Hearts and Minds: US Cultural Management in 21st Century Foreign Relations 3631667302, 9783631667309

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Matthew ChambersIntroduction
Policy
Tess Lea and Stuart Rollo • A Servant Is Not Greater Than His Master: American Primacy in Australian Security
Robert D. Eldridge • No Better Friend: The Outreach Efforts of the United States Marine Corps in Japan and the Asia-Pacific
Michael C. Davies • Ebb and Flow: How Strategic Culture, Operational Art, and Threat Perceptions Have Defined the Engagement with Culture
Institutions
Mehmed Ali • The Matrimony of Patrimony: The Troubled Marriage of Museums and Mission in U.S.-Occupied Iraq
Natalia Grincheva • The Museum Dimension of American ‘Soft Power’: A Genealogy of Cultural Diplomacy Institutions
Media
Juan Luis Manfredi • MOOCs and Foreign Affairs: New Challenges for Diplomacy
Yasmin Djabarian • Shaping the U.S. Image in Iran via Satellite: VOA’s Simaye Amrica and Its Projection of America’s Attractiveness
Serena Fusco • ‘These Girls Hold Our Future in Their Hands’: The Case of Girl Rising
Language
Eunice Seixas • ‘Hearts and Minds’: Discursive Uses and Impacts in US-Russia Relations
Karyn Hollis • Quantitative Linguistic Analyses of the Phrase ‘Hearts and Minds’: From the Spiritualism of The King James Bible to the Militarism of Wikileaks Cables
About the Authors

Citation preview

AMERICAN STUDIES AND MEDIA

4 This volume looks at a key component of recent US foreign relations, namely, its emphasis on “hearts and minds” as part of its cultural management of the global Other. The authors collected here analyze to what extent we can frame the intent and consequences of this term as a coherent policy, discussing how to think about foreign policy strategies that involve the management of cultural relations.

Edited by Elżbieta H. Oleksy and Wiesław Oleksy

MEDIA

ISBN 978-3-631-66730-9

AND

www.peterlang.com

US Cultural Management in 21st Century Foreign Relations

AND

Hearts and Minds

STUDIES

STUDIES

Matthew Chambers is Assistant Professor at the Department of American Studies and Mass Media, University of Łód´z, Poland. He has published a monograph on modernism and cultural poetics.

Matthew Chambers (ed.) · Hearts and Minds

“This fascinating collection reveals the nuance and complexity behind a seemingly banal phrase.” Professor David Schmid, State University of New York at Buffalo

Matthew Chambers (ed.)

AMERICAN

AMERICAN

“Including fascinating first-hand and deeply-researched accounts of the workings of various US institutions (many of them ‘cultural’), this volume is a must for an understanding of the power the US projects worldwide.” Professor Laleh Khalili, SOAS University of London

MEDIA

Volume 4

Hearts and Minds

AMERICAN STUDIES AND MEDIA Edited by Elżbieta H. Oleksy and Wiesław Oleksy

VOLUME 4

Matthew Chambers (ed.)

Hearts and Minds US Cultural Management in 21st Century Foreign Relations

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Chambers, Matthew, 1978- editor of compilation. Title: Hearts and minds : US cultural management in 21st century foreign relations / Matthew Chambers (ed.). Description: Frankfurt am Main ; New York : Peter Lang Edition, [2016] | Series: American studies and media, ISSN 1610-6814 ; volume 4 | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2016029318| ISBN 9783631667309 (print) | ISBN 9783653063042 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: United States—Foreign relations—21st century. | United States—Relations. | United States—Foreign public opinion. | Cultural diplomacy—United States. | Cultural relations—Philosophy. | United States—Foreign relations—Philosophy. Classification: LCC E895 .H43 2016 | DDC 327.73009/05—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016029318

This publication was financially supported by the University of Łódź. ISSN 1610-6814 ISBN 978-3-631-66730-9 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-653-06304-2 (E-Book) E-ISBN 978-3-631-69616-3 (EPUB) E-ISBN 978-3-631-69617-0 (MOBI) DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-06304-2 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2016 All rights reserved. Peter Lang Edition is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH. Peter Lang – Frankfurt am Main ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙ Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com

Table of Contents Matthew Chambers Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������7 Policy Tess Lea and Stuart Rollo A Servant Is Not Greater Than His Master: American Primacy in Australian Security�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������17 Robert D. Eldridge No Better Friend: The Outreach Efforts of the United States Marine Corps in Japan and the Asia-Pacific�������������������������������������������������������������������������43 Michael C. Davies Ebb and Flow: How Strategic Culture, Operational Art, and Threat Perceptions Have Defined the Engagement with Culture������������������������73 Institutions Mehmed Ali The Matrimony of Patrimony: The Troubled Marriage of Museums and Mission in U.S.-Occupied Iraq������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 105 Natalia Grincheva The Museum Dimension of American ‘Soft Power’: A Genealogy of Cultural Diplomacy Institutions��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 125 Media Juan Luis Manfredi MOOCs and Foreign Affairs: New Challenges for Diplomacy������������������������� 165 Yasmin Djabarian Shaping the U.S. Image in Iran via Satellite: VOA’s Simaye Amrica and Its Projection of America’s Attractiveness���������������������������������������������������� 189

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Table of Contents

Serena Fusco ‘These Girls Hold Our Future in Their Hands’: The Case of Girl Rising���������� 213 Language Eunice Seixas ‘Hearts and Minds’: Discursive Uses and Impacts in US-Russia Relations����� 247 Karyn Hollis Quantitative Linguistic Analyses of the Phrase ‘Hearts and Minds’:  From the Spiritualism of The King James Bible to the Militarism of Wikileaks Cables����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 273 About the Authors.................................................................................................... 293

Matthew Chambers

Introduction ‘Hearts and minds’ is a phrase with a long history and with multiple connotations that tend toward expressing cultural outreach in contested situations. Since 2001, the phrase has become prominently associated with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The issue, then, is that a phrase that points to the appeal of reason and emotion quite often is done so in the context of violence and social and political tension. Thus, there is a tendency to greet the phrase with suspicion, as the sincerity of such expressions are confronted with the paradox out of which they are produced. In other words, can we speak of humane appeals in the context of war? To what degree can we accept proclamations by the military of ‘winning the hearts and minds’ when the ‘winning’ in that phrase suggests combat? This volume explores these questions by examining the true complexity of the so called ‘cultural turn’ of the US military, as well as how various manifestations of American soft power and cultural outreach have developed in this century. ‘Hearts and minds’, as much as it suggests the spectre of violence, also concerns cross-cultural communication, persuasion, and influence. As such, it primarily gets expressed in the context of foreign policy, but a foreign policy that is primarily focused on securing the homeland. Amy Kaplan, for instance, reads foreign policy as a form of ‘domestication’, in the sense that it seeks to tame and make familiar that which is external, and thus perceived as threatening, to the domestic sphere. ‘Domestic’ in this sense is related to the imperial project of civilizing, and the conditions of domesticity often become markers that distinguish civilization from savagery. Domestication implies that the home contains within itself those wild or foreign elements that must be tamed; domesticity monitors the borders between the civilized and the savage as it regulates the traces of savagery within its purview. (2002: 25–6)

‘Hearts and minds’ fits into Kaplan’s analysis in the sense that cultural outreach in the service of foreign policy initiatives often seeks to make familiar that which is threatening, or to project an idea of the domestic onto the Other. In U.S. missions abroad, the sense of the domestic is exported so that the ‘foreign’ in these extraterritorial spaces becomes that which resists the goals of the mission, be they insurgents or an unwilling local populace. Recent iterations of ‘hearts and minds’ suggest this domesticating drive of American foreign policy. As my framing suggests, the context for analyzing the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ is an American one, specifically as the US has involved

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itself more aggressively in extraterritorial conflicts. Indeed, we find the term in President Bush’s post-invasion justification for the US presence in Iraq in front of the United Nations. All who stand for human rights must also stand for human freedom. This is a moment of great opportunity in the cause of freedom. Across the world, hearts and minds are opening to the message of human liberty as never before. In the last two years alone, tens of millions have voted in free elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, in Kyrgyzstan, in Ukraine, and Georgia. And as they claim their freedom, they are inspiring millions more across the broader Middle East. We must encourage their aspirations. We must nurture freedom’s progress. (2005)

By using words and phrases such as ‘opportunity’, ‘inspiring’, ‘encourage their aspirations’, ‘nurture’, and ‘progress’, Bush’s diction portrays contested social and political spaces in the soft glow of flourishing democracy-in-action.1 However, Bush’s foreign policy discourse famously speaks in grand abstractions, so that terms like ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’, and even ‘hearts and minds’ feel voided of any meaning.2 A more concrete expression of how American foreign policy engages with the concept of ‘hearts and minds’ can be found in the FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency

1 Unsurprisingly, Bush smoothes over any complications in his examples, U.S. self-interest and historical context have been backgrounded in an effort to foreground new beginnings. Didier Fassin and Mariella Pandolfi have argued that there has been a blurring between humanitarian and conflict intervention efforts to the extent that

humanitarianism has become the jusitification of extralegal action. In effect, the only higher reasons that can be set against international law are protecting populations at risk, saving the lives of those in danger, and relieving human suffering… In this operation, whereby the world’s disorders, whether natural or human in origin, become equated, we can see a form of naturalization – or depolticization – of war. Indeed, the humanitarianization of intervention implies the neutralization of conflict situations. Now it is as if the only issue were aid to victims, as if the local context presented no historical peculiarities, as if military operations did not originate in the defense of the states conducting them. (2013: 13) 2 Indeed, the former president earned himself a reputation for hyperbole. George Orwell wrote that words like ‘democracy’ fall into a category of ‘meaningless words’ that ‘not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different’ (1946: 258).

Introduction

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Manual (2006) and itself loudly touted as a sign of the US military’s adaptability when it came to cross-cultural contact and communication. The phrase ‘hearts and minds’ appears in the manual, however, firmly in the context of conducting counterinsurgency (COIN) operations, and thus reads as methods for exploiting sources to better wage war.3 Once the unit settles into the AO [area of operations], its next task is to build trusted networks. This is the true meaning of the phrase ‘hearts and minds’, which comprises two separate components. ‘Hearts’ means persuading people that their best interests are served by COIN success. ‘Minds’ means convincing them that the force can protect them and that resisting it is pointless. Note that neither concerns whether people like Soldiers and Marines. Calculated self-interest, not emotion, is what counts. Over time, successful trusted networks grow like roots into the populace. They displace enemy networks, which forces enemies into the open, letting military forces seize the initiative and destroy the insurgents. (2006: A-5)

It is no surprise, of course, that a military field manual provides information on fighting tactics, even if they are expressed as cross-cultural communication, however, what is striking is how we encounter two sharply contrasting, yet oddly compatible, senses of the phrase ‘hearts and minds’: Bush’s emphasis on the power of institutions to establish and maintain democratic spaces contrasts sharply with the bald statement of coercive military force, however, the context for Bush’s use is an aftereffect of military action. In other words, both contexts suggest violence, which is what is most problematic about the phrase itself. It is often used to mean a form of persuasion and suggests a consensus deeper than compromise. Yet, most often we hear it in the domain of military and diplomatic strategy, and most recently, as a frequently used term in the context of counterinsurgency doctrine. The fundamental tension between the sense of the phrase suggesting acceptance and consensus and what are ultimately coercive methods points to the need to pause and analyze how and where the phrase is used and to what ends. One area to examine is the blurring in recent decades between hard and soft power strategies as American foreign policy has increasingly been carried on the back of its military. Dana Priest concisely demonstrates the gradual post-World War II drift towards relying on military forces to conduct functions traditionally reserved for the Department of State (2004: 41–57). Citing Richard N. Gardner’s 2000 Foreign Affairs article on the decrease of diplomatic spending in relation to the overall national budget over the previous decades, she highlights the fact that ‘[i]n the 1960s, the diplomatic budget accounted for 4 percent of the total federal budget…[and in] 2000 it was less than 1 percent, or 20 billion’ (2004: 412). The number Priest is

3 The phrase has been dropped out completely from the updated 2014 version of FM 3-24.

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referring to comes from what Gardner identifies as the ‘150 Account’, or Foreign Assistance budget, which at its 2015 planned level of $35.4 billion keeps it at that 1 percent of the total budget level. By comparison, the April 2015 SIPRI Fact Sheet ‘Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2014’ notes that despite a 6.5% decrease in US defense spending in 2014, it holds at $610 billion – only a 0.4% decrease from 2005 and greater than the next seven countries combined (2015: 2). Since 2001, greater reliance has been placed on the US military to serve in diplomatic and humanitarian capacities. A reflection of this need for soldiers to act as cultural workers can be demonstrated with the allocation of DoD funds for training in so called ‘critical languages and cultures’. For example, as part of the 2016 planned budget, the Department of Defense allocates $27 million for a National Security Education Program that will ‘provide a future Federal workforce with skills in languages and cultures critical to national security’ and $9 million for ‘9 institutions of higher education hosting Language Training Centers provided training in 17 languages’ (FY2016: 3–22). One way to approach these numbers that responsibly reflect on a topic that is this far-reaching in its implications and complex in its form is from an interdisciplinary perspective. Indeed, gathered here are researchers and practitioners who are informed by public policy, anthropological, military, media, and cultural studies backgrounds. In presenting this by no means complete, but hopefully comprehensive, accounting of American cultural management globally, this volume attempts to stitch together differing, and in some cases contrasting, perspectives in order to honor the vast complexity of the scope of this topic. Hearts and Minds has four areas of focus: Policy, Institutions, Media, and Language. These foci reflect the different emphases found in the various approaches of the contributors, and are best thought of as suggested groupings. For example, ‘Policy’ comprises three perspectives on the US military’s role in cultural outreach. This section begins with Tess Lea and Stuart Rollo’s comprehensive look at how American foreign policy has impacted US-Australian relations, especially in light of the Obama administration’s so called ‘pivot to Asia’. They employ ethnographic and interview data to deconstruct the multiple tactics deployed in making US military expansionism such a frictionless event. Their writing shows the ‘vernacular affect theory’ at work on the part of the US military to win local hearts and minds by analyzing reviews of Australian and US government policy, underscoring the ‘neorealist assumptions that inform them’. They go on to argue that the ideology of American exceptionalism is hegemonic to the degree that it is accepted as common sense in Australia that the only military power which should dominate the Asia-Pacific region is the United States, and thus, in turn, America’s interests become Australia’s own. Most significantly for this book, their work

Introduction

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opens by framing their discussion in the terms of Australia’s cultural history as both colonizer and colonized in providing the launching pad for America’s ‘pivot to Asia’, but does so in a way that also historicizes the key concepts of Hearts and Minds as a whole. In light of Lea and Rollo’s critique, and to be read more as counterpoint than response, is Robert Eldridge, who in his capacity as the Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff, G-7, Government and External Affairs, Marine Corps Installations Pacific/ Marine Forces Japan until April 2015, provides an inside take on the US base in Okinawa, as well as the US cultural outreach on that island, including the challenges of such from the perspective of someone working with US Marines. Eldridge looks at the Japanese and Okinawan public opinion/political narrative on the military bases and the ways the U.S. military, in particular, the Marine Corps has been trying to address the narrative and educate the (local) public. One of the underlying themes will be about the ‘emotionalization’ of the issues (as well as the general ignorance about the alliance and basing matters). With Eldridge’s contribution we have the benefit of an insider’s perspective who has also been academically conversant with the broader cultural issues at play. Michael Davies rounds out this section by examining approaches to culture within the Department of Defense bureaucracy. He focuses on the need to parse out the terms ‘military’ and ‘strategic’ culture, and argues that attention paid to the concept of culture directly involves practical concerns such as the specificity of the identified enemy and the likelihood of operational action. Davies outlines his concern for an ‘anti-cultural’ element within the US military bureaucracy that has affected procurement, force structure, and strategic mindsets, and further that the institutionalization of this mindset will compound problems in future contexts. However, he hopefully concludes that with the creation of the 7th Warfighting Function, termed ‘Engagement’, being the most powerful expression of the US military’s so called ‘cultural turn’, the shape of the U.S. military will be changed, subtlety at first, but with deep and lasting impact over the long-term. ‘Institutions’ includes two perspectives on the role of museums as both archive and cultural outreach. Mehmed Ali begins with the context of the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad in 2003, and analyzes the work of the US Embassy Baghdad’s Public Affairs Section and the military’s MNF-I and USF-I CJ-9 Directorate. Several projects explored will include the efforts focused with the Iraqi National Museum, the War Crimes Museum, and archeological sites around the country. He goes on to discuss the impact on these museums with the shift in focus away from Iraq as a core foreign policy initiative, as well as the ongoing instability of the country’s infrastructure, which itself calls into question the success of the earlier efforts by external actors.

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Natalia Grincheva uses some examples of the Museum Connect Program to analyze the impact of American museums internationally. Grincheva argues that museums remain a site where politics and culture overlap in their projection of the institutionalized ideal of democracy at work. She argues that democratic values have been communicated by the American museums at home and abroad not only through programming and art collections, but also through the very nature of the museum agency. What she terms ‘museum diplomacy’ in this way is operationalized on two levels: in the straightforward notion of programming that thematically links to positive notions of democracy, but also what she identifies as the ‘more subtle forces of international professional leadership of American museums’ that influence the development and structuring of museums elsewhere. ‘Media’ includes three contributions that approach ‘hearts and minds’ projects through various forms of emerging and established media – MOOC’s [Massive Open Online Courses], radio, and film. Juan Luis Manfredi takes a look at how MOOC’s have become central to public diplomacy efforts in the US, Europe, and Japan. He argues that the idea of digital ​​ diplomacy is the use of such tools in order to achieve the goals of foreign policy and conventional diplomacy. The link between technology and diplomacy affects models and processes of international communication, the ways of promoting cultural interests (film, literature), or the dissemination of values ​​associated to a particular lifestyle. MOOCs have become a preferred tool for rethinking strategies, resources, and goals of educational programs. By its technological nature, there are no administrative boarders, broadening the audience. The value proposition is based on international networking. It changes the elitism of the scholarship through mass dissemination. By their content, promoting maintains values ​​(entrepreneurship, citizenship) and highlights the language and culture in different ways. Yasmin Djabarian asserts that the use of mass media makes it the most visible and cost-effective public diplomacy tool for governmental efforts to wield soft power. In the context of US foreign policy objectives and the lack of diplomatic relations between the United States and Iran, Voice of America’s (VOA) Persian News Network (PNN) has become its most significant language service. Djabarian focuses on PNN’s cultural shows, which mainly stress the diversity of US culture, specifically Inside America, which aims to provide Iranian viewers with distinct and comprehensive insights into American culture and society. Djabarian first analyzes several episodes of Inside America in terms of the format’s attempt to create and foster a favorable image of the United States, then compares her findings to her analysis of a format produced by Iran’s English language service Press TV called American Dream. In doing so, Djabarian addresses Iran’s reactions to

Introduction

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Western international broadcasting and its attempt to shape the US image among Iranians, in Iran and the diaspora, and Western audiences. Serena Fusco performs an analysis of Girl Rising – a series of videos made possible by Intel, USAID, and several Country Partnerships that promotes female education worldwide – to provide a critical counterpoint to the widespread acclaim around the operation enacted by and through the film, thus reflecting on its possibly broader historical and cultural functions. Fusco places the film in the context of its ‘movement’ – meaning not only its advocacy for a cause and its intended circulation, but also the cultural significance of such a ‘movement’ as a way to construct America as a global actor in the 21st century, but she also analyzes how Girl Rising tells stories of female empowerment through education, turning them into the rhetorical ground, and affective horizon, for constructing various forms of subjectivity. Fusco ultimately argues that the operation enacted by and through Girl Rising is part of a rearticulation of American agency’s face to the world, as opposed to ingrained narratives of American unilateralism. The final section, ‘Language’, addresses the use of the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ as a discursive concept. Eunice Seixas argues that US international funding and the promotion of civil society and human rights organizations has been an important part of an ‘hearts and minds’ strategy that attempts to frame, manage, and administer America’s interests throughout the globe. Seixas analyzes the discursive uses of the phrase in recent statements by the US and Russian presidents, respectively, to address how the phrase reflects foreign policy attitudes and positions of both countries, particularly in relation to one another. Seixas performs a detailed close reading of Barack Obama’s 7 July 2009 speech the Parallel Civil Society Summit in Moscow, and Vladimir Putin’s appropriation of the phrase during an address delivered at St. George’s Hall about Crimea. At the heart of her analysis is how the phrase itself is pliable and indeterminate, and ultimately reflects the speaker’s broad emotional assessment of their own and their perceived counterpart’s foreign policy postures. Karyn Hollis keyword searches the Wikileaks cables with the program DICTION, which is a content analysis software program which examines tone and content in large data samples, to analyze political discourse as it is expressed in the leaked diplomatic cables. Hollis uses DICTION to discover the discursive strategies used by diplomats in their rhetorical efforts to gain worldwide support for their various causes associated with the phrase, ‘hearts and minds’. Hollis’s results of this analysis are compared to a similar text sample of Wikileaks cables that does not use the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ to affirm statistical differences in tone and content. The results will also be broken down by country or global region to detect any variations in the way the phrase is employed around the world.

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Finally, the quantitative analysis will be supported and illustrated by a concise qualitative close reading and Critical Discourse Analysis of a representative cable in the ‘hearts and minds’ sample. Far from being an empty slogan, ‘hearts and minds’ has emerged as a widespread way of thinking about America’s relations throughout the globe. While it has retained its militaristic association, it has extended out into other sectors such as cultural programs as well as NGO involvement in relief, infrastructure-rebuilding, and educational efforts. The question becomes to what extent can we frame the intent and consequences of this term as a coherent policy? How does it reflect an exceptionalist attitude, in the sense of the drive to manage the global terrain as the non-exceptional Other? How can we think about foreign policy strategies that implicitly or explicitly involve the management of ‘cross-cultural’ relations? And finally, how do affects, as underlying the slogan ‘hearts and minds’, enable ideologies that frame cultural management in foreign relations? Hearts and Minds aims to provide the reader with some context and illumination to these questions.

Bibliography Bush, G.W. (2005). ‘President Addresses United Nations High-Level Plenary Meeting (14 Sept 2005)’. http://georgewbushwhitehouse.archives.gov/news/ releases/2005/09/20050914.html. Fassin D. and M. Pandolfi. (2013). Contemporary States of Emergency: The Politics of Military and Humanitarian Interventions. New York: Zone Books. Gardner, R.N. (2000). ‘The One Percent Solution’. Foreign Affairs. July/August. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2000-07-01/one-percent-solution. Accessed at 15 July 2015. Kaplan, A. (2002). The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Chief Financial Officer. (2015) United States Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2016 Budget Request Overview. Orwell, G. (1946). ‘Politics and the English Language’. Horizon 8 (76), April, 252–264. Perlo-Freeman, S.; A. Fleurant; P.D. Wezeman; S.T. Wezeman. (2015) SIPRI Fact Sheet (April). Solna, Sweden: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Priest, D. (2004). The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America’s Military. New York: W.W. Norton and Co. U.S. Department of the Army. (2006) Counterinsurgency (FM 3-24). Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of the Army.

POLICY

Tess Lea and Stuart Rollo

A Servant is Not Greater Than His Master: American Primacy in Australian Security Introduction One of the most remarkable aspects of America’s much vaunted ‘pivot to Asia’ is how unremarkable its manifestation in the north of Australia is for the Australian public. President Barack Obama’s announcement in November 2011, heralding ‘the next proud chapter in our alliance’, when United States Marine Corps personnel would transit through Darwin on six month rotations, was received with barely a whimper—despite the fact that it represented the addition of a permanent, Australian based, US Marine component to the largest empire of bases the world has ever known (Turse 2011). Australian media coverage quickly centered on the promised economic benefits of the deployment, but little space was devoted to interrogating what the troop rotation was part of, either in a broader geostrategic sense, or in its symbolic and political implications. Even now, such debate as exists regurgitates decades-old accounts of statecraft and audit-style commentaries on the economy of national arsenals, anchored entirely within a realist framework of international relations. The nature of the deployment itself as a ‘base’ is semantically denied by the Australian government, despite the physical and strategic reality. The self-evidencing and mutually beneficial necessity of American military hegemony for Australia’s national security is projected as follows; The United States, in its role as peerless global power, must maintain the international economic, political, and security order it established in the aftermath of World War II. Australia, resource rich, with a small population, and a cultural outsider in the region, needs to ensure its own security through a strong alliance with the dominant (white) global power. In terms of this accepted framing, the US pivot to Asia and its increased pressure on subordinate allies to march to an American tune requires little explicit coercion. Domestically, it is received not only as right but also as inevitable. This framing presumes and anticipates impending security threats with military expansions, contributing to a self-fulfilling regional cycle of arms development and territorial jostling that threatens to manifest as a ‘security dilemma’. Within this recursive logic, China’s ‘Anti-Access Area Denial’ (A2AD) military

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strategy, weighted heavily towards surface-to-surface missile capabilities in response to American naval superiority, is countered by America’s ‘AirSea Battle’ concept, in which American naval and air forces act to counter A2AD technologies by integrating their capabilities across air, sea, land, space, and cyberspace to maintain US freedom of operation in any potential theatres of war. Of concern is not only the deep ‘naturalness’ of Australia’s alliance with the United States and the way it unites both critics and supporters of the pivot, but also the wider misrecognition of its significance. According to the 2014 Lowy Institute National Poll—Australia’s most consistent measure of public opinions about foreign policy—since the US pivot to Asia, the per centage of Australian adults who were ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ worried about ‘US foreign policies’ has decreased dramatically, with this issue now placed at the bottom of their list of potential critical threats (Lowy Institute 2014: 8, emphasis added). This is despite the ongoing deployment of thousands of American Marines on Australian soil for at least the next quarter century, the expansion of already extensive US intelligence gathering facilities based in Australia, and the tenuous link between Australia’s regional vulnerabilities and the American-led wars Australia repeatedly commits its resources to. Neither Australia’s national interests nor the new military role it is playing in an increasingly tense prospective cold war have been closely examined. The only audible critical conversation centers on whether Australia can retain its lucrative trade relationship with China while supporting an American led military containment venture. All critical commentary is immediately sucked into an historical vortex, with pre-framed accounts of past warfare, foreign policy pacts and treaties, Australia’s questionable independent defense capabilities, regional threats and arsenals, and, uniting it all, a base fear model of today’s brown and yellow perils, where China (or Indonesia) remain potential enemies. Such a framing deflects sustained probing about the ethnic coalitions Australian paranoia rests upon. It is this simultaneous critical vacuum and widespread public complacency that most clearly signals the capture of Australian ‘hearts and minds’, and that accompanies a more general invisibilization of Australia’s involvement in American militarism across the globe. The compulsive logic of the Alliance pacifies as it occludes other questions. For instance, given Australia’s longstanding geographic, cultural, economic and migratory interconnectivity with Asia, what explains Australia’s automatic orientation to the United States? Put differently, why is an Australia that allies itself with its regional neighbors, rather than ex-colonial affiliates, the most difficult thing to imagine? Thus rephrased, a key dimension to our argument becomes immediately apparent. In what follows we suggest that the seamlessness of

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Australia’s transition into a key plank in America’s pivot to Asia rests in Australian socio-cultural history. China as a future threat laminates onto an older notion of Asians as a more general threat, in a country that must actively cultivate what Ghassan Hage (1998: 58–9) has called a ‘field of whiteness’ as a naturalized form of governmental dominance. A grammar of rightful tenancy imbues liberal settler imaginaries in Australia, affecting historical representations (in which occupation is made rightful given the military and economic inferiority of Indigenous first peoples); sustaining a vigilant crafting of an external threat, around which white identity is made to cohere. American narratives of exceptionalism complement existing Australian ones, mapping onto assumed notions of white supremacy that need to be territorially defended. Our analysis is divided into four parts. First we look to the shifting meanings of ‘hearts and minds’ to better contextualize the deployment of ‘soft power’ in the Australian context. Second, we look to Australia’s defense history to explore the profound sense of vulnerability and isolation that attended Australia’s reliance first on Great Britain, long after other Commonwealth countries were pursuing greater sovereignty in foreign policy, and thence the USA. Here we argue that the invocation of ‘national security interests’ exerts an hypnotic magic because it draws on culturally-constructed fears founded in Australia’s colonial past and neo-colonial present. Australian defense policy has always been based upon a national fear of Asian threats and on a related knowledge that the Australian continent was itself occupied through unreconciled invasion. While in recent years, Australian defense policy has consistently identified a conventional military attack originating in, or passing through, the Indonesian archipelago as the primary security threat (Dibb and Brabin-Smith 2007: 67), for many decades it was a broader ‘Asian’ invasion by stealth (through immigration) that was perceived as the great risk to white Australia. This fear of the northern neighborhood subtends the narrative of mutual self-interest that rationalizes the US-Australian alliance. Of course, the crafting of a national identity from a denial of dispossession and amplification of ethnocentrism is not unique to Australia, but as we will show, it is key to understanding the axiomatic equation of Australian ‘national interests’, our collective ‘hearts and minds’, with contemporary American military-strategic policy. The system of ethnic identifications and exclusions through which white Australia continually recreates itself, helps to explain why America has been inside Australia as a psychic reference point all along. Third, we focus on the tropical city of Darwin in Australia’s north, now host to a permanent rotation of US Marines, to explore how the sense of inevitability and rightness is fostered. Here we show how, as Judith Butler has put it, ‘visual and

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discursive fields are part of war recruitment and war waging’ (2010: ix). For while the sense of isolation and vulnerability that saw Australia swivel from vassal of Great Britain to America remains a dominating subjectivity, Australia’s contemporary embrace is not simply taken for granted but is actively solicited through tactics of ‘soft power’. The Darwin case study brings into focus the array of techniques for wooing hearts and minds, from plays on liberal settler beneficence to more straightforward engagement with cultural stereotypy in museums and websites. Finally, we consider the implications of Australia’s passive acceptance of security axioms. Binding public discourse into the ‘cold war’ compulsions of a false dichotomy—America or China—is the overriding ‘hearts and minds’ tactic. Discussion around the rise of China is framed in such a way that a spurious choice is offered between total support for the United States in its quest to maintain a position of regional primacy, or abandonment of the alliance to passively await regional domination by China. Supporting America naturally becomes the more appealing option. Within a civilizational teleology with Americans as bearers of liberalism in Eurocentric world history, the United States has come to stand for democracy, human rights, economic development and a defendable nation state, the inarguable aspirations of Eurocentric modernity. To automatically think this mythic narrative is to accept American hegemony without coercion. How this narrative is upheld and what is recruited to make it epistemologically and affectively convincing is our main thematic concern.

Hearts and Minds: An Affective Battleground The ‘hearts and minds’ approach to governance, first practiced by the British in 19th Century Afghanistan, seeks to coopt rather than coerce imperial subjects into the maintenance of empire. Under what was known as the ‘Sandeman system’ (after the British colonial administrator Sir Robert Groves Sandeman who first conceptualized the battle for hearts and minds in the modern colonial context), local Afghan tribesmen were employed as police within the territories they lived in, keeping the area safe for imperial communications and trade (Hopkins 2010: 25). The term reentered the popular military lexicon in the 1950s, when British General Sir Gerald Templer announced a new approach to suppressing the largely ethnic Chinese, Malaysian communist rebels in what British colonists called the ‘Malayan Emergency’. ‘The answer’ said Templar, ‘lies not in pouring more troops into the jungle, but in the hearts and minds of the Malayan People’ (cited in Mills 1958: 63). In its essence, the ‘battle for hearts and minds’ represents a mode of conduct through which foreign powers can achieve their own strategic, political, and economic objectives in relation to other states through a combination of the exercise of ‘soft power’ and ‘sticks and carrots’.

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The phrase has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years in its juxtaposition to ‘shock and awe’ strategies, first touted in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq to mark the impending revolution in America’s military capacity to force entire nations into submission and exercise its power unfettered by international protocols (Sepp 2007: 217). With intense and bloody insurrection making a falsehood of the notorious declaration ‘mission accomplished’, American policymakers disowned the doctrine of ‘shock and awe’ and exhumed a more traditional campaign for the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Iraqi people. The Americans hoped to establish a compliant government, friendly to the United States, which would help uphold a US-led regional and international order. While the plan went awry in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has achieved its greatest successes among its less pronounced targets—its closest allies. It is both through the approach of the ‘Sandeman System’, in which local adjuncts are coopted into maintaining an imperial system out of self-interest, and through the exercise of soft power, the ability of a state to wield international influence through the legitimate attractiveness of its institutions and values rather than through force or payments (Nye 2004: 256), that the United States has achieved such a preeminent position in the hearts and minds of Australians. Australians in general assume a field of truths about the value of concepts like democracy, human rights, religious tolerance, and secularism that make forms of political and economic liberalism intelligible and meaningful, despite the contradictions and differential applications of these norms to differentially positioned humans (such as asylum seekers). These normative values—the foundational concepts of American exceptionalism—create coalitional ontologies binding Australia and the United States. When President Obama declared of the Marine rotation that ‘the United States of America has no stronger ally than Australia. We are bound by common values, the rights and the freedoms that we cherish. And for nearly a century, we’ve stood together in defense of these freedoms’, the fact that the ‘common values’ and ‘cherished freedoms’ that the two nations share are entirely American in origin passed unnoticed. American culture permeates Australia not only at the level of television, film, music, art, fashion, but also via the neoliberal school of economics, which has systematically restructured the Australian society and economy to much more closely resemble that of the United States (Chester 2010: 313). Within an otherwise wealthy nation, inequality has increased dramatically; well-paid manufacturing, agricultural, and industrial jobs have disappeared; once prosperous factorytowns have become desolate; and foreign ownership of Australian natural resources has flourished (Reserve Bank of Australia 2011: 43). It is in relation to the rise of China that the boundaries between American soft and hard power begin to blur in Australia. For soft power to be effective, a

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state’s culture, political ideals, and policies do not necessarily have to be a priori appealing to another population. They can also simply be appealing in opposition to some looming ‘other’. Asia is the other against which white Australian identity defines itself, an external differentiation that is essential to the internal exceptionalism which maps Australian sentiments onto American interests. In this sense the soft power relationship begins to resemble the classic ‘carrots and sticks’ of hard power. The ‘carrot’ of an American defense guarantee is juxtaposed with the implicit ‘stick’ of withdrawal should Australia stray too far from the American security line. In exchange, Australia throws its political, military, logistical and, most importantly, its colonially-acquired geographical support behind American power.

From Colonizer to Self-colonizing Viewed historically, America has never been outside Australia. It was the American War of Independence that saw Britain turn to the island continent that Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Makassan and Chinese explorers had left alone (Powell 2010). Ships chartered by the Dutch East India Company had been skirting along the north and west Australian coasts over several decades in the 1600s; but theirs was a commercial venture, and the navigators sailed under strict instruction to settle only for gold, silver, and precious stones. They charted the coasts, but took the antagonistic homeland defense of Indigenous warriors, their lack of bling, and their apparent disdain for material possessions as signs to stay well clear. But when the American Revolution denied any further warehousing of industrialism’s wasted people on plantations in Virginia and Maryland, Britain turned to Australia to absorb its convicts, an island continent they’d only recently usurped, care of Lieutenant James Cook (Christoper 2010). Cook had been sent to the Pacific with two sets of instructions. His official mission (and the papers he was to show any who challenged his presence) was scientific. He was to set sail for Tahiti and track the transit of Venus, in order to calculate elusive longitudinal coordinates and ideally also the dimensions of the solar system. His second instructions were concealed in a letterbook and barred from mention. These secret words, handwritten over six fragile pages, authorized Cook to take possession of the large continent that European cartographers knew existed somewhere in the southern latitudes. Having found ‘a Continent or Land of great extent’, Cook was then to chart its coasts; cultivate the friendship of its people with whatever trifles served the purpose; carefully observe the soil, the beasts, the fowls and fishes; collect specimens of minerals and any mining products; and annex any convenient trading posts in the name of His Majesty,

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King George the Third (Secret Instructions, 1768). While Cook was instructed to be friendly with the natives, his instructions advised wariness too, lest any ‘accident’ precipitate an answer. The official representation of Britain’s true interests as those of a peaceful scientific mission—even the naming of Botany Bay after the abundant flora gathered from the fringes of Sydney Harbor—belied Britain’s quest for exploitable natural resources and expanded control of strategic trading posts around the globe, underpinned by assertions of sovereignty and default recourse to defensive warfare. The transformation of Indigenous land ‘into the modern political technology of security—linking sovereignty, societal order, economic prosperity and geopolitics’ (Burke 2001: 1) thus began as it has continued—with denial of its imperial purpose altogether. In essence it is an approach to winning hearts and minds through overtures of friendly exchange and the humanism of expanded ecological, anthropological and navigational knowledge, underpinned by less overtly articulated imperial ambitions, a formula which closely parallels America’s current primacy in Australian security. As we will show, the permanent rotation of American marines through the Northern Territory in the present moment likewise emphasizes the transient nature the deployments and their greater humanitarian and trust-building purpose. New South Wales was revisited seventeen years after Cook’s charting when Captain Arthur Phillips, a naval officer, tasked with implementing ‘an unprecedented penal and society-making experiment’ (Keneally 2009: 42–3), arrived with eleven shiploads of convicts and soldiers. Phillips shared military origins with the next seven governors who carved the new colonies out of murderous conflicts with local clans, giving unmistakable form to the warfare at the heart of Australian national identity. As Anthony Burke notes, ‘Australia’s origins lie in the attempts by the British ruling classes to achieve some sense of economic and existential security against enemies ‘without and within’: against both imperial competitors and an internal threat’ (Burke 2001: 5). With antagonistic internal differentiation at the core of Australia’s founding, it did not take much for military management of Indigenous people and the criminal poor to segue into an antiChinese hysteria established during the gold rush and intensifying at the time of Australian federation (Griffiths 2010). The nation state of Australia was established in 1901, upon the federation of six separate British colonies on the continent. In the same year, the first Australian parliament passed an Immigration Restriction Act (aka the ‘White Australia Policy’), which effectively barred entry to people of non-European backgrounds, and penalized ‘Asiatics’ who moved or traded within Australian borders. In a striking similarity to the American concept of ‘manifest destiny’, which would secure

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continental United States for the white man at the expense of native Americans and the people of Mexico, the Australian government legislated to ensure that the vast and sparsely populated continent that British-Australians had claimed (but not yet fully occupied) would be kept for the ‘white race’. Charles Kingston, the man primarily responsible for securing White Australia in his position as Minister for Trade and Customs, captured the spirit of the White Australia Policy at the Australasian Federation Conference of 1891 where he stated I regard as second only to the necessity of protecting our shores against actual invasion, the necessity of protecting Australia against the influx of aliens, Asiatics, criminals, paupers, and other undesirable classes. (Kingston 1891)

While Australia’s policy reflected the exclusionary acts of other settler-colonial nations, there was one major difference: in Australia, a eugenicist racial purity agenda was at the legislative core of the nation building project. The White Australia Policy constituted the first substantial piece of legislation passed by the newly formed Commonwealth government (Fitzgerald 2007: 2). Its urgent passage stems from the psycho-pathological consequences of cultural isolation, racial phobias, and the projection onto Australia’s Asian neighbors of the imperialist impulses by which Australia’s own record in the Pacific has been marked (Bull 1977: 147). The quasi-slave trade operating between Australia’s Pacific island neighbors and the vast plantations of Queensland, as well as the drive to annex as much Pacific territory as possible to preclude Japanese strategic occupation in the first decades of the 20th Century (Louis 1966), also inform contemporary fears of expanding Asian power. In 1977 the eminent Australian international relations theorist Hedley Bull summarized Australia’s core anxiety as follows: a tiny population commanding a continent the size of Europe, rich in food, energy, and raw materials, and with a gross national product that easily surpasses that of its far more populous SouthEast Asian neighbors, must surely be prey to an envious Asian ‘other’ who would not allow this situation to go on indefinitely (Bull 1977: 137). The same fears undergird the Australia-US alliance today. Australia’s own idiosyncratic adherence toward America’s pivot to Asia emanate from the desire to maintain the status-quo of American dominance, lest it be replaced by a revisionist Chinese one. The anchoring of Australia’s imperialist past into its epistemologies of (in) security extends to the colonization of Australia itself. According to Toula Nicolacopoulos and George Vassilacopoulos (2004: 31) the ongoing dispossession of Aboriginal Australians has given rise to an ‘ontological disturbance’ in the Australian psyche. The illegitimate nature of the acquisition of Australia by British colonizers, based on the legal fiction of terra nullius, has heightened fear of white Australia’s own dispossession at the hands of its unpredictable Asian neighbors.

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It is under these psychological conditions that Australia established its clientpatron security relationships, first with Great Britain, and then, upon the collapse of British naval power in the Pacific during WWII, with the United States.

Seeking Powerful Mates From Federation until 1942, Australia pursued a policy of ‘Imperial Defense’, which founded national security in the collective defense of the British Empire. In return for participating in such imperial conflicts as the Anglo-Boer War, Australia was told it could rely on the protection of the Royal Navy, and enjoy the political and economic benefits of its status within the British Empire (Kilcullen 2004: 52). The unravelling of this fantasy in World War Two, when Britain made its defense priorities clear, did little to shake Australia’s determined pursuit of strategic dependency. In his ‘New Year’s message’ of 27 December 1941, with defeat of the Japanese as his objective, Australian Prime Minister John Curtin clearly articulated the realignment: ‘Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom’ (Curtin 1941). From this point onwards, Australia’s defense policy shifted from one of reliance on Britain to one of reliance on the United States, a transition made easier by the cultural congruence between Britain and the United States. America emerged from WWII in an unparalleled position of global primacy. It did not simply supplant Britain in the position of global leadership; the power gap between the United States and any potential rivals was so vast that for a time the economy of the United States was larger than that of the rest of the world combined. As the undisputed military and economic hegemon, the United States promulgated an ideology that it was compelled to fill the role of global arbiter, a role that it had officially refused after WWI (cf. Braumoeller 2010). For the first time in recent history, however, the world’s dominant power was without a global network of overseas bases and overseas sovereign controlled territory. The United States sought a global security architecture through a variety of bilateral and multilateral arrangements that furnished military access for the purposes of global power projection (Sanders 2000: v). President Harry Truman put this newly explicit pursuit in typically selfless terms: Though the United States wants no territory or profit or selfish advantage out of this war, we are going to maintain the military bases necessary for the complete protection of our interests and of world peace. Bases which our military experts deem to be essential for our protection, and which are not now in our possession, we will acquire. We will acquire them by arrangements consistent with the United Nations Charter. (Truman 1945)

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In 1938, America had a relatively modest defense budget, no military alliances, and no troops stationed on territory that it did not control (Lundestad 1980: 23–24). By 1955, the defense budget had ballooned over fifty times. By the mid-1960s, the United States was committed to over 43 nations by treaty and agreement, it had approximately 375 major foreign military bases and 3000 minor military facilities spread across the globe; a network designed to contain the Soviet Union and communist China by virtually surrounding them (Senate Committee on Foreign Relations 1970, cited in Sanders 2000: 9). Today, it is the largest military empire the world has ever known. During the Cold War, little effort was needed to compel the Australian public to playing their part in this global network. Communism was seen as a direct and existential threat: the Red Peril of the Cold War replaced the Yellow Peril that had so haunted Australians since pre-federation, without a tangible distinction between the two. To the extent that the United States government did seek to influence public perceptions of their military role in Australia, this mostly took the form of secrecy, evasion of scrutiny, and omission of strategic detail, wholly reinforced by the Australian government (Ball 1980; 19). Despite the drastic changes that have occurred in the realm of international relations since WWII (including the dissolution of the Soviet Union), Australia has, almost without interruption, maintained the US alliance at the core of its foreign policy. Australian troops were sent to Vietnam—the backlash from which stimulated a brief foray into military self-reliance in the 1970s and 1980s (White 2008: 68)—and most recently Afghanistan and Iraq, in both military and diplomatic support of US foreign policy. In addition to supporting wars not of its own making, Australia has also formed a network of ‘cooperative’ scientific and intelligence bases, under American leadership but on Australian soil, that have been undertaking increasingly clandestine operations since the early years of the alliance. When combined with American signals installations on home soil, these surveillance bases effectively cover the entire globe (Ball 1980: 15). They also perform US military functions totally independent of Australia. The intelligence gathering, communications surveillance, and ballistic missile telemetrical analysis operating from the clustered domes in the center of Australia known as Pine Gap, for instance, have greatly expanded in recent years, evidenced by the sprouting of new satellite ground terminals, from thirteen in 1994 to thirty-four in 2012 (Tanter 2012: 28). Richard Tanter and Desmond Ball, two of Australia’s foremost security and signals intelligence experts, have warned that Pine Gap is intimately involved in the American drone warfare program (in Maley 2014), its transmission monitoring systems are used to ‘geolocate’ users of mobile or satellite phones.

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These targets are killed extrajudicially, outside declared warzones, and untargeted civilians die in the process. Tanter (2013) aptly describes the Australia-US alliance as ‘an historical chameleon’. Its shape constantly transforms; from its original purpose as a US guarantee against the remilitarization of Japan, to an imagined southern bastion of the free world in the Cold War, to a mutually beneficial commitment in the Global War on Terror, to its current role as part of a containment strategy against a rising China. It is in this latest manifestation—as a lynchpin in the American strategy to strengthen its military and diplomatic ties in the Asia-Pacific region as a hedge against an emerging China—that the Australia-US alliance finds itself today. The establishment of a base that denies it is a base, as with the US ‘Marine Rotational Force-Darwin’ (MRF-D), highlights the shift from a partial concealment of a military relationship dating from the cold war to an explicit celebration of the alliance in the contemporary moment. A campaign of concerted image making and narrativization, including the occasional airing of ‘worries’ about so many hard men being let loose among Australian women, serves to normalize the intensification of the US military presence by shaping interpretations of Australian cultural memory, the spatial environment, economic benefit, and sexualized bodies. The moniker of a ‘rotation’ is in itself a subtle public relations exercise that allows officials to insist that Marines are not being ‘based’ on Australian soil, even though the ‘rotation’ is a permanent one—the only difference being that troops are deployed for less time before being replaced by others. Such differentiated techniques for stage managing public affect is not confined to shaping domestic opinion in Australia, but permeate the whole process of the American ‘pivot to Asia’, in which the realpolitik is euphemized into a vocabulary of international humanitarianism.

Pivot to Asia The United States undertook to ‘pivot to Asia’ in 2011. While the pivot is couched in the language of disaster relief, cooperation building, and the strengthening of historical ties, it is in fact a program of military, economic, and diplomatic intensification and engagement with a broad coalition of regional states which aims to contain China and reassert American primacy in the region. The official line is well presented by former US Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Kurt Campbell, who argues that, to grow its economy, the United States undertook the ‘pivot’ through reinvigorated diplomatic, economic, development, peopleto-people, and security ties with the region (Campbell and Andrews 2013: 2). Campbell ranks the military component as the least important aspect of the pivot,

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dismissing its extensive discussion as symptomatic of media laziness: military affairs are simply ‘easier to report on’ than diplomatic ones (ibid: 8). A more accurate description of pivot policy is found in the words of Tom Donilon, then National Security Advisor to President Obama, who wrote in 2011 that: Security in the region requires that international law and norms be respected, that commerce and freedom of navigation are not impeded, that emerging powers build trust with their neighbors, and that disagreements are resolved peacefully without threats or coercion. In Asia Pacific, this requires that the US maintain and enhance a strong network of allies and partners. (Donilon 2011)

In plainer words, China’s rise is a threat to the American-led status-quo; to ensure that the status-quo is maintained America must strengthen its alliances and military presence in the region. In truth, American fears that China’s rise will drastically alter the balance of power in the Asia-Pacific region are not unfounded. China is now approaching the point of overtaking the United States as the world’s largest economy, measured in purchasing power parity (Giles 2014). China has also become the number one trading partner for most of the region, including Australia, the United States, and all other US regional treaty allies—in other words, economically, China is already more important to the Asia-Pacific than America is. Further, while the United States still spends vastly more on its military than China, at a ratio of around 4:1 (IHS Jane’s 2013), when purchasing power is factored in, the disparity lessens: it costs far less for the Chinese to pay their troops and produce their armaments than it does America. With China’s military spending growing at an average of over 10 per cent per year over the last decade, and America’s forecast to shrink by $75 billion over the next two years, the disparity in military power may be closing as well. At the same time, the United States oversees a global network of bases, with operations and security interests that span the world’s continents and oceans, while China concentrates its forces more locally. The Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2AD) capabilities China has recently developed are mainly in the form of surface launched ballistic missiles, the most notorious of which is the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile, or ‘carrier-killer’. These are viewed as a serious threat to American carrier fleets, the main source of power projection for the United States since WWII. In response, American strategic planners have developed the concept of ‘AirSea Battle’ in which American naval and air forces ‘Disrupt, Destroy, and Defeat’ enemy A2AD capabilities by integrating their capabilities across air, sea, land, space, and cyberspace to threaten rapid air bombardment of land-based command and control centers, weapons platforms, and military formations (US Department of Defense 2013: 7).

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To resource its AirSea Battle capabilities, the concept of ‘interoperability’ sits alongside the humanitarian indemnifications of the military build-up in Darwin. The purpose of war games over Darwin’s dry season skies and deep within its hinterland, the Australian public is repeatedly told, is to ensure the congruence of Australian and American force postures. Viewed differently, the demand for interoperability indexes America’s claims to a continued spatial dominion over strategically significant areas. By compulsion of the alliance, Australia is a major purchaser of US weaponry and equipment, justified in times of budgetary frugality with compelling arguments asserting the importance of joint military deployments (Lea 2014: 231–2). The flipside; that the Australian military cannot operate at full capacity without its American counterparts, and the path-dependent routing of Australia into distant wars, never features in public discourse. As the Foreword to the AirSea Battle Concept Summary by the US Department of Defense states: The improved combat capabilities advocated by the (AirSea Battle) concept may help shape the decision calculus of potential aggressors. Additionally, continued U.S. investments in the capabilities identified in the concept reassure our allies and partners, and demonstrate the U.S. will not retreat from, or submit to, potential aggressors who would otherwise try and deny the international community the right to international waters and airspace (US Department of Defence 2013: i).

American security doctrine is to maintain control over key geographical locations, both to protect the system of global trade that American power feeds and underpins, and also to maintain its ability to threaten core Chinese national interests in the case of conflict, and use this as a deterrent to potential Chinese aggression—an ‘aggression’ stirred by the compulsion of counter-arsenals. This is where the centerpiece of the Australian component of the US ‘pivot to Asia’, the establishment of the US ‘Marine Rotational Force-Darwin’, comes into broader American military strategy.

Darwin ‘The rotation’ was first announced In November 2011 by then Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and US President Barrack Obama. It began with an initial deployment of 200 Marines in April 2012, followed by a second deployment of 250 Marines in April 2013. In March 2014, a third contingent of around 1,150 Marines was deployed, and a full contingent of 2,500 Marines is scheduled for 2016–17. At first blush, the decision to rotate Marines through Darwin is puzzling. Darwin sits inside the tropical savannah country of northern Australia, and is most famous for its lethal jelly fish, crocodiles, mosquitoes and extreme weather events. It drowns in heavy monsoonal downpours between December and February, and

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is virtually rainless and hot the rest of the time. It is also renowned for its high intensity cyclones, having been wiped out three times in its short settlement history. The most recent cyclone, which swept through on Christmas Eve in 1974 and destroyed 80 per cent of all residences, requiring a mass civilian evacuation and intensive rebuilding program, is seen as a precursor of the anthropogenic extremes to come (CSIRO 2012). Surrounded by an expanding delta, already the warm, shallow waters of the Arafura Sea edging the low lying city have risen by seventeen centimeters over the past two decades, hastening both the erosion of Darwin’s barely-protected shorelines and the ferocity of future sea-whipped cyclones and flooding events. What then is the attraction of this heat-stressed and climactically-exposed coastal town to the world’s greatest military power? The principal reasons given for the creation of MRF-D differ depending on whose imaginations are being conscripted. To wary south-east Asian neighbors, the MRF-D is presented as a humanitarian and disaster relief operation. Nationally, it is downplayed as a mere ‘troop rotation’ and ‘interoperability’ exercise, an end in itself with no greater military implication. Locally, an upsurge in jobs servicing the American troops is promised, as too is an influx of foreign currency to be spent on entertainment, infrastructure, and tourism. As Australian Minister for Defense Andrew Johnston, in a recent joint press conference with the American Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, gushed, ‘can I tell you the Darwin Chamber of Commerce is elated with 2,500 hungry Marines in their city?’ (Hagel and Johnston 2014). It is a military exercise that seems to do all things for all people, acting upon Australian senses through a scattered array of mediatic techniques and messages. Far from being clandestine, the Marines are highly promoted. There is a dedicated website and accompanying image file of ‘Yanks’ and Aussie military personnel exercising side by side, feeding a voyeurism for sculpted bodies manipulating war weapons which sexualize as they naturalize the marine presence whilst distracting from questions of costs or strategic implications (cf. Marshall 2012). The ‘first long-term expansion of the American military’s presence in the Pacific since the end of the Vietnam War’ (Wines 2011) has so far seen Marines supporting the Aboriginal football academy (a goodwill program to incentivize Indigenous school retention); patiently fielding questions at information booths in supermarkets and shopping malls; playing with children at schools; and comparing their fitness coaching techniques to those of Aussie soldiers (Fiocco 2013). Of course, the American presence amounts to far more than any of these things. The 2,500 Marine deployment will constitute a fully equipped Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF), one of only four deployed in the Asia-Pacific region, joining

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those in Guam, Hawaii, and Okinawa. This is no innocent quartet. Its purpose is to respond rapidly to low- and high-end contingencies by combining command, maritime, ground, air, logistics, and lift capabilities that can deploy together (Kan 2013: 13). When it is not in the business of structuring Australian understandings about the benign role of a MAGTF, the US Marine Corp is more candid about its offensive capabilities:  MAGTFs are established for specific missions, or in anticipation of a wide range of possible missions. Combining air, ground, and logistic assets maximizes the combat power of each of the war fighting elements. The air-ground task-force concept is designed to thoroughly exploit the combat power inherent in air and ground assets by closely integrating them into a single force. The Marine Expeditionary Unit brings what it needs to sustain itself from the sea for the rapid accomplishment of the mission or to pave the way for follow-on forces. The size and composition of the Marine Expeditionary Unit make it well suited for amphibious operations; security operations; non-combatant evacuation operations; humanitarian assistance operations; and special operations (13th Marine Expeditionary Unit 2007)

In other words, the MAGTF deployment in Darwin augments rapid force projection capabilities in a location of extremely high strategic value. The tactical value of Darwin rests in its proximity to the Straits of Malacca, the skinny stretch of water between Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. Only 2.7km at its narrowest point, the Straits are a well-known strategic chokepoint. If blocked, nearly half the world’s shipping fleet would have to reroute through the Indonesian archipelago. As the shortest sea route between the Gulf countries and Asia, the Straits are also China’s energy corridor—80 per cent of China’s crude oil imports pass through the Straits (US Energy Administration 2014). Importantly, China is far more dependent on oil imports for its energy supplies than coal or uranium; its average net total oil imports reached 6.2 million barrels per day (bbl./d) in 2013, while only producing 4.6 million bbl./d of its own supplies (ibid.). Handy, then, for a military hegemon to have sea-air striking range from a docile little place like Darwin: by maintaining the capacity to interdict shipping through the Strait of Malacca, the United States holds a strong deterrent against any possible Chinese military action. For their part, the Chinese government are not placated by the line of MRF-D being mere ‘disaster relief ’ and ‘cooperation building’. Indonesia too, well aware that it has long been viewed with suspicion by Australian defense planners, raised concerns about the plan to cycle US marines through Darwin, with the Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa noting immediately that the agreement risked ‘provoking a reaction and counter-reaction, which would create a vicious cycle of tension and mistrust’ (Natalegawa 2011). Mahfudz Siddiq, head of Indonesia’s

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parliamentary defense, intelligence and foreign affairs commission, expressed the fear that US deployments in the region may be part of a plan to secure American economic interests in the restive province of resource-rich West Papua: Speculation could well emerge that this is America’s response to the situation in eastern Indonesia, specifically Papua and the interests in securing Freeport [The world’s largest goldmine]. President Obama’s presence at the ASEAN High-Level Conference and East Asia Summit need not cause Indonesia to neglect this matter. (Quoted in McRae 2011)

Chinese media and public opinion to the rotation of US Marines through Darwin has been even more critical. Chinese commentators accurately perceive the intent of the operation as constraining Beijing’s regional influence. The China Daily’s senior writer Wang Hui advised ‘Canberra’ to be less docile: Many people in China believe Canberra has actively responded to Washington’s rebalancing strategy in Asia, which is seen as largely intended to contain China’s rise in the region. This year, its move to welcome US marines in Darwin and discussions on allowing the US military to use the Cocos Islands in Western Australia as a new base for US surveillance aircraft have been interpreted as providing stepping-stones for the US to beef up its military presence in the region and meddle in regional affairs. In fact, as a country that increasingly projects itself as a member of the Asia-Pacific club, Canberra does not need to follow Washington’s every step, especially when efforts to strengthen their traditional alliance might have a negative impact on its relations with Beijing. Double-dealing is not recommended either, as it is short-sighted and would erode Canberra’s credibility. (Hui 2012)

China Defense Ministry Spokesman Senior Colonel Geng Yansheng put it more bluntly, arguing that any moves to strengthen military alliances in the region reflect a ‘Cold War mentality’ that is ‘detrimental to the mutual trust and cooperation between countries in the region’ (Manyin et al. 2012: 19). The contrast between these receptions could not be greater. In Australia, the discourse of strategic security conjures deeply ingrained fears of future invasion based on repressed knowledge of unrightful prior colonization and a regional scenario of binary oppositions. In this regard, the pro-American public relations machinery has not had to work too hard, for the ordaining of Australia’s posture as a grateful subordinate ally facing potential Asian terror is culturally reinforced at every turn. The Darwin Military Museum, built on grounds where concrete gun emplacements and other fortifications were meant to hold off sea-borne enemies, powerfully evokes the drama of the Japanese bombings in February 1942. While raids were to last nearly two years, on 19 February 1942, the Japanese dropped more bombs and sank more ships in Darwin’s port than at Pearl Harbor, hit a mere three months earlier by the same commander and with the same squadrons.

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Visitors to the Darwin War Museum are ushered through to the backless seats of a viewing room, where, after a tension-building moment in darkness, simulated Japanese fighter planes dramatically escape the confines of the screen and race across the ceiling to drop bombs and spray bullets at the audience, a volcano of fire crackles and airplane screeches assault the senses in full surround sound. In the relative calm of the post-devastation footage, as black and white film and photographic montages of survivors picking through debris and evacuation scenes are replayed, patrons hear recordings of eyewitness interviews. They relate terror and confusion, the heroism of those who tried to fend off the Japanese with puny rifles, and how more Americans than Australians died during the air raids, many in unmarked sea graves. The remaining exhibits emphasize the role of American soldiers who stayed to defend the town and restore key infrastructure in the long months of live action following. And, so the story goes, a warm and mutually beneficial alliance was affirmed. America’s historical military partnership with Australia, consisting almost entirely of the perception that they saved Australia from the Japanese during WWII, is constantly, and acontextually, referenced as proof of the merit of the new program of basing American troops in Darwin. Noticeably, like the National War Memorial in Canberra, the Darwin museum makes no mention of Australia’s other frontier wars—even though the colonial land-grabs and cattle bulldozers of yesteryear bequeathed the large swathes of real estate that makes the Northern Territory such a useful foreign policy asset today. And if the killing times of settlement cannot be acknowledged; Australian war history before Captain Cook is simply inconceivable. The concept of Australia as a country that had been defended, successfully, against other intruders, by Aboriginal fighters, is not the kind of blood debt that can be memorialized. Arguably, Australia’s ongoing refusal to remember why the country was not settled two centuries before the British is inevitable—settler amnesia marks the power of the victor to rewrite events (Seed 2001). But attempts to assert other histories to combat dominant accounts also get bogged within a field of moral absolutes, and no small part is played by the obscene history of Australian settlement in the north. Pushing this point further reveals another form of solicitation, one which relies on the immediacy of colonial terror in Indigenous ‘hearts and minds’ for its converse effect. For not only is the original dispossession of Australia a condition of the psychic precarity which underwrites (white) public assent to America’s domination, it also plays a part in orienting Indigenous induction to the same. This solicitation calls upon recent memories of dispossession in a different way, playing off still fresh memories of frontier injustices to make defense diplomacy irresistible.

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Frontier Assets A critical part of the answer to ‘why Darwin’ lies less in Darwin’s features as a city, and more in its geo-location: the Straits of Malacca are within immediate launching range. But Darwin is not only near the Indonesian archipelago, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, and the South China Sea; it also has a hinterland uncluttered by the kinds of civilian infrastructure that might attract controversy if yielded to a foreign power in more settled regions. A key part of the package of offerings Australia has gifted the US military is training access to Bradshaw Field Training Area, some 800,000 hectares of defense-owned property on a former cattle station in the notorious Victoria River Downs district, historic home to some of the worst frontier massacres and enslavements (Rose 1991). Here, at one of the largest weapons training grounds in the world (Robson 2011), the Australian Defense Force is able to enact cultural respect precisely because disrespect is a tacit foil. The respectful approach articulates to a violently dispossessing alternate. The ADF recognizes that such activities as live firing, amphibious landings and detonations ‘have the potential to impact on sites or artifacts of cultural heritage significance’ for Indigenous people, yet assesses the likelihood of damage as low, ‘because these sites are recognized by Defense and management controls (are) implemented to protect them’ (Aurecon 2012: 58). Training Area Standing Orders openly specify the relevant protection mechanisms, which include notification of the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority (AAPA) in the event that any new artifacts or sites are uncovered and strict avoidance of specified sacred sites and respect for their buffer zones, specified as ‘no go areas’ (ibid.). These overtures accrue political significance and impact precisely because of their radically anomalous character. To understand the contrasts at stake we need to travel south-west of Bradshaw, to Banka Banka Station, where an Indigenous sacred site known as Two Women Sitting Down was recently blasted in half by the mining company OM (Manganese) Ltd at its Bootu Creek Manganese mine. The same Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority that the military has called upon to assist its culturally respectful endeavors recently pursued a desecration lawsuit against the mining company. OM (Manganese) was fined a paltry AUD $150, 000 for continually blasting and excavating ore next to the sacred area, in full knowledge that a collapse was imminent, eventually sending 170,000 tonnes of rock and soil cascading into the pit (Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority v OM (Manganese) Ltd 2013). More shocking than this recent desecration date is the fact that this was the first and to this point the only successful prosecution AAPA has been able to mount since its inception in 1979.

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The influence of American soft-power has a vertical as well as a horizontal dimension. As the last parts of Australia to be settled, Aboriginal killing times in the north started in the 1880s with attempts to drive sheep and cattle wherever water supplies and pasture flourished. In only a few short years, an estimated 200,000 cattle, 10,000 horses and numerous bullock-wagons were transported overland (Roberts 2005: 66–67). The pastoralists were licensed to murder Indigenous rivals, to the point where the (crude) population estimate of 50,000 Indigenous people living in the Northern Territory before European contact fell to 23,500 by 1911, a devastation that took less than three decades to execute (Heatley 1979: 132). Fast-forward to the early 21st century, when the grisly extermination logics of the frontier have been declared a thing of the past, and the ossifications of museum exhibits have enshrined the kinds of bodies that get memorialized as war dead (and the kinds that get forgotten). It is here that the contrast between the pastoralists who brutally took Aboriginal lands and the warm solicitude of Defense personnel who enjoy the real estate legacy at Bradshaw Station becomes clear. In concert with multiculturalism’s claim to have erased racial difference, Australian and American defense efforts to respect Indigenous sovereignty by carefully consulting on where they might blast their weapons and practice blowing up the earth, are exemplary models both of recognition—given the context—and of the unacknowledged forms of coercive racial power that underpins settler colonial dominance. The lack of infrastructure on Indigenous estates and at Bradshaw is testimony to the underinvestment in Aboriginal people in regional and remote Australia more generally. It is a backgrounded poverty which also helps explain the mainstream public acceptance of the US Marine deployment in Darwin.

Getting Dirty The absence of debate about the rotation is assisted by other kinds of contrast. Playing on fears evoked by popular knowledge of sexual predation surrounding US bases in Japan and South Korea, the American boys rotating through Darwin are depicted as members of a fraternity, with the odd female leavening the otherwise male muscularity on display. Unsurprisingly, when a cross-section of the Darwin community was consulted about any emerging concerns on the American presence, the specter of Guam and Okinawa and fears of sexual assault dominated (Bennett 2013; see also Sutton 2013). Yet, such fears do not amplify resistance, but paradoxically reinforce the value of a ‘hearts and minds’ approach. The immediate response from high ranking officials and patriotic commentators alike is to insist that US Marines are highly disciplined professionals, and that serious measures are in place to punish violators. Comparative statistics are called

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upon to reinforce this image of hardline accountability. A Deloitte Access Economics report commissioned by the ADF and released in 2013, Social Impact of rotations of up to 1,100 US Marines and associated equipment in Northern Australia, provides the following calculus: The most detailed statistics available on sexual assaults committed by US military personnel on foreign soil (in Okinawa from 1986–2006) would imply that there is around a one in eight chance that a rotation of 1,100 US Marines for six months could lead to any case of sexual assault (reported or unreported) [in Darwin]. More recent data from Okinawa that is Marine-specific suggest much lower likelihood (a 1 in 20 ‘best’ estimate). A worst case scenario is that Marines would be as likely to commit such crimes as an equivalent sized group of Northern Territory males, which could lead to 4.4 sexual assaults (reported or unreported). (Deloitte 2013: 34)

The disarming statistics remind readers that rape is not only a normal aberration; a wider rape culture within the Northern Territory is more risky. Indeed, the risk assessors point out, young women in their phone survey report feeling safer with Marines than with other Territory males (p. 33). Violence in Okinawa is reread as a baseline from which a greater threat can be imagined: that of local men. In effect, the state makes use of the banality of high sexual assault rates in the wider community to deflect attention from, or rather, fortify the affective attraction of, a strengthened military presence. The comparison with Okinawa to craft a dissembling narrative of sexual predation and the paternalistic protection on offer by Marines stops short of reminding readers that both Japan and Korea are actively reducing American military deployments on their territory—despite both countries immediately facing a far more volatile security environment than Australia. Okinawans, having protested against the American military presence on their island since the 1960s (Inoue 2010: 4), finally achieved a political victory in 2006 when the notorious Futenma Marine air base was relocated to another part of the island and several thousand Marines were shifted from Okinawa to facilities in the U.S. territory of Guam (Yonetani 2001). These shifts in no way lessen the Japanese-American alliance. According to the 2006 relocation agreement, Japan would continue to foot the larger share (sixty per cent) of the $10.3 billion earmarked for the build-up of facilities on Guam to accommodate the 8000 marines to be relocated there (Kan 2013: 1). In South Korea, the United States is similarly working to relocate its forces from areas close to the border with North Korea, and within the demilitarized zone, to areas south of Seoul, giving South Korea a more prominent role in its own national defense. This relocation has also run into difficulty following the protests of local inhabitants who fear environmental damage; noise and vibration from military exercises; constraints on planning and development for the existent communities

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in the new locations; US military personnel crimes against local residents; and camptown prostitution (Moon 2012: 865). While these examples do not demonstrate a concerted move away from the American alliance but a strengthening of security ties in the moment of reducing and reshuffling American basing, they do indicate acute public awareness of the consequences of American military bases and reveal a public so vocal it effects change in military policy. But such provocations have been absent in Australia. At a time when other regional allies of the United States are actively moderating their American presence, Australia is openly and uncritically embracing a dramatic expansion.

