State Dept spokesman quits after slam of Pentagon

Philip Crowley
© AFP/File Nicholas Kamm

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - State Department spokesman Philip Crowley resigned Sunday after slamming the Pentagon's treatment of a US solider suspected of leaking thousands of diplomatic cables and military documents to WikiLeaks as "counter-productive."

"Given the impact of my remarks, for which I take full responsibility, I have submitted my resignation as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs and Spokesman for the Department of State," Crowley said in a statement released by the State Department.

On Friday, Crowley departed from his characteristic diplomatic language when asked at a forum on new media and diplomacy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, about the United States "torturing" Private First Class Bradley Manning.


Manning, 23, was arrested in June while deployed to Iraq amid suspicions he had passed a trove of secret US government documents to WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing website which were then published in newspapers around the world.

Crowley said Manning's treatment by the Defense Department, which includes solitary confinement and being forced to sleep naked, "is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid," BBC reporter Philippa Thomas wrote on her blog.

"Nonetheless Bradley Manning is in the right place," Crowley said, adding "there is sometimes a need for secrets" to advance US diplomatic interests.

Later Friday Obama insisted the Pentagon's treatment of Manning was appropriate.

Last week the US military unveiled 22 additional charges against Manning including the serious offense of "aiding the enemy," which carries a potential death sentence. But the army said he would face possible life in prison.

In his statement Sunday, Crowley said his remarks "were intended to highlight the broader, even strategic impact of discreet actions undertaken by national security agencies every day and their impact on our global standing and leadership."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted Crowley's long service to the United States in accepting his resignation.

"(Crowley) has served our nation with distinction for more than three decades, in uniform and as a civilian," she said.

"His service to country is motivated by a deep devotion to public policy and public diplomacy, and I wish him the very best."

Clinton said Michael Hammer, currently deputy spokesman at the state department, will serve as acting spokesman.

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Musical Deck Chairs, or The Bureaucratic Shuffle

Drawing on his public diplomacy and State Department background, my colleague Joshua S. Fouts analyzes the bureaucratic implications of my "Pragmatic Overdose" essay on how the Obama administration is struggling to articulate a coherent global development policy. His comments are reposted from The Imagination Age.

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From Evan's essay:

Security Should Not Define Development

Obama's advisors want to energize U.S. development policy by framing it in terms of American national security, calling development a "strategic imperative." This makes it sound important, but in reality it will backfire. The common wisdom is that poverty breeds instability. The problem is that scarce development dollars are not necessarily best spent in conflict zones. In fact, American development policy is hampered by the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, which attract a disproportionate share of expertise and resources. These three countries are nowhere near the wealth threshold above which democracies tend to stabilize. They would be risky development investments even without conflict. The tradeoff is thus development projects where they might better flourish.

Evan's point is well-made. But it's an issue that will be challenging to the culture of the State Department, where I used to work. Development policy is closely related to cultural relations work (sometimes called public diplomacy) which suffers from a similar dilemma in these kinds of bureaucratic associations.

New Values, Not New Bureaucracy

As it stands, Obama's "New Way Forward" is more bureaucratic shuffle than fresh ethical vision—coordination between departments is necessary, but not sufficient. His team must dig deeper into the fault lines of American foreign policy and take advantage of a crucial chance to redefine America's global engagement.

We won't see a new way forward until the United States views other nations as equal peers in the quest to realize a good life, instead of treating them as instruments in pursuit of American national security or favorable trade. To achieve this, the State Department must stake out its own values—beneficial immigration flows, fair trade, and regional green energy innovation—instead of cutting turf from Defense and other departments.

Herein lies the dilemma. The State Department's "own values" are clouded by layers of historic turf wars fighting for the level of financial investment and support it needs to do its work. After decades of decreasing budgets relative to that of the Defense Department a culture of insecurity has been bred in the State Department. When I was there in the 1990s, the insecurity and desire to demonstrate relevance compared to the well-funded Defense Department was palpable.

The rhetoric hasn't changed much since I left in 1997, as I discovered last week when I was inducted as a Next Generation Fellow of The American Assembly. During round-table discussions about US cultural outreach efforts throughout the day with other fellows and observers, one participant, a public diplomacy foreign service officer, declared that we "should not have another discussion about bringing back the USIA." The dissolution of the USIA is a topic that gets brought up constantly during such discussions.

