanding of objectives, constraints, sequence, and the different means at the government's disposal risks not only a dispersal of effort and wasted resources but, in the worst case, actually ceding important ground in the "hearts-and-minds" campaign. In devising public diplomacy toward the Middle East, the key to success will be to marry the principles of "make haste, slowly" and "do no harm."

Objective. In general, a public diplomacy campaign waged in the current political context ought to have three basic components:

1. Explaining U.S. policy, candidly and without apology. America has a strong, positive record on issues of concern to Arabs and Muslims and should make its case. Washington should be justifiably proud of its military efforts to defend Muslim populations in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Kuwait; the health, welfare, and infrastructure improvements purchased by the tens of billions of dollars of assistance to the largest Arab state, Egypt; and the mutually beneficial relations it has with governments from Nigeria to Turkey to Indonesia. Similarly, the United States should not shy away from explaining its support for Israel and its generation- old effort to promote a peaceful, negotiated settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute, nor should it flinch from highlighting the ongoing threat that Saddam Husayn poses to his people and the wider region and the need to maintain tight constraints on Saddam's ability to act on his oft-stated ambitions.

2. Providing alternative sources of credible, factual, relevant information, especially about the wider world but also about the local countries in which listeners and viewers live. Rather than seek to compete with the sensationalism that characterizes Arab satellite television stations, U.S.-produced news should be presented in a professional and dispassionate manner, but one that highlights free and open debate among responsible political elements. For reasons outlined below, programming should be country-specific, as much as possible.

3. Projecting those core U.S. values that characterize U.S. society, especially tolerance, openness, meritocracy, and civic activism. This is a much more modest objective than aspiring to enlist popular support for U.S. policy throughout Arab and Muslim societies or to build future pro- American governments in the region. The objective here should be to expose Middle Easterners to information about the American way of life and to provide local populations with a choice about how they wish to develop their own societies, not that the United States is going to impose that choice on them. While the United States cannot award every Middle Easterner a visa, U.S. public diplomacy can give every reader, listener, and viewer a portal into the American way of life, providing them with an opportunity to learn that functioning, flourishing alternatives exist to their generally closed and illiberal societies. Context. The first step in devising a public diplomacy campaign to complement the "war on terror" is to recognize the complexity of the challenge; the distinction between target-states and target-peoples; and fundamental differences between the current situation and the U.S.- Soviet ideological struggle of years past.

1. The targets in the current situation are populations of states whose governments range from those that are, more or less, supportive of U.S. security interests (e.g., Egypt, Saudi Arabia) to those that are inimical to our interests (e.g., Syria, Iran).

2. In terms of public diplomacy, the distinction between allies and adversaries is blurred. Both friendly and unfriendly states alike fend off domestic criticism of internal problems by offering wide latitude to anti- Americanism in all spheres of public discourse, especially media, culture, religion, and education. While this does not obviate the very real problem of animosity to U.S. policy in many corners of the Middle East, this does mean that U.S. public diplomacy will face an uphill battle in almost every Middle Eastern state. 3. In general, civil society organizations that, in other cultures and at other times, might be ready partners for U.S. public diplomacy either cannot or will not play that role in the current Middle East context. Some are Islamist in orientation and are avowedly anti-American. Many others, especially those involved in local health and welfare service delivery, are predominantly nonpolitical and must remain that way to avoid running afoul of the regime. Sadly, to the extent that they exist, the Walensas, Sharanskys, and Havels of the Middle East are not generally friendly to U.S. Middle East policy. Ironically, those most naturally sympathetic to the United States may be found in organizations connected to, though not directly part of, the regime, as well as in the business communities, though these organizations are also likely to make a distinction between U.S. values (which they appreciate) and U.S. policies (which they oppose). The bottom line is that organized civil society will not be a strong ally in this effort, though a handful of groups may support specific initiatives and deserve U.S. engagement.

