Embassy Security: Could Murals and Cactus Be the Answer?

Hiding a cell tower - one of the non-traditional uses for cactus

Maybe Festivus came late this year, because it appears to be the season for The Airing of Grievances about how U.S. embassy security measures have inhibited the practice of public diplomacy.

First it was the Advisory Commission for Public Diplomacy rehashing old complaints, then it was a new report from the Academy of American Diplomacy with an anti-Fortress Embassy twist added by Whirled View. Now, it's a veteran Public Diplomacy officer, retired but working part-time as a rehired annuitant, who has some problems with you security people.

He airs his grievances in an article for the May 2015 edition of the Foreign Service Journal, Keeping Embassy Security in Perspective, which he begins with a very solid statement about the inherent danger of expeditionary diplomacy and the political backlash that follows security incidents:

To put it bluntly, Amb. Stevens died because violent extremists attacked our consulate facility in Benghazi three years ago and killed him. Let’s not blame him for doing his job. As Foreign Service personnel, together with other government civilians and employees of nongovernmental organizations who work alongside us in the field, we sometimes find ourselves “in harm’s way” because that is the only way we can do our jobs. Our objectives do not become less compelling just because some danger is involved.

-- snip --

Ever since [the Benghazi attack] overseas security has been a club for politicians to use against one another. After the State Department’s Accountability Review Board sharply criticized State for “systemic failures” and “deficiencies” at senior levels, increased security was ordered worldwide.

The author then describes all the ways in which those increased security measures disappointed him when he helped the U.S. mission in Tunis recover after the 2012 mob attack.

The one thing that was not limited was the security operation. Throughout my six months in Tunis, our staff meetings typically focused on security and construction issues. Across the entire mission, relatively few U.S. employees had outside contact work as their primary responsibility.

Off duty, I was generally able to move about Greater Tunis more or less freely. Thanks to email and Facebook, I found many old friends and contacts. Some had become “ancien régime,” but they nonetheless offered an important window into our understanding of what was happening in Tunisia. Meanwhile, official Washington still had Benghazi in its teeth, and the focus was on security, not outreach.

Repeated requests by the embassy to go off ordered-departure status and bring back dependents were rebuffed. Yet just across the highway, the American School had put itself back into operation within days. Sure, there was still credible threat reporting—but we saw very little violence. Nearby, our posts in Morocco were still open, as was the embassy in Cairo, surely a more dangerous place.

The net effect of this continued security-first posture was to reduce the U.S. government’s presence and operational effectiveness in Tunisia at a crucial time. What program outreach we were doing was largely in the hands of NGOs, who could bring in staff and program support without an explicit green light from M.

The embassy’s public library (Information Resource Center) was essentially closed to the general public, both because advance clearance through the RSO was required for access and because the space itself had been requisitioned as the embassy’s training classroom. The public affairs section’s multipurpose room had likewise been taken over by temporary security staff. Since even routine access for outside visitors required 24-hour advance notice, I often met contacts at cafés just beyond the barbed-wire barriers.

Barbed wire atop and alongside high blank walls, running parallel to one of the country’s main highways, gave the embassy compound the look of a federal penitentiary. Once, I suggested to the construction folks that we use cactus (a traditional Tunisian security barrier) in place of the concertina wire, and add colorful “Info-USA” panels on the side of the perimeter wall facing the highway. The cactus, I was told, would be too expensive. (Compared to the overall cost of maintaining that huge compound on top of a reclaimed swamp?) The murals? Maybe, someday. (If anyone from the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations is reading this, please consider!)

I suppose having murals painted on the perimeter wall would be perfectly fine, but then, that really isn't OBO's job. As for putting cactus on top of the wall, I suspect the problem there was the sheer nuttiness of the idea more than the cost.

The author identifies a key aspect of the problem when he notes that we tolerate some types of risk much more readily than others.

Somehow few challenge the risks we face from tropical disease or endemic crime, only from politically motivated violence. For that, host governments have the primary responsibility to protect our official facilities under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the parallel 1963 Convention on Consular Relations. As politicians and pundits club each other with talk of “sending in the Marines” (or the 101st Airborne), let’s admit that it is almost never practical or desirable to apply purely military solutions to diplomatic security issues.

Exactly so, and let's do admit that what he calls military solutions are rarely appropriate for diplomatic security problems. Our political system tolerates some common types of risk quite well, but it goes bat-guano-crazy over terrorism and mob violence. That is not irrational, however. 

Finally, he bottom-lines it with the irrefutable statement that 'we need good security, but ...' we want other things, too.

We need to maintain good “force protection,” of course, and we need to minimize mistakes, but we also need to get out of our offices to do our jobs. That means tolerating a certain level of risk.

Well, yeah, sure. The exact same thing was said by the Benghazi Accountability Review Board Report in its introductory paragraphs:

This Board presents its findings and recommendations with the unanimous conclusion that while the United States cannot retreat in the face of such challenges, we must work more rigorously and adeptly to address them, and that American diplomats and security professionals, like their military colleagues, serve the nation in an inherently risky profession. Risk mitigation involves two imperatives – engagement and security – which require wise leadership, good intelligence and evaluation, proper defense and strong preparedness and, at times, downsizing, indirect access and even withdrawal.

So, everybody agrees that we need good embassy security, but ... also other stuff, like engagement with foreign audiences.

It's a question of priority, of what we need most at any particular time. We needed to engage the public in Tunisia after the 2012 attack on our embassy, but ... not more than we needed to repair the damage and enhance the perimeter against a possible second attack. We needed to bring the non-essential staff and dependents back in-country, but ... not until the situation in Tunisia and the region had stabilized.

These are inherently political decisions, as is the whole subject of risk acceptance for diplomatic missions. Personally, I happen to be on the side of taking reasonable risks, but, this is where I have a grievance of my own with critics of embassy security.

National priorities are set at a level well about that of the Regional Security Officer, or the Ambassador, or even the SecState. If you don't like the waves of risk aversion and increased security that follow attacks such as those in Benghazi and Tunis, then write to your Congressman. If you start a petition, I'll sign it. If you run for office, I'll vote for you. But, don't blame the security budget for your problems. Diplomatic Security isn't driving the decision train.

Was It All That Bad To Have a Few American Center Libraries Torched? Discuss

A Golden Oldie, USIS Library Karachi

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Two weeks ago the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy (ACPD) repeated some very old arguments that blame the current decline in public diplomacy programs on the post-1985 creation of security standards for overseas diplomatic missions, as well as the replacement of old embassy office buildings with so-called Fortress Embassies, and - most of all - a 1999 law that prohibits having stand-alone American Centers outside those new embassies without a waiver signed by the SecState. I sympathize with the goal of retaining stand-alone American Centers, but the ACPD's arguments are badly in need of updating and fact-checking.

Which brings me to last Tuesday's post at Whirled View about American Diplomacy: What Went Wrong and What Can Be Done About It? Once again, it seems, those Fortress Embassies are What Went Wrong to public diplomacy programs.

