Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Stay the course; speak on message
Luanne Traud
Recent columns
- Marking a difficult anniversary
- My daughter, the voter
- A few new Voices would be nice
- A rush to legislate
From the RoundTable blog
Each year the State Department invites members of the National Conference of Editorial Writers to Washington, D.C., for two days jammed with briefings. It's a great way for State's top echelon to speak with opinion writers who toil outside the Beltway and a welcome opportunity for us to hear policy directly from the source.
In addition to the wealth of background these briefings provide in forming and writing editorials, there are two things that I usually find intriguing: First, the take-home messages that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her assistant and deputy secretaries hope we spread to America's hinterland. Second, what they leave unsaid.
This year, everyone tried to step around the 800-pound Iraqi gorilla that refuses to leave the room. Sure, it's still the Bush administration's No. 1 priority, but other than reiterating the importance of "getting it right" and helping build a government, security and infrastructure, there isn't much to add.
Instead, this year's gorilla -- Iran -- towered over the room. And North Korea, another favorite whipping boy of past years, failed to make the administration's Top Five priority list, well six actually, as Russia and China tied for the last spot. They are preceded in immediacy by Iraq, Iran, Sudan and Israel.
Of course the "war on terror" continues to overlay diplomacy as the U.S. remains engaged in an "ideological battle" or merely a "struggle," depending on who's speaking.
On the terrorism front, "the enemy is getting smaller," the coordinator of counterterrorism, Henry A. Crumpton said. But that doesn't mean the enemy is getting fewer. Rather, terrorists are splintering into smaller teams "making it harder to detect and to engage."
Yet, the U.S. is winning, he assures. "But it's the kind of thing that can't be measured month to month or year to year." He suggests a holistic measurement that he didn't quite define. And he was fuzzy on what he meant about "the philosophical and moral challenges" encountered in the "ideological battle."
It is this battle that Karen Hughes, the undersecretary of public diplomacy, wages with her "engage, exchange, educate and empower" strategy.
Hughes, President Bush's longtime confidant, created her niche at State because "the country had to do a better job communicating with the wider world."
The three-part mission is to promote America's beliefs in freedom and justice; isolate and marginalize violent extremists by confronting their tyranny and hate; and foster a sense of common interests and values.
To get the word out, Hughes created a full-time "rapid response unit" that monitors the world media, takes three or four key issues, develops the U.S. response and distributes daily a list of talking points to every Cabinet and sub-Cabinet member, every U.S. ambassador, public affairs officer, regional combatant commander.
"It literally gets the U.S. government on the same page," Hughes explained.
And they'd best speak what they read.
The old rule was that an ambassador needed permission to talk. The new rule: "Ambassadors better speak out on matters of established position."
Americans have become accustomed to the administration's penchant for repetition. If a point is made often enough and by enough people, then it becomes accepted as fact.
That same principle is now being deployed to soften the U.S. image in the Arab world. Hughes said that rather than ignore the Arab media, especially Aljazeera, she reaches out to its 40 million viewers. She counts among her successes Aljazeera calling before it showed a recent terrorist tape. The State Department was able to have a response in Arabic on air immediately.
"It's a long-term strategy," she said. "Public opinion doesn't shift in huge ways in the short term."
But, Hughes believes, it will shift just as long as every member of the administration stays on message.
The only tense moment of the State briefings came when someone suggested to Secretary Rice that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and U.N. Ambassador John Bolton had expressed different approaches to foreign policy.
"Gee, I think we're all on the same page," Rice said, cutting off the questioner in mid pose. "The secretary of defense is the secretary of defense. He doesn't do foreign policy, and I would expect him to be worried about issues like, you know, militarily how are we dealing with issues. Give me one example of Secretary Rumsfeld and I not being on the same page. I mean, it just doesn't happen to be the case."
The take-home message: Commit the talking points to memory.