Campaigns for Hearts and Minds: Concluding Remarks It is not only the similar cultural and historical origins of the United States and Australia, pitched as ‘common values’, which explain the close relationship. The common threat of Japan during WWII catalyzed more intimate security ties, and the repetition and resurrection of this attack as the only form of war memory that the north of Australia is allowed to have, vivifies ideas of brotherhood through sacrifice even as it indemnifies ongoing settler colonial occupation. Moreover, it is American hegemonic interests, and the perennial Australian fear of Asia, that drives Australia’s desire for foreign paternalism. Working off of this self-colonizing foundation, the wooing of Australian hearts and minds has been successfully orchestrated to justify the rapid expansion of American military and intelligence capabilities in Australia, with near universal approval. The ceding of hearts and minds is so complete that, in the same week that a new, legally binding force posture agreement was signed expanding cyberspace, air, naval and basing commitments (AUSMIN 2014), the Australian Minister for Defense told the media of the existing US Marine rotations through Darwin: You might be surprised to know we’ve had 1,200 there for some long time now in the dry six months of the year in the Northern Territory. And you would be surprised, because it’s gone seamlessly. Everybody’s happy. Everything has worked according to plan. There’s been no issues. And we are absolutely delighted with the presence of those personnel there. (Hagel and Johnston 2014, emphasis added)

The seamlessness sits on a tacit binary choice: either give unqualified support to America’s nascent containment of China; or accept China as the new regional hegemon. The removal of alternatives–for example, accommodation of China into the regional security architecture as a responsible stakeholder—solidifies the sense of inevitability underpinning Australia’s active embrace of a containment alliance. Ironically this threatens to trigger conflict over ambiguous territorial disputes in the

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east and south China seas. The power dynamics of the US-Australian relationship, the growing presence of US intelligence and military forces within Australia, and Australia’s increasing reliance on US defense technology and interoperability, means that where Australia stands on these pivotal issues is determined in Washington, not Canberra. And, it seems, Australians wouldn’t have it otherwise.

Bibliography 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (2007) ‘What is a Marine Expeditionary Unit?’ accessed 20 August 2014. Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority v OM (Manganese) Ltd. (2013). accessed 1 August 2014. Aurecon Australia (2012). Talisman Sabre 2013, Final Public Environment Report. Aurecon Australia for Department of Defense, December 2012. accessed 1 August 2014. Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) (2014), Joint Communique, 12 August. https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/us/ausmin/ausmin14-jointcommunique.html accessed 20 August 2014. Ball, D. (1980). A Suitable Piece of Real Estate. Sydney: Hale and Iremonger. Bennett, C. (2013). ‘Sex, Violence Fears Raised at Marines Meeting’ NT News 5 February 2013 accessed 15 August 2014. Braumoeller, B. (2010). ‘The Myth of American Isolationism’, Foreign Policy Analysis, 6, 349–371. Bull, H. (1977). ‘Australia and Asia: Security Perspectives’ India International Centre Quarterly, 4(2), 135–148. Burke, A. (2001). In Fear of Security: Australia’s Invasion Anxiety. Sydney: Pluto Press. Butler, J. (2010). Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?. London, New York: Verso. Campbell, K and Andrews, B. (2013). ‘Explaining the US Pivot to Asia’, Chatham House Programme Paper. accessed 20 August 2013. Captain Cook’s journal during his first voyage round the world made in H.M. bark ‘Endeavour’ 1768–71. accessed 20 August 2014.

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Chester, L. (2010) ‘Actually Existing Markets: The Case of Neoliberal Australia’. Journal of Economic Issues, 44 (10), 313–323. CSIRO (2012). State of the Climate 2012. Commonwealth Science and Industry Research Organization accessed 3 August 2014. Curtin, J. (1941). ‘The Task Ahead’, The Herald (Melbourne), 27 December. Dibb, P. and Brabin-Smith, R. (2007). ‘Indonesia in Australian Defense Planning’, Security Challenges, 3(4), 67–93. Christopher, E. (2011). A Merciless Place: The Fate of Britain’s Convicts after the American Revolution. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Donilon, T. (2011). ‘America is Back in the Pacific and Will Uphold the Rules’, Financial Times, 27 November. accessed 4 August 2014. Fiocco, S. (2013). ‘MRF-D Marines Break Barriers in Aussie Fitness Test’, MRFDarwin News (30 July 2013) accessed 1 August 2014. Fitzgerald, J. (2007). Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Giles, C. (2014) ‘China Poised to Pass US as World Economic Power This Year’, Financial Times, 30 April. accessed 20 August 2014. Griffiths, P. (2010). ‘From Humiliation to Triumph: Sir Henry Parkes, the Squatters and the Anti-Chinese Movement, 1877–1878’ Journal of Australian Colonial History, 12, 143–170. Hage, G. (1998). White Nation: Fantasies of White Australia in a Multicultural Society. Sydney: Pluto Press. Hagel, C. and Johnston, D. (2014). Joint Press Conference of US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Australian Minister of Defense David Johnston, Sydney. 11 August 2014. accessed 15 August 2014. Heatley, A. (1979). The Government of the Northern Territory. St. Lucia QLD: University of Queensland Press. Hui, W. (2012). ‘Sino-Australian Ties Benefit Both’, China Daily, 24 December, p. 8. IHS Jane’s Aerospace, Defence & Security (2013). ‘Defence Budget Rankings 2013’. accessed 20 August 2014.

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Inoue, M. (2007). Okinawa and the US military. New York: Columbia University Press. Kan, S. A. (2013). ‘Guam: US Defense Deployments’. Congressional Research Service: Report for Congress. 15 November, 2013. Keneally, T. (2009). Australians (Vol. 1). Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Kilcullen, D. (2007). ‘Australian Statecraft: The Challenges of Aligning Policy with Strategic Culture’. Security Challenges, 3 (4), 45–65. Kingston, C. (1891) Minutes of the 1891 Australasian Federation Conference. 10 March, 1891. Australian Parliamentary Library. accessed 1 August 2014. Lea, T. (2014). Darwin. Sydney: NewSouth Books. Louis, W. Roger (1966). ‘Australia and the German Colonies in the Pacific, 1914– 1919’ The Journal of Modern History, 38 (4), 407–421. Lowy Institute (2014) The Lowy Institute Poll accessed 1 August 2014. Lundestad, G. (1986)’. Empire by Invitation? The United States and Western Europe, 1945–1952’. Journal of Peace Research, 23(3), 263–277. Maley, P. (2014). ‘Australia Supports US Drone Hit’. The Australian. 20 May 2014. accessed 14 August 2014. Manyin, M. Daggett, S., Dolven, B., Lawrence, S., Martin, M., O’Rourke, R., and Vaughn, B. (2012)’. Pivot to the Pacific? The Obama Administration’s ‘Rebalancing’ Towards Asia’, Congressional Research Service: Report for Congress. 28 March 2012. Marshall, D. (2012). ‘Life during Wartime: Sexuality, Recruitment and Reality Television’. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 26(2), 225–233. McRae, D. (2011). ‘Indonesian Response to US Marine Deal’. The Lowy Interpreter. 23 November, 2011. accessed 1 August 2014. Mills, L. A. (1958). Malaya: A Political and Economic Appraisal. (Minneapolis; Lund Press) Moon, S. (2012). ‘Protesting the Expansion of US Military Bases in Pyeongtaek: A Local Movement in South Korea. The South Atlantic Quarterly. 111 (4), 865–876. Natalegawa, M. (2011). ‘Indonesia Fears US Marines Will Bring Tensions and Mistrust to the Region’. ABC News Radio transcript. Thursday 17 November, 2011 accessed 1 August 2014.

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Nicolacopoulos, T. and Vassilacopoulos, G. (2004). ‘Racism, Foreigner Communities and the Onto-pathology of White Australian Subjectivity’. In A. Moreton-Robinson (ed.), Whitening Race: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism, pp. 32–47. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. Nye, J. S. (2004). ‘Soft Power and American Foreign Policy’ Political Science Quarterly, 119(2), 255–270. Powell, A. (2010). Northern Voyagers: Australia’s Monsoon Coast in Maritime History. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing. Reserve Bank of Australia. (2011) ‘The Mining Sector and External Accounts’, Statement on Monetary Policy; November 2011. accessed 20 August 2014. Reynolds, H. (2013). Forgotten War. Sydney: NewSouth Books. Roberts, T. (2005). Frontier Justice: A History of the Gulf Country to 1900. St. Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press. Robson, S. (2011). ‘Australia Offers Strong Training Opportunities for Marines’. Stars and Stripes, 27 November 2011. http://www.stripes.com/news/australiaoffers-strong-training-opportunities-for-marines-1.161787> accessed 20 August 2014. Rose, D. B. (1991). Hidden Histories: Black Stories from Victoria River Downs, Humbert River and Wave Hill Stations. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. Sanders, C.T. (2000). America’s Overseas Garrisons: The Leasehold Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Secret Instructions for Lieutenant James Cook Appointed to Command His Majesty’s Bark the Endeavour 30 July 1768 National Library of Australia, NLA: MS 2;

accessed 1 August 2014. Seed, P. (2001). American Pentimento: The Invention of Indians and the Pursuit of Riches. University of Minnesota Press. Sepp, K. I. (2007). ‘From ‘shock and awe’ to ‘hearts and minds’: the fall and rise of US counterinsurgency capability in Iraq’, Third World Quarterly, 28 (2), 217–230. Sutton, M. (2013). ‘Cracks Appearing in Us Marines’ Charm Offensive in Darwin’. The Guardian, 30 July 2013 accessed 15 August 2014. Tanter, R. (2012). ‘The Joint Facilities Revisited- Desmond Ball, Democratic Debate on Security, and the Human Interest’. Nautilus Institute Security and Sustainability Special Report (12 December, 2012).

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Tanter, R. (2013)’.The US Military Presence in Australia: Asymmetrical Alliance Cooperation and Its Alternatives’. The Asia Pacific Journal. 11 (45/1), 11 November 2013. accessed 1 August 2014. Truman, H. S. (1945). Radio Report to the American People. Public Papers. 9 August 1945. accessed 1 August 2014. Turse, N. (2011). ‘Empire of Bases 2.0’, Tomdispatch. accessed 1 August 2014. US Department of Defense (2013). ‘Air-Sea Battle: Service Collaboration to Address Anti Access &Area Denial Challenges’, Air-Sea Battle Office May, 2013. accessed 20 August 2014. US Energy Information Administration (2014). China Factsheet. 4 February 2014. Vine, D. (2009). Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press. White, H. (2008). ‘Strategic Interests in Australian Defense Policy: Some Historical and Methodological Reflections’. Security Challenges. 4 (2), 63–79. Wines, M. (2011) ‘A U.S. Marine Base for Australia Irritates China’ The New York Times 17 November 2011, accessed 20 August 2014. Yonetani, J. (2001). ‘Playing Base Politics in a Global Strategic Theater: Futenma Relocation, the G-8 Summit, and Okinawa’ Critical Asian Studies, 33 (1), 70–95.

Robert D. Eldridge

No Better Friend: The Outreach Efforts of the United States Marine Corps in Japan and the Asia-Pacific 30 August 2009, was a turning point in U.S.-Japan relations. For the first time since the establishment of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in 1955, voters overwhelmingly went with another party, the Democratic Party of Japan, and two weeks later, Japan saw its first true change in administrations in more than five decades.1 That summer, in the run-up to the general election, DPJ President Hatoyama Yukio had called for the relocation of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma outside of Okinawa Prefecture, in effect unilaterally canceling a controversial bilateral agreement that had been agreed to by the Japanese and U.S. governments in 1996 but remained unimplemented due to local opposition and delaying tactics. Observers attributed this bold declaration as being the reason for the victory of the DPJ and other opposition parties in Okinawa at the time. It certainly became the focus of the election, and would challenge and eventually haunt Hatoyama’s the administration over the next nine months. Whether he realized it or not, candidate Hatoyama’s call for the relocation of MCAS Futenma outside of the prefecture essentially meant the same thing as telling the U.S. Marines to leave Okinawa. This is because the Marines operate as an integrated and rapidly deployable organization through the proven doctrine known as the Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) and these assets are deliberately positioned in the geo-strategically located Okinawa. By late May the following year, however, Prime Minister Hatoyama had come around to supporting the original plan to relocate MCAS Futenma within the prefecture. He shortly thereafter resigned to take responsibility for his flip-flop, to the anger and consternation of anti-base activists in Okinawa and to the great relief of numerous people on both sides of the Pacific more concerned with keeping the presence necessary to maintain the bilateral security relationship with the United States (Japan’s only formal ally).

1 In the summer of 1993, an anti-LDP coalition formed headed by Hosokawa Morihiro as prime minister. His administration, and the one that followed, were both short-lived, and the LDP returned to power in June 1994.

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For me, and a few discerning Marine Japan hands, however, Hatoyama was a blessing in disguise. His ignorance was shared by the people of Japan, and his ascendancy gave us the chance to correct these misperceptions. In other words, it was the failure of the long-serving ruling party, the LDP, to truly promote a bipartisan foreign and security policy, and to educate the public on Japan’s only alliance, that gave rise to the unfamiliarity demonstrated by the then-incoming and inexperienced DPJ administration2. The LDP’s mismanagement of policy and of its own internal affairs gave birth to the DPJ, and it was the LDP’s lack of effort over the previous half-century to fully highlight the merits of the alliance and the presence of U.S. bases in Japan that caused the two phases of political chaos and diplomatic friction between 2009–2010, and 2012 (deployment of the first squadron of MV22B Ospreys to Japan, specifically MCAS Futenma), followed by an upcoming third (from November 2014, with the election of an anti-base governor in Okinawa). This essay explores the efforts of the Marine Corps, led by this author, to change the atmosphere from exactly that: ignorance to understanding and appreciation. Much progress was made during that time, despite the failure of the Government of Japan (under administrations led by both the DPJ, from 2009–2012, and then LDP, once again, from 2012-today) to proactively step forward and lead or even assist. Having received my doctorate in Japanese Political and Diplomatic History from a Japanese university, and having published numerous works on Okinawan history and U.S.-Japan relations, with deep connections in the Japanese political, bureaucratic, media, academic, think tank, and NGO/NPO worlds developed over two decades in country (to include having increasingly close relations with members of the DPJ well before their coming to power), I was hired as a senior civil servant into the Marine Corps the same month that the Hatoyama administration started, to be in charge of political advising and public diplomacy. Importantly, although I had participated in a one-year sabbatical serving with Marine Forces Pacific in Hawaii in a similar position3, my formal lack of military experience was actually an asset in that I knew what the civilians did not know about the Marine

2 For a critique on the LDP’s inability to articulate the importance of the Marine Corps presence in Japan, see Robert D. Eldridge, ‘U.S. Marines’ Role in Okinawa Little Understood’, Daily Yomiuri, 16 April 2005. 3 For more on the work conducted during the sabbatical, see Robert D. Eldridge, ‘My One Year with the Marines: Reflections on Bridging the Gap between Academics and the Military’, International Public Policy Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2 (March 2006), pp. 163–180.

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Corps, and thus was able to bridge that understanding and thus bring transparency4 to the least understood of the four branches of the U.S. military5. As this chapter will highligh that most of the debate presented by the opponents surrounding the U.S. base presence and relations between Okinawa Prefecture and the central government is often factually incorrect or less-than-correct, which does a disservice to the people of the prefecture (and of the two nations as a whole) and makes the work of public officials all the harder. At the minimum, it should always be recognized, that there is another side to the story, one that is not always being introduced, for whatever motive, by the media or opposition groups, perhaps because it would undermine their cause and raison d’etre (as well as funding). As such, hyperbole has become the norm. In this environment, reason and rationale do not easily win against emotions, distortions, and misunderstandings. The purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to explore not only our efforts to educate the Japanese public on the roles and missions of the Marine Corps, but to also introduce some of the background to the issues behind the U.S. military presence in Japan, and the institutional and other challenges of sustaining the initial successes of our outreach programs.

The U.S. Marine Corps Presence in Japan For a variety of reasons—some self-imposed, some self-created, and others the result of complicated external dynamics as well as plain ignorance—the United States Marine Corps (USMC) in Japan has in recent decades taken the brunt, sometimes fairly but usually not, for criticism of the handling of U.S. base issues in Japan. This is particularly true for Okinawa, Japan’s southernmost prefecture, which hosts a relatively large percentage of Marine Corps forces and bases. The American military presence in Japan is based on Article 6 of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between Japan and the United States of America, a security arrangement that first came into being in 1951 and was revised in 1960.6 4 ‘Zaioki Beikaiheitai Gaikō Seisakubu Jichō ni Robaato Erudorijji Shi (Robert Eldridge to Become Deputy for Community Policy, Planning, and Liaison of Okinawa-based U.S. Marine Corps)’, Kyōdō Tsūshin, 28 September 2009. 5 Even in this remark, I would be corrected by a Marine reading this. Goes the famous saying, ‘The Marines are not a branch. We are a breed’. 6 Article 6 reads: ‘For the purpose of contributing to the security of Japan and the maintenance of international peace and security in the Far East, the United States of America is granted the use by its land, air and naval forces of facilities and areas in Japan. The use of these facilities and areas as well as the status of United States armed forces in Japan shall be governed by a separate agreement, replacing the Administrative Agreement

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What is often not understood or even known by the majority of the Japanese public (and even by many of their leaders, not to mention U.S. commentators and officials) is that both the concept for a bilateral security treaty, first proposed in 1947 by then Foreign Minister Ashida Hitoshi (Eldridge 2010: 5–6)7, and the 1950 request by Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru to the United States Government (USG) to base its forces in Japan following the peace treaty (Eldridge and Kusunoki 1999), were desires expressed by the duly elected Government of Japan (GOJ). In contrast, not knowing this history, many people in Japan (as well as academics and anti-base groups in both countries) assume that the Japan-U.S. security treaty was an arrangement imposed upon Japan by an omnipotent USG after the war. It is a very different dynamic if the bases and thus the presence are viewed as an external occupation-like force versus being the men and women and equipment of the world’s most powerful military whose presence was requested by one’s elected government to make up for the lack of its own security capabilities. In other words, U.S. forces were invited to be forward-deployed in Japan by the GOJ to both help defend Japan (subsequently clarified in Article 58) and to contribute to the peace and security of the Asia-Pacific region, a part of the world that Japan is heavily dependent for trade and natural resources but one which remains highly unstable due in part to mistrust, incompatible political systems, and the lack of a regional security mechanism. It is the U.S. Marine Corps, and specifically, the III Marine Expeditionary Force, headquartered at Camp Courtney in present-day Uruma City, Okinawa Prefecture, that is the busiest and most engaged of U.S. forces in the Western Pacific. Indeed, III MEF is the busiest of all three, despite being the smallest of all three MEFS in the USMC (which in turn, is the smallest of all four branches of the U.S. military). This is in part because III MEF is the largest of the deployable under Article III of the Security Treaty between Japan and the United States of America, signed at Tokyo on 28 February 1952, as amended, and by such other arrangements as may be agreed upon’. 7 Also see, Robert D. Eldridge, The Origins of the Bilateral Okinawa Problem: Okinawa in Postwar U.S.-Japan Relations, 1945–1952 (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 135–147. 8 Article 5 reads, ‘Each Party recognizes that an armed attack against either Party in the territories under the administration of Japan would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional provisions and processes. Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall be immediately reported to the Security Council of the United Nations in accordance with the provisions of Article 51 of the Charter. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security’.

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American ground forces, with an authorized strength of 18,000, but in reality several thousand less at any given time. It is also because interaction, such as multilateral exercises and training, is done through people, not equipment, aircraft, or ships. Furthermore, as the ‘force in readiness’, or America’s 911 force, the Marines are called to respond on a multitude of contingencies throughout the world, especially in the tragedy-filled Asia-Pacific. Over the past decade, the majority of these responses have been in the humanitarian assistance/disaster relief (HA/DR) field, usually at a rate of 1.5 per year, Operation Unified Assistance in Indonesia, Operation Tomodachi in northeastern Japan, and Operation Damayan in the southern Philippines among the more well-known. It is often the face of the Marines that are the first to be seen in these disaster areas, before even domestic help can arrive, and in part why the Marines are described as ‘No Better Friend’. The forward deployment to Japan of U.S. forces provide deterrence in this trouble-filled part of the world, which has some of the largest militaries in the world, such as North Korea, China, and Russia. In addition to the failure of some nations to reach a post-World War II and post-Korean War reconciliation, diplomatic, trade, and territorial tensions with China rise daily between China and Japan and the two nations are locked in an intense rivalry for influence in the region. In order to increase transparency and trust, U.S. forces, in particular the Marine Corps, conduct a program now in its twentieth year called Theater Security Cooperation, or TSC, which supports training, education, personnel exchanges, and military and other bilateral and multilateral exercises throughout the region as a way to further cooperation and avoid conflict or other miscalculations. Students of international relations know these efforts at increasing trust and transparency ‘confidence-building measures’. Military commanders know it as ‘common sense’, as it is important to further partnerships with as many actors as possible for as many possible situations that may arise. This ‘hand-comm’, or communication by handshakes, and working together have been hugely helpful in natural disasters, especially as the capability of partner nations grow. Overall, too, the TSC program, of which the Marine Corps is an integral part, has been an immense success, as more and more bilateral interactions become trilateral and multilateral in nature and the foundations for peace and stability in the region deepen and grow. With this said, however, historic tensions remain. In addition to being forward-deployed in Japan, the Marine Corps is also expeditionary, which keeps its operating forces out and about often away from its ‘home’ bases, such as those in Okinawa. Precisely because it is inherently expeditionary and has the organic capabilities to self-deploy, the Marine Corps is able to participate in the above exercises and missions on a regular basis, without fail, and if necessary to respond to crises when dialogue, discussion, dissuasion, and deterrence have failed.

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Ironically, this expeditionary nature is one of several factors behind the Japanese people’s difficulty in understanding the Marine Corps.9 Namely, because their own Self-Defense Forces have been historically restricted or limited legally from participating in missions outside of Japan for much of the postwar period (this has changed slightly in the post-Cold War period), it has been difficult for Japanese citizens who have known nothing but peace for the past seventy years to understand the roles and missions of the Marines. There are other reasons, too, for the Japanese public’s lack of knowledge about the Marines. One includes the fact that the majority of the USMC presence in Japan is located in Okinawa, the island nation’s southwestern-most prefecture. Almost 99  per cent of the population lives in the rest of Japan, and thus few Japanese are able to interact with U.S. Marines on a daily basis. It should be pointed out that there are two USMC facilities in mainland Japan—a sparsely populated one at Camp Fuji in Shizuoka Prefecture whose ranges are shared with the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF), and an air station shared with the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) at MCAS Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture. But considering that most Japanese have never been to a SDF base and not that many more have even spoken to someone in their own country’s military before, it is not surprising that the public has had few opportunities to visit a U.S. Marine base or even meet a U.S. Marine.10 In contrast, most of the main installations of the other three branches of the U.S. military are located in mainland Japan, to include the capital city of Tokyo. It is easier for residents in mainland Japan, particularly in the Kanto area where a significant part of the population resides, therefore to visit these locations or see American service members. (While members of the services can go off base in their utility uniforms, Marines can only do so in formal uniforms or their civilian clothes, and so it may be difficult for the average Japanese citizen to identify and interact with a Marine.) A third, and equally important, reason for the lack of understanding is the fact that the SDF does not have its own Marine Corps, and thus there is no lens 9 With this said, there has been at least one popular book about the USMC was published in Japan by a well-known professor of organizational management at Hitotsubashi University’s Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy, which increased both the knowledge and interest in the Marine Corps. See Nonaka Ikujirō, Amerika Kaiheitai: Hieirigata Soshiki no Jiko Kakushin (The American Marine Corps: Self-Improvement in a Non-for-profit Organization), (Tōkyō: Chūkō Shinsho, 1995). 10 Marine Corps installations sponsor open-base days throughout the year, to include one at MCAS Futenma during the summer months. The one held in 2013, after the first squadron of MV-22Bs had arrived, drew 70,000 people over the course of two days.

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or prism by which to view the U.S. Marines. Within the SDF are ground, air, and maritime components, appropriately named the GSDF, Air Self-Defense Force (ASDF), and MSDF. Each one has an organizational counterpart in the U.S. military. For example, the postwar historic counterpart of the GSDF has been the U.S. Army, and thus the Japanese people, through their own GSDF, can understand the roles and mission of a land force such as the U.S. Army. Similarly, through the ASDF the Japanese public can understand what the U.S. Air Force does, as is the case with the MSDF on behalf of the U.S. Navy. But as there is no Marine Corpslike organization in the SDF, it is a stretch for people to understand the Marines. This very asymmetry of the Marine Corps thus makes it the ‘glue’ binding the U.S.-Japan security relationship. While the other branches of the U.S. and Japanese militaries are matched up with their historic counterparts based on core competencies and missions, the Marines have a blend of all of them and thus bind them together and the two nations together. This is true not only for deterrence and real world missions, but also because the Marines serve as well as an important bridge between Japanese forces and those of other nations, helping the SDF piggy-back into exercises and operations, such as Unified Assistance and Damayan. Interestingly, despite the GSDF ‘adopting’ the USMC as its second counterpart in 1997, the leadership and soldiers of the GSDF themselves, with the exception of those who attended Marine Corps schools or had other unique opportunities to interact professionally and personally, for the most part did not understand the Marines, other than intellectually, and were not able to articulate what makes the Marines unique and different—a combined air-ground task force that could rapidly respond by land, sea, and air, and conduct multiple operations simultaneously. It was not until the March 2011 Great East Japan when the Marines were asked to respond within Japan that the SDF and the public began to understand with their own eyes how the Marines operate and how quickly they can get to a disaster area in any time, clime, or place. Even then, it was clear that the SDF truly did not understand the full scope and range of Marine Corps capabilities, and became something they had to learn intrinsically rather than simply intellectually (Hiroe, Eldridge, and Katsumata 2011).11 In recent years, the SDF itself has publicly discussed acquiring a Marine Corpslike capability or establishing its own marine corps, either to be nested within the GSDF or within MSDF. Some neighboring countries have expressed a concern about this discussion, viewing a Japanese Marine Corps as something designed for

11 The interview was conducted on 15 July 2011, and published in Japanese in Chūō Kōron in September and in English online that fall.

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offensive purposes. This is not necessarily the case—the same diplomatic, security, and legal policies would certainly apply to what currently exists over the respective branches of the SDF. What the SDF means by this capability is an amphibious force that can respond to a contingency on any one of Japan’s 6500 islands, done in a joint manner, with rapid decision and implementation—all superior traits closely identified with the U.S. Marine Corps. It is no wonder then that the SDF is trying to learn from the USMC, with its 240-plus years of experience. In order to train for these various missions, and to be prepositioned to be the force in readiness, the Marines maintain a number of installations for training and/ or the basing of equipment and personnel in the geo-strategically important main island Okinawa. The real world, but restricted, training, invites complaints from local residents, due to noise or concerns (usually unfounded) about safety, because Okinawa’s main island is a long, thin, hilly-mountainous island of which about 18% of its land area is utilized for U.S. and Japanese bases.12 In contrast to the training conducted by the Marine Corps, the GSDF tends to tread lightly, a luxury that the ‘Devil Dogs’ do not have due to their varied missions and need to be able to respond, first and fastest. Said another way, because the Marines are forward-deployed in Okinawa and do the ‘3K’ work (kitanai—dirty, kiken—dangerous, kitsui—difficult), the SDF gets by with having to do far less.

Politics, Protests, and the Media in Okinawa Politically, complaining about the bases and making unrealistic promises are sure ways to get or stay elected, and so quite often the rhetoric does not match the reality. Elected officials, either heads of local governments or members of the respective assemblies, often protest at the slightest incidents, even when all the facts are still unknown, either in person, by letter and fax, or both. The protests become documented, and then are used vis-à-vis the central government to acquire more compensation. In some cases, the protest visits are sincere and on the mark, and in other cases they are highly political with imperfect knowledge, either intentionally

12 Often, the proportion of U.S. bases in Japan located in Okinawa is said to be 74% but that number is incorrect for a couple of reasons, including the definition of the type of facility, and the fact that there are additional base areas used jointly with the SDF. The actual number is 62%, and if the land returns agreed to by the USG are allowed to proceed (such as the relocation of MCAS Futenma), the per centage will eventually drop to the low 40% range. For more, see Robert D. Eldridge, ‘The Okinawa “Base Problem” Today’, Nippon.com (3 February 2012), (http://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a00501/, accessed 29 December 2014).

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or through ignorance and emotionalism, while the media explicitly fan the flames at the expense of the judicial system, when public opinion rather than the courts, become the judge. One previous U.S. consul general who served in Okinawa and has written a book about his experiences is said to have described this behavior as yusuri takari, or ‘extortion’, in a lecture in Washington, D.C., before university students (that unbeknownst to him and later me, who also hosted the group when it visited Okinawa, included activists) and while he denies having said it, he is cheered on by many residents in Okinawa who recognize that as being the truth and are embarrassed by it (Maher 2011). More than money and the inability of these elected representatives from becoming profiles in courage, however, is the pressure put on them by the two local newspapers, which control more than 98 per cent of the market share and which both adopt a strongly anti-military and anti-central government stance. By setting the agenda through the introduction of topics (or purposeful non-introduction of inconvenient news or facts), the media greatly controls the narrative on this small island, and helps to see that the feelings of ‘victimization’ and ‘discrimination’ are constantly replayed locally, nationally, and worldwide. While the Okinawa media tends to argue it is simply ‘representing public opinion’, which more recently it has described as the ‘total will (sōi) of the prefectural residents’, it is also clear that it does indeed to seek to frame the narrative, if not pursue its own agenda.13 One local conservative commentator, in the run-up to the 2014 gubernatorial election, described the danger for Okinawan residents when two local newspapers of identical editorial bias control the local market and are able to impose their views on their subscribers and general public in an island prefecture such as Okinawa (Yasunori 2014). Namely, according to him, culturally Okinawans tend to pursue groupthink more than many people in other places in Japan (which is often criticized from abroad by scholars for its own group-think) and there is a strong tendency to go along with others due to such reasons as proximity, family connections, business connections, school connections, a lack of education, etc., which are more prominent in smaller, provincial areas. Brainwashing from above, in his words, combined with this sociological pressure from the side, leads to ‘totalitarianism’, much like happened throughout Japan in the 1930s and 1940s with militarism and the eventual formation of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association (Taisei Yokusankai) into which all parties were merged, much like the recent creation of the ‘All Okinawa’ 13 For an early discussion on this issue, see Robert D. Eldridge, ‘Public Opinion in a Base Community: Okinawa and the War on Terrorism’, in Robert D. Eldridge and Paul Midford, eds., Japanese Public Opinion and the War on Terrorism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 207–234.

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movement supported by the Japan Communist Party and Japan Social Democratic Party that eventually saw the election on 16 November 2014 of a nominal conservative heading the movement. The extent of the local media’s involvement in the above ‘All Okinawa’ movement to include the favoring of one candidate or position over another, is well documented, and goes against the new ‘Canon of Journalism’, adopted by Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association (Nihon Shimbun Kyōkai), on 21 June 2000, which includes the statement that ‘Reporting must be accurate and fair, and should never be swayed by the reporter’s personal conviction or bias’.14 It also goes against the policy of the local newspapers. For example, the Ryukyu Shimpo Company calls on its employees to report fairly and not to engage in political activities. Despite this, the local media is known for its ‘henkō hōdō’, or biased reporting. One of the many biases of the Okinawa media is found in its almost excessive and near exclusive focus on reporting about anti-base activities, to include the covering of symposiums, rallies, and tours to Okinawa, no matter how small. In particular, when the rallies are covered, numbers of the participants are usually inflated by a factor of three-to-five times (against police numbers, which go unpublished now due to pressure from the media and base opponents), either by the organizers or the media, or both, in collusion. In response, employees argue that their newspaper has won awards for its reporting and thus is a respectable product. However, most of the awards are sponsored by left-leaning entities such as labor unions and something called the ‘Peace and Cooperative Journalist Fund for Japan’, and not necessarily by reputable international organizations. Others would argue that the influence of paperproduced newspapers is going down in the age of the Internet and Social Media, and while this is true, it is also true that the local newspapers due to customs, such as the strict observance of wakes and funerals (and the media’s hold over obituary notices, from which large incomes are derived), causes people in Okinawa to still be bound to subscriptions to one or both of the local newspapers. While some mainland media outlets understand what the local Okinawa media is doing by its biased reporting, most tend to ‘go along to get along’, being dependent in part on their local counterparts for information, contacts, and office space in Naha. In some cases, such as NHK, the Japanese national broadcasting company, and Kyodo News Agency, reporters are known to ‘become more Okinawan than the Okinawans are’, according to insiders. What this means is that they tend to

14 See Nihon Shimbun Kyōkai, ‘The Canon of Journalism’, at http://www.pressnet.or.jp/ english/about/canon/ (accessed 27 December 2014).

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have romantic images of Okinawa and over-empathize with some individuals, groups, and causes they see as representing Okinawa (a trend that is also seen in other areas and among other groups, such as activists, academics, and researchers, for example, or aid workers, etc.). In some cases, reporting is ‘bent’ to fit local sensitivities or other considerations. The number of reporters who end up quitting due to this effort at twisting the news is not insignificant. Due to the small size of the industry, rarely, however, do they go out and criticize their former employers. The trend of over-sympathizing with local Okinawa activists is seen most prevalently by academics/educators, and the media, the two groups who for the sake of the needs of society, must be independent and objective. In the case of the former, academics are responsible for doing cutting edge research for present-day and future analysis and/or teaching of the next generation, while in the case of the latter, reporters are doing so for our contemporary, and hopefully correct, understanding of the issues. An example of the former failing to do so was seen in the description by one Australia-based writer from Hokkaido who described hyperbolically the Okinawans as ‘among the most and longest abused peoples of the twentieth century’ (Tanji 2006: 2). Even the most radical of the Okinawan protestors would not have gone that far to describe their situation, real or perceived. The result of what can only be described as ‘extreme empathizing’ is that writers and reporters abroad or in other parts of Japan are dependent on what at best may be incorrect and usually inherently biased and, in some cases, sensational descriptions of Okinawa. These reports from Okinawa are then rebroadcast onto the mainland through anti-base organizations, Tokyo-based reporters (who rely on their local contacts to provide the news or its interpretation), and ‘part-time’ activists and scholars who actually do come down for a weekend to investigate the situation here, end up having their assumptions and pre-conceived notions re-enforced. What’s more, foreign media outlets tend to file their reports based on local coverage or a very superficial reporting on the ground during their annual (or sometimes, once-only) trip to Okinawa. A reporter from the Tokyo office of one Washington, D.C.,-based newspaper recently filed a story with a number of errors, as well as problematic assumptions.15 In his highly acclaimed memoirs, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency relates how this pattern of misinformation showed its face in the Cold War, in which forgeries or other misrepresentation would be introduced by one, usually small, local paper (usually with a biased agenda or ties to political groups) 15 I challenged her article in the following commentary, ‘Getting the Facts Right on Okinawa’, which while submitted to the Washington Post was not published for unknown reasons, nor was any response provided.

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and then re-introduced by increasingly more mainstream outlets. ‘As always, with each repetition’, Richard Helms lamented, ‘the original allegation gained credibility’ (Helms and Hood 2003: 286–287). This tends to be the situation, daily, in Okinawa. Moreover, the same arguments, the same debates are regularly rehashed due to the activities of the anti-base activists, the agenda of the media, and the ignorance of central government officials in Tokyo and the politicians. Rather than for edification, therefore, the media in Okinawa seeks indoctrination of its agenda and woe to the individual, businessman, politician, or educator who seeks to do the right thing by challenging the narrative when it is incorrect. With this as the background, public officials in Okinawa are afraid to be seen as having a cooperative relationship with the bases or even with their own central government. What’s more, they have found it pays to complain (Cooley 2008)16, with the central government promising ever more money to the prefecture, in an unspoken yet increasingly challenged expectation that the communities would go along with continuing to host the installations and/or training activities. The above is not meant to say that there are no annoyances or legitimate complaints by local residents, such as the issue of incidents (crimes) and accidents, noise pollution, traffic-related problems, and the relatively large amount of land being used by U.S. facilities. What is not discussed by opponents of the bases, however, is that there are two sides to every story. Quite often only an element of the truth is revealed in the media, with the rest of the debate being comprised of a pre-existing narrative of ‘victimization’, ‘discrimination’, and ‘outrage’, as well as speculation and accusations of cover-ups. Furthermore, contrasting data is rarely used by the media, scholars, politicians, and other opponents of the bases, and hence a very distorted view of the situation in Okinawa is presented. The biggest target of the protests in recent years has been MCAS Futenma, for several reasons, including the fact that the Marine Corps has become an easy target politically due to the above ignorance and the precedence created when its capabilities were used as diplomatic bargaining chips (i.e., the Marines becoming the ‘bill payer’) by U.S. State Department and Department of Defense officials in bilateral negotiations in 1995–1996 leading to the Special Action Committee on Okinawa (SACO) agreement and later during the problematic Defense Policy Review Initiative talks and realignment agreements of 2005–2006. The crash of a CH-53D Marine Corps helicopter next to MCAS Futenma on the edge of the grounds of Okinawa International University on 13 August 2004, led to strong

16 Alexander Cooley, Base Politics: Democratic Change and the U.S. Military Overseas (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), particularly Chapter 5.

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outcries to relocate or even close the base even though this was the first ever such crash in its then near sixty-year history and no residents were injured or killed. It was from this time that MCAS Futenma has been erroneously described as the ‘most dangerous airfield in the world’, a phrase that the conservative Japanese government itself has even been using for political purposes recently, undermining its own case with the public in Okinawa to accept the relocation facility elsewhere as well as by highlighting its own inaction if the base were in fact so dangerous. In actuality, MCAS Futenma boasts one of the highest safety records of any U.S.-operated airfield, anywhere in the world. Celebrating nearly seventy years of continuous operations, it has been operated by the Marine Corps since 1976, but began with the U.S. Army in 1945 and then U.S. Navy in 1957. In each case, the Service in charge has paid close attention to safely operating the air station and aircraft over the years. This is no small feat in light of the fact that MCAS Futenma sits up high, in the middle of the city of Ginowan, with its growing population, currently about 95,000. At the time of MCAS Futenma’s construction toward the end of the Battle of Okinawa, the town of Ginowan numbered about 6,800 people. In the prosperity of the postwar years the population in the area started to grow. This growth continued following reversion of administrative rights over Okinawa to Japan in 1972, leading to rapid and often uncoordinated development right up to the fence-line. For example, there are sixteen schools in the immediate area, including two—Futenma No. 2 Elementary School built in 1969 and Okinawa International University in the early 1970s—that were built abutting the base (not the other way around). As one conservative commentator, a former economist for the Bank of the Ryukyus, has noted, if MCAS Futenma was as dangerous or problematic as its detractors make it out to be, Ginowan would not have seen a growth rate of fifteen times in the postwar, the largest of any municipality in the prefecture. In any case, this encroachment has led to an increased concern over noise emanating from the base as well as in regard to the safety of the aircraft flying in and out of it over the city. In 1996, as a result of these concerns, SACO recommended the relocation of the functions of MCAS Futenma to a less-populated area of the main island. Eventually, a decision, since reaffirmed several times by both governments, was made to relocate some of the functions of the air station to the waters off Camp Schwab, whose peninsula at Henoko Village will be expanded through a massive and expensive landfill project into Oura Bay, which promises to bring many jobs to the area.17

17 For the sake of disclosure, it should be pointed out that the author is highly critical of the Henoko plan due in part to the environmental damage and political and fiscal costs

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With this said, the air station is and has always been a professionally and safelyoperated facility. Its 2740-meter runway includes a displaced threshold with approach and departure safety zones. The airfield operating hours are reduced to sixteen hours a day from Monday through Friday with limited hours on Saturday and closed on Sunday. The control tower is certified by the Federal Aviation Administration and equipped with the latest technology for highly qualified Marines and civilians to maintain constant communication with aircraft and other control towers in the area, such as Naha International Airport and Kadena Air Base. The rotary wing traffic pattern is adjusted to keep the majority of the flight path over the installation. The aircraft operating at MCAS Futenma today are the safest in the Marine Corps inventory, such as MV-22B, CH-53E, UH-1Y, AH-1W, C-12, and UC-35 among others. The MV-22B aircraft, for instance, has the lowest Class A mishaps world-wide in the first 200,000 flight hours of use. Interestingly, the arrival of the MV-22B Osprey reduced the number of operations due to its capabilities and use of simulators vis-à-vis the CH-46 helicopter it replaced. In fact, the average monthly time logged for using the MV-22 simulators for completing training requirements is more than triple that of the simulators for the CH-46 Sea Knights. On top of this is the high quality of the pilots, crew members, and maintenance personnel who operate and check the aircraft. These men and women serve in a high tempo environment providing constant support in exercises and operations that serve five security treaties in the Asia-Pacific Region. Symbolic of their dedication to safely performing their respective missions, VMM-265 and VMGR-152,

involved and has previously recommended a different approach and solution. In particular, the author has pointed out in previous writings encroachment already exists in the Henoko area and thus the current plan does not offer a sustainable solution. See, for example, Robert D. Eldridge, ‘Special Policy Recommendation: Toward a Viable, Comprehensive, Long-term Approach to the Okinawa Basing Issue and the True Strengthening of the Alliance, 24 September 2005’, (http://www2.osipp.osakau.ac.jp/~eldridge/ Articles/2005/Special%20Recommendation%20English%20version.pdf, accessed 28 December 2014), Robert D. Eldridge, ‘The Futenma Relocation Problem and U.S.-JapanOkinawa Relations after the Interim Report: A Speech before the American Chamber of Commerce in Okinawa, 4 November 2005, Ginowan City’, and Robert D. Eldridge, ‘The ‘Roadmap’ to Nowhere: Explaining the Inability to Implement U.S. Base Realignments in Okinawa’, U.S.-Japan Alliance Series, No. 7, Center for International Security Studies and Policy, Osaka University School of International Public Policy, June 2006.

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a KC-130J aerial refueling squadron, both recently were awarded the Chief of Naval Operations 2013 Aviation Safety Award.18 In addition to the safe operations at the air station is the fact that MCAS Futenma has introduced a variety of measures to reduce the impact of the operations on surrounding communities, and takes special events in the community (such as school entrance testing, graduations, etc.) into consideration regarding airfield operations. Furthermore, in August 2014, VMGR-152 was relocated to MCAS Iwakuni, in accordance with the 1996 SACO agreement to reduce the impact on Okinawa. That move alone brought a 33% reduction of tenant aircraft on MCAS Futenma as well as a further reduction in the related concerns about noise and safety. Combined, these measures have been so successful that visitors regularly comment that it is the ‘quietest air station in the world’ (with the exception of the chirping birds and insects in the forested areas on the eastern, northeastern, and northwestern portions of the airfield).19 Indeed, some have called it the place at which they most want to picnic or take an afternoon nap. But all of these facts represent ‘inconvenient truths’ for the local media and anti-base forces, who work constantly at creating the image that MCAS Futenma is dangerous. Even the conservative candidates for elections buy into this image and repeat the rhetoric, thereby undermining their own cause, whether it be pursuing the relocation of MCAS Futenma to the northern part of the island or simply co-existing with the bases. Rather than challenging the narrative and pointing out MCAS Futenma’s safety record, incumbent Nakaima Hirokazu, for example, continued to describe it as ‘the most dangerous airfield in the world’—the same thing his rivals said in 2006, 2010, and 2014 said—and ended up losing the governor contest in the fall of 2014. If it is so dangerous, according to politicians, activists, scholars, and the media, voters asked themselves, ‘why should we accept its relocation within the prefecture?’ All four ruling party candidates, who were equally wavering and inconsistent in their stances, also lost their races for the single-seat constituencies in Lower House elections one month later. The paradox, thus, was the more the governor and conservative candidates adopted an anti-base stance, the more 18 See Christopher M. Murray, ‘Safety Does Not Just Happen’, Okinawa Marine, 23 December 2014 (http://www.okinawa.marines.mil/News/NewsArticleDisplay/tabid/18973/ Article/558753/safety-does-not-just-happen.aspx, accessed 27 December 2014). 19 See the comment by the defense editorial writer for the Yomiuri Shimbun, Katsumata Hidetoshi, ‘Yokushiryoku to Futan Keigen no Hazama de: Futenma Kōchaku, Senkaku Kinchō, Okinawa Beikaiheitai Kichi o Aruku (Caught between Deterrence and the Reduction of the Burden: Futenma, Tensions Over the Senkakus, and Walking around Marine Corps Bases in Okinawa)’, Chūō Kōron, December 2010, p. 132.

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they lost their identity and were subsumed by the leftist camp’s message and eventually replaced. Sadly, not only do the anti-base forces work at creating such the image that MCAS Futenma is inherently unsafe, they have actually been engaged in terrorist-like activities in an attempt to interfere with flight operations near the base and thus cause a mishap. For example, anti-base protesters have used balloons and kites flown in the approach-ways which if caught in the engines or rotors could cause an aircraft to lose elevation and crash. As such, aircraft need to divert, thus actually making the skies dangerous. Furthermore, lasers have been used on U.S. pilots during the approaches, which is harmful to the eyes of pilots in general and especially when they are using their night-vision goggles for night-time training. Because an air base is not considered an ‘airport’ under Japanese law (Masayuki 2006) and police and administrative officials in Okinawa are reluctant to do anything to antagonize anti-base activists in the first place20, authorities were reluctant to clamp down on these ‘peaceful, anti-base protests’ but when they realized that the very thing that was feared—another crash at MCAS Futenma—could very well happen as a result of these tactics, the Okinawa Prefectural Police and Okinawa Defense Bureau (local office of the Ministry of Defense), at the direction of higher authorities, agreed to cooperate with U.S. military officials to ensure the safe operations outside the fenceline after it was repeatedly raised in U.S.-Japan Joint Committee meetings. The time around the July–October 2012 deployment of the first squadron of MV-22B Ospreys to Okinawa (via MCAS Iwakuni in mainland Japan) was the most challenging with regard to aerial interference by the protesters, and while it has substantially been reduced, there are still semi-regular reports of the use of lasers toward the pilots and aircraft, a criminal offense if done toward a commercial airliner. Ironically, the local media, while constantly calling MCAS Futenma the ‘most dangerous base in the world’, has also given much positive attention and support to the protesters who were interfering with normal base and air operations (and thus making it dangerous), including a prominent interview on the front page of one of its newspapers with a non-Japanese teacher of English at a local university who encouraged illegal activities, such as blocking the gates and other forms of protest. This foreign individual is well-known in the military community for his verbal harassment of U.S. personnel on their off-duty hours, his displaying of the

20 There is actually a local expression for this state of affairs: ‘heiwa undō ha menzaifu’, which effectively means, ‘anything is permissible in the name of peace’.

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American flag upside down from his university office, and writings in the local newspaper calling for the blockade of the gates to Futenma. Professional agitators also engage in vandalism of MCAS Futenma’s fenceline, particularly, but not exclusively at Gate 3 (Nodake Gate), also known as the back gate on a weekly basis (Shisui 2014). Protestors affix duct tape, often mixed with glass and metallic shavings, with a variety of colors, to the fence, usually in plain view of the local police who set up riot buses or unmarked SUVs nearby following the forced closure of the gates due to protesters parking their own vehicles in front of them and conducting a ‘sit in’. An emergency vehicle had difficulty accessing the gate during that time following a medical situation on base, which highlighted to officials the problems with letting illegal protests get out of hand.21 In the scuffles at the time, moreover, Japanese police and Japanese security guards working for the Provost Marshall’s Office were injured by the peace activists. Some of the latter group succumbed to heat stroke, due to the organizers not having provided water and shade to those they had assembled in the still-hot late September (2012) Okinawa sun. In a similar display of irresponsibility among the continuous cascade of contradictions in Okinawa, numerous media-hired helicopters flew around and over the air station as the MV-22s were arriving. The irony is the media helicopters were noisier and more dangerous than the ‘controversial’ Ospreys, and the local media was inundated from local residents with complaints about its unsafe reporting. A similar phenomenon happened in October 2013 during a joint GSDF-USMC training exercise in Shiga Prefecture when GSDF personnel disembarked from an MV-22 for this first time ever. There were numerous media helicopters in the area making it dangerous for everyone, although the MV-22 pilots executed the mission with their normal skill, precision, and professionalism, despite the media, and hence, political, attention.22

21 Illegal in that they are blocking roadways, thus preventing normal traffic flow against Japanese traffic laws, and blocking access to U.S. facilities, which is guaranteed under the Status of Forces Agreement (articles 2, 23, among others), part of an international treaty ratified in May 1960 by Japanese parliament, the highest organ of state power in the country. 22 As a passenger at the time, the author (serving as the interpreter and political advisor for the commanding general, III MEF, Lieutenant General John E. Wissler) personally witnessed the chaotic situation caused by the media aircraft. Complaints were quietly registered with hosting Japanese authorities, who had also ‘warned’ the media, but to no avail: ‘they do not listen to us’, one senior general from Middle Army headquarters acknowledged.

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Responding to the Environment in Okinawa While there is much, much more to write about regarding the countless misunderstandings, distortions, and purposeful misrepresentations, the previous section was meant simply as an overview of the environment that exists in Okinawa, and to a lesser extent in Japan, from a public affairs and community relations perspective. The reality is that the political and administrative environment is even more complicated, especially when discussed holistically. This section describes some of the actions that have been taken to address the above dynamics and to bring more transparency to bilateral affairs as they concern the U.S. military presence in Okinawa. Not all of these can be discussed, due in part to reasons of space. However, a few of the initiatives and programs will be highlighted, the contents being easy to explain as the author was the proposer, designer, and executor of them. As mentioned earlier, my goal and role in leaving my tenured academic position in 2009 was to promote the transparency of the Marine Corps for a Japanese (and American) audience, due to my personal experience of knowing that we civilians do not possess a true understanding (and thus appreciation) of the military. This is particularly true for the Marine Corps stationed in Japan. I felt—and knew—I could be bridge not only between the civilian and military community (as I had previously done in Hawaii), but also between the peoples of the United States and Japan. Being fluent in Japanese with a wide network in all walks of life in that country, I could explain to the various groups who came to visit us in a way that does not come across in the usually sterile military-like ‘just the facts’ briefings that those in uniform or government tend to provide. In particular, I used specific examples from Japanese localities, organizations, or history that would drive home points, making them personal, that otherwise would be limited to ‘intellectual’ or notional pieces of information.23 23 In order to do this, I made it a personal policy to try to accommodate as many individuals and legitimate groups that wanted to visit our bases as possible, to include volunteering after hours (or before work) and on weekends. Indeed, there was not a weekend I was not assisting in a visit, working from home in some capacity, or traveling around Japan (or the United States) promoting the USMC and its role in the alliance. Those that knew my work e-mail account, office telephone number, office cell phone, or personal cell phone, or home e-mail account (or that of my previous employer, Osaka University), contacted me weekly, if not daily, to arrange visits or to introduce their friends, colleagues, family members, or associates. Those that did not know my contact information would call or write to our office or to the Marine Corps’ public affairs website (http://www.okinawa.usmc.mil/ in Japanese, or http://www.okinawa.

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One of the methods we created to handle the number of civil society groups that wanted to visit was the ‘Marine Corps 101 Seminar’ program. This seminar, which runs for a full day and is available for groups of ten to about sixty people, was established in 2011 at the suggestion of a friend from the author’s nineteen years in Osaka, who currently serves as the State Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Honorable Nakayama Yasuhide. As a fellow strong supporter of the Japan-U.S. alliance, he felt it vital that the U.S. government, U.S. military, and USMC proactively introduce itself in Japan and urged me to create the seminar. In addition to a half-day of briefings about the history of the Marine Corps, customs and traditions, and its role in the Asia-Pacific region, followed by a lunchtime discussion, the Japanese seminar participants visit four USMC installations in Okinawa and conclude the day with a ceremony at Camp Foster in front of the headquarters building where they receive a ‘certificate of completion’ signed by one of the senior military leaders. Shorter tours and briefings are available and are regularly conducted, but to qualify for the certificate, one has to attend the full-day seminar. In addition to the full-day seminars, we regularly entertain student groups, such as the Japan-America Student Conference, Okinawa Peace Now! Conference, as well as teacher-led visits with college, high school, middle school, elementary, and even kindergarten students for shorter tours, discussions, or other interactions. There are also regular visits by think tanks, such as the Research Institute for Peace and Security based in Tokyo, and foundation-sponsored groups, such as the Mansfield Foundation and the Suntory Foundation. Less formal tours include smaller groups and individuals who have a desire to see particular places or equipment with their own eyes or speak directly with base officials. For me, these sorts of interaction were less like work, and more like ‘teaching’, the field I had just left. In fact, I was proud to show off the bases, to introduce

marines.mil/ in English) to request a tour and briefing for themselves, their students, or civic groups. Where possible, I would say ‘yes’. Importantly, the social or political ‘level’ of the individual did not matter to me—I was as happy to show a child and his or her parents/grandparents around as a cabinet minister or elected official. I called this approach, ‘VOP’, for ‘very ordinary people’, in contrast to the more traditional VIP (very important person). I believe that it is equally if not more necessary to address as many individuals as possible, rather than exclusively their representatives, in order to ensure the information and feelings get correctly relayed, and that we can hear firsthand the questions, concerns, and comments by the visitors. In retrospect I should have counted but the number of individuals I have hosted either individually or on behalf of the commands (III MEF as well as Marine Corps Installations Pacific, or its Marine Corps Bases Japan predecessor) is in the several thousands.

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the Marines and their record of accomplishments in disaster relief and other real world operations, or simply in being ‘good neighbors’ in their community relations projects or in individual behavior. In addition, the command-wide effort at being responsible stewards of the environment and cultural assets, or at operating equipment and the air station safely, is second to none. Admittedly, the first year was particularly difficult to keep the above pace up because members of the newly created Hatoyama administration were also visiting almost every week, from Cabinet Ministers to sub-cabinet and other senior members of the government, newly elected members of Parliament, committees and committee heads. The number of visits and the high level of the participants became so heavy that we actually decided to reduce the number of non-essential visits to MCAS Futenma so that they could get breathing time and continue with current operations in between visits (in an effort to continue to operate safely). The ignorance about security issues demonstrated by the new ruling party, which essentially lacked any governing experience, was appalling (but understandable). There were a few individuals who were somewhat familiar with alliance matters, but they tended to come with their own biases or were unable to practice statesmanship due to being weighed down by vested interests or ignorance. Gradually, however, this ignorance was overcome. Some politicians visited more than once, and/or kept up the relationship. Others sought additional information, becoming true believers in the alliance and Marine Corps. This was particularly good for the Self-Defense Forces, as well, because few of the members of the new ruling party had any understanding or connection with the SDF, and through their studies of the alliance and U.S. forces, they came to better understand the role of their own military. When the DPJ administration ended, somewhat prematurely, in December 2012, many of the members of the ruling party had increased their knowledge of and expertise in Japanese foreign and security policy. One of those most interested in learning was then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirano Hirofumi. Hirano, who was an engineer for Panasonic before becoming a secretary to a Socialist Party member of the parliament. He himself entered politics 1996 but was not involved in national security matters and had no particularly predisposition on this issue when he became Hatoyama’s right-hand man. Using his network, including a fellow member of the class of 1996 who had extraordinary contacts with the USMC in Tokyo and Okinawa, Hirano was able to learn firsthand (during a visit to MCAS Futenma in February 2010) and secondhand through his colleague, about the roles and missions of the Marine Corps and eventually came to understand that the Marines were indispensable to the alliance and that the functions of MCAS Futenma were equally indispensable

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to the ability of the Marine Corps to operate in and from Okinawa. Chosen for his skills at coordination, Hirano subsequently brought the Hatoyama administration in line with the original GOJ position (prior to the 2009 elections) to support the relocation of Futenma within the prefecture (although Hirano himself was appeared to like the author’s proposal for Katsuren much more than Henoko). Of course, this went against Hatoyama’s electoral pledge (to relocate the functions of MCAS Futenma out of the prefecture), and Hatoyama resigned after announcing his grudging support for the longstanding agreement to pursue conditional relocation within Okinawa. Hirano subsequently became the chairman of the standing bipartisan committee on security (Anzen Hoshō Iinkai) of the House of Representatives and during that time hosted a series of Marine Corps officers as interns. The author created this program in 2011 by which junior officers (1st Lieutenant to Major) applied for the experience to live and work in Tokyo for two weeks on this command-sponsored opportunity. Hirano immediately volunteered to host them in his new Diet office, involved them in meetings, had them research legislative precedents, and learn a side of Japan with which they normally would not be familiar. Some even were able to travel to Hirano’s hometown in Wakayama. One intern, a Marine Captain who was already attending a post-secondary program in Tokyo, extended her internship for a full five months, combining her language and cultural studies at the University of Tokyo with practical experiences in law and politics in Nagata-chō (Tokyo’s Capitol Hill). At least one of the interns was a lawyer, and thus was able to gain additional comparative insights into the legislative process in Japan. Respect for the Marine Corps grew as a result of these officers’ interactions with their Diet counterparts. The parliamentary internship was meant to be mutually beneficial in that not only would the Marine Corps officers learn about Japan, but the Japanese members of parliament and their staffs could learn about the Marine Corps and/or the United States. Moreover, as these individuals progressed through their careers, the hope is that they stay in touch and continue to meet when possible. This is the first such internship program created in Japan at the subcomponent level. Furthermore, the internship is reciprocal, and thus the staff member is welcome to participate in an internship program on base. In fact, such an internship (known as the G-7 Internship Program) was established at Camp Foster in the summer of 2010 for students in Okinawa Prefecture and mainland Japan. Because the majority of the office’s work is not secret and there are already many Japanese staff members in the headquarters building, to include in the G-7 (Government and External Affairs Division) itself, we decided to open up non-paying internship positions for students to learn about

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the alliance, about working for the government, and about being shakaijin, or ‘working adults’, as well as to improve their English language skills. We have had numerous students from throughout Japan apply and participate in the program, and have even supported local middle school students who participated in a miniinternship program as part of their social studies curriculum. As the creator of this internship program (having successfully co-led one at Osaka University’s School of International Public Policy), I was particularly happy about the one we made to fit the needs of the middle school students, as it was their teacher who reached out to us, and not the other way around, at the request of one of the boys. The feedback was wonderful, and the relationship continues, as it does with the other interns, one of whom subsequently entered the ASDF and two others who have gone on to further studies abroad (in the United Kingdom and Australia). Programs like this are all part of an effort to bring greater transparency to our installations, and to make a contribution to the local community in the area of human resource development. The latter is an important pillar of our Okinawa Partnership Plan, by which the bases are utilized as assets by the community rather than as targets for the ill-informed and sometimes hostile critics. While the internship program, among others, has been quite successful to date, this unique effort at helping to develop the next generation of human resources in Okinawa might have been even more successful if the two most likely partners in this relationship played a role. Namely, neither the local universities in Okinawa nor the local media have shared any of information about our internships. In the case of the former, the reason appears to be ideological—a fundamentalist-like pacifism that believes schools should not have any ties with the military. In the case of the latter, the newspapers believe that they should not report anything positive about the bases. One editorial writer for the Okinawa Times, after making several flimsy excuses as to why his newspaper had not printed anything about the internship program to date, told the author and our first intern at the time (summer 2011) that it ‘would not print anything positive about the bases until the ‘base problem’ was resolved’. When people could not come to us, we would go to them for lectures and interactions around the country such as at conferences, symposiums, and receptions. In addition to visits to numerous universities throughout Japan to speak in classes, seminars, and public lectures, we went to hospitals, think tanks, national, prefectural, and local government offices, media outlets, chambers of commerce, civic groups, and even bipartisan study groups sponsored in the parliament just to name a few. (In retrospect, I wish I had gone to even more, but it was important to remain impartial and neutral in the policy/political world in a foreign country such as Japan and thus

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several invitations we felt it was best to decline for some groups.) Unfortunately, money became a factor with the 2013 budget crisis and thus we were unable to go to several events due to a lack of travel funds, even though the cost would have been minimal but the impact large. But where and when possible, I would go, again using my mornings, evenings, and weekends to travel, often on personal time. History is replete with there being opportunities being missed that subsequently led to tragic consequences. I did not want to miss any opportunity I could. In addition to hosting visitors and going around the country to speak to different groups, we also regularly contributed op-eds and made radio and television appearances. All told, I either wrote, helped write, or suggested at least fifty op-eds for U.S. and Japanese newspapers, most of which appeared bilingually, using Social Media and our website to re-publish in the other language. Thanks to the support of our Public Affairs Office, including a supportive deputy and highly motivated junior officers, we kept up a high tempo of output as they simultaneously handled the various other media inquiries they would normally get. In addition, the younger enlisted personnel were highly savvy with Social Media and made aggressive use of bilingual Facebook and Twitter sites, thanks to equally talented Japanese staff in their office. This newer technology blended well with ‘older’ methods. For example, the quarterly bilingual magazine, Ōki-na-wa (a play-on the place name of Okinawa, which in this case means ‘Big Circle’), which began publication in 2002, continues today. In addition to hard copies, PDF versions are shared immediately on Social Media sites in both English and Japanese, with backnumbers being available as well. Furthermore, the Marine Corps in Okinawa website itself was introduced in Japanese beginning in April 2003, making access to information by Japanese citizens that much easier.24 Stories that appeared in the weekly base newspaper, printed weekly, that were of particular interest to local residents were quickly translated and uploaded onto the Japanese language site. The paper version of the newspaper was discontinued in early 2014 due in part to budgetary reasons, but has been replaced by an online newspaper, by which stories are uploaded as soon as they appear, making it a much more responsive and timely newspaper—the old blending with the new, so to speak (Eames and Eldridge 2014). 24 When I was still in academia, I had recommended the Marine Corps create such a website. Being open-minded and flexible, the Consolidated Public Affairs Office, Marine Corps Base Camp Smedley D. Butler, established it. See Robert D. Eldridge, Okinawa and U.S.-Japan Relations in the 21st Century: Bilateral and Trilateral Approaches to a Sounder Okinawa Policy (Tokyo: Research Institute for Peace and Security, 2002), p. 27 (https://ssl60.secureserver.jp/~rips/rips.or.jp/english/publications/special_reports/ pdf/eldridge_okinawa.pdf, accessed 31 December 2014).

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Importantly, it should be noted as well that even in cases where stories or opeds were not translated into Japanese by us, we knew that there was a shadow audience following our activities and pronouncements, whether in the central or local governments, the media, or among the general audience. Our messages, in other words, were reaching them even if they were not the primary audience. With regard to radio and television appearances, in addition to accepting many requests for interviews, we also developed close working relationships with a variety of stations who subsequently regularly invited us on. The pace was oncea-month, in which various USMC representatives would go on to talk about the latest and greatest in their commands or about themselves as a person or as a leader of Marines. Our monthly regular radio and television appearances began in 2012 and 2015 respectively, separate from all the other occasional, unedited appearances or interviews. Listeners and viewers often sent in their questions ahead of time or in some cases during the shows so we knew what their main interests were and could use the show time effectively, as well as provided helpful feedback afterwards. This approach had its origins some fifty years before. John F. Kennedy, when he was a candidate for president in 1960, called the power of the established media— namely the newspapers—the ‘paper curtain’ and told his aides to get him time on the television: ‘At least people can listen to what I say, not what some reporter says I said…’ (Goodwin 1988: 112). Our using live radio or pre-recorded television shows in Okinawa, Japan, and Hawaii allowed us to bypass the reporting media and speak directly to the public. As alluded to above, the Internet, and in particular, social media are today’s generation’s television, and for those interested in getting the word out, these forms of media complement television if not surpass it. As such, one of the pillars of our outreach is the use of these media, disseminated in both English and Japanese in increasingly almost real time, by tech-savvy young Marines and Japanese civilian staff. The author’s efforts at raising the level of transparency have been recognized by the media in Japan (Mie 2012), but more importantly by the dozens if not hundreds of letters and messages of gratitude received following the above interactions, with 99 per cent being of the nature that the originator of the note ‘learned a lot’ and ‘had been unaware of the situation before’. Importantly, we solicited suggestions on how to improve things we did in and for the community. This new level of insight among the public (and ourselves) gave rise to a significant change in public opinion in Okinawa by which the once ‘silent majority’ began to be less silent and become more proactive. A number of organizations sprang up between 2012 and 2013 at the time the two MV-22B Osprey squadrons were being deployed to Okinawa to replace the aging CH-46 Sea Knights (then almost fifty

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years old) that showed their support and appreciation of U.S. Forces, to include Operation Arigato, Fence Clean Project, Heart Clean Project, and the Okinawa Osprey Fan Club, the latter with more than 5000 members. Their activities were in direct contrast to the intense demonstrations led by agitators in the late summer and fall of 2012 when VMM-265 first arrived, and in fact, the more the protests radicalized thru vandalism, acts of terrorism, and physical violence (and hate speech) against individual and collective U.S. personnel, the more the conscientious citizens of Okinawa stood up and said ‘enough’. Thus, there was a certain irony in the fact that the more the protesters acted up, the closer the friendships became between these conscientious citizens and U.S. personnel members and their families. This situation was captured in an op-ed by the author about the friendships the Osprey has built, and is one that actually continues today (Eldridge 2013). Namely, while vandals continue to trash the fence at Nodake Gate on a weekly basis in full view of the police who ‘warn’ them not to do it, conscientious citizens and U.S. personnel members and their families come out every Sunday morning, giving up family time, their days off, or other activities, to clean the fence and beautify the City of Ginowan. The leader of the Fence Clean Project, in which more than 6,000 people have participated to date, actually thanks, tongue in cheek, the protesters for trashing the fences in his remarks to the gathering of cleaners at the end of the morning in that they have brought the good citizens of Okinawa, many of whom did not know each other before, together to clean the fences and the local community. There are many more programs and successes to write about, to include Operation Tomodachi, our follow-on Disaster Cooperation Program (Eldridge 2012b), Okinawa Osprey Family Day, Community Relations Idea Contest, etc., but the aforementioned are just some of the examples of what we have been able to accomplish. The next, concluding, section discusses a few recommendations for Marine Corps’ outreach abroad, particularly in the Asia-Pacific, ideas that are equally applicable to the United States Government.

Some Issues and Recommendations in Public Diplomacy One of the ironies of the above successes in increasing understanding for and support of a continued USMC presence in Okinawa is that they have underscored a serious problem. Namely, the accomplishments are primarily attributable to individual initiatives based on personality and chance rather than organizational excellence across the board. While the good thing about this is that one individual (or like-minded individuals) can change things, the down side is that it is inherently subjective as it is individual-focused, ad hoc when limited by the time and energy of that individual, and unsustainable when that person moves on to his or

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her next assignment. The Marine Corps, like other organizations, like to say that no one is irreplaceable, but in fact, there are irreplaceable members. Not losing them and/or learning as much as one can from them, both what they know as well as how they utilize that information, is critically importantly to the future success of the organization in that area. Knowledge of the host country and language ability are key, as are the personal relationships, not only with the country’s elites but with the average person, from all walks of life, not just the ones with whom officials have formal relations. Getting relations right with allied countries, especially those that help host our bases, are as important if not more than those of other countries, because if relations with allied countries fray, the United States will have a much tougher time in the world. For public diplomacy to succeed, leaders (and all members of the organization) have to be engaged, and be strong believers in transparency. Leaders at all levels have to understand that the ability to operate in a foreign country depends on the relationship with the local communities as much, if not more, than simply the official, political, legal, or administrative arrangements with the government of the country in question. In other words, community relations are vital. If you get the community relations right, the politics will follow. It is not necessarily true the other way around that robust relations with the community will follow simply if the political relationship at the top is good. Organizations (as well as nations) cannot rely on reputations alone, but need to constantly seek to improve on that reputation. Moreover, an organization cannot simply assume that the other partner sees the reputation equally. The Marine Corps is a case in point. While it has a superior reputation in the United States, this has not necessarily been the case in Japan or Okinawa. If anything the Marines are either an unknown quantity, as this chapter has shown, or looked down upon due to previous incidents and the lingering view, stubbornly held or portrayed by some in Okinawa, that the military is for those who did not do well academically or were in trouble with the law. Speed and flexibility matter whether it is public diplomacy, public affairs, public relations, or politics and diplomacy. Generally, the slower an organization is in responding, the more alternative versions of the story will come out and may never be corrected. Unfortunately, while the Marine Corps is known for its quickness and maneuverability on the battlefield, it tends to be slow in proactive public affairs, to its own detriment. As Joshua Cooper Ramo noted in his 2009 book, The Age of the Unthinkable, ‘the public relations battlefield can be as perilous and crucial as the real one’ (Ramo 2009: 208).