The post 9/11 explosion of fortress embassies [phrasing?] on the outskirts of cities has just exacerbated US diplomats’ inability to function abroad effectively. Diplomacy is foremost about interacting with people - and when diplomats are sidelined to distant suburbs and the people they need to talk with work in the city center and are not welcome in Embassy offices chances are that those discussions and meetings will be far and few between, if they take place at all.

-- snip --

The report [of the Academy of American Diplomacy, American Diplomacy at Risk] ignores America’s fortress embassies but they too are a part of the equation.

What good does it do to have crusader castles and even the most qualified diplomats based in the equivalents of the outer reaches of the universe? True, such embassies provide a single hardened location supposedly easier to defend from terrorists but wouldn’t it be better - perhaps even safer - if certain functions were separated into smaller, less visible but more accessible units scattered throughout a city? Was it even all that bad to have a very few American Center libraries torched over the decades as happened in volatile places like Pakistan years ago but the rest of the larger mission - including the Embassy and Consulates - kept out of harm’s way?

The not-all-your-eggs-in-one basket argument has merit, I think, at least in the comparatively safe places where the host government is capable of providing the U.S. mission with a reasonable level of protection. Where it isn't capable or willing to do so, then all our eggs are better off collected into one big Fortress protected by our own resources.

As for the rhetorical question about torched American Center libraries, well, someone must be kidding. Was it all that bad? Yes, it was pretty damn bad when mobs attacked our libraries in Pakistan in 1979, with loss of lives in every case. And it didn't act as a safety value for the rest of the mission, either, since our Embassy and Consulates were also attacked. The only difference was that the Libraries in Lahore and Rawalpindi were more vulnerable than the rest of the mission facilities, and so they were more easily destroyed. Mobs also tried to burn the Libraries in Karachi and Peshawar, but those were collocated with our Consulate office buildings and the attackers were stopped by massive police interventions.

A survivor of the 1979 attack in Lahore described it to CNN in 2012:

A mob of perhaps 5,000 marched to the American Center, burned it and then marched to the consulate and attacked us. Battled by 300 Pakistani policemen, they burned our cars and tried, unsuccessfully, to burn down the consulate itself -- with us inside. There were enough police to keep the crowd at bay, but not enough to disperse them quickly. After several hours, the crowd left and the police took us out in an armed convoy.

The attack on the Lahore Library was described in detail by one of its local employees, Tanweer Ahmed Khan, in an article he wrote for a USIA commemorative history, Fire and Luck at the American Center, Lahore:

On November 21, 1979, in Lahore, Pakistan, the three American USIS officers — BPAO Douglas H. Smith, BCAO V.Miro Morville, and Program Officer Lester R. Velez — were out for lunch as was FSN Administrative Specialist Mohammad Ajmal Khan. Suddenly, a mob of 5,000 rioters attacked the American Center. At that time, there were no high protective walls, no steel fences on perimeter walls, no guard booths, and no security doors on the third floor where the staff worked.

When the mob first appeared, our security guard in the lobby pulled the steel shutter down to close off the entrance. In response, the crowd tore down the electrical poles and used them to break open the shutters and force their way into the building. Rais-uddin Zuberi, our budget analyst and second in command in the Administrative Section, called Ajmal Khan at his residence and informed him of the situation. Ajmal told him to have the staff move immediately onto the roof of the building, which was the designated safe haven.

What really impressed me at that time was that, within minutes, Ajmal, without caring for his own life, showed up at the American Center building — entering through a back service entrance — to help us out of the life-threatening situation. He masterfully took charge of defending the lives of the 50 staff members and the visiting library patrons, who were afraid to leave the building.

Ajmal led the group to the third floor and then onto the roof. He counted the staff members and asked if anyone was missing. Someone said that Umar Din, a library security guard, was missing. Everyone got panicky. Fortunately, a few of us who had returned from lunch just before the attack had seen Umar Din having lunch at a nearby restaurant. By this time, the crowd was swarming inside the American Center building. They set the lower floors of the building on fire.

The invaders then climbed to the library, destroying books and furniture. Huge black clouds of smoke traveled to our offices on the third floor and then circulated in the air-conditioning ducts. The smoke was so great, they started to jump out of the building. Some of them were injured. After a while, the leaders of the mob announced that all Pakistanis should come down and promised we would not be harmed. However, the Americans would not be spared. Since there were no Americans in the building, we evacuated without any trouble.

Twenty years have passed since this incident, but I still think about what would have happened if an American officer had been with us in the building. None of us would have wanted to leave an American in a life-threatening situation. I always thank God that no American was in the building at that time.

Was that really all that bad? Yes, it was, and it would have been much worse for the U.S. and local employees as well as the Library patrons if the Americans had not been out at lunch when the attack began.

The American employees were present when the American Center in Islamabad was attacked by a mob in 1989:

Five demonstrators were shot and killed Sunday and 80 people were seriously injured when Pakistani riot police opened fire on thousands of protesters attacking the U.S. cultural center here after a demonstration against the British novel "The Satanic Verses" turned into a rock-throwing anti-American melee.

None of the three Americans or 15 Pakistani employees inside the center at the time were hurt, but thousands of dollars in damage was done to the building, which houses an American library and sponsors cultural events designed to reinforce U.S.-Pakistani ties.

"It was a peaceful demonstration that went wrong," said Kent Obee, head of the U.S. Information Service in Pakistan. Obee was inside the building waiting to receive a petition from the protesters when the riot erupted.

A key factor in the survival of our employees in that attack was that the Center had been physically hardened up Fortress Embassy-style by USIA's in-house security element. Nevertheless, five protestors were shot to death literally on the door step of the American Center on that occasion.

Ten years later, the same American Center in Islamabad was fired on with incendiary and fragmentation rockets, injuring a local guard and nearly killing a Library employee. Not long after our invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Center was closed - given up on as an indefensible location and a magnet for attacks - and public diplomacy operations moved into the U.S. Embassy compound inside Islamabad's diplomatic enclave, where they basically withered away.

Of course, all that and more happened in Pakistan, and Pakistan is an especially difficult situation. I'd be curious to know how many physical attacks - drive-by shootings, mobs, bombs, arson, and so on - have occurred at all of our public diplomacy platforms around the world over time. I'd be even more curious to know whether those platforms have suffered attacks out of proportion to whatever percentage they are of all U.S. mission non-collocated facilities. If, just to make up numbers for the sake of illustration, they are ten percent of our non-collocated facilities but account for twenty percent of all attacks on those facilities, then that would tell us something about their comparative risk. Couldn't the ACPD collect those statistics? That might help them more than a White Paper full of old arguments when it comes to engaging the State Department on ways to preserve stand-alone American Centers.

To return to Whirled View's post, it concluded with this plea:

Wouldn’t it make more sense for economic and commercial functions to be located in financial and business districts? After all, one fifth of all American jobs now depend on international trade.