Taken together, all this suggests the need for extreme humility in devising a public diplomacy campaign targeted toward the states and peoples in the Middle East. Thankfully, this region of the world is less critical to current U.S. military operations than was the case with the Gulf War a decade ago; today, the key Muslimmajority states in terms of the U.S. military effort are Pakistan and Uzbekistan, not Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, the Arab Middle East still needs to be a central concern because of other current U.S. interests and because the campaign against terror may before long turn its focus here. Nevertheless, as one pundit has noted, this part of the globe is undergoing a "clash within civilization," which any U.S. outreach effort can affect only on the margins and only over time. Four immediate policy consequences emerge from the above:

1. The state-supported anti-Americanism of existing media/religious/educational elite institutions throughout the region means that any public diplomacy effort begins with the White House. Unless bilateral diplomacy addresses this issue at the highest levels - that is, unless the president and his senior aides are willing to raise with leaders of Egypt and other states the need to purge state-run media of its rampant anti-Americanism (and anti-Semitism), the need for the leaders themselves to adopt clear public stands against these noxious trends, and the need for friendly regimes to lower the vast array of bureaucratic barriers they place in the way of U.S. engagement with local NGOs and ordinary people then there is little chance that America's own public diplomacy campaign will register much success.

2. As much as possible, efforts at public diplomacy under the broad rubric of "Arab world" or "Muslim world" should be rejected in favor of country-specific initiatives. This flows from the fact that a key subtext of U.S. regional strategy should be to avoid feeding into transnational tides of pan-Arabism or pan-Islamism in favor of evolutionary political and economic change within existing state structures and national borders. On a practical level, it is important to recognize how diverse the Middle East actually is and, for example, to avoid lumping together the vastly different cultures and societies of Casablanca, Aleppo, Muscat, and Riyadh under the simplistic category of "Arab" or "Muslim."

3. Focusing on individual states, however, will pose its own set of problems. The difficulty of directing regime-specific messages (except via national “surrogate radio stations" like Radio Free Iraq) will perforce dictate a lowestcommon- denominator form of public diplomacy throughout the region, so as not to provoke insurrectionary sentiment in countries where it could backfire against U.S. interests. Even so, the administration is still going to face stiff opposition, primarily from "friendly regimes" who are likely to view an enhanced public diplomacy effort as meddlesome interference in local affairs. 4. The paucity of local partners, even in countries with significant civil society institutions (such as Morocco, Iran, or the Palestinian Authority) will reinforce the need to focus both on broad target groups (e.g., youth, women) and

on themes which appear non-threatening but which have significant political content in the long run (e.g., education, community action, and tolerance).

In general, those devising a U.S. public diplomacy campaign targeted to Arab and Muslim-majority states (as well as to Muslim minorities elsewhere) should avoid two themes:

1. that Americans (even American Muslims) know Islam better than other Muslims do. It makes little sense for U.S. political leaders to preach to Middle Eastern Muslims that Osama bin Laden does not represent "true Islam." That message will resonate only if broadcast by moderate Muslim clerics within the societies in which listeners/viewers live. U.S. diplomacy should actively engage with local religious leaders to convince them (or cajole local political leaders to convince their own local religious leaders) to issue clear statements against extremism and violence, which will be much more powerful than protestations about Islam by U.S. politicians. (It is essential that such condemnations not be limited to the events of September 11; to be lasting and powerful, they should address all terrorism-that is, all attacks on civilians, regardless of political context or alleged objective.) The more appropriate role for American Muslims in U.S. public diplomacy is to advertise the religious tolerance of U.S. society and the freedom within America to debate U.S. policy.

2. that America is keen to understand why so many in the region "hate us." While journalists are keen to hype the anti-Americanism of local populations, it is both self-defeating and analytically unproven to assume that large majorities in the Arab and/or Muslim worlds detest the United States. That many, probably most, Middle Easterners are critical of specific U.S. policies is neither new nor a surprise, given America's status as the sole superpower, arbiter of global culture, and engine of a globalization process in which the Middle East participates only marginally. At the same time, as the small but vocal and politically active class is avowedly anti-American, the large "silent majority" of Arabs and Muslims most likely relishes the idea of coming to America, knows little about the reality of American life, and is exposed only to the caricature of U.S. policies they see on local media. In short, there is a difference between opposition and hate, and to the extent they hate, they hate a phantom.

Exacerbating the challenge for U.S. policymakers is the fact that the most obvious and logical resource for public diplomacy to the Middle East—that is, the professional class of U.S. experts on contemporary Middle East politics and society-is generally (though not uniformly) hostile to U.S. Middle East policy. Most would cause more mischief than good should they be entrusted with creating and implementing a public diplomacy campaign. As a rule, seeking out scholars and policy practitioners who can provide a robust explanation of U.S. policy, even if they are not necessarily “Middle East experts," should be a higher priority than putting on display for Middle Easterners the diversity of U.S. views that is a hallmark of our democracy.