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While there has been significant progress in Okinawa and Japan as a whole, there is always more that can be done. The important thing is to never be satisfied with the status quo, to ‘experiment obsessively’, and to constantly be open to outside perspectives about how to improve oneself and one’s organization.25

Bibliography Cooley, A. (2008). Base Politics: Democratic Change and the U.S. Military Overseas. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Eldridge, R. (2001). The Origins of the Bilateral Okinawa Problem: Okinawa in Postwar U.S.-Japan Relations, 1945–1952. New York: Routledge. – (2002). Okinawa and U.S.-Japan Relations in the 21st Century: Bilateral and Trilateral Approaches to a Sounder Okinawa Policy (Tokyo: Research Institute for Peace and Security, 2002), accessed 31 December 2014. – (2005a). ‘U.S. Marines’ Role in Okinawa Little Understood’, Daily Yomiuri, 16 April. – (2005b). ‘Special Policy Recommendation: Toward a Viable, Comprehensive, Long-term Approach to the Okinawa Basing Issue and the True Strengthening of the Alliance, 24 September 2005’, accessed 28 December 2014. – (2005c). ‘The Futenma Relocation Problem and U.S.-Japan-Okinawa Relations after the Interim Report: A Speech before the American Chamber of Commerce in Okinawa, 4 November 2005, Ginowan City’. – (2006a). ‘My One Year with the Marines: Reflections on Bridging the Gap between Academics and the Military’, International Public Policy Studies 10 (2), 163–180. – (2006b). ‘The ‘Roadmap’ to Nowhere: Explaining the Inability to Implement U.S. Base Realignments in Okinawa’, U.S.-Japan Alliance Series, No. 7, Center for International Security Studies and Policy, Osaka University School of International Public Policy, June 2006. – (2008). ‘Public Opinion in a Base Community: Okinawa and the War on Terrorism’. In R. Eldridge and P. Midford (eds.), Japanese Public Opinion and the War on Terrorism, pp. 207–234. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 25 David H. Freeman, Corps Business: The Management Principles of the U.S. Marines (New York: Harper Business, 2000), especially Chapter 10.

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– (2010). ‘Security Treaty with Japan Turns 50’, Big Circle, Spring accessed November 2014. – (2012a). ‘The Okinawa ‘Base Problem’ Today’, Nippon.com (3 February), accessed 29 December 2014. – (2012b). ‘After Operation Tomodachi, Relationships and Preparations Continue’, Japan Echo 8 (12), 26–28. – (2013). ‘Friendships Osprey Has Built in Japan’, Japan News, 18 April. – (2014). and C. Eames, ‘New Format, New Relationships’, Okinawa Marine, 15 May accessed 29 December 2014. – (2011). And J. Hiroe and H. Katsumata ‘Behind the Scenes of Operation Tomodachi’, Japan Echo Web accessed 29 December 2014. – (1999) and A. Kusunoki, ‘To Base or Not to Base? Yoshida Shigeru, the 1950 Ikeda Mission, and Post Treaty Japanese Security Conceptions’, Kobe University Law Review 33, 97–126. Freeman, D. (2000). Corps Business: The Management Principles of the U.S. Marines. New York: Harper Business. Goodwin, R. (1988). Remembering America:  A Voice from the Sixties. New York: Little, Brown, and Company. Helms, R. with W. Hood. (2003). A Look over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency. New York: Ballantine Books. Katsumata, H. (2010). ‘Yokushiryoku to Futan Keigen no Hazama de: Futenma Kōchaku, Senkaku Kinchō, Okinawa Beikaiheitai Kichi o Aruku (Caught between Deterrence and the Reduction of the Burden: Futenma, Tensions Over the Senkakus, and Walking around Marine Corps Bases in Okinawa)’, Chūō Kōron, December. Nonaka, I. (1995). Amerika Kaiheitai: Hieirigata Soshiki no Jiko Kakushin (The American Marine Corps: Self Improvement in a Non-for-profit Organization). Tōkyō: Chūkō Shinsho. Kyōkai, N.S. (2000). ‘The Canon of Journalism’ accessed 27 December 2014. Maher, K. (2011). Ketsudan Dekinai Nihon (The Japan That Can’t Decide). Tōkyō: Bungei Shunjū. Tanji, M. (2006). Myth, Protest, and Struggle in Okinawa. London: Routledge. Ibata, M. (2006). ‘Zainichi Beigun to Nichibei Chii Kyōtei-Tokureihō: Adobaruun Keiyo ga Akiraka ni Shita Shomondai (U.S. Forces in Japan and the Status of

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Forces Agreement: The Issues the Okinawa International University Balloon Campaign Has Revealed)’, Okinawa Hōgaku, No. 35 (March), 83–103. Mie, A. (2012). ‘Scholar Tries to Ease Okinawa’s U.S. Pains Ex-Professor Accepts Tall Order: Put the Marines’ Best Foot Forward’, Japan Times, 24 November. accessed 29 December 2014. Murray, C.M. (2014). ‘Safety Does Not Just Happen’, Okinawa Marine, 23 December. accessed 27 December 2014. Ramo, J.C. (2009). The Age of the Unthinkable. New York: Little, Brown, and Company. Shisui, K. (2014). ‘Backlash Against Anti-U.S. Military Activists on Rise in Okinawa’, Asahi Shimbun, 11 May. Tedokon, Y. (2014). ‘Okinawa no Koe (Okinawa’s Voice)’ (TV), 9 December. Unattributed. (2009). ‘Zaioki Beikaiheitai Gaikō Seisakubu Jichō ni Robaato Erudorijji Shi (Robert Eldridge to Become Deputy for Community Policy, Planning, and Liaison of Okinawa-based U.S. Marine Corps)’, Kyōdō Tsūshin, 28 September.

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Ebb and Flow: How Strategic Culture, Operational Art, and Threat Perceptions Have Defined the Engagement with Culture The great twentieth century nuclear strategic theorist Bernard Brodie famously said that ‘good strategy presumes good anthropology and good sociology’ (1973: 233). By this he meant that the ability for an entity to achieve its aims, it requires a strong understanding of the sociocultural nuances not only of the actors on the battlefield, but of itself. Similar sentiments can be found across many of the great texts of strategy. Yet, within the United States, the understanding, analysis, and care for these types of issues has ebbed and flowed across time, with the ‘cultural turn’ in the later stages of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan being the most recent expression of a ‘flow’. The reasons for this are many. This chapter will attempt to offer one notion which suggests that it is the interaction of American strategic and military culture, the theory and practice of the operational level of war, and how an enemy is defined in a specific time period that explains whether culture is taken into consideration within the U.S. national security system. This will henceforth be shortened to ‘the interaction’. The United States national security system is an engorged web of departments, agencies, organizations, and personnel. It is estimated that it costs the U.S. taxpayer about $1 trillion each year (CDI: 2014), and employs well over 4 million people directly and indirectly (Forging 2008: 21). It is often pejoratively and limitedly described as the ‘Military-Industrial Complex’ (or some equivalent construction with added nouns), mimicking the language of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell speech (1961). Instead, it should be seen as the ‘enormous aggregate of interacting, interrelated, and interdependent institutions with structural and functional relationships that form a complex whole’ (Forging 2008: 21). This somewhat ambiguous definition comes from the Project for National Security Reform, and their assessment of the system itself, Forging a New Shield. The lack of concreteness in this definition is precisely because the term ‘security’ is no longer synonymous only with ‘defense’, and therefore the Department of Defense; instead, security

The author would like to thank Christopher Sims, Nathan White, Frank Hoffman, Bernard Carreau, Rob Holliday, Chris Lamb, and Ted Pikulsky for their edits, ideas, and recommendations.

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encompasses much more in today’s world, and as a result incorporates many more organizations and constructs and their dynamic relationships. As the U.S. armed forces have an overwhelming influence on the entirety of the system itself, both in terms of personnel as well as cultural norms and influences, this chapter, when using the term ‘national security system’, will delicately center discussions of the system on the military itself and the policy-making processes that enables it. This is not to deny the complexity of the system itself, nor to ignore various other facets of it, but to merely enable a more apt description of the interaction in the space allotted. This chapter will begin with defining the terms of the interaction and placing them in historical context. The major analytical sections of this chapter describe how the interaction worked in practice and why ‘culture’ ebbed and flowed in importance in the post-World War II era. To enable more adequate and available analysis, each time period will be broken up by dueling dynamics where the ebb and flow occurred. A new period is when the process starts over once more. This method will also show that constants in the form of processes, norms, and values remain within the national security system that argues against the importance of culture and are the primary drivers of the ebbing of cultural knowledge within the system. A quick overview of the current attempts to remove this constant from the equation will finish the chapter. As much of this work is in the conceptual stage, it will be tentatively described as a great positive, but caution will be exercised as the institutionalization of this knowledge, and how it relates to the end of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the future security environment, will define whether institutionalization in fact occurs. If not, it is highly likely that this type of knowledge will once again be thrown into the dustbin of history until it becomes plainly obvious it is necessary once more.

Defining the Interaction Strategic and Military Culture Strategic culture was originally advanced in Western strategic thought by Jack L. Snyder. His 1973 RAND monograph, The Soviet Strategic Culture: Implications for Limited Nuclear Operations, looked at how Soviet organizational, historical, and political contexts impacted decision-making in response to different situational and technological constraints (1977). Snyder defined strategic culture as ‘a set of general beliefs, attitudes, and behavioral patterns with regard to nuclear strategic [that had] achieved a state of semipermanence’ (1977: V). From here, the concept blossomed out and evolved. It has also been described as ‘ways of war’, in that these attributes

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reflect how and why (predominantly) nation-states wage war. The notion of strategic culture is certainly not new. Reflective images of the concept are readily available in many treatises, ancient and modern. What Snyder did was to put a modern theoretical construct upon it. In doing so, he added a new variable of analysis to modern strategic thought that must be taken into account, even if its magnitude of impact varied significantly across time and space. Not long after Synder’s work appeared, military culture began to receive similar analytical treatment. Strategic culture is based upon the assumption that ‘societies…differ fundamentally in their manner of waging war’. It contends that certain traits within societies, particularly elites, lead to certain decisions regarding the use of force, its employment, and manner of warfighting. Like most totalizing theories on culture, it does capture some semblance of the truth, but often leads to many silences in the narrative. Instead, strategic culture should be seen as a reflection of the ‘political class and the political leadership of societies generally’ in how they wage war as leaders of societies (Lord 1985: 270), As ‘elites are often the purveyors of the common historical narrative’, (Lantis 2002: 107) and it is elites that wield the organizational and political controls over the tools of force, it is often their conceptions of society and force that is described as ‘strategic culture’. Jeffrey Lantis has theorized that the concept of ‘strategic culture’ has gone through multiple phases, concurrent with a variety of changes in theory and historical occurrences. The initial large-scale engagement with the issue in the United States was the creation of the national character studies in World War II and immediately afterwards (Price 2008: 39–40). Lantis’ first generation was born with the aforementioned Jack Snyder and the links between strategic cultures and the Cold War nuclear arms dynamic. The second phase followed the rise of constructivism that showed the ‘utility of cultural interpretations’ in opposition to Neo-realist interpretations. The third generation moved further along the constructivist viewpoint and began looking at how cultural proclivities limited choices (Lantis 2006). Many of these phases still exist within current discourses. It is therefore not surprising to see that aspects of each phase, even first-generational ideas, still permeate and exist within the national security system. In his analysis of American strategic culture and how it often suffers to comprehend, adapt to, and deal with irregularly-organized foes, Colin S. Gray’s offers the most comprehensive understanding of the American way of war to date. Gray, whose lifetime of work on strategic theory is unparalleled, outlines 13 characteristics: 1) Apolitical; 2) Astrategic; 3) Ahistorical; 4) Problem-solving, optimistic; 5) Culturally challenged; 6) Technology dependent; 7) Focused on firepower; 8) Large-scale; 9) Aggressive, offensive; 10) Profoundly regular; 11) Impatient; 12) Logistically excellent; 13) Highly sensitive to casualties (Gray 2006: 30). These

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characteristics, whether individually, in combination, or all together, have been shown to repeatedly arise in wars fought by the United States since the end of the American Civil War. This should not be surprising as the most widely held analysis of American civil-military relations directly places the Civil War as the seed for contemporary U.S. military culture and tradition (Huntington 1957). Military culture refers directly to the cultural aspects of the armed services themselves. Like any culture, particularly for any organization as large and complex as a modern nation-states armed services, military culture holds a number subcultures. Carl Builder in his book of the same name, described them as ‘Masks of War’ (1989). Defining these masks as ‘acquired [organizational] personalities…that are shaped by their experiences and that, in turn, shape their behavior’ (1989: 8). Builder saw these masks as means to explain their impact on strategic decision-making and warfighting: The roots of modern American military strategies lie buried in the country’s three most powerful institutions: the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Though many people outside the military institutions, including academics and presidents, may propose military strategies and concepts, these can be implemented only if and when military institutions accept and pursue them. To understand the American military institutions, then—who they are and what they are about—is to understand almost everything of enduring significance in the national debates over military issues (1989: 4).

Builder compared the three Services and found five ‘faces’ through which they typically operate: altars of worship, concerns with self-measurement, preoccupation with toys versus the arts, degrees and extent of intraservice (or branch distinctions), and insecurities about service legitimacy and relevancy. The Servicespecific cultures enhance this chapter by showing the differences between the Services, and how that can affect many of the other aspects that will be discussed here, such as policymaking and advice to policymakers, force structure and acquisition, doctrine, and warfighting. Briefly, Builder described the Navy as being marked by a sense of ‘independence and stature’ (1989: 31). The Air Force as ‘the embodiment of an idea, a concept of warfare, a strategy made possible and sustained by modern technology’ (1989: 32). While the Army were the ‘essential artisans of war, still divided into their traditional combat arms—the infantry, artillery, and cavalry (armor)—but forged by history and the nature of war into a mutually supportive brotherhood of guilds’ (1989: 33). The Marine Corps and Coast Guard were left out because they were not ‘independent institutional actor[s] with a significant voice in the national approach to strategy or military force planning’ (1989: 9). Since then, the Marine ‘mask’ has been described by Frank G. Hoffman as built upon a combination of an expeditionary ethos, the subordination of the individual to the team, human-centricity, service paranoia, and an image of itself as

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‘America’s 9-1-1’ force (2011). Others have given these masks further description and analysis in recent years (Holmes-Eber, 2014; Johnston 2013). The Intelligence Community has also received similar analysis (Turner 2004; Johnston 2005). A ‘Special Operations’ mask was not so described either, but many have styled a plethora of the traits of those deemed ‘operators’ (Tucker 2013). The great differences between all the units under Special Operations Command, and because each unit remains under the institutional control of one of the Services to significant degrees is one explanation for the lack of an overarching Service culture. The other is that often ‘operators’ and their sub-organizations, such as Special Forces, SEALs, or Delta, have their own unique value systems that cannot be lifted to equivalent of the entire Service of Special Operations because they are tailored to specific environments, talents, and missions. Similarly, the analysis assembled by Builder deals with the organizations as a whole, but often leaves branch differences within each Service and their cultures without in-depth description. For example, the difference between U.S. Army artillery, tank, and infantry branch cultures can be significant, not to mention differences created by the units themselves that have their own history, mission, and operating concepts (Lamb et al. 2013: 121–122). Compare the same branches to those in the Marine Corps, and a different set of traits will emerge, some similar, some not. Importantly, these branch cultures can impact senior officers long into the future. For example, General Tommy Franks’ plan for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was considered astrategic because he was tactically, not strategically, focused, borne of his many years in command of tactically-focused and kinetic-based units (Ricks 2006: 127–128). General Stanley McChrystal’s own biography sees his time in the U.S. Army Rangers as his most significant mental shaper (McChrystal 2014). While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss these further, they must be acknowledged accordingly to accurately illustrate the complex picture that these subcultures can have impact on the larger narratives. As an example of how and why strategic and military culture matters, take, as Gray does, ‘the dependence on technology, the reliance on firepower, the emphasis on U.S. casualty avoidance…[which] express[es] a mindset and doctrine that have not adapted persuasively to the distinctive conditions of irregular warfare’ (Gray, 2006: 54). These traits are instead more closely related to the modes of warfare of World War II (technology and firepower), opposing the Soviet forces in Europe (technology and firepower), and the post-Cold War aspects of warfighting that related to non-existential threats and limited wars/humanitarian interventions (casualty avoidance and technology). Thus, when the armed forces are required by policy to engage in limited irregular wars against enemies who do not operate as the American forces have been trained to combat, difficulties, even outright failure, occurs. This will be discussed in greater detail later on.

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While an emphasis on strategic and military culture can certainly be overplayed, it should never be forgotten. Particularly when it influences organizational processes, norms, and values because no matter what one may plan, inherent cultural attributes can negatively sway any battle plan even before the enemy gets the chance. Grey’s 13 characteristics are vitally important to understand the next part of the interaction, the theory and practice of the Operational level, because of the emphasis placed upon the level in U.S. military thinking and doctrine and its impact on policymaking, are directly born from these same pre-existing cultural explanations on how the United States fights wars.

The Theory and Practice of the Operational Level The operational level first appeared as a codified doctrinal term in the 1982 version of the U.S. Army’s Field Manual 100–5, Operations (1982). It was officially defined as, The Operational Level of War involves planning and conducting campaigns. Campaigns are sustained operations designed to defeat an enemy force in a specified place and time with simultaneous and sequential battles. The disposition of forces, selection of objectives, and actions to weaken or outmaneuver the enemy all set the terms for the next battle and exploit tactical gains. They are all part of the operational level of war (1982: 2–3).

This concept emerged from a variety of historical investigations, usually misread or misunderstood ones, of the ‘lessons’ of the Vietnam war (Kelly and Brennan 2009: 12–17). This is why it was institutionalized into doctrine in 1982—the first major re-write of Army doctrine in the post-Vietnam era. It was intended that within this level, the military would dominate totally because it is where they have specialized knowledge. And in a new era of the All-Volunteer Force, recently created with the end of conscription, this specialization would become a profession as well. Professionalization also enabled the military to reinforce its own narratives. By holding a particular area as its own specialty, it could be the experts of a vocation where the military could not be ‘stabbed-in-the-back’ by, ‘civilian policymakers and strategist[s], the legislature, the press, the anti-war opposition, and the American people’ (Kimball 1988: 433). In the aftermath of Vietnam, a narrative formed that suggested that if the military had been allowed to fight Vietnam its way, victory would have been achieved (Summers 1985). Later analysis would prove this to be unequivocally false, putting the blame more at the feet of the U.S. military, particularly the Army, for failing to understand the mode of warfare it was engaged in during Vietnam and adapt to that fact, as well as the poor advice senior military and civilian advisors given to policymakers at the time (Krepinevich 1986;

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McMaster 1997). Nevertheless, the legend stuck. Even to the present day regarding Iraq and Afghanistan, the same theme is recycled (though never explicitly stated) (Gentile 2013). The operational level was supposed to be the expression of the combination of all actions in a battlefield to achieve the campaign goal as specified by policy. Instead, in practice, the new ‘level’ tri-furcated the holistic theory of war into competing, non-cooperative levels of dogma—tactics, operations, and policy—in a structural-functionalist manner that would have a profound impact on all facets of the Unites States’ ability to wage war. The creation of the operational level made sense in the context in which it was written in: the Cold War. By moving away from the complex battlefields of Vietnam, and returning to the plains of Central Europe, the military could return to its core competency that favored its cultural predilections—armored conventional warfare. Here, policy was long set: stop the Soviet advance. As was the command structure where the commander of NATO forces reigned supreme in the maneuvering of the combined forces of the alliance in a mode of warfare the institution(s) preferred. This was a pure expression of the operational level. The blistering performance during the Gulf War in 1991 would further prove the effectiveness of this construct. However, as noted, these are very specific sets of circumstances and modes of warfare that these organizations were already highly-attuned to being effective against. However, the test of any organization is when it faces a new problem. As Builder asked rhetorically, ‘What if military forces were not what we pretend them to be—the military means to political ends—but were, instead, institutional end in themselves that may or may not serve the larger interests of the nations that support them?’ (Builder 1989: 4). In practice, this is what the ‘operational level’ has institutionalized across the entirety of the U.S. armed forces: that Service parochialism matters more than changeable goals and enemies. Strategy, in the neo-Clausewitzian sense, is supposed to be the combination of resources, execution, and policy to achieve an end. By creating a military-centric zone that leaves policy considerations out of the equation, and allows the bureaucratic equities of the military Services to dominate procurement, training, doctrine, and other facets of war, the ability of the military to achieve said goals, whatever they may be, lessen. It also means the advice they provide to policymakers is blinkered and narrow. Over and over again, this problem is seen and rarely dealt with. There is also a secondary subsurface set of factors that affect this part of the interaction. Precisely how these modes of thought are reinforced actually form the core reason for the ebbing of cultural knowledge over time. As noted above with regards to strategic and military culture within the United States, pragmatism and problem-solving based on modernist worldviews are core attributes of the national

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security system. Combined with Cartesian-scientific positivist foundationalism, homogenized concepts of order, truth, and nature emerge that infect assumptions on the use of force, the ‘other’, and how acts will be perceived throughout the national security system. From this, the military, or any other tool, is therefore ‘designed as an independent variable (the solution) manipulated to affect the dependent variable(s) (the problem) (Paparone 2013: ix). Because the theory and practice of the operational level has isolated the military from the rest of society, while being such a colossal part of an already mammoth system, its own internal processes, norms, and values have a greater impact that they otherwise would. These internal modes of thought and action infect its assumptions, institutional models, and therefore its outputs. Two interrelated aspects are exemplars of this mindset in action: the personnel system and doctrine. As Professor Chris Paparone notes in his critique of the mental models of the U.S. military, ‘Modern militaries functionalize work and design various specialties of intelligence, subfields of military logistics, and so forth, in order to match the organizations specializations to those detailed, elaborated functional behaviors designed into the positions which make up the whole system and its stratified subsets’ (2013: 115). The current U.S. personnel system has been readily called ‘Byzantine’, even by Secretaries of Defense, because of the layers of bureaucracy one must navigate, overcome, and maneuver through. (Rumsfeld 2003). This ‘calcified’ mode of operation is standard for all facets of the personnel system, a system that has remained ‘largely unchanged since 1947’ (Tilghman 2015). Tim Kaine’s analysis of the personnel system described it as a ‘deeply anti-entrepreneurial structure’, (Kaine 2011) that pushes out those who disagree with the status quo, or question authority and received wisdom, while promoting those who accept the organizations assumptions without question. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling, in an explosive critique about the war in Iraq, said that ‘the system that produces our generals does little to reward creativity and moral courage. Officers rise to flag rank by following remarkably similar career patterns…to move up he must only please his superiors’. Because of the risk-adverse nature of the personnel system that does not reward non-standardized modes of thinking, those individuals who engage in such actions are readily suppressed or pushed out. Yingling continues, ‘It is unreasonable to expect that an officer who spends 25 years conforming to institutional expectations will emerge as an innovator in his late forties’ (2007). Sclerotic concepts and institution-wide dishonesty (Wong and Gerras, 2015) therefore become the norm. The case of General H.R. McMaster is an exemplar of this system in practice. As a Colonel in charge of a brigade in Iraq, McMaster created the operational basis for what would be known as ‘The Surge’ in Iraq (Packer 2006). Yet, then-Colonel McMaster, even though he had earned the praise of a great number of people from

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his work in Iraq, and was an accomplished soldier-scholar (McMaster 1997), was passed over for promotion to General twice. One anonymous colonel surmised that, ‘When you turn down a guy like McMaster, that sends a potent message to everybody down the chain…[that] ‘we’re not interested in rewarding people like him…’’ (Kaplan 2007). An organized campaign was established to get McMaster promoted that was eventually successful. He has since been further promoted to his third star. However, this is a very rare case where the system was beaten. Superb individuals like Colonel (ret.) James G. Burton, a member of the military reform movement from the 1980s, worked tirelessly to ensure weapons systems— most famously the Bradley Fighting Vehicle—were not death traps, but he, and many like him, were eventually beaten by this system into retirement. Even if their work was eventually used and celebrated, they were still forced out of the military for working against the grain (Burton 2014). The lessons remains true today: obey the system or it will chew you up and spit you out. Similarly, doctrine operates as ‘epistemic scripts as to how the military organizes’ (Paparone, 2013: 118). It offers definitions, descriptions, and guides to how the Services should train, field, and fight, similar to any instruction manual. Doctrine is officially defined by NATO as the ‘fundamental principles by which the military forces guide their actions in support of objectives. It is authoritative but requires judgment in application’ (AAAP-6, 2014: 2-D-9). The second sentence is intended to convey that while doctrine is meant to discipline actions, reality may prove the doctrine is inapplicable, and therefore judgment can be exercised by the soldiers in the field. As Paparone notes on doctrine, The logics of systematic behavioral control and knowledge taxonomies are encased in the modern military institution; hence, also serve as epistemic scripts as to show how the military organizes (smaller units comprise bigger formations and so forth). It should be no surprise that the functionalist military institution also stratifies its knowledge and correspondent educational systems in taxonomic fashion…. Functionalism also justified existing institutionalized hierarchical power structures designed for internal behavioral control…. The internal taxonomies of the institutionalized structures become so pervasive that members can conceive of no other way to structure—the epistemic script becomes sedimentary (2013: 118–119).

In short, doctrine is used to simplify the chaos of the battlefield into taxonomic categories and control behavior and language from the highest levels to the lowest in structural functionalist manners. As expected, such functionalism leads to categorization, and poor categorization at that. The doctrinal notion of ‘military operations other than war’ is handy here. War, as defined by our near-canonized Prussian theorist, Carl Von Clausewitz, is the use of force to achieve an end (Clausewitz 1989: 87). How can

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you have military operations other than ‘war’ then? The term is supposed to refer to forms of warfare such as peacekeeping, peace-enforcement, humanitarian assistance, and like operations. The unstated assumption is, however, that only a single particular mode of warfare, armored conventional warfare, is ‘war’; thus every other form is less than ‘war’, even high-intensity counterinsurgency as found in Iraq. In turn, because it is less than ‘war’, it does not require institutional attention. Though the very term, ‘operations other than war’ is logical nonsense, as is its very meaning, organizationally, it reinforces existing processes, norms, and values and the organizational structures those rest upon. And because of it, the additional training, education, and mindsets that non-armored conventional war require—culture being a key one—are ignored or de-emphasized and have a direct relationship to the ‘ebbing’ phenomenon. Though many prefer it that way (Gentile, 2010). A final aspect that help to reinforce preexisting processes, norms, and values is the overwhelming techno-centrism of the system. Technology is seen as the primary mode through which many assume transformative global change is, and will be, occurring. It is presumed that disrupters will force a radical break with existing structures and form new ones; ‘From chaos comes a new order’ (Paparone, 2013: 127). It is within this same intellectual zeitgeist the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) was born. Described as a ‘response to the [Defense Department’s] adherence to the Weinberger [/Powell] Doctrine of overwhelming force…to guarantee a swift and unambiguous victory’ (Ucko 2009: 52–53), the RMA hoped to ‘replace mass with information’ (Kaplan 2005). By using high-technology systems, interlinked into a system-of-systems approach to lift the fog of war, a more effective military would be created. Success on this front has been fleeting, and expensive, and was obvious even before it began in earnest (Grau 1997). Yet, this thinking has not waned. A recently released report from the Center for a New American Security titled, Game Changers, offers an example: What makes a technology ‘game changing’, ‘revolutionary’, ‘disruptive’ or a ‘killer application’ is that it both offers capabilities that were not available—and were in many ways unimaginable—a generation earlier and in so doing provokes deep questions whose answers are not readily available. These kinds of institutional, organizational and even individual soul-searching questions encompass not only what is possible, but also what is proper, in everything from doctrine and staffing to law and ethics. Such technologies—be they fire, the printing press, gunpowder, the steam engine or the computer—are rare but truly consequential (Brimley et al. 2013: 4).

Paparone rightly describes those who subscribe to these modes of thinking as ‘shamans’ because radical changes cannot be planned. Any planning would only serve to ‘blind the radical shifts that may already be underway’, (2013: 132) to

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those that may be happening by do not conform to the pre-existing notion of radical change. These shamans have forced the national security system to spend ungodly amounts of money on unworkable pieces of equipment, which in turn create organizational adaptations, mindsets, and doctrine that affect how the organization itself will act (Freedberg, 2012). And as the American way of war has a tendency to emphasize ‘technologically-produced solutions to what are inherently political challenges’ (Hoffman and Davies, 2013: 2), other considerations are ignored because they do not match the semantics and logic of the radicals. When these aspects are put together, it becomes clear how they affect day-today operations, whether in an office or on the battlefield—those who obey the preexisting processes, norms, and values are promoted, while those who push back against it are suppressed. Thus there is a perverse incentive for each individual and organization to hold the line, even though it may not operate effectively against current reality. The system therefore regenerates itself with only new information being felt and acted upon at the margins, and any change is temporary unless enforced. It also explains why FM 3-24 was considered so revolutionary at the time, and thus emblematic of the ebb and flow dynamic—previous doctrine had specifically avoided the topic of culture, and thus the personnel system did not offer any incentives to those who wanted to engage with culture, and in fact openly fought against those who did. Consequently, when the U.S. began to engage individuals, groups, and populations that required more nuanced culturally-centered thought in the Iraq and Afghan wars, it took many years to overcome institutional processes, norms, and values to force an adaptation, weak as it was.

Defined Enemies The final piece of the interaction simply refers to the enemies of a defined time period. What the enemy is, how they fight, their organization, ideology, effectiveness, but above all else, how the United States national security system has viewed these factors matters in how the other aspects of the interaction works. Continued misunderstanding of the enemy, even whether they truly are enemies, precisely because culture is not taken seriously in military affairs, is a primary reason why this facet is part of the interaction. It is these perceptions that matter most; not so much what these enemies (and not) were, but what they were seen to be. I will be leaving this explanation here rather bare because much of the evidence I intend to use is most useful in the next section, where I lay out how the interaction works in practice. By describing the various perceptions there, not only will I avoid duplication, but also lend greater explanatory power to them by fleshing out the perceptions more fully with the necessary analysis.

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The Interaction Assessing the interaction between strategic and military cultures, the theory and practice of the operational level of war, and defined enemies will be relatively superficial as I am attempting to assess nearly 70 years of historical, institutional, and theoretical dynamics in a short space, but that is also intended. By breezing through history, the top-layer issues that define the interaction over time emerge more clearly than they might with a deep dive analysis on a specific event.

World War II to Vietnam Immediately following the end of hostilities in World War II, the United States began to demobilize the massive army it had built. Expecting an ordered and lasting peace to be created and maintained through U.S. nuclear hegemony, economic might, and the United Nations, it did not see the need to maintain a large standing army. As the Iron Curtain descended over Eastern Europe and tensions began to rise, ever greater analytical attention was paid to the Soviet Union. The July 1947 article by then-U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, George F. Kennan, published in Foreign Affairs outlined a response to the perceived threat from the Soviet Union (1945). Kennan’s article, published anonymously, has become legend, as has his ‘Long Telegram’ (1946). Analysing the links between Marxist-Leninist ideology and Russian cultural traits, Kennan believed that Soviet pressure and action can be, ‘contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points..’. However, Kennan advised diplomatic entanglements, economic pressure, and weakening the Soviet structure from within. U.S. forces were to be used only in discrete circumstances, and local governments were to be built up to withstand Soviet pressure with US help. But to do this, Kennan made clear that it required a keen understanding of the ‘Russian sense of insecurity’, and other facets of the Russian/Soviet mindset (1945). Patronizingly, Kennan noted in the Long Telegram that the United States ‘must study [the Soviet Union] with same courage, detachment, objectivity, and same determination not to be emotionally provoked or unseated by it, with which doctor studies unruly and unreasonable individual’ (1946). What containment became known for, however, was not what Kennan envisioned. Instead, the U.S. began a massive build-up of conventional and nuclear weapons. This was Paul Nitze’s concept of containment, which manifested itself in National Security Council Report (NSC-) 68. (1950). Congruent with these actions was the National Security Act of 1947. This act of Congress created what we now know as the Department of Defense, bringing

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together all the disparate agencies and organizations regarding national defense under a set of defined roles, missions, and responsibilities. Most importantly, it brought the Departments of the Army and Navy together, and created the Department of the Air Force, establishing the U.S. Air Force as its own organizational entity, equal to the Army and Navy. The Marine Corps remained under the Navy. The Act also created the Joint Chiefs of Staff, designed to provide military advice to the Executive branch. A mammoth bureaucracy was created to manage this organizational monstrosity, centered at the newly built Pentagon. Almost immediately, service parochialism overtook national security needs. In what has been called the ‘Revolt of the Admirals’, a number of U.S. Navy admirals openly criticized the Truman Administration and their chain of command. The Admirals were incensed that the newly created Air Force was receiving the majority of the money for nuclear weapons delivery systems, and that the Navy was suffering budget cutbacks because of it (Armed Forces 1949). Even more appallingly, this occurred after the Key West Agreement between the Secretary of Defense and the Service chiefs brokered between 11–14 March 1948 at Key West, Florida, which defined the roles and size between the Services (Blechman et al. 1993). Having decided on roles and responsibilities, even where crossovers were arranged, Service-centric thinking predominated. The Air Force pushed forward to institutionalize the doctrine of strategic bombing even though it had thoroughly been discredited by its own Bombing Survey from World War II (1987). The Army remained gutted after the draw down, but continued to focus on conventional conflicts on the Eurasian landmass, and the Navy remained a blue water navy centered around carrier battle groups. The Marine Corps also remained the amphibious expeditionary force that it had built in World War II. It was towards these conventional capabilities that acquisitions would be made, and doctrine created. In many cases, this proved prescient. Even though Korea was not expected to be an active war zone, each of the capabilities proved themselves in the Korean War, some more than others. The war would also force a quick conventional rearmament of the United States, instead of focusing on nuclear weapons for deterrence, particularly now that the Soviets had tested their first atomic weapons. Although the Korean War ended ignominiously, it did show the necessity of having a large standing army to make the containment policy real and effective (Fehrenbach, 1963). After the war ended in 1953, to fund this rearmament, Defense budgets would remain around $15–18B (2014 USD) for the rest of the decade (Budget 2014: 190). This was the period of the massive retaliation doctrine (Dulles 1954). NATO had little choice to pursue such a policy because they did not have the

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conventional arms to do anything else but offer total annihilation to any conventional move across the West German border as a deterrent (Howard 1973). It was also during this time when the concept of the Soviet Union as an allpowerful conspiracy generator emerged. The Red Scare of the 1950s helped this along, but it was also manifested in the strategic policymaking elite. Criticizing many of the recent revisionist histories on President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Robert J. McMahon writes that ‘The Eisenhower administration insisted on viewing the Third World through the invariably distorting lens of a Cold War geopolitical strategy that saw the Kremlin as the principal instigator of global unrest’ (McMahon 1986: 457). This conspiracy-centered mindset would obliterate the nuance out of world politics and the rise of anti-colonial struggles that were emerging. As a result, [the administration] often wound up simplifying complicated local and regional developments, confusing nationalism with communism, aligning the United States with inherently unstable and unrepresentative regimes, and wedding American interests to the status quo in areas undergoing fundamental social, political, and economic upheaval (McMahon 1986: 457).

It was into this mindset that the Kennedy Administration stepped. Upon assuming office, President John F. Kennedy redirected America’s defense policy from massive retaliation to flexible response. This would allow greater strategic choices beyond capitulation or global nuclear genocide. President Kennedy took an interesting step in reading aloud at his first National Security Council meeting excerpts from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s speech supporting ‘wars of national liberation’, and urged the Council members to ‘read and ponder the speech’ (Krepinevich 1986: 29). What emerged from this was Kennedy’s special interest in figuring out ways to fight such wars, or how to deal with them before they reached a tipping point. While Khrushchev’s speech further solidified the conspiracy theory that the Soviet Union was behind all these wars, it also did help to re-invigorate the role of cultural studies within the U.S. national security system, albeit in very small segments. This was the period of the ‘Soviet Experts’ and defense think tanks such as the Special Operations Research Office. It was also the era of the infamous Camelot mission (Engerman 2009: 43–70; Rohde 2013: 37–63). For the military, President Kennedy’s effort led directly to the creation of the U.S. Army Special Forces, units designed to engage and support civilian populations in these wars of national liberation. The Vietnam War began with small numbers of civilian and military advisors, and would end 15 years later with a total collapse of the South Vietnam state and 58,000 American dead. Following Kennedy’s desire, what began as an interest in

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the nuances of these newly emerging countries would eventually become an assumption that each country reflected pre-existing American values, beliefs, and governmental norms, and that their enemies were mere puppets of the Soviet Union (or occasionally China). As such, their armed forces could be molded in a similar fashion to defeat the ‘real’ enemy—the Soviets. Andrew Krepinevich, in his masterful The Army and Vietnam, refers to the model of operations the U.S. Army engaged in Vietnam as ‘the Concept’—the substitution of material costs at every available opportunity to avoid payment in blood (1986: 5). This meant large-scale units conducting sweeps of regular and irregular units using artillery and indiscriminate fire, and helicopter-borne troops to destroy the larger North Vietnamese units. Body counts were the metric of success. The Concept, in practice, presumed the Vietnam War to be a conventional war, just fought in the jungle, not the plains of Europe. It eliminated any distinction in how the Vietnamese people perceived themselves, the North, the Viet Cong, communism, and their own leadership, and it ignored the intended policy goal—a South Vietnamese state capable of maintaining its own stability. Emblematically, as one Colonel would famously say in Full Metal Jacket, ‘we are here to help the Vietnamese, because inside every [Vietnamese] is there is an American trying to get out’. (1987). Krepinevich’s ‘Concept’ focused on the Army, but the same could be said for the other Services. The Air Force centered on strategic bombing raids on industrial centers and large troop placements (Farley 2014: 108–112). The Marines conducted amphibious operations into the northern areas of South Vietnam, then became a land force intent on holding a piece of real-estate. Only very late in the war, and in very small numbers, would the Marine Corps begin to fight the war as the enemy fought it with its Combined Action Platoons (Klyman 1989; West 2003). The Navy followed the Air Force in conducting bombing raids. The Services also trained the South Vietnamese forces in their own image. As one 1970 American analysis noted, the military ‘simply performed its repertoire even though it was frequently irrelevant to the situation’, and as such, ‘the Vietnamese [will be] incapable of doing anything different from what we have done’ (Jenkins, 1970: V). The outcome was inevitable. But not for the reasons one might expect. Two analyses have been produced that offer similar conclusions. Based on his own experiences, the commander of the Civil Operations and Revolution Development Support (CORDS) unit, Robert W. Komer said that, ‘almost regardless of what policy called for, these institutions tended to play out their existing institutional repertoires, and to adapt themselves only slowly even to felt needs’ (1972: 151). Komer would still claim in the same monograph that CORDS, which was the primary exemplar of the flow of sociocultural knowledge of the time during the war, did more to bring

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the South Vietnamese Government to stability, but acknowledged that it might have been too little, too late. Similarly, Leslie H. Gelb and Richard K. Betts suggest that the bureaucratic and democratic decision-making organizational processes worked as they were designed throughout the war; the policy simply failed (1979: 2). Put together, it shows that the policy could not adjust because the information flows were blinkered by conceptual and bureaucratic mindsets, and that forced changes could not occur because the agencies and departments charged with implementing them did not have the internal capability to change. Simply, the outcome was certain before the first shot was fired because the national security system—specifically the Armed Services, and U.S. Government Departments and agencies—were unable to comprehend and deal with the situation as it existed. They merely molded actions to their own prisms and operating methods, and took no account of whether those actions were effective towards the purported end goal because the implementation of ‘The Concept’ was more important than achieving a successful end because that’s all they had been set up to do. Moreover, they had built an assumption of the local conditions based on a conspiracy-minded concept of a monolithic Soviet menace and subsumed all local concerns under this rubric. What little flow of sociocultural knowledge that existed within the war had an outsized impact on the war, but the institutional constraints in policy, bureaucracy, and resources would mean the primary efforts would be military-centric, based on irrelevant operational concepts. To add insult to injury, the flow that did exist for sociocultural knowledge in this era would be immediately turned off at the end of the war as well, ensuring few lessons would be institutionalized.

Somalia to the Balkans to Iraq Again As noted above, in the post-Vietnam era, the stabbed-in-the-back legend played a part in the professionalization of the military. It also led to the military being increasingly divorced from policy considerations, therefore continuing its inability to see how its own operational concepts could not achieve the policy goals set by policymakers. The only time these considerations harmonized were in the NATO theater and the Gulf War of 1991. But the former never broke out into direct hostilities, and the latter occurred over the space of a few short months. Yet it was these war that would continue to have an outsized impact on the interaction even as they continually proved irrelevant to the strategic situation. Amidst the glow of the crushing victory over the armed forces of Saddam Hussein, the U.S. military was called into action in Somalia. A civil war-caused famine had killed many thousands of people. A contingent of U.S. Soldiers, Sailors, and

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Marines were sent into to restore order. Not long after, they withdrew and a force of United Nations (UN) peacekeepers and U.S. special operations units remained. These special operations units eventually became involved in a manhunt for Mohammed Farah Aided, the leader of the Habr Gedir tribe, who was attacking the peacekeepers and continued to kill Somali’s in his attempt to gain control of the  country. As the UN and the U.S. attempted to form a central government, the numerous clans in the country, particularly in and around the capital, Mogadishu, maneuvered for position. As one assessment noted, ‘Aidid supporters were easily manipulated to unrest when the UN was seen to be taking sides against their clan’ (Petersen, 2000: 76). This unrest was made easier with offensive actions by the U.S. and the UN troops. The inability to understand the situation is Somalia was obvious. The clan structure was not mapped out, nor were the allegiances between them, thus the political dynamics could not be comprehended, making the desired end functionally impossible. The nuances of the country and its people were drowned by the collective force of the so-called ‘New World Order’ defined in this very new post-Cold War era, even though those very nuances were vital to the creation of a sustainable peace. Since their creation over the past few decades, U.S. special operations forces had created their own ‘concepts’—leadership targeting (Cockburn, 2015: 2). In Somalia, this was put into action. On 12 July 1993, U.S. attack helicopters targeted an Aidid clan meeting, killing approximately 50 people (Petersen, 2000: 101). The U.S. had intended to wipe out Aidid himself and his senior clan leadership, but failed and pushed Aidid and his allies into all-out war. Aidid raised the stakes by continuing attacks against U.S. forces in response. The U.S. would eventually send in special operations units—Delta Force and Army Rangers to conduct a manhunt to capture Aidid. This would end with the infamous Black Hawk Down incident. In response the U.S. pulled its forces out, and led many to assume the U.S. had resumed its casualty-avoidance preference for warfighting, even after the Gulf War. By focusing on leadership-centric attacks, the U.S. had misread Somalia. The clan structure was the center-point of social and economic life in Somalia. Killing or capturing Aidid would do little to nothing to ‘change’ Somalia’s status. As journalist Mark Bowden said in his biography of the Black Hawk Down incident, ‘To think that 450 superb American soldiers could uproot [the clan] violently, thereby clearing the way form, as General Powell puts it, ‘an outbreak of Jeffersonian Democracy’, seems far-fetched (1999: 498)’. But the operational concept overwhelmed all other considerations. Future Central Command Commander, and a participant throughout the Somalia operation, General Anthony Zinni would state not long after that what he needed was, ‘What is it about their society that’s so remarkably

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different in the values, in the way they think, compared to my values and the way I think in my western, white-man mentality?’ (1998: 267). Similar mistakes would occur in the Balkans during the 1990s. Robert D. Kaplan’s Balkan Ghost (1993) became famous for advancing the theory that the conflicts in the region were based on ancient hatreds. This book reportedly impacted President Clinton’s thinking about involvement in the region (Kaufman 1999). The theory was incorrect, however. The war was predominately over the ‘conscious use of nationalism as a vehicle to achieve power’ by Slobodan Milosevic (Silber and Little 1996: 25). When combined with the casualty-avoidance preference of the Clinton administration, it led to inaction, and when action did occur, it was predominantly by air using stand-off smart weapons (Schmitt 1995). The eventual large-scale bombing of Serbia during Operation Allied Force in 1999 would maintain this pattern. Again, the U.S. Air Force operated according to its doctrinal patterns—attacking infrastructure, military nodes, and fielded forces. What the war plan missed was that the ‘influence networks within the leadership was just as important as mapping supply routes for the military’ (Schulte 2013: 18). The core leadership cadre surrounding Milosevic were far more important than many other proposed centers of gravity in ending the genocide occurring in Kosovo. Once NATO shifted its focus to him and his closest advisors and their interests, Serbia quickly capitulated. But two months of (fruitless) bombing occurred until this was realized. The impact of the interaction would become more pronounced than ever before with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The terror attacks of 11 September 2001 by Al-Qaeda would initiate another search to ‘understand’ the group, Muslim populations, and Islam in general to avoid another catastrophic attack on American soil. The answer, it seemed, was in a radical socio-political re-ordering of the entire Middle East. This was the dream of the Iraq War. Begun during the night of 20 March 2003 as U.S. and Coalition forces moved through the Kuwaiti border into the deserts of Mesopotamia, the Iraq War intended to depose the regime and person of Saddam Hussein and replace it with a pro-American government built around American ideals. The mirror-imaged notions of human nature built upon this strategic goal went hand-in-hand with a battle plan that took no accounting the social, political, or economic realities of Iraq itself (Franks 2003). It was a recipe for disaster from the beginning. Journalist Tom Ricks would state in his influential book on the Iraq War, Fiasco, that the top Pentagon officials ‘spent well over a year preparing to attack Iraq, but treated almost casually what would come after that’ (2007 78). The battle plan would be initiated with what has famously become known as ‘Shock and Awe’ tactics—to

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overwhelm the Iraqi defenders with a massive show of force delivered from the air. Ground troops would then move through the country quickly using their high-technology prowess to suppress any resistance (Strachan 2007: 4–5). By 10 April 2003, Coalition troops had entered Baghdad, symbolically ending the reign of Saddam. Because of the lack of planning and care for the aftermath of the invasion, it would be another eight years before the war would officially end. As the invasion would quickly turn into an occupation, and then move into an insurgency and finally a civil war, the Coalition forces were simply overwhelmed by their lack of training, knowledge, doctrine, and capacity to govern, let alone understand, their newly designated areas of control. The conventional war paradigm that the military had been built to fight was completely alien to what they would find in Iraq at the end of the invasion phase. The strength of the conventional war paradigm, which was also nation-state-centric, was seen in the attempts to deny the existence of an insurgency within Iraq for the first few years after the fall of Saddam (Woodward 2006: 266; Richter 2005). To acknowledge the insurgency, as well as its legitimacy to the circumstances, something that was resisted under the tenure of Secretary Rumsfeld (Miles 2005) would require initiating modes of thinking and action that had been either purged or de-emphasized from the military and policymaking for many decades (Ucko, 2009: 47–64). It would have required acknowledging the particular circumstances of the Iraqi state and people, and the relationship between the two. In-depth knowledge at the local level was necessary, something that the U.S. national security system lacked in spades. As Safa al-sheikh, the head of Implementation and Follow-Up Committee of National Reconciliation, would say to British diplomat, Emma Sky, ‘Things which are known to Iraqi children do not seem to be understood by US policy-makers’ (Sky 2015: 218–219). Instead, the Iraqi people, their culture and politics were subsumed under both mirror-imaged notions of U.S. values as well as the threats posed by the ideology of al-Qaeda, the group responsible for the terror attacks of 11 September 2001. This strange combination led both military and civilians to misunderstand why reconstruction did not go as planned. Al-Qaeda was initially theorized within the U.S. and the West as a totalizing organization and ideology born of socio-political dysfunction and a totalitarian form of Islam. Fears of a S.P.E.C.T.R.E.-type organization within our midst, built upon memories of the Soviet KGB helped this along (Frum and Perle 2003: 41–60). As such, by destroying physical bases, and transposing cultural traits to ‘their’ lands, the terrorists could be defeated. In Afghanistan, the physical bases were destroyed with relative ease, as were the Taliban government that, broadly speaking, protected their existence. The same thinking pervaded the Iraq invasion. Just as before, local sociocultural nuances that defined the local

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populations were annihilated under this rubric, as were those of Al-Qaeda itself (Hegghammer 2006; Hegghammer 2008; Wiktorowicz 2006). This perception would affect both military and civilian forces. For military personnel, particularly in the early days, expecting to be greeted as liberators quickly dissipated as the insurgency began to rage. One senior officer is quoted as saying that, ‘the only thing these [Iraqis’] understand is force and I’m about to introduce them to it’ (Brown, 2008: 445). If Al-Qaeda and other terrorists are perceived to be part of a monolithic organization and ideology, anyone fighting against the U.S. in Iraq, invaded, in part, because of a reported link between the Saddam and Al-Qaeda, must automatically be a part of that group. As such, the nascent insurgency was initially referred to as Anti-Iraq Forces (Richter 2005), and often presented as the scions of anti-U.S. states in the region (albeit with some truth). Simultaneously, U.S. actions to counter these groups were seen as acultural ‘tactical imperatives’ (Brown 2008: 446), as if these actions did not register a link to the political dynamics of the ‘new’ Iraq. Civilians were also forced to deal with cultural essentialism. As noted in Phil Klay’s award winning book, Redeployment, which utilizes fictional stories based on actual occurrences of him and his associates in both theaters. In one story about a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Anbar in Iraq, the team leader is given baseball uniforms, a gift from a private citizen in the U.S.: ‘Why am I looking at fifty baseball uniforms in the middle of Camp Taji? Major Zima nodded, as if to let me know he thought it was a valid question. ‘Because Gene Goodwin sent them to us’, he said. ‘Gene Goodwin thinks baseball is just the think for Iraqis’. Who is Gene—you know what? It doesn’t matter…’

It would be revealed a few pages later that Gene Goodwin was ‘the mattress king of Northern Kansas’ who had convinced his local Congressman that baseball was precisely what Iraqis needed for national reconciliation (Klay 2014: 93–94). The lack of care for the views of the locals was rampant. It would only be with significant time and effort in Iraq that military and civilian personnel would reach a level of proficiency that was actually capable of achieving positive ends. This is what would begin the next ‘flow’ phase and initiate the latest ‘cultural turn’. It was a surprise to many to see that Field Manual (FM) 3-24, Counterinsurgency (2007), became probably the most publicly famous doctrine in U.S. military history (Nagl, 2007). This was something that was not hard to achieve as doctrine is an internal document generated to enforce norms, values, and codes of expertise, not outside commentary and interest. Yet, it was popular nonetheless. Much of this had to do with its drastic change in direction from previous doctrines over

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the past generations, but also its place in the context of the Iraq War. The doctrine would likely have been quickly forgotten if U.S. President George W. Bush had issued orders to pull out from Iraq in 2007. FM 3-24 would become the imperfect founding document for the latest ‘cultural turn’ of the national security system. From those involved in its creation would emerge Human Terrain Teams, Female Engagement Teams and the Cultural Support Teams, borne of the logic that conventional forces required specialized cultural knowledge to be effective in their areas (Lamb et al. 2013: 82–86). Different intelligence analytical techniques would also emerge. The doctrine would also breed new life into area studies and language programs across the United States. ‘Culture’ would become a buzzword. The flow of this cultural turn was a veritable waterfall compared to the past 40 years. However, for all the ink and money spent on this cultural turn, its successes have been fleeting. While the success of the Surge campaign in Iraq will remain highly debatable for many years to come, it is slowly emerging that regardless of the tactical successes, the U.S. Army, the main force fighting the war, institutionally fought this adaption of its mission. As Joshua Jones noted, the resistance to meet the demands of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to any significant degree was overwhelming. And as such, no lasting changes based around the latest cultural turn that will better enable these forces to meet future threats have been institutionalized. As such, the U.S. Army, as an institution, has already forgotten how to fight these wars because preexisting doctrine and institutional norms demand it (2013: 213–224). It is only on the edges that changes have been made. Within the other civilian Departments and agencies, the overwhelming majority of programs created to deal with locally-based knowledge and conflict have been defunded or drastically reduced. Thus the non-military programs, often the most important parts of any non-conventional campaign, are gone (White 2014). It is hard not to be fatalistic at how quickly this cultural turn ended at the institutional level and what that means for the narratives, norms, training, and education within the national security system. Yet there are some lights in the distance.

The Future The Joint and Coalition Operational Analysis unit’s report, Decade of War, Volume  I:  Enduring Lessons from the Past Decade of Operations pulled together 46 studies on lessons from operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere. Eleven meta-themes arose from this collection. At the top of the list was Understanding the Environment, that there was a ‘failure to recognize, acknowledge, and accurately define the operational environment [which] led to a mismatch between forces, capabilities, missions, and goals’ (2012: 2). Translated from Pentagonese,

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the report is stating that the U.S. armed forces did not understanding the sociocultural nuances of the individuals, groups, and populations in these theaters. Moreover, because they did not understand the these dynamics of these theaters, not only could they not plan appropriately for the modes of warfare they found themselves, nor could they advise policymakers on the difficulty, problems, and complexity of engaging in such an action in the first place. This is a damming selfassessment, but one that is welcome. Since this report was released, this ‘lesson’ has found significant traction in a variety of places across the national security system. A common theme throughout this chapter has been that national security actors and institutions predominantly carry out their standard operating concepts without thought to how it affects the intended goal; that, paraphrasing, General Stanley McChrystal, the structure is the strategy (Ricks 2015). Thus the strongest and most effective way to force an organizational adaptation is from within. As it has been the land forces that have been most engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is not surprising they are leading the effort. A joint venture between the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Army, and U.S. Special Operations Command recently emerged, and stated unequivocally that war is ‘fundamentally a human endeavor in which the context of the conflict is determined by both parties’ (Strategic Landpower, 2013: 2). As part of this effort, a series of doctrinal concepts emerged to help this assertion mean something tangible to military forces. The initial concept term chosen was the ‘Human Domain’ (Hoffman and Davies 2013). As the term, ‘Human Terrain’, had been somewhat tarnished by its association with the Human Terrain System, and had be defined to mean only the local population of a specific area, ‘domain’ offered a more overarching, yet still descriptive term of art for humanity as a whole in a national security context. Moreover, ‘domain’ already fitted with existing doctrine and concepts across each Service. However, as expected, the Services began to recreate and mold the concept and the term according to their own preferences. The U.S. Army has now adopted ‘Engagement’ as the 7th Warfighting Function. The intent of this function is to enable, ‘Army forces [to] understand the human aspects of an operational environment and determine the opportunities and resource requirements necessary to influence the solutions to achieve a suitable end state’ (TRADOC Pam 525, 2014). As ‘Engagement’ is defined as the 7th Warfighting Function, it is a revolutionary step as it means that 1/7th of all ‘people, organizations, information, and processes’ (ADP 3–0 2011: 13) should be directed towards this effort and the implications of the function. While this is a structuralist response to what should be a holistic mindset change, this is how the U.S. Army deals with a problem and creates a solution. It is a radical first step in context, but still a first step nonetheless.

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U.S. Special Operations Command has embraced the term ‘Human Domain’ whole-heartedly. Former Commander Admiral William H. McRaven has repeatedly stated that this domain is ‘more important’ than any other realm to ‘the troops and to policymakers’. While this construct still embraces a functionalist separation of the various aspects from one another—’physical, cultural, and social’ (Ruolo 2013), it is a clear step in the right direction as it will force more up-to-date ideas, concepts, and theories to emerge and fuse with doctrine over time; particularly as the idea permeates the Command more fully. The Joint Staff has taken a similar route as Special Operations Command, but they are using the term, ‘Human Aspects’.1 The Marine Corps has taken a different path. Focusing their energies on the Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning (CAOCL) at the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia, they intend to infiltrate the language, training, narratives, and mindsets of Marines more indirectly than through overt doctrinal changes. The Marine Corps prides itself on focusing on the human-centricity of war (MCDP-1 1997: 3–4), but this is often not the case in practice. Nevertheless, CAOCL’s efforts have led to the ‘Marineizing’ of much cultural language and knowledge first, and then it has been slowly adapted to more effective and analytically-current concepts (Holmes-Eber, 2014: 194). As Robert Komer said, ‘sound policy formulation must take fully into account the capabilities of the institutions involved to execute it effectively’ (1972: 152). That is what this chapter has attempted to do. To show that the focus on culture has ebbed and flowed in importance to the national security system according to the interaction between strategic and military culture, the theory and practice of the operational level of war, and the defined enemies of the time. When these factors do not meet, sociocultural nuances are ignored. These perceptions soon change as experience demands it. Yet the institutional demands can be so overwhelming that adapting to the new situation is either fleeting, impossible, or when allowed, only allowed on the edges. While, as Paula Holmes-Eber notes, ‘military change is an interactive process, in which external shifts and pressures from the state, society, and the battlefield are integrated and reworked into their unique internal cultural and structural patterns of the specific military organization’ (Holmes-Eber 2014: 194) those same processes can work against a particular position as well. The remnants of the latest cultural turn offer some hope for the national security system to move beyond its current operating models and towards more updated ones; one where sociocultural nuances become an intrinsic part of its 1 At the time of writing, this concept is in the primordial stage of creation.

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enterprise-wide analytical mindset. But it must be acknowledged that the sheer mass, complexity, and depth of the current norms, values, and processes within system makes change extraordinarily difficult. Even when a radical event such as the failure to achieve victory in two wars occurs, it continues along its set path as it does right now, and we are forced, once again, to witness another ebbing. As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have wound down, as has the money for projects, agencies, personnel, and reports that concentrate on these issues, and pre-existing institutional norms begin to reassert themselves once more with vigor. As shown many times, all that has been gained can be quickly lost. Sadly, there are few options available to arrest this dynamic. The type of change necessary can only occur at the Executive and Congressional levels with a new National Security Act. Only with deep, lasting, and forced radical organizational change can the U.S. national security system, and the U.S. military as the center of that system, begin to look like a system capable of delivering effective national security in the twenty-first century. Until then, it will remain stuck in shockingly out-of-date and ineffective organizational constructs, processes, and values. The ebbing and flowing of sociocultural knowledge is merely an emblematic example of its structural failures over time.

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Hegghammer, T. (2006). ‘Global Jihadism After the Iraq War’, The Middle East Journal 60(1), 11–32. – (2008). ‘Islamist Violence and Regime Stability in Saudi Arabia’, International Affairs 84 (4), 701–715. Howard, M. (1973). ‘The Relevance of Traditional Strategy’, Foreign Affairs (January). Huntington, S.P. (1957). The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of CivilMilitary Relations. Boston: Harvard University Press. Jenkins, B.M. (1970). The Unchangeable War. RM-6278-2-ARPA. Santa Monica, CA: RAND. Johnston, R. (2005). Analytic Culture in the U.S. Intelligence Community: An Ethnographic Study. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Johnson, J.L. (2013). Assessing the Strategic Impact of Service Culture on Counterinsurgency Operations. Final Draft, Thesis. University of Reading. Joint and Coalition Operational Analysis (2012). Decade of War, Volume I: Enduring Lessons from the Past Decade of Operations. Suffolk, VA: Joint Staff J7. Jones, J.S. (2013). Protecting the Mission: The Case of the U.S. Army. Thesis. American University. Kaine, T. (2011). ‘Why Our Best Officers Are Leaving’, The Atlantic (January/ February). Kaplan, F. (2005). ‘A Future the Army Can’t Afford: Should we Spend Billions on High Tech Dreams?’ Slate, 28 March. – (2007). ‘Challenging the Generals’, The New York Times, 16 August. Kaplan, R.D. (1993). Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Kaufman, M.T. (1999). ‘The Dangers of Letting a President Read’, The New York Times, 22 May. Kelly J. and M. Brennan. (2009). Alien: How Operational Art Devoured Strategy. Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute. Kennan, G.F. (1946). The Charge in the Soviet Union (Kennan) to the Secretary of State, 861.00/2-2246: Telegram, 22 February. – (1945). ‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct’, Foreign Affairs (July). Kimball, J. (1988). ‘The Stab-in-the-Back Legend and the Vietnam War’, Armed Forces and Society 14 (3), 433–458. Klay, P. (2014). Redeployment. New York: The Penguin Press. Klyman, R.A. (1989). The Combined Action Platoons: The U.S. Marines Other War in Vietnam. New York: Praeger Publishers.

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Komer, R.W. (1972). Bureaucracy Does Its Thing: Institutional Constraints on U.S.GVN Performance in Vietnam. R-967-ARPA. Santa Monica, CA: RAND. Krepinevich, Jr. A.F. (1986). The Army and Vietnam. Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press. Lamb, C.J. J.D. Orton, M.C. Davies, T.T. Pikulsky (2013). Human Terrain Teams: An Organizational Innovation for Sociocultural Knowledge in Irregular Warfare. Washington, DC: The Institute of World Politics Press. Lantis, J. (2002). ‘Strategic Culture and National Security Policy’, International Studies Review 4 (3) (Autumn 2002), 87–113. – (2006). Strategic Culture: From Clausewitz to Constructivism. Report Prepared for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Advanced Systems and Concepts Office by SAID, 31 October. Locher, J.A. et al. Forging a New Shield (2008). Washington, DC: Project on National Security Reform. Lord, C. (1985). ‘American Strategic Culture’, Comparative Strategy 5 (3), 269–293. McChrystal, S. (2014). My Share of the Task: A Memoir. New York: Portfolio Trade. McMahon, R.J. (1986). ‘Eisenhower and Third World Nationalism: A Critique of the Revisionists’, Political Science Quarterly 101 (3), 453–473. McMaster, H.R. (1997). Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam. New York: HarperCollins. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (2014). AAAP-6, NATO Glossary of Terms and Definitions, NATO Standardization Agency. Nagl, J.A. (2007). ‘The Evolution and Importance of Army/Marine Corps Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency’, FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press. Packer, G. (2006). ‘The Lesson of Tal Afar’, The New Yorker, 10 April. Paparone, C. (2013). The Sociology of Military Science: Prospects for Postinstitutional Military Design. New York: Bloomsbury. Peterson, S. (2000). Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda. New York: Routledge. Price, D.H. (2008). Anthropological Intelligence: The Deployment and Neglect of American Anthropology in the Second World War. Durham, SC: Duke University Press. Rhode, J. (2013). Armed With Expertise: The Militarization of American Social Research During the Cold War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Richter, P. (2005). ‘Rumsfeld Hasn’t Hit a Dead End in Forging Terms for Foe in Iraq’, The Los Angeles Times, 30 November.

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Ricks, T.E. Fiasco: The America Military Adventure in Iraq. New York: The Penguin Press. – (2015). ‘The Hierarchy Does Not Work’, Marine Corps Gazette 99 (6). Roulo, C. (2013). ‘McRaven: Success in Human Domain Fundamental to Special Ops’. Armed Forces Press Service. 5 June. Rumsfeld, D.H. (2003). Prepared Statement on the National Security Personnel System. Delivered to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, U.S. Congress. Washington, DC, 4 June. Schmitt, E. (1995). ‘NATO Shifts Focus of its Air Attacks on Bosnia Serbs’. The New York Times, 11 September. Schulte, G.L. (2013). ‘Revisiting NATO’s Kosovo Air War: Strategic Lessons for an Era of Austerity’. Joint Force Quarterly 71 (4th Quarter). Silber L. and A. Little. (1996). The Death of Yugoslavia, Revised Edition. London, Penguin Books. Sky, E. (2015). The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq. New York: Public Affairs. Snyder, J.L. (1977). The Soviet Strategic Culture: Implications for Limited Nuclear Operations. R-2154-AF. Santa Monica, CA: RAND. Strachan, H. (2007). Clausewitiz’s On War:  A Biography. New York:  Atlantic Monthly Press. Summers Jr., H.G. (1985). On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. New York: Presido Press. Tilghman, A. (2015). ‘Pentagon’s Quiet Push for Military Personnel Reform’, Military Times, 11 May. Tucker D. and C. J. Lamb. (2007). United States Special Operations Forces. New York: Columbia University Press. Turner, M.A. (2004). ‘A Distinctive U.S. Intelligence Identity’. International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 17 (1), 42–61. Ucko, D.H. (2009). The New Counterinsurgency Era: Transforming the U.S. Military for Modern Wars. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. U.S. Department of Defense (2013). Strategic Landpower: Winning the Clash of Wills. Arlington, VA: Strategic Landpower Task Force, May. U.S. Government. (2011). ADP 3-0, Unified Land Operations. Arlington, VA: Department of the Army. – (2014). The Budget for Fiscal Year 2014, Historical Tables. Washington, DC: Office of Management and Budget. – (2006). Field Manual 3-24/Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 3-33.5, Counterinsurgency. Washington, DC: Department of the Army.

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– (1982). Field Manual 100-5, Operations. Washington, DC: Department of the Army. – (1997). MCDP 1, Warfighting. Washington, DC: Department of the Navy. – (1950). NSC-68, United States Objectives and Programs for National Security. The White House. – (1947). Public Law 253/S 758, National Security Act of 1947, 26 July. – (2014a). TRADOC Pam 525-8-5, U.S. Army Functional Concept for Engagement. Fort Eustis, VA: TRADOC. – (1987). United State Strategic Bombing Survey (European War) (Pacific War). Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Air University Press. West, F.J. (2003). The Village. New York: Pocket Books. White, N.F. (2014). ‘Organizing for War: Overcoming Barriers to Whole-of-Government Strategy in the ISIL Campaign’, Small Wars Journal, 28 December. Wiktorowicz, Q. (2006). ‘Anatomy of the Salafi Movement’. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 29 (3), 207–239. Woodward, B. State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc, 2006. Wong L. and S. J. Gerras. (2015). Lying to Ourselves: Dishonest in the Army Profession. Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute. Yingling, P. (2007). ‘A Failure of Generalship’, Armed Forces Journal, 1 May. Zinni, A.C. (2008). ‘Non-Traditional Military Missions’, in Joe Strange, Capital ‘W’ War: A Case for Strategic Principles of War (Because War Are Conflicts of Societies, Not Tactical Exercises Writ Large, Perspectives on Warfighting Number Six. Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University.

INSTITUTIONS

Mehmed Ali

The Matrimony of Patrimony:  The Troubled Marriage of Museums and Mission in U.S.-Occupied Iraq Iraq is one of those unique places in the world – essentially contiguous to the Mesopotamia of old – a land between two rivers which has served in continuum for millennia as a cultural crossroads. The nation’s sense of history is evident even though it is a relatively new construct, established as a British Mandate colony in 1920 out of several distinct pieces of Ottoman territory. Here is believed to be the birthplace of agriculture, writing, law, city-states, and the wheel. It is the geographic successor to the great empires of the Sumerians, Assyrians, and Babylonians which made it a cradle of civilization. But as the past has shown, sometimes the cradle will fall… One of the grave consequences of the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003 most covered by the media was the looting of the National Museum and other cultural institutions following the breakdown of order in Baghdad, an outcome of the conflict which, in public discussions, sometimes overshadowed the overall loss of life itself. The decision by the Coalition Provisional Authority to disband the Iraqi security forces which led to chaos illustrated not only a great depth of ineptitude but a lack of concern for those symbolic and yet highly important elements of society such as history and culture. And in perspective, the concept that Iraq’s antiquities might be targeted during the conflict should have been well understood as many regional museums had been looted during the first Gulf War of 1991 (Luke and Kersel 2013: 1). As U.S. troops carefully created a security perimeter around the Ministry of Oil complex, essential cultural sites like the National Museum were left unprotected and were torn asunder (Rothfield 2009: 78). As one author has described, ‘during a few hours… several thousand years of Iraqi history vanished in one of the most dramatic episodes of memoricide in recent history’ (Tejel 2012: 160). Looters quickly ransacked many of the exhibition halls and storage areas, denuding them of thousands of the nation’s historic artifacts (Russell 2014: 83, 85). In the end, the American occupiers were designated by some as the ‘modern Mongols’ for their role in allowing Iraq’s cultural heritage to be assaulted (Hanley 2003). Although the National Museum became the focal point for criticism it was not the only entity of its kind to suffer. Places like the Mosul Cultural Museum,

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in the nation’s second largest city, saw the theft of several of their ancient bronze reliefs and cuneiform tablets dating back to Assyrian Empire times.1 The Mosul center also was victim to a rocket attack which damaged one of the exhibition halls while south of Baghdad the museum at Babylon was ‘heavily looted (and) its library reduced to a pile of ashes’.2 Aside of the damage to museums, as Coalition forces spread out through the country they could be blamed for a host of negative impacts to ancient sites as well including building ‘parking lots built near the ancient halls of Babylon, an air base surrounding the Ziggurat of Ur… and sniper posts on the massive spiral minaret of Samarra’.3 It was the connection that Iraqis and the world held for the treasures of Mesopotamia that made the ill-starred events of 2003 so personal for so many and really put America in a bad light. Understanding the detrimental public relations issue and feeling a compelling interest at ‘righting a wrong’ the US military and diplomatic corps worked to invest themselves in an area which was out of their traditional scope of mission. Unlike the British who came into Iraq during the Great War with several high-level officers who held backgrounds in archeology, the Americans in 2003 had no comparable talent (Rothfield 2009: 8). Within a brief time, though, a new generation of Monuments Men (and Women) arose to assume a multi-million dollar, high profile effort at ‘fixing’ the problems connected with Iraq’s cultural heritage. In the end, however, the limited experience of museum and cultural heritage management by those charged to undertake the effort, the often competing and cross colliding goals of the military, civilian and Iraqi agencies involved, and the difficulties of working in an active warzone laid out a difficult path for progress in Iraq. The early responses to the impacts of the U.S. invasion were laid out by military leaders such as Marine colonel Matthew Bogdanis who was sent by CENTCOM to report that ‘only a tiny fraction’ of antiquities were stolen from the National Museum. After getting over the initial denial stage that nothing major had happened to Iraq’s cultural infrastructure and the idea that, ‘the museum looting – that monstrous ‘crime against humanity’ – turned out to be false’ the U.S. government began to reconsider its public positions on the issue (Rumsfeld 2011: 477). While there were some discussions and interest at different levels, both in civilian and military organizations, it took a few years after the initial occupation for the concept of cultural heritage to be strategically placed onto the U.S. list of priorities. 1 U.S. Embassy Baghdad, Archaeological sites in the Ninewa Province, July 2008, 6. 2 National Geographic News report on The National Geographic Society’s Cultural Assessment of Iraq, ‘Ancient Iraqi Sites Show Theft, Destruction’, June 2003. 3 Schemm, Paul, ‘Weighing Up Losses To Iraq’s Heritage’, AFP (16 March 2007).