A cultural section in an American Center near major educational and arts institutions, information sections close to Fleet Streets and political officers as close to the Foreign Ministries, presidential offices and parliament as possible? Even with the Internet, the most important business takes places directly and confidentially between people - not transmitted to the world via wifi.

In short, “American Diplomacy at Risk” provides the opening for a foreign affairs discussion that needs to begin now. It is nearly 14 years since 9/11. Will anyone listen?

Now, 9/11 had nothing to do with the “explosion" of Fortress Embassies. The Capital Security Construction Program was mandated by a law that was passed in 1999, although it wasn’t until 2001 that new construction kicked into high gear. See this publicly available source of information, pages 11 and 12, for a concise summary of that program. And, even though security was the prime motive, that program also addresses a long-term problem of decrepit and unsafe diplomatic office buildings; ones that are too small, too old, too expensive to maintain, fire traps, and seismic risks. Haiti and Kathmandu are just two posts that have benefited from new offices and residences that didn’t fall down when earthquakes struck.

And by the way, can we please stop exaggerating the remoteness of all those new embassies and consulates? After browsing the nineteen press kits for completed new embassies that are available on OBO's website, I see that few of them describe new missions in distant suburbs or outer reaches of the universe. At least six of those new embassy locations sound like they are very accessible.

In Rabat, the new embassy is located three miles from the city center on a major thoroughfare. In Vientiane it is south of downtown, but with a stand-alone American Center in the downtown core. (How about that? Someone must have requested a waiver of the collocation requirement.) In Belgrade it is south of the city center. In Cotonou “the new Embassy will be located on an 8.8 acre site along one of the town’s main thoroughfares - Boulevard de la Marina. The site is in close proximity to other diplomatic facilities and ministerial buildings near the town center, and 2 kilometers away from the airport and seaport.” In Guangzhou it is in the central business district adjacent to the Pearl River.

Additionally, the new embassy that is now under construction in London is inside the city, although on the edge. In Pristina, OBO is breaking ground on a new embassy inside the central city.

In Mexico City, which is the biggest project OBO has going on after London, the new embassy location is just as centrally located as the current Embassy and American Center. The embassy's press release noted that "the Polanco site was chosen due to its location, with proximity to government offices, services, and major residential areas."

Google maps tells me the construction site is only 4.5 km from the current embassy. Would any prospective Public Diplomacy client in Mexico City find it any harder to get to the New Polanco site than to the current Ben Franklin Library in the Zona Rosa? I can't see how.

Thirty years after the first Fortress Embassies were built, it is high time to acknowledge that OBO has refined the process and greatly improved its product.

In fairness to OBO, it seems that it has listened. Now, it's time for our public diplomacy advocates to say something new.

Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy Goes Back to the Future of New Coke

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Hey, look, a picture of a U.S. embassy with a fence right in front of the entrance! What do you think when you see that?

It makes me think "that's a really screwed-up situation since that building must have no setback distance at all, which makes it totally vulnerable to terrorist attacks and politically motivated violence, and we ought to replace it with a safe, secure, and functional Fortress Embassy." But that's just me.

Turns out I'm wrong, because the photo is on the cover of the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy's new report about how Fortress Embassies are actually ruining everything, also known as Public Diplomacy at Risk: Protecting Open Access for American Centers. Read the full report here.

Briefly, this is what the ACPD wants to warn us about:

ACPD is concerned about the potential closure of 21 (of 32) American Centers in the next 10 years due to the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act of 1999 (SECCA), which requires all U.S. agencies in country be co-located on the embassy, consular and annex compounds. The hardening of our posts through SECCA was a logical and pragmatic response to a host of devastating attacks against U.S. embassy spaces in the 1980s and 1990s. Yet we are concerned that SECCA may be automatically and asymmetrically applied to U.S.-controlled public diplomacy platforms, American Centers and Information Resource Centers (IRCs), regardless of the characteristics of individual cases.

--snip --

The space for maximum engagement is the free-standing, U.S.-controlled American Center. Once the American Centers move to these [new embassy and consulate] compounds, they transform into less accessible Information Resource Centers (IRCs). IRCs are located in more remote locations, present more restrictive environments, and attract six times fewer visitors than American Centers.

-- snip --

ACPD believes it is imperative that we reconsider how the relocation of free-standing American Centers to U.S. embassy, consulate and annex compounds can complicate the essential goals of public diplomacy to understand, inform and engage foreign audiences to advance U.S. foreign policy ... We are concerned that the closing of American Centers is now accelerating and we emphasize the need for the selective and flexible application, on a case-by-case basis, of security standards.

The report is new but the contents are thirty years old. "This white paper is a follow up to the 1985 ACPD report, 'Terrorism and Security: The Challenge for Public Diplomacy,' which was submitted in reaction to the Inman Standards [sic] and their possible effect on the U.S. Information Agency (USIA)." Indeed, it follows the earlier report so closely that all the arguments it makes are recycled from 1985. If you've had any experience with public diplomacy matters since the year Back to the Future came out, since New Coke was launched, since the internet has existed over the years, then reading this report might be like experiencing an 80s nostalgia band.

The 1985 report was a plea to retain independent, stand-alone, and reasonably security-free American Centers outside of U.S. diplomatic facilities, but that idea lost out to the security recommendations made by the Inman Panel in 1985 and later codified into law by SECCA. New physical security standards were created which impeded the free operation of public diplomacy programs, the U.S. Information Agency lost its independence and was folded into the State Department, and around 140 new 'safe, secure, and functional' embassies have been built since then with only a few of them retaining a separate, stand-alone, American Center.

Having lost the argument in 1985, the ACPD waited thirty years and is now making the same arguments all over again. Good luck to them, but I don't think their case has gotten any better over time. For one thing, they still blame the Inman Commission Report for all the troubles in the public diplomacy world ever since 1985, and rehash old myths:

The Advisory Panel on Overseas Security at the State Department, or the “Inman Panel” (as it was known in honor of its Chairman, Admiral Bobby Ray Inman) created the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and proposed the Inman Standards, which stated that all embassies should be set back at least 100 feet from the street and be located on plots of 15 acres or more, and preferably outside of city centers. It was also recommended that U.S. Information Agency (USIA) libraries also relocate from city centers to the fortified embassy compounds.

That's wrong on all counts. The Inman Panel proposed no security standards at all - rather, it proposed that an interagency body ought to create mandatory minimum standards - and it said nothing about what size plots of land should be acquired for new embassy construction or where those plots should be located. The ACPD has had thirty years to read the Inman Panel report; where do they find any of that stuff in it?

To be sure, most of the Fortress Embassies that have been built since Congress began funding new embassy construction do have 100 feet of setback from their property lines, and they are on plots of land large enough to collocate all mission functions, and large plots of land do tend to be available and affordable only outside of city centers. However, don't blame the Inman Panel too directly. Those are all inevitable consequences of embarking on a strategic program to replace most of our old embassy facilities, as mandated by public law. See this publicly available source of information for an impeccable summary of that new embassy construction program, starting on page 8. Blame or credit Congress for that, not Inman.

