Report on the Human Resources Dimension of U.S. Public Diplomacy. Getting the People Part Right

摘要

Public diplomacy--the effort to understand, inform and influence foreign publics in support of foreign policy objectives has never been more important to the security of our nation than it is today. In recent years and months, a large number of organizations and groups--governmental, quasi-governmental, and academic/private--have published reports about the U.S. governments conduct of public diplomacy. Many of these groups have come to similar conclusions about both the overall effectiveness of USG public diplomacy efforts and the need for improvement in a number of areas. For example, nearly all have called for substantially increased resources for public diplomacy, especially for exchanges; greater leveraging of private sector expertise and resources (public-private partnership); and enhanced bureaucratic coordination both within the State Department, the USGs lead public diplomacy agency, and the USG more broadly. Some have called for improvements in the USG messaging process, specifically, increased and more rigorous integration of meaningful research into the development of USG message campaigns, more serious efforts to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of such efforts, and so on. Relatively few of these reports, however, have addressed what might be termed the human resources dimension of public diplomacy. This report will address that aspect of USG public diplomacy operations.