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After some time, the importance of historic asset preservation was recognized specifically in both the U.S.-drafted Status of Forces Agreement and Strategic Framework Agreement which had as a goal to ‘promote Iraqi efforts and contributions to international efforts to preserve Iraqi cultural heritage, (and) rehabilitate Iraqi museums’ (‘Agreement Between the USA and Iraq’ 2008: 5; ‘Strategic Framework Agreement’ 2008: 3). Seeing the need to professionalize their connectivity to these issues the Embassy hired a full time Cultural Heritage Liaison in November of 2006 (Rush 2010: 127). Diane Siebrandt joined the Public Affairs Office with a masters degree in zoöarcheology and several digs under her belt including experience in Iraq with the U.S. sponsored Mass Graves Team (U.S. Embassy Baghdad 2008a). Famous for attempting to control all things archeology (once even declaring that ‘everything to do with cultural heritage must come through my desk!’) (Interview with anonymous, 21 April 2009), Siebrandt perhaps did not understand the reality of the literally hundreds of separate commands and agencies and the hundreds of thousands of Americans running around the country with different missions and diverse mindsets at that time. That said, her commitment to the cause and dogged determination in countless bureaucratic struggles yielded some results (U.S. Embassy Baghdad 2008e). The efforts of Siebrandt and others in the diplomatic corps and executive offices culminated in the Iraq Cultural Heritage Project (ICHP), launched by First Lady Laura Bush and the Iraqi Ambassador to the U.S., Samir Sumaidaie, in October of 2008 (U.S. Embassy Baghdad, 2008h). Totaling almost $14 million, the Project called for constructing a conservation institute for artifact preservation, promoting professional development for Iraqis working in the field of archeology and museum management, and refurbishing the National Museum including design of new storage facilities and enhancements of exhibition galleries (U.S. Embassy Baghdad, 2008h). The Project was awarded for implementation to International Relief and Development Fund, a non-governmental organization who had no real cultural heritage experience but had a substantive existing operation and track record (albeit controversial for their lack of oversight at times) of projects in Iraq (Hingham, Scott et al. 2014; ‘USAID’ 2009). The long road to reconstruction was not an easy path. First, in making a decision on where to locate the conservation institute as part of ICHP, security considerations were at the forefront especially with the ‘Surge Mentality’ that was occurring with the buildup of a military and diplomatic counteroffensive to the troubles of 2006 and 2007 (Interview with anonymous, 29 October 2010). It was determined at the time that the institute (which was eventually named the Iraqi

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Institute for the Conservation of Antiquities and Heritage or IICAH) would be built in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil (U.S. Embassy Baghdad 2008i;), the nation’s fourth largest metropolis and a zone of relative peace since the U.S. led invasion (Romano and Gurses 2014: 144). But Erbil, or Hawler as most locals call it, is not just any Iraqi city – it is the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government, the autonomous governing area led by the minority Kurdish people. And although it was described as having an ‘unintended, but positive, result: bringing Americans, Iraqis, and Kurds together to learn about conservation techniques and the cultural heritage of the region’ (Luke and Kersel 2013: 90) it also became a source of contention for heritage professionals and Iraqi politicians in the central government which naturally thought that the premier conservation institute should be located in the national capital where of course Arabs, not Kurds, are the majority (Interview with anonymous, 22 August 2012). A second issue was that equipment used for training museum professionals in specific conservation techniques was not available in Baghdad leading some to question how the new knowledge was going to have long term benefits once individuals returned to the capital after training (Interview with anonymous, 22 August 2012). While the Iraqi Institute was important, the centerpiece of the Iraq Cultural Heritage Project was the National Museum. While one can disagree with the ideas that a ‘museum’s primary function is ideological’, that it provides a ‘hegemonic function’ in bringing allegiance to the state (Duncan and Wallach 1980: 449, 457), or that it is ‘a form of social control’ (Gillis 1994: 90–91) one must see that the National Museum in Iraq attempted to bolster a sense of legitimacy for the newly created nation. Museums are not only a reflection of the national identity, they are reification of the state itself. And leaders from King Faisal to revolutionary Abdul Qarim Qassem to Saddam Hussein all realized the stories of the past could provide a sense of unified power to a country which had no real sense of being before the establishment of the Kingdom of Iraq in 1921. Unlike in other countries where home-grown bourgeois elements established museums as a way to preserve rare collections and showcase elite values, the creation of the National Museum was a top-down government affair from the beginning (Gillis 1994: 90–91). And in Iraq’s case the cause of establishing a museum did not necessarily derive from the local people but from an imperial outsider. Gertrude Bell, Oriental Secretary to the British High Commissioner for Iraq, saw the establishment of the National Museum as a way to provide affirmation for the weak state. Almost single handedly Bell established the structure on which Iraq’s cultural heritage was staged. In July of 1922 she drafted the nation’s antiquities

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law, in October she was appointed the ‘Honorary Director of Antiquities’ by the newly installed King Faisal ibn Hussayn, and a year later in October of 1923 she initiated the National Museum (Howell 2006: 429–430). Overseeing the creation of the Museum was one of Bell’s great undertakings and illustrated her dual role as a chief preserver of Iraq’s cultural heritage and enforcer of British power. The Museum became an allegory for the relationship between the new nation and its ‘Mandate’ overseer. For example, Bell influenced the moving of the National Museum out of the Ministry of Education so it could be attached instead to the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation which ‘did not contain a large number of nationalists who would fight to protect the museum’s interests’ vis-à-vis the foreign trade of antiquities excavated in country by British archeologists (Gillis 1994: 92–93). And in establishing the themes of the Museum, Bell ensured that in order to limit potential identification with pan-Arab nationalism which could disrupt relations with Britain, the National Museum focused on the glory of the ancient past of the Sumerians, Assyrians, and Babylonians, giving no consideration to the splendor of Abbasid Baghdad or any other Islamic heritage (Juterczenka 2009: 133). The history of the Museum’s beginnings foreshadowed the continuation of a perceived external ‘imperial imperative’ from a local population who had been shut off from international connectivity for several decades under the Ba’athist government and was wary of ‘foreign influences’. Early decisions during the Coalition Provisional Authority period also contributed to cloud over any good will generated by the Embassy in regards to later initiatives with the National Museum. As United States’ law enforcement officials and diplomats were aggressively attempting to obtain the return of ancient artifacts looted from the National Museum, Americans were continually reminded and forced to face the reality that two substantial record groups – the papers of the Ba’ath government (which were sent to the Hoover Institute) (U.S. Embassy Baghdad 2008b) and of the Jewish Archives (comprised of material collected by Iraqi ‘Secret Police’ from the Jewish community that fled Iraq due to persecution) had been removed from Iraq in the early days following the overthrow (U.S. Embassy Baghdad 2007; U.S. Embassy Baghdad, 2008g). One of the United States’ major difficulties in working on the National Museum included even obtaining approval to conduct work there. First on the list to deal with was the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, the legal authority on all matters related to cultural heritage in Iraq through Antiquities Law Number 55 which was approved in 2002 before the occupation (U.S. Embassy Baghdad 2010b). Making matters complicated, the State Board reported to two governing

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entities – the Ministry of Culture and the State Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (Garen 2006b). And in the world of creating positions of power to please numerous political parties and religious factions, the latter body was especially made up of appointed people largely representing the Shi’a community which often put up roadblocks for the long term employees of the State Board who were Sunni (Garen 2006a). In many ways, the Iraqi government’s involvement in the preservation of its history replicated the larger political overtones which Ambassador Ryan Crocker described as a ‘sectarian system that was used to divide the spoils of state’ (‘Statement’ 2007). In the work on the National Museum, there were less than subtle undertones with many Iraqis who viewed the projects with the Americans to be ‘collaborationist’ in nature. Attempting to push through the competing interests, the Embassy spent much precious time navigating the convoluted politics embedded in the world of Iraqi antiquities and trying to find reliable partners who did not view the Americans as ‘occupiers’ (Rothfield 2008: 22; Interview with anonymous, December 20, 2011). And when things looked precarious in regards to Iraq government approval for projects (manifested in such ways as a two year delay on a project involving the ancient site of Babylon), the Public Affairs Office went on record as supporting the candidacy of Dr. Ameera Edan Hlaihel to be the official Chair of the State Board of Antiquities declaring that, ‘U.S. prestige in the cultural heritage arena in Iraq and internationally depends on Dr. Ameera’ and that there were, ‘no other qualified candidates for this position’ (U.S. Embassy Baghdad 2008c). Although the National Museum originally began its operations in June of 1926 (Howell 2006: 430), because of the country’s numerous wars it has been only open regularly for two years since 1980 (U.S. Embassy Baghdad 2008f; Somervill 2010: 130). And this includes the period of ‘stability’ with the U.S. presence in Iraq which unfortunately only accomplished limited gains in helping the museum attain a normal status. With relations between the Embassy and the Iraqis involved in cultural heritage vacillating but mainly improving as time went on, the Museum has ‘opened’ in fits and starts since the fall of the Ba’athists. The Iraqi government launched an official reopening to much fanfare in February of 2009 with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki sharing the stage with Ambassador Ryan Crocker. But after the excitement dissipated, the museum actually stayed closed with the exception of periodic school group visits associated to politically connected individuals (Interview with anonymous, 15 March 2012). In August of 2014, the Museum announced that it had ‘inaugurated’ two halls which focused on the Hellenistic heritage of Iraq, opening them briefly to the public, however,

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it was noted that the museum was still closed, ‘due to security concerns’ (‘Iraq National Museum’ 2014). And if one does not count the ‘hits’ to the Embassysponsored virtual tour of the Museum that Google engineered, one can realize the showpiece of American cultural reconstruction is just as absent of visitors as it was during Saddam’s tenure (Nordland 2009; ‘Journey’ 2011). As there is a publically undiscussed principle which allows for the understanding that the National Museum is ‘by far the most important institution’ in the country it is a natural outcome that other centers of cultural preservation are in the second echelon of promoting the national identity (Ata Sabri 2010: 4). And this leads to a policy where not all museums are created equal (or funded as such). While substantial Iraqi and international support has been offered to the National Museum, other public spaces are important hubs of patrimony which for the most part have been lost in the cultural hierarchy. That being said, the Embassy did provide some level of support to a number of other smaller entities focusing on history, culture and heritage. One organization, the Museum of Modern Art, known eponymously as Markaz Saddam during dictator Hussein’s rule, was the premier location for collecting works of art during Baghdad’s heyday as a center for ‘bright cultural activities that attracted artists and intellectuals from all around the Arab world’ (Al-Tawil 2004). Artists who became famous, not only in Iraq, but throughout the Middle East included Jawad Salim and Faiq Hassan amongst others and their works were represented at the museum (Fattah 2009: 185). Just as in the case of the National Museum, the Modern Art Museum suffered terribly in the looting that occurred in the wake of the American occupation as such, ‘At first, local residents broke into the building and stripped furniture, electrical fixtures, air conditioners and other similar items. By the second day of looting, professionals who understood the value of the holdings removed approximately 8500 paintings and pieces of sculpture from the Museum. Aside of famous Iraqi artists, the Museum also had collections representing the works of Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, and others’. (Ata Sabri 2010: 4–5)

Modern art was suspect to many in the post-invasion governments of Iraq especially after religious-focused parties gained ascendancy in parliament. Qasim Sabti, a well-respected Baghdad artist during this time, related that, ‘Because of this political atmosphere, there’s no oxygen left for the artist to breathe’ (Myers 2010b). As part of the deëmphasis on what many politicians considered ‘impious’ art, the Museum was provided limited funds, building repairs went uncompleted, and exhibition areas were taken over for use by an expansion of offices for other ministries (Myers 2010a). While for a number of years there had been calls for

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assistance from the Museum for the U.S. Embassy they were often turned down by the Public Affairs Section who did not see it as a priority or were overwhelmed at the complexity of the requests which ran the gamut from finding all the individual missing sculptures and paintings to funding the construction of a brand new state of the art museum building (Interview with anonymous, 14 July 2009). The Embassy, instead focused on a smaller project coming up with a little over $10,000 for the printing of an awareness book patterned after the ‘Red List’ of missing antiquities. The book had some success in tracking down stolen artwork notably Dia al Azzawi’s Lost City – a famous modern oil on canvas that appeared for sale to a museum in Dubai. Initially threats were made against the art dealer who reported the painting to Interpol. However, after a short period of time, the ‘owner’ of the painting came to their senses and the FBI and the Embassy worked to bring the piece back to the museum in Baghdad (Pocock 2010: 56–57). But with ‘one down, 8,499 to go’ the work of repatriation can be viewed as a very long term project which is doubly difficult as the fluid borders of the immediate post-invasion period provided an easy avenue for illegal export of Iraq’s national modern art portfolio. And to add to the difficulties, accusations have been leveled that the General Director of Fine Arts in the Ministry of Culture (which oversees the Museum of Modern Art) has been the ‘Godfather of the Museum art works looters’ potentially being involved in some of the illegal transactions regarding missing art, claiming that they were not looted but actually legally and rightfully belonged to ‘private collections’.4 Another institution the Embassy assisted was the War Crimes Museum based at the Iraqi High Tribunal where Saddam Hussein and others were tried after the overthrow of the government in 2003. The Tribunal was created under the auspices of a Coalition Provisional Authority statute and was criticized by some as being, ‘riddled with technical and substantive shortcomings that undermined (its) independence and legitimacy’ (Bassiouni 2011: 696). One of the goals of the Tribunal was to ensure that it was on the right side of history by telling its story which was backed up by an archive of 26 million digitized documents of evidence against the Ba’athist government (U.S. Embassy Baghdad 2008j; U.S. Department of State 2009: 4). In the fall of 2008, U.S. Embassy Public Affairs staff were charged with assisting the development of a museum in collaboration with the Tribunal. Although a few names, such as the Iraqi Museum for Victim Legacies or the straight forward Iraqi High Tribunal Museum, were proposed by Embassy staff to soften the tone of its outward mission, the focus of the War Crimes Museum really gravitated 4 E-mail from anonymous to author (29 November 2014).

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to proving the atrocities of the Ba’athist government.5 Advice from the Embassy was to have the museum focus on the stories of the people who were victimized and an elaborate floor plan was drawn up with a ‘memory station’ and sections highlighting ‘healing and reconciliation’ and the ‘importance of rule of law’.6 But in many ways, as Ambassador Ryan Crocker related at a congressional hearing in 2007, that ‘no Nelson Mandela existed to emerge’ in Iraq, the realities of revenge took first place in the minds of the Iraqi designers (United States Senate 2007). The end result became a kind of House of Horrors display with the exhibit of Baathist torture devices including an iron cage used at Iraq’s Olympic Committee headquarters by Saddam’s son to lock up and brutalize athletes who failed to win (Haynes 2008). The museum, in many respects, did exactly what Saddam Hussein would have probably wanted – while highlighting the evils of his regime it essentially glorified the unbounded power that he wielded. There were several factors which helped to doom the short-lived museum. First was the decision of the government of Nuri Al-Maliki to essentially shutter the doors of the Iraqi High Tribunal itself which left the museum without an institutional backer. The Tribunal’s ‘closing’ was perhaps a declaration from the government that the past of Saddam had been dealt with effectively and it was time to move on, maybe as a nod to those Sunni who thought that the court had singled them out for prosecution/persecution, or perhaps because even though the Tribunal was limited in scope to cover only the Ba’athist period of rule, Maliki probably didn’t want a distinct branch of justice which was continually highlighting the evils of government and potentially bringing further comparisons to his own rule.7 (Interview with anonymous, 6 January 2010). Whatever the rationale, most of the remaining judges of the Tribunal were ushered into retirement and other employees let go. The museum was never able to welcome the general public inside to its displays and it closed up in 2010 less than two years after its launch. In an act of foresight, however, the thousands of documents which had been scanned deposited onto a series of hard drives which were stored in offsite locations. Their exact whereabouts today is still kept in confidence.8 A unique organization that was assisted was the House of Fashion, an institution that came out of an explosion of museum openings, including at least nine new ones launched in the decade following the ascension of the Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist Party in 1968, which helped in ‘promoting nationalism’ and ‘denying social 5 6 7 8

E-mail from Hyder Jaffar to author (10 December 2008). U.S. Embassy Baghdad, Iraqi Genocide Museum Proposed Floor Plan, January 2009. Interview with anonymous (6 January 2010). E-mail from anonymous to author (21 December 2014).

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difference(s)’ between the numerous religious and ethnic groups that made up Iraq (Gillis 1994: 97–98, 100). The House of Fashion, (renamed on English-language documents as the Iraqi Heritage House of Historic Textiles by Public Affairs staff so it would sound less trivial) was curated by a director who had a flair for preserving antique artifacts as well as coordinating modern fashion shows with designs inspired by ancient clothing. Through the Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation the Embassy granted $50,000 to improve the museum’s operations and storage facilities (U.S. Embassy Baghdad 2008d). And true to Iraqi politics, as soon as the project was completed the director started receiving death threats and was forced into early retirement because of her dealings with the Americans and ‘due to the fact that she was a Christian’ (Interview with anonymous, 21 December 2008). A final museum that was supported by the Embassy through one of its satellite entities, the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mosul, was the Elbnay Maranj Cultural Center located at the small town of Tel Isqof (also known as Telisquf) in a remote area of the Ninewa Plains where tens of thousands of Christian and other minority refugees had fled after sectarian violence reigned heavy in cities like Baghdad (U.S. Embassy Baghdad 2010d). The idea was to have the Reconstruction Team assist the museum in strengthening their capacity through purchase of computers, display cases, and a generator and in preserving their collections which included ancient Christian manuscripts which dated as far back as the 7th century C.E (U.S. Embassy Baghdad 2010a). Many of the Embassy’s projects over the years were initiated in the absence of a heavy, top-down framework instead being formed through a fairly decentralized process which was flexible to immediate geographic needs. With the State Department’s primary project program, QRF (Quick Response Funds), individual diplomats and teams around the country were connected to a proposal system which was aligned to several open-ended themes created by the Embassy (US Embassy Baghdad 2010c). There was veto power from the central offices (which was very infrequently used), but rarely an order for something particular from on high. The Elbnay Maranj museum was a different story, however, given high priority primarily because of its linkage to the ‘Minority Directive’, a series of Congressional mandates which appropriated funds specifically for the Department of State to assist religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq (United States Government Accountability Office 2012; US Embassy Baghdad 2012). With individual House members such as Anna Eshoo and Frank Wolf promoting the cause of their constituents who were connected to Iraqi Christians in the Ninewa Plains there were tens of millions of dollars available for projects that fit the Directive (Allen, Jr. 2013). While Eshoo kept the heat on due to her own background as an

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Assyrian American, Wolf was different in that he was responsible to voting and lobbying interests in Virginia which were highly engaged on the issue of keeping Christianity alive in the Middle East (‘Secret Political Reach 2009). With pressure from Washington, DC and from the Embassy itself, the Reconstruction Team responsible for the area rallied to find enough projects that would help tally up towards the total (FY 2010). The Elbnay Maranj initiative perhaps optimistically forecasted the impact a small museum would have on the region; This project will assis a privately run cultural museum to display artifacts from Telisquf ’s past preserving them for future generation of Iraqis and international visitors. Visitors will pay to view the exhibits, purchase souvenirs, and use locally provided services injecting badly needed cash into the local economy. Aside of natural energy resources, Iraq’s primary potential for global economic engagement is tourism. Much like Egypt or Jordan benefit greatly from foreign funds coming into the country through international visitors, so too Iraq has the potential to maximize its cultural and historical resources for economic gains. As the security situation stabilizes in Ninewa, the demand for tourism, especially potential religious tourism from the region and the West will increase accordingly’. (U.S. Embassy Baghdad 2010d)

But despite the high hopes of the museum and its Embassy champions that it would eventually be well integrated into the world tourist circuit, Tel Isqof became just another dot on the map in the battle between government forces and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). During the summer of 2014 ISIL occupied and ravaged the Christian community in Tel Isqof and then subsequently was forced from the town during the fighting with Iraqi-Kurdish forces (Abdullah 2014). Once again, concepts of historical and cultural preservation were smothered by overpowering political and security circumstances. As the Department of State was doing its part in assisting the rebuilding of Iraq’s cultural heritage infrastructure, the Department of Defense was also in the game but really as a relatively minor player considering its resources. At numerous command levels, the military assigned staff to work on cultural heritage issues including the top levels of the chain. At Combined Joint Directorate Nine (CJ-9), one of the subsets of Multi-National Force-Iraq essentially created to take on mission areas that didn’t ‘seem to fit neatly anywhere else’, there was a billet for a Tourism and Antiquities Liaison Officer.9 The Liaison Officer, however, was

9 Fielding, Marcus, Red Zone Baghdad (Newport, Australia: Big Sky Publishing, 2011).

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usually a low-ranking individual often with an O-2 or O-3 designation with little decision-making power.10 The U.S. military also established an Antiquities Working Group (also known as the Historical/Cultural Advisory Group) which, because it was connected primarily to the impact of Army construction projects on archeological sites, was based out of the Central Command’s Environmental Engineering Office. The limited goals of the Group were evident in their official schedule; to implement a ‘Fragmentary Order’ regarding military presence near archeological sites, prepare an environmental guidance document and an ‘Archeological Construction Checklist’, and ensure that the military had contact numbers for Iraqi archeological inspectors for each province (U.S. Embassy Baghdad 2008d). While the U.S. military could be credited with the lion’s share of the problems caused by American intervention they did not in the end contribute many initiatives towards fixing the issues despite having a vast sum of resources on hand. It’s as if the concept of American Exceptionalism and can-do spirit seemed to be absent in many military circles over time in Iraq. While there were billions of dollars available through CERP funding very little went towards focusing on cultural heritage. While there was one project which removed modern Iraqi Army buildings constructed on the ancient site of Kish, the Department of Defense’s chief contribution to the cause was the Legacy Resource Management Program based at Fort Drum in New York which created thousands of decks of Archaeology Awareness playing cards and similar information posters (Rush 2010: 127, 129). In this rationed role, the military can be scrutinized as helping to protect Iraq patrimony primarily through a self-benefit – that is, education and training for its own ranks. But in some respects with limited experience and subject matter knowledge it might have been a solid decision for the U.S. armed forces to stay out of the cultural heritage arena. As one service member who was involved in formulating proposed development plans for the Aqar Quf Ziggurat in western Baghdad wisely realized, ‘I was not there as a preservationist, but as an U.S. Army engineer officer’ (Kila and Zeidler 2013: 183). If not for the weight of its own bureaucracy and the connected inertia it creates or for the more pressing and natural mission of security, the American military might have taken more of an active role in heritage issues and caused more long term harm than good. Even though the U.S. military was the ‘heavyweight’ in the civilian-military partnership there was very little substantial outcomes from the relationship aside

10 E-mail from 1st Lieutenant Brennan Howell to David DeVoss, 26 September 2009; E-mail from Captain Fred Saunders to Mohammad Gozeh, October 27, 2009.

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of an occasional partnership in serving on committees which produced ideas and a few Department of Defense policies. One angle of the relationship was a State Department reliance on the military for all sorts of logistical support in the field. Due to the security situation, travel to museums and archeological sites was most often only accomplished with Coalition air and ground transportation as diplomats would arrive at Iraqi institutions focusing on a ‘civilian mission’ surrounded by heavily armed soldiers.11 And this dependence was quite clear once the military left the country in December 2011 there was no way that the Embassy could actually transport diplomats to remote sites.12 One of the few instances of a substantive partnership (and one of the few uses of Department of Defense funds for cultural heritage) was a project focusing on a new roof at the National Museum – something that was necessary in order for all the other projects to be viable and something that was forgotten for inclusion when the Iraq Cultural Heritage Project was submitted.13 Due to changed regulations, the Embassy’s Quick Response Funds, mandated a 50 per cent match from the Government of Iraq.14 With this in play and the Iraqis unable to actually budget for such an expense, the roof at the National Museum could only be funded through a U.S. source which had no such strings attached, namely the Army’s Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP). Establishing a true partnership with civilian expertise and military money was not easy at first. In 2008, the Embassy’s Diane Siebrandt had lined up a proposed suitor for funding in the form of the U.S. military who had access to CERP funds.15 With everything almost finalized, the advisor to the Minister of Culture, Bahaa Mayah, informed the Americans that an Iraqi engineer had looked at the problem and the cost was going to be $3 million instead of the approximately $740,000 originally estimated. Mayah even graciously announced that he had a contractor all lined up to do the work which sent the military commander walking away with the funds.16

11 U.S. Embassy Baghdad, Draft of Book Chapter entitled U.S. Military Support of Cultural Heritage Awareness and Preservation in Post-Conflict Iraq, Diane Siebrandt, November 2008. 12 Interview with anonymous (2 February 2012). 13 Interview with anonymous (11 December 2011). 14 E-mail from Glen Keiser to Akemi Tinder (22 November 2009). 15 Memorandum for Commander, Multi-National Corps – Iraq, Iraq National Museum Roof Reconstruction (17 August 2009). 16 Notes from meeting with Diane Siebrandt (5 November 2009).

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By building up a personal relationship through weekly meetings with the US Division Center Commander Major General Terry Wolff, the uber-stereotype of a diplomat – book-brilliant and socially reserved – Minister-Counselor Thomas Lynch was the linchpin in getting the U.S. military to finally sign over the CERP funds before the program closed its doors to new projects in the summer of 2010. With a simple ask from the humble envoy, the General caved in and approval came as ‘my gift to the PRT’.17 But then came the hard part. The contractor hired for the roof repair was a local Iraqi company who excelled in the tradition of Middle East bartering while U.S. military oversight of the project was very limited as work towards closing out the CERP portfolio took precedence as well as the attitude from certain officers that the initiative was ‘really an Embassy scheme, not a military priority’.18 Staff interaction from the National Museum on the project was either nonexistent or overbearing dependent on the day.19 After much haggling a first test completed by pouring thousands of gallons of water on the roof showed success.20 When the second test was done, however, there were issues due to the fact that the protective copper flashing covers connected to gutters had been stolen.21 Eventually the project was completed with some compromises on both sides and a salve in the form of another project in which the Embassy purchased $22,000 worth of office equipment and computers for the Museum.22 While the most accepted narrative of the U.S. ‘adventure’ in Iraq is one of complete failure, American involvement with cultural heritage provided many instances of positive success. Over the years of intense American involvement, good things did happen. With support from the State Department, the International Council of Museums disseminated the Emergency Red List of Iraqi Antiquities at Risk to highlight artifacts that were being looted and traded in the international marketplace. In the area of training and exchange progress occurred including sending Iraqi museum staff to the United States to programs such as the International Partnerships Among Museums conference, a conservation lab at the Smithsonian Institution, Library of 17 E-mail from Robert Merchant to Robert Kuntz (9 September 2010). 18 Interview with anonymous (26 January 2011). 19 E-mail from Usama Algezrawi to Justin Cardoza (4 October 2010); E-mail from Mehmed Ali to Colonel Mark Haney (24 January 2011). 20 E-mail from Mehmed Ali to Colonel Mark Haney (24 January 2011). 21 E-mail from Usama Algezrawi to Mehmed Ali (21 March 2011); E-mail from Usama Algezrawi to Mehmed Ali (18 March 2011). 22 Letter from State Board of Antiquities to Baghdad Provincial Reconstruction Team (22 June 2011); E-mail from Daniel Terrell to Lavelle Kirkpatrick (8 July 2011).

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Congress digitization initiative or a six month residency at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute.23 And in an overarching sense, the trials of the Iraqi occupation essentially propelled the United States to finally ratify the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict in 2009.24 This being said, the long term reach of these initiatives is especially limited in conjunction to Iraq’s immediate needs. It should be noted that many of the issues with Iraq’s museums actually predated the invasion and yet American hands can bear some of the responsibility of that as well. Backed by the United States, the focus of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist tenure ended up to be starting a devastating war with neighboring Iran in 1980 (Donaldson 1996: 146). The eight year war left hundreds of thousands dead and when resources were robbed to pay for the conflict, so ended Baghdad’s golden age as a center of culture and learning. Museums on the wholesale suffered then and continue to suffer today. John Russell, an archeologist who has held numerous government positions over the years, including with the Coalition Provisional Authority, believes that, ‘Unfortunately, when you build a museum, the first thing people tend to want to do is fill it, and that is the last thing we need’ (Garen 2006). And yet museums, in places of instability like Iraq, provide security for rare artifacts that might otherwise be sold off into the world of private collections. The problem is when collections are centralized, as was the case of the National Museum, there is a potential for disaster which could be potentially alleviated by having artifacts be in diffused locations. And in a divided nation like Iraq there is also the larger issue of when a central government controls all the knowledge and artifacts of heritage raising questions of whose history is being preserved and what the narrative should actually be.25 The legacy of the United States’ cultural heritage work is of mixed results. Despite the work accomplished, the trend of overall neglect has continued and Iraq’s reputation as a place where challenges of priorities and funding are prodigious. The United States realized that even when the Iraq Cultural Heritage Project was officially completed in April of 2011, there needed to be a continuation of some level of substantial involvement from the Embassy side due especially to the Government of Iraq’s inability to take care of anything budget-wise aside salaries for employees of the pertinent agencies (U.S. Embassy Baghdad 2011). To this effect, 23 U.S. Embassy Baghdad, Press Conference Notes, October 2008; National Museum of Natural History, Anthropology Conservation Laboratory ‘What’s New for June 2004, Iraqi Colleagues Visit the Conservation Lab’. 24 Wegener, Corine, ‘The 1954 Hague Convention and Preserving Cultural Heritage’, Archeological Institute of America Site Preservation Program, October 2010. 25 Interview with anonymous (4 August 2014).

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the State Department pulled together some more funding to the tune of over a half a million dollars for the Iraqi Institute for the Conservation of Antiquities and Heritage while also leveraging another $650,000 from private foundations (U.S. Department of State 2012). Where one might see that initiatives like cultural heritage fit into a category of a ‘lesser tool of diplomacy’ there has been much emphasis on ‘soft power’ and ‘smart power’ during the last several administrations (Luke and Kersel 2013: 3). Museums might not naturally seem like the first stop on improving bilateral relations with a nation that the United States ‘liberated’. Yet museums’ long term focus on heritage and their control over national narratives which could be negative for Americans might mean that diplomats who want to have a positive legacy should continue to leverage resources to stay close to the source of history (U.S. Embassy Baghdad 2011). The larger de-emphasis of Iraq as a national foreign policy initiative the last few years has left a hole in the work begun over a decade ago. The window of opportunity to really have a positive impact was open only briefly and much of what was accomplished during that time was somewhat ephemeral. Issues of sustainability were always troublesome with any project in Iraq as a vast majority of the burden for keeping things on a similar path was placed on the Iraqis themselves. Iraqis who did not necessarily have the experience, resources, or interest in maintaining the same level of activity or direction. What Americans thought were priorities were not always compatible with those whose concept of sovereignty was first and foremost. And since 2014, the larger issues of instability brought on by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have left a question mark at the door of the touted accomplishments of the foreigners who went to assist Iraq.

Bibliography Abdullah, D. (2014). ‘Peshmerga Retake Mosul Dam: spokesmen’, Asharq AlAwsat, 18 August. ‘Agreement between the United States of America and the Republic of Iraq on the Withdrawal of United States Forces from Iraq and the Organization of Their Activities during Their Temporary Presence in Iraq, 17 November 2008’. Allen, Jr., J.L. (2013). The Global War on Christians: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Anti Christian Persecution. New York: Crown Publishing. Al-Tawil, H. and N. Shabout. (2004). ‘An Open Letter from Hashim Al-Tawil, Project to Save Iraqi Culture, Hashim Al-Tawil and Nada Shabout’, October 2004. accessed 18 November 2014.

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Ata Sabri, S. (2010). ‘Iraqi Artwork Red List’ Baghdad: US Embassy Baghdad. Bassiouni, M.C. (2011). Crimes Against Humanity: Historical Evolution and Contemporary Application. New York: Cambridge University Press. Donaldson, G. (1996). America at War Since 1945: Politics and Diplomacy in Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers. Duncan, C. and A. Wallach. (1980). ‘The Universal Survey Museum’, Art History (December). Fattah, H.M. (2009). A Brief History of Iraq. New York: Facts on File, Inc. Fielding, M. (2011). Red Zone Baghdad. Newport, Australia: Big Sky Publishing. ‘FY 2010 Economic Support Funds legislation’. accessed 1 October 2014. Garen, M. (2006a). ‘New Concern Over Fate of Iraqi Antiquities’ New York Times (9 September). – (2006b), ‘Threats To Iraq’s Heritage Continue From All Sides’, Four Corners Publishing (2 June). Gillis, J. (ed) (1994). Commemorations, the Politics of National Identity. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Hanley, C.J. (2003). ‘Looters Ransack Iraq’s National Library’, Associated Press (15 April). Haynes, D. (2008). ‘Memories of Pain in Saddam Hussein’s House of Horror’ The Times, (6 December). Hingham, S. et al. (2014). ‘Doing Well By Doing Good: The High Price of Working in War Zones’, Washington Post (4 May). Howell, G. (2006). Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ‘Iraq National Museum Opens Two Renovated Halls Following 2003 Looting’, The Guardian (21 August 2014). Juterczenka, S. (ed) (2009). The Fuzzy Logic of Encounter: New Perspectives on Cultural Contact. Germany: Waxmann Verlag GmbH. Kila, J. and J. Zeidler. (eds) (2013). Cultural Heritage in the Crosshairs; Protecting Cultural Property During Conflict. Leiden, Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV. Luke, C.M. and M.M. Kersel. (2013). United States Cultural Diplomacy and Archaeology – Soft Power, Hard Heritage. New York: Routledge. ‘Memorandum for Commander, Multi-National Corps – Iraq, Iraq National Museum Roof Reconstruction’, 17 August 2009. Myers, S.L. (2013a). ‘Iraq’s Modern Art Collection, Waiting To Re-Emerge’, New York Times 13 July.

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Myers, S.L. et al. (2013b). ‘Iraq’s Imperiled Modern Art’, New York Times, 14 July. Nordland, R. (2009). ‘Google Chief Announces Plan in Baghdad to Put Iraqi Artifacts Online’, New York Times, 24 November. Pocock, C. (2010). ‘Art in the Middle East. Issues’, Contemporary Practices 10, 54–61. Romano, D. and M. Gurses. (eds) (2014). Conflict, Democratization, and the Kurds in the Middle East, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Rothfield, L. (ed) (2008). Antiquities Under Siege: Cultural Heritage Protection After the Iraq War. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press. – (2009). The Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rumsfeld, D. (2011). Known and Unknown: A Memoir. New York: Sentinel. Rush, L. (ed) (2010). Archaeology, Cultural Property, and the Military. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press. Russell, M.B. (2014). The Middle East and South Asia – The World Today Series, 2014 – 2015, 48th Edition. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield. Schemm, P. (2007). ‘Weighing Up Losses To Iraq’s Heritage’, AFP, 16 March. ‘The Secret Political Reach Of ‘The Family’, National Public Radio, 24 November 2009, accessed 1 October 2014. Somervill, B. (2010). Empires of Ancient Mesopotamia. New York: Chelsea House. Starns, A. ‘The Journey to Bring Iraq’s National Museum to Street View’, accessed 18 November 2014. ‘Statement of Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, Before a Joint Hearing of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Committee on Armed Services’, 10 September 2007. ‘Strategic Framework Agreement for a Relationship of Friendship and Cooperation between the United States of America and the Republic of Iraq’, 17 November 2008. Tejel, J. et al. (2012). Writing the Modern History of Iraq: Historiographical and Political Challenges. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Company. ‘USAID halts Iraq job funding’, Stars and Stripes, 28 July 2009. U.S. Department of State. (2009). ‘Iraq Weekly Status Report, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs’, 7 January. – (2012). ‘Office of the Spokesman, U.S.—Iraq Joint Coordinating Committee for Cultural and Educational Cooperation, Fact Sheet’, 23 February.

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U.S. Embassy Baghdad. (2007). ‘Notes from John Russell Call, January 2007’. – (2008a). ‘Diane Siebrandt Bio, April 2008’. – (2008b). ‘Welcome Home Notes for Phil Reeker, May 2008’. – (2008c). Action Memorandum, Appointment of Dr. Ameera Idan Hlaihel as Chairman of the Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, 15 May 2008. – (2008d). ‘Cultural Heritage Core Projects 2008, June 2008’. – (2008e). ‘Staff Notice on Cultural Heritage Guidelines, June 2008’. – (2008f). ‘Assessment of the Iraq National Museum, August 2008’. – (2008g). ‘Notes from Meeting with the Minister of Culture, 14 August 2008’. – (2008h). ‘Press Release, 16 October 2008’. – (2008i). ‘Fact Sheet on Iraq Cultural Heritage Program, 20 October 2008’. – (2008j). ‘Action Memorandum, The Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation, 16 December 2008’. – (2009). ‘Iraqi Genocide Museum Proposed Floor Plan, January 2009’. – (2010a). ‘Provincial Reconstruction Team Ninewa, Elbnay Maranj Museum Project Cost, December 2010’. – (2010b). ‘Baghdad Provincial Reconstruction Team, National Museum Proposal, December 2010’. – (2010c). US Embassy Baghdad, QRF Handout-Minorities, 10 November. – (2010d). ‘Provincial Reconstruction Team Ninewa, Elbnay Maranj Cultural Museum proposal REVISED, December 2010’. – (2011). ‘U.S. Embassy Baghdad Cultural Heritage Projects’, accessed 4 November 2014. – (2012). ‘Minority Slideshow March 2012, v3’. United States Government Accountability Office. (2012). ‘Report to Congressional Requesters, Iraq – U.S. Assistance to Iraq’s Minority Groups in Response to Congressional Directives, July 2012’. United States Senate. (2007). ‘Hearing Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, One Hundred Tenth Congress, First Session, 11 September 2007’, United States Government Printing Office. Wegener, C. (2010). ‘The 1954 Hague Convention and Preserving Cultural Heritage’, Archeological Institute of America Site Preservation Program, October.

Natalia Grincheva

The Museum Dimension of American ‘Soft Power’: A Genealogy of Cultural Diplomacy Institutions V. We do not blame thee. Elder World—nor separate ourselves from thee: (Would the Son separate himself from the Father?) Looking back on thee – seeing thee thy duties, grandeurs, through past ages bending, building, We build ours today. Mightier than Egypt’s tombs, Fairer than Grecia’s, Roma’s temples, Prouder than Milan’s statued, spired Cathedral, More picturesque than Rhenish castle-keeps We plan, even now, to raise beyond them all, … VI. … Over whose golden roof shall flaunt, beneath thy banner, Freedom, The banners of The States, the flags of very land, A brood of lofty, fair, but lesser Palaces shall cluster. … X. And thou, high-towering One – America! … Thou – also thou, a world! With all thy wide geographies, manifold, different, distant, Rounding by thee in One – one common orbic language, One common indivisible destiny and Union. … -- Walt Whitman, Songs of the Exposition, 1871

I wanted to start this chapter on U.S. museum diplomacy with illuminating stanzas from the poem of a famous American essayist and journalist, Walt Whitman,

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who became one of the most influential poets in the American canon. Whitman wrote his Songs of the Exposition for the opening of the 40th fair of the American Institute in 1872, which was held annually at the Crystal Palace in New York City throughout the 19th century. Attracting more than 30,000 attendees per year, the fair was one of the first fairs around the world that provided a space for agriculture, commerce, manufacturing, cultural industries, and the arts to exhibit ‘the most valuable collections and products of the innovative industries’ (Wile 1928: 110). Songs of the Exposition by Whitman, with poetic prescience and emotional fervor, celebrates the ideals of the new American civilization. Through the reinforcement of the important place of the exhibition in the ‘dream of America’, the verses shown above reflect the highest aspiration of the people to create a new country -‘mightier’, ‘fairer’, and ‘more picturesque’ than the ‘Elder World’. The influence of the Institute’s fairs on the ‘malleable consciousness of the young Republic’, as well as on the emerging museum field in the country, was tremendous. As historian Thomas Adam indicates, these exhibitions ‘not only have provided the buildings and initial finances for many museums, but also have stimulated … demand for the type of educational services which can be met only by active museums’ (Adams 1939: 13). Songs of the Exposition reveal the most powerful and influential ideas of the emerging American civilization, inherited by museums ‘as organic element of national life’, including such ideologies as exceptionalism, globalism, and democratic aspirations for freedom and equality. These core foundations of the American culture not only defined the institutional nature of museums in the country, but also significantly shaped the role of American museums in international communication with other nations. The involvement of American museums in promoting American ideas of liberal democracy, artistic freedom and universality of human values has long been traced and discussed in numerous publications, which demonstrated the powerful role of the U.S. professional museum world in building bridges across borders to win ‘the hearts and minds’ of global audiences. For example, American museums as national cultural institutions have been particularly instrumental in exporting ‘American way of life abroad’ (Gienow-Hecht 2003: 270) during the historical epoch of the Cold War’s ideological and cultural struggles against communism. Authors such as Jane de Hart Mathews (1976), Eva Cockcroft (1985), Frank Ninkovich (1997), Stuart Hobbs (1997) Michael Krenn (2005), Richard Arndt (2005) and others have brilliantly documented in their seminal works how American museums through covert funding, provided by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), have been serving ‘as a propaganda weapon in demonstrating the virtues of ‘freedom of expression’’ (Cockcroft 1985: 128) in Europe and beyond through their large exports of abstract expressionism.

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In more recent publications Christine Sylvester (2009), with her foundational book Art/museums: International Relations Where We Least Expect It, has insightfully and vigorously described the key role of such internationally recognized American museums as Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), the Getty museums and the Guggenheim in shaping global artistic and professional movements by promoting ideas of innovations, progress and development based on the core American values of democracy and freedom. Among other contributions to the body of works describing cultural diplomatic functions of American museums are various articles and chapters by Annabell Shark (1997), Margo Bloom (2002), Vera Zolberg (2004), Neil Curtis (2006), Roger Launius (2007), Sharon Macdonald (2011), Howarth (2012) and many others. All these museum scholars looking at more recent American endeavors and international engagements confirmed that American museums remained sensitive to cultural and political issues of the nation and retained their status of authoritative cultural institutions projecting national values of the USA to domestic and international audiences. Despite the fact that museums in the country have always directly or indirectly contributed to the efforts of American cultural diplomacy, there has always been a strong controversy around the question if American museums can be understood as mere ‘political tools’ of the U.S. governments advancing its foreign policy agenda. Interestingly, European museums are comparatively open about their close interaction with governments and promote their political engagement as a part of their missions. In contrast, American museums, if involved in governmental initiatives, are very reluctant to publicize their cooperation with the U.S. government and prefer to maintain the image of independent organizations with distinct missions. For example, Thomas P. Campbell, director of the privately funded Metropolitan Museum, in an interview with the Guardian about the recently opened Islamic galleries and cooperation with U.S. State Department, emphasizes: ‘We don’t present ourselves as an answer to contemporary political issues… We are not a tool of government, we are independent’ (Higgins 2011; emphasis added). From a more historical perspective Krenn also points out that the relationship between the American art world and agencies such as the CIA were complex and based on the contradictory interests from the both sides. His book on the U.S. cultural diplomacy of the Cold War, Fall-out Shelters for the Human Spirit, aims to prove that American art world ‘was not merely a dupe in a CIA plot; nor was the U.S. government, with Machiavellian ruthlessness, simply ‘calling the tune’ to which the art world danced’ (Krenn 2005: 5). According to his historical analysis both parties, the government and museums, had their own goals, but they pursued their interests through cooperation and compromise: 

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Eloise Spaeth, a noted collector and vice president of the board of trustees for the American Federation of Arts (AFA), declared to an audience (which included USIA [United States Information Agency] officials) in 1951: ‘You and I have different reasons for wanting our visual arts known abroad. We are not primarily interested in using art as an instrument of propaganda. We love this particular art form (or we wouldn’t be gathered here today). Loving, we want to share it’ (Krenn 2005: 5; emphasis added).

Such a principal position of American museums in declaring their independence from the government control stems not only from the economic independence of these institutions from the state money, but also from strong democratic aspirations that have been at the core of the museum agency development as a public institution since the time of its foundation in the USA. Many scholars confirm that the history of American arts institutions reflects the original traditions of a democratic culture (Bandler 2003). American museums, unlike European, have emerged not as ‘cabinets of curiosity’ under the auspice of the ruling class, but, in contrast, as a vital democratic institutions open for people (Fox 1963; Harris 1978; Zolberg 2004). As American museologist and educator Alma Wittlin points out, the idea of creating an American museum was based on the opposition to the old European conception of a museum agency:  The American Museum is … neither an abandoned European palace nor a solution for storing … national wealth… It is an American phenomenon developed by the people, for the people, and of the people (Wittlin 1970: 150; emphasis added).

With such strong aspirations for freedom, democracy and independence American museums’ operational principles, nurtured within the national economic and political environment, have been particular instrumental in communicating national American values through international engagements with museums abroad. As the Marquis de Sade suggested several centuries ago ‘the only useful thing left for democratic countries to do is to perfect their own political system to the degree that other peoples will want to imitate them’ (de Sade 1965: 339). In this chapter I would like to argue that through their historical development within the country, U.S. museums have absorbed the strongest ideological principles of the American nation which have made them very efficient and powerful independent actors in the international arena projecting the best values of democratic societies. Through a genealogical analysis of such a phenomenon as an American museum this chapter traces the core philosophical ideals of the American democratic tradition and a national belief in the institutional destiny of the U.S. museums. Drawing on the genealogy, as a Foucauldian method (1984) to trace ‘origins’ and to question them on deeper levels, my work looks at the origins of the foundational principles that made American museums powerful projectors of philosophical

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ideals of American democracy, exceptionalism, and cosmopolitanism. Foucault describes his genealogy as an ‘effective history’ (Foucault 1984: 87), which debunks the assumptions underlying conventional historiography and shows how subjects and institutions are constituted in discourses. Employing this method of analysis, this chapter aims to unearth the ideological relations operating within the American museum world, specifically in the course of its historical developments. In this way, this writing not only adds to the current literature on the powerful role of American museum in the cultural diplomacy of the USA, but also explains the very phenomenon of the American museum diplomacy which operates under a minimum control from the U.S. governments, yet offers strong support to official efforts in promoting principles of liberal democracy and universal artistic freedom abroad. The chapter consists of three main parts: ‘Beneath Thy Banner, Freedom’, ‘Beyond Them All’, and ‘One Common Destiny’ corresponding to the philosophical conceptions of American democracy, exceptionalism and globalism in relation to museum diplomacy. The first part, ‘Beneath Thy Banner, Freedom’ explores different political forces in place when the American museum served as an agent for spreading the democratic principles of the U.S. culture. American museums, in contrast with the European traditions of highly-aristocratic elite culture, emerged from the very beginning as democratic and inclusive institutions emphasizing educational opportunities for all. In this way the idea of democracy has traditionally been nurtured and developed within the very nature of the museum agency in the USA, thus, making American museums ideal agents in exporting the American ideals of global democratization around the world. The second part of this chapter, ‘Beyond Them All’, traces the principle of American exceptionalism in the framework of the economic politics around museums. This section focuses on American professionalization of the museum field and explores the powers of American museum leadership in the international arena to promote capitalism through exposing the world community to a success of the museum field commercialization. Being from the very beginning independent actors operating in the economic environment of the U.S. capitalism, American museums have developed strong financial capacities and fundraising skills to navigate the complex world of economic realities that made them global leaders in museum management in the 21st century. Finally, this chapter explores the dimension of American universalism within the museum context by employing the philosophical principle of cosmopolitanism as the main national concept which drives the development of the museum agency. The section ‘One Common Destiny’ illustrates and explains the global

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aspirations of American museums, which extends reconstructions of cultural realities beyond strictly national boundaries, trying to ‘sell’ American values as a universal: appealing for and acceptable within diverse cultural communities around the world. All three parts develop the philosophical principles within the museum nature in a historical context and demonstrate how these ideas have been organically integrated in the structure and content of American museums. Therefore, each of the sections opens with the genealogical analysis of historical background of American museums, specifically focusing on the development of its foundational philosophical principles. The second part of each sections serves to reinforce the museum’s ideological and philosophical framework based on the core institutional principles and demonstrates how these foundational ideals have been shaping museum diplomacy of the USA. This ‘evolutional’ structure of each of the important parts in the chapter helps to offer logical explanations which can contribute to understanding of where and why American museums stand today in their international relations with other museums from around the world.

‘Beneath Thy Banner, Freedom’ – Exporting American Democracy across Borders Whitman’s poem Songs of the Exposition outlines the principles of democracy and freedom of expression as core to the American nation. American museums acquired the spirit of democracy as a driving force that not only inspired different art movements supported by museums, the same spirit also has become the nuclear concept of the institutional nature on the structural, financial, and political levels of the museum agency. First collections in Europe, whether art objects or the rarities and curiosities of natural history, date back to the sixteenth century. These early collections mainly ‘were the toys of the wealthy and the eccentric’. The formation and development of these collections was performed by secret scientific societies, who stand far from being friendly to the idea of ‘diffusion of knowledge’ (Adam 1939, 3). Because the USA has always had the task ‘of putting in practice the social doctrine of equal opportunity for all’ the field of American museums was characterized from the very beginning ‘as a new instrument of democratic culture’, and the purpose of the very first museums in the country was ‘strictly educational’ (Adam 1939: 5). Wittlin describes the development of American museums as primary educational settings whose task it is to ‘to lure our word-drugged minds to the contemplation of objects’. Interestingly, if the formal educational means like books and lectures were criticized for being ‘flooded with propaganda and intellectual authoritarianism’, museums were put in opposition to this formal learning, as public spaces, where

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‘firsthand information must be kept alive’. As Wittlin further points out, the staff of the early museums was hired not only for its scholarship, but also its social consciousness (Wittlin 1970: 151). The role of museums within American society, as politically and socially engaged institutions, has remained powerful since the times when the first museum appeared. It is indeed worth noting that the actual birth of the country coincided in dates with the foundation of the very first museum in the United States. In 1773, three years before the Declaration of Independence, the first public museum of America, the Charles-Town Library Society, was founded in Charleston, South California (Wittlin 1970: 106). Though ‘there are no grounds for believing that this society or its exhibition policy played any part in preparing the way for the American Revolution’, Adam argues that the growth of museums ‘cannot be divorced from the social turmoils that paralleled their birth’ (Adam 1939: 5). In his historical work about the initial stage of development of American museums, he highlights that museums always have been the ‘symptoms of a revolutionary state of mind’ accumulating cultural resources of the previous generations for future innovative development of society (Adam 1939: 5). As many publications argue, a keen desire of American museums to make themselves successful in reaching wider populations and in making a social impact on the life of communities was consistent throughout the history of museum development and even had a profound effect on the cultural force of these institutions throughout the world, especially in the 20th century (Adam 1939, Wittlin 1970, DiMaggio 1991). The American museum, being naturally placed in a close relationship with political movements, especially around the ideals of democracy, presented core national forces ‘that extended political, economic and educational opportunities to increasing numbers of the population’ (Adam 1939: 16). The main purpose of museums was envisioned as making these institutions affordable to the majority of people while at the same time, ‘supplying the best facilities for practical instruction and for the cultivation of pure taste in all matters concerned with the arts’. The primary task of museums was to empower their communities to ‘a sense of democratic need’ through sharing and exchange of arts and cultures (Adam 1939: 16). By bringing this philosophy to all levels of institutional structure, including communication, administration, and curatorial, the idea was to create a museum that can ‘be the midwife of democracy’ (Wittlin 1970: 151). However, by 1920, when aesthetic standards were clearly defined and promoted among American collectors, the early emphasis on education shifted toward acquisition and connoisseurship. This gave a rise to a new institutional model, set forth by Benjamin Ives Gilman (1918), who tried to reinforce the curatorial functions of the museums, making them less inclusive and democratic (DiMaggio 1991: 269).

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Nevertheless, museum historian Joel Orosz indicates that museums in the USA, following the paradigm of the ‘Barnum’s museum or elite ‘curiosity cabinets’’, were never pervasive (Orosz 2002). The aspirations of liberty, equality, and democracy remained strong in alternative visions of the museum models, influenced by the principles of public libraries and department stores (Grana 1963, Zolberg 1986). These ideals were expressed in the model promoted by the progressive reformers, who in contrast ‘stressed broad public education and, as means to that end, frequent special exhibitions and generous interpretation of the works exhibited’ (DiMaggio 1991: 270). As several museum scholars point out, U.S. museums from the late nineties put a special emphasis on public programming, whether by promoting local and regional traditions and practices, attracting working people to the museum door, developing special programming for adults or providing spaces for workshops and classrooms (Alexander 1983; Kotler & Kotler 1998). As these historical highlights demonstrate, museums in the United States have always strived to meet an everincreasing public agenda within their mission and goals trying to hold themselves to higher standards and even increased understanding of the best way to serve the public. In the European context, this democratic model of a museum serving communities and engaging broader publics in new educational opportunities, remained unpopular until the end of the 20th century. In the 1970s, a new museology movement took force throughout Western society and was promoted on an international level by UNESCO (Vergo 1997). The movement advocated to redefine museums’ nature, making them a more democratic and inclusive institution, facilitating active learning and engaging in social and cultural life of local communities. Since that time, the move has been toward museums understanding their publics and empowering a democratic relationship between the audiences and the institutions (Vergo 1997). In the U.S. context, the new museology movement was embraced with a special enthusiasm; one of the most influential American museum leaders, Duncan F. Cameron, actively contributed to the UNESCO activities and policies on the development of new museum strategies. He advocated for transforming museum from a ‘temple’ into a ‘forum’ in order to destroy traditional hierarchies, diminishing the role of audiences, and strengthen curatorial authorities. Cameron called museums for reconstructing themselves into ‘forums’ that can provide democratic spaces for audiences to participate in the creation of polysemic narrations accounting to ‘the most radical innovations in art forms, the most controversial interpretations of history, of our own society, of the nature of man, or, for that matter, of the nature of our world’ (Cameron 2004: 69). At the

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moment, the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), a national organization with international recognition, outreach, and global leadership aspirations, enthusiastically advocates for developing and sustaining museums, which are actively involved in their communities, highly inclusive to different social segments of populations, and democratic on structural and programming levels: Our museums serve as forums and safe places to talk about issues of concern to the community. This capacity is at the center of how museums are helping people understand current events in a broader historical and cultural context (AAM 2006).

The AAM, being the most important national organization that unites American museums and museum professionals and being involved in a number of international cultural activities, has a vital impact on the professional museum world in the USA, and specifically in a larger promotion of the democratic principles in museum management and public engagement. The historical roots of the organization’s creation indicates that appearance of this association reinforced the democratic principles of American museums and put inclusiveness, public education, and access to collections at the core of the professional nature of American museums. Orosz confirms that the AAM was formed by those museum leaders who emphasized public education in a new way and promoted inclusiveness and community affiliation (Orosz 2002). Through developing the first museum association in the country, museums acquired a forum for exchanging ideas and a space to consider the purpose of the ‘new museum’. DiMaggio argues that the AAM, by legitimizing the museum ‘form’ through its status as a professional organization, ‘empowered and authorized the museum reform movement’ and caused substantial change in the museum field, reinforcing democratic principles (DiMaggio 1991). From the first years following the creation of the AAM, its efforts were devoted to develop further a ‘museum idea’ that responded to the needs of modern communities. This could be evidenced for example in one of the first studies aiming to understand, how museums function within their immediate environments. The 1932 ‘Museum and the Community’ project, sponsored and published by Advisory Group on Museum Education of the Carnegie Corporation opened a professional research in the museum field focusing on developing strategies for increasing museums attendance and relating institutions to the needs and resources of their communities. Since the 1960s, there has been even greater focus on social programming and educational advances guiding the museum field. As Schwarzer observed ‘an anti-hierarchical, hands-on approach to learning was prevalent during the 1960s and 1970s’ and was influential in the further development of the museum field during the 1980s and 1990s (Schwarzer 2006: 6). This tradition continued in a more recent movement, the main objectives of which were notably described in

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the AAM’s 1992 benchmark report ‘Excellence and Equity’. This report addressed the need to expand the ‘public dimension’ of American museums ‘to allow diverse community voices to be heard’ (Habich 2003: 4; Bloom 2002: 1015). The birth of the American Association of Museums’ ‘Museums and Community’ initiative in 1996 has become an important step in furthering conversations in progress in many cities in the country among the broader publics, museum professionals, and leaders of community institutions about the important role of museums as predominantly public institutions (Habich 2003: 5). These ideas of democratization and increasing the public values of cultural institutions was even greater reinforced in 1999 through the Animating Democracy Initiative launched by the ‘Americans for the Arts’ organization (Bacon et al. 2002: 1). Campaigns developed under this initiative implemented various ‘civic dialogue’ projects at several cultural institutions, including museums. These programs significantly advanced knowledge about the philosophical, practical, and social dimensions of arts-based civic dialogue all over the country and laid strong foundations for further development of the discourse of democratizing the museum nature in the 21st century marked by the development of new models of cultural production and consumption (Bacon et al. 2002: 1). One of the successful implications of these initiatives was wider spreading of the participatory techniques in museum practices, which aimed to establish public forums in museums with opportunities for ideas and knowledge exchange, as well as to promote the intentional inclusion and active participation of people as important collaborators in the curatorial process. However, the democracy of public participation within museum culture has been nurtured from the very early years of museum development in the USA. For example, the Newark Museum starting from 1928 hosted many programs of an inclusive nature, like special tours for the blind, open hours of their library to the public, as well as organizing a ‘junior museum’, where local children could participate by taking classes, starting their own collections, and making their own exhibitions (Alexander & American Association for State and Local History 1997). These democratic frames of cooperation with people and communities shape museums’ operations not only in the national context, but most importantly on the level of international diplomacy and engagement. Thus, for example the AAM cooperates with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs through the Museum Connect Program, a grant program that strengthens cooperation and mutual understanding and respect among people in the United States and abroad by implementing innovative projects developed by museums. The major goals of the Museum Connect program, as stated on its official program page on the U.S. Department of State website, are to develop ‘a broader

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knowledge about and understanding of one another’s cultures’ and ‘create replicable models for international collaborations that reach beyond their physical walls to directly engage members of their communities’ (U.S. Department of State 2012). Every year the government awards from $50,000 up to $100,000, (however with a 50% cost-share match) to national museums working in cooperation with foreign museum partners through a rigorous competition, administered by the AAM. The program, which is also known as Museums & Community Collaborations Abroad, is explicitly communicated and framed as a cultural diplomacy initiative aiming to shape U.S. international relations:  Museums Connect builds on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s vision of ‘smart power’, which embraces the full range of diplomatic tools – in this case museum art, history, cultural preservation and science exchanges to bring people together to foster greater understanding (U.S. Department of State 2012).

The main focus of the program is to reach to local communities of foreign countries through building a common framework with national museums abroad to implement cooperative activity that aims to address social, cultural, economic, or political issues and concerns in their neighborhoods. This not only helps to ‘create a more secure, stable, and prosperous global arena in which the United States can advance its national interests’, but also promotes ‘such fundamental American values as religious and political freedom and human rights’ (U.S. Department of State 2012). This project, though implemented and administered through museums, really focuses on the development of the communities, reaching out to the public, larger than local museum-goers or than a narrow group of curators and museum professionals. This ensures that American cultural ideals are promoted to ‘non-elite audiences that have little direct exposure to American culture and values’ (U.S. Department of State 2011: 182). Heather Berry, manager of International Programs at the AAM, in the interview shared that the Museum Connect Program, which started in 2007, was a joint initiative of the U.S. Department of State and the AAM and was created in collaboration of professionals from the both organizations, who ‘came together and really re-imagined the museum cooperation program, making it more robust, from something that was a one-to-one connection to something that would involve larger communities and go beyond the museum walls to engage as larger audiences as possible’ (Berry 2012). From the governmental perspective, this focus on communities, addressing social challenges, and engaging ordinary people was dictated by the public diplomacy priorities of the USA, striving ‘to bring positive transnational change’ and help ‘citizens fighting to change their societies’ in order to build strong, empowered democratic communities in foreign countries.

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Considering the specific context of national museum policies, the Museum Connect Program can be seen as a natural extension of the museums’ policy framework of the USA. Berry stresses: ‘What we wanted to do is to take this framework and apply [it] to the international engagement initiative’ (Berry 2012). In this way the program contributes to the efforts of U.S. cultural diplomacy in two meaningful ways. First, it provides a perfect communication tool to reach out to larger audiences and increase positive attitudes toward American museums, culture, and people by connecting museum leaders and communities through a common initiative challenging social problems. In this way, foreign publics, including youth, minorities and disadvantaged populations (which become the major participants in the program) learn about U.S. values and ideals while collaborating on, discussing, and comparing social challenges in their communities and the ways they can be addressed. Second, foreign museums’ professionals, being exposed to the financial, structural, and administrative realities of American museums’ management, develop greater appreciation of the core American museum policies and strategies, which are designed to ensure healthy development in a free-market democratic society. Therefore, democratic principles are projected to foreign audiences not only through programming, but also through organizational values and best practices. Beyond the official cultural diplomacy efforts, from the ‘backyard diplomacy’ perspective, the discourse about the democratic engagements with broader publics and serving the needs of communities have been also widely promoted by nonprofit sector on the international level. For example, the Salzburg Global Seminar in 2011, which for almost a century has served as an important international communication space of the ideas of the U.S. diplomacy, hosted a conference discussing and promoting the principles of community engagements as an important part of international exchanges and cooperation. During the conference working group members affirmed that the incorporation of participatory culture facilitates more productive communication on a cross-cultural level and helps to eliminate cultural differences, which lead to greater social impact. The participants of the conference concluded that in the contemporary globalized world ‘museums and libraries have an obligation’ to create a space of engagement and dialogue to where participation takes place. These spaces for cross-cultural exchanges of ideas can enable communities ‘tell their own stories in culturally diverse ways’ and have greater global participation (The Salzburg Global Seminar 2011). As this part demonstrates, since the first days of the museum’s inception in the country the core democratic nature of the American museums not only defined the structure and community role of these institutions in the national context, but, more importantly was adopted in the main strategies and principles of operations

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and engagements on the international level. In this way museums by simply following their institutional missions and logic in a very natural way communicate the ideals of a democratic society, thus, supporting the official U.S. foreign policy objectives in spreading democratic structures and values around the world. The following part of the chapter will reinforce this framework on the economic level of democratic aspirations and will look at exceptional destiny of the U.S. museums which from the very beginning stayed independent from the governmental financial support and control.

‘Beyond Them All’ – Commercial Internationalism Promoting American Exceptionalism On the institutional level the discourse of exceptionalism has been strong from the very beginning of the foundation of the museum agency. The lines from the Whitman’s poem on the opening of Exhibitory complex, cited in the beginning of the first chapter, picturesquely illustrate, the desire of Americans to build their own repositories of cultural heritage were quite ambitious, and were accompanied by a strong belief in a national exceptionalism and superiority above other nations: ‘We plan… to raise beyond them all’ – ‘Mightier than Egypt’s tombs, Fairer than Grecian’s, Roma’s temples, Prouder than Milan’s statues, spired Cathedral, More picturesque than Rhenish castle …’ As Wittlin’s historical analysis of the development of the museum field confirms, the idea of creating a museum that would exceed the old world collections galleries in artistic excellence has been central for the growth of American museums. For example, John Pierpont Morgan, who was the patron of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York at the end of the 19th century outlined the philosophical principal of the museum in its main mission to create an institution, ‘containing the best of all countries and centuries, and making it unnecessary for Americans to seek such sights in Europe (Wittlin 1970: 139). Proving this aspiration for perfection and global leadership, reflected in the nature of the American museums, Hixson argues, that this philosophy of excellence is rooted in the national identity of the USA: ‘cultural hegemony affirming America as a … providentially destined ‘beacon of liberty’, a country which possesses a special right to exert power in the world’ (Hixson 2008, 1). The role of museums in supporting this philosophy is unique and important, because they provide specifically designed settings to accumulate national heritage to establish and defend an ‘imagined national identity’. The exceptionalist rhetoric in the framework of museums was predominantly based on a unique precedent upon which the agency of museums and libraries was born.

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As museum historian Adams indicates, in older western civilizations a development of a museum agency relied greatly on the inspiration from the past generations: ‘The infant republic had to dig its roots into stable intellectual soil, and these bands of antiquarian missionaries served a pressing social need’ (Adam 1939: 8). However, in the American context, this inspirational drive would not work since the country did not have that past, so it needed to invent a solid basis upon which the nation could construct its collective consciousness to explain its presence and envision its future. Museums in this way served as history machines that not only helped to preserve the achievements of the newly born country in material preservations, but were predominantly involved in the acts of constructing and shaping the future of the nation. More importantly, in the context of U.S. history, the unique situation of the emergence of an American museums was defined ‘by shared values rather than by ancient institutions’ (Hixson 2008: 11). Therefore, the future that museums aimed to construct was shaped by the common beliefs of the newly born American civilization. The ideology of exceptionalsim, which, along with the democratic vision, has remained one of the core beliefs shaping the museum context, was from the very beginning connected to the ideas of liberalism, which laid at the foundation of undesiring American nation. As Wittlin indicates, comparing with the ‘Old World’, especially with the European, American unique character has been crystalized and nurtured through the philosophy of individualism and liberalism. The world of American civilization radically differed from the old one, first of all, because it provided unlimited opportunity for pursuing one dreams in a condition of freedom, not suppressed by various social, political or economic restrictions. The major forces that pushed the development of the country, have been also strong in the context of museums, which stated to appear in the USA notably due to individual initiatives, and not enforced by the public authority, like in other countries: ‘those who took initiative represented a wide spectrum of intellects, of social and economic backgrounds; work by committees was important… confidence in the future remained undaunted by failure’. With the rise of this public enthusiasm, the museum field started to proliferate: ‘one short-lived museum led to another, the new often absorbing the preceding one, which in this manner continued its existence…’ (Wittlin 1970: 106). Interestingly, Kimmelman indicates, that, from the very beginning the ideas around museums where closely linked to liberal economic values which defined the social political context of the country: American museums, unlike most European ones, also have their roots in a strain of nineteenth-century political philosophy that specifically sought to marry commerce with spectacle to achieve a form of social engineering (improving the middle class). They have always

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existed in a capitalist environment of winners and losers (Kimmelman 1999: 54; emphasis added).