Robert Satloff is the executive director of The Washington Institute.

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POLICYWATCH #580

October 31, 2001

Analysis of Near East policy from the scholars and associates

of THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE

DEVISING A PUBLIC DIPLOMACY CAMPAIGN TOWARD THE MIDDLE EAST: PART II-CORE ELEMENTS

By Robert Satloff

(Part II of this two-part PolicyWatch discusses the core elements of a public diplomacy campaign for the Middle East; yesterday, Part I outlined the principles that should govern such a campaign.)

There are three basic elements of an integrated public diplomacy campaignmedia, education, and exchange. More needs to be done in each arena. But before the government falls prey to the appeal of waging “information warfare" via the airwaves as the main way to complement the military campaign now underway, it would be wise to invest in three areas first: making America's diplomats take seriously the goal of public outreach abroad and mandating the language requirements to make that possible; restoring funding and urgency to educational and exchange programs of proven success; and developing ways to engage the next generation of Middle Easterners, especially through English education and American studies programming. After all, the battle for hearts and minds, like the war on terror, is a long-term project.

Media

The easiest target for enhanced public diplomacy is broadcasting-that is, television and radio-but this is also the most delicate, difficult, and, potentially, the most problematic. In a perfect world, the U.S. government would compete for Middle Eastern listeners and viewers with its own network of powerful FM radio stations and satellite television channels that wins audience by appealing to the current tastes of Arabic-, Persian-, and Turkish-speaking Generation Xers and then provides educational, informational, cultural, and entertainment programming that expands minds and wins hearts. Regrettably, this is precisely what the U.S. government is ill suited to do. While the United States has a strong, if uneven, record in terms of surrogate radio to adversary states, broadcasting to strategically friendly but politically ambiguous states is much more difficult. Success would require a news organization as well-heeled, fleet- footed, and hi-tech as al-Jazeera, trying to win the sort of credibility that it took the BBC decades to acquire.

One obvious impediment will be personnel and oversight. Done properly, pro-U.S. radio and television would require hiring scores of Arab journalists and technicians to maintain local bureaus in many Arab and Muslim countries, providing the raw material for the local news and features that would give U.S. broadcasting its unique appeal. This runs two types of risks: either that the correspondents "go local" and fail to project adequately the pro-U.S. message that is the rationale for the station, or that they (and their families) find themselves subject to enormous pressure—both directly and indirectly, overt and subtle from local governments or nongovernmental political groups. (The pressure would be magnified in the event that U.S. radio or television tries to establish full-scale broadcast centers in the Middle East, as was the original intent of the new Middle East Radio Network soon to be launched by the Broadcasting Board of Governors.) In either case, finding and keeping the proper balance, without either subjecting staff to life-threatening situations or provoking the ire of Congress when broadcasts are not sufficiently pro-American, is a herculean task.

In the near term, it is important to enhance existing Voice of America programming to the Middle East and to proceed with the BBG's new radio initiative-under careful and ongoing supervision-so as to test the practicability of the concept. But it is at least as important and no less urgent to pursue lower-profile, lower-cost, less labor-intensive media work that is likely to provide more lasting "bang" for the public diplomacy "buck." This means building on opportunities-people, programs, and technology-that already exist. Operationally, this includes:

Providing career incentives for local diplomats, especially ambassadors, to do television, radio, and media outreach. Currently, the incentive structure works the wrong way, as ambassadors and other diplomats can get in trouble if they stray from anodyne State Department guidance but score few career points if they make media outreach a major focus. Instead, the State Department should borrow from the Pentagon model, legislated in the Goldwater-Nichols military reform act, that required officers with "joint" service to be promoted at least as fast as those without, thereby making "joint" service a career-enhancer rather than a dead end. In this context, the State Department should implement (perhaps as a result of new legislation) new policies making good performance at appearing on local media a major factor in the promotion process.

Regularizing the appearance of senior government officials on major foreign media. While the U.S. government should be modest about developing its own satellite television capability, it should assiduously take advantage of the scores of Middle East journalists -print and electronic eager to air and publish the comments of U.S. officials. With a well-run public diplomacy program, appearances on regional broadcasting by the secretary of state and the national security advisor will be as routine as their appearance on Sunday morning network talk shows. Also, funding should be found to provide media training-by both U.S. professionals and local experts to U.S. diplomats in the field.