And, there is the straight-out-of-1985 argument that new embassy locations will not be served by public transportation, leaving public diplomacy clients with no way to get there. That one wasn't supportable even in 1985, and since then we've had much experience to the contrary. The ACPD cites U.S. Consulate Mumbai, India, as an example of a PD program that suffered after it lost its stand-alone American Center and "moved into [a New Consulate Complex] that is remote from the city center and far from major transportation lines." Actually, U.S. Consulate Mumbai was relocated to the city's new Bandra Kurla Complex where it is served by an abundance of public transportation. The public can get a ride there if it wants, and the same is true of other new embassy locations.

If the public isn't visiting our American Centers as often as it did back in the 80s and before, maybe there are reasons for that apart from our modern-day security measures. Like the fact that, even in the developing world, people can find air-conditioned buildings and internet access almost anywhere these days. Surely the ACPD must have statistics on this matter.

Here's something I'd like to see the ACPD report on: did the number of visitors to the stand-alone American Center in New Delhi remain steady during the same period when visitors declined in Mumbai, or did the numbers decline in both places? Two PD programs in the same country, one located in a legacy stand-alone building that was built for USIA in the 1960s, and the other absorbed into a new Fortress Embassy about five years ago. That's practically a controlled experiment. If the numbers support ACPD's case against Fortress Embassies, then they should make them public.

One thing in the current ACPD report is new, and that's a request for PD clients to use their smart phones and iPads and such inside U.S. diplomatic office buildings:

A worldwide policy for open access to [Information Resource Centers, i.e., the libraries which have been absorbed into new embassies and consulates] that applies to all posts is necessary. This would lift "by appointment only" restrictions where they exist, create a separate security screening from the main chancery, permit unescorted access, and allow use of personal electronic devices and wireless internet access.

Okaaay ... so we should let our foreign visitors drop in on our diplomatic facilities whenever, and walk around by themselves using their own electronic devices as they see fit? What could possibly go wrong? Other than what has already gone wrong, I mean. But, do we need more computer intrusion problems?

Ironically, ACPD could have made a security-based argument that "open access" is both necessary for its programs and cannot be done inside a diplomatic facility without creating unacceptable risk to computer networks. That was a lost opportunity to get aboard the security bandwagon.

Of course, the ACPD makes a bold proposal for ending all the security nuttiness that effects its programs. Since Congress caused a lot of the problem when it passed a law that requires all new diplomatic facilities to have at least 100 feet of setback distance, and to collocate all offices and agencies in one big compound, then it could just pass a Sense of the Congress resolution saying it doesn't really intend for that law to apply to American Centers, and encourage the Secretary of State to freely use his authority to grant waivers letting them stay outside of Fortress Embassies.

Great idea, but it has already been done. In 2009, the Senate passed a Sense of the Senate Resolution, reported out of committee by one Senator Kerry, which resolved that:

the Secretary of State should initiate a reexamination of the public diplomacy platform strategy of the United States with a goal of reestablishing publicly accessible American Centers;

and,

after taking into account relevant security considerations, the Secretary of State should consider placing United States public diplomacy facilities at locations conducive to maximizing their use, consistent with the authority given to the Secretary under section 606(a)(2)(B) of the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act of 1999 (22 U.S.C. 4865(a)(2)(B)) to waive certain requirements of that Act.

That same Senator Kerry is now the Secretary of State. The ACPD therefore must already have the most receptive audience possible for requests to waive the law whenever new construction threatens one of the remaining autonomous American Centers. So, why hasn't that solved the problem? A waiver process exists; isn't anyone using it, or are they using it but getting denied? In the case of Consulate Mumbai, for instance, did the post even request a waiver? We might want to look into that before calling on Congress for another resolution the same as the last resolution.    

Despite it all, I really like American Centers and hope they can remain a viable platform. That's why it annoys me to see the ACPD rerunning half-baked arguments that didn't work for them thirty years ago. Have they learned nothing and forgotten nothing?

American Centers vs Fortress Embassies

Photo - The Archer K. Blood American Center Library at the American Center, Dhaka, Bangladesh (from Embassy website)

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H/T to John Brown's Press and Blog Review for posting a link to the agenda transcript for the May 2011 Public Meeting of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.

Check the date of that meeting - May 2011. And yet the transcript was only released a couple days ago. Did it take that long to clear the publication? Better late than never.

One part of the transcript piqued my own personal special interest. In the presentation by Ms. Betsy Whitaker, Strategic Communications Officer, Office of the Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, she remarked on the ongoing attempts to maintain some public diplomacy outreach facilities outside of the Department's famously forbidding Fortress Embassies:

American Spaces are clearly an area of great importance to generations of public diplomacy officers, and platforms of course that can be used sometimes as a sort of politically neutral venue where people can gather and simply learn about the United States through a variety of different media, and also interpersonal interaction.

We have, with, again, the assistance of IIP, created an office for the support of American Centers. In fact, we have the acting director over here, Anne Barbaro. And in working with IIP, we have also worked very, very hard for 18 months now, I think, to create a very good working relationship with our colleagues in Diplomatic Security and the Overseas Building Operations Bureau.

Why? Because we have sought, and I think are gradually achieving, an all-of-department approach to these spaces. DS clearly we need as a partner as we – because one of the reasons, as you know, that many of these centers have been shuttered or called back or pulled back behind embassy gates is simply because of security concerns.

And what we have been doing with OBO is twofold. One, as posts are anticipating the construction of new embassy compounds or new consulate compounds, working with the mission, if it has been part of the planning discussion to think about bringing some of these centers and spaces back in with the rest of the mission, we’re simply asking people just to stop for a second and ask the question, is this a wise move in terms of our outreach, and, you know, is this absolutely necessary in terms of security?

Let me be clear: Under Secretary McHale says security trumps all. And if it is indicated that these facilities must be brought – relocated or brought behind a fortified line of some sort, she of course understands that. But I think what she’s asking is for people just to simply stop and think and consider this, consider whether or not the mission would be interested in coming in for what we call a co-location waiver, whether or not there is a circumstance in which that space could be apart from the mission offices and such.

And we’ve had some good luck. We’ve had a couple of waivers granted in the past year, one in Ouagadougou I recall. And, you know, others are coming in as our missions – and this is, again, an all-of-missions thing – the chief of mission must sign off on these requests – as missions decide, you know, whether or not they’d like to make the request for a co-location waiver.

The issue here is the legal requirement that all U.S. diplomatic offices abroad be collocated on a single embassy compound in the principal place of USG business in that city. You can read all about it here, in 12 FAM 300. The requirement is invoked whenever a new embassy office facility is constructed or acquired.

(By the way, "collocation" is the correct spelling of the word, with two "l"s and no hyphen, although it is almost always misspelled as "co-location." That misspelling is my pet peeve, and correcting it is my lost cause.)