Adam also confirms this idea, by pointing out that international exhibitions, which gave a rise to the museum agency were, first of all, commercial enterprises, based firmly on the profit motive that explained their tendency to create dramatic displays relevant to the social life of targeted communities (Adam 1939: 10). This inherited commercialism within an American museum agency from the very beginning was also supported on the organizational or structural level, because, most of the time, museums were founded and run by economic elites. As Duncan reveals, the American public museum ‘is a monument to the powerful men who not only led the development of American finance capitalism, but also understood its cultural and ideological needs’ (Duncan 1995: 70). Many historians indicate that a large amount of American museums were founded due to the considerable material and ideological contributions from financial magnates, who provided resources for acquiring art collections and also helped to establish museums’ endowments: Andrew Mellon was collecting the paintings which would launch the National Gallery in Washington DC; JP Morgan’s successors – the Havemeyers, the Rosenwalds, and other were filling New York’s Metropolitan Museum. Samuel Kress, after building an empire on the basis of five-and-ten cent stores for middle America, exercised his sense of stewardship by acquiring and distributing art both to major national collections and to smaller cities that had supporters his stores, donating fine art to dozens of provincial museums (Arndt 2005: 443).

These financial sources, on behalf of the American commercial elite, have retained their powers over museum agency through many generations ‘by setting the museum’s general policy, governing all its programs and activities … caring of the museum’s assets, including its collections and physical plant’ (Glueck 1972: 119). Throughout the 20th century, museums’ trustees, who were in power over museum management, programming, and international operations, were chosen for ‘the same reason as they were one hundred years ago, when some of this country’s great museums were founded: because they are men of substance with money, business acumen and/or an interest in art, or at least a collection they can leave to the museum’ (Glueck 1972: 122). In comparison to European museums, which usually were established under the auspice of government forces, Burcaw stresses that U.S. museums were created by wealthy individuals and families mainly to celebrate and commemorate personal legacies and to share collections with their communities. In the eyes of Europeans the first American museums were not considered as powerful cultural institutions communicating the high standards of artistic value, ‘in a European

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museum you will never have that feeling of looking at a vast pile of objects brought together by an amateur with more money than taste’ (Burcaw 1997: 33). However, as Katz et al. explains, the intent of building a public space and sharing collections and resources with local communities of the museums in the USA usually overshadowed critical comments concerning the quality of its collection. The organizational logics ‘from the ground up, instead of top down’ as with the European museums, portrayed American museums as inclusive public institutions oriented toward people and promoting the attitude of ‘what is there that can be shared and celebrated?’ (Katz et al. 1965). As a result, financial elites brought their culture, ideology, and viewpoint to the museums’ operations. Not surprisingly, American museums have developed strongly commercial strategies for operating in the world of market economy, giving rise to the movement of commercialization of cultural institutions, which has spread widely in the 21st century beyond the borders of the USA. Cultural critic Max Kozloff believes that regardless of the actual funding sources, whether through government, foundation, municipality, or private collector, the support of an American museum still has a ‘corporate’ nature—‘a natural microcosm of the capitalist system, notorious for its tendency to expand on high returns’ (Kozloff 1972: 156): ‘All those museum directors who insist that the corporate angels exert no influence on their professional practice overlook the fact that investments in our cost-accounting society have to be managed and overseered’ (Kozloff 1972: 157). Outlining the current practices of American museums, the report, prepared by the American Association of Museum Directors, emphasizes that commercial strategies within such agency as an American museum have become even stronger in the 21st century. Thus, the report stresses that earned income is becoming a larger part of the financial structure of all non-profit enterprises, in many ways undermining the philanthropic traditions of museums upon which they have historically relied (AAMD 2006). Furthermore, the report highlights a stronger engagement of museums with for-profit companies, which extended from mere building infrastructures around museums, to organizing joint exhibition ventures, which break traditional barriers between these kinds of organizations and in some cases might affect the good name or reputation of a museum (AAMD 2006). All these commercial tendencies, as the report illuminates, build more complex connections and interdependencies between museums as educational public spaces with entertainment industries. However, the inherited commercialism in American museum has always been linked to populist traditions, incorporating the popular culture of entertainment into the programming of these institutions. Because from the very beginning the purpose of American museum was to engage

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ordinary citizens, who in some cases lacked even a formal education, ‘the museum was meant to not only educate, but also to amuse’ (Kotler and Kotler: 1998). It was believed that the use of amusement helped to popularize museums among larger populations and help to increase the general level of public education. A strong tradition of a ‘popular’, or ‘commercial’ museum has been developed between 1815–1860, a period of time in the American museum history, when many American museums became less focused on academic pursuits, but on various audience-focused activities (Glaser and Zenetou 1996). In this regard, museums experimented widely with ‘advertisements to draw attention’ as well as using sensationalism to attract audience that then, as they promised, could be educated. Museum Scholar Zolberg traces this commercial and entertainment influences on the American museums even in earlier times. Specifically, he indicates that models upon which a American museum was established included the ones provided by the great international fairs and exhibitions designed by Protestant denominations to carry religion and culture to many regions, which gave rise to more commercial ventures (Zolberg 1995: 60). As Zolberg further emphasizes, American museums both in their origins and their recent development ‘are imbued with commercial, nationalist, and religious elements according to which success is measured in the ability to draw large numbers of visitors – to be edified, instructed and entertained’ (Zolberg 1995: 61). This explains the global leadership of American museums in development of social marketing tools and strategies that always helped museums in the U.S. to secure financial support and to build constituency. Since the 1970s, the role of social marketing in American museums have been even more reinforced and professionalized, which lead to opening marketing departments and hiring more marketing personnel, ensuring to more efficient communication with audiences and work with donors and the community to generate funding and financial support (Tobelem 2007: 274). Furthermore, as Tobelem explains, the increased involvement of museums in all forms of market mechanisms, such as exhibition planning, fund raising, budget control, and database management, brought to the world of museums the whole range of new demands, associated with evaluating marketing investments and efficiency of their efforts, thus leading to increased preoccupation about costs, financing, development, and profitability (Tobelem 2007). In his seminal work Culture and the Public Sphere, cultural theorist Jim McGuigan, referring to the cultural politics of Western economies, notes that the emergence of ‘managerialist’ and marketing reasoning in the sphere of public culture and arts caused profound negative effects on the development of the cultural sector in many countries. He argues that in the recent decades, the boundaries between theme parks and museums have been blurred and entertainment

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objectives of museums have been prioritized in order to attract public capital (McGuigan 1996). Even earlier Krauss observed that museums in the USA have been steadily turning into ‘simulacral experience rather than aesthetic immediacy’ (Krauss 1990: 16). A decade later, James Wood, the Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, regretfully reveals that the new financial pressures of the 21st century have led museums to shift from ‘nourishment to gratification, from teaching and expertise to entertainment and celebrity, from memory to manipulation, from conservation to consumption’ (Wood 2004: 126). Andy Warhol once remarked, ‘All department stores will become museums and all museums will become department stores’ (Gomez 2002: 43). However, as some museum scholars observe, many American museums have already established a strong tradition based on consumer psychology, according to which museums organize their spaces for the purpose of selling products, for example reproductions of the objects they possess. More importantly, these venues have become not only as a source of revenue, ‘but also as a defining factor in the public’s museum going experience’ (Toepler and Kirchberg 2006). However, this criticism toward the commercial nature of American museums is contrarily posed with a different, more positive opinion in the academic literature. Specifically, the movement of populism and partnerships with commercial sectors are interpreted, by some scholars, as positive forces, which improved museums through fostering expansions of public programs and outreach, increasing accessibility, and facilitating an inclusive nature of museums. As Leach argues, the American culture of ‘consumer society represented a new vision of democracy. It was based on desire rather than achievement, on overturning the producer ethic in favor of a consumer ethic, on forgetting the past and fostering the ‘cult of the new’’ (Leach 1993: 5). In the international dimension of the world of American museums, the national context of political independence from the government funding, commercial and populist features of museums have been instrumental in defining and shaping the major communication strategies and objectives on the international scene. First of all, it is important to note here that the same spirit of cultural entrepreneurship and individual efforts outside of government incentives that guided the development of American museums was present in establishing official international relations programming of museum diplomacy. U.S. museums developed primarily as private institutions and were founded by ‘the giants of industry and finance’ – by ‘prominent citizens who controlled banks and corporations and helped shape the formulation of foreign policy …’ (Cockcroft 1985: 126). Thus, the first drive for establishing an official museum diplomacy program in the U.S. department, when this need appeared during the midst of the Cold War, stemmed from an individual, representing a private sector. Nelson Rockefeller, who was a

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devoted MoMA patron, in the 1950s organized the museum’s International Council, personally coordinating a partnership with the American government in museums international programming as a part of the Cold War cultural diplomacy (Smith Bautista 2009: 12). Through ‘the promotion abroad of an enterprise-based culture’, which by its own fact of existence projected democratic values of America, the U.S. government aimed to advertise the market-based economies standing in opposition to the socialism and communism (Gienow-Hecht 2003: 270). What is unique about museum diplomacy in the U.S. context is that museums, even though they helped to serve the government in particular historical moments, maintained their comparative autonomy and independence. As Cockroft insightfully explains: ‘In many ways, American museums came to fulfill the role of official patronage – but without accountability to anyone but themselves’ (Cockcroft 1985: 147). She argues that the functions of the CIA cultural apparatus and MOMA’s international programs were in many ways similar and supported each other. Krenn confirms that ‘MOMA’S program was largely a private affair, sponsored by the museum and its well-to-do patrons, particularly the Rockefeller family’ (Krenn 2005: 85). As Cockroft reveals, it was in fact the CIA that ‘served the interests of the Rockefellers and other corporate luminaries in the America’, that wanted to pursue their political and economic goals in the international markets: Rich and powerful patrons of the arts, men like Rockefeller and Whitney, who control the museums and help oversee foreign policy … recognized the value of culture in the political arena. Rockefeller …consciously used abstract expressionism, ‘the symbol of political freedom’, for political ends (Cockcroft 1985: 132).

The role of museums in connecting artists and making the art world an international scene was indeed important. Without certain museums’ enthusiasm and leadership, supported by private funding, many international cultural programs had never been implemented, if relied on governmental initiative. A good illustration of this idea is the U.S. representation at the Venice Biennale, which is considered to be one of the most important of international cultural-political art events, in which the global artistic community representing their countries competes for cultural honors and promotion of their national talents. It is a wellknown fact that the State Department refused to take the responsibility for U.S. representation at Venice Biennale (Cockcroft 1985: 128). Interestingly, there are many indications that a number of artists were seeking support from the U.S. government in order to sustain the enormously expensive U.S. pavilion in Venice. For example, by 1948, the Grand Central Art Galleries, which had built the pavilion in the late 1920s, were not able to cover the costs of operations. They tried to

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convince the Department of State to take over the financial responsibility of the pavilion (Krenn 2005: 198). Eloise Spaeth, vice president of AFA, in her speech addressed to the U.S. Department of State in 1951, ‘challenged her government to do what most of the nations of Western Europe had already done: build a national exhibition building for the Venice Biennale’ and let the American art present the U.S. foreign policy with a unique opportunity ‘to counteract the widespread belief that ‘Americans are materialistic’, with little interest in anything that doesn’t make money’ (Krenn 2005: 55). Failing in the effort to convince the government to take over the pavilion, MOMA stepped in to fill an ‘embarrassing gap in American art’ and bought the U.S. pavilion for $20,000. This was the only case of a privatelyowned pavilion at the Venice Biennale (Cockcroft 1985: 128), which operated solely through museum efforts from 1954 to 1962. Apart from government independence, the engagement of American museums and their role in international cultural communication is also defined by their organizational structure shaped by the canons of free market democracy. By exposing managerial organizational features in the international museum communities, U.S. museums serve American ideology of spreading liberalism democracy around the globe. In this way, American museums by themselves without a specific programming serve as a wonderful demonstration of American values, which museums from other countries unavoidable face through engagement in international collaboration projects. As Kroes observes, the American model in culture, economics, and politics, expressed through the organizational structure of American museums, despite various supporting or criticizing opinions, serve as a reference point in discussions defining various positions, either rejecting the American model or promoting it for adoption, thus spreading awareness among professionals about the ‘American way’ (Kroes 2000: 345). Especially, in the latest decades, museums sectors from the Western societies has started to actively discuss American alternatives in changing the nature of museums from a publicly funded institution to a more independent actor in the national economy. Thus, various museum internships and fellowships programs in American museums have gained special attention and popularity among European and developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, where international participants are educated about American museum management. Therefore, the U.S. corporate models are being extended to the rest of the world. These models of public relations ‘disenfranchise other forms through public relations imposing dominant frames in other cultural milieus’ (Curtin and Gaither 2005: 100). On the official level of cultural diplomacy the Museum Connect program is a good illustration how small museums in the USA in the governmentally funded

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programs serve as transmitters of free market democracy ideology. The majority of the reports from the implemented projects of this program illuminates how the basic changes affect first of all the professional museum community, through direct interactions of museum mangers, who learn from the American counterparts. Another illustration of the institutional frame of museum diplomacy is the international annual conference of the American Alliance of Museum which position itself as the international museum association and in many ways competes with the International Commission of Museums set up by UNESCO. The conference gives an opportunity for international participants to learn the excellence of the American museum management through organized seminars and workshops providing details about the success of the corporate based logics of American museums. Furthermore, the Conference provides grants for participants from developing countries in order to attend this educational event, which in a diplomatic way serves prompting incentives pushing forward the agenda of liberalization, globalization, and American pop culture promotion. By tracing the commercial nature of the American museums, this part of the chapter has demonstrated that origins of the independent financial standing and rationale of the museums in the national community, as well as in their global engagements. It is evident that the financial freedom from the government money translates in the museum world into more democratic arrangement of their national and international activities, thus, making these institutions exceptional leaders in the 21st century cultural management in the conditions of growing economic globalization. The influence of American museums on their counterparts from Europe and beyond is tremendous at the moment, because the U.S. museums demonstrate a success of the institutional survival in the times, when the government funding for cultural sector is significantly decreasing in many countries around the world. This brings even more confidence to the American museum world which helps the American museums to reinforce their universal or cosmopolitan aspirations. The next section will look more precisely at the origins of this American globalism or cosmopolitanism and will trace this philosophical principle in the course of its development in the structure of American museums.

‘One Common Destiny’ – Communicating Global America Within a national museum context, the ideas of American cultural universalism and cosmopolitan aspirations have long become a meaningful part of political discourses created around the agency of the American museum. The globalism and cosmopolitanism of American museums is grounded, first of all, in the exceptional diversity and plurality of audiences, histories, traditions, and cultural artefacts,

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originating from various communities. From the first days of their inception, museums in the USA needed to embrace this diversity to serve as important and meaningful facilitators of public discourses comprising various cultural issues and concerns. The development of many European museums within their specific national cultural and political environments was historically predetermined by the accumulation of the national cultural heritage. In contrast, the American museums were developed not out of the need to institutionalize the preservation practices, safeguarding the national cultural resources for future generations. The tasks that the American museums faced in the times of their creation related, first of all, to their social responsibilities towards American publics. Beyond a mere educational function, the museums in the USA served as community nodes for facilitating cultural cohesion and developing a sense of a nation, a sense of ‘American-ness’ which could unite all different communities constituting the American publics: ‘It is the great function of museums of all kinds to develop and train appreciation … of national life and ideals. Nation Study and Americanization belong together … we must know not only the myriad races in America from ancient Indians to the latest comer among the Lithuanians, but our Allies in Europe, Asia and Africa. We Americans … are called on to understand the entire world’ (AAM 1918: 12). Facing the challenges of absence of shared cultural histories and experiences among the great number of immigrants coming from every corner of the world, an American museum has long developed the philosophy of unification or universalism as a necessary means to homogenize the diversity of narratives being favored and developed separately in various communities. On one of the first national conferences of the American Alliance of Museums in the beginning of the last century Scales shared his concerns and reflections on the situation, where museums have to fulfil social functions for immigrants and help them successfully integrate and become Americans: From every corner of the globe the answers had been coming in upon us, until we found ourselves in the midst of a civilization as difficult as it was rich-a civilization which presented the twin problems of how to conserve the riches and how to unify the peoples poured into our midst. It is only a matter of course that museums stand ready to do their part toward these problems, for it is not by accident that a large proportion of museum visitors are foreign-born. The immigrant and his child want the museum; … For where so clearly as in the museum can the immigrant be encouraged to believe that in this new world are continued the good things of his old one? Englishman, Frenchman, Japanese, Italian, Syrian-all may come to the museum and feel more at home than the native-born American… the museum can bring home to the immigrant his chance to help enrich the head and heart of his new country as well as her pockets, to serve the public and not merely the taskmaster on the job, will it not be giving him an inducement toward loyal citizenship to which he is eager to respond? (Scales 1917: 129–130; emphasis added).

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Interestingly, even the concept of ‘difference’ has acquired a slightly negative connotation in the framework of the activities of museums, aiming to bridge various cultures and to teach people about mutual understanding. Thus, discussing a Japanese-American cultural exchange project, a coordinator from the Boston Children’s Museum argued that the organized activities, involving children and their parents from both countries to share their stories and to exchange cultural artefacts, lifted the participants ‘to a point where they can see at once the great attributes of likeness … It is easy to see the superficial difference between ourselves and the Japanese’ (AAM 1918: 14). Many museum programs were oriented to evoke a feeling of sameness between representatives of different cultures in order to build harmony in the social relations among Americans. Therefore, the concept of cosmopolitanism, rooted in the desire to embrace the global on the local level of American communities in order to build national character has long remained coherent with the institutional missions of museums to lead national development: ‘America … must become a unified nation… it must be like an orchestra of many different pieces playing under a skilled leader and in an harmony richer for the ordered gift of each contributor. In the spiritual reconstruction of America the Museums shall play their part’ (AAM 1918: 17). Another important dimension of American museums, in which the ideals of universalism and cosmopolitanism thrived, is connected to the richness and diversity of collections, originating from various parts of the world and containing artifacts from a great number of cultures and civilizations. The incredible diversity of collections that American museums acquired from the ‘old world’, as a part of their own historical past, has always built a strong foundation for understanding a museum as an international, global institution embracing and celebrating a diversity of cultural expressions and representing the multitude of cultures constituting the national mosaic of American society: ‘there is undoubtedly a diversity of gifts, whether of tongues or of arts, and an American museum has become the potential heir to them all’ (Scales 1917: 130). Many U.S. museums, including the most renowned institutions like the Smithsonian, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, the Getty Foundation, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Chicago Institute of Art, the Metropolitan Museum, and hundreds of others have extensive collections of international art, which is not necessarily associated with national cultural heritage resources that can communicate truly American values. Regarding the notion of cultural heritage, social critic Ernest van den Haag argues that classical art in the USA is not supported by and should not be by the federal budgets, because it does not represent American nation: 

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We have marvelous things in our museums. But they did not get there through government activities and did not celebrate those activities or our national history, cultural or political. The contents of our museums have nothing to do with our national life…. Tin pan alley, jazz, rock, or baseball are more important in the celebration of American values, not only in the working classes and among adolescents, but also in the upper classes and even among educated groups (van den Haag 1979: 66; emphasis added).

Indeed, as cultural historian Carol Duncan describes, in the 19th century many American museums were filled with ‘tons’ of art objects by the American millionaires who ‘embarked on extravagant shopping tours, combed Europe for art, bought in bulk, and shipped home as much of it as money could buy’ (Duncan 1995, 53). Furthermore, by the late 19th century the professional museum and national gallery standards both in Europe and America required that ‘a proper art museum’ would provide its visitors with the art collections from different origins and art schools. These art collections should display whenever possible the most outstanding geniuses from each historical art movement, so the visitors can enjoy and learn from their walk through the ‘spiritual development of civilization’. ‘In the United States, Italian Renaissance and classical art were accorded privileged places as the defining moments of a universally attainable principle of civilization’ (Duncan 1995: 50). United together in the context of American museums, these collections, representing national heritage of other societies, actually started to communicate some important political messages that contributed to positioning of the USA in the international arena. Thus, Duncan insightfully points out, ‘these American Louvres’ communicated ‘peculiarly American meanings’, affirming to an international community ‘the identity of the United States as a full-blown … society, an equal among other great nations of the western world’ (Duncan 1995: 54). In this way, the acquisitions of the tremendously expensive art collections from other parts of the world symbolized the power of the American nation and communicated the strength, innovation, and wealth to the global audiences: The Republican bankers, merchants and lawyers who founded the first great American public art museums had certainly arrived economically – they owned or controlled vast shares of American capital. Now they were in the process of securing both their political base and their social prestige. The power of high culture to identify them as members of an elite social network with international connections was not simply a luxury; it was necessary to their political and economic objectives (Duncan 1995: 54).

Moreover, collecting and displaying arts from different cultures and civilizations in American museums served as a homogenizing force in the culturally diverse context of U.S. society. Following the democratic principles of the American nation and core museum functions, the purpose of the newly acquired European collections of elite in American museums ‘was to disseminate a single high culture

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to one and all’. These artefacts from other countries actually acquired new meanings in the American context, being identified ‘as the definitive national culture, the highest philosophical and moral heritage of the American people’ (Duncan 1995: 55). Joseph Hodges Choate, founder of the Metropolitan Museum, one of the largest ‘encyclopedic museum’ in the world with immense collections embracing different centuries and human civilizations, once said: ‘knowledge of art in its higher forms of beauty would tend directly to humanize, to educate and refine a practical and laborious people’. He envisioned the Metropolitan museum as a cultural institution ‘animating, informing and directing source of impulses, the most civilizing and refining influences, that radiate throughout the land… and will yet in time make it the centre of artistic progress in this country – even as in Europe…’ (Preyer 1909: 4). In the contemporary museum world, global aspirations, cosmopolitan philosophy and universal ideals are still prevalent in the major museum discourses defining and shaping the work of national museums in the country, as well as their international engagements. One aspect of the museum management that is relevant to the discussion of the philosophy of universalism is the politics defining cross-cultural engagement within an American society. Like in the times of their inception museums in the USA are regarded as primary public spaces with strong social functions to facilitate harmonious development of the society within an extreme multi-cultural context. As the American Alliance of Museums advocates museums should serve as ‘places of cultural exchange in their communities … primary sites for civic dialogues about community interests and the policies that affect communities’ (AAM 2008: 7). Museums in the context of American diversity are placed to take a role as ‘the most powerful agents in helping all children understand the future’ and build society where each member is taken as a meaningful part of the national unity (AAM 2008: 7). Within the politics of diversity, embracing questions of equal and fair inclusion, participation and representation of various cultural and social groups in the museum context, the U.S. museums are called to combine cultural diversity policies with those, addressing questions of building stronger, more coherent and peaceful communities. In this sense, the ‘diversity’ is understood not as a goal in developing harmony within a community, but as a primary condition under which museums need to build their social programming. For example, Brown, discussing different ways the U.S. museums address multicultural issues in their curatorial programming, criticizes the approach adopted by some museums. She advocates against classification of the museum’s audiences in several cultural groups and/or communities that are being addressed and communicated to differently within a museum. The author calls this approach a ‘seduction of and newfound love for a new ethnic group each season that gives rise to … the

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flavor-of-the-mouth syndrome. This syndrome also suggests that there are easy ways of programming for these groups because their issues are simplistic’. Brown finds this kind of programs ‘failing to represent more than one point of view, for dealing with the issues of these cultures in isolation and not as they affect others…’ (Brown 2004: 144). Furthermore, she emphasizes that homogeneous programming deepens separatism and ethnic phobia in the society instead of bringing everybody together in a truly intercultural dialogue and cooperation. ‘Often when you target people leaving in an area, you exclude persons of the same ethnic backgrounds from different classes and with different ideological and political points of view’. Brown advocates for finding an appropriate ways ‘to speak to human experiences’ and discusses again the communication function of museums from the perspectives of social inclusion and promotion of the universal values, which can tighten together different communities. ‘It is our mission to preserve, exhibit, and interpret these collections for the public – not some of the public, but all of the public. Though we can’t give all of the public what they want all of the time, we can provide more of the people with an honest representation of their achievements and contributions in this society’. (Brown 2004: 145). This advocacy for bringing diverse audience together implies the promotion of ideas of universalism and cosmopolitan aspirations. Furthermore, from a purely economic perspective, museums in the USA are actively encouraged by the national professional museum discourse to embrace the ideals of globalism. The philosophy of globalism is integrated into the politics of international expansion, promoted by the American Alliance of Museums as one of the ways to address economic challenges in a new globalized environment. For example the report ‘Museums & Society 2034: Trends and Potential Futures’ clearly advocates for larger museums to ‘go global’ by ‘opening more outposts in rapidly developing countries with an appetite for museums. The increase of wealth abroad (and among émigrés) may create new sources of funding for exhibits and programs about cultures growing in global prominence’ (AAM 2008: 12). Under conditions when the ‘an increasing percentage of profits will continue to flow overseas’ (AAM 2008: 12), these international strategies of expansion not only can secure funding for museums, but, more importantly, can position them as important independent political and economic actors on the world markets. By taking a proactive role in franchise development abroad, museums can ‘play an important role in helping communities with job losses reinvent themselves in the new knowledge-based economy’ (AAM 2008: 12). These strategies are advocated by the Alliance as specific set of actions that can also help museums to fulfil their social responsibility towards communities, ‘responding to society’s need for greater global awareness’. By increasing their efforts to promote dialog and understanding

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about other cultures and American place in the global economy, museums can serve ‘as ambassadors to the rest of the world not just through overseas outposts but through traveling exhibits and more directed Web presence, helping interpreting U.S. culture to countries of growing influence’ (AAM 2008: 12). Another very important aspect of the American museum community that can significantly contribute to understanding the roots of the cosmopolitan vision integrated in the museum discourses is the strong leadership aspirations which define the international engagement of American museums. The AAM vision statement proudly declares: ‘We will champion the vital role of museums in the 21st century’ (AAM 2010). These ambitious future plans set a specific tone of communication between the American museums and the rest of the world. The AAM clearly sets an objective to enlarge ‘international perspectives and maximize international participation’ in all aspects of international interactions (AAM 2010). The major role, that the AAM is trying to take in the global community, is mediating, making sure that the best museum institutional policies, strategies, and practices are in place to serve better the cross-cultural contact with foreign museums and to contribute to further promotion of American museums to global audiences. Though AAM is a national organization, it really has a global outreach and influence on the professional field of museums throughout the world and not only through mediation functions in the programs supported by the U.S. Department of State. As Orosz points out, since the organization’s foundation it aimed ‘to provide a venue in which to share ideas about the work of museums to share those ideas with museum employees around the country – and around the world…’ (Orosz 2002). Howarth observes that the ‘AAM started with a pan-American focus’ but has increasingly moved to global influence, even though it has never had ‘the worldwide mandate of ICOM (International Coalition of Museums)’ (Howarth 2012: 91). Currently, the global aspirations of the AAM are manifested in the ambitious annual AAM conferences with a vast international outreach and participation, both in terms of programming and audiences. The conference attracts annually up to six thousand museum professionals from the USA and other countries and there are around 160 programs and sessions which are designed to address a wide variety of museum management issues and raise many important questions in respect to different dimensions of museums programming and development (Phelus 2012). Especially in recent decades, the Alliance developed new series of sessions that are simultaneously translated into other languages, including Arabic, Mandarin, French, Spanish, etc. Also the conference provides various opportunities for networking among museum professionals through an ‘international lounge program’, an international welcome reception, and other

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activities ‘fostering the cross-cultural dialogue’ (Phelus 2012). Describing the role of this conference, Senior Director of the International Programs and Events at the AAM, Dean Phelus shares: The annual meeting is the largest educational opportunity for museum professionals in the world…. I believe this conference really is a very important component of cultural diplomacy, it’s a way to understand the similarities and differences that we share in regard to the different types of museums that are represented, variety of social areas that are represented, as well as the branches of diverse populations. It promotes a greater crosscultural understanding on the global level (Phelus 2012).

Furthermore, the AAM has been for a long time accepting members from organizations and individuals around the world. Though the Alliance is an American organization, it has ‘members from the international community’. The director of the international relations explains: ‘we need to be more actively engaged with our international colleagues to … help develop the international museums practices in collaborations with our colleagues from abroad’ (Phelus 2012). The AAM devotes much of its efforts to engage the international museum community in the Museum Accreditation Program that have been implemented by the Alliance for more than 40 years. Accreditation, granted by the AAM as a confirmation that a non-profit organization can be called a museum, ‘offers high profile, peer-based validation of your museum’s operations and impact’ promises the Alliance, ‘Accreditation increases your museum’s credibility and value to funders, policy makers, community and peers’ (AAM 2013). On the international level, this accreditation program has some important political and cultural implications, because it ambitiously intends to establish it authority on the international level to decide on the institutional status of museums founded in different countries. Reflecting on the international dimension of the program, the AAM Director of the International Programs says: ‘we are going to other countries to talk about our accreditation program…this international perspective helps to facilitate a global understanding of what it means to be a museum’ (Phelus 2012). By acquiring this international power to define institutional forms of museums across various countries, the AAM is taking a central leadership role, communicating its cosmopolitan aspirations within a professional museum world. The Alliance also has developed strong practices of global outreach that aim to educate the international community of museums professional about the ‘best practices’. The AAM publishes books about the museum management being translated into other languages, organize workshops and professional development programs also available in different languages. On the top of that, the AAM implements exchange programs with other countries, ‘for example, the one that

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we recently did in Cuba… There is a wide spectrum of things that we are becoming to develop more broadly with regard to our interest in connecting to our museums colleagues globally’ (Phelus 2012). Another interesting example of the expanding international programming of the AAM is a Global Views Series. It is a series of professional sessions ‘that are of global interest, which means, that they equally speak to the international museum community. They are organized on the proposal basis, any from the museum global community can propose a session… International committee usually reviews these proposals and form the global series. Recently we have had participants in these series from China, and Taiwan, and Australia, and Arabian Peninsula, and India… it’s an open process and we have proposals coming from all over the world …’ (Phelus 2012). International programming of the AAM in cultural diplomacy issues also has a quite broad focus, trying to engage and establish cooperative relationships with all countries from every corner of the world. For example, Heather Berry, Manager of International Programs at AAM, who coordinates Museum Connect program in cooperation with the U.S. Department of State indicates:  in the international partnership among museums the main focus is in the geographic diversity… we are funded by the Department of State and they have their own geographic priorities, but in the process of peer-review of the projects applications we make sure that there is a diversity where the Museum Connect program is happening around the world. And sometimes, if we find some successful application from the museums, which are not quite diverse in terms of their international partnerships, we really encourage them to find and engage more partners (Berry 2012).

All these programs of the AAM position this alliance as an international organization. However, as Howarth indicates, ‘it is the US’s national museum organization, and it’s very ‘American-ness’ works against it in some international contexts’ (Howarth 2012: 90). By remaining the American Association of Museums, but with an international focus and a strong ambition to shape the professional museum discourse on the global level, it mainly seeks to increase ‘its influence on, and involvement with, the developing regions of East Asia (most notably China), the Middle East and, less obviously, Central and South America’ (Howarth 2012: 90). In this way, the cosmopolitan agenda of the AAM on the political map of international engagements acquires strong imperialistic objectives. Based on a similar rhetorical means, stressing universal values and aspiring to a global appeal, the international professional discourse constructed by the AAM, though not officially commissioned by the government, continues the official line of the U.S. international politics, emphasizing and reinforcing American imperial powers and domination over other regions. Many scholars acknowledges the power of American professional and

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institutional knowledge and organizational structures to be transferred and adopted by various developing countries, striving for economic development and inclusion into the global markets. They emphasize that this global influence of the USA on the institutional level bring negative consequences on the cultural development in local communities. For example, van den Bosch stresses:  The means of transmitting this model are global, the reach of the model is global, yet the model has a local first world – a Northern and particularly North American identity. Other national and cultural identities do not vanish; they become subordinated. The main problem for the art museum is the homogenization of practices, collections, and attitudes to the audience through the internationalization of the art market. Oyen has shown that the emphasis in any comparative analysis needs to change from the search for sameness or unity that reproduces the global first world model to an inclusion of difference, and an analysis of why some differences appear more pronounced (van den Bosch 2005: 85). In line with this perspective, Fraser also points out that in the past decades, ‘the spread of the American model of private support through Thatcherism in Britain to neoliberalism on the European continent and beyond’ has made museums increasingly dependent on economic forces, shaped by the processes of globalizations, and redefined the restructure of the professional field of museums. Because the survival of contemporary museums ‘depends on their ability to compete, locally, nationally, and globally, for sponsorship and also for audiences’ (Fraser 2006: 150), they become increasingly dependent on the global art market demands and trends. Vivant also argues that when the cities began to compete to attract tourists and investments, ‘museums began to compete for the best reputation and the highest number of visitors and patrons’ which symbolizes an ideological turn in favor of globalization forces spreading to audiences, funds and artists flows (Vivant 2011: 101). These authors advocate against global instalments of American models, shaping various dimensions of museums management, and call museums to develop policies for collections preservation, exhibition organization, and audiences’ development, which take in account their own regional localities, histories, and cultures (van den Bosch 2005: 86). Especially, with the rapid advancement of the new media communication tools, which make the dissemination of knowledge, originating from dominating powers and mentalities, fast and efficient, ‘a universalizing culture’ is being produced and adopted in different corners of the world, which homogenizes differences and helps to establish American influence (van den Bosch 2005: 87). In conclusion, I would like to bring up and discuss some purely artistic nuances enabling American museums to become important mediators in promoting democratic values of American society on a global scale. The democratic

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aspirations in arts creation has traditionally been manifested in discourses actively promoting the American freedom of artistic expression, so much valued and supported within American society. The governmental rhetoric has specifically relied on promotion of artistic freedoms as one of the most important foundations of the healthy development of the society in the country. For example, President Eisenhower, in his public speech to celebrate the quarter-century mark of the Museum of Modern Art, proclaimed: …freedom of the arts is a basic freedom, one of the pillars of liberty in our land. For our Republic to stay free, those among us with the rare gift of artistry must be able freely to use their talent. Likewise, our people must have unimpaired opportunity to see, to understand, to profit from our artists’ work. As long as artists are at liberty to feel with high personal intensity, as long as our artists are free to create with sincerity and conviction, there will be healthy controversy and progress in art (MOMA 1954: 2).

Specifically, his speech outlined the importance of this basic human freedoms to freely express artistic talents in the ‘modern international politics’ oriented towards building a more just world of order ‘without the armor of inherited convictions or set formulas, but only with bare hands and all the honesty’ that can significantly enhance the global spread of democratic beliefs and liberate oppressed societies living under totalitarian regimes (MOMA 1954: 3). As Bruno pointed out the unique value-set that comprises the ‘American democratic experiment’ in creating a fair and equal society, with as many freedoms as possible ‘is a kind of case study for the larger world’ (Broun 2004: 300). He argues that the ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Martin Luther King Jr. symbolize not only purely American ideals, but are relevant and important for the whole world as universal values of ‘people searching for freedom everywhere’ (Broun 2004: 300). Because, from the beginning, the U.S. has been a ‘home to people, including artists, who could not be reconciled to life in their native land’, American artists striving for freedom, and not only the global aspirations and beliefs, have a strong ability to shape more democratic societies through their work within and beyond the USA. Furthermore, the democratic aspiration and the logic of market liberty had a tremendous impacts on the understanding of arts in the USA. In contrast to other countries, Americans have traditionally been more inclined to define arts in much broader terms. The definition of art within the U.S. culture has fuzzier and vaguer barriers and even intersects with so called ‘popular cultures’. Thus, Melling and Roper indicate that the egalitarian ethic of the American political process have empowered artists, denied by the elitist regimes in other countries. As a result, this foundational principle of democracy shaped the American arts as ‘accessible, dynamic, exciting and ephemeral to the extent that it changed

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constantly under the influence of technological and industrial advance’ and empowered the development of the popular culture (Melling and Roper 1996, 11). Eventually, the American artistic environment of cultural production has been defined not so much by aesthetic appreciation, but more by degree to which the arts reflected the popular ideals of lifestyle and pursuit of happiness, the basic rights of all people. ‘Regardless of historical social distinctions and differences, there is the lasting, compelling, and self-evident code of democratic equality’, which lay in the foundations of the relationship between democracy and the world of culture and the arts in the USA (Kroes 2000: 44). These artistic aspirations for freedom, inclusiveness and democracy has been another important dimension in the nature of the U.S. museums which also contributed to their diplomatic functions in the international arena. Drawing on the historical genealogical analysis of the U.S. museum field, the chapter illustrates that the leadership and initiative taken by the American museums today in the international arena has been nurtured within the museum agency through generations. The core museum principles of democracy, exceptionalism and cosmopolitanism have always tremendously contributed to the efforts of the U.S. cultural diplomacy in a very natural way, especially at moments when the State Department dropped its interests in and cut funding for international cultural outreach. Though the relationship between museums and the government remained problematic and complex, American museums managed to find a way to project the best from American culture to foreign audiences, whether completely independently or in cooperation with the government, for example during the Cold War. The ideal of American democracy inherent in the economic position and cultural structure of the museums in the USA was instrumental to push forward the democratic agenda as a part of international outreach. The major argument of this chapter is that the museum diplomacy in the context of the USA cannot be defined in the narrow terms of traditional cultural diplomacy understood solely in terms of government support of international museums’ programming. The great influence that American museums exert overseas functions across different cultural, economic, and political forces. The museum diplomacy in this way is operationalized not only through artistic or cultural programming, promoting American democracy and freedom of expression abroad, but also through more subtle forces of international professional leadership of American museums, which influences the cultural fields around the world and imposes the values of the American society through exposure of American model of cultural operations balancing across various interior powers and contra powers.

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Bibliography Adam, Thomas. R. (1939). The Museum and Popular Culture. New York: American Association for Adult Education. Alexander, E. P. (1983). Museum Masters: Their Museums and Their Influence. Nashville, Tenn.: American Association for State and Local History. – and American Association for State and Local History. (1997). The Museum in America: Innovators and Pioneers. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press. American Association of Museums (AAM). (1918). ‘Museum Work’. Washington, DC: American Association of Museums Press accessed 11 October 2014. – ‘Statement of Edward H. Able, Jr., President and CEO American Association of Museums’. American Alliance of Museums Press. – (2008). ‘Museums & Society 2034: Trends and Potential Futures’. Washington, DC: American Association of Museums Press accessed 11 October 2014. – (2010). ‘The Spark: AAM’s Strategic Plan: 2010–2015’. Washington, DC: American Association of Museums Press accessed 11 October 2014. – (2012). About Us, accessed 11October 2014. – (2012). ‘Trends Watch 2012: Museums and the Pulse of the Future’. Washington, DC: American Association of Museums Press accessed 11 October 2014. Archibugi, Daniele. (2008). The Global Commonwealth of Citizens: Toward Cosmopolitan Democracy. Princeton University Press. Arndt, Richard T. (2010). ‘The Hush-Hush Debate: The Cultural Foundations of U.S. Public Diplomacy’, Public Diplomacy Magazine 4 (1): 18–29. – (2005). First Resort of Kings, American Cultural Diplomacy in the 20th Century. Washington DC: Potomac Books. Bacon, Barbara, Pam, Schaffer, and Williams, Patricia. (2002). Giving Voice: A Role for Museums in Civic Dialogue. American Association of Museums, Copyright 2002. Bandler, M. (2003). ‘Conversation With Dana Gioia: Bringing Art to All Americans’, INFO USA, US Department of State, accessed 11 October 2012. Berry, H. (2012). Interview by Natalia Grincheva. Bloom, Margo. (2002). ‘Museums and Communities after September 11’, The Journal of American History 89 (3), 1014–1016.

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Launius, Roger D. (2007). ‘American Memory, Culture Wars, and the Challenge of Presenting Science and Technology in a National Museum’, The Public Historian 29 (1), 13–30. Leach, William. (1993). Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture. New York: Vintage Books. Macdonald, Sharon. (2006). A Companion to Museum Studies. Wiley-Blackwell. McGuigan, J. (1996). Culture and the Public Sphere. London: Routledge. Melling, Phil and Roper, Jon. (1996) Americanization and the Transformation of World Cultures. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press. Ninkovich, Frank. (1997). ‘The Currents of Cultural Diplomacy: Art and the State Department, 1938–1947’, Diplomatic History 1 (1): 215–238. Orosz, Joel. (2002). Curators and Culture: The Museum Movement in America, 1740–1870. Tuscaloosa: University Of Alabama Press. Phelus, Dean. (2012). Interview by Natalia Grincheva. Preyer, Charles David. (1909). The Art of the Metropolitan Museum of New York. Boston: Page & Company. Scales Laura W. L. (1917). ‘The Museum’s Part in the Making of Americans’, Proceedings of the American Association of Museums (AAM). Volume XI. Washington, DC: American Association of Museums Press accessed 11 October 2014. Schwarzer, M., and American Association of Museums. (2006). Riches, Rivals and Radicals: 100 Years of Museums in America. Washington, DC: American Association of Museums. Shark, Annabell. (1997). ‘MoMA, The Bomb and the Abstract Expressionists’, Direct Art 4 (1). accessed 11 October 2012. Smith Bautista, Susana. (2009). ‘The Social Function of Museums in the Digital Age’, The International Journal of the Arts in Society 4 (2), 9–19. Sylvester, Christine. (2009). Art/Museums: International Relations Where We Least Expect It. London Paradigm Publishers. The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). (1954). ‘Eisenhower Message Opens Museum of Modern Art’s’. 25th Anniversary Program. New York. accessed 11 October 2014. The Salzburg Global Seminar and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. (2011). ‘Libraries and Museums in an Era of Participatory Culture’, Salzburg Seminar accessed 11 October 2014. Tobelem, Jean-Michel. (2007) ‘The Marketing Approach in Museums’, In Richard Sandell and Robert R. Janes (eds), Museum Management and Marketing, 294–312. London and New York: Routledge.

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Toepler, S. and Kirchberg, V. (2014). ‘Museums, Merchandising, and Non-Profit Commercialization’, National Center on Non-Profit Enterprise accessed 11 October 2014. U.S. Department of State. (2011). ‘Museums & Community Collaborations Abroad’ accessed 11 October 2014. – (2012). ‘Museum Connect’ accessed 11 October 2014. van den Bosch, Annette. (2005). ‘Museums’. Third Text 19 (1), 81–89. van den Haag, Ernest. (1979). ‘Should the Government Subsidize the arts?’ Policy Review 10 (3), 63–73. Vergo, P. (1997). The New Museology. Reaction Books. Vivant, Elsa. (2011). ‘Who brands whom? The Role of Local Authorities in the Branching of Art Museums Town’. Planning Review 82(1), 99–115. Whitman, Walt. (1871). ‘Songs of the Exposition’. In W. Whitman Leaves of Grass. New York: J.S. Redfield. Wile, Frederic. (1928). A Century of Industrial Progress. New York: Arno Press. Wittlin, Alma. (1970). Museums, in Search of a Usable Future. Cambridge: The MIT press. Wood, James N. (2004). ‘The Authorities of the American Art Museum’, in James Cuno (ed.), Whose Muse: Art Museums and the Public Trust. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Zolberg, V. (2004). ‘An Elite Experience for Everyone’, In Itit Rogoff and Daniel J. Sherman (ed.), Museum Culture: Histories, Discourses, Spectacles, 49–65. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Juan Luis Manfredi

MOOCs and Foreign Affairs:  New Challenges for Diplomacy Introduction Towards a Communication Theory for Public Diplomacy In recent years, public diplomacy has been gaining ground in studies on international political communication. International communication has taken on a vital role in international relations and the number of academic and professional definitions for the term has grown. Joseph Nye for instance, coined the idea of soft power and smart power (Nye 2013), whilst Phil Seib focuses more on the impact of social media on real-time diplomacy (Seib 2012). Nicholas J. Cull has broadened the scope of activities included in public diplomacy by explaining that it involves ‘an international actor’s attempt to manage the international environment through engagement with a foreign public’ (Cull 2009: 12). The growing number of projects specializing in public diplomacy has led to a variety of designations: gastrodiplomacy, sports diplomacy (Imperiale 2014), digital diplomacy or engagement with the diasporas. Public diplomacy is a strategy that involves information, education and entertainment with the aim of influencing a foreign audience. It is a foreign line of action, and as such it must be in harmony with conventional diplomacy and government strategies. Public diplomacy pursues three main goals (Manfredi Sanchez 2011): reinforcing linguistic and cultural identity in times of globalization (which is the goal of the Spanish Instituto Cervantes, the BBC World Service and the francophone community, for instance, as well as Erasmus programmes and audiovisual projects that are co-financed using public subsidies); taking part in international economic flows (through foreign trade, commercial diplomacy, financial diplomacy and nation branding); and influencing public opinion (by means of grants from the Fundación Carolina, the US International Visitor Leadership Program and training international civil servants in a given country, for instance). There is no need to choose just one of these goals – every country, every action and every political context will involve and strive towards whichever are in its interests. This chapter looks for the reflection and debate about the role that MOOCs may play in the field of the public diplomacy. As a traditional element of cultural diplomacy, education and exchanges are the way to create professional, academic and

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scientific networks. However, technologies challenge this traditional organization of academic influence spreading the number of attendees and the fields of research. Public diplomacy is the result of a combination of five tactical aspects (Cull 2008): the ability to listen, promotion of interests, cultural diplomacy, exchanges, and international radio and TV broadcasts. Each of these five aspects develops at its own pace and affects different audiences (Leonard et al. 2002: 73). Public diplomacy comprises efforts made in the short term (engaging with the world of journalism, dealing with influential players on the net, engaging with correspondents), in the middle term (public campaigns, national branding, organising publicity events), and in the long term (connecting with civil society, leading multilateral bodies, sponsorship). The difference between public diplomacy and propaganda is that the former operates in the interests of mutual gain, cooperation and transparency. In contrast, propaganda is coercive, it forces content upon the viewer and it is not open to discussion or a change of attitude. But this idea of a ‘psychological war’ is not suitable in times of peace. Instead, performing a variety of measures, particularly in the field of culture, rises as a means to promote ideas and to influence public opinion. Thus, cultural dynamism is understood to be more appropriate than coercion when it comes to changing public opinion for political purposes (Niño 2009: 35). In public diplomacy, ideas are disseminated with a view to attracting resources and people, which must be done on the basis of trust and understanding. That is why educational programmes are paramount when it comes to designing and implementing public diplomacy strategies. Most countries resort to some form of activity to educate journalists, politicians, social activists and other influential agents in political spheres, or invite them to learn about the country. Resorting to the prestige of the national language and culture in other countries is the preferred method in liberal democracies, especially the United States of America and the United Kingdom. Both of these countries developed their instruments shortly after the end of World War Two. The concept has evolved substantially. The original notion, which was linked to Edmund Gullion, was a mere euphemism of propaganda. But during the Cold War, it became necessary to adopt a new theoretical approach to international political communication, and so the idea of public diplomacy arose. The concept further evolved and transformed after 1989, as new international audiences emerged owing to the creation of a new scenario brought on by international television, disappearing geographical boundaries in the field of communication and the globalization of the audiovisual sector. In light of this evolution, new tools began to be used, new diplomatic goals were set and the obsolete methods used in the cultural cold war were left behind.

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The theoretical basis remains the same – the change lies in how it is used. Even realists acknowledge the value of influence and public opinion as decisive elements on the international scene. So much so that E.H. Carr divides international political powers into three spheres: military, financial and public opinion, as is ‘a regular instrument of foreign policy’ (1939: 192). Similarly, Morgenthau believes that ‘controlling the minds of men as a tool to modify relationships of power between two nations’ consists in ‘persuasion of a higher nature’ (1986: 86). The natural evolution of this model is tending back towards education as the mother of public diplomacy. Looking back in history, public diplomacy has played an essential role in encouraging cultural, scientific and educational relations. In this sense, Arndt claims that ‘diplomacy means relations not between nation-states but between cultures’. Exchange programmes are among the stars of conventional public diplomacy, given that they attract the attention of the elite and establish links with high emotional value. They are training programmes in the broadest sense, but they are also extremely costly activities and their profitability is difficult to appraise, precisely because the results are reaped in the very long term. Arndt goes on to say that ‘cultural interchange meant a complex and balanced give-and-take of learning and teaching, export and import, weakness and strength, humility and self-confidence’ (Ardnt 2006: 1–2). Inwardly, the link between culture and education is the foundation on which nations build their identity. Outwardly, public diplomacy is a vehicle for cultural policy abroad, insofar as it encompasses teaching a country’s language abroad, exporting cultural assets and services (books, films), taking part in events of a diverse nature (exhibitions, samples), design and creation (fashion, science, gastronomy), as well as other regular activities. The boundary between the two is indistinct and theoretical, which explains the need to include other aspects such as prestige and reputation in public diplomacy management. Lastly, it should be pointed out that public diplomacy is a government task and is therefore the exclusive competence of the state. This gives rise to a paradox caused by the merge between political science, communication, culture, journalism and international law all in a single field of study. Strictly speaking, diplomacy is the key instrument in foreign policy and is one of the core elements of institutional relations. Nevertheless, the ability to act shown by other players and the programmes carried out on a private basis by organizations, companies and individuals are becoming increasingly relevant. They are independent from the state’s political decisions and strategies, and from its budget. However, they are not governed by the same principles and lack real political power. Therefore, I believe that their influential capacity should not be included under the umbrella of diplomacy, but rather they belong to another field of knowledge that is yet to be determined.

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Methodology Digital diplomacy is a new field of research that encompasses different interests. In order to approach the topic of digital diplomacy, this study has resorted to a variety of sources from the fields of journalism, law, political science and education. Its corpus is not solid owing to the fact that, as far as foreign policy is concerned, states are still testing to see which principles, methods and digital systems contribute to achieving the goals of diplomacy. Firstly, an analysis has been made of the literature available on international education programmes as one of the traditional cores of public diplomacy. Programmes of this kind have always had an interest in identifying leaders in the field of science or culture. Next, a definition has been drawn up of digital diplomacy’s essential elements to see where most progress has been made in view of the technological transformation. The study has then gone on to analyze how education and international communication have found their way into diplomatic activity and how technology has quickened the pace of certain public diplomacy processes. The case study carried out compares the strategies applied by the United States, the European Union and Japan. The aim is to define the decisions they have made, their risks and opportunities, and bring them into context. The novelty of this project lies in studying the phenomenon of digital diplomacy, its effects on public diplomacy and the effective relevance of the first measures carried out.

How Digital Diplomacy Has Emerged in the Field of Education Educational Programmes and Public Diplomacy Public diplomacy strategies now take care of the cultural diplomacy measures that were traditionally carried out as part of foreign actions. The logic behind foreign action requires a well-organized cultural policy that is articulated such that it has an influence on international issues. The idea of culture, which is so closely bound to language, is conveyed through cultural policies, the creation of international relations based on cultural events, the provision of resources, the setting of political goals (or public opinion goals), the creation of administrative bodies to apply these policies and the appointment of administrative personnel. The Advisory Committee on Cultural Diplomacy (of the US Department of State) believes that cultural diplomacy is the axis around which foreign policy revolves. A report published after the 11 September attacks in 2001 suggested that ‘Perhaps this time we can create enduring structures within which to practice effective cultural diplomacy and articulate a sustaining vision of the role that culture can play in enhancing the security of this country’ (Advisory Committee

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2005: 7). This is an express acknowledgment of the need to guide cultural initiatives towards achieving specific political objectives. Communication, in a very broad sense, and education are preferential action paths when it comes to influencing a foreign audience. The former plays the role of mediator in the experience of broad sectors of the population. Film, audiovisual media, literature and music are used to enhance a country’s notoriety and acclaim, to promote general tourism or study trips, and to support the marketing of products and services on foreign markets (Leonard et al. 2002: 9). Public diplomacy provides funding for international fairs and festivals, translations, preferential spaces in libraries (for instance, what was formerly known as American Corners, now American Spaces) and international broadcasts, as well as providing joint funding for projects of other kinds (such as the European audiovisual programme MEDIA or IBERMEDIA, with recurring models). The inclination to use audiovisual content is due to the fact that it easily transmits emotions and values. In the words of McLuhan, audiovisual content is a hot communication medium. To illustrate this, there are specific programmes aimed towards journalists, who are expected to have the ability to influence and shape their country’s public opinion. Such programmes seek to ensure a close experience with the aim of reaching the population at large, whilst at the same time reinforcing the opinions of a specific foreign policy strategy. Similarly, learning about a country by means of an exchange programme is not intended as propaganda, but rather as persuasion. The difference lies in that the journalist generates a framework of understanding, they create their own networks of sources and acquire their own personal experience. In short, leaders are the ones who have an impact on the population and their immediate surroundings, rather than great acts of political publicity. Education, on the other hand, pursues other goals and therefore requires other strategies. Educational programmes work in the middle term and are as individualized as possible. Each student chooses a programme, a university or a destination. The aim is for the experience to be unique, even if it is framed within a measure that is intended for academic groups, journalistic groups or others of a different nature (Manheim 1994). This aim is embedded in the founding legislation of international education policies. In 1948, the Information and Educational Exchange Act was passed, which reads as follows: ‘International exchanges of persons and projects constitute an integral and essential technique in attaining the general objectives of this educational exchange program. […] Through personal experience and personal influence [they] promote a better understanding of the United States abroad’ (Espinosa 1975: 342). Educational programmes therefore work on a very individual basis and focus on engagement by means of educational or scientific activities. Influential ability

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focuses on the individual, who belongs to some sort of elite in their home country. This individualized approach makes it easier to design messages and ensure the success of a campaign. The target profiles vary: people in charge of public policy, teachers and students are the most frequent. These programmes do not exclude people based on financial, social or racial criteria, but they do pick out people with great influential ability in a specific sphere. The idea is to connect the future elite by means of personal contact, i.e. by building professional networks that will contribute to developing specific projects in the fields of technology, innovation, science and R&D. In short, these programmes pave the way to build personal, individual relationships. That is why they use up so many resources, require steady action and are very risky. Designing the programme, selecting candidates and choosing a relevant training programme are unstable elements. Whatever the nature of the programme (scholarship, exchange, training, conferences, seminars, professional social networks, etc.), they are all affected by those elements. This approach shapes the way educational programmes are carried out in the USA, Europe and Japan. The outward projection of an identity is governed by cultural guidelines, with clear differences in terms of values. This means that launching new educational content and allocating resources to do so can be driven by different political objectives and will therefore give rise to different programmes. In the USA, a system was established for educational programmes with the approval of the 1961 Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act (US Code – Title 22: Foreign Relations and Intercourse – Chapter 33). Better known as the FulbrightHays Act, its preamble sets down the ultimate goal of this policy:  Increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries by means of educational and cultural exchange; strengthen the ties which unite us with other nations by demonstrating the educational and cultural interests, developments, and achievements of the people of the United States and other nations, and the contributions being made toward a peaceful and more fruitful life for people throughout the world; promote international cooperation for educational and cultural advancement; and thus assist in the development of friendly, sympathetic, and peaceful relations between the United States and the other countries of the world.

This system for international exchanges and education came in response to the threat of communism. In light of the growth and success of propaganda in Europe, it was decided to put in place an educational collaboration with a view to linking financial investment to educational development and thus transform the idea that certain countries had of the USA (Johnson and Colligan 1965). In Europe, the Erasmus programme is the epitome of exchanges. The Spanish Autonomous Body for European Educational Programmes (OAPEE for its Spanish initials) states that:

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The goal is to cater for the teaching and learning needs of all those involved in official higher education and higher vocational training, regardless of the duration of the degree or qualification, which includes doctorate studies, as well as the institutions that impart such training. (Organismo Autonomo 2014)

Much has been written regarding the history and scope of the Erasmus programme. The most interesting aspect here is its dual dimension in public diplomacy. The European Union’s case is unique because of its political definition. Generally considered a unique type of quasi-federal organization, in my view, EU educational activities are under a two-fold public diplomacy umbrella. On the one hand, the internal dimension is addressed to the Member States, to maintain their status and sovereignty. They are the immediate audience of such communication actions. This dimension emphasises the historical relationship and the success of the European project. The main tools are information, dissemination and educational exchange programmes. The expense of these activities amounts to 80 million euro per year. There is much debate in the literature on European identity. Davis Cross clarifies that there is sufficient public sphere shared identity to develop communication activities that will strengthen European public diplomacy. European identity is clear when analysing the topic in terms of frames. European public affairs are similar (2010). At a second level, the member states themselves are responsible for promoting and supporting the internal dimension of European identity, in parallel with national identity. However, member states tend to ignore this dimension in their international activity (Davis Cross 2010). On the other hand, the external dimension is oriented towards the neighbourhood policy and enlargement. In this dimension, international cooperation and development aid are key actions that support the EU’s external image. Also, the development of military intervention policies has given more depth to this aspect. In the field of public diplomacy, activities are focused on information activities. The expenditure reaches 8 million euro per year (Rasmussen, 2010: 273). The contents promote normative power. In particular, the EU is associated with the processes of peace, international cooperation, human rights, democracy promotion, civil society and the rule of law. These values are specified in the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). The further development of the initiative Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) has favoured the creation of an international reputation. The new Erasmus+ programme covers from 2014 to 2020 and is part of the 2020 Education and Training strategy. It is aimed towards students and teachers at four stages of education (school, vocational training, higher education and adult training). The European Commission has set the programme two specific objectives. One is to support the consolidation of a European Higher Education Area (EHEA), while the second is to ensure that higher education contributes to

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innovation. To this end, the European Commission will be allocating a budget of 4.92 billion euro for the next six-year period. According to figures from the Spanish Autonomous Body for European Educational Programmes (OAPEE), it is estimated that three million people have benefited from the Erasmus programme one way or another since it was created in 1987. In Japan, the Japan Exchange & Teaching Program (JET) also began in 1987, at the same time as the European programme (JET 2014). The aim of the JET is to encourage the country’s internationalization and to foster mutual understanding with other countries by means of Exchange programmes. It is targeted towards young people, who are invited to spend a year working in public institutions and teaching centres. The JET is financed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Education, and local governments through the Council of Local Authorities for International Relations. In 2013, 4,372 people benefited from the programme. The USA takes the lead with 2,359 US participants in the JET, followed by Canada (484), the United Kingdom (388), Australia (2003) and New Zealand (255). Spain, in contrast, has sent only two people. The nature of these Japanese exchanges has ‘the purpose of internationalizing Japan’s local communities by helping to improve foreign language education. But it also creates grassroots channels between Japan and the rest of the world and develops the next generation of supporters of Japan’ (Ogawa 2008: 276).

State of the Art of Digital Diplomacy The emergence of digital media has created a new information ecosystem that is more open and participatory to citizens. Twitter and Facebook have demonstrated how people connect online when they share similar interests. These (micro) powers create a new sort of influential elements. The discussion now is how much or how new media affect the political structure, but there is no doubt about the impact. Technologies have greatly increased the capabilities (and problems) of diplomacy. The various sources of legitimacy, participation and communication support the hypothesis of network diplomacy. Heine, Gstöhl and others have coined this term network diplomacy. The special feature is that relationships outside conventional circles (other diplomats, political or commercial representations) provide contact with other stakeholders in policy making. Social networks are the epitome of network diplomacy. In the academic literature there is no consensus on what is digital (or electronic) diplomacy or diplomacy 2.0. Generically, Hanson notes that it involves ‘the use of the web and new ICTs to carry out diplomatic objectives’ (2012: 3). The author emphasizes the role of social media as transformers of the rules of public diplomacy (2012: 17).

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Digital diplomacy has burst onto the international scene as a result of three concatenated elements (Seib 2012: 41–42). First of all, the consolidation of international TV channels. At least eight major journalistic firms are competing on the audiovisual market, with all kinds of different missions, strategies, resources, processes and values. International information has become standard and is part of the dynamics of international relations. These are the eight major international television channels (public data according to their corporate web sites or as disclosed by them in 2014): Table 1.  Major international broadcasters (2014) Channel RT (2005)

Reference nationality Russia

Ownership/ Mission Funding Public/ To tell the world stories about Russia Combined and report on international news from a Russian standpoint.

CCTV

China

Public/ Public

To voice China’s perspective on international affairs and break away with the west’s monopoly over the news.

Deutsche Welle DW

Germany

Public/ Public

To shape innovation. To explore the world with acclaimed experts.

Al Jazeera

Qatar

Public/ Private

Independent and unbiased news for an international audience. The aim is to be a voice that will contribute to diversity of perspectives in countries that are scarcely represented. The idea is to become the voice of ‘the voiceless’.

Radio France Internationale

France

Public/ Public

Event coverage from a French point of view. Promoting French values all over the world.

BBG Broadcasting United Board of States of Governors America

Public/ Combined

To inform, interact and connect with people all over the world so as to promote freedom and democracy.

BBC – Global News

United Kingdom

Public/ Public

The first to broadcast the latest news. Becoming more innovative all the time.

CNN

United States of America

Private/ Private

To provide trustworthy international news. To offer top quality information and analyses.

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The next element in this context is transparency, filtering and intelligence (Guichot 2012). Competition is rising between journalism, top international politics, freedom and safety. The transfer of files and procedures to digital media, together with new information and communication technology, raises new challenges for governing international relations. Kalathil advocates that the revolution of information technologies has transformed the outlook of international relations. Recent occurrences such as assigning power for political purposes in North Africa, disclosing secret documents or exposing Chinese citizens to cases of corruption among their elite are truly ground-breaking. They are new phenomena:  The rise of nontraditional security threats (cyber and otherwise), networked forms of organization, asymmetrical conflict, decentralization, recentralization, altered global governance structures, multicentrism, information asymmetry, new development models, contested global norms, and much more. (Kalathil 2013: 3)

The last of the three elements is the growth of digital media and the expansion of the digital environment. Social networks, digital platforms, mobile devices, tablets, instant messaging and digital newspapers have given rise to a new ecosystem of relations involving information, politics and citizens (Castells 2008). This is interesting as an element that will transform public diplomacy as digital environments grow to become a place for debate, influence, generating prestige and developing skills. It transports the five functions mentioned above by Cull to a singular environment where physical boundaries are inconceivable and which can barely be cut off or censored. Such an environment is essential to empower a new generation of citizens. Special mention should be made of the demographic challenge faced by new public diplomacy strategies. Roughly 45% of the world’s population is aged under 24, according to figures published by the Population Reference Bureau in its 2011 edition. And the number is rising. Networks are – and will be even more so in the coming years – a necessary environment in which to disseminate messages, manage influence and develop educational programmes. In this context, digital diplomacy can be considered the use of the Internet and new media to achieve the four main goals of diplomacy (representing, negotiating, protecting and promoting a state’s interests as regards third parties). Digital diplomacy uses tools, but the strategy depends on foreign action and on the mandate of foreign policy. Diplomatic innovation is brought on by combining networks, technology and demographic change in a world that is ever more interconnected. New media and social networks transform diplomatic activity and the strategies it follows. The principles of digital diplomacy are flexibility, scalability and survival – the core of network society (Castells 2009: 23). Academic literature has already coined the term ‘network diplomacy’, which explains how the many sources

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of legitimization, participation and communication have made their way swiftly into the international arena and into the specific field of diplomacy (Heine 2008; Cooper et al. 2008: 271–287; Gstöhl 2012: 49–58). Network diplomacy is characterised by its openness in response to the need to open up conventional circles of diplomatic practice (comprising other diplomats, those responsible for public or commercial policies, journalists, influential figures or political decision makers) so as to welcome new actors (such as NGOs, universities, activists and bloggers). Digital diplomacy provides new answers for each country’s foreign policy and supports its choice of instruments (conventional diplomacy, consular assistance, intelligence, cooperation towards cultural development or action, attracting investment and internationalization, among others)’ (France Diplomatie 2014). Canada believes that ‘direct diplomacy is an instrument of contemporary diplomacy’ (Baird 2014). In 2011, the US Secretary of State at the time, Hillary Clinton, already anticipated that the Internet is the new public space in which ideas compete, experiences are exchanged and political citizenship is exercised (Clinton 2014). Spain has appointed a Special Mission Ambassador for digital diplomacy under Royal Decree 168/2014 of 14 March 2014.

Developing MOOCs as Elements of the Public Diplomacy Strategy MOOC – An Innovative Ingredient in Public Diplomacy In the field of public diplomacy, each country has designed its own methodologies to embrace digitalization. A strategy is considered to exist when resources are allocated, processes drawn up and values transmitted. The intangible nature of the digital concept is less relevant than the need to set diplomatic goals, take part in developing programmes and pursue influence in terms of public opinion. In the digital field, digital strategies are aligned with the cultural goals and foreign policy values that are developed under the umbrella of cultural foreign policy. MOOCs have emerged as a tool for which demand is growing in this innovation and transformation process of public diplomacy. MOOC stands for ‘massive open online course’. They constitute the most visible side of applying technological innovation in the educational field. They are the epitome of learning environments as they flexibly combine learning tools, create digital communities of practice and present open content. MOOCs are the most well-known variant, but there are other forms of digital resources and technology. MOOCs are a revolution in learning (both because of the course methodology and pedagogy) and in education (owing to the type of courses offered,

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their design and the number of students that can take them all at once). They are innovative in that they are the answer to mass distance education (allowing access to quality education), whilst at the same time creating social capital for the platform (resource efficiency). Educational opportunities are no longer a limited affair. MOOCs offer practical training by watching online videos, reading, taking part in forums and taking tests to monitor learning. But they are not a regular online course: they must be framed in an agile environment and adapt their teachings to changing surroundings, be of an international and open nature, link the project to the learning community, use social networks, be open to the needs of the students and involve a mass number of students. There is no general consensus on the added value of MOOCs and to top that, the institutions that promote MOOCs fail to agree as to the objective they are pursuing. Here, added value can be divided into three areas. In terms of employability, the student is able to enhance his or her personal profile and social capital by connecting with others who are interested in the same field of knowledge. Employers can access these profiles and identify talent. Furthermore, MOOCs offer a different type of specialization to standard post-graduate courses. As regards qualifications, the student is able to create his or her own post-graduate course by paying for certain services. The student can certify or prove that he or she has taken specific courses, attended lectures or been to tutor sessions. And last of all, MOOCs generate value for universities, as they lower the cost of outsourcing workshops, seminars and other optional courses. MOOCs comprise all of the characteristics that Cull describes as being necessary in order to create a public diplomacy strategy, insofar as these courses can act as listening points to hear the demands of civil society (what participants say, the tone of conversations, the topics chosen, their priorities and so on), they foster specific interests (promoting values, tools or fields of knowledge), they support cultural diplomacy (by promoting the language and culture), they encourage exchanges (these courses offer interaction with specific individuals, some of distinct international or professional renown) and they use audiovisual content (videos, podcasts, etc.). These are the reasons why the USA, Japan and Europe have designed digital courses. Their strategies respond to national interests and to each of their public diplomacy models. At the same time, they also reveal limitations in terms of resources (ideas, people, funding) and of power of impact (language, culture). MOOCs reinforce the hypothesis of cultural likenesses, which in turn shape international subsystems and are levered by political and strategic factors.

