The road sign that points to good ethics. Photo credit: Pixabay
Lately I’ve been reflecting on ethics in government. Have you?
Ethics definitely apply to public diplomacy, but how? The guidelines that I can find remind me of a very old joke, usually told by an aging male.
“When we got married, I made it clear to my wife that I would handle the important decisions and she could take care of the details.
“And so my wife takes care of things like where we live, the household budget, where the kids go to school. And I worry about world peace, hunger in America and so forth. It has worked out great!”
Ethics are visible not in generalities, but in daily routine and behavior. Yes, PD has a list of leadership tenets that include “the highest standards of integrity, transparency, and professional conduct,” and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has sponsored a professional ethos statement for the Department that calls for “uncompromising personal and professional integrity.” However, these are so general as to leave officers unmoored by the challenges of a world filled with falsehoods, sharp power and hidden agendas.
Our embassies are constantly confronted with examples of unprofessional conduct by social-media “influencers,” adversary nations and even our own political leaders. New situations put them to the test, and not only in media relations. For example, the Department’s leadership, including the “nonpolitical” Educational and Cultural Affairs Bureau, increasingly shapes programs to support clear foreign policy objectives in measurable ways. I totally support that approach. But can it sometimes tempt officers to hedge on underlying principles and legislative intent?
PD values and norms used to be imparted to new officers by mentoring, but now FSOs now move in and out of PD; doctrine and formal training are much more important than they were twenty years ago.
The Public Relations Society of America publishes a Code of Ethics, which lists specific examples of proper and improper conduct in public affairs. The National Association of Government Communicators’ code offers a fulsome list of standards that seem to apply across international information and cultural programs.
It’s time for public diplomacy leaders to call out the most important ethical principles in our work. I’m talking about things like the following.
Relations with the media
- Communications based on facts, with no tolerance for falsehood
- Equal treatment for media organizations regardless of political party
- Openness to questions from the media including regular press conferences
- Respect and civil behavior toward all members of the press
U.S.-sponsored educational and cultural programs
- The award of academic scholarships on merit as judged by committees operating outside political considerations
- Showing exchange visitors all sides of America “warts and all”
- Transparency in the attribution of our public diplomacy programs
These are merely illustrations. How should the State Department pursue an authoritative definition and propagation ethical standards most relevant to public diplomacy?
The right place for this is the office of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, together with the specialist attorneys in the Office of Legal Counsel. “R” could set guideposts and management controls.
Next, specific training could be created. At the Foreign Service Institute, ethics and law are embedded in current training, but are not taught as separate curriculum. They are often implicit. One model approach for FSI could be its training to respect diversity in the workforce, which is mandatory. Courses provide examples of how to address specific situations and teach students to exercise principles of equality.
Finally, PDC members, we could start right here at home. the Public Diplomacy Council’s mission statement “supports the academic study, professional practice, and responsible advocacy of public diplomacy.” It’s time for our organization and other nonprofits in the field to encourage and move forward the discussion of what that really means.
American public diplomacy has been admired around the world for reflecting the traditional values of its society. Our openness, transparency and commitment to values that transcend private interests is the key to America’s soft power.
We should all do our best to make sure those values remain strong.
Joe B. Johnson consults on government communication and technology after a career in the United States Foreign Service. He is an instructor for the National Foreign Affairs Training Center, where he teaches strategic planning for public diplomacy. Read More
Joe,
This is a good starting point for a dialogue. It’s aspirational, but a good point. A few, quick, remarks. First, there is and always has been the fundamental need that the White House must be on the same page. The president, through his staff, drive the agenda. Second, the Secretary of State must be in accord as well, or at least mostly, enough to give the necessary support, resources, *and* accountability to move toward success (whatever that might look like). Third, and related to the first two, the Office of Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy *and Public Affairs* must be led by a competent person with the right skills, the right experience, and the ability to lead.
Through most of the history of R, the third condition has not been met. Further, throughout the history of R, which starts in 1999, the average tenure of the R chief has been less than 1.5yrs and the office has had a confirmed appointee barely 60% of the time. (There has been a confirmed R during the current administration for barely 9% of the time.) Further still, nearly each R has been substantively different than the predecessor and often lacking what any public diplomacy practitioner or reality-based academic would assert is the necessary experience to fulfill the requirements. The latter may be gained, but history shows this has not happened.