The collocation requirement may be waived, and so the R Bureau routinely puts up a fight to keep public diplomacy outreach facilities outside whenever new embassy compounds are planned. The position as Ms. Whitaker stated it, i.e., that the Department ought to consider waiving the collocation requirement on a case-by-case basis, is impeccably reasonable. This is basic risk management. The program benefits of making public diplomacy facilities easily accessible to the public can, in a rational world, be articulated and weighed against the security risks, and the increased security costs, of having a comparatively 'soft target' official facility in an annex across town from a new embassy compound.

Let the Ambassador make the request, and let the Secretary decide. Everyone signs on the dotted line, and accountability is established. Fair enough.

My personal interest in this matter is only indirectly with public diplomacy, in that I liked the old independent American Libraries and think they ought to be brought back into the mix of PD platforms, but I am directly interested in good risk management. As the wise man who hired me for my first job in DS said when he gave me the Foreign Affairs Handbook that contained our security standards: "These are the standards, but, of course, they have to be applied by reasoning human beings." I have always tried to apply reason to them, and I find they are much more persuasive that way.

Flags Made To Be Burned - A New Public Diplomacy Metric?

Protestors like to burn flags, and those flags have to come from somewhere. In Pakistan, that somewhere might be a specialty shop run by an entrepreneur named Syed Mohammed Hussain who has flags to burn. I mean, he makes combustible flags to order:

Syed Mohammed Hussain has seen his one-off experiment [producing Danish flags to be burned] turn into a profitable little sideline as he produces American and Israeli flags to order.

This week brought fresh demand for the Stars and Stripes with a wave of demonstrations against American allegations that Pakistan was using an Afghan insurgent group to wage a proxy war against US forces.

But it all started with protests at caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed printed in a Danish newspaper in 2006. Pakistan witnessed some of the fiercest demonstrations, with two people shot dead.

"I was also very angry about the Danish cartoons but I wouldn't have gone out on the streets myself. Instead I decided to get Danish flags printed," Mr Hussain, who sells his flags for 500 rupees or about £3.50, told The Express Tribune

Word spread fast and he couldn't keep up with the orders.

Today, bulk buyers – looking for more than 100 flags – are given a discount.

And there has been no shortage of business this year as relations with the US have fluctuated between poor and catastrophic.

The killing of Osama bin Laden in May ignited a spate of flag-burning protests. Many Pakistanis were angry that the US could launch a secret, unauthorised raid on Pakistani territory.

Today his storeroom has a selection of western flags, including the Union Flag and French Tricolour, ready to be stamped, trampled or burned.

So here's my idea for a metric of Public Diplomacy success in places like Pakistan: monitor fluctuations in the local demand for U.S. flags.

If Syed Mohammed Hussain's unsold inventory of Stars and Stripes grows, that would be quantifiable good news about the U.S. image in Pakistan. If he has to work overtime to make more product and raises his prices, that would be a leading indicator of a spike in public outrage.

You're welcome, United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy!

The Facebookification Of Public Diplomacy In Pakistan

The WaPo has a story today about the eclipse of the old human-contact institution of U.S. Information Service Libraries in Pakistan by the new socially-networked world of public diplomacy. It's odd, but I can't decide whether the author regrets the passing of the Libraries, or is being snarky about them. Anyway, at least she is clear that they were closed for security reasons.

Amid threats, U.S. woos Pakistan from behind walls:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — In a city where kind words about anything American are hard to come by, one notable exception is a sand-colored, palm-fringed building formerly known as the American Center.

For two decades, Pakistanis still fondly reminisce, international newspapers were stacked high there, poetry and art were showcased and friendly American diplomats fostered a come-one-and-all vibe. But in 2005, amid rising anti-Americanism and Islamist militancy, the U.S. Embassy-run center in Islamabad became the last in a nationwide network to shut and the diplomats retreated to walled compounds.

The building, which now houses private media outfits, has since become a symbol of the gaping gulf between the United States and Pakistan — and a prime example, critics say, of how security measures at U.S. foreign missions since Sept. 11, 2001, have alienated American diplomats from the populations they most need to court.

Yet U.S. officials say the closures also ushered in a less tactile but more aggressive — and expensive — era in what they call “public diplomacy,” one facilitated by growth in electronic media and a surge in young Pakistanis using it. Largely from behind barbed wire, embassy staffers now wield a multimillion-dollar budget to stimulate debates on Facebook, fund English courses and provide research services to Pakistani students and officials. Most prominently, they are pumping money into programs that send Pakistanis to the United States, in hopes they will return as unofficial American ambassadors.

-- snip --

Pakistan’s freewheeling media regularly spew what one U.S. diplomat called “terrible toxicity” about the United States. Though the U.S. Embassy staff has multiplied in recent years, diplomats rarely roam beyond major cities, or even much within them.

-- snip --

Some U.S. officials echo the concern. “A secure, open-access facility where people can meet and engage is still important,” one official said, adding that the closure of the American centers “hurt human interactions” between Americans and Pakistanis.

Last year, the embassy considered reopening the centers. But U.S. officials said they decided that the security situation in Pakistan, where a muscular Islamist insurgency has struck U.S. targets, meant that any potential structure would be more forbidding — and dangerous — than welcoming.

These days, the U.S. Consulate in Lahore features fuzzy photos of erstwhile American centers on its Facebook page [TSB note: see those fuzzy photos - and memories - on Lahore's Old is Gold contest page]. And U.S. diplomats argue that that page — along with other embassy Facebook pages, which together have 82,000 “fans” and play host to online debates — is one example of how technology fosters a broader American reach than a brick-and-mortar structure could. Through video conferencing, they say, visiting U.S. experts’ lectures have also been beamed to dozens of Pakistani universities.

-- snip --

Sania Zahra, an international relations student researching Saudi Arabia and Iran, said she admired Americans’ democratic values, as well as the organizational skills that, she said, make the Lincoln Corner a tidy refuge. But she said she felt part of a minority.

“The people of Pakistan say the Americans are fighting, they are doing drone attacks,” said Zahra, 25. “And where they are living, they are building high walls.”

There are indeed high walls at all of our diplomatic facilities in Pakistan. As retired Ambassador Ronald Neumann said of Pakistan, "if you're going to have people live in a car bomb-prone place, you are driven to not have a light footprint."

The American Center in Islamabad had been the target of terrorism and political violence several times during those Golden Oldie years of person-to-person public diplomacy. Particularly severe attacks occurred in 1999, when anti-personnel rockets were fired at the building, and again in 1989 when as many as ten thousand demonstrators protesting the publication of the novel Satanic Verses turned violent, broke through the front doors, and set fire to the building while public diplomacy officers were inside. In the latter incident, Pakistani police opened fire to stop the attack, killing six demonstrators literally on the doorstep of the American Center. It was the worst anti-American violence in Pakistan since 1979, when both the chancery in Islamabad and the USIS Library in Lahore were burned by mobs.

1979, 1989, and 1999. What is up with that ten-year cycle?