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The Strategy of the USA, the EU and Japan The United States has a long track record in cultural diplomacy based on science and technology (Arndt 2005; Flink and Schreiterer 2010). The Internet and digital culture have continued that relationship following other waves of innovation (Akaev and Pantin, 2014).The specific advantage of technology lies in its ability to open up new markets (ecommerce of goods and services), generate employment (start-ups), promote values (freedom and expression) and broaden international trade. Technology is a vehicle for diplomacy in the sense that it transmits these abilities and is by no means neutral. In order to expand on the technological model fostered by the USA, a link must be established between public and private interests. The public origin of the Internet (using public funds) is now added to by the huge investment made by private agents, who are channelling innovation towards a more trade-focused path. Such public-private operations require collaboration, trust and broad networks. The elaboration of a ‘common good’ is the outcome of negotiations between public interests and private interests. In US diplomacy, we can find three areas of digital diplomacy. Firstly, Hillary Clinton’s ‘Internet Rights and Wrongs: Choices and Challenges in a Networked World’ speech four days after the fall of Mubarak is a statement of policies for Internet freedom, political development and other challenges in an interconnected world. According to Clinton, ‘The Internet has become the public space of the 21st century’ and the ‘Freedom to connect’ means ‘the marketplace of ideas’. In order to promote freedom and democracy it is necessary to encourage respect for personal rights and free access to cyberspace. Clinton’s speech underlines three big challenges: the dilemma of liberty and security, transparency in the WikiLeaks age and free expression respecting tolerance and civility. Such a trilemma is hacking diplomacy (Manfredi 2011). MOOCs are the ultimate example of ‘technology-driven diplomacy’ (Hanson 2012). This covers the series of measures carried out by the US Department of State to promote companies, media and business in the digital environment. Young people who engage in start-ups, digital media and other technology-based businesses are aided by activities, programmes and training courses. Richard Stengel, the current Under Secretary, expressly mentioned the need to link digital diplomacy with innovation, economy, investment and internationalization. In general terms, Stengel stated that financial diplomacy and entrepreneurship will be prioritised. At the time he was appointed, the Under Secretary wrote:  Social media and mobile technology are transformational tools. We need to move toward a digital-first strategy.  That doesn’t mean digital only; far from it. It means that our content

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and programs and messaging should build out from an integrated digital platform. In places around the world where FM radio is the way to reach people, we will build it out from a digital foundation.  This isn’t pie-in-the-sky; this is reality.  These new technologies will be especially helpful in reaching young people who expect to have a conversation with us, rather than just receiving messages. (Stengel 2014)

One year earlier, his predecessor Tara Sonenshine, who was also the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, explained that digital diplomacy serves the interests of foreign policy because MOOCs foster interaction with a global audience, open up the doors to a globalized economy, encourage entrepreneurship and drive innovation. Sonenshine spoke of resources: ‘The United States is also investing up to $2 billion in the creation of open online educational and job training resources’ (Soneshine 2014) and in improving global employability. Such political ideals have been applied in the form of MOOC Camps, driven by the Education and Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Department of State with a theme that is very much in line with US foreign policy goals. Specifically, the courses offered cover topics such as science and technology, entrepreneurship, and English as a foreign language. The first technology partner chosen was Coursera, the consortium comprising Princeton University, Stanford University, the University of California (Berkeley), the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and the University of Pennsylvania, among others. Alliances have since been extended and now include edX. The aim of the Department of State is to create ‘learning hubs’ with local support from embassies, who can favour face-to-face interaction. These hubs are aimed towards mass audiences but they complement the network of offices and institutions that was already constituted by conventional diplomacy with social networks and technology. Fulbright scholars play a key role in the success of MOOCs as they guide forum conversations and take care of recruiting talent on the net. The embassies are in charge of arranging a meeting for each participant with the head of the educational programme with a view to recruiting students wishing to complete their studies in the United States (EducationUSA). The embassies in Armenia, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, China, Czech Republic, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Lithuania, Macedonia, Madagascar, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Tanzania and Uruguay have been the first to embrace the initiative. These activities are in sync with the boost of entrepreneurial action all over the world. Privately held institutions have been investing money and creating opportunities for technology-based entrepreneurial courses. Among the most noteworthy is Global Entrepreneurship Week, supported by the Kauffamn Foundation and the World Economic Forum to promote entrepreneurship and

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technology companies. This initiative sponsors a MOOC entitled ‘Beyond Silicon Valley: Growing Entrepreneurship in Transitioning Economies’ which is the course that best reflects this whole series of technology, values and ideas that are aimed to change the world around them. This contribution of private funds is linked to the expansion of public diplomacy. During the Cold War, foundations, philanthropy and other non-government agents with a global scope became involved in the global public diplomacy strategy. It was precisely their unofficial nature that enabled them to promote certain values linked to freedom, free markets and a free flow of ideas (Parmar 2012). There are those who have criticised the MOOC Camp project. In line with the rhetoric of cultural studies, MOOCs have been seen as part of a US-born cultural imperialism. The educational model, topics and values promoted respond to the interests of US diplomacy as the course sponsor. This concept of teaching culture through culture pertains to colonial and anti-colonial literature (Carnoy 1974; Tomlinson 1991). In the new digital era, MOOCs have emerged as a continuation of such practice. The UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills also contemplates this critical opinion, claiming that some ‘detect a new form of cultural imperialism’ in the provision of international educational services. For Kris Olds there is a sort of territorial matrix that follows the same logic:  It is worth discussing how scalable, across national boundaries, the content of each course is. Some courses reflect the production of knowledge about phenomena or issues that are perhaps equally relevant to people in the US and Pakistan, for example. Other content, however, is deeply reflective of variations in state-society-economy relations, as well as the identity and positionality of course professors. Over time this will become even more of a factor as courses other than computer science and physics get posted. Surely, with open-access courses that are designed to reach across global space there should be more visible information that flags how appropriate or relevant the content might be to students outside of the nations the course professor(s) are situated in. Of course this is not a simple thing to do but one way or another those working with MOOCs need to grapple with the myriad of challenges associated with teaching students from contexts very different than the ones their regular students are embedded in. (Olds 2012)

An example of this direct link between digital diplomacy and conventional national interests is the decision to impose sanctions on MOOCs. Given that certain exports have been banned in Iran, Cuba, Sudan and Syria, the students enrolled in these digital courses are being left out. This approach confirms the idea that the courses are part of an export of educational services and are therefore subject to sanctions, as opposed to being services of an informative nature with a more flexible internationalization process.

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The second cause for criticism is that, owing to their digital nature, MOOCs are intended for the new elite population; the courses are free and open-access, but the means needed to take part in them are not, which broadens the divide between those who can afford access to the Internet and new media and those who lack the resources. As regards the quality of the courses, Joshua Kim explains that massively open online courses are wonderful things, but they should not be confused with a higher education. A MOOC, if well designed, can be a terrific method for information transfer, practice and assessment. Education contains all these elements, but an authentic educational experience requires dialogue. If our campuses are running courses that are absent of real dialogue between students and instructors then we are guilty of educational malpractice. (Kim 2012)

The report mentioned above points to a division: ‘On one side, MOOCs are hailed as a cost-free access to excellent resources and learning experiences for students in less educationally privileged geographies, notably India, China and Africa’ […] ‘Alternatively MOOCs, with their high demands for connectivity, online literacy and English language skills, may be excluding developing world students and privileging learners from the most highly developed educational environments’. In the context of the European Union, the technological transformation in public diplomacy has not made such a deep impact: ‘Public diplomacy deals with the influence of public attitudes. It seeks to promote EU interests by understanding, informing and influencing. It means clearly explaining the EU’s goals, policies and activities and fostering understanding of these goals through dialogue with individual citizens, groups, institutions and the media’ (2007: 12). As noted above, the EEAS has its own problems of internal organization. The absence of strong external action hampers the success of advanced public diplomacy. The documentation of the EEAS does not include extensive content on the use of digital media to achieve the objectives of public diplomacy. Nevertheless, there are at least two major initiatives that encourage Europeanism, entrepreneurship and European values. The first of these powerful projects is OpenupEd.Eu, which was launched in 2013 and coordinated by the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities with the support of eleven partners from France, Holland, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Russia, Turkey and the United Kingdom. The Commissioner for Education, Androulla Vassiliou, explained that the project ‘reflects European values such as equity, quality and diversity’ and that it is seen as ‘a key part of the Opening up Education strategy’ (European Commission 2014b). The second relevant project is Startup Europe MOOC, which aims to drive talent and digital skills on the European continent. The idea is to transform the economic environment so as to promote

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innovation, economic growth and employment. It is part of the Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan and the Digital Agenda (European Commission 2014a). What we see is a dispersed and irregular strategy. There is no internal coordination within the European Commission and content seems to be posted with no apparent order. As far as the content of MOOCs is concerned, we might state that they have failed to take full advantage of the historical and cultural heritage of European countries. Efforts to promote entrepreneurship and digital skills are not a differential factor to distinguish platforms and segment users. In short, the lack of an advanced strategy to drive MOOCs bearing the European seal is yet another telling sign of the shortcomings of European public diplomacy. The EU is faced with the dual challenge of catering for internal audiences (from its own member states) and external audiences (from other countries). So, who should the courses to promote European identity be addressed to? Should priority be given to relationships among member states or with non-member countries? The difficulties inherent to its organizational design and allocation of functions are hindering the speedy progress in education. This concatenation of problems appears to hinder the design and execution of a digital public diplomacy strategy related to international education. The EEAS itself underestimates the ability of digital media influence when it states that public diplomacy is run ‘by supporting EU Centres, public policy think tanks and research institutes. Targeted events are organized in partner countries. This complements national initiatives which typically focus on the bilateral relationship with Member States’. No innovation appears here. In the first analysis, the result of the research shows that MOOCs are used in a basic way (European values more than capabilities). Such type of contents reduce the possibilities of dialogue and participation. According to the type of tactics proposed by Cull, digital diplomacy remains in ‘Listening’, ‘Culture and Media’. There are no ‘advocay’ tools or programmes. A second level of analysis should revolve around the definition of digital diplomacy. The documentation of the European Union does not seem to understand or assimilate this diplomatic innovation, but it maintains its own patterns of tradition. Following the US experience seems wise, seeking to innovate and try small experiences that might help to create value and value for money. In summary, we are looking at a very basic first stage of digital diplomacy. However, it seems that new strategies are being directed towards these instruments owing to their considerable competitive advantages. Japan has also jumped onto the MOOC bandwagon and is looking to fulfil its foreign policy goals with the Japan Open Online Education Promotion Council (JMOOC). The institution was created in 2013 and its mission is to contribute

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to ongoing learning for society as a whole and to promote innovation in teaching methods. Other goals include social acknowledgment of digital education certificates (JMOOC 2014). The institution specifically states that it intends to create MOOCs with a Japanese focus, free from US influence. Experience has been gathered from the Japanese Open Course Ware, which now encompasses 41 higher education bodies and offers some 3000 courses per year (JMOOC 2014). Its intention is to cover the niche of MOOC courses in view of the scarce number of courses available in Japanese or imparted by Japanese universities. Its major technology partner is Schoo (http://schoo.jp), a start-up created in 2013. Japanese public diplomacy institutions are aware of how weak their educational activities are, especially in fields that are not linked to technology or engineering. The ‘unpredictability’ this entails is lowering the likelihood of success, and so ‘professionals who teach Japanese language and culture should see MOOCs as a means to reach more students’ (McMorran 2013). Japanese society also has its critics. On the one hand, they see that the country’s own legislation is hindering the creation of new content and free use of third-party content, even for educational purposes (McLelland 2014). Others claim that MOOCs are tending to make a show of higher education, which can lead to a decrease in quality. Otake considers the case of Michael Sandel, a law professor at Harvard whose popularity has rocketed since he imparted a MOOC on the edX platform (Otake 2010). Japan’s strategy is proof of the constraints of cultural policy when taken in isolation from political practice. It does not suffice to have a strong and internationalised economy, or to offer cultural value – social connections must be established. This supports the idea put forward by Wallerstein (2007) and Roche (2002) regarding cultural geo-policy. Japanese culture has shown its limited ability to take part in an exchange of meanings, flow of ideas and transmission of global icons, texts and representations. It is not a matter of quality, but of access. The constraints lie in academic literature on Japanese public diplomacy (Metzgar 2012; Ogawa 2008). This case is of interest in this study insofar as it uncovers the myth that MOOCs are capable of creating quality or adding value to a strategy when there is no political determination. Public diplomacy is about policy innovation and politics rather than public relations.

Debate and Results The emergence of MOOCs in public diplomacy is a hard fact. With different objectives and means, the USA, the EU and Japan have all become involved in creating, producing and disseminating educational content on this type of platforms. On a strategic level, MOOCs have found their place among the series of elements

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used in cultural and educational policies. Their cultural relevance is spreading to the field of science, technology and values. That is why each of these three players has chosen a type of MOOC that satisfies its interests. Owing to their technological nature, MOOCs suit the new public and digital diplomacy strategies. In a space of just three years, they have left their mark on the agendas of decision makers and political leaders. There are no best practice guidelines as yet and it remains uncertain how the results should be assessed. Pamment has written about the difficulty of assessing this phenomenon under rational criteria. Public diplomacy has an emotional component that is difficult to compare, and the idea of influence is evanescent (Pamment 2014: 58). MOOCs are a potential source of innovation in international political communication. As regards employability, entrepreneurship and business, these courses are able to encourage interaction among citizens, eliminate the need for intermediaries in localization processes, link up international partners and allies, display syllabuses and germinate ideas. As regards ongoing learning, the courses can provide certification of knowledge, help acquire new skills without the need go anywhere, provide an initial experience or first contact with a foreign country, and identify prestigious universities and centres. As regards cultural diplomacy, in a broad sense, MOOCs are ideal for outsourcing workshops, seminars and all kinds of activities for citizens. It has yet to be seen what level of understanding (real added-value to intelligence and policy-planning) can be attained by analyzing the big data produced by the series of students regarding courses, preferential topics, risk prevention and other innovative aspects. In terms of content, MOOCs can be steered towards foreign policy interests. For the time being, only the USA has a clear idea of how to go about this, by creating its own qualifications and seeking sound alliances with global players. The EU is stuck in the dual market dilemma. It is uncertain who the courses should be addressed to, i.e. whether to approach EU citizens or seek to influence an audience beyond Europe’s 28 member states. Japan intends to use MOOCs as a lever for change in educational programmes and to encourage the internationalization of Japanese qualifications. As it stands, Japan’s culture and language remains a niche and the aim is to increase the number of teachers, students and professionals interested in this field. Each model pursues different objectives, using MOOCs as a sort of content marketing tool. It is interesting to analyze MOOC students. Exchange programmes are naturally limited in scope and number. They are aimed towards the elite of a given circle (whether financial, intellectual or social) and offer an interactive experience. MOOCs, on the other hand, are thought out to be an instrument of mass impact.

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One analysis criterion could be precisely the number of students enrolled or their geographical diversity. However, a qualitative analysis would still be required to measure the impact of MOOCs on foreign society, as well as the extent and quality of the relationships established among participants and teachers, or the percentage of students who become influential figures in their local societies. One of the critical aspects here is the rise and fall of technological trends. If 2012 was baptized the year of MOOCs (Pappano 2012), constant evolution calls for us to ask ourselves what the future holds for these courses or what they will become. There is no doubt as to their impact on exchange programmes and international political communication, but it has yet to be revealed how they will develop in the midterm and what agreements will arise with the major technological tycoons (Amazon, Apple, and Pearson, for instance). There are more questions than certainties. A second cause for criticism is governance of MOOC programmes, which governments are backing with a view to boosting foreign policy. There is also a conflict of interests when it comes to deciding at which companies and under what business model they should be taught. Furthermore, consideration must be given to the way in which promoting certain values, attitudes and behaviours might help or hamper a country’s interests, but without turning them into propaganda. Lastly, the mass generic term MOOCs will have to be left behind. We have observed that not all courses are the same and that they pursue different goals. By following the work of the Institute for Public Policy Research, we will be able to see whether they take on a digital education model for the elite or for the public at large; whether they specialize by field or by content; whether they focus on the audience and on local development or they are geared towards ongoing learning. In short, the proliferation of media, platforms and digital content has changed the role that educational programmes play in the field of public diplomacy. This initial contribution seeks to focus the debate and raise awareness to the fact that this phenomenon is becoming increasingly relevant in conducting foreign policy.

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Yasmin Djabarian

Shaping the U.S. Image in Iran via Satellite: VOA’s Simaye Amrica and Its Projection of America’s Attractiveness The war on terrorism has focused attention on the important role U.S. public diplomacy plays in improving the nation’s image. The United States has undertaken efforts to ‘win hearts and minds’ by better engaging, informing, and influencing foreign audiences; however, recent polling data show that anti-Americanism is spreading and deepening around the world. (GAO 2005) Time and again, we have seen that the best ambassadors for American values and interests are the American people—our businesses, nongovernmental organizations, scientists, athletes, artists, military service members, and students. (Obama 2010: 12)

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, and in the wake of widespread opposition to U.S. policies regarding its war on terrorism, public diplomacy became the panacea for negative public opinion of the United States abroad. Post-9/11 publications – both governmental reports and scholarly articles – on foreign policy and public diplomacy efforts toward the Middle East predominantly emphasized the necessity to engage in a ‘war of ideas’ by shaping the U.S. image abroad in a favorable way. One of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, for example, urged the need to ‘defend our ideals abroad vigorously’ and warned ‘[i] f the United States does not act aggressively to define itself in the Islamic world, the extremists will gladly do the job for us’ (2004: 377). Thus, engaging actively in image cultivation has been considered a strategy for advancing national interests and maintaining national security. In this context, U.S. public diplomacy, charged with reaching out to foreign audiences, functions strategically to shape the conversation abroad about America. Decades before a distinct discourse on the concept of soft power evolved, Walter Lippmann, in his seminal work Public Opinion (1922), noted, ‘The world that we have to deal with politically is out of reach, out of sight, out of mind. It has to be explored, reported, and imagined’ (29). He further pointed out that while the pictures in people’s minds resulted from their perceptions of reality, a pseudo environment, the consequences that were triggered by these imagined realities

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were real. In Lippmann’s own words, ‘We shall assume that what each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made by himself or given to him’ (25). The United States’ aim of shaping foreign perceptions of America and the world results from similar assumptions of those expressed by Lippmann. A 2005 Government Accountability Report on public diplomacy addresses the perceived need to actively shape the American narrative abroad to reduce anti-American sentiments. The report explains the national interests pursued in that endeavor by pointing to the dangers of anti-Americanism, namely its potential to ‘increase foreign public support for terrorism directed at Americans, impact the cost and effectiveness of military operations, weaken the United States’ ability to align with other nations in pursuit of common policy objectives, and dampen foreign publics’ enthusiasm for U.S. business services and products’ (1). International broadcasting has been accredited the status of the ‘most visible and important part of U.S. public diplomacy’ (Khalaji 2007: 1). Given its use of mass media to disseminate information about the United States, it is also one of the most cost-effective foreign policy instruments. Post-9/11 U.S. public diplomacy has mainly focused on reaching Middle Eastern publics, as the identification of target addressees of public diplomacy efforts has historically reflected the priorities of the U.S. foreign policy agenda. In this context, the Islamic Republic of Iran stands out as a key target for U.S. public diplomacy efforts due to the special challenge it presents for U.S. foreign policy. Relations between the United States and Iran can be characterized as deeply hostile and severely strained. Iran’s nuclear program or rather the fear of an Iranian nuclear bomb, its geopolitical significance in the region, its anti-Semitic aggression against Israel, and its support of terrorism make Iran a top priority on the U.S. foreign policy agenda (Bush 2006: 20; Obama 2011: 18). Two key events in the 20th century – the U.S.-led coup against Mossadegh in 1953 leading to the reinstatement of the Shah and the Iranian Hostage Crisis in 1979–81 – added to a mutual mindset of distrust and animosity in recent history. The termination of formal diplomatic relations in the aftermath of the Iranian Hostage Crisis has further complicated the situation and makes U.S.-Iranian relations stand out as unique in world affairs. As William O. Beeman (2005: 5) notes, ‘[v]irtually no other pair of nations shares this strange pattern of noncommunication’. As a consequence, communication acts are either mediated through third actors or staged as ‘public speeches as ‘signals’ to the other party’ (Beeman 2005: 43). Against this backdrop, public diplomacy efforts play a distinct role in U.S. foreign policy toward Iran and make Voice of America the only official American presence in Iran as well as the only outlet to distribute unfiltered messages to the Iranian public. As Philo L. Dibble, former deputy assistant secretary of state

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from the State Department’s Bureau for Near Eastern Affairs emphasized during a 2011 hearing on U.S. international broadcasting, ‘We have very few official avenues for dialogue, communication, influence or interaction with the Iranian people. For that reason, U.S. Government broadcasting and public diplomacy activities play a more crucial role for our policy on Iran than for virtually any other country’ (25). Currently, the United States has two government-funded broadcasting services for Persian-speaking audiences: Voice of America’s (VOA) Persian News Network (PNN)1 and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) Radio Farda. The two services complement each other due to their distinct frameworks and missions. While Radio Farda functions as a so-called grantee2 and operates as a surrogate broadcaster, carrying out the role of a free local broadcaster in Iran, PNN, as part of VOA and thus the U.S. government, is legally obligated to portray and explain the United States in its programming. The following sections will therefore entirely focus on PNN’s attempts to cultivate a positive image of the United States among Iranians and shape their perceptions in a favorable way.3 This chapter particularly emphasizes PNN’s projection of America’s attractiveness with regards to U.S. culture and lived values. The causality between a country’s ability to attract others and its success in reaching its national goals are at the core of soft power theory. Hence, public diplomacy – as an instrument of soft power – relies on rather intangible power assets in comparison to its counterpart, hard power, which depends on force (war, sanctions) and inducement. Joseph Nye, who coined the term soft power, explains its function as follows, ‘The soft power of a country rests primarily on three resources: its culture (in places where it is attractive to others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad), and its foreign policies (when they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority)’ (2004a: 11).

1 Although the name has officially been changed to VOA Persian Service in 2014, the service is internally and externally still widely referred to as PNN, and I will call it PNN throughout this chapter. Its name change has also been hardly noticeable for the general public since VOA has not issued any press release on the matter, and PNN’s hosts and anchors have never referred to the channel as PNN in their shows before either, always using the expression Sedaye Amrica (Voice of America). 2 Although Radio Farda is funded by the U.S. Congress, it is not part of the U.S. government but of RFE/RL, a private corporation. 3 Although PNN consists of PNN Radio and PNN TV, the following analysis will exclusively focus on PNN’s television channel since it reaches a significantly higher audience. In addition, examining PNN TV allows for an assessment of its audiovisual portrayal of the United States.

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Among these three resources, soft power theory highlights the greater potential of culture and values to attract foreign people. As Nye notes, ‘Unpopular policies are the most volatile element of the overall image, and there seems to be more stability in the reservoir of goodwill that rests on culture and values’ (2004a: 38). Especially in the case of the United States, foreign policy decisions and efforts are less likely to generate soft power, therefore the display and export of American culture, the showcasing of America’s attractiveness, is a central element of public diplomacy efforts. In a 2011 Congressional hearing titled ‘Is America’s Overseas Broadcasting Undermining Our National Interest and the Fight Against Tyrannical Regimes?’ Jennifer Park Stout from the State Department argues that the greatest asset of American public diplomacy and thus the country’s greatest advantage in the war of ideas is ‘the attractiveness of the United States […] due to the power of our example and the appeal of our values’ (24). Emphasizing culture and values, however, does not leave the political component out of sight. Rather soft power theory asserts that the goodwill of a foreign public can be an advantage even when rather unpopular plans are pursued. As Nye claims, ‘[s]ometimes friends will give you the benefit of the doubt or forgive more willingly’ (2004a: 110). Thus, it is hoped that the appeal of U.S. culture and (shared) values leads to strong ties with other nations that cannot be easily disrupted by disagreement over foreign policy decisions for example. Since a cultural offensive by the United States cannot be met by a homogeneous response among different and even within individual countries, the strategy of what and how to portray is crucial. As former Foreign Service Officer William A. Rugh states, Most people in foreign countries admire these achievements and respect them as evidence of a vibrant and innovative culture. For those people, American culture means power for the United States. For some, however, America is a decadent, self-indulgent, and uncontrolled society which is immoral; therefore they do not admire or respect what they see in our films or hear in our music, but regard it as a negative influence in the world, so American culture for them does not constitute a power. (2009: 7)

Rugh thus stresses the power that American culture constitutes and enhances given that it is evaluated by ‘willing interpreters and receivers’ (Nye 2004b). The second resource of soft power, values or rather values lived by the United States government and its citizens, are unequivocally tied to U.S. national security. For example, references to American core values, an integral element of the U.S. self-image, appear frequently in the National Security Strategies. The following excerpt that lists selfproclaimed U.S. values and their potential for realizing national interests implies what kind of image the United States tries to project to foreign audiences:

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The United States retains the strengths that have enabled our leadership for many decades. Our society is exceptional in its openness, vast diversity, resilience, and engaged citizenry. Our private sector and civil society exhibit enormous ingenuity and innovation, and our workers are capable and dedicated. We have the world’s largest economy and most powerful military, strong alliances and a vibrant cultural appeal, and a history of leadership in economic and social development. We continue to be a destination that is sought out by immigrants from around the world, who enrich our society. We have a transparent, accountable democracy and a dynamic and productive populace with deep connections to peoples around the world. And we continue to embrace a set of values that have enabled liberty and opportunity at home and abroad. (Obama 2010: 9)

Judging from the preceding passage of the NSS, the values cherished by Americans – a self-declared exceptional society with a ‘vibrant cultural appeal’ – seem to be considered values with a universal appeal. Obama’s National Strategy for Counterterrorism from 2011 also counts on the appeal of those universal values and their power to battle and prevent national threats, stating, ‘The United States was founded upon a belief in a core set of values that is written into our founding documents and woven into the very fabric of our society. Where terrorists offer injustice, disorder, and destruction the United States must stand for freedom, fairness, equality, dignity, hope, and opportunity’ (5).

U.S. Public Diplomacy In order to understand and assess U.S. public diplomacy and thus international broadcasting efforts to Iran, I will provide concise background information on the rather controversial set of public diplomacy theories. Historically, U.S. public diplomacy has been merely used as a foreign policy tool in times of war or conflict, as a means of ‘helping to resolve existing conflicts rather than in preventing new ones’ (Fitzpatrick 2010: 4). In line with this tradition and despite its widely recognized integral role in winning the Cold War, U.S. public diplomacy was mostly neglected during the perceived time of peace that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Public diplomacy’s awkward standing in U.S. foreign policy strategy has been problematic up to this point. The terrorist attacks on 9/11, ‘a wake-up call for public diplomacy’ (Zaharna 2010: 29), and particularly the negative trend in foreign public opinion of the United States triggered by U.S. post-9/11 policies created awareness for the importance of a continuous and active public diplomacy system at all times (Melissen 2005: 9). As a consequence, U.S. public diplomacy has been revived to counter anti-American sentiments, particularly in the Middle East. The large number of reports and task forces of public diplomacy, its inclusion in the National Security Strategies and its close monitoring by

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Congress mark the resurgence of public diplomacy in the political sphere. Public diplomacy expert Jan Melissen calls public diplomacy ‘the hottest item in the US foreign policy establishment’ between 9/11 and the Iraq War, while Eytan Gilboa stresses its multidimensionality calling it ‘one of the most multidisciplinary areas in modern scholarship’ (Melissen 2005: xvii; Gilboa 2008: 56). The exponential attention public diplomacy generated in the aftermath of 9/11 from scholars in such fields as Political Science, Sociology, Psychology, Computer Science, History or PR Branding has led to a significant level of confusion on how to define the term itself (Gilboa 2008: 74). As a consequence, there is a lack of ‘a clear and consistent definition of public diplomacy that articulates its scope and function and demonstrates its worth and value in protecting and advancing national interests’ (Fitzpatrick 2010: 66). According to the website of the U.S. Department of State, the purpose of American public diplomacy is ‘to support the achievement of U.S. foreign policy goals and objectives, advance national interests, and enhance national security by informing and influencing foreign publics and by expanding and strengthening the relationship between the people and Government of the United States and citizens of the rest of the world’. Similar to the definition of the State Department and leading public diplomacy scholars, the previously mentioned 2005 report by the United States Government Accountability Office also stresses the elements of influence and persuasion as well as foreign publics as addressees. Accordingly, the goal of public diplomacy is proclaimed as to increase understanding of American values, policies, and initiatives and to counter anti-American sentiment and misinformation about the United States around the world. This includes reaching beyond foreign governments to promote better appreciation of the United States abroad, greater receptivity to U.S. policies among foreign publics, and sustained access and influence in important sectors of foreign societies. (4)

However, the definition established by the report goes a step further as it also provides information on what public diplomacy specifically tries to influence: a foreign public’s perception and understanding of U.S. values, policies, and initiatives. The agents of public diplomacy are only implicitly addressed. In their Congressional Research Service Report, Nakamura and Weed (2009) specifically state that public diplomacy can generally be described as ‘a government’s efforts to conduct foreign policy and promote national interests through direct outreach and communication with the population of a foreign country’, putting a government explicitly at the position of the initiating actor.

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U.S. International Broadcasting to Iran All government-supported civilian U.S. international broadcasting is headed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), an independent federal agency. The BBG oversees five broadcasters: Voice of America (VOA); Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL); The Middle East Broadcasting Network (MBN), consisting of Alhurra and Radio Sawa; Radio Free Asia; and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), comprising Radio and TV Martí. The already mentioned shift in key target audiences of U.S. international broadcasting after the Cold War – from Communist Eastern Europe to the Middle East – corresponds with the comparably high funding MBN and other priority language services within the VOA receive. The BBG’s requested budget for MBN’s 2015 expenses is $106.6 million. This makes MBN the second most expensive broadcaster after VOA. MBN serves 22 countries in the Middle Eastern region but is essentially a single language service, exclusively broadcasting in Arabic. In comparison, Voice of America’s requested budget for covering 45 languages is comparably low with $211.9 million (BBG 2014: 10). All of VOA’s language services are legally mandated to follow the VOA Charter, which had been drafted in 1960 and signed into law in 1976. It is also integrated in the United States International Broadcasting Act of 1994. The VOA Charter establishes the twofold mission of VOA broadcasts. Its first point addresses VOA’s journalism-driven function by declaring, 1. VOA will serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news. VOA news will be accurate, objective and comprehensive. The remaining two points mandate VOA programming to present the United States in its entirety. 2. VOA will represent America, not any single segment of American society, and will therefore present a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and institutions. 3. VOA will present the policies of the United States clearly and effectively, and will also present responsible discussions and opinion on these policies. Although the charter establishes a highly problematic design for U.S. international broadcasting by assigning two inherently contradictory roles for VOA – functioning as a news organization and as a foreign policy tool – this issue will not be further elaborated on given the scope of this paper. It can, however, be noted that two-thirds of the very brief charter discuss VOA’s role as a U.S. advocate. In addition, the United States International Broadcasting Act of 1994 legally mandates

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U.S. international broadcasting to ‘be consistent with the broad foreign policy objectives of the United States’ (sec. 303), undeniably positioning VOA broadcasts within the foreign policy apparatus.

Simaye Amrica as a Mirror of American Culture At VOA, PNN stands out as the most significant language service. For once, it is the only VOA language service that was turned into a full-fledged network. In addition, the resources allocated to PNN in terms of budget and staff are greater than those for any other VOA service (BBG 2013: 81). The BBG’s Fiscal Year 2015 Congressional Budget Request includes reductions of PNN’s 2015 budget. However, these cuts do not seem to reflect a diminished significance of PNN, but rather PNN’s strategy to fulfill its Congressional mandate more thoroughly in the future. In the section on planned reductions, the report reads, ‘VOA Persian will streamline its program mix to focus on a core set of programs, scale back talk show programming which requires elaborate booking, and add more news about and from America’ (42). Thus, the requested budget, diminished by 2.3 million dollars, proves to rather stem from a shift in programming strategy than in prioritization. PNN’s programming schedule broadcasts from Washington, DC, where the VOA Headquarters are located and mainly targets ‘Iran’s burgeoning population of young people’ (OIG 2009: 15). Its programs are distributed via five satellites and can additionally be watched online on PNN’s website as well as on individual shows, Facebook pages and YouTube channels. Its current programming schedule consists of twenty shows, which can be classified as cultural shows, political and news shows, and special-interest shows. Simaye Amrica, which translates to ‘American Image’, stands out on PNN’s programming schedule as both the only show that is explicitly tied to the United States through its title and that exclusively focuses on representing America in all its facets. Prior to its inception in 2012, a press release by VOA announced that the new show, which is dubbed Inside USA in English, ‘will bring Iranian audiences in touch with Americans’ (VOA 2012). With regards to its content, VOA said, ‘Inside USA will report on American values and institutions’. Thus, the show can be considered the most immediate implementation of the VOA Charter’s mandate to ‘represent America, not any single segment of American society’. The following analysis of Simaye Amrica covers a time span of five months and will be based on its first eleven episodes, since the first episodes explicitly address and illustrate the scope and intention of the show. Since perceived credibility is singled out as the main precondition for successful public diplomacy efforts (Zaharna 2010: 169), I will firstly discuss the key method the show’s presenters

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use to establish an atmosphere of trust and authenticity: the repeated emphasis on Simaye Amrica’s service function. By reiterating that the show is dedicated to providing its Iranian viewers with answers to any questions they might have about America, Simaye Amrica aims to shape its audience’s perceptions and preferences while giving the impression of not actively pursuing any agenda. This strategy can be understood as a direct implementation of a key principle of soft power: ‘If I can get you to want to do what I want, then I do not have to force you to do what you do not want’ (Nye 2008: 95). Since Simaye Amrica presents itself to be responsive to audience interests and frequently asks their viewers to send in their feedback and questions, the show sends an anti-propagandistic message to its audience. Thus, by framing the show as a service receptive to audience wishes, its credibility is enhanced, a prerequisite for successful public diplomacy and image cultivation. At the end of Simaye Amrica’s first episode, host Roozbeh Mazhari addresses the interactive character of the show by saying, Alright, that was the first episode of Simaye Amrica. I want to thank you for joining us for the past half an hour and for letting us into your homes. This show does not have more than just one aim – please do not forget that – and that is that you are content. Email us and tell us what you want to know about America – good or bad – we all will do our best to provide you with that.4,5 (29:28)

He thus also makes an effort to stress that negative aspects will not be left out in the show’s programming. From then on, Mazhari encourages the audience at the end of each episode to get in touch with the show’s team via email or Facebook to extend the conversation beyond the actual 30 minutes of the show. In the fifth episode, Mazhari provides proof of the two-way communication processes that take place between the audience and the show’s team, when he introduces a segment about American schools by claiming that he and his team had gotten many emails asking about details on the educational system (15:11). Simaye Amrica’s efforts to highlight commendable and human aspects of the United States in an authentic manner in order to decisively shape the U.S. image

4 [Khob in bud avalin barnameye Simaye Amrica. Az in ke ta nim saate gozashte ma ra hamrahi kardid va ma ra be khune khod rah dadid, sepasgozaram. In barname yek hadaf bishtar nadare, faramush nakonid va un ham jalbe rezayate shomast. Baraye ma Email beferestid va begooid dar morede Amerika chi mikhahid bedunid – khoob va ya bad – ma hameye talashemuno mikonim, ke uno barayetun faraham konim.] 5 Since PNN shows are in Farsi, all Simaye Amrica episodes have been translated by a native speaker while watching the shows together. This translation and all following ones are thus my own.

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among Iranians in a favorable way can be observed on two levels: the structural level and the content level.

Image Cultivation on the Structural Level The show’s setting and its inclusion of regular segments create patterns on the structural level that work toward establishing Simaye Amrica as an authentic and trustworthy source of information about America and thus contribute to the overall U.S. image cultivation effort taken by the show. Apart from very few exceptions when host Mazhari addresses Simaye Amrica’s audience from a studio, he mostly introduces the segments from one of many locations in Washington, DC, for example at sites of national significance (Congress, Lincoln Memorial, World War III Memorial, Jefferson Memorial), cultural institutions (National Air and Space Museum), or streets around the city. Shooting at different settings adds to the show’s claim to present to its viewers the ‘real America’ and to take them on a symbolic journey throughout the United States. The Iranian audience can thus take an active part in the process of getting to know America by seeing for itself what the United States looks like. Mazhari’s introductory comments in Episode 3 express the chance of experiencing the United States first hand in all its diversity on a journey throughout the country, Are you ready for 30 minutes across the United States? You don’t need to pack your bags nor have a passport or visa. You don’t need the permission of your father, mother, or brother. Women don’t need to leave their husbands nor men their wives. The only thing you need to do is to leave the remote control on the table. We checked – there is nothing going on anywhere else, only here at the show Simaye Amrica. As Americans would say, ‘You just lay back, relax, and enjoy!’6 (00:05)

Another potential authenticity marker is a regular in-between segment, in which Iranian viewers get the chance to ‘meet’ Americans at various locations. Authentic Americans or interview partners from following segments address the audience in English. The usual pattern of their statements is, ‘Hi, I am [first and last name]

6 [Baraye safare nim saati dore Amerika hazerin? Baraye in safar na ehtiaj darid chamedan bebandid va na ehtiaj be passport va ya visa darid. Hich ehtiaj nadarid az pedar va madar va ya zan o shouharetun ejaze begirid baraye in safar. Tanha kari ke bayesti anjam bedin, ineke kontrole television haminke dastetune. Uno begzarid kenar chon ma hameye karha ra baratun anjam dadim. Hameye kanalha ra check kardim. Hich jaye dige hich khabari nist. Ela hamin ja ra barnameye Simaye Amrica. Be ghole Amerikaiha, ‘You just lay back and relax and enjoy’. Lambedino lezat bebarid, bezanim o berim.]

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and you are watching Simaye Amrica’. This contact with ordinary Americans, not Hollywood celebrities or politicians, and the personalization that takes place through the mentioning of their names enables Iranian viewers to get an authentic glimpse of members of American society. While Simaye Amrica is actually educating its Iranian audience about America through all of its programming, there is a recurring short segment that puts particular emphasis on the educational aspect. Starting in episode 2, Hich midunestid ke…? [Would you have known that…?] highlights historical, geographical, or statistical facts concerning the United States in order to familiarize its viewers with very diverse facets of America. The segments are usually less than twenty seconds long and consist of a voice-over providing background information on the particular national site, significant personality, or artifact, while corresponding footage runs. For example, in the second episode, virtually the most important national symbol is chosen: the U.S. flag (04:32). While the national anthem is played, an American flag is shown from three different angles, waving in the wind. A female voice explains that the flag displays 50 stars, one for each state, and thirteen stripes, which represent the thirteen colonies that declared their independence from Great Britain. Other segments feature such diverse topics as the Washington Monument (episode 4 /10:26), New York City (episode 6 / 15:15), the old Hawaiian alphabet (episode 8/12:24) or the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt (episode 9 / 09:14). Not following any particular pattern concerning the topic selection of Hich midunestid ke…? appears to be a deliberate strategy to present and educate Iranians about America’s multifacetedness and diversity.

Image Cultivation on the Content Level As has been established before, out of the three soft power resources, U.S. culture and values bear the greatest potential to attract foreigners. Joseph Nye emphasizes that this holds particularly true ‘[w]hen a country’s culture includes universal values and its policies promote values and interests that others share’ (Nye 2004a: 11). Simaye Amrica’s programming content essentially corresponds with those two soft power resources. Although the show covers a broad spectrum of topics, the segments of the eleven episodes that constitute the sample for the following analysis can be organized into three categories: American society, lived values, and American potential. These categories are inherently interconnected and thus not exclusive. Most segments are a conflation of the categories. In the following, individual segments will be discussed through the lens of these categories in order to understand how Simaye Amrica crafts a particular U.S. image and what facets of America are assessed as relevant, representative,

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and persuasive for Iranian viewers, or, in other words, identified and chosen as self-perceived soft power assets.

American Society: Diverse and Open Segments in this category introduce Iranian viewers to Americans that are ethnically and religiously diverse and of various sociodemographic backgrounds. Aiming to provide a comprehensive picture of American society, these segments also address Americans’ personal issues and struggles in an apparent effort to humanize the American people. Moreover, the strategy to include problematic aspects, even though only to a certain extent, contributes to higher level of perceived authenticity of the program’s content and messages. Segments in this category portray the United States as an open and diverse society and are found throughout the whole sample. The different segments provide the viewers with insights into the lives of students, families, military personnel and Iranians living in America. In the first episode, the audience gets to know a couple from Minneapolis, Minnesota, who likes to go ice fishing (25:13). Reporter Tala Hadavi explains that ice fishing is an activity that people in that region pursue and that is hardly heard of in other parts of the United States. Given that this story appears in the first episode, it hints at the programming strategy that Simaye Amrica follows: Portraying a niche activity practiced by a small portion of U.S. society contributes to a comprehensive image of the United States. Tala Hadavi’s report on her road trip through Louisiana in episode 4 has a similar effect. She is seen in her car, listening to country music and explaining her route from Golden Meadow to Breaux Bridge (24:10). The Breaux Bridge footage firstly shows a trailer home with a simple, slightly run-down outside and inside. Afterwards, she is filmed sitting in a restaurant with traditional Southern food like fried chicken on the table. As do other couples in the restaurant, Hadavi and an older man wearing a cowboy hat also dance to the live country music and hug each other after the song ends. The following day, Hadavi visits two Cajun brothers, John and Curtis. They talk about Cajun culture and their experiences and view of living in the United States. John and Curtis talk about the Cajun people, which they describe as hard-working, laid back and very friendly (23:25). They also stress that they both feel American although their mother tongue is French. Later, Hadavi is filmed driving back reflecting about her experiences in Louisiana. An audiovisual summary of her trip follows, in which her thoughts – accompanied by matching footage from the three different settings – are expressed. At one point, Curtis is shown, who says, ‘I always say that a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet’ (26:00). Hadavi states that her Louisiana visit, especially the hospitality of the region, has greatly affected

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her. Her evaluation of that experience also reflects the segment’s contribution to crafting a U.S. image of genuine hospitality. In addition, the two segments’ settings, Minneapolis and rural Louisiana, portray parts of America that Iranian viewers are most likely rather unfamiliar with. Thus, Iranians learn about the diversity of American geography from bitterly cold Minnesota to the swamps of Louisiana. These two segments are serving as prime examples of Simaye Amrica’s attempt to showcase American culture in a non-polarizing and multifaceted way, potentially to counter the image of ‘sexually obsessed, crude, arrogant, godless occupiers’ that enemies of the United States propagate (Bowden 2004). In both episodes 1 and 4, however, as well as in episode 10, more controversial topics are addressed: tattoos, adolescent smoking and drug abuse. The tattoo piece in the first episode essentially consists of two parts. In the first one, Mazhari is on his way to a tattoo studio in Adams Morgan, a Washington, D.C neighborhood, and informs the audience that tattoos are normal among Americans of all ages (09:43). A regular customer, who has already spent approximately $50,000 on his body art, is interviewed sitting shirtless in the studio. More tattoo lovers and the studio owner voice their passion for tattoos in the segment. The second part of the segment then features a father-of-three and a female lawyer, who are both having their tattoos removed (14:18). The show thus tackles a controversial topic like tattoos, considered makrouh (reprehensible action) in Iran, in a very balanced and cautious manner. By showing that tattoos are accepted and widespread in the United States, the report is on the one hand proof of freedom and the chance to self-fulfillment. At the same time, potential problems such as regret over tattoos from a young age are addressed. The segments on young smokers in episode 4 and college students’ drug addictions in episode 10 are presented as societal problems that are actively fought against. The reports discuss health issues resulting from smoking and drug abuse and illustrate the government and school’s efforts to prevent adolescents and young adults from smoking and taking drugs. While the former segment’s strategy to provide a balanced coverage of a potentially controversial topic, tattoos, demonstrates an effort to not repel more conservative viewers, the latter segment admits to a societal problem, which the United States is determined to improve. Both segments portray the United States as an open society, in which its members can live their lives freely and in which problems are openly discussed in order to be reasonably resolved. Since Simaye Amrica does not discuss politics and foreign policy issues as such, it is striking that it devotes significant time to covering the U.S. military. In a potential effort to humanize the military, the second episode, for example, invests

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three segments to feature the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (01:33), address a war veteran’s financial and psychological struggles (05:12) and introduce organizations for homeless veterans in New York City (08:30). The use of emotional images that accompany the reports is striking. In one segment, Steve, a reservist and father-of-four, is shown at his home. Having been unable to find employment upon his return from Iraq, he can no longer pay his rent. Packed boxes are seen in the background (05:12). While he talks about his situation, in one shot, a tear is rolling down his cheek (07:42). In another episode, a segment depicts the National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, and many relatives of fallen soldiers who honor their lost ones (episode 9). The family of Andrew Pearson, who died four years earlier in Iraq, is more closely featured and filmed at their home. Pictures show the mourning family, Pearson in his uniform (28:31), and his children writing letters to their father (28:41).

Lived Values The following segments showcase American values by highlighting how those values are lived in American society. That makes the second category technically a subcategory of the first but will be looked at separately to identify its distinct contributions to VOA’s American image cultivation efforts. Segments both explicitly and implicitly emphasize core values such as freedom and democracy but also showcase U.S. humanitarianism and altruism, tolerance and open-mindedness, as well as gender equality and women’s empowerment. For each of the aforementioned pairs, I analyze two segments that are representative of Simaye Amrica’s characterization of these values. The most explicit presentation of American freedom is presented in the first episode (17:27), where five Americans are asked to explain why they are proud to be American. Their answers are not dubbed as usually but Farsi subtitles are provided. Although they are different ages, ethnicities, and genders, four out of the five refer to the freedoms they enjoy in the United States, saying ‘I am proud to be an American because of Barack Obama and the great freedoms we have in this country’ or ‘Because of the country, the people who fought and died for this country’s freedoms’. The fourth interviewee, a young man takes a little less serious stance by claiming, ‘Because of the beautiful women’. While he says that, he winks into the camera. The focus on the notion of freedom can be both the result of a conscious selection of answers and proof of a deeply rooted faith in American freedom shared by the interviewees. A little more implicitly, the first segment of episode 11 addresses another central value: democracy (00:51). By explaining the U.S. judicial system, the show demonstrates democracy and justice at work,

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referring to the different court levels and mentioning that Supreme Court Justices are appointed for lifetime to shield them from political influence. The segment presents the judicial system as transparent and objective. Other segments serve as a prime example for Simaye Amrica’s portrayal of American humanitarianism and altruism. In episode 7, Mazhari sits down on a bench with a homeless person sleeping under a thick blanket, while introducing a segment on Americans’ donations to the Salvation Army saying, ‘Helping those in need and aid organizations is an integral part of American culture’7 (09:30). These introductory comments thus summarize the message of the following piece: Americans selflessly take care of fellow members of society. The segment then starts with footage depicting Americans in their cars lining up at the Salvation Army in Arlington, VA, in order to drop off various goods. Two female donators explain that they feel obliged to help others who are in need. A Salvation Army officer notes that he is certain about Americans’ genuine desire to help others and knows that U.S. citizens are always ready to supply aid in emergencies. Episode 10 features a program by a nonprofit organization called A Place Like Home (APLH), which provides underprivileged high school students from South Los Angeles with dresses and suits for prom. Mazhari introduces the segment by explaining the event of prom and the high costs for appropriate attire (26:14). The footage shows open-air stands set up in a market-style manner, where male and female students walk through looking for their prom outfits and accessories. They are trying on gowns and tuxedos in make-shift fitting rooms. An APLH volunteer comments on the difficult situation in the area where only about 50 per cent of the students finish high school and graduation enhances the possibility of escaping a cycle of poverty and crime. As mentioned before, most reports do not show only a single positive feature of the United States, but rather work on multidimensional levels. The APLH segment, for example, does not only portray Americans as invested in voluntarily supporting younger generations, it also allows for a glimpse into adolescent life in an open society when the actual prom event is shown, including girls and boys dancing together to hip hop music (28:49). The next set of values that is regularly stressed is respect and open-mindedness. The following two sample segments are not only representative of those, but also seem to provide proof of American respect for Islam and sensitivity toward Muslims. Given its predominantly Muslim audience, the underlying programming decision is certainly strategic.

7 [Komak be afrade niazmand va sasemanhaye kheyrie dar Amerika dar farhange shun yek masalaye kamelan ja oftade ast.]

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In episode 3, a female reporter interviews the organizer and participants of a Muslim speed dating event at a restaurant in Washington, DC (22:38). Michael, the event planner, explains that he regularly organizes speed dating for different ages and ethnicities, but that this is the first Muslim speed dating he has hosted. The camera captures the atmosphere of the dimly-lit restaurant where female Muslims, some of whom are wearing headscarves, and male Muslims are seen sitting at tables, talking to each other and laughing. This particular segment shows how the United States enables people of different backgrounds and faiths to live their lives according to their religious beliefs and meet like-minded people and potential partners. In addition, American society is portrayed as a place that respects the diversity of its members and actively facilitates them to keep their religious and cultural heritage. Episode 5 reinfoces this message most visibly with a segment on Sizdahbedar8 celebrations in a Washington, DC park (27:16). The harmonious interaction and mutual respect among Americans and Iranians is highlighted in multiple ways. First of all, the segment starts by showing men and women dancing to Persian music, while in the background the American flag is flown (27:31). Secondly, the first interview partner is an American, who explains the tradition of Sizdahbedar. Right afterwards, another American male, Chris, is interviewed. Being married to an Iranian woman, he talks about his entirely positive experiences with Iranian culture and the advantage of being exposed to it. Lastly, an Iranian family sitting in a tent also comments on the Sizdahbedar festivities saying that it is easier to celebrate this Iranian tradition in the United States than in Iran. Although the report is essentially on Sizdahbedar, American traditions are also addressed. A voice-over explains that Iranians who live in the United States try to hold up their traditions but also get the chance to learn about American customs, too. To audiovisually accompany that claim, the camera zooms in to the American flag, while the National Anthem is sung. The next shot shows two dark-haired boys holding their right hands to their hearts singing clumsily along (28:27). To once more emphasize American kindness toward Iranians and appreciation for the Islamic faith, the segment closes with the American who explained the Sizdahbedar tradition before, now reading out loud, ‘Hamishe barat da’a mikonam’ [I am always praying for you] (29:22). Simaye Amrica both implicitly and explicitly addresses the United States’ commitment to empowering women. Episode 8 features Barnard College, an all-women’s college in New York City that is affiliated with Columbia University (26:08).

8 Sizdahbedar is an Iranian festival celeberated at the 13th day of the Persian New Year Nowruz.

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The female president of the college, Debora Spar, is interviewed. She emphasizes that they have a good program for women who plan careers in responsible positions such as a presidency. The segment thus stresses that American society is committed to educating women to become leaders. In the next episode, the audience is introduced to a 31-year-old woman named Stacey who opened a mobile second-hand clothing store in a bus she had purchased. Accompanying footage displays the colorfully painted bus full of customers. In one sound bite, Stacey expresses her hope that other women are able to fulfill their dreams as well (26:40). Mazhari adds after the segment is over that the number of women running small stores has quadrupled within the past four years. In addition to those and many other segments that feature girls and women, gender equality is also promoted through Simaye Amrica’s female contributors, especially reporter Tala Hadavi. She is an integral part of the team, travels around the United States to find stories, and regularly talks with Mazhari about those stories in front of the camera.

America – A Land Full of Potential and Superlatives The third category of interest in terms of Simaye Amrica’s construction of a particular U.S. image is ‘American potential’. Segments in this category focus on American artists, U.S. street art, sports and outstanding achievements by Americans. They present the United States as a country teeming with innovation and advancement. The first episode features the Mall of America in Minnesota (18:11). In the beginning, Simaye Amrica’s presenter Hadavi provides the audience with some key facts about the mall, while an aerial shot of the mall’s site is shown. The footage then displays a succession of impressive sections of the mall such as its indoor rollercoaster, its attached Sea Life Aquarium and its wedding chapel. Further images show individual stores and customers with shopping bags. Hadavi’s interview partner, Mall of America’s director of tourism Doug Killian, emphasizes the mall’s status as a major tourist attraction counting 42 million visitors each year, outnumbering other major tourist sites such as Disney World or the Grand Canyon. They also talk about the four Iranians who designed and supervised the mall’s construction, stressing Iranian contribution to this American landmark and thus pointing again to an Iranian-American connection. The segment closes with footage of a Mariah Carey concert at the mall, once more highlighting the mall’s exceptional character. America’s potential and extraordinariness is regularly featured in Simaye Amrica’s portrayal of sports events like March Madness (episode 4) or horse racing (episode 8). Moreover, the energetic and impressive atmosphere of American

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sports is highlighted. Thus, ‘[a]n America is created that is neither military hegemon nor corporate leviathan – looser place, less rigid and more free, where anyone who works hard shooting a ball or handling a puck can become famous and (yes) rich’ (Pierce 2003 qtd. in Nye 2004a: 47). In episode 8, PNN sports reporter Ali Emadi reports from the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, home to the football team Dallas Cowboys (21:54). The piece starts with a compilation of fast-paced football game sequences that are accompanied by upbeat music, underlining the energy of the game. While Emadi then provides facts and figures concerning the stadium’s capacity to accommodate 80,000 viewers or the construction costs of $1.3 billion, pictures of the huge stadium and of its construction phase are shown. A luxurious private suite is filmed, and Emadi points out that it costs $100,000 to be rented for one game. Both segments on the Mall of America and the AT&T Stadium present the United States as a home of gigantic architectural masterpieces and impressive entertainment sites.

The Other Side of the Story: Press TV’s American Dream Since 2007, Press TV, the English-language satellite channel of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB)9 has broadcast to audiences worldwide. Its headquarters are located in Tehran, but it also collaborates with bureaus in what it refers to as ‘the world’s most strategic cities’ on its website. There, the channel also published the following vision statement, Heeding the often neglected voices and perspectives of a great portion of the world; Embracing and building bridges of cultural understanding; Encouraging human beings of different nationalities, races and creeds to identify with one another; Bringing to light untold and overlooked stories of individuals who have experienced the vitality and versatility of political and cultural divides firsthand.

Despite its self-proclaimed focus on fostering mutual understanding, the channel has, however, caused considerable controversy and was, as a consequence, banned in the UK (Blair 2012). BBC’s Linda Pressly (2011) characterizes Press TV’s stance as ‘pro-Palestinian, anti-sanctions against Iran, and critical of Western – especially US and UK – foreign policy’. In the following, Press TV’s approach to shaping a distinct image of the United States will be examined by focusing on one of its former programs called American 9 The IRIB is a state-owned media organization.

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Dream. Like Simaye Amrica, American Dream is the only show among Press TV’s list of former and current programming repertoire that is tied to the United States by name and exclusively dedicated to featuring U.S.-related stories. In addition, it is also broadcast from Washington, DC. On Press TV’s homepage, American Dream is defined as a ‘weekly program giving a warts-and-all picture of life in the USA from ghettos to gated communities to the White House’. By singling out such extreme sites as ‘ghettos’ and ‘gated communities’, the short description already indicates a negative bias toward the United States. In contrast to Simaye Amrica episodes, which cover up to eight unrelated topics, American Dream devotes its entire broadcasting time to one issue. The shows that are serving as the basis for the following brief analysis of image construction efforts by Press TV were broadcast between 23 January 2012 and 30 April 2012. The individual episodes’ titles, which are listed on Press TV’s website and also mentioned by American Dream’s host Nisa Islam, already foreshadow their tone and focus: ‘Is America still the land of the free?’, ‘Islam under attack’, ‘Are the Republicans & Democrats killing civil liberties?’, ‘The Plight of US veterans’, and ‘More Americans suing employers for overtime pay’. As already suggested by their titles, the 25-minute episodes connect the United States to occurrences such as human rights violations, injustice, police brutality, and discrimination. Each episode follows an identical structure. There are usually three guests with whom Islam individually meets. She poses her questions one at a time, and her interviewees are all answering the same questions. The selection of guests seems highly biased, as they do not provide differing or challenging viewpoints. In the episode on civil liberties, Nisa Islam interviews Americans on the streets of Washington, DC and asks them, ‘What do you think is happening to civil liberties in America’. Although she claims to ask people ‘on the streets of DC’, all interviewees are filmed at the Occupy movement’s camp site, which leads to a homogeneous set of answers. The first interviewee sets the tone by claiming, ‘They [civil liberties] basically do not exist anymore. House Resolution 347 and the NDAA has [sic!] wiped out all the amendments. The only one left is the second amendment’ (06:44). Another male interviewee claims, ‘President Obama’s officially taken our 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments out of the Constitution. Essentially, no more life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. HR 347 is trying to take away our first amendment rights, our right to assemble, our right to free speech and the right to address our Congress with our grievances’ (07:43). Islam’s comments throughout the individual shows and her summaries at the end of each episode further reinforce the overall U.S.-critical stance of the show. In the ‘Islam under attack’ episode, her first words are, ‘Islam is on the rise in America,

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mosques are growing and people are converting. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Muslims continue to be the target of attacks, and secret spying, and after ten years in Afghanistan, American soldiers have burnt copies of the Holy Quran’. (00:01). She reiterates her criticism at the end of the same show closing with the following words, ‘America claims to be the land of the free, the home of the brave. She was founded upon religious freedoms, but Muslims want to be free from attacks. They want to be free from secret spies, and they want to be free from the desecration of their holiest books. Isn’t that the American Dream?’ In the episode on Guantánamo Bay titled ‘Is America still the land of the free?’ Nisa Islam calls Guantánamo Bay ‘one of the worst violations of human rights’ (07:41) and claims that, ‘America’s continued use of Guantánamo Bay to imprison detainees sends the following anti-human rights messages to the world’ (07:44). The viewers can then see a list of the aforementioned messages, whose rhetoric is strikingly polemic and aggressive, displayed on screen. The first message, for example, reads, ‘The whole world is a battleground in a global war in which human rights don’t apply’. The fourth and fifth message are phrased as follows, ‘The right to a fair trial depends on where you come from’ and ‘Justice can be manipulated to ensure the government always wins’. The United States is thus portrayed as a reckless global player that deliberately violates fundamental human rights for the sake of its own advantage. Footage that supports the implicit and explicit messages of the show usually quite graphically depicts wrongdoings by the U.S. government and police. In the episode on civil liberties, for instance, Nisa Islam stands at a square in Washington, DC, between tents of Occupy supporters, briefly introduces the topic, and tells her audience, ‘A little over six months ago, the discontent in America erupted in the Occupy Movement. It went coast to coast; it even went around the world. We learned about the 99 per cent and the 1 per cent. We saw protests; we saw police brutality; we saw Occupy evictions. Watch this clip’ (01:05). What follows is a two-minute clip that shows police officers brutally attacking peaceful protesters. The video runs for two minutes without any comments by Nisa Islam, which enables viewers to hear the shouting and screaming in the original footage. A man who is pushed down by several police officers is heard to repeatedly scream, ‘I did not do anything’ (02:08). In one shot, a person is filmed who has ‘The American Dream is over’ written in bold letters on its back.

Conclusion U.S. International broadcasting to Iran performs a vital function of American foreign policy efforts. Its main aim is to create a favorable U.S. image among

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Iranians in order to shape their preferences and reduce anti-Americanism in the region. The reliance on image cultivation for advancing national interests is a well-established strategy in the political sphere. According to Gilboa (2008: 56), ‘Favorable image and reputation around the world, achieved through attraction and persuasion, have become more important than territory, access, and raw materials, traditionally acquired through military and economic measures’. Simaye Amrica serves as one of PNN’s most significant soft power instruments. Since it can be considered the most direct implementation of the VOA Charter’s mandate ‘to represent America, not any single segment of American society’, it bears the highest potential to actively shape the United States’ image among Iranians. Based on the previous programming analysis, the show’s strategic efforts to project America’s attractiveness could be identified. On the structural level, Simaye Amrica mainly aims to establish itself as a credible and trustworthy source of information about America, for example through host Roozbeh Mazhari’s frequent references to the show’s interactive character and service function. In addition, the regular segment Hich midunestid ke…? educates Iranians about America in a very unobtrusive manner and fosters an increased understanding of U.S. history and culture. On the content level, an analysis of the selection and presentation of topics covered by Simaye Amrica reveals its two-fold strategy. On the one hand, it identifies and portrays niche aspects of America and American society, such as a couple’s ice fishing activities in the first episode, to provide its viewers, show by show, with a comprehensive picture of the country. On the other hand, particularly with regards to the show’s representation of U.S. values, Americans are portrayed as a rather homogeneous society. They are virtually presented as to all cherish and live by the same universal values, as for example in episode 7 when Mazhari introduces the segment on the Salvation Army by claiming that supplying aid to those in need is a typical American trait. Overall, Simaye Amrica presents the very best of America. The sample’s episodes cover uncontroversial topics in a balanced manner and highlight values with universal appeal. Topics are used to show the advantages of living in an open society. Apart from serving as a platform to showcase American culture and values, Simaye Amrica also highlights impressive and extraordinary sites such as the Mall of America or the AT&T Stadium in Texas. The use of emotionally appealing or impressive images, depending on the topic, strategically complement the statements made by Simaye Amrica’s team and the individual interviewees. While Simaye Amrica presents the United States as committed to democracy and freedom as well as humanitarian work, human rights, and women’s empowerment, Press TV’s American Dream depicts America as violating human rights, tolerating police brutality, discriminating Muslims, and taking away its citizen’s fundamental rights.

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The American Dream episodes are entirely critical of the U.S. government and U.S. authorities, however, not of the American people, who are in fact constantly depicted as victims. Thus, the negative U.S. image that is created exclusively adheres to the government and the environment in which Americans live.

Bibliography 9/11 Commission (2004). The 9/11 Commission Report. Washington, DC: GPO. BBG (2013). ‘Fiscal Year 2014 Congressional Budget Request’, accessed 2 November 2014. BBG (2014). ‘Fiscal Year 2015 Congressional Budget Request’, accessed 1 November 2014. Beeman, W. O. (2005). The ‘Great Satan’ vs. the ‘Mad Mullahs’: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other. Westport, CT: Praeger. Blair, D. (2012). ‘Britain Bans Iran’s Press TV from Airwaves’, The Telegraph, 20 January, accessed 7 August 2014. Bowden, M. (2004). ‘Lessons of Abu Ghraib’, The Atlantic, accessed 10 September 2014. Bush, G. W. (2006). National Security Strategy of the United States of America. Washington, DC: The White House. Dibble, P. L. (2011). Testimony. Hearing, Is America’s Overseas Broadcasting Undermining Our National Interest and the Fight Against Tyrannical Regimes? United States. Cong. House. Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. 112th Cong., 1st sess. Washington, DC: GPO. Fitzpatrick, K. R. (2010). The Future of U.S. Public Diplomacy: An Uncertain Fate. Leiden: Brill. GAO (2005). U.S. Public Diplomacy: Interagency Coordination Efforts Hampered by the Lack of a National Communication Strategy. Report to the Subcommittee on Science, State, Justice, and Commerce, and Related Agencies. Committee on Appropriations, U.S. House of Representatives. Washington: GAO. Gilboa, E. (2008). ‘Searching for a Theory of Public Diplomacy’, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 616, 55–77. Khalaji, M. (2007). ‘Through the Veil: The Role of Broadcasting in U.S. Public Diplomacy toward Iranians’. Policy Focus, 68, 1–19. Melissen, J. (2005). The New Public Diplomacy: Soft Power in International Relations. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Nakamura, K. H., and Weed, M. C. (2009). ‘U.S. Public Diplomacy: Background and Issues’. CRS Report for Congress, accessed 10 June 2014.

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Nye, J. (2004a). Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. New York: Public Affairs. – (2004b). ‘The Benefits of Soft Power’, Compass: A Journal of Leadership, accessed 14 March 2012. – (2008). ‘Public Diplomacy and Soft Power’, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 616, 94–109. Obama, B. (2010). National Security Strategy. Washington, DC: The White House. – (2011). National Strategy for Counterterrorism. Washington, DC: The White House. OIG (2009). ‘Voice of America’s Persian News Network’. Report of Inspection, accessed 15 February 2012. Pressly, Linda (2011). ‘Iran’s Battle for TV Influence Takes Shape on Press TV’, BBC News, accessed 7 August 2014. Rugh, W. A. (2009). ‘The Case of Soft Power’. In P. Seib (ed.), Toward a New Public Diplomacy: Redirecting U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 3–21. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Stout, J. P. (2011). Testimony. Hearing, Is America’s Overseas Broadcasting Undermining Our National Interest and the Fight Against Tyrannical Regimes? United States. Cong. House. Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. 112th Cong., 1st sess. Washington, DC: GPO. United States International Broadcasting Act of 1994. Pub. L. 103–236. 108 Stat. 361–376. 30 Apr. 1994. VOA. Voice of America Charter, accessed 15 January 2014. VOA (2012). ‘VOA Expands Broadcasts to Iran’, Press Release, accessed 10 May 2012. Zaharna, R.S. (2010). Battles to Bridges: U.S. Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy After 9/11. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Serena Fusco

‘These Girls Hold our Future in their Hands’: The Case of Girl Rising Prologue: Cosmodern Circulations, Cosmodern Fantasies This essay analytically and critically approaches the operation enacted by and through the 2013 film Girl Rising. As I shall attempt to demonstrate, several cultural and political issues germane to US identity and agency as constructed in the connection/rift between locality and globality coalesce around Girl Rising. Hence, my analytical effort also wants provide an occasion for reflecting on the contemporary cultural construction of the US face to the world. I suggest that this problematic is historically ‘cosmodern’ in the sense elaborated by Christian Moraru: after 1989, US culture developed an increasing awareness of the global interdependence of individuals and communities; this is coterminous with an American realization of being ‘in the world’ and needing to relate to the rest of the world – to achieve well-being, but also for sheer survival (Moraru 2011). On the one hand, I will place the film in the context of its ‘movement’. By this term, I mean not only its advocacy of a cause, but also the film’s intended and necessary circulation, and some of the forms and implications of this circulation. Paying attention to ‘circulation’ means to follow cultural and political subjects and objects in their movements, reciprocal positions, and proportions. Critically reading both the film as a cultural and rhetorical object and some of the ‘thresholds’1 between the film and the related campaign, I will analyze how Girl Rising tells and disseminates stories of female empowerment through education, turning them into the rhetorical ground, and affective horizon, for creating possibilities of ambivalent identification that are ultimately sutured into a fantasy; this fantasy connects, and to an extent conflates, the local with the global, and the present with the future. In the end, I shall contend that the operation enacted through Girl Rising is part of a fantasized rearticulation of US agency as global agency, in cultural as well as ethical terms.

1 The concept of ‘thresholds’ of a text is from Genette (1987).

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Around ‘One Girl with Courage’: What Is Girl Rising? Jan Cheney remarks that Girl Rising ‘isn’t a movie or even a documentary, at least not in the traditional sense. It’s a lengthy, highly effective PSA designed to kickstart a commitment to getting proper education for all young women, all over the globe’ (Cheney 2013). Directed by Richard E. Robbins, the film is produced by Ten Times Ten, LCC, and distributed by CNN Films and Gathr Films. The founding partners are Intel, The Documentary Group, and Vulcan Productions. The initiative also involves several strategic partners (among them, Google.org and Nike Foundation) and has a Country Partnership with a number of entities, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The film premiered on 7 March 2013, the eve of International Women’s Day. Several screenings also took place on 11 October, the day that in 2011 had been proclaimed International Day of the Girl Child.2 As already evident from this short summary, the film and the initiative, in a pattern that is typical of our times, have created a space for encounter and synergy between domains public and private, institutional and corporal, profit and nonprofit, individual and collective.3 Girl Rising narrates in succession the stories of nine young girls from nine different parts of the world. Each story is different and all of them are linked by the main message of the film: demonstrate the globally transformative power of female education and advocate female education globally. At the beginning of each section, on-screen titles provide the (first) name of the girl and the country (in most, and not all cases, also the city or area) she is associated with. Sokha is in Cambodia; Wadley in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Suma in Bardiya, Nepal; Yasmin in Cairo, Egypt; Asmera in Yilmana Densa, Ethiopia; Ruksana in Kolkata, India; Senna in La Rinconada, Peru; Mariama in Freetown, Sierra Leone; Amina in Afghanistan. The screenplay of each of the nine ‘episodes’ is written by a professional writer ‘from the same country’ as the girl.4 This choice bespeaks an investment in

2 The International Day of the Girl Child was established by the UN General Assembly on 19 December 2011 by means of Resolution 66/170. 3 The screenings are often events – to which representatives of collective bodies also participate. For instance, a March 2014 screening was hosted by the University of Arkansas and Sharon Orlopp, Global Chief Diversity Officer and Senior Vice President of Walmart, was as moderator of the post-screening discussion. 4 The phrase ‘from the same country’ entails a certain degree of ambivalence. Here, it needs to be intended loosely. While all the writers are ‘originally’ or ‘ethnically’ from (although not necessarily born in) the same countries as the girls, they all enjoy international mobility, global credibility, and are Western-educated and/or reside in the US.