This leads us to ask what is the perceived role of the office to the administrations, and Secretaries of State, over the 21 years since it was established. A quick review: Beers was hired to revamp State’s domestic image and not build relationships and counter misinformation abroad and her nomination was stalled until 9/11. Her successor, Hughes, was hired because she was a good domestic political organizer with the biggest feather in her cap being running the Republican National Convention. Another R was hired because she was a big donor to the Secretary’s presidential campaign and because she had experience launching an international television network (being the child of an FSO didn’t hurt), but she intentionally didn’t elevate IIP to an A/S position (as her predecessor had succeeded in setting up) to instead hire a truly toxic leader while, separately, completely shutting down interagency collaboration with DoD, among other issues. There was the R who failed to deliver so badly that DoD and posts put no stock in his words and his experienced front office fled to other jobs. And then, Tillerson hires a corporate communications person, which is what he wanted but wholly ill-suited for a public diplomacy job.
To loop back to the “misinformation” point above, it may be worth reminding readers of two points. First, the Assistant Secretary for Public and Cultural Relations, established in December 1944 as the predecessor of R, was, within a year, charged with combating Russian misinformation and disinformation. That responsibility has been lost and forgotten. The need to tell our story comes not just from perceived ignorance of the target audience, but the misinformation and disinformation they are subject to. Second, the Global Engagement Center was Congress’s attempt, and arguably the White House’s too, to recreate USIA in the absence of effective leadership and backstopping and accountability of R.
We have a larger problem here. Ethics in public diplomacy will only go so far and do so much when the White House and Secretary are not onboard. Like most of our current challenges regarding Russian, and other, disinformation, we may only be looking toward lower level, tactical programs implemented by skilled, committed, and experienced people who are, and should be, quiet in their efforts not to hide them from the adversary but from the most senior leaders. The new US public diplomacy projects a different message with different values and you are (rightly) suggesting we counter them. This is the case for each of your points, Joe, valid, worthwhile, democratic, principled, and necessary as they are. For now, this will not come from R, but from the field, provided of course the political Ambassadors, too many of whom fit into the derogatory stereotype of a political ambassador, permit them.
Congratulations on posting an unusually interesting blog. It raises lots of questions and considerations.
First, the era we live in now certainly prompts reflection on ethics in government and diplomacy’s public dimension. But it’s hardly the first time. Consider Ben Franklin’s drafting of news articles with false information for others to sign during the American Revolution. And issues raised during McCarthy’s attacks on VOA and USIS libraries, early Cold War covert political action campaigns, JUSPAO’s activities in Vietnam, and Iran Contra as a “Project Democracy.”
Second, I agree with your focus on ethics in “daily routine” but not to the extent of saying categorically that ethics “are visible not in generalities.” Diplomats are agents who owe loyalty to “the prince” (who appoints them as representative agents), to the state (in the US it means an oath to the Constitution), and to the people (especially in a representative democracy). Add to these generalities such aspects of international law as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions on the laws of war, and such global norms as those relating to genocide and slavery.
That said, however, your blog directs appropriate attention to how diplomats as professionals reconcile abstract principles with matters at hand. This requires prudence and a practical wisdom that is context dependent. It turns on finding ways to make appropriate ethical judgments in situations of uncertainty and complexity — when fact patterns may be unique, when values are in conflict, and when the diplomat must resolve tensions between professional agency and the exercise of power.
The example of Rwanda comes to mind having just reread Jamie Metzl’s article in the American Journal of International Law calling for state jamming of hate media in the context of genocide as a narrow exception to the norm of free flow of information.
Third, I agree completely that greater attention should be paid to values, norms, and practical judgments in diplomacy training. But I would not reduce it to “R,” although “R” should certainly play a role. The public dimension in today’s whole of government diplomacy calls for a broader approach.
Fourth, I’d like to think about how and if a code of ethics for diplomacy might work. Your examples call for reflection and conversation. How, for example, do you reconcile “an authoritative definition and propagation [of] ethical standards most relevant to public diplomacy” with your statement that ethics “are visible not in generalities?”