In 2002, it was decided that the American Center should close for security reasons, first temporarily and then, by 2005, permanently. I contributed in a small way to that decision back then. Although I regretted the necessity, it was apparent to me that there was no feasible way to operate the building with a reasonable level of security for either the staff or the visitors.

The threat environment in Pakistan has only gotten worse since then, and I don't think anyone now sees any prospect of the American Center coming back to Islamabad. However, new types of public diplomacy outreach centers that allow more limited human interaction with the PD audience might very well take its place. I hope they will, even though I'm a troglodyte security guy, because I think that a vital element was lost when public diplomacy retreated into Facebook.

That's right - we're human, too. Hath not a security guy eyes, etc? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?

OBL Validates R Bureau's Counterterrorism Communications Strategy

It seems that the late Osama Bin Laden believed the West had beaten him in the public image battle within the Muslim world, and he was searching for a re-branding strategy when he abruptly assumed room temperature.

Osama wanted new name for al-Qaida to repair image:

As Osama bin Laden watched his terrorist organization get picked apart, he lamented in his final writings that al-Qaida was suffering from a marketing problem. His group was killing too many Muslims and that was bad for business. The West was winning the public relations fight. All his old comrades were dead and he barely knew their replacements.

Faced with these challenges, bin Laden, who hated the United States and decried capitalism, considered a most American of business strategies. Like Blackwater, ValuJet and Philip Morris, perhaps what al-Qaida really needed was a fresh start under a new name.

The problem with the name al-Qaida, bin Laden wrote in a letter recovered from his compound in Pakistan, was that it lacked a religious element, something to convince Muslims worldwide that they are in a holy war with America.

-- snip --

At the White House, the documents were taken as positive reinforcement for President Barack Obama's effort to eliminate religiously charged words from the government's language of terrorism. Words like "jihad," which also has a peaceful religious meaning, are out. "Islamic radical" has been nixed in favor of "terrorist" and "mass murderer." Though former members of President George W. Bush's administration have backed that effort, it also has drawn ridicule from critics who said the president was being too politically correct.

That effort to "eliminate religiously charged words" from the USG's messaging to the Muslim world goes back at least as far as 2008 - remind me, who was President then? - when the leak of an official document from the Counterterrorism Communications Center caused a big internet stir about how the State Department had supposedly banned the word "Jihad" from its lexicon.

At least, that was the internet meme of three years ago. Google "State Department bans the word Jihad" for examples. Typically weasel-wording obscurantist Foggy Bottom political correctness run amok, etc., etc.

But today, it looks like that communications strategy had its intended effect. OBL believed that he and al Qaeda had failed to associate themselves with the Ummah, the commonwealth of Islamic believers, in the eyes of the Muslim world, where they were increasingly seen as merely terrorists rather than noble Jihadis. The fact that the USG refrained from branding them Jihadis may have contributed to the failure of OBL's strategy. Anyway, we didn't shoot ourselves in the foot for a change.

Those guys at the Counterterrorism Communications Center in International Information Programs ought to be taking a bow right now. By the way, does the Counterterrorism Communications Center still exist?

Public Diplomacy, Internet Freedom, And "Where's Jared?"

Anne Applebaum, in the WaPo today, asks whether the State Department has run into a firewall on internet freedom.

“We stand for a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas.”

That was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in January 2010, making what she called “an important speech on a very important subject." [See it here, and see more here.]

And there was more: “We are also supporting the development of new tools that enable citizens to exercise their rights of free expression by circumventing politically motivated censorship. We are providing funds to groups around the world to make sure that those tools get to the people who need them.”

-- snip --

Some of the “tools” she mentioned, such as software that enables individuals to evade regime firewalls without detection, were already in use. The money was there, too: Three months earlier, in October 2009, the State Department had received $30 million from Congress specifically to combat Internet censorship. Yet in the subsequent year and half, none of that money was spent — not in Libya, not in China, not anywhere.

-- snip --

As it also happens, another U.S. government agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, has deployed these two companies’ [anti-censorship] programs with notable success ... The BBG can track its success: At first, it noted an uptick in access in Iran, China and Vietnam (where there are now some 80,000 users). More recently, Ultrareach recorded a 700 percent jump in use in Tunisia between Dec. 17, when a desperate fruit vendor set himself on fire, and Jan. 12, the day President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali officially ended Internet censorship in Tunisia. It tracked a 6,125 percent increase in use of its services in Egypt from Jan. 21 to 27.

-- snip --

With even a small slice of that $30 million the State Department hasn’t spent, however, BBG engineers reckon they could get free Internet access for 50 million people, every day. And yet — despite explicit requests from Congress, the State Department appears determined not to give it to them ... One part of the U.S. government has anti-censorship technology but no money to expand its use. Another part of the U.S. government has money for anti-censorship technology but hasn’t spent it. The American political system is too dysfunctional, in other words, to create “a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas.”

What an odd situation. A government agency that (1) has a mission, (2) has funds to spend on that mission, and (3) has effective tools with which to accomplish that mission, but (4) won't spend the money it has to use the tools it has?

There must be some reason for this odd inactivity. Perhaps we're thinking that activists in totalitarian countries need more in the way of risk management than just a tech-tool? Or did WikiLeaks give us second thoughts about the desirability of "a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas”? Is it that we are reluctant to offend the ChiComs?

And most of all, why can’t my hero @JaredCohen do something about this? Or rather, why can't he "think/do" something? And what exactly has he thought/done so far in that Google think/do tank? I will be disillusioned if he turns out to be the sort of character who is perpetually on the verge of creating the next big thing.

Pakistan: Hearts and Minds Campaign a Casualty of Lahore Shooting Incident

The senior anchor at DawnNews, a television station associated with Pakistan's most influential English language newspaper, described the damage the Davis case has done to the U.S. image there in an opinion piece at Dawn.com today. You don't have to agree with all of his premises to accept his main point, which is that our public diplomacy efforts in Pakistan are pretty much dead.

Hearts & minds campaign?

The time to evaluate the impact of this issue on the vital strategic relationship between the two countries will come later. But at least in one significant respect, Pakistan-US ties are already badly damaged. And this relates to the nature and direction of public discourse in Pakistan about the United States.

The Davis issue has disfigured the environment in which the strategic partnership with the US was being nurtured. Raymond Davis endorses the typical Pakistani image of the US as a trigger-happy bully. In popular perception, Davis is the personification of a policy conduct Washington has displayed all around since 9/11 at a much larger scale — from the sands of Iraq to the mountains of Afghanistan and in the Fata region.

-- snip --

This nationwide welling up of anti-US emotion pushes further down the already declining US ratings in Pakistan. This is major damage to the ‘hearts and minds’ outreach programme that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been spearheading to fashion a better image for her country in Pakistan.

The policy worked at three levels: promotion of goods and services that the US brings to Pakistan; dilution of criticism of Washington’s policies by a robust media policy of rebuttals, denials and counter-charges; and isolation of those organisations and individuals whose sense of reality did not conform to Washington’s interest in Pakistan.