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presenting the girls as ‘authentically’ as possible.5 Each of the nine parts is, in turn, narrated by the voice of a well-know actress/singer. The nine combinations – girl/ writer/artist – are as follows:  1) Sokha/Loung Ung/Alicia Keys 2) Wadley/Edwidge Danticat/Cate Blanchett 3) Suma/Manjushree Thapa/Kerry Washington 4) Yasmin/Mona Eltahawy/Chlöe Moretz 5) Asmera/Maaza Mengiste/Meryl Streep 6) Ruksana/Sooni Taraporevala/Priyanka Chopra 7) Senna/Marie Arana/Salma Hayek 8) Mariama/Aminatta Forna/Selena Gomez 9) Amina/Zarghuna Kargar/Anne Hathaway Stylistically, Girl Rising combines elements of fictional film, documentary film, advertising, PSA, live action, and animation. To my mind, what mostly makes Girl Rising ‘nontraditional’ are the discourses around it and channels through which it is distributed. Those entail a number of media and venues – public, private, and institutional. The film screenings can be ‘requested’ – hence determined, to an extent, from below, reserving a number of tickets via credit card and not charging the purchasers until the screening ‘tips’, i.e. the number of tickets for covering the screening costs have been guaranteed. Girl Rising is constructed as a brave attempt to champion and promote the historically neglected cause of female education ‘around the world’ – the world being here a metonymical extension of ‘the developing world’. Reviews are uneven with regard to the film’s artistic merit or communicative power, but there is virtually unanimous consensus around the goodness of the cause.6 The filmic operation, as I shall argue later on, is not separable from the context of its production, distribution, and reception. However, since the intention behind the filmmaking, the Girl Rising website informs us, is to rely on ‘the power of storytelling’,7 in the next paragraph I shall analyze the film in a ‘traditional’ way, i.e. as a cultural product, a narrative, and rhetorical object.

5 I shall refer to the problem of genre later in the essay. 6 See Cheney (2013), Rapold (2013), and Whipp (2013). 7 http://girlrising.com/about-us/. Last Accessed 11/23/2014.

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The Stone and the Lake: Rhetorical Structure in and around Girl Rising Why are these stories worth telling? The answer provided revolves around time. The ultimate narrator of the film, who has the voice of actor Liam Neeson, answers the unspoken spectatorial question: NARRATOR (LIAM NEESON’S VOICE): Their stories are important, because these girls hold our future in their hands. If they, and the million of girls like them, succeed in getting the kind of education they need, incredible things will happen.

The possessive adjective ‘our’ points to a plural first person – a ‘we’ which is crucial to the functioning of both the film and the operation around it. How encompassing is the unspoken ‘we’ behind the possessive ‘our’? Which subjective positions does this statement entail, and how are these positions constructed? Whose future is ‘our’ future? In order to reflect on these issues, I shall begin with a discussion of: the problem of the genre to which the film may be ascribed, and the related issue of the ‘truth-value’;8 the ‘frames’ that organize the film; the ‘external’ (or, as I shall attempt to demonstrate, not completely so) additional ‘frame’ that accompanies it; filmic strategies for implementing identification; and finally, some of the film’s significant intertexts.

Not Being Attached to Genre Girl Rising is quite heterogeneous in style and is hardly ascribable to one definite genre. It uses both factual and fictive elements; it combines live action and animation; it employs notable chromatic variety; it is basically a colour film, but one of the nine sections is shot in black and while; in term of register, dramatic tones are used as well as ‘lighter’ ones, occasionally also providing comic relief.9 Some stories entail more action and are faster-paced than others. One with lots of cinematic action is Wadley’s, in which the girl plays herself and lets the spectator follow her before and after the tragic earthquake that constitutes the pivot of the story.10 By contrast, one very restricted in terms of cinematic action and with more of a documentary feeling is Asmera’s. This Ethiopian girl and her family 8 The term ‘truth-value’ is modelled after and influenced by Lydia H. Liu’s discussion of ‘meaning-value’. See Liu (1999). 9 Mariama’s story is an example of this ‘lighter’ tone. It precedes and sets off Amina’s story, which to the contrary is a sombre one. 10 The January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti was 7.0 in magnitude. It is reported that more than 230.000 people were killed.

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members (mother and brother) face the camera in a number of photo-like shots that are remindful of family portraits. Much of the dramatic quality is provided by Meryl Streep’s intense voice-over: while the camera presents the characters, reveals the beautiful landscape, or pans on the mother sifting cereal, the narrator relates the events. Asmera is the fourteen-year-old daughter of a widowed mother. The family has undergone yet another painful loss: the untimely death of the firstborn daughter, Asmera’s older sister. When a man proposes to marry Asmera, the mother is about to grant the request, envisioning it as the best possible direction for the girl to take: ‘She held Asmera, and said: here is a chance. Here is possibility. Go’ (Narrator: Meryl Streep’s voice). The older brother objects and his resolute pledge to work in order to support Asmera in continuing her education avoids that the girl is married off. While the ‘innovative’ quality of the film has been observed, the Girl Rising website raises the issue of genre – as related to the ‘truth-value’ to be found in the film – and dismisses it as irrelevant:  We’re not attached to calling it a documentary, but it certainly isn’t pure fiction, either. We aren’t concerned with how it’s labeled as long as people see it. Ultimately, you can call it what you like. (GirlRising.com)

Clearly, the aim of the film is to grant voices to the voiceless and the disempowered, letting them ‘speak’. From the very beginning of the film, the issue of ‘letting them speak and the truth-value of this speech, are both evoked and strategically glossed over. The omniscient narrator on whom we depend for the making of the film meaning so informs the spectator:  NARRATOR (LIAM NEESON’S VOICE): Each of these girls was paired with a writer from their own country to help tell her story. These are true stories – if sometimes reimagined to capture the things these girls and these writers want you to see.

Despite the stylistic variety and multivocal nature of the film, dismissing the meaningfulness of genre as a category ensures that fact and fiction are not deepened nor questioned in relation to each other: instead, they become naturalized and subsumed in a ‘higher order’ of truth.11

Narrative (Concentric) Frames Girl Rising works according to a layered structure, or a series of concentric frames. The innermost diegetic core corresponds to the partly factual, partly fictive 11 As I shall further clarify later on, such naturalizations of ambivalence in the name of higher, or broader orders of discourse are ultimately productive of the film’s appeal.

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dramatization of each girl’s life: the ‘stories’. This level is framed by another, corresponding to the writers’ words that ‘re-imagine’ the girl’s lives. The third level consists of the voice-over: a recognizably ‘other’ voice tells the story. In most stories, the actress’ voice impersonates the girl, speaking in the first person; in other cases, the voice is a classic voice-over – or, in narratological terms, an omniscient narrator.12 Finally, at a fourth level, we encounter the voice of actor Liam Neeson. This ultimate voice-over has several functions. First of all, it sets off a series of shots in which, on the background of natural landscapes (sometimes coloured by animation), girls of various ages and ethnicities hold boards displaying the ‘facts’ – i.e. statistics – the film revolves around and based on which it advocates its cause13 Liam Neeson’s voice also narrativizes the data and figures displayed on the boards, lending a human quality to them. This frame connects the nine episodes, and the ‘facts’ provided during each intervention of the male narrator’s voice are particularly relevant to the girl’s story just told, before the next story follows. Differently from the girls, the writers, and the actresses, the male voice narrator is absent even from the film website, thus topping a structure that proceeds from embodiment to disembodiment, from inside to outside. Many of the voices are familiar to an American as well as to an international public. While this neatly falls into the widespread costume of celebrities doing PSAs, it also has rhetorical filmic implications. Kaja Silverman argues that ‘[i]nsofar as the voice-over asserts its independence from the visual track, it presents itself as enunciator. It seems […] to be a metafictonal voice, the point of discursive origin. This impression is sometimes augmented by the disembodied voice’s extratextual familiarity’ (Silverman 1988: 51). By contrast, the girls are the embodied ones. According to a semiotic effect that feminist critics have long seen as ingrained in the cinematic apparatus, the girls appear as the bodies at the bottom of a gaze or enveloped by other voices, more than subjects who are really speaking for themselves.14

12 The latter is the case for the stories of Sokha, Wadley, and Asmera. 13 See http://girlrising.com/assets/GirlRising_fact_sheet_042213.pdf; also see http://girlrising.pearsonfoundation.org/downloads/GR_Curriculum_Resources_STATISTICS. pdf?pdf=GR_Curriculum_Resources_STATISTICS. Last Accessed 11/23/2014. 14 See the highly influential arguments in de Lauretis (1984). De Lauretis and other feminist philosophers influenced by poststructuralism have elaborated several theories of female embodiment as opposed to the masculinised power of objective, disembodied representation. It may be in that respect meaningful that the ultimate narrator in Girl Rising is a disembodied masculine voice amidst a

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The male voice powerfully sutures the nine stories and their plurality and reworks the themes and rhetorical/filmic strategies into the ‘facts’. This frame is ambitious, ever-enlarging, and futural: NARRATOR (LIAM NEESON’S VOICE): So, what exactly changes when the six hundred million girls in the developing world get a good education? Everything.

Let Them Teach: The Ripple Effect Girl Rising as filmic text is not conceivable outside its frame of production, circulation, and reception. This means that we should consider the presentational framework – the website above all – as one more narrative frame, and as a level where style also matters – and is reflected within the film itself.15 I would suggest that the concentric frames that form the filmic structure extend on the other side of the screen, in a movement that creates a zone of indistinctness, of ever-enlarging circles between the filmic world and the real world, an open contact zone between the spectators, the filmmakers, and the girls whose stories are told. The frames that surround the girls are ever-receding: this is one of the keys to the film’s appeal, in the sense that any spectator feels s/he can take on the role of ‘letting the girls speak’, i.e. provide the conditions for letting the individual voices resonate and become exemplary for yet other viewers/listeners. The screening of the film must programmatically activate a ripple effect, in which inspiration flows and expands from individual to community to the larger community, in(de)finitely. In this respect, the construction of Girl Rising as a pedagogical instrument is pivotal to the whole operation. The website has a section for ‘educators’ that explains how to use parts of the film in the classroom. Educators can obtain additional materials and teaching kits. Different Girl Rising teaching curricula have been developed in collaboration with Pearson Foundation for different educational levels. The website advertises the curricula with the tagline ‘Let Suma Teach Third Period’. Of course, in the classroom, Suma is not the teacher – she is, instead, teaching material. Nevertheless, in observance of the (more than reality) ‘truth effect’ we have already noticed in operation, she

number of female voices dis/embodied to various degrees – the ‘natives’ being embodied to the highest degree. 15 For instance, the choice of the word ‘movement’ for promotion is significant: the term conveys the sense of a collective body with a high degree of self-determination, getting organized from below and not because of imposition or pressure from above – it is a call to ‘join us’, as stated on the website, and as the last line of the film has it.

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is both embodied and naturalized, i.e. presented as speaking for herself. The issue of ‘truth-value’ is again simultaneously highlighted and covered. Needless to say, among the entities screening the film have been, since the beginning of its distribution, a number of educational bodies, including higher education institutions. ‘You will be left in awe discovering what is happening in your own backyard. Come see what a huge impact a little education can bring to the life of one girl. This documentary will give you pride in how far you’ve come and the education you’ve received’.16 Watching the girls onscreen, struggling to change their families and their communities despite the odds in their educational opportunities, American students should feel reconfirmed in their sense of identity and their educational achievements. The girls’ world is just on the other side of the cinematic screen, in the spectators’ ‘backyard’. Such announcement well illustrates the dynamics of identification/distancing/suturing of identities of different scales that found the film’s rhetorical appeal. Using the curriculum, teachers can engage their students in meaningful, theme-based social studies, political science, math, economics, and language arts lessons by encouraging them to think about important political, cultural, historical, and geographic issues tied to educating girls — and about their role as global citizens and their responsibilities to their own communities.17

Yet, what if, instead of being simply a look in the backyard, the transition from the local to the global under the aegis of ‘global citizenship’ – nowadays a big buzzword in the debate on education in the US – is revealed not be a smooth process in the least? ‘Global citizenship’, as well as its partly antecedent concept ‘world citizenship’, have been widely criticized as durably compromised with colonial as well as neocolonial presuppositions – presuppositions increasingly converging, in the 21st century, in triumphal discourses of ‘neoliberal citizenship’.18 Among the manifestations of US-centric ‘neoliberal citizenship’ are, Chandra T. Mohanty maintains, the politics of education: ‘going ‘global’ has led to U.S. education’s becoming export-oriented to global markets: redesigning, repackaging, managing, and delivering educational ‘products’ at offshore sites and for consumers in foreign

16 This was issued by Emporia State University on 28 February 2014 for advertising the screening of the film on campus (http://www.emporia.edu/news/02/28/2014/documentary-girl-rising-explores-lack-of-access-to-education/? Accessed 11/13/2014.) 17 http://girlrising.com/curriculum/. Accessed 11/12/2014. 18 Scholarship on and around these problematics is enormous. For a recent collection containing many other references, see Isin and Nyers (2014).

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markets’ (2003: 186). ‘Global citizenship’ is also by now both a leading imperative and an increasingly debated term in the theory and practice of international study programs for US students. While the concept is generally regarded as productive for fostering both the construction of a ‘global civic society’ and the participation of young Americans (future American decision-makers) in it (Skelly 2009; Hovey and Weinberg 2009), critical voices have discussed the idealizing, hence ultimately mystifying articulations sometimes accompanying the term, and/or its possible complicity in a logic of commodification – one according to which international experience, a cosmopolitan sensibility, and the world itself become ‘packages’ to be acquired for a private and ultimately selfish consumption (Woolf 2010; Zemach-Bersin 2009). Inderpal Grewal has reconstructed a bind in the call to global citizenship and cosmopolitan identity that, she argues, tends to be reduced to invisibility: ‘the cosmopolitanism of the last decade of the twentieth century was a legacy of two subjects: the liberal subjects as possessor of rights and the subject of international trade’ (2005: 42). I shall return to the idea of global citizenship, its universalis basis, and its entanglement with educational theories and practices in the fifth paragraph.

Ambivalent Identification and Hilfslosigkeit Identification in, across, and through concentric frames does not simply work by regular and progressive extension; to the contrary, it works reconciling profound identitarian splits and ambivalences. Christian Metz developed what would become a seminal theory of cinematic identification, primarily based on Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis. In Metz’s argument, the spectator of a film primarily identifies with a transcendental, all-controlling subject position, at the level of (in Lacanian terms) the Symbolic order. At the same time, the transcendental quality of the subject in the Symbolic order does not obliterate, and never really supersedes, the core of lack at the centre of the subject – a lack that was installed in the primal mirror scene and that pertains to the level or register of the Imaginary. The phantasmic quality of the cinematic apparatus is both present and covered, and this covering is what grants film, using a Barthesian terminology, its ‘reality effect’ and an apparent solidity, ‘the whole of the perceived being out there’ (1983: 53). Metz maintains that the cinematic apparatus both shapes and is shaped by ‘not […] the sovereignty of a “human vocation” but […] inversely […] certain specific features of man as an animal (as the only animal that is not an animal): his primitive Hilfslosigkeit, his dependence on another’s care’ (1983: 53). In Girl Rising, fundamental lack and need for care are elaborated through a working opposition between vulnerability and strength. Early in the film, the narrator explains that

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one of the benefits of education for girls is that ‘it makes them safer’, because ‘there is nobody more vulnerable than a girl’. To an extent, the girls’ stories of struggle, resilience, and overcoming contradict this statement. Once they have overcome the many obstacles they encounter, the girls become aware of their power: ‘I feel like I can do anything’, Mariama/Selena Gomez’s voice says. ‘Do you underestimate my will?’, Amina/Anne Hathaway asks. Nonetheless, only logically due to the film’s relation to a fundraising campaign, the girls ultimately depend on external help. Yasmin’s story makes this clear through the choice of sensitive yet thoughtfully handled subject matter. We follow twelve-year-old Yasmin19 and her mother to a police station, where we learn that the girl has been raped. Her story wins the sympathy of two initially mistrustful officers. However, when the mother exclaims ‘I only want justice’, the officer replies ‘Justice? Nowadays?’. What is implied/suggested is that justice for Yasmin would be attainable only if she acquired the education she lacks, and she might be able to do so thanks to the care and help of the potential donors the film addresses itself to. In the introduction to a 2003 collection, David Blakesley advocates a rhetoricbased approach to film, and, following Kenneth Burke, he defines rhetoric as ‘either the exploitation or elaboration of ambiguity to foster identification’ (Blakesley 2003: 13; my emphasis). Exploiting the ambivalence of filmic identification is rhetorically at work in many aspects of Girl Rising. For instance, Wadley’s story sets a structure of identitarian tension that works throughout the film. Wadley’s life appears ‘normal’ at the beginning – a life an American girl could relate to. Wadley dreams at night, gets up in the morning, and goes to school. The story of a friend, briefly narrated by the voice-over, provides a counterpoint of insecurity and vulnerability to Wadley’s story of ‘normality’: we are told that this other girl’s father was shot by a man attempting to steal the taxi he drove for a living. This marks a fine line between identification and dis-identification, similarity and difference, normality and exception. This tension peaks in the collapse of ‘normality’ that orchestrates the story: the 2010 tragic earthquake.20 19 At the beginning of the film, we learn that both ‘Yasmin’ and ‘Amina’ are names given by the filmmakers to replace the real names of two girls who, out of safety concerns, could not play themselves. They are replaced by two young actors playing their life. 20 On the significance of the category of ‘normality’, Mariama’s story has a moment of interesting self-consciousness and mise-en-abyme. As the ‘Mariama’ section of the film begins, we see her and a group of younger children displayed on a street poster – possibly in an unspecified American city. At this point, we begin hearing Mariama/ Selena Gomez’s voice: ‘You’re probably wondering: is that an ad for some charity? But I actually have a normal life for a teenage girl’.

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Intertexts and Contexts: Superheroes and Warrior Princesses Sensitively handling sensitive material – child rape – through an intertextual motif, Yasmin’s story displays some radical contradictions coalescing around a globalized rhetoric of female empowerment. When confronted with the officers at the police station and asked to tell her story, Yasmin boldly declares: ‘I’m a superhero!’ Though her mother interjects ‘stop this nonsense!’, the story develops as a superhero narrative. The actress takes up the narration while animation, in a style remindful of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis21 but in colours, fills the screen. The actress’s voice-over, speaking in the first person and impersonating Yasmin, tells how she was lured by a man to his house. The story of the girl’s reaction, culminating in her stabbing (but not killing) the rapist, is presented as a fight between her in superhero attire and the villainous adversary: YASMIN (CHLÖE MORETZ’S VOICE): I told him that I did not want to kill him, because a true hero does not kill. […] He was strong but I was stronger. […] This man – he was a bad man, and he left me no choice. We fought in that dark place for a long time. He begged for me to spare him. So I spared his life.

The animation part ends with Yasmin stepping out of the superhero character and gradually transforming on screen back into her everyday clothes. This transformation induces a sobering turn to the narrative, which goes back to the drab colours of the police station and to the Arabic-speaking actors (with English subtitles). The superhero narrative appears to be the protective fantasy through which Yasmin retells her trauma. Protection from trauma, including sexual violence, Liam Neeson’s voice informs us, would be better realized if girls were empowered through education. Yasmin is not so lucky, nor will she be: she never went to school, cannot read nor write, and she is ‘engaged to be married’ because of her mother’s decision, who (the website informs us, as of November 2014)22 saw this as the safest option for her. Senna’s story is openly constructed in dialogue with an intertext:23 SENNA (SALMA HAYEK’S VOICE): My father named me after a famous warrior: Xena. He had seen her on TV – but since he could neither read nor write, he didn’t know that her

21 Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novels going under the collective title of Persepolis have been highly successful and attracted much critical acclaim. 22 http://girlrising.com/about-the-film/yasmin-in-egypt/. Last Accessed 11/23/2014. 23 In my opinion, Senna’s story is one of the few in the film that, to an extent, deny full suture to, hence partly denaturalize the oppositions most of the other stories are built upon. In this respect, also see paragraph seven.

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name started with an X. He said that, like her, I would grow up to be a fearless defender of the poor – a heroine prepared to go to war against ruthless men if honour demanded it.

The cult TV series Xena: Warrior Princess initially aired, in the US and worldwide, in the late 1990s-early 2000s. It starts with Xena (previously a villain in the series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys) being ‘changed’, i.e. having renounced her past of violence and slaughter as leader of a ruthless army, and having decided to travel a world ravaged by bloodthirsty warlords (a group she once belonged to) to help and defend people in need, so as to atone for her past sins. Xena is both a heroine – she rescues those who cannot rescue themselves, like Senna and Suma – and a role model – she sets an example with her good behaviour and her ongoing struggle to act ethically. The moral struggle between good and evil is both the pivot that creates the show’s spectacular and action quality and the key to Xena’s character. In a scene taking place at the end of Episode Three, Season One, Xena points to Gabrielle – her travel companion, friend, and protégée – that she once was like the calm surface of a lake nearby. The camera frames the water surface, which is diagonally bisected by a shadow projected by the vegetation around, so half of it is in the light while the other half is in the dark. Xena throws a stone into the lake: XENA: The water ripples and churns. That’s what I became. GABRIELLE: But if we sit here long enough it will go back to being still again. It will go back to being calm. XENA: But the stone’s still under there. It’s now part of the lake. It might look as it did before, but it’s forever changed.

Xena is historically, geographically, and culturally very loose and flexible, and it does not it stake any claims on realism or accuracy. It blends myth and fantasy registers; moreover, it inserts a substantial use of characters and motifs associated with ancient Greece into a setting that is iconically medieval in its look and feel. In the concluding chapter of Feeling Global: Internationalism in Distress, Bruce Robbins develops a reflection around ‘a term that has been much in the news since the end of the Cold War’: [T]he term ‘warlord’ seems to fit the anti-visionary vision of fragmented, bitterly pragmatic international relations that [James] Der Derian refers to as ‘neo-medievalism’. […] In this context, it seems to consecrate […] a tight scarcity economy both of acting and of caring. If it’s a jungle out there, an amoral battleground where force is everything, then all we can do is look out for ourselves and our near and dear ones without asking universalistic questions about right, wrong, or the general welfare and without otherwise extending our engagements to anything too far away. (Robbins 1999: 158–59; my emphasis)

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This ‘medievalized’ world is the opposite of the ‘classical’ ideal of the polis, grounded in ancient Greek philosophy and a key element to any modern reflection on citizenship. Interestingly, Xena blends the two, or better inserts a ‘classic’ feeling, with its associations of extended citizenship and compassion (scholars mostly tend nowadays to trace the emergence of a cosmopolitan feeling to philosophers like Socrates and Diogenes),24 at the heart of fantasy-like Middle Ages where warlords rule and the polis is at the mercy of the lawless and ruthless. I shall presently go back to the problem of the ‘extension of engagements’.25

Future Women as Multiscale Problem-Solvers [A]ll concerned should recognize that promoting economic growth is not a sufficient way to promote education for women. Development theorists who focus only on maximizing economic growth, assuming that growth alone will provide for other central human needs, are very likely to shortchange female education. […] Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen have shown that growth-oriented policies do not improve the quality of education, particularly female education, in the absence of additional focused state action. (Nussbaum 2003: 328)

Philosopher Martha Nussbaum, a champion of women’s and human rights, published in 2003 an essay titled ‘Women’s Education: A Global Challenge’.26 In this work, Nussbaum maintains, among else, that while female education should be a priority in both national and international political agendas, it will not automatically result from economic growth or the rise of a country’s GDP. I suggest that Girl Rising is a reverse mirror held to some of the paradigms employed by Nussbaum in her cases around education. For instance, while

24 A ‘classical’ motif is also present in Asmera’s story, which is constructed around a (simplified) version of the myth of Icarus. 25 A long line of intertexts could be retraced at this juncture of popular culture, media, and the representation of the individual in the social body. Several texts remind their viewers, especially in their young age, that we are all, if not necessarily super-, nonetheless ‘heroes’ in our small world. Examples of this may be the cartoon series developed around the Masters of the Universe Mattel franchise, or Mister T, the animation spin-off of ATeam – all aired both in the US and internationally during the 1980s. At the end of each episode, one of the series’ protagonists usually makes an ‘aside’ and instructs the young audience about a moral lesson to be learned from the episode. In a broader – and more adult – sense, it seems to me that patterns relating the superhero, violence, and ethics have been radically changed by Quentin Tarantino’s films, like for instance Kill Bill Vol. I and Vol. II. 26 The essay is partly based on a visit to the Sithamarhi district of in the state of Bihar, in north-eastern India.

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Nussbaum’s sets out to ‘solve the problem’ (Nussbaum 2003: 345) of female education, Girl Rising both embraces and reverses this logic: NARRATOR (LIAM NEESON’S VOICE): Girls are not the problem. They’re problem solvers. You want to slow the spread of AIDS? Educate a girl. You want to grow the global economy? Educate a girl.

Broadly speaking, female education in Girl Rising is transposed from being a possible, albeit not automatic consequence of economic development (in Nussbaum) to being the key to economic growth, and from being a shared problem to be solved to being the key for solving other problems of global concern. This point is rhetorically and narratively reinforced through Mariama’s story. Mariama is the first in her family to attend school regularly. She is a problem solver in at least two ways. At school, she likes science and dreams about being like Isaac Newton. As her/Selena Gomez’ voice states, ‘science is about finding solutions and solving problems’. Mariama also has an after-school job at a radio station. During her show, she listens to people (mainly other girls) telling her about their problems, and offers exemplary solutions.27 ‘Girls are rising’ – Amina/Anne Hathaway’s voice states in the film finale. As a whole, Girl Rising (obviously strategically) avoids using the noun ‘feminism’ or the adjective ‘feminist’. Despite the avoidance of the word, Girl Rising elicits thorny questions like those formulated by Marnia Lazreg in 2000: […] the world’s woman. But this world is ‘worlded’ by others who do not include themselves in it as a subject of study. Theirs is a geographically small world but one politically, economically, and intellectually large. It has made what Max Weber called ‘universal history’, the kind of history that speaks of the ‘West’s’ presence in one way or another, on the market place, in government palaces, and at home, around the television set. It is the kind of history that gathered thousands of women together in Beijing and Houairu, China, in 1995. Though some women from remote villages had their trips paid for by international organizations who sent them to commune in a sisterhood made to order, they were all but ignored by their well-educated ‘Western Universal’ sisters […]. In my youth I objected to the Weberian cultural arrogance. But I am not so sure now that he was wrong after all. No matter how well he understood the scope of the economic might of the West, he had not anticipated the rise of feminism as an intellectual and social movement that expanded the ‘universal’ function of the ‘West’. […] Hiding behind the lofty and unimpeachable calls for equality, choice, human rights, etc., Western feminists

27 We are told how Mariama helps a girl to solve a double problem, that in turn relates to the film’s overall message: the girl she advises manages to enrol back in school, which in turn keeps her far from ‘her aunt’s boyfriend’, who has a ‘really bad wandering hand problem’.

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have promoted conceptions of individual and institutional change modeled after their own societies. (Lazreg 2000: 29)

Girl Rising could indeed be regarded as a case of ‘triumphant discourse of global feminism’ articulated in Western (neo)liberal terms. In the passage I have just quoted, Lazreg pinpointed in the year 2000 issues that had already been, and increasingly would be, broadly and passionately debated, and keep being debated by feminist scholars western and non-western, such as Sara Ahmed, Judith Butler, Inderpal Grewal, Caren Kaplan, Chandra T. Mohanty, Gayatri Spivak, and many others. There have been countless attacks as well as careful reflections, on the allegedly universalist but, to some, fundamentally (culturally) biased logic behind Western (including US American) feminist discourse – as well as behind several topical keywords, categories, and ‘tools’ in international relations, such as ‘development’, ‘democracy’, and ‘human rights’ – to name but a few.28 On the other hand, a universalist perspective has been carefully critiqued and partly recuperated by scholars such as Arjun Appadurai, K. Anthony Appiah, Pheng Cheah, Rey Chow, Lydia Liu, Bruce Robbins, Edward Said, and Slavoj Žižek.29 Reminding her readers of the existence of ‘competing universalisms’ in different contexts, Judith Butler points that ‘the futural articulation of the universal […] can happen only if we find ways to effect cultural translation between […] various cultural examples in order to see which versions of the universal are proposed, on what exclusions they are based, and how the entry of the excluded into the domain of the universal requires a radical transformation of our thinking of universality (Butler 2002: 51, my emphasis).

28 Moreover, any discussion that considers women, education, and empowerment cannot but be nowadays haunted by the durable suspicion, matured in the encounter between feminism and Jacques Derrida, that subordinate positions for women are already built in language and culture – a healthy suspicion summed up by Kaja Silverman as ‘being aware of the phallocentricity of our current signifying practices’ (Silverman 1983: 194). The phallocentricity of the culture a girl encounters in her education is briefly touched upon in Wadley’s story, and is entwined with a postcolonial theme: ‘That morning, Wadley was working to memorize Toussaint Louverture’s final speech, as he was removed from Haiti by the French, after he tried to win independence for the country. Wadley liked to imagine herself defiant, like brave Toussaint Louverture – but she also wished she’d been given some words by women to recite: brave and strong women, like her mother’ (Narrator: Cate Blanchett’s voice). 29 For a pioneering contribution in this direction, see Cheah and Robbins (1998); for a recent and already very influential perspective, see Appadurai (2013).

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As a ‘global movement’ for female empowerment through education, does not Girl Rising fall within the scope of the universalisms to be critically interrogated? What does it tell us about the construction of, and interaction between local and global dimensions? What does the universalist thrust of Girl Rising reveal about how stories and funds converge in a center and get redistributed and globally recirculated? I shall return to these issues below.

Global Extension: Universalism, Cosmopolitanism, and Education Education, humanism, and internationalism are conjoined in Nussbaum’s highly influential and by now classical work, to which now I turn again in order to provide both an analytical backup and a fuller contextualization of the issues under scrutiny. Nussbaum’s humanist argument represents identification – the basis, in turn, of solidarity to fellow humans – as a structure of ever-enlarging concentric circles. Within this model, identification, humanist solidarity, and the attainment of world citizenship work by a principle of extension and addition:  The Stoics stress that to be a citizen of the world one does not need to give up local identifications […]. They suggest that we think of ourselves not as devoid of local affiliations, but as surrounded by a series of concentric circles. The first one is drawn around the self; the next takes in one’s immediate family; then follows the extended family; then, in order, one’s neighbours or local group, one’s fellow city-dwellers, one’s fellow countrymen—and we can easily add to this list groupings based on ethnic, linguistic, historical, professional, gender and sexual identities. Outside all these circles is the largest one, that of humanity as a whole. Our task as citizens of the world will be to ‘draw the circles somehow toward the centre’ […], making all human beings more like our fellow city dwellers, and so on. (Nussbaum 1994/2002: 9; my emphasis).

The investment in girl’s and women’s education also speaks to the growing debate on the pluralization and internationalization of education,30 which has been taking place in the US at least since the 1990s, the years of the so-called ‘culture wars’.31 Especially in Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (1997), Nussbaum extensively discusses the politics of education as a key element in the creation of an international, cosmopolitan sensibility that may be the basis of ‘world citizenship’. In the midst of the culture wars, Nussbaum 30 It is in this respect significant that the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE), a Maine-based non-profit organization recognized as a leader in the field of international education, has become one of Girl Rising’s strategic partners. 31 The term ‘culture wars’ is mostly associated in the US to the intense debate that developed during the 1990s around the problem of redefining US culture in the context of a changed world order.

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defended the steps taken in the direction of a diversification and internationalization of curricula in US higher education institutions. The aptness of the reform, Nussbaum argues, lies in historical facts as well as philosophical premises. Referring to the US, she maintains: ‘our country is inescapably plural’ (1997: 6). She provides a number of sketches of life in several and disparate American campuses that both reflect and provide a reason for the reform she defends: [T]he ethnically mixed student body, more than 40 per cent minority, crowds the campus green. […] Lowy speaks in a low, gentle voice, peering through his thick glasses. He describes the difficulty of teaching about immigration, assimilation, and the political struggles of new minorities in a political climate saturated with sensationalism, mistrust, and appeals to irrational emotion. ‘Certainly there are some people who teach multiculturalism in a provocative way. I choose a more gentle approach. […] I always tell people that you can either package your humanity in your politics or you can package your politics in your humanity, and if you’re really a decent human being with the right attitude and the right heart and good faith toward people it will come out. (1997: 3–4)

The depoliticizing rhetoric attained by means of a broad appeal to ‘humanity’ and the gentle, almost idyllic, almost timeless quality of the scene above are consistent with the overall thrust of Nussbaum’s argument, aimed at taking the edge off the more ‘threatening’ aspects of the educational reform that she wants to safeguard against conservative backlash. Historicity comes to the foreground immediately afterwards, when, in a passage that is worth quoting at length, Nussbaum expounds on the reason why the opening and pluralization of the educational curricula is not simply beneficial, but necessary at the time when she writes: As citizens we are frequently called upon to make decisions that require some understanding of racial and ethnic and religious groups in our nation, and of the situation of its women and its minorities in terms of sexual orientation. […] [W]e are also increasingly called upon to understand how issues such as agriculture, human rights, ecology, even business and industry, are generating discussions that bring people together from many nations. This must happen more and more if our economy is to remain vital and effective solutions to pressing human problems are to be found. The new emphasis on ‘diversity’ in college and university curricula is above all a way of grappling with the altered requirements of citizenship, an attempt to produce adults who can function as citizens not just of some local region or group but also, and more importantly, as citizens of a complex interlocking world. (1997: 6; my emphasis)

In Feeling Global, Bruce Robbins critically engages with both Nussbaum’s controversial essay ‘Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism’ (the basis for the argument later developed in Cultivating Humanity) and her numerous critics, both radical and conservative. Here I am especially interested in how Robbins pinpoints, contrasting them with Nussbaum’s, a number of conservative positions that share

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a fundamental disbelief in the existence of a space for articulating cosmopolitanism. In these critics’ views, cosmopolitanism is a void: a nonexisting place, empty, cold, allegedly bereft of love and emotions. This emotional void makes relating meaningfully to those who are too far away impossible, or is itself proof of the impossibility thereof. The implications are extremely isolationist: ‘[t]hese days, many American policy makers and media pundits no longer bother to pretend that what is good for us is good for the world. With a menacing modesty, they are now content to champion one national interest against all others’ (Robbins 1999: 149). Girl Rising has been realized by a global team led by Americans, with funds from the US and/or coming to the US, and administered by a US-based staff; it tells stories of individual resilience that globally reconfirm the cultural belief in the pursuit of happiness and the power of the individual that have long been associated with US culture, and to date (November 2014) is has mostly been watched by US American audiences and/or in US-sponsored contexts.32 It seems to me that its leading idea – namely, that ‘these girls hold our future in their hands’, presents a reversal of the conservative perspectives pinpointed by Robbins. Instead of assuming a rift, Girl Rising creates a virtuous cycle: what is good for the girls is good for the world and is good for us – i.e. the ‘developed world’ (contrasted with the ‘developing world’) and primarily the US. Or, starting the cycle elsewhere (but still in an allegedly virtuous circular pattern), US interest is the girl’s interest, and the girl’s interest is the world’s. We are at the opposite of claiming that ‘us’ and ‘the world’ do not share a common ground. Nonetheless, despite the fact that Robbins’s study was published fourteen years before the Girl Rising premiere, to simply claim that times have changed for the best and Americans have finally learned to feel connected to the global dimension is not, in my view, a sufficient explanation. As I shall further elaborate in paragraph six in temporal terms, the film constructs an ambivalence in identification that is not resolved, but instead is sutured short-circuiting present and future through fantasy. Consequently, both the interpellative force and the divisive quality of a global(ized) ‘we’ coalesce in the film. Robbins highlights the divisive quality of placing global loyalties – from an American perspective: 32 I am grounding these statements not only in an epistemological act and a cultural interpretation, but also in the ‘impact map’ on the Girl Rising website (http://girlrising.com/grow-the-movement/index.html#impact-map) displaying the geographical concentration of the screenings. It is unclear when the impact map was last updated. Even if the statement about US audience being the most exposed to the film needed to be revised, it is likely that the other points would still be valid.

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Amy Gutmann argues […] that ‘asking us to choose between being, above all, citizens of our own society or, above all, citizens of the world’ is ‘morally misguided and politically dangerous’ […]. But if choosing is not always called for, can one not at least acknowledge that sometimes it may be? […] Along with the necessity of choice, Gutmann and most of the others throw out even its hypothetical possibility. Thus they refuse to confront the core of Nussbaum’s case, which is simply that loyalty to one’s nation can and sometimes does contradict the manifest demands of justice as seen from any extra-national perspective, even a subuniversalistic one. (Robbins 1999: 152; my emphasis)

Robbins highlights that Nussbaum’s ‘gentle’ – and, one may add, depoliticizing – cosmopolitanism was easily perceived as anti-patriotic in the years of the culture wars:  Nussbaum’s own favored image for how local givens relate to concern for humanity is ‘concentric circles’. Borrowed from the Stoics, this image minimizes conflict between humanity and the local, urging us merely to make the outermost circle (humanity as a whole) more like the innermost circle (self and family). Yet it does suggest, however gently, the need for an educative progress from narrower to broader loyalties. This is already too much of an either-or for most of the respondents. (Robbins 1999: 151)

Almost two decades later, Girl Rising’s solution to the tension between patriotism and cosmopolitanism is to replace ‘cosmopolitanism’ with ‘global citizenship’, showing this to be not opposed to patriotism,33 but instead both the point of departure and the point of arrival of an exercise in global solidarity delivered through the (temporally and spatially) ever-expanding circle of education. To Robbins, though, the controversial (in a good sense) potential of Nussbaum’s essay lies in the question: what if the concentric, ever-enlarging circle meets other circles? What if more than one stone is thrown into the lake? Girl Rising is in line with Nussbaum’s idea(l)s in suggesting that we are all already or potentially in the same circle. This, in turn, highlights some inevitably controversial implications of Nussbaum’s cosmopolitanism, because no ripple can infinitely expand without encountering another ripple – i.e. another claim to universality. Girl Rising both pluralizes/globalizes Nussbaum’s engagement and sutures the contradictions of this broad projection through fantasy.

Fantasy: The Local/Global Slash as Suture Despite the film’s narrative reliance on the concentric circles structure I have examined, the pattern of diffusion of Girl Rising is actually quite decentralized. Anyone can request a screening, so the film distribution does not hinge 33 For an enthusiastic recent announcement of marriage between patriotism and global citizenship see Gerzon (2010).

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on decisions made ‘from above’ but, to the contrary, on the ‘grassroots’ decision on the part of individuals who want to bring it to their community. Hence, a question follows: can this decentralization, all these ripples, be accommodated in the Nussbaumian model of one global enlarging community? In this respect, I would suggest that the marriage of a centralizing rhetoric with a decentralizing one may paradoxically be instrumental in covering and displacing the potential for controversy inherent (following Robbins) in the concentric circles model. At this point it may be illuminating to look at Girl Rising through the lens of another discourse focusing on girls – or, better, on ‘The Girl’: a history project, developed by several scholars, named The Modern Girl Around the World,34 focusing on the period between World War I and World War II.35 This project is aimed at creating ‘a method we label connective comparison’, that scrutinizes the idea of discrete temporal and geographic locations by positioning specific local developments in conversation with those occurring elsewhere in the world. In so doing, it highlights the inchoate manner in which things previously understood to be local come into being through complex global dynamics. […] [I]t puts into practice Johannes Fabian’s insight that the time of modernity is lateral and simultaneous, not evolutionary or stagist. (The Modern Girl Around the World Research Group 2008: 3–4)

This method is attained casting the ‘Modern Girl’ as ‘heuristic device’. This means that the very entity at the centre of the act of comparison is not unchanging nor a given, but is instead predicated on the research findings. ‘A heuristic device cannot be taken as given a priori; rather, it emerges in and through the research process and it possesses a future orientation’ (2). In a later essay by Tani E. Barlow (herself one of the scholars of the MGAW Research Group) this temporal emphasis takes a partly different twist. Barlow discusses the ‘emergence’ of female subjectivity as a recognizable point of encounter between similarities and differences among different cultures/regions of the world in modernity. Barlow asks: ‘[h]ow is it possible to reconcile the relation of singularity (the modern emergence of a subject, women, as such) and multiplicity (that this subject in many instantiations, emerged at the same time […] all over the globe?’ (2011: 164), and she answers using the concept of event. ‘By ‘the event of women’ I mean the specific historical revelation taking place across the colonial modern world during the period 34 The outcomes were collected in the comparative history volume The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization, published in 2008. See The Modern Girl Around the World Research Group (2008). 35 In this study, the historical condition of globalization is moved back in time from its most common temporal associations, and is not seen as a phenomenon exclusive to the late twentieth and early twenty-first century.

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of imperialist and anti-imperialist political regimes, when it was declared that a newly recognized political form – women – had a name, was nameable, and formed a totality’ (2011: 163). Barlow specifically elaborates on Alain Badiou’s theory of the event.36 For Badiou, Barlow maintains, philosophy and thought seize truths out of a flow of time and expose them. A truth is an event and an event is a truth. It is the aim of philosophy to accommodate different truths, providing tools for systematizing them, making them ‘compossible’.37 From this perspective, ‘Girl’ and ‘Woman’ are less signs corresponding to given referents than composite signs that are – at least partly – non-referential. Similarly to the ‘Modern Girl’, the ‘Girl Who Rises’ is the product of a central project and a number of on-site interconnections. I turned to Barlow mainly because she helps me focus the emergence of a heuristic, ‘eventual’ subject in the fold of disjunctions that are cultural, historical, and philosophical; in particular, in a disjunction between space and time, one that conjoins different spaces in a temporal dimension, a ‘time frame’ that can be constructed as totalizing or, alternatively, plural. Engaging with Girl Rising critically can shed light on the paradoxes, contradictions, disjunctions that keep it together by means of an active suturing operated by a naturalizing fantasy. While founded on cultural premises remounting back in time, these disjunctions are, I suggest, germane to the tension between US identity and globalization in our time. The disjunction linking cyclical/circular to progressive/linear time is foundational for the film. The successful stories of the girls are presented as interruptions in the cyclical time of repetition. For instance, in Suma’s story:  SUMA (KERRY WASHINGTON’S VOICE): That’s the way things have been around here. That’s the way they have been for the poor.

While the film calls this ‘the cycle of poverty’ and takes pains in depicting the girl’s families as sympathetic, it is hard not to perceive a powerful component of cultural essentialism in a sentence like ‘in Ethiopia, this is how it was done’ (in

36 The event is a key concept for several philosophers of the twentieth century (and beyond) – from Martin Heidegger to (in the last quarter of the twentieth century) Alain Badiou, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-Luc Nancy. It is a debated and complex matter and each of these philosophers elaborates it differently. 37 This essay by Barlow emerges from an engagement with the Wallersteinian idea of ‘world system’. For Barlow, this has historiographic implications that I cannot tackle in the space of this essay.

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Asmera’s story, referred to marrying girls very young).38 Once the cycle of poverty has been broken, change ‘happens fast’, Liam Neeson’s voice assures the spectators. A tale of individual success is given global scope and an acceleration in time that, in order to deliver a message of hopefulness, at least partly contributes to overlook both empirical evidence and the composite character of the world zones where ‘change’ is supposed to start and take hold.39 Girl Rising short-circuits the present and the future so as to have an investment in the present with the promise of a future, and the future as the inevitable outcome of doing good – and investing well – in the present. Deictic identification and pronouns are crucial here. The ‘we’ of ‘our’ future is an unfinished identification, one that does not only bear a linear promise but is actually also predicated on a circular (cyclical) logic. Fantasy in the sense first elaborated by Jacqueline Rose and subsequently employed by Donald E. Pease is the critical category I rely upon here. In States of Fantasy, Rose reworks fantasy into the realm of the political: ‘[f]antasy is not […] antagonistic to social reality; it is its precondition or psychic glue. […] [I]t fuels, or at least plays a part in, the forging of the collective will’ (Rose 1998: 3). Fantasy accommodates pulls towards both disruption and preservation, overcoming boundaries and reinforcing boundaries: ‘[i]f fantasy can be the ground for license and pleasure […] it can just as well surface as fierce blockading protectiveness, walls up all around our inner and outer, psychic and historical, selves’ (1988: 4). Elaborating on Rose, Pease (2009) underlines that the workings of fantasy entail a suturing of the contradictions between the citizens’ desires and the workings of the polity. The suture takes hold in repetition, because rifts and contradictions are experienced as a source of antagonistic pleasure and enjoyment – as a ‘positive challenge’, in a way. This antagonistic enjoyment also guarantees that contradictions are not a hindrance but instead a spur to a repeated, always enjoyably unfinished, emotional and identitarian investment. A web article advertising a Girl Rising screening in Portland, OR, opens as follows: ‘What would happen if more of the world’s 66 million uneducated girls were allowed to receive the same schooling as their male counterparts? That’s the

38 In narrating stories of individuals that make it not only against material but also cultural odds, at least in part incarnated – albeit not so consciously – by the previous generation, the film is also remindful of ethnic American narratives of success and emancipation. 39 Gail E. Wolfe suggests that ‘the film’s depiction of education as a panacea for the myriad problems plaguing girls in the developing world obscures nearly as much as it illuminates. […] [T]he transformative power of girls’ education is constrained by the context in which it operates’ (2014: 279).

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question addressed in Girl Rising’.40 Now, interestingly, this question is exactly what the film does not really address, but instead suspends in a conflation of present and future and sutures in a fantasy. The disjunction between the ‘we’ behind ‘our’ (‘our future’) and them, the girls, is, or will be sutured in the future. This is to say that the ‘we’ behind the ‘our’ is an unfinished fantasy that returns ‘home’ via deterritorialization and externalization. This lake-world in which a thousand stones can be dropped, and each ripple mirrors an individual effort, can in turn be held as a mirror to a US American fantasy of global citizenship such as Girl Rising. As hinted, this actually liberates plenty of inevitable and jagged contradictions, which can be condensed in questions such as: how really expandable or how really narrow, how universal and how particular is the ‘we’? Is this a new, or a renewed form of American exceptionalism – not working at the level of the State, like Pease has reconstructed, but at the level of an imagined Cosmopolis? For Moraru, the way one constructs the temporal dimension is crucial. The ‘cosmodern imaginary’ that Moraru theorizes as a possible alternative to the fragmented cultural landscape of postmodernity entails an ethical dimension of ‘giving time’,41 one that is neither ‘chronophagic’ nor ‘culturophagic’ (2011: 303; emphasis in the original). This signifies both the aptness of decelerating – so as to avoid the devouring conflation of time upon itself – and the necessity to allow that different, heterogeneous historical and cultural temporalities pluralize the Oneness of US-centric time. The Afghanistan setting and Amina’ story are especially revealing of the jagged quality of the disjunctions inhabiting Girl Rising:  NARRATOR (LIAM NEESON’S VOICE): Thanks to a new generation of leaders, men and women, there are more girls in school in Afghanistan now than at any time of its history.

It is unclear, and never clarified, what ‘new generation of leaders’ the narrator refers to; it is difficult, though, not to be reminded that a major change in regime and leadership in Afghanistan was brought up starting in 2002, in coincidence with massive military US intervention in the aftermath of 9/11. Based on the unsaid in Amina’s story, it would appear that the promise of education for world girls is a fantasy also in the sense of being able to extend as far as accommodating (paraphrasing Pease) ‘active contradictions’ such as (paraphrasing Barlow) the ‘compossibity’ of military engagement and ethical thrust on a global scale. ‘Active’ means that such contradictions are not accidental; to the contrary, each

40 http://www.oregonlive.com/living/index.ssf/2013/03/girl_rising_film_championing_g. html. Accessed 10/29/2014. 41 Here Moraru is elaborating on Jacques Derrida’s concept of ‘given time’.

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element of the contradiction keeps the other in place through a logic of strategic disavowal – one we have just seen instantiated in Amina’s story. The rhetoric of identification in Amina’s story is quite articulate and temporally (meaning through time) sutured only in the end. Amina is a name given to an Afghan girl whose real name cannot be disclosed for safety concerns:  AMINA (ANNE HATHAWAY’S VOICE): If my husband heard these words, he might kill me. So might my father, or my brother, or anyone of thousands of my countrymen.42

Amina being de-individualized (‘my story is like thousands of others. Millions’) is visually enhanced by the ample use of the burqa in the section: she is shot as the isolated element at the centre of a landscape while wearing it; she wears it on the occasion of her imposed wedding and for a moment we see the scene through her eyes (‘my eyes are hidden beneath this embroidered cage’). In spite of being married as a child and giving birth to a baby shortly afterwards, Amina will finally be able to re-enrol in school. If we are led to believe that she regains her individuality – this emancipation is visually accompanied by one of the most media-circulated, and iconic images of the ‘liberation’ of Afghanistan: she lifts the burqa and bares her face – in the end, Amina is reconfirmed to be a cipher, albeit in a different order of discourse – she is the cipher of the Girl Who Rises: ‘[i]f you kill me, there will be other girls who rise up and take my place’.

All That Circulates: Fantasy, Investment, Return I do not wish to maintain that cultural stereotyping or essentialism are aims of the film per se; nonetheless, Girl Rising grapples with issues that are bound to raise controversial, jagged discourses of culture and identity. Bruce Robbins’s discussions of universalism is once again relevant here. In Feeling Global, Robbins works to disentangle the concept of universalism from a purely culturalist frame of reference. He does not do so in order to champion universalism acritically; to the contrary, he does so to open up the idea to debate and critique. Robbins asks: ‘How much difference does it make when universalism is disputed in terms of power rather than in terms of culture?’ (Robbins 1999: 73). Disputing universalism in terms of power rather than culture can open up a space for joint intellectual reflection and political action – and maybe we can also formulate this sentence the other way round, as in intellectual action and political reflection. ‘Thinking about universals in terms of unequal power, rather than solely in terms of cultural 42 These words are accompanied by several shots of grim male faces dully staring into the camera.

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difference, makes visible the common or universalizing ground that we already occupy’ (Robbins 1999: 77). This adds up to not rejecting universal terms, despite the fact that they have been much more often than not (as extensively discussed, among others, by Sara Ahmed, Rey Chow, Lydia Liu, and Naoki Sakai) elaborated in the context of lasting forms of Western and US hegemony.43 [T]here can never be a universalism that is not ‘under the aegis of some definite power or agent’. To disqualify it on those grounds, in the hopes of eventually finding a ‘clean’ universalism independent of all partial powers and agents, is to condemn oneself to an indefinite wait— and, in effect, to withdraw from the project of political change. In short, all universalisms are dirty. And it is only dirty universalisms that will help us against the powers and agents of still dirtier ones. There is no room for purism here— which is not to say that important distinctions don’t have to be made. (Robbins 1999: 75).44

While we cannot and should not deny the history of universalism(s), universalist discourses are among the communication channels one can use to speak to the others and tentatively build political solidarities. Moreover, if one does not aprioristically reject the universal, it is the already existing universal that can come under scrutiny. In my view, this can critically translate into paying attention to the movement and circulation – circulation of money, of meaning(s), of human beings – that form the universal. Accordingly, the strategic question to be answered at this point seems to be: when a cycle is broken, what other (re)cycle is implemented? What modalities of circulation, both material and cultural, does this film consist of and/ or promote? What are the universal(ist) equivalents that permit this circulation, and how are they constructed? NARRATOR (ALICIA KEYS’ VOICE): For years, she was a child of the dump. […] Hunting the rot for glints of light. […] Careful not to step on used syringes, rusty nails, or broken glass. In daydreams, she pictured freshly sharpened pencils. Rows of desks. The chant of the alphabet. Wandering visions to pass long empty days in a place where a girl is simply one more thing the world has thrown away.

43 Among these terms and phrases is the much contested ‘human rights’. 44 Bruce Robbins’s ‘realistic’ point about the possibility of conflict and the impossibility of purism can be used, in my opinion, to problematize Moraru’s view, which may well be considered teleological and idealizing in its own way, despite the considerable efforts by the author to distance himself from any teleology. Robbins’s acknowledgment of the possibility of conflict, on the other hand, could not be any further removed from Samuel P. Huntington’s influential, and in some circles infamous, idea of the ‘clash of civilizations’.

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Sokha’s story immediately sets forth a theme of crucial importance: the girls are a resource (or universal equivalent) that should not be wasted. This appears also, for instance, in the associations called by the name ‘Asmera’: ‘named for harvest. Golden Crops. Bounty’ (narrator, Meryl Streep’s voice). In yet another of the film’s productive rhetorical ambivalences, the stories both evoke and naturalize the economic theme, as well as the disjunction between individual opportunity and material conditions. Wadley’s story is powerful in this sense. After the earthquake and the consequent economic devastation, Wadley’s mother cannot afford to send her to school: NARRATOR (CATE BLANCHETT’S VOICE): Money was still not completely clear to Wadley. She knew that there was never enough of it, that some people had more of it than others, and that it determined in many cases how people looked at you, and talked to you, and treated you. It was the reason why some people ate three meals every day, while others ate every couple of days. It was why, she was learning now, some kids went to school and others did not.

The narrative presents Wadley repeatedly returning to class despite the fact that her family cannot pay: ‘I will come back every day until I can stay’. And she prevails. The economic obstacle is simply not brought up again: we are led to believe that her resilience and perseverance have paid off. Contextualizing the story, though, we can infer that she is economically backed up by one of the partner organizations of Girl Rising. In Asmera’s story, the economic theme is less elaborated upon but more consistently ingrained in the narrative: it is the brother’s pledge to support Asmera’s education with his work that permits the happy ending. Senna’s story is a partly different case: it is virtually the only one in the film that hints at a global circulation of a universal equivalent – gold – that is extracted from a locality by globally powerful agents without any benefit for the local economy:  SENNA (SALMA HAYEK’S VOICE): La Rinconada is a gold mining town in Peru. […] My father […] like all the men of La Rinconada, was a miner. […] For thirty-five years my father drilled […], haunted tirelessly for a glimpse of glitter […]. For all the years that my family had climbed that frozen rock, for all the gold that had been dug out, burned clean, sent to glitter around the world – we had never owned a fleck of it.

In the end, nonetheless, the gold is identified with Senna herself: SENNA (SALMA HAYEK’S VOICE): I know now that the fortune my father sought […] was buried in me. It was just a matter of finding it.

The girls are seen as the gold of their communities; pace all dreams of wings and mobility, they ‘need to stay’, the narrator maintains. From the very beginning,

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educating girls is presented in the film as a high return investment for those who have vision, and the film is done to persuade those who do not:  NARRATOR (LIAM NEESON’S VOICE): In spite of the fact that educating a girl is one of the highest return investments available in the developing world, millions of girls just aren’t making it.

Not surprisingly, the universal equivalent – the connector, equalizer in differences and differentiator in equality, present yet absent – is money.45 The money theme is subtly worked throughout the film – being both obscured and underlined, both made into symbol and realistically presented. In the final credits, as it is logical due to the film’s aim, money is made central in the form of a direct interpellation to donate. ‘The Ten Times Ten Fund for Girls’ Education supports the organizations that support girls, including our partners in making Girl Rising’. Due to the fact that Ten Times Ten is the company producing Girl Rising, one cannot but retrace a circular movement here as well. The movement and circulation of money combines a linear perspective (give/ receive) with a circular one (investment/return). While the girls hold ‘our’ future in their hands, they are, in turn, held as tokens of an investment which, as it is the case with all investments, is expected to create some return. And return cannot be projected ahead indefinitely nor displaced onto a tomorrow that is already here because change simply needs to manifest itself. In a global market durably inhabited by the spectre of the economic crisis and injected with fear of what may happen, return at least partly needs to come rapidly, if not immediately. In the conflation of the present and the future, the Girl Who Rises may risk being caught in a time warp: ‘[p]erpetually in statu nascendi and disposed of before its time’ (Moraru 2011: 296).

Coda: Education, the Circulation of Affect, and a Nobel Prize ‘When leveraged successfully, international education is a prime vehicle to contribute to a nation’s foreign policy priorities and interests, including its soft power profile’ (Byrne and Hall 2014: 1). Caitlin Byrne and Rebecca Hall’s research is centred on Australia, but this statement can be easily applied to the US context. Against the backdrop of a perceived rise of anti-Americanism after 9/11, Nye explicitly mentions the link between international education and soft power: We will need to be more inventive in this area, whether it be through finding ways to improve the visa process for educational exchanges, encouraging more American students

45 For a discussion of signification – and translation – as political economy see Liu (1999).

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to study abroad, rethinking the role of the Peace Corps, inventing a major program for foreigners to teach their languages in American schools, starting a corporation for public diplomacy that will help tap into the resources of the private and non-profit sectors, or a myriad of other ways. (Nye 2004: 267)

Education as a matter of global scope has been fundamental for US culture and self-representation since the 1990s. Besides being a filmic text and a ‘global movement’ that conjoins education with a global dimension, Girl Rising is in itself an educational instrument that projects and sutures American multiscale fantasies of global citizenship.46 As the assignment of the 2014 Noble Prize for Peace to Malala Yousafzai47 demonstrates, there is, on the one hand, a growing global effort for improving the state of female education; on the other hand, female education itself has become a globally charged issue. A notable investment – financially, governmentally, culturally – on the part of the US is taking place to influence, determine, or simply inhabit the terms of this issue. One only has to think about the April 2014 web campaign for liberating the girls kidnapped at school in the Nigerian city of Chibok. In order to demand their liberation, both ordinary people and several celebrities – Michelle Obama prominent among them – circulated photos of themselves holding paper sheets displaying the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. The ‘our’ here openly conflates the distance that we have seen elaborated/sutured in temporal terms in Girl Rising. While affect, like fantasy, is essential to the implementation and maintenance of allegiances at many levels – including the family, the state, and (international) civil society – affect per se, Sara Ahmed and Wanda Vrasti remind us, may not be political. In Ahmed’s words: Part of me questions the ‘benevolence’ of such good feelings […]. Love is not what will challenge the power relations that idealization ‘supports’ in its restriction of ideality to some bodies and not others. […] ‘[T]o love the abject is close to the liberal politics of charity, one that usually makes the loving subject feel better for having loved and given […] but which sustains the relations of power that compel the charitable love to be shown in this way. (Ahmed 2004: 141)

46 The problem of scales (a ‘Wallersteinian’ problem) becomes evident in the individualization, and to a good extent privatization of the concept of revolution. ‘One girl with courage is a revolution’ is one of the film-related catchphrases. Donors and corporate subjects who invest vast sums of money are called ‘revolutionaries’. 47 Born in 1997, Malala Yousafzai is a globally known public figure and spokesperson for women’s rights and education. In 2012 her activism became known worldwide after she was victim of an assassination attempt in the Taliban-raided area of Pakistan where she lived.

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Recent affect theories discuss how around ‘affects’ – such as love and compassion – ambivalent identifications are created and negotiated, both individual and collective. Affects are potentially inclusive, but at the same time, like the universal in Butler’s formulation, they rework necessary exclusions under the guise of inclusiveness. Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Woodward have both pointed out that compassion is the outcome of a careful balancing, being withheld as much as it is liberally granted – being calculated (Berlant 2004, Woodward 2004). In other words, not all suffering bears the same value:48 this implies that compassion has its own economics, ‘within which ‘‘others” are ghosted for a good cause’ (Berlant 1998: 51; my emphasis). Spectators watching Girl Rising and letting others watch it acquire the status of members of a ‘global movement’. They can attain and expand this status in several ways: clicking to donate, teaching, hosting a screening; they can spread the word, enlarge the ripples, spark the flame. One cannot but hope that the ‘rapture of the event’ (Vrasti 2011) does not ultimately turn into a self-serving, narcissistic logic.49 I would like to conclude by pointing out that the presence of the question ‘Why isn’t there a US story?’, among the Girl Rising website FAQ offers yet another, perhaps unexpected illumination angle within the main disjunction with which I began this essay – the one linking the world and the US in a fantasy of global citizenship. The question bespeaks a problematic desire to claim and occupy something we might define as a ‘nonprivileged’ US position. This may not just be narcissism. It might, to the contrary, bespeak a growing sense of US-based insecurity in the enjoyment of women’s rights, educational opportunities, and/or economic possibility. The level of dialogue, or alternatively of conflict, between this hypothetical story and the stories in Girl Rising would be yet another field to be explored.

48 Also see Butler (2004). 49 Lauren Berlant has offered a provocative ‘Theory of Infantile Citizenship’ in her 1993 eponymous essay. The phrase ‘infantile citizenship’ describes a condition of faith in the inherent goodness of political institutions – a faith that is usually questioned when a confrontation with the real, cynical nature of the public sphere marks the entry into adulthood. Nevertheless, ‘infantile citizenship’ can be recuperated and revived by means of media-induced acceleration: “belief in the ‘system” is renewed by the condensation of time and power the television-style media produce’ (Berlant 1993: 408). Thanks to this revival, one can still believe that ‘the system works!’ (Berlant 1993: 406). The counterpart of believing that the system works in the end is, of course, ‘blaming the system’ for all injustices and inequities (see Robbins 2012).

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Bibliography Ahmed, S. (2004). The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. Appadurai, A. (2013). The Future as Cultural Fact: Essays on the Global Condition. London: Verso. Barlow, T.E. (2011). ‘What is a Poem? The Event of Women and the Modern Girl as Problems in Global or World History’. In D. Palumbo-Liu et al. (eds.), Immanuel Wallerstein and the Problem of the World: System, Scale, Culture, pp. 155–83. Durham: Duke UP. Berlant, L. (1993). ‘The Theory of Infantile Citizenship’, Public Culture 5, 395–410. – (1998). ‘The Subject of True Feeling’. In A. Sarat and T.R. Kearns (eds.), Cultural Pluralism, Identity Politics, and the Law, pp. 49–84. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. – (2004). ‘Introduction:  Compassion (and Withholding)’. In L. Berlant (ed.), Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion, pp. 1–13. New York and London: Routledge. Blakesley, D. (2003). ‘Introduction’. In D. Blakesley (ed.), The Terministic Screen: Rhetorical Perspectives on Film, pp. 1–16. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois UP. Butler, J. (2002). ‘Universality in Culture’. In M.C. Nussbaum and J. Cohen (eds), For Love of Country?, pp. 45–52. Boston: Beacon Press. – (2004). Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso. Byrne, C., and Hall, R. (2014). ‘International Education as Public Diplomacy’, IEAA Research Digest 3 (June), 1–10. Cheah, P., and Robbins, B. (eds) (1998). Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Cheney, J. (2013).  Girl Rising Movie Review’, accessed 5/5/2014. de Lauretis, T. (1984). Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP. Genette, G. (1987). Seuils. Paris: Seuil. Gerzon, M. (2010). American Citizen, Global Citizen: How Expanding Our Identities Makes Us Safer, Stronger, Wiser – And Builds a Better World. Boulder: Spirit Scope. Grewal, I. (2005). Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms. Durham: Duke UP. Hovey R., and Weinberg A. (2009). ‘Global Learning and the Making of Citizen Diplomats’. In R. Lewin (ed.), The Handbook of Practice and Research in Study

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Abroad: Higher Education and the Quest for Global Citizenship, pp. 33–48. New York and London: Routledge. Isin, E.F., and Nyers, P. (eds) (2014). The Routledge Handbook of Global Citizenship Studies. New York and London: Routledge. Lazreg, M. (2000). ‘The Triumphant Discourse of Global Feminism: Should Other Women Be Known?’. In A. Amireh and L.S. Majaj (eds), Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers, pp. 29–38. New York: Garland. Liu, L.H. (1999). ‘The Question of Meaning-Value in the Political Economy of the Sign’. In L.H. Liu (ed.), Tokens of Exchange: The Problem of Translation in Global Circulations, pp. 13–41. Durham: Duke UP. Metz, C. (1975/1983). Psychoanalysis and Cinema: The Imaginary Signifier. Trans. C. Britton et al. London: MacMillan. The Modern Girl Around the World Research Group. (2008). ‘The Modern Girl as Heuristic Device: Collaboration, Connective Comparison, Multidirectional Citation’. In The Modern Girl Around the World Research Group (eds), The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization, pp. 1–24. Durham: Duke UP. Mohanty, C.T. (2003). Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham: Duke UP. Moraru, C. (2011). Cosmodernism: American Narrative, Late Globalization, and the New Cultural Imaginary. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (1997). Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge: Harvard UP. – (1994/2002). ‘Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism’. In M.C. Nussbaum and J. Cohen (eds), For Love of Country?, pp. 3–17. Boston: Beacon Press. – (2003). ‘Women’s Education: A Global Challenge’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 29 (2), 325–55. Nye, J.S. Jr. (2004). ‘Soft Power and American Foreign Policy’, Political Science Quarterly 119 (2), 255–70. Pease, D. (2009). The New American Exceptionalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rapold, N. (2013). ‘Movie Review: The Power of an Educated Woman’, accessed 10/15/14. Robbins, B. (1999). Feeling Global: Internationalism in Distress. New York and London: New York UP. – (2012). Perpetual War: Cosmopolitanism from the Viewpoint of Violence. Durham: Duke UP.

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Rose, J. (1998). States of Fantasy. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sakai, N. (1997). Translation and Subjectivity: On Japan and Cultural Nationalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Silverman, K. (1983). The Subject of Semiotics. Oxford: Oxford UP. – (1988). The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP. Skelly, J.M. (2009). ‘Fostering Engagement: The Role of International Education in the Development of Global Civil Society’. In R. Lewin (ed.), The Handbook of Practice and Research in Study Abroad: Higher Education and the Quest for Global Citizenship, pp. 21–32. New York and London: Routledge. Vrasti, W. (2011). ‘”Caring” Capitalism and the Duplicity of Critique’, Theory & Event 14 (4), accessed 11/13/2014. Whipp, G. (2013). ‘Review: Girl Rising Shows the Power of Education’ accessed 11/22/2014. Woodward, K. (2004). ‘Calculating Compassion’. In L. Berlant (ed.), Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion, pp. 59–86. New York and London: Routledge. Wolfe, G.E. (2014). ‘Does Educating Girl Really Change the World?’, Sex Roles 71, 278–81. Woolf, M. (2010). ‘Another Mishegas: Global Citizenship’, Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad 19, 47–60. Zemach-Bersin, T. (2009). ‘Selling the World: Study Abroad Marketing and the Privatization of Global Citizenship’. In R. Lewin (ed.), The Handbook of Practice and Research in Study Abroad: Higher Education and the Quest for Global Citizenship, pp. 303–20. New York and London: Routledge.

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Eunice Seixas

‘Hearts and Minds’: Discursive Uses and Impacts in US-Russia Relations Introduction The expression ‘hearts and minds’ is typically linked to an idea of soft power, civil society actions and of gaining the support of the population in counterinsurgency actions, contrasted with the use of more violent, conventional warfare tactics (Nixon 2009; Egnell 2010). Nevertheless, this approach builds from a problematic historical narrative on colonial relations, is grounded on the perspective of modernization and rests more on assertions than on evidence (Cohen 2014; Egnell 2010; Fitzsimmons 2008). The phrase itself has also been re-contextualized in several spheres and re-appropriated by several actors in quite different contexts. It gains particular relevance within the US foreign policy and its goal of promoting democratization and human rights abroad, predominantly through the USAID, but also through regime change operations, which include the use of ‘hard power’ and exerting or supporting military actions. In this chapter I analyze the way in which this phrase is used in the context of US-Russia relations and specifically by President Obama and President Putin in some of their respective speeches. My aim is to examine, through Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) the way this phrase appears discursively associated to certain values, categories and discursive strategies, as well as used for justifying specific policies. I begin by outlining the main problems of the ‘hearts and minds’ conceptualization and practical approach as linked to counterinsurgency. Next, I present the methodological approach of CDA and its application to the study of political discourse. Subsequently, I critically examine how the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ has appeared in the US political rhetoric, particularly by former US Presidents. The following section briefly contextualizes US-Russia relations in the last decade, from the ‘reset’ policy to the present conflict in Ukraine. Then I present the analysis of some of President Obama and President Putin speeches where they use the phrase ‘hearts and minds’. Finally, I discuss the impact of these discursive uses in the relation between these two powers.