For readers who don't know, the USIA was the State Department's quasi-independent cultural outreach arm, which was dismantled in 1999 when Congress and the Clinton Administration decided (incorrectly, as the events of September 11, 2001 would soon prove) that we had won the war of global public opinion. The remaining parts of USIA that survived were folded into the new Public Diplomacy cone of the State Department.

Since then, the public diplomacy officers with successful careers are those who adopted the rhetoric quoted above. The logic is simple in an organization as bureaucratic as the State Department: Where you stand depends on where you sit.

The USIA, in theory, was a great agency, but the fact is that it always remained beholden to the State Department and was thus limited in its ability to influence perceptions of the United States. The debate about bringing back the USIA is a time consuming one during events aimed at enhancing cultural relations and, further, completely misses the point, namely that influence can no longer be imposed by rhetoric in the modern world. If an agency is created to address this need, the United States and global community would be far better served by a new method and approach.

Wouldn't it be more innovative, creative, productive, and, yes, more American, to champion investment in intercultural dialogue programs be they independent or governmental? The fact of the matter is, US government investment in cultural relations relative to defense is, at best, an afterthought. Worse, it is a joke, compared to the efforts of other countries. No US foreign service officer should be proudly defending the State Department from creating another USIA. They should be demanding increased funding for cultural relations by any means necessary.

Evan's essay is yet another reminder that bureaucracy does not change. I used to believe that the work of cultural relations and development were well-placed in the State Department. I now believe that we would be better served adopting the UK model by creating an independent cultural relations entity like the British Council. (Dancing Ink Productions is currently collaborating with the British Council on the development of a global creative space within the digital culture for real world cultural relations benefit.)

Based on an earlier report by retired foreign service office John Brown, it sounds like the Obama Administration agrees: Obama's Public Diplomacy Chief of Staff recently told Brown that people interested in doing applied cultural relations work should not look to the State Department for careers but should go to NGOs.

Encouraging passionate US citizens who are concerned about improving ties with other cultures to take their work elsewhere is entirely self defeating for the United States and will cripple us further in the global arena. The Obama Administration needs to support cultural relations financially as well. Government investment in fighting wars overseas should be considered just as important as preventing them by improving cultural understanding between people.

Sadly, there is no domestic constituency for cultural relations work in the US. So the likelihood of increased investment in this critical part of our interaction with the world will be left in the hands of others.

[IMAGE CREDIT: IISG.]

Hard Power, Soft Power, and Bollywood Power

We published a thoughtful piece in Policy Innovations this week by Shashi Tharoor, who has spoken at the Carnegie Council recently about his book on India.

In his essay, “India’s Bollywood Power,” Shashi describes what I would call the “soft power assets” of India—its culture, film, food, etc. I agree that these assets are sometimes underappreciated and that soft power complements hard power to form what Joe Nye calls “smart power.” We also need to be mindful that India’s open society and freedoms give it a flexibility and universality that may be more appealing than what some call “authoritarian capitalism” promulgated elsewhere. As Shashi notes, a country must be able to “tell a story” but I would add that the story should be universal.

But to what end? I think the key point Shashi omitted from his otherwise excellent article is that power, of whatever type, is used to get something. Theoretically open societies possess more soft power assets, like freedom and pluralism, but they are also more receptive to outside influence (or to the soft power of others). If a country is democratic, the mood of its people will influence policy.

It seems that the State Department agrees that soft power or public diplomacy is indeed important. Still grasping for the right modality, the agency recently launched America’s website—http://www.america.gov/—tasked with, yes, telling America’s story. Its feature in focus? Innovation:

Fashion design might one day be adapted to protect the U.S. Army thanks to innovative work by a Cornell University student that has caught the eye of military scientists. The garments use silver nanoparticles in 2007 to eliminate health threats from microbes and palladium nanoparticles to reduce the effects of air pollutants.

(Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai as seen in Dil Ka Rishta. Photo by Horst-Mirjam von Linotype (CC).)