Admittedly, this policy worked rather well. The voice of America in Pakistan got considerably amplified, thanks primarily, though not only, to well-planned vigorous pro-US media activity carried out by known native advocates of Washington’s interests.

To change negative publicity into a positive profile, Washington carried out vast and constant diplomatic engagement with the politicians and the military top brass alike. Statistics show that in the last year and a half, Pakistan has been the US officials’ most ‘visited’ country in the world.

-- snip --

How many hearts and minds exactly turned in Washington’s favour, we don’t know. Perhaps not many. But something did change. Thorny controversies that once defined public discourse on the US disappeared into thin air. Towards the end of 2010 and on the eve of 2011 not a whisper was heard about the presence of Blackwater in Pakistan, expansion of US embassy premises, unauthorised and suspicious movement of US diplomats and embassy personnel. Even the matter of granting visas to US officials became a non-issue. The Kerry Lugar Bill’s preconditions for getting aid were totally forgotten.

But then came Mr Davis with his Glock handgun taking Pakistani lives and shooting through the heart the hearts and minds campaign. Since then Washington’s public profile has been completely defiled.

The strategic communication regime Washington’s spin doctors had put in place to create an enabling environment for successful diplomacy — called propaganda in old times — is completely dysfunctional. The trust deficit in the realm of public diplomacy is as wide as never before.

This is long-term damage recovering from which would take much longer than settling the issue of diplomatic immunity.

We do not know what Davis’s real mission was, but he certainly performed one task of strategic scale: ruining whatever little hope public diplomacy campaigners might have had of convincing the simple folk of Pakistan that the US was just a friendly giant they had no reason to run away from.

U.S. Embassy Baghdad's "Last Three (Virtual) Feet"

DipNote has announced U.S. Embassy Baghdad's latest initiative in public diplomacy, a new program on its YouTube channel called "Window Into the U.S. Embassy."

OK, given the realities of the security situation in and around Baghdad, maybe our public diplomacy options there are limited to social media and YouTube. I can understand that. But, the Dipnote post has this strange concluding paragraph that makes a mockery of the whole idea of impersonal person-to-person communication:

I'm a firm believer in Edward R. Murrow's tried and true words about effective communication with foreign audiences: "The real crucial link in the international communication chain is the last three feet... one person talking to another." While there's no substitute for meeting Iraqis face-to-face, and building relationships over a cup of steaming tea or a plate of kebabs, here at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad social media is helping us open windows into new audiences and build bridges across those last three (virtual) feet.

DipNote's post seems to be having an argument with itself. In the first place, we will speak to Iraqis at arms length, and in the second place, face-to-face communication is crucial. Which is it?

If there really "is no substitute" for meeting Iraqis face-to-face, then why are we substituting a YouTube program for just that? And, if we have no better option but to do just that, why are we invoking the sainted Edward R. Murrow and his all-important "last three feet" in a post about how we will keep the internet between us and the Iraqi public?

What is the "virtual" last three feet, anyway? Virtual as in "simulated," I suppose. We will pretend to talk to you in person, and we invite you to pretend along with us.

The idea of virtual human contact simply doesn't fit into the Murrow paradigm, and by using it Dipnote invites snickering.

Sometimes a Debriefing, Sometimes Enhanced Interrogation

The Hertitage Foundation held a forum on U.S. public diplomacy yesterday to mark the tenth anniversary of the dissolution of the United States Information Agency (USIA). You can watch the video here: The Abolition of USIA and Its Effects on U.S. Public Diplomacy.

It was considerably more entertaining than the average wonkfest. Here are a few quotes, courtesy of today's story in the Washington Times:

Mr. Schadler, a former USIA officer now with the American Foreign Policy Council, called the closure of the agency dedicated to "telling America's story" for 46 years an "inexplicable self-inflicted wound" that damaged U.S. public diplomacy.

The decision, made in 1999 at the end of the Cold War, was supported by Congress, the White House and the State Department, which would absorb much of the USIA structure.

Mr. Schadler denounced the "bipartisan insanity that destroyed the USIA." Since the transfer to a newly created undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, the function of explaining the United States to the rest of the world has resulted in "an incoherent shambles," he said.

Mr. Schadler argued that public diplomacy "has been missing for a decade" from U.S. foreign policy and that al Qaeda terrorists make better use of the Internet than American diplomats. He added that the Defense Department and the CIA are doing better jobs of public diplomacy than the State Department.

Mr. Schadler noted that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates called for a "massive influx of resources" for public diplomacy when he served in the same position in the George W. Bush administration.

"Defense Department officials do public diplomacy because their buddies are being killed and maimed because we have such poor public diplomacy [from the State Department]," he said.

"The CIA conducts public diplomacy," he added. "Sometimes it is called a debriefing. Sometimes enhanced interrogation."

On the panel along with the outspoken Mr. Schadler were Joseph Duffey, the last director of USIA, and Daniel Sreebny, acting director of the Global Strategic Engagement Center at the Office of the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Both of those gentleman were just as blunt as Schadler in their criticism of the decision to disband USIA, even Sreebny, who is still on the government payroll.

Mr. Sreebny, who has served 30 years in public diplomacy, called the dismantling of the agency a "mistake and terrible disservice" to the American public.

When he learned that the USIA would be moved to the State Department, he recalled, "I was angry at the political leadership, at State, at the White House, at Congress."

However, he added, re-establishing the USIA as an independent government agency also would be a disservice today because of the cost of relaunching such a broad public diplomacy effort.

"If you are not going to do it right, why do it at all," Mr. Sreebny said.

Mr. Duffey, USIA director from 1993 to 1999, said cost was one of the main factors for transferring the agency to the State Department. The other was the end of the Cold War and the feeling that the USIA was unnecessary.

"It was a time of euphoria and a misreading of history," he said.

This is coming from a right-leaning public policy research institute. I think that makes it unanimous. No one now thinks it was a good idea to disband USIA in 1999.

Senator Lugar Wants to Bring Back American Centers

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I see that Senator Lugar has called on the State Department to "reinvigorate the old American Center concept" of cultural outreach facilities that are located apart from embassy office compounds. A good idea, I think, and one I've commented about here.

Some key quotes from the Senator:

But after the Cold War, the United States prematurely declared victory in the battle for hearts and minds, terminating the U.S. Information Agency, which ran the centers, and cutting the State Department's public diplomacy budget. Many thought the Internet and global satellite TV would render irrelevant the people-to-people exchanges fostered by the centers.

Separately, U.S. diplomatic facilities overseas became more isolated. Following the 1998 bombings by Al Qaeda of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 12 Americans and more than 200 Tanzanians and Kenyans, the United States embarked upon a major construction program to build new embassies protected against terrorist attacks. Many embassies are now far from city centers and impose time-consuming security procedures upon all visitors. Additionally, most U.S. civilian employees are required to work within the embassy perimeter.

Those security upgrades were necessary, but the result has been less day-to-day interaction between U.S. diplomats and locals. Stripped-down outreach facilities, now called Information Resource Centers (IRCs), are often located within embassy compounds and open to the public by appointment only. State Department statistics show that IRCs within embassy walls in the Middle East received only one sixth as many visitors as those off-compound. Clearly, reaching a wider audience will require creative adjustments to the United States' security approach, keeping in mind that the safety of U.S. personnel must be paramount.

And, his recommendation is that:

As part of a broader overhaul of its public diplomacy effort, the United States should reinvigorate the old American Centers concept - putting, when possible, new ones that are safe but accessible in vibrant downtown areas - support active cultural programming, and resume the teaching of English by American or U.S.-trained teachers hired directly by embassies. That would help draw people to the centers and ensure that students got some American perspective along with their grammar.

Far be it from me to nit-pick what a U.S. Senator says, especially when I agree with him, but permit me to quibble about three of his points:

"Many embassies are now far from city centers"

Actually, only new embassies - meaning those that were built under the new construction program that started around 2000 - are located far from city centers, and not all of them are. Only 21% of our embassies and consulates are new ones, so I doubt the location factor alone can account for a systemic loss of public access. Many of the remaining 79% of our diplomatic facilities are right smack in the middle of downtowns areas, even those so excessively 'vibrant' (Damascus and Belgrade, for example) that it would be safer for our embassies to be a little more distant. Still, I take his point: our embassies get fewer walk-in visitors than our old American Centers did.

Incidentally, I get my information about the percentage of new diplomatic facilities from a recent General Accountability Office report which noted that from 1999 to 2008 only 64 new embassies, consulates and annexes were completed, and from the State Department's website which lists a bit over 300 overseas diplomatic missions.

"[M]ost U.S. civilian employees are required to work within the embassy perimeter"

The Senator is referring to what is known as the collocation requirement, in accordance with which all the offices and agencies under the authority of the Ambassador in a given country must be located together on a single compound rather than scattered around town. I must note the collocation requirement is not some State Department security standard, but rather part of Public Law 106-113, Title VI, Section 601, known as the "Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act of 1999." The same law also requires every diplomatic facility to have a certain setback distance between it and the perimeter of the property on which it is located, something which is rarely possible in downtown areas and therefore contributes to the embassy remoteness problem.

The Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act says in part:

Site Selection - In selecting a site for any new United States diplomatic facility abroad, the Secretary shall ensure that all United States Government personnel at the post (except those under the command of an area military commander) will be located on the site.

Perimeter Distance - Each newly acquired United States diplomatic facility shall be sited not less than 100 feet from the perimeter of the property on which the facility is to be situated.

The law defines a diplomatic facility very broadly, to include any "other office" no matter whether it has a public outreach purpose:

In this title, the terms `United States diplomatic facility' and `diplomatic facility' mean any chancery, consulate, or other office notified to the host government as diplomatic or consular premises in accordance with the Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic and Consular Relations.

"Clearly, reaching a wider audience will require creative adjustments to the United States' security approach"

Clearly, it will. And I, for one, am all in favor of creativity in approaching security problems. However, no adjustments can be creative enough to overcome the collocation and setback restrictions imposed by Public Law 106-113.

If Senator Lugar really wants to be helpful, he ought to sponsor a bill to amend the law so as to exempt American Centers. Then we might be able to open a few in those city centers where he wants them to be.

Bring Back the USIS Library

As the new administration settles in at the foreign affairs department of the Washington DC area's largest employer, there appears to be a surge of interest in reinvigorating our Public Diplomacy efforts. Personally, I am cheering on those who urge a revival of the American Cultural Center. I wish them success in bringing back the fine old institution of the semi autonomous cultural entity that stood apart from the dread Fortress Embassies.

I always enjoyed spending time in U.S. Information Service Libraries during my travels to diplomatic posts back before the 1999 merger of the U.S. Information Agency into the State Department. They had a nice mini-America feel, and they were clearly effective at cultural outreach. An Indian-born architect I know has told me how the USIS Library he visited as a young boy changed his life. He would sit at the same library table every afternoon to read books, and one day he noticed on the opposite wall a poster of Abraham Lincoln with this quote:

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy."

I can imagine how that quote would have struck him, being a citizen of a democratic but far from egalitarian society. I don't think even Gandhi ever said anything similar. (As I would not be an Untouchable, so I would not be a Brahmin? No. Gandhi was a Brahmin.) The sentiment was foreign to his native Hindu culture, and he was fascinated by it. He became an admirer of Lincoln and read everything he could find about him in the Library, which eventually led him to graduate from an American University via its foreign extension campus, and then to emigrate to America and become a citizen.

I doubt he would have had the same experience at one of the smaller and less walk-in-friendly embassy Information Resource Centers that replaced USIS Libraries. Most likely, it would be impossible for a kid to hang around in an IRC day after day to just absorb the atmosphere. Do IRCs even have atmosphere?

What is there to stop a revival of the USIS Library or something close to it? Apparently only two things: concern about their physical security, and certain legal and administrative requirements that, unless waived, call for all offices and agencies under the authority of the Ambassador to be collocated on embassy compounds. Neither problem is insurmountable.

Were I advising the Public Diplomacy bureaucracy, I'd recommend they gather data on the history of attacks on USIS Libraries, Bi-National Centers, American Corners and similar stand-alone public facilities past and present, and see whether the incidence of attacks on them hasn't, over time, been the same as or lower than the incidence of attacks on diplomatic facilities in general. Those results might go a long way toward relieving security concerns.

I'd also advise PD to document the program impacts that occur with collocation. Contrast the measures of program effectiveness for stand-alone public diplomacy facilities - of which there are many, since we still occupy legacy USIS buildings in places where we haven't had new construction since 1999 - with the metrics for those PD facilities that have been collocated under the new embassy construction program. We always hear the claim that program effectiveness is lost when PD facilities are collocated, but I've never seen actual substantiation. Documentation of that sort would be PD's best argument for avoiding collocation in the future.

Here's hoping I'll be able to visit some brand-new American Cultural Centers in all their (old) inviting ambience and downtown locations before many more years go by.

Improving America's Image Abroad: GAO Gives It a 5 Out of 13

The General Accountability Office (GAO) has rank-ordered the nation's most urgent issues that require action during the first year of the incoming Obama administration, and the result is pretty good news for advocates of a more robust Public Diplomacy. "Improving America's Image Abroad" made it to position #5 on GAO's list, right behind Defense Spending and just ahead of the 2010 Census.

Here is today's Washington Post story on the GAO's press release. The press release itself and GAO's summary of the issue are here and here.

This quote from the GAO summary is the heart of the matter:

Gaps in research data, foreign language capability, staffing, and resources hinder the United States’ ability to best target and communicate with key foreign audiences.

In other words, more money and personnel are needed. As the WaPo story points out, the budget for public diplomacy efforts, which was $358 million for 2008, is a mere pittance to a government that allows its Defense Department to contract out over $100 million for strategic communications services next year in Iraq alone.