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‘Hearts and Minds’ in Counterinsurgency Hearts and minds are a diverse concept, considered as 1) a distinct category of tactical activities – separated from traditional military tasks; 2) regarded as a softer approach to traditional military activities – a way of conducting operations and 3) defined as different forms of information operations (IO), psychological operations (psyops) and special forces activities (Egnell 2010). The origin of the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ is usually associated with field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer’s description of the British approach to counterinsurgency since the ‘Malayan Emergency’ of 1948–60: ‘The answer to the uprising lies not in pouring more troops into the jungle, but in the hearts and minds of the people’ (apud Dixon 2009: 354). In contemporary counterinsurgency actions (COIN), this phrase gained institutional and strategic relevance in 2006 when it was incorporated into the U.S. Army and Marine Corps ‘Counterinsurgency Field Manual’. The manual was based both on historical counterinsurgency experiences and the recent US intervention in Iraq and stated that ‘Protracted popular war is best countered by winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the populace’, defining counterinsurgency as a far-reaching, all-inclusive effort ‘to get the people to accept its governance or authority as legitimate’. Since the previous colonial proposals have inspired today’s approaches to counterinsurgency, a critical analysis of the idea of ‘hearts and minds’ should also take into consideration its historical meanings. Moreover, the counterinsurgency operations during the colonial withdrawal may have been much more violent and coercive than the literature would imply, as it is argued by Dixon (2009). Dixon analyzes the British approach to Counterinsurgency and argues that ‘the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ does not accurately describe Britain’s highly coercive campaign in Malaya since the British approach in Malaya did involve high levels of force, was not fought within the law and led to abuses of human rights’ (ibid: 355). The current historical narratives on counterinsurgency are also criticized by Jonathan Gumz (Gumz 2009 apud Egnell 2010) for their ahistorical and parochial nature, arguing even that history, in the field of counterinsurgency, has been used as ‘a bland cupboard from which to raid lessons learned which serve to confirm ideas already arrived at in the present’ (Egnell 2010). The question of legitimacy is crucial for counterinsurgency actions and there has been a limited and normative understanding of this issue, which has led to many activities being not only in vain, but also counterproductive. This is related to the issue of expectations that are created by the foreign presence, which have to be addressed effectively in order to the foreign intervention be perceived as legitimate and capable of winning hearts and minds (Egnell 2010). But, more importantly, counterinsurgency actions continue to be grounded on the perspective

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of modernization which involves Western norms of governance and economic management (Egnell 2010: 299). It is, ‘historically speaking, firmly rooted in this intellectual tradition of a materialist conception of social welfare, justice, and legitimate authority’ (Fitzsimmons 2008: 361–62). On the other hand, there has been a lack of research concerning the causes of success or failure in the conduct of counterinsurgency and hence, despite its popularity, the importance of winning ‘hearts and minds’ rests more on assertions than evidence (Cohen 2014; Fitzsimmons 2008). Thus, it is important to critically examine both the discursive and practical implementation of hearts and minds’ approaches. Additionally, the contemporary interpretation of winning hearts and minds in a setting of comprehensive approaches to stabilization and peace has resulted in problematic assumptions regarding the links between stabilization and aid, namely that: 1) reconstruction and modernization efforts have stabilizing effects on conflict; 2) aid projects help to win hearts and minds and thereby increase support for the host government and for the international presence and 3) with specific reference to Afghanistan, extending the reach of the Afghan government contributes to stabilization (Wilder 2008 apud Egnell 2010: 287–288). In sum, as Egnell (2020) states, the phrase hearts and minds as linked to counterinsurgency and aid and stabilization practices has revealed questionable normative readings of past experiences, as well as questionable assumptions whose consequences have yet to be examined. Its dichotomous thinking opposing this approach to conventional warfare has also prevented a debate ‘on which measures in what context and circumstances are justifiable in counterinsurgency operations and the role of human rights discourse in legitimizing this’ (Dixon 2009: 379). The element of ‘history’ appears to be especially important in putting forward a certain reading of the past (inclusive the colonial past) in order to justify present and future actions and policies, which are also linked to specific worldviews and may serve to enhance specific national identities. This is particularly significant in terms of critically examining how language can serve to enact and reproduce power and legitimize certain social practices, one of the aims of CDA.

Critical Discourse Analysis of Political Discourse Critical discourse analysis is a qualitative orientation to discourse analysis associated to critical theories and the study of power dynamics in society, aiming to analyze the way power is enacted, reproduced and resisted, through text or speech. It is differentiated from other discourse analysis approaches by its critical aims of understanding, exposing and resisting social inequality (Van Dijk 2001: 352). Thus, ‘CDA combines critique of discourse and explanation of how it figures

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within and contributes to the existing social reality, as a basis for action to change that existing reality in particular respects’ (Fairclough 2014). One of the main assumptions of CDA is that texts are sites of negotiation and power dispute and include traces of different discourses and ideologies. This means that texts are seldom the work of only one person and that the analysis should look into elements of intertextuality and interdiscursivity that relate text and context. In contrast with other discourse analysis approaches, CDA does not focus merely on the texts, but also analyzes the social processes and social structures in which individuals and groups construe meanings in their interaction with texts. In this sense, some concepts are particularly relevant to CDA: the concept of discourse, the concept of critique and the concept of ideology (Wodak 2002). According to Fairclough, discourse operates at three levels: as text (spoken or written), as discursive practice (processes of production and interpretation of text) and as a sociocultural practice (immediate context, institutional context and social context). These three levels of discourse correspond to three different levels of analysis: description, interpretation and explanation. According to this approach, discursive practice would mediate the relation between text and context. The critical aspect of CDA has been influenced by critical social theories, specifically the Frankfurt School and the works of Jürgen Habermas, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Marxist and post-Marxist approaches. CDA is situated in a critical version of science and grounded on a ‘moderate, conditioned, contingent social constructivism’ (see also Fairclough, Jessop & Sayer 2004), which avoids ‘overemphasizing on the one hand the social determination of discourse, and on the other hand the construction of the social in discourse’ (Fairclough 2014). It is in this conceptualization of agency and its relation with social structures that resides the critical aspect of CDA, whose goals are not merely the ones of studying social reality and its relation with discourse, but also to fight social inequality. Thus, the success of CDA is ultimately measured by its contribution to social change, which entails a social and political engagement from the part of the researcher and also an avoidance of an esoteric style in writing/communicating the research findings (Van Dijk 1993: 2009). Also inspired in the concepts of ‘symbolic violence’ and ‘méconnaissance’ of Bourdieu, CDA aims to demystify discourses, revealing their ideological aspect and aligning with the ones that suffer (Wodak 2002). Ideology is conceptualized as a way of establishing and maintaining unequal power relations and particular focus is given to analysing the way that language constitutes a mediator of ideological effects in a series of social relations (Wodak 2002: 9). Power is understood as a central condition of the social life and associated to relations of difference and

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their effects on social structures Power and domination can also be linked to the control of social groups over discourse and the power to control social representations, as greater control over both text and context is generally associated with greater influence and hegemonic power (Van Dijk 1993). Power is not merely signaled by the grammatical forms used in a text but mainly by the control a person holds of the social situation in which it is placed, i.e., the genre of a text. The genre represents the way that language is used to respond to recurrent social contexts and situations corresponding to ways of interaction as for example, the interview, the academic speech, the political speech, etc. (Fairclough 2003). By analyzing the genre of the text, CDA is examining less transparent structural relations of domination and discrimination (Wodak 2002). Besides the concepts of discourse, critique, power and ideology, another idea becomes central in the historical-cultural approach developed by Wodak: the concept of the historical subject based on an understanding that all discourse is situated in time and space, historically produced and interpreted. Wodak’s approach focuses on analyzing historical change, intertextuality and interdiscursivity and sees CDA as an interdisciplinary approach which aims both to analyze unequal social relations and the possibilities of resistance to these (ibid.: 12). Several authors within CDA have analyzed political discourse, understood here as ‘institutionally bound text and talk of politicians’ (Van Di 2008). Particularly important is Van Dijk’s argument that political discourse is especially political due to its functions in the political process, i.e., the fact that the speakers are aware of the contextual conditions and restrictions. The author emphasizes the ‘context models’ in terms of definition of both political and manipulative discourse, i.e., specific social practice linked to specific institutions; dominant political, bureaucratic, academic, entrepreneurial elite. Thus, many characteristics of political discourse are defined in terms of contextual, instead of ‘textual’ categories, specifically: a) the global domain: politics; (b) the global act(s) being implemented: legislation, policy mailing, etc.; (c) the global setting (House of Parliament, session of parliament, etc.) (d) the local political acts being accomplished: tabling a motion, `doing’ opposition, etc. (e) the political roles of the participants: MP, representative, party member, member of the opposition, etc. (f) the political cognitions of the participants: political beliefs and ideologies; aims and objectives, etc.. Nonetheless, there are certain classic characteristics of the political and manipulative discourse, such as the pursuit of a global discursive strategy of positive self-representation and negative otherrepresentation, which builds on a polarization between ‘we’ and ‘them’, ‘our good deeds’ vs. ‘their bad deeds’. This polarization can be achieved through discursive strategies of accusation and defense, different presentation of our/their positive/

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negative actions, by giving either a lot or few details and generalizing or being more specific, being vague/precise, explicit/implicit; selection of topics to (de) emphasize, the use of lexicalization – positive words for ‘us’ and negative words for ‘them’; local syntax: active vs. passive; nominalizations to (de)emphasize agency and our/their positive/negative responsibility, rhetorical figures, hyperboles/euphemisms, etc. Other discursive features linked to political and ideological discourse are strategies of apparent concession and apparent empathy which aim to build a positive self-presentation and value judgments or mini-stories which aim to persuade the audience. These ideological and power elements do not express themselves clearly and explicitly and often combine with other discursive aspects of the text, leading to apparent contradictions (Van Dijk 2008). In sum, CDA is a valuable approach to study power, ideology and political discourse from a critical perspective that looks at the dialectics between text and context and aims not only to describe, interpret and explain social events but also, ultimately to fight social inequality and social injustice. This writing builds on that approach to analyze how the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ is used in American and Russian political rhetoric, particularly by presidents Obama and Putin.

‘Hearts and Minds’ in US Political Rhetoric Despite being most commonly associated with counterinsurgency, the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ has been used in other contexts and with other meanings, for example to refer to a domestic context and the ‘hearts and minds’ of the American people. Already in 1818, U.S. founding father John Adams, used to describe the American Revolution as being ‘(…) in the minds and hearts of the people, a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations’ (Dickinson 2009). And the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) boldly declared in 1919 that: ‘Lynching can be stopped when we reach the heart and conscience of the American people’, thus viewing the fight against lynching as a moral struggle ‘of the brain and the soul and to the brain and the soul of America’. The NAACP executed a media campaign to fight racial violence which achieved considerable success in changing the American people’s perceptions about African American criminality and American justice (Francis 2011). The phrase was also stated by several US presidents before Barack Obama. For example, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt uses the term in 1934 in order to appease the people and the political apparatus in a time of economic turmoil: ‘In these days it means to me a union not only of the states, but a union of the hearts and minds of the people in all the states and their many interests and purposes, devoted with unity to the human welfare of our country’ (ibid).

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In a different way, President John F. Kennedy uttered this phrase in its address to the US Congress in 1963, during the Cold War period, when he asked for $4.5 Billion in Foreign Aid. Kennedy presented his request of a increased budget for Foreign Aid as an imperative, justified not only in terms of the ‘national traditions and national interests’, but also in terms of a growing will to modernization and development all over the world, namely, in the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Latin American people: ‘Perhaps most significant of all is a change in the hearts and minds of the people, a growing will to develop their countries. We can only help Latin Americans to save themselves. It is for this reason that the increasing determination of the peoples of the region to build modern societies is heartening’.1 Notice that this way of phrasing the issue of development assistance places the responsibility on the receptors of aid and dismisses the responsibility of the donors. It also presents the issue rhetorically in a dramatic way, as a question of deliverance, of salvation, which actually means deliverance from ‘falling victim’ of the Communist power. In this speech ‘history’ appears as a subject on the side of the US and the ‘free world’, the ‘other side’ being the ‘aggressive Communist power’. While the ‘aggressive Communist power’ is linked to chaos, poverty and despair, the US international aid is associated with freedom, independence, hope, action and progress in a classic discursive global strategy of positive self-representation and negative other-representation that contrasts the bad deeds of the Communist power with the good deeds of the US as a leader of the free world and its ‘deep urge to extend a generous hand to those working toward a better life for themselves and their children’. This representation of difference is created through a contrast between two very abstract and generalized representations/images of a society (another typical characteristic of political discourse), one positive and one negative. History is used discursively as a proof of the good deeds of the US military, economic and international assistance. It is used in the last paragraph as a prediction of the results of the ongoing US international work towards development and democracy and against communism (see extract below). This is done in quite vague terms, not specifying what type of technical and developmental programs will be implemented (which probably is not so important to the Congress during this Cold War context, as it is the reassurance that these funds will be used to ‘supporting the military security of the free world’ and ‘helping to erect barriers against the growth of communism’).

1

Available at: http://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal63-1315131# H2_2

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Historical records that our military and economic assistance to nations on the frontiers of the Communist world – such as Iran, Pakistan, India, Vietnam and free China – has enabled threatened peoples to stay free and independent, when they otherwise would have either been overrun by aggressive Communist power or fallen victim of utter chaos, poverty and despair. History records that our contributions to international aid have been the critical factor in the growth of a whole family of international financial institutions and agencies, playing an ever more important role in the ceaseless war against want and the struggle for growth and freedom. And, finally, history will record that today our technical assistance and development loans are giving hope where hope was lacking, sparking action where life was static, and stimulating progress around the earth – simultaneously supporting the military security of the free world, helping to erect barriers against the growth of communism where those barriers count the most, helping to build the kind of world community of independent, self-supporting nations in which we want to live, and helping to serve the deep American urge to extend a generous hand to those working toward a better life for themselves and their children.

More recently, President George W. Bush uttered the phrase in 2005, in an address to the UN as he justified the Iraqi invasion by a growing desire for freedom by people all over the world ‘Across the world, hearts and minds are opening to the message of human liberty as never before’.2 We’ve done this kind of work before; we must have confidence in our cause. In World War II, the free nations defeated fascism and helped our former adversaries, Germany and Japan, build strong democracies – and today, these nations are allies in securing the peace. In the Cold War, free nations defeated communism, and helped our former Warsaw Pact adversaries become strong democracies – and today, nations of Central and Eastern Europe are allies in the war on terror. Today in the Middle East, freedom is once again contending with a totalitarian ideology that seeks to sow anger and hatred and despair. And like fascism and communism before, the hateful ideologies that use terror will be defeated by the unstoppable power of freedom. (Applause.)

Again, history appears in this speech as to reinforce the credibility of the US as the leader of the ‘free nations’ (‘We’ve done this work before; we must have confidence in our cause’), now with the specific reference to WWII and the Cold War. And just like in President Kennedy’s speech, after this historical legitimization, there is a prediction of the results achieved by the proposed action (in this case

2 Available at: http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/speeches/12.12.05.html

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the Iraqi invasion that is euphemistically presented as ‘the unstoppable power of freedom’). ‘Freedom’ is a nominalization that serves to erase the agency and also the real nature of the proposed action (war), framing it also in an abstract and moral way, as a struggle between wrong (‘the hateful ideologies that use terror’) and right (freedom). In this speech the US (representing the leader of the free nations) is equated with freedom, while the ‘other’ is represented as the enemy of freedom, including in this category, fascism, communism and totalitarian and ‘hateful ideologies that use terror’. In sum, the idea of a growing desire for modernization, development and freedom all over the world has been discursively associated with the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ and used by several US Presidents in order to legitimate very different actions, from an increase in the budget for foreign aid in order to fight communism to the invasion of Iraqi. These discursive uses relied also on a specific normative reading of history and the ongoing self-proclaimed mission of the US in promoting ‘freedom’ and ‘development’ across the world.

US-Russia Relations: From ‘Reset’ to the return of Cold War Rhetoric? Since Putin’s arrival to power in 2000, the relations between Russia and the western powers have been suffering important tensions, namely related to the conflicts in Georgia, Chechnya and recently Ukraine, but also regarding the questions of human rights and civil society in Russia. Putin’s foreign policy has been focusing on reaffirming the Russian State in global political and economic relations and has been described as pragmatic, oriented to geopolitics, realist instead of being based on values and aiming to weaken the Western influence, and especially the US influence on international affairs (Jonsson 2012: 450). Putin has been advertising Russia’s relations in Asia and specifically its partnership with China, in order to reaffirm Russia as a global power in a ‘multipolar’ world (Rozman 2012). Russia is part of the Shangai Cooperation Organization (SCO), together with China, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, this intergovernmental organization working as a censure of the western powers, as well as a trump to use in negotiations with the US. In fact, Russia may be trying to establish as a ‘bridge’ between the SCO and the Euro-Atlantic organizations of EU and NATO, by emphasizing the unique geopolitical position of Russia as a connection between Europe and Asia, while simultaneously promoting its status inside the SCO (Troitskiy 2007). From the part of the US there is on the other hand, a need to cooperate with Russia in questions related with the Iran, Afghanistan, the proliferation and the

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Middle East. These interests led to a new policy of bilateral relation US-Russia characterized as a ‘reset’, term used by Vice President Joe Biden, in 2009. However, from the part of Russia, the ‘reset’ has been received with prudence and ambivalence (Saivetz 2012). Moscow’s caution related mostly to the issues concerning the former Soviet Union republics and the attempt of western influence/interference in these, especially following the EU enlargement policy and the NATO expansion to the east (Saivetz 2012). Although the western powers have rejected the Russian concept of the sphere of influence, in practice and until the recent conflict in Ukraine, they have opted – especially the EU – to avoid tensions with Moscow. On the other hand, Russia demands for a relation built on genuine equality and reciprocity appears to have forced the EU to adopt a more realist approach, based on common interests and challenges (Jonsson 2012: 451). In the sphere of human rights, the relations between the US and Russia have also been problematic. After being re-elected as the President of the Russian Federation and in order to meet the wave of protests that subsequently rose up in the main cities of Russia, specifically the protest at 6 May in Moscow, which ended with the arrest of several protesters, Putin approves in June 2012, a law that dramatically increases fines for participants in protests that ‘endanger the public order’. These fines can reach 300,000 rubles – more than the average Russian salary. Furthermore, the organizers of the protests can be fined in about 1 million rubles. And in July 2012, Putin signed a law according to which, NGOs should reveal any foreign funding that they receive, against severe penalties and even prison. This law classifies the NGOs that receive foreign funding as ‘external agents’. In the same month Putin signs two more laws: one implementing a system of censorship in the internet and another criminalizing libel, in another attempt to destroy opposition. As of 1 October 2012, USAID has ended its programs in Russia, a decision forced by Moscow’s ultimatum for the agency to terminate all its operations inside the country. Putin accuses the USAID of covertly influencing the political and electoral process in Russia and of orchestrating the mass protests that followed its re-election in 2012. On the other hand, the foreign affairs minister justifies this decision by arguing that the agency’s work does not correspond to its proposed goals. The Kremlin further argues that Russian civil society is mature enough and it does not need an ‘external leadership’. These arguments are in line with the recent policy of naming of NGOs receiving foreign funding as ‘foreign agents’. Some specific NGOs are targeted in this critique, namely the NGO ‘GOLOS’, which has been working on the monitoring of elections, as the NGOs ‘Memorial’ and ‘International Transparency’ for questioning the legitimacy of the Russian government regarding the questions of counter-terrorism actions in the Northern Caucasus, as well as state and institutional corruption.

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In 2014, however, the pro-democracy protests in Ukraine escalated into a war about the independence of the Crimea Peninsula with potential serious consequences for the relation between the western powers and the Russian Federation. At the beginning of the conflict the frustration of the Obama administration at Europe’s hesitant policy has been exposed in a leaked phone conversation between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine, in which Victoria Nuland allegedly declares: ‘Fuck the EU’. The same alleged conversation indicates that the US had very clear ideas about what the outcome of the crisis should be and how to achieve these goals.3 Presently, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine places Russia and US on opposite sides, with the US supporting the present Ukrainian government and the Russian State supporting the separatist government and the incorporation of Crimea into Russia. The UN, on the other hand, passed a non-binding resolution declaring the Crimean referendum invalid and the incorporation of Crimea into Russia illegal. In sum, if the idea of ‘reset’ in the relations between Russia and the USA has never been without problems, following the emergence of the conflict in Ukraine, this narrative seems to have been totally abandoned in favor of harsher critiques and a greater division between these two powers. This led to the recent statement of Gorbachev at the 25th anniversary summit of the fall of the Berlin Wall that ‘the world is on the brink of a new Cold War’. The analysis of the political rhetoric of US and Russia presidents and specifically, their respective discursive uses’ of the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ have to be placed in this context.

Obama’s Discursive Uses of ‘Hearts and Minds’ President Obama’s speeches, particularly before his election in 2008 and during his first term as president have had a strong impact on the audience and we just have to remember the famous slogan ‘Yes we can’ and how important and symbolic it became to acknowledge this. In an analysis of several of President Obama’s speeches between 2008 and 2009, Wang (2010) outlined a series of characteristics of these. He concluded that President Obama used predominantly simple words and short sentences, in an easy and colloquial language, which help shortening the distance between him and the audience. Also, President Obama’s speeches have primarily focused on what the government has achieved, has been doing and what will do, in an attempt to promote the American people confidence towards the president and his government. And his use of modal verbs, tense and first person

3 Available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

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pronouns was important in making his audiences understand and accept his message. He used simple present tense to talk about the domestic and world-wide situations at present, which is an efficient way of presenting his arguments as truth statements. And he used simple future tense for laying out his following reforms, thus presenting the government’ objectives and building the audience’s confidence at the same time. Moreover, by using first person pronouns and religious believes, he successfully reduced the distance between him and the audience, a discursive strategy that can help him persuade the public to accept and support his policies. Other features not analyzed by Wang are President Obama’s physical presence and ‘charisma’ and his self-presentation as an African-American with a Muslin origin. Since 2008, the political and economic context has changed and Obama’s popularity has greatly decreased as has his rhetorical impact. President Obama does not use the expression ‘hearts and minds’ to talk solely about counter-revolutionary actions and the war on terror, which shows that this expression has become somehow trivialized in the political rhetoric. For example, in 2011, President Obama uses the expression ‘hearts and minds’ to refer to a domestic context regarding the GOP’s responses to his economic proposals: ‘We are in a battle — a battle for the hearts and minds of America (…) This is going to be a tough fight over the next 16 month’. This recontextualization device (using the expression in a different context, in this case a domestic and economic context), appears to work, in this case, to give greater relevance to the issue, framing the acceptance of Obama economic proposals as linked to a required change in mentality of the American people. It is interesting to consider the implications of using this expression in the domestic context since the idea of winning the hearts and minds of the people in counterinsurgency and war on terrorism usually means winning these abroad against the foreign insurgents, the (illegitimate) state or the terrorists. In this context who represents these enemies? The Republicans? It seems a hazardous conjecture to make. It could also be the case that President Obama is using the expression similarly to the way that President Franklin D. Roosevelt uses the term in 1934 in order to unite the population in a period of economic turmoil: ‘In these days it means to me a union not only of the states, but a union of the hearts and minds of the people in all the states and their many interests and purposes, devoted with unity to the human welfare of our country’. In fact, it is a similar context of economic crisis that American (and European) people are still enduring now. The fact that President Obama expression lacks clarity and that no specific reference is made to Roosevelt, opens it up to these different possible readings. Nevertheless, it is in President Obama’s speeches about counterinsurgency and civil society that the idea of ‘winning the hearts and minds of the people’ has

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gained more relevance. I will analyze two of President Obama’s speeches in which he uses the phrase ‘hearts and minds’: his speech about Iraq on 19 March 2008 in North Carolina and President Obama’s ‘remarks’ at the Parallel Civil Society Summit, in Moscow, 7 July 2009. In his speech on Iraq on 19 March 2008 in Fayetteville, North Carolina,4 Obama does not use the exact phrase ‘hearts and minds’ but the words ‘heart’ and ‘mind’ separately. Nevertheless, President Obama is clearly presenting a counterinsurgency approach, although sometimes going beyond this and outlining a more general framework to counteract different potential threats in the global world. At the same time, President Obama is also establishing a contrast between this strategy and the policies followed by President Bush, particularly regarding the Iraq war. President Obama starts by evoking President Woodrow Wilson discourse before America entered WWI to contrast this with the statements of President Bush before announcing going to war with Iraq. In this way, President Obama is categorizing the entry of USA in WWI as necessary and the war with Iraq as unnecessary, while simultaneously highlighting the severe consequences of a war, as well as the illegitimacy of the reasons presented by President Bush for invading Iraq (based on ‘faulty premises and bad intelligence’). Thus, President Obama presents Bush decision as irrational and based on ideology, claiming the need for a more pragmatic and rational approach, especially in issues as grave as war: ‘The lesson of Iraq is that when we are making decisions about matters as grave as war, we need a policy rooted in reason and facts, not ideology and politics’. Then, President Obama presents himself as a ‘turn on the page’ on this ‘failed ideology’ and towards ‘pragmatic judgments’ that can ‘keep our country safe’. This corresponds to a structuring of the discourse in terms of problem and solution, President Bush policies being the problem and his election being the solution, a needed ‘turn of the page’. And I am running for President because it’s time to turn the page on a failed ideology and a fundamentally flawed political strategy, so that we can make pragmatic judgments to keep our country safe. That’s what I did when I stood up and opposed this war from the start, and said that we needed to finish the fight against al Qaeda. And that’s what I’ll do as President of the United States.

Subsequently, he lays down some of his proposals, presenting those vaguely as a ‘different message’, as an approach ‘(…) that puts the onus on the Iraqis, and that relies on more than just military power’. The use of a negation – ‘The choice is not between Musharraf and Islamic extremists’ – is another way of contrasting his approach to President Bush’s approach. President Obama proposes a strategy 4 Available at: http://www.cfr.org/elections/obamas-speech-iraq-march-2008/p15761.

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of stabilization, through an investment in education, economic development and democratic institutions, complemented by humanitarian help, which is in line with counterinsurgency strategies. The reference to the child in Pakistan is a rhetorical move to persuade people through emotional images of innocent and helpless children to which ‘America’ is the ‘promise’ for a better life. We need to send a different message. We will help Iraq reach a meaningful accord on national reconciliation. We will engage with every country in the region – and the UN – to support the stability and territorial integrity of Iraq. And we will launch a major humanitarian initiative to support Iraq’s refugees and people. But Iraqis must take responsibility for their country. It is precisely this kind of approach – an approach that puts the onus on the Iraqis, and that relies on more than just military power – that is needed to stabilize Iraq. (…) The choice is not between Musharraf and Islamic extremists. As the recent legislative elections showed, there is a moderate majority of Pakistanis, and they are the people we need on our side to win the war against al Qaeda. That is why we should dramatically increase our support for the Pakistani people – for education, economic development, and democratic institutions. That child in Pakistan must know that we want a better life for him, that America is on his side, and that his interest in opportunity is our interest as well. That’s the promise that America must stand for.

Interestingly, one finds a re-appropriation of the expression ‘hearts and minds’ regarding ‘other threats in the world’, the ‘neglected landscapes of the 21th century’:  In addition to freeing up resources to take the fight to al Qaeda, ending the war in Iraq will allow us to more effectively confront other threats in the world – threats that cannot be conquered with an occupying army or dispatched with a single decision in the middle of the night. What lies in the heart of a child in Pakistan matters as much as the airplanes we sell her government. What’s in the head of a scientist from Russia can be as lethal as a plutonium reactor in Yongbyon. What’s whispered in refugee camps in Chad can be as dangerous as a dictator’s bluster. These are the neglected landscapes of the 21st century, where technology and extremism empower individuals just as they give governments the ability to repress them; where the ancient divides of region and religion wash into the swift currents of globalization.

President Obama is claiming the need for ‘winning the hearts and minds’ of the people, presuming that all over the world, what people feel and think is a potential threat. His speech does not explain why is this a threat and to what, remaining ambiguous and vague regarding this issue. Additionally, President Obama uses quite different examples to characterize this threat: ‘What lies in the heart of a child in Pakistan’; ‘What’s in the head of a scientist in Russia’ and ‘What’s whispered in refugee camps in Chad’. It appears from these examples that the threat

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can come from either the powerless (the child in Pakistan and the refugees in Chad) or from the ‘Russian scientist’ which is a clearly more powerful figure, one which has the power of scientific knowledge. Thus, the threat is construed as coming from everywhere. The specific choice of the Russian nationality for this example indicates problems in the non-proliferation agreements between Russia and US. According to President Obama, this threat cannot be faced with hard military power or legal decisions, which implies a strategy of winning the hearts and minds of the people. Then, President Obama characterizes these threats as the contradictions of the globalization in the 21st century – ‘the neglected landscape of the 21st century’. By doing this, President Obama is using a vague and euphemistic expression to widen the category of these potential threats and thus justify potential US intervention in the globalized world. Subsequently in this speech, President Obama presents his proposals for dealing with these ‘21st century neglected landscapes’, namely, through the integration of diplomatic, economic and military power in a new national security strategy. This appears to go beyond the idea of ‘winning the hearts and minds’ of the people, remaining vague as to the nature of this integration and specific policies. The few proposals he outlines include a goal of expanding the Foreign Service, USAID work, as well as American Peace Corps. These activities are all presented as a way to ‘send out in the World an America’s Voice Corps’ counteracting ‘enemy propaganda’. This is in line with a ‘hearts and minds’ strategy that builds on intelligence and psychological operations, as well as on humanitarian and civil society actions. The reference to the ‘enemy propaganda’ is quite strong and ideological, and in contradiction to the previous argument that his election would mean a break from the ideological and irrational policies of President Bush and a turn to more pragmatic/rational approaches. The following paragraph reiterates the idea of an ‘engaged US’, with a mission to ‘keep the peace, resolve disputes, monitor disarmament, and support good governance around the world’. Interesting in this context is also the reference of Russia and China – ‘We must work with powers like Russia and China, but we must also speak up for human rights and democracy – and we can start now by speaking out for the human rights and religious freedom of the people of Tibet’. Two goals are affirmed – the goal of cooperation with Russia and China (presumably based on pursuing national interests) and the goal of promoting human rights (based on values). The phrasing and specifically the preposition ‘but’ clearly shows the tension between these two goals. The speech ends with the emphasis put on this election as a ‘defining moment’ in US history, appealing to a unity ‘on behalf of our security and our values’. Thus, President Obama is presenting himself as the guardian of American (or world) security and American (or Western) values. This idea

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of US mission is justified by reference to history, and specifically the Cold War and the WWII (the reference to ‘fascism’), reinforcing an identity of the US as a leader for the free world, who brings ‘democracy’ and ‘hope’ ‘in the darkest corners of the world’. The last sentence of this speech states ‘When America leads with principle and pragmatism, hope can triumph over fear. It is time, once again, for America to lead’. This suggests a double promise, a promise that America will lead again, and that if American ‘leads with principle and pragmatism, hope can triumph over fear’. The promise that America will lead again is presented as an imperative – ‘It is time, once again, for America to lead’ and presumes a presently weakened US, missing the supremacy it had in the past. Again, we observe the very abstract and ideological opposition between hope and fear, ‘America’ representing ‘hope’ and the ‘other’ representing ‘fear’ which appeared throughout the speech. But we cannot place the burden of a new national security strategy on our military alone. We must integrate our diplomatic, information, economic and military power. That is why, as soon as I take office, I will call for a National Strategy and Security Review, to help determine a 21st century inter-agency structure to integrate the elements of our national power. In addition, I will invest in our civilian capacity to operate alongside our troops in post-conflict zones and on humanitarian and stabilization missions. Instead of shuttering consulates in tough corners of the world, it’s time to grow our Foreign Service and to expand USAID. Instead of giving up on the determination of young people to serve, it’s time to double the size of our Peace Corps. Instead of letting people learn about America from enemy propaganda, it’s time to recruit, train, and send out into the world an America’s Voice Corps. And while we strengthen our own capacity, we must strengthen the capability of the international community. We honor NATO’s sacrifice in Afghanistan, but we must strive to make it a larger and more nimble alliance. We must work with powers like Russia and China, but we must also speak up for human rights and democracy – and we can start now by speaking out for the human rights and religious freedom of the people of Tibet. And while we are frustrated by the UN, we must invest in its capability to keep the peace, resolve disputes, monitor disarmament, and support good governance around the world – and that depends on a more engaged United States. We are at a defining moment in our history. This must be the election when we stand up and say that we will serve them as well as they have served us. This must be the election when America comes together behind a common purpose on behalf of our security and our values. That is what we do as Americans. It’s how we founded a republic based on freedom, and faced down fascism. It’s how we defended democracy through a Cold War, and shined a light of hope bright enough to be seen in the darkest corners of the world. When America leads with principle and pragmatism, hope can triumph over fear. It is time, once again, for America to lead.

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Another important speech by President Obama in which he utters the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ is the one given at the Parallel Civil Society Summit, in Moscow, 7 July 2009.5 From the first words of these remarks, President Obama is reducing the distance between himself and the audience by talking in the first person, using his sense of humor, referring to his personal experience in activism, telling a story with a moral lesson about this experience and even mentioning the presence of his friend with whom he has engaged in civic activities. He is also acknowledging the importance of NGOs (their main audience) and encouraging them to continue their grassroots work in Russia towards democracy and respect for human rights, assuring them at the same time that they have ownership in these matters. After making a joke about civil society being so important ‘because you can’t always count on politicians’, President Obama states what he believes to be ‘a fundamental truth in the 21st century: that strong, vibrant nations include strong, vibrant civil societies’. This statement is a powerful one as the President of the USA is placing himself in a position of power/authority, by talking of such general and abstract things as fundamental truths of this century and especially at the beginning of his speech. By this statement, President Obama is also recognizing Russia as a ‘strong and vibrant nation’, which seems a vague praise, since it is unclear what this really means, the expression being usually linked to the vocabulary of the NGOs and used in order to present a positive image to donors. However, later in the same speech, when talking about partnerships and common challenges, President Obama is much more clear about what a vibrant civil society means and which are the human rights to be defended, specifically mentioning the freedom of speech, an independent press and the right to organize peacefully, among other, thus indicating to the more problematic issues in Russia at the same time that he reaffirms the idea that human rights are universal values and not American ideals. The phrase ‘hearts and minds’ appears almost at the beginning of the speech when President Obama acknowledges the importance of NGOs in ‘mobilizing and organizing and changing people’s hearts and minds’ and thus changing the political landscape. For history teaches us that real progress -- whether it’s economic or social or political -doesn’t come from the top-down, it typically comes from the bottom-up. It comes from people, it comes from the grassroots -- it comes from you. The best ideas and solutions come from ordinary citizens who become involved in their communities and in their

5 Available at: http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/texttrans/2009/07/2009070716 1101xjsnommis0.129635.html#axzz46le8uB3c.

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countries. And by mobilizing and organizing and changing people’s hearts and minds, you then change the political landscape. And oftentimes politicians get the credit for changing laws, but in fact you’ve created the environment in which those new laws can occur.

President Obama talks about progress and argues that it typically comes from the grassroots, presenting this idea as legitimated by history. This is an important statement in terms of impression management since it anticipates a common critique to the US approach of modernization and democratization as a top-down process. The third sentence however, builds on the assumption that there is a need for ‘changing the political landscape’ in Russia and for creating an environment on which ‘new laws can occur’. President Obama is nevertheless quite vague about this issue, not specifying which laws need to be changed. Subsequently in these remarks, President Obama attempts to present himself in a positive light in terms of moral credibility for someone who is defending human rights, by recognizing that US sometimes falls short of these ideals and by stating his decisions to closing the Guantanamo Bay prison and banning torture. This can be an anticipated answer to an expected and recurrent critique from the part of the Russian elite, concerning the credibility of the US to question other countries’ human rights practices while in Guantanamo, torture is common. And also in a clear selfpresentation strategy, Obama ends the speech with a quotation of Tolstoy that highlights the idea of service, a value often linked to Russian identity and civil society in the political elite’s discourse. And in supporting these ideals, it’s also important that we uphold them ourselves. And that’s why I take the last speaker’s admonition as a useful reminder -- that what we do matters, in part because although we know that sometimes we’ll fall short of our ideals, when we do -- they can be an excuse for others. Our journey to perfect our union goes on to this day. And that’s why I did order the closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison and I did ban torture -- without equivocation and without exception.

Both these two speeches, although occurring in different times (before Obama’s election and afterwards), in different spaces (in the US and in Russia) and directed to very different audiences, include nevertheless, the idea of ‘hearts and minds’. Being directed to different audiences and serving different purposes the speeches are quite different, the remarks at the Parallel Civil Society in Russia corresponding to a much more constrained ideological discourse and including a lot of impression management strategies, the speech in the US on Iraq being made during the election campaign where Obama attempts to present himself and his program as a necessary ‘turn on the page’ and a solution to US contemporary problems, by promising that the ‘US will lead again’ in his mission to bring freedom and hope all over the world. Still, it is possible to observe some common features in both

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speeches. In both speeches President Obama uses value laden generalizations, whether it is to talk about the American mission in the world or to talk about civil society, thus placing himself on a position of power and authority. In both speeches President Obama affirms the need to cooperate with Russia, but also to promote human rights in Russia and to be caution about possible threats coming Russia – ‘the mind of a Russian scientist’. However, the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ acquires different meanings in each speech. In a 2008 speech, President Obama appears to be outlining a counterinsurgency approach to be implemented in Iraq, including the idea of gaining the support of the population, although the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ is not uttered in this context. In the same speech, the words ‘hearts’ and ‘minds’ are uttered separately and in a negative way to indicate potential threats to ‘freedom’ and in order to argue about the need for a US intervention and leadership. One example of such threat is ‘the mind of a Russian scientist’. In the 2009 remarks in Moscow, President Obama uses the expression ‘hearts and minds’ to affirm the importance of civil society in changing the political environment, associating the work of CSOs with the promotion of human rights and emphasizing specific human rights that have been less valued by the Russian State. Thus, the way that President Obama uses this phrase in these two speeches contributes to construe a tension between US and Russia and to reaffirm US mission in promoting human rights and democracy in the world.

Putin’s Discursive Use of ‘Hearts and Minds’ On 11 June 2013 Putin made a visit to New Russia Today Broadcasting and gave a live interview with respective correspondents, many of them of western origin. In this talk Putin mentions the US history of violence towards indigenous and black people to suggest that: ‘It means that this mentality has taken roots in the hearts and minds of the people, and it is likely to be still there’. This is a strong statement, implying an essentialization of the American ‘mentality’ as a colonial and racist one. This discursive use of the expression ‘hearts and minds’ aims to discredit the legitimacy of the US self-proclaimed identity as the leader of the free world in his mission of promoting democracy and human rights, by reminding the audience of the dark episodes of US history. It is probably also a reaction to Obama’s political discursive use of history, specifically using repeated references to the violence of both fascism and communism, hence constantly highlighting the dark episodes of history of the ‘other’ while ‘forgetting’ its own dark history. This critique of US culture and mentality is then reinforced by putting forward a strange comparison/assumption – that even Stalin (recognizing that Stalin was a dictator and a tyrant) would never use nuclear weapons against Japan as the

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US did in the WWII. This assumption serves the main purpose of increasing the difference between Russia and ‘the West’ by stating that the US – the so-called leader of the free world – have done so inhumane things that not even a tyrant like Stalin would do. This being an assertion that cannot be disconfirmed, the speaker is totally safe in making it. In a variation of the classical manipulative strategy of positive self-representation and negative other representation Putin represents Russians in a positive way but leaves implicit the representation of the western other. Hence, by saying that ‘Russians are more spiritual – it’s more about your relationship with God’ and ‘We have different visions of life. That’s why it is very difficult to understand each other but it is still possible’, Putin is implying that Americans are more materialistic. Putin is very careful to frame this as cultural difference, in an attempt to reject the Cold War rhetoric of ideological difference: ‘To date we don’t have any significant ideological differences. But we do have fundamental cultural differences’. VLADIMIR PUTIN: The US is a democratic state, there’s no doubt about that, and it has originally developed as a democratic state. When the first settlers set their foot on this continent, life forced them to forge a relationship and maintain a dialogue with each other to survive. That’s why America was initially conceived as a fundamental democracy. With that in mind, we should not forget that America’s development began with a large-scale ethnic cleansing, unprecedented in human history. I wouldn’t like to delve so deeply into it, but you are forcing me to do it. When Europeans arrived in America that was the first thing they did. And you have to be honest about it. There are not so many stories like that in human history. Take the destruction of Carthage by the Roman Empire. The legend has it that Romans plowed over and sowed the city with salt so that nothing will ever grow there. Europeans didn’t use the salt because they used the land for agriculture but they wiped out the indigenous population. Then there was slavery, and that’s something that is deeply ingrained in America. In his memoirs, US Secretary of State Colin Powell revealed how hard it was for him as a black man to grow his way up, how hard it was to live with other people staring at you. It means this mentality has taken root in the hearts and minds of the people, and is likely to be still there.  Now take the Soviet Union. We know a lot about Stalin now. We know him as a dictator and a tyrant. But still I don’t think that in the spring of 1945 Stalin would have used a nuclear bomb against Germany, if he had had one. He could have done it in 1941 or 1942 when it was a matter of life or death. But I really doubt that he would have done it in 1945 when the enemy had almost given up and had absolutely no chance to reverse the trend. I don’t think he would. Now look at the US. They dropped the bomb on Japan, a country that was a non-nuclear state and was very close to defeat.   So there are big differences between us. But it’s quite natural that people with such differences are determined to find ways to understand each other better. I don’t think there

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is an alternative. Moreover, it’s not by chance that Russia and the US forged an alliance in the most critical moments of modern history – that was the case in WWI and WWII. Even if there was fierce confrontation, our countries united in the face of a common threat, which means there is something that unites us. There must be some fundamental interests that bring us together. That’s something we need to focus on first. We need to be aware of our differences but focus on a positive agenda that can improve our cooperation. In the end of the visit, answering the last question, Putin argues that there is a need for a change in mentality in the minds of the US ruling elite that sees itself as an empire. In here President Putin appears to be giving lessons to the US regarding what being an empire means and suggesting that the US should look for compromises instead of imposing its will on everyone. ANASTASIA CHURKINA: This is the last question, I promise. Obama hinted that it would be easier for him to cooperate with Russia. However, that is not what we are seeing today. We’ve already touched upon many of our remaining issues with the US. Why do you think the reset has not worked? And can it ever take place in the first place as an equal, reciprocal process? Or is it that Russia is always expected to sacrifice its national interest? VLADIMIR PUTIN: Any state pursues its national interests, and the US is no exception. What’s unique here is that the collapse of the Soviet Union left America as the world’s single leader. But there was a catch associated with it in that it began to view itself as an empire. But an empire is not only about foreign policy, it’s also about domestic policies. An empire cannot afford to display weakness, and any attempt to strike an agreement on equitable terms is often seen domestically as weakness. But the leadership cannot afford to display weakness due to domestic policy considerations. I think that the current administration realizes that it cannot solve the world’s major issues on its own. But first, they still want to do it, and second, they can only take steps that are fit for an empire. Domestic policy considerations play a huge role. Otherwise you would be accused of weakness. In order to act otherwise you either have to win overwhelming support or there must be a change in mentality, when people will understand that it’s much more beneficial to look for compromises that to impose your will on everyone. But it certainly takes time to change those patterns of thinking in any country, in this case it’s the US. First and foremost, this change should take place in the minds of the ruling elite in the broad sense of this phrase. I don’t think that it’s impossible. I this we’ve almost come to that point. I very much hope we will reach it soon.

President Putin, utters the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ in a more recent speech, but this time regarding the Crimea Republic and the results of the referendum in favor of its independence from Ukraine and incorporation into the Russian Federation. This was his address to State Duma in 18 March 2014, in Moscow, soon after the referendum in Ukraine at 16 March. President Putin begins by addressing the Federation Council members, the State Duma deputies and also the Representatives of the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol present in this event and presents the issue of his speech – the referendum in Ukraine – as an ‘issue of vital, historic significance

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to all of us’, where the ‘us’ appears to include Russia and Ukraine. He then states that the referendum was ‘in full compliance with democratic procedures and international norms’, thus contesting the argument of the US that this was not a legitimate referendum and does not reflect the will of the people. By doing this, President Putin is also saying he values these democratic procedures and international norms and that the western powers, led by the US, do not comply with these norms, an argument he develops throughout the speech, giving several examples of the west and especially the US double standards and ‘blunt cynicism’. After recognizing the formal legitimacy of the referendum, President Putin explains the results by reference to the history of Crimea and ‘what Russia and Crimea have always meant for each other’. This reading of history emphasizes the idea of ‘pride’, related to cultural and religious values of Orthodoxy, as the ‘basis of culture, civilization and human values that unite the people of Russia’ and to the military power of Russia – ‘Each of these places is dear to our hearts, symbolizing Russia military glory and outstanding valour’. Besides giving this account of a ‘shared history’ to naturalize and legitimate the result of the referendum, President Putin also uses other arguments, namely the idea that Crimea is multiethnic and multicultural as is Russia, followed by the somehow conflicting argument that the majority of people in Crimea are Russians (here quoting the authority of the numbers – 1.5 million Russians out of 2.2. million people). President Putin further recognizes that ‘Crimean Tatars were treated unfairly’ in the past, to then discount this statement in a strategy of apparent concession and apparent empathy, by saying that so did other people in the USSR, namely Russians. The reference to ‘hearts and minds’ appears after a pause and the address ‘Colleagues’, which gives it more impact. President Putin states:  In people’s hearts and minds Crimea has always been an inseparable part of Russia. This conviction is based on truth and justice and was passed from generation to generation, under any circumstances, despite all the dramatic changes our country went during the entire 20th century. These statements naturalize the alleged identification of people of Crimea with Russia, by saying this ‘conviction’ has resisted through all the changes in the Russian State during the 20th century. It is a way of legitimating this identification by saying it was always there, passed from generation to generation, hence linking this to History and traditions. At the same time, this conviction is associated and legitimized by the values of truth and justice. President Putin then continues to talk about history but to point the illegitimacy of the decision of Communist Party Leader Nikita Khrushchev to transfer Crimea region to Ukraine, along with Sevastopol. Then he talks about the fall of USSR and the independence of Ukraine with Crimea as part of it describing this as a ‘plunder’ and an ‘outrageous historical injustice’:

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It was only when Crimea ended up as part of a different country that Russia realized that it was not simply robbed, it was plundered.

President Putin then criticizes the government of Ukraine at the same time that he places himself on the side of the people of Ukraine that desire a better life. Here he makes a distinction between two categories of protesters: the peaceful protesters vs. the ‘radicals’ and nationalists that are now the government. He considers the latter as illegitimate authorities of Ukraine and alerts about their future nationalist policies. The next part of the speech is aimed at revealing the double standards of the Western powers and especially the US, by comparing the issue of Crimea independence to the issue of Kosovo and using the quote from the written statement of the US on 17 April 2009, submitted to the UN International Court in connection with the hearings on Kosovo. President Putin tries to discredit the Western powers by using a strong value judgment: ‘This is not even double standards; this is amazing, primitive, blunt cynicism’. This is followed by a critical reflection about what is wrong with the world today, meaning the lack of stability that followed the ‘dissolution of bipolarity’ (another way of referring to the end of the Cold War). President Putin gives then a series of examples of what he considers to be an illegitimate interference of western powers and especially from the US, clearly blaming ‘them’ for this instability. The case of the war in Yugoslavia and the bombing of Belgrade is mentioned, together with the ‘colored revolutions’, namely in Ukraine. These actions are interpreted as being directed against Ukraine and against Eurasian integration. Then President Putin uses the classical polarization between ‘we’ and ‘them’ to contrast Russia good deeds/intentions – ‘we want to be fair’ to the West bad deeds – ‘they lied’, expressing the issue as a moral one. Towards the end of the speech President Putin rhetorically addresses the US people, appealing to their value of freedom, the Europeans – especially the Germans – and finally the people of Ukraine to recognize the right of the Crimean people to decide their fate. Then, there is a warning concerning the threat of the NATO expansion to the east, and the possibility of Ukraine joining the NATO. The speech ends with a reaffirmation of the people’s will and an argument that both the majority of people in Crimea and the majority of the people from the Russian Federation support the reunification of the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol with Russia. Thus we see that the overwhelming majority of people in Crimea and the absolute majority of the Russian Federation’s people support the reunification of the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol with Russia. Now this is a matter for Russia’s own political decision, and any decision here can be based only on the people’s will, because the people is the ultimate source of all authority.

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Members of the Federation Council, deputies of the State Duma, citizens of Russia, residents of Crimea and Sevastopol, today, in accordance with the people’s will, I submit to the Federal Assembly a request to consider a Constitutional Law on the creation of two new constituent entities within the Russian Federation: the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, and to ratify the treaty on admitting to the Russian Federation Crimea and Sevastopol, which is already ready for signing. I stand assured of your support.

In sum, President Putin uses the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ in a quite different way in each of these speeches. In the interview at Russia Today Broadcasting, President Putin re-appropriates the expression to use it against the US, by emphasizing the dark episodes of the US history and suggesting that attitudes that previously justified the killing of indigenous and racial discrimination may still be in the ‘hearts and minds’ of Americans. President Putin also accuses the US of thinking of itself as an empire and claims there is a need to change the ‘hearts and minds’ of the US political elite. In the speech about the referendum in Ukraine, President Putin uses the expression ‘hearts and minds’ to suggest an historical and cultural unity between the Republic of Crimea and Russia, which is used to explain the results of the referendum and legitimate the incorporation of Crimea and Sevastopol in the Russian Federation. This places Russia and US on opposite sides of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Furthermore, in this same speech, President Putin accuses the ‘West’, but particularly the US, of having double standards and being untrustworthy and irresponsible. One thing is common to these discursive uses: both build on an historical interpretation, on a certain reading of the past, emphasizing specific historical episodes while silencing others, in order to legitimate his argument. Also in both speeches – as in more recent speeches by President Putin – one finds a polarization between Russia and the ‘West’, ‘self ’ and ‘other’, which are contrasted in terms of culture, mentality, and morality. Although the global and homogenized ‘west’/ ‘our western counterparts’ are the terms chosen for these comparisons, the USA is specifically targeted and singled out as a prototype of the west faults in several occasions.

Conclusion The phrase ‘winning the hearts and minds of the people’ has been used for long in political rhetoric and strategy, being typically linked with a counterinsurgency approach that is itself problematic both in terms of discourse/narrative and in terms of its application, in colonial times as in more recent interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. But this phrase has been re-appropriated by politicians in different

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contexts and with quite different meanings. This writing focused on the discursive uses of this phrase by President Obama and President Putin in some of their recent speeches, especially when these concern in a more or less direct way, the relation between US and the Russian Federation. The analysis presented here suggests that the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ is being used by both President Obama and President Putin to construe a difference between the two nations, by respectively representing the ‘other’ as a threat, while affirming their own geopolitical interests. President Obama uses value-laden generalizations, portraying the US as the guardian of ‘freedom’ against ‘fear’ and talking about ‘fundamental truths of the 21th century’, while at the same time attempting to present himself in a more positive light, by referring to ownership and cooperation and reducing the distance between himself and the audience. President Putin is more direct and concrete in his accusations about the US ‘double standards’ and ‘irresponsibility’, although he is at times sarcastic as when he appears to give lessons to the US on the problems of thinking of itself as an empire and in his re-appropriations of the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ against the US. Both speakers use history, as well as values and even law to justify their arguments and construe this difference between the self and the other. Also, each speaker accuses the other of returning to Cold War rhetoric, while denying that the self is also doing the same. Continuing, these discursive features do not suggest anything good in the future relation between Russia and the US, since discourse is linked to social practices and institutions. However, politicians are or should ultimately be accountable to their citizens and subsequent studies should focus on the way this political rhetoric is received by US and Russian citizens.

Bibliography Cohen, R. S. (2014). ‘Just How Important Are ‘Hearts and Minds’ anyway? Counterinsurgency Goes To the Polls’, The Journal of Strategic Studies, 37 (4), 609–636. Dickinson, E. (2009), ‘A Bright Shining Slogan. How ‘Hearts and Minds’ Came To Be’, Foreign Policy, 24 August, accessed 20 November 2014. Dixon, P. (2009). ‘ ‘Hearts and Minds’? British Counterinsurgency from Malaya to Iraq’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 32 (3), 353–381. Egnell, R. (2010). ‘Winning ‘Hearts and Minds’? A Critical Analysis of Counterinsurgency Operations in Afghanistan’, Civil Wars, 12 (3), 282–303. Fairclough, N. (2003). Analyzing Discourse: Textual analysis for social research. London and New York: Routledge.

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Fairclough, N. (2014), ‘What is CDA? Language and Power Twenty-Five Years On’, accessed 20 November 2014. Fairclough, N. Jessop, B. & Sayer, A. (2004), ‘Critical Realism and Semiosis’, published by the Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YN, UK, at http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/papers/Fairclough-Jessop-Sayer-Critical-Realism-and-Semiosis.pdf. Francis, M. M. (2011). ‘The Battle for the Hearts and Minds of America’, Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, 13 (1), 46–71. Fitzsimmons, M. (2008). ‘Hard Hearts and Open Minds? Governance, Identity and the Intellectual Foundations of Counterinsurgency Strategy’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 31(3), 337–365. Jonsson, A. (2012), ‘Russia and Europe’. In G. Gill & J. Young (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Russian Politics and Society, pp. 444–453. London and New York: Routledge. Saivetz, C. R. (2012), ‘Reset? Russian Perspectives on US-Russian Relations’. In G. Gill & J. Young (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Russian Politics and Society, pp. 454–466. London and New York: Routledge. Troitskiy, M. (2007), ‘A Russian Perspective on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’, In A. J. K. Bailes, P. Dunay, P. Guang & M. Troitskiy, The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, SIPRI Policy Paper No. 17, 30–44. Van Dijk, T. (1993), ‘Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis’, Discourse & Society, 4(2), 249–283. Van Dijk, T. (2001), ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’. In D. Tannen, D. Schiffrin & H. Hamilton (eds.), Handbook of Discourse Analysis, pp. 352–371. Oxford: Blackwell. Van Dijk, T. A. (2008). Discurso e Poder. São Paulo: Editora Contexto. Van Dijk, T. (2009), ‘Critical Discourse Studies; A sociocognitive Approach’. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis, pp. 62–85. London: Sage. Wodak, R. (2002), ‘Aspects of Critical Discourse Analysis’, ZfAL 36, 5–31.

Karyn Hollis

Quantitative Linguistic Analyses of the Phrase ‘Hearts and Minds’: From the Spiritualism of The King James Bible to the Militarism of Wikileaks Cables The phrase ‘hearts and minds’ has become emblematic of the last 50 years of American military and economic policy, appearing in discourse that records the expansion of the US financial and cultural empire across vast areas of the world. The slogan reveals a strategy encompassing US goals in terms of commerce, culture and military presence, yet the slogan’s origin leads back to a more spiritual connection as early American ministers steered the ‘hearts and minds’ of their flock toward stern but lofty ends. In this investigation that uses quantitative online research tools of various types, I will examine the way the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ has been used for over 200 years in books and written records traceable and quantifiable through Google Search, Google Books, and Google N-Gram viewer. This information will compliment a large corpus-based, text analysis of Wikileaks cables containing the phrase written by US Embassy diplomats and State Department officials between 2002 and 2010. These cables will be examined using standard techniques of content analysis such as frequency and collocation counts, followed by a study of the same corpus using DICTION, a text analysis program that measures textual tone and content. A narrower corpus, one comprising 26 cables from the US Embassy in Iraq will add further specificity to the study using DICTION, and finally, a Critical Discourse Analysis of one particular cable written by a foreign service officer at the US Embassy in Iraq will provide a prose illustration of many of the empirical findings discovered through quantitative measurements. Ultimately, I will show how the phrase has been used over hundreds of years, evolving from a mainly religious purpose to a secular one used to usher in an imposed neoliberal worldview on nations conquered by force or commerce. To begin with a definition of terms, viewed connotatively, the two words making up the synecdoche ‘hearts and minds’ encompass most, if not all, of what it means to be human. The word ‘heart’ brings with it the physical body as well as emotions, while ‘mind’ adds a full rational and intellectual component. Thus, the phrase applies when the desire is to capture the entire range of human experience referring to individuals, peoples and nations; we see this meaning documented by

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Internet searches confirming that the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ is and has been in widespread use in English for hundreds of years. Simply typing the phrase into a Google search returns an astounding 54,700,000 hits referencing matters ranging from movies, books, music, to news articles, and including texts from several disciplines: religion, psychology, politics, military history, literature, pedagogy, technology and more. A recent Google Books search turned up 2,310,000 titles and pages containing the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ in English, and the Google Books Ngram Viewer graphing tool allows for a two hundred year perspective on the use of the phrase, ‘hearts and minds’ as it appears in Google’s digitized corpus of 5.2 million books written from 1800–2008. See Chart 1 below. Chart 1:  Google Ngram Viewer results for ‘hearts and minds’

Although not exhaustive, a sampling from the Ngram graph shows the increasing popularity of the phrase over the last two centuries. Perusing where the phrase appears in book texts and titles offers a glimpse into its evolution from mainly a religious connotation in the 1800’s to its more secular one today as it appears in political, military and ideological works in the year 2000. It can also be seen that the use of the term increases more than twofold over this 200 year period, due partly to the growth in printing and mass media, but also because the phrase seems to encapsulate contemporary understandings of the importance of persuasive discourse to accompany modern military campaigns. In the Google Ngram graph of ‘hearts and minds’ shown above, clicking on the link to books published from 1800–1826

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shows 7,010 books in Google’s collection that include the phrase, giving a predominantly religious meaning to its use. Although not included in the graph, one of the earliest identified uses of the phrase was found in the King James Bible published in 1549: the Epistle of St Paul to the Phillipians 4.7, reads ‘And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ’. This particular verse was also used in the Book of Common Prayer published in 1820 by Richard Mant. Shakespeare has Anthony use the phrase in Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene II, line 1663:  O masters, if I were disposed to stir Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong,

Another use of the term was found in an 1800 edition of Edward Synge’s defense of Christianity originally published in 1693, A Gentleman’s Religion: With the Grounds and Reasons of It. Synge writes, ‘this grace and ability to do good is in the Scripture ascribed to the ministry and influence of the Holy Ghost upon the hearts and minds of true believers’. (138). Another influential minister using the phrase was prolific Methodist sermon writer John Wesley. Secular uses of the term were present but less frequent and less consequential. Historians employed the term, such as the esteemed Charles Rollin of France who in 1730–38 published his 10 volume work, Ancient History. The ninth edition of this book, translated into English was published in 1800 in London. Writing about Pericles and ‘the methods employed by him to gain the affection of the people’ (299), Rollins wrote that those who mastered eloquence of speaking as had Pericles, were ‘sure of reigning in the assemblies, … determining affairs, and exercising a kind of absolute power over the hearts and minds of the people’ (300). Another less common use of the phrase in this first selection of Google books occurs in books about music. In his, Concert Room and Orchestra Anecdotes of Music and Musicians, Ancient and Modern published in 1823, Thomas Busby wrote that ‘such power and force have the modulation, motion and management of the voice upon the hearts and minds of men’ (106). The phrase was also used in The North American Review by James Russell Lowell. In a critical appraisal of Spenser’s Fairie Queene, the author writes, ‘How many too of these words and phrases which he has used and which are forever sounding in our ears and filling our hearts and minds with undefined sensations and beautiful images may be followed home to this work’ (37). The phrase is used in the American Phrenological Journal in 1819 (326) and in biographical memoirs (150) referring to those responsible for Napoleon’s exile at St. Helene, in British newspapers referring to the British people (102), and by John Adams in his political tract denouncing British rule on the ‘hearts and minds of our seamen’ (11).

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Leaving the early use of the phrase as found in Google books from 1800– 1826, we find that the phrase has expanded from religion and entered many other realms. We notice that in 1980, the phrase becomes more and more common in printed materials. By the late 20th century, a click on the 1889–2000 link on the Ngram graph, reveals that the meanings conveyed by the phrase had substantially changed to those largely concerned with the military and political realm – although not exclusively. A short sampling of titles shows the range of books and subject matters that contain the phrase: The Irish War: The Hidden Conflict between the IRA and British Intelligence; Armed Struggle and the Search for the State: The Palestinian National Movement; Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People; Class Dismissed: A Year in the Life of an American High School, A Glimpse into the Heart of a Nation; First Black Marines: Vanguard of a Legacy; The Kinder, Gentler Military: Can America’s Gender Neutral Fighting Force Still Win Wars?; Sex, Ecology, Spirituality; From Bomba to Hip Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson tied the slogan to goals of the US mission in Vietnam ‘Ultimate victory, [in Vietnam] will depend upon the hearts and the minds of the Vietnamese, he claimed, thereby attaching the phrase to the failed military and propaganda campaign of a losing war. The phrase’s negative connotations grew when it became the title of the award-winning 1974 Vietnam documentary, Hearts and Minds which exposed the criminality of the war with its sinister psyops campaigns. Later in 2008, US President Barack Obama used the phrase three times in his book, The Audacity of Hope. Referring to the common set of values and ideas that bind the American people together, Obama writes that ‘they remain alive in the hearts and minds of most Americans—and can inspire us to pride, duty and sacrifice’ (2008: 6). Later he explains that ‘As important as moral exhortation was in changing hearts and minds of white Americans, what ultimately broke the back of Jim Crow… were the Supreme Court cases… ‘(2008: 38). Obama’s use of the phrase to refer to Americans is unusual in that more typically the phrase is used as of late by Americans to refer to ‘others’ in developing nations. Obama illustrates this more common use of the phrase when he writes that, ‘If we want to win the hearts and minds of people in Caracas, Jakarta, Nairobi or Tehran, dispersing ballot boxes will not be enough. We’ll have to make sure that the international rules we’re promoting enhance, rather than impede, people’s sense of material and personal security’ (2008: 163).

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Analysis of the Phrase ‘Hearts and Minds’ in Wikileaks Cables In November 2010, Wikileaks released 250,000 diplomatic cables providing an extraordinarily candid glimpse into various aspects of US foreign policy as recorded in cables from ambassadors and State Department and Foreign Service personnel. In these leaked documents, the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ appears in 683 cables referring to events in over 100 countries. Such widespread and prolonged use of the phrase confirms its importance in implementing a global ideology involving cultural, military and political efforts to win sympathy for American interests and attitudes across the globe. And ironically, while the phrase is typically presented in opposition to military action – as a kinder, gentler, more effective method of persuasion – its use in diplomatic discourse is in conjunction with military campaigns, at least in the case of the Wikileaks cables. As opinion shapers, authors of diplomatic cables are concerned with influencing important audiences at home and abroad. The cable readers could consist of politicians, other diplomats, government bureaucrats, journalists and the like, all important conveyors of information relative to attaining support for public policy and action, typically neoliberal economic plans and projects.

What Frequency and Collocation Counts Tell Us about ‘Hearts and Minds’ As can be seen in Chart 2 below, in spite of the fact that diplomats clearly believe a ‘hearts and minds’ campaign to be more effective than a military solution in convincing people to accept Western ways, it is almost always carried out in conjunction with a military effort, and it is in the vast majority of cases used as a strategy aimed at non-western, developing peoples. Chart 2 provides evidence for this perspective showing that the cables are heavily laden with terminology of war, conflict and military conquest. Words such as ‘security’, ‘support’, ‘military’, ‘forces’, ‘against’ indicate as much.

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Chart 2: Word Frequency Count in Wikileaks Cables with ‘Hearts and Minds’ Word count = 191,486

Chart 3 below shows the words most commonly appearing with the phrase, ‘hearts and minds’ in the Wikileaks cables. Framing a ‘hearts and minds’ campaign in terms of a battle to win or lose is typical as can be seen from the collocation chart below. Chart 3: Words Most Frequently Collocating in Wikileaks Cables with ‘Hearts and Minds’ Word count = 191,486 Words

Counts

wins

74

winning

37

people

26

campaign

11

population

9

losing

7

end

7

government

7

battle

6

DICTION Text and Content Analysis Software When examining corpora such as the Wikileaks cables, computer-assisted content analysis offers a manageable way of characterizing large bodies of textual data and

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often allows for broader and more empirically valid generalizations than smaller samples of similar texts. I will use the text analysis program, DICTION, to analyze the corpus of cables gleaned from the Wikileaks Cablegate site. DICTION is a content analysis software program that examines tone and content in large data samples. DICTION has been found particularly useful in the analysis of political discourse. Over 300 academic articles and studies have made use of DICTION software. In my analysis, DICTION will shed light on the discursive strategies used by diplomats and others in their rhetorical efforts to gain worldwide support for various causes using the phrase, ‘hearts and minds’. Due to Iraq’s continuing importance in US foreign and military affairs, I have focused on Wikileaks cables from Iraq to provide more specificity to DICTION research. Finally, the quantitative analyses will be supported and illustrated by a concise qualitative close reading and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of a representative cable in the Iraqi ‘hearts and minds’ corpus. I used DICTION to compare a large corpus of 683 Wikileaks cables containing 190,197 words to DICTION’S normative corpus of 50,000 words drawn from a wide variety of academic, journalistic, entertainment, and professional texts. The DICTION analysis reveals where the text under examination differs from expected norms using five variables to determine areas of rhetorical strength and weakness: Certainty (language indicating resoluteness, inflexibility, and completeness), Optimism (language endorsing come concept, person, group or event and highlighting their positive entailments), Activity (language featuring movement, change, implementation of ideas and the avoidance of inertia), Realism (language describing tangible, immediate, recognizable matters that affect people’s everyday lives), and Commonality (language highlighting the agreed-upon values of a group and rejecting idiosyncratic modes of engagement) (2014). Chart 4: DICTION Analysis of All Wikileaks Cables Containing ‘Hearts and Minds’ Word count = 190,197 DICTION variable found in Wikileaks cables using phrase ‘hearts and minds’

Definition of DICTION variable

Master Variable = Commonality (Greater Language highlighting the agreed upon values than expected frequency) of a group and rejecting idiosyncratic modes of engagement Master Variable = Certainty (Lower than expected frequency)

Language indicating resoluteness, inflexibility, and completeness and a tendency to speak ex cathedra

Master Variable = Realism (Lower than expected frequency)

Language describing tangible, immediate, recognizable matters that affect people’s everyday lives

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The findings detailed above depict a complex rhetorical situation in which cable writers attempt to find points of agreement with their subject matter and audience. In Burkean terms, the cable authors indicate a desire to find areas of identity with the subjects at hand. Most typically in their cables, the US diplomats try to persuade their interlocutors of their common ideals such as the rule of law, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, equality before the law, representative democracy, and a market-driven view of the economic processes called on to provide for citizens’ wellbeing. The emphasis on promoting these values in the cables results in the greater than expected Commonality score. However, due to the varying loyalties of the citizens of other countries, few of these values and beliefs are likely shared by them. This was certainly the case in Iraq as will be demonstrated. This lack of common beliefs and experiences leads to the low scores for the variables indicating Certainty or resoluteness. When one senses a vast difference between self and interlocutor, perhaps unconsciously, the tendency is to present information as tentative and with flexibility. Similarly, since diplomatic progress is often very slow, halting, even disappearing, the diplomats’ ability to describe concrete benefits for the everyday lives of a country’s citizens is necessarily lessened, leading to a lower than expected Realism score. Specific examples of these tendencies will be enumerated below in the examination of a cable about healthcare in Iraq.

Examination of Iraqi Cables—Historical Context Iraq, home of ancient Mesopotamia, is one of the oldest civilizations on the planet. As such, it has had long periods alternating between peace and war over millennia. The contemporary history is no different, and a review here will put the Wikileaks cables into a cultural and military context. In 2003, Iraq was apparently cooperating with UN weapons inspectors who found no weapons of mass destruction in the country. Nevertheless, in March 2003, US President George W. Bush ordered the bombing of Baghdad. By November the Coalition Provisional Authority took responsibility for supplying humanitarian aid to the Iraqi people and establishing a democratic form of government to be elected by Iraqi citizens. In 2004, sovereignty of Iraq was handed over to the interim Iraqi government, but in August of 2004 an insurgency began against the new Iraqi government. Several elections took place amid the fighting, and in 2006 al-Maliki was named Prime Minister of the new national unity Iraqi government. Later that year former dictator, Saddam Hussein, was hanged for war crimes. Amid continued sectarian fighting, the US military handed over control of the ‘Green Zone’ to Iraq and began troop withdrawal. Because of deteriorating conditions in Baghdad and Al Anbar province, George W. Bush increased US troop presence in Iraq in 2007 by 30,000 to total

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around 170,000 soldiers to train and strengthen the Iraqi army from which former Baathist officers had been banned. Known as ‘The Surge’, this increase in US military presence lasted until 2009. Al-Maliki was named prime minister for a second term in 2010, and in 2011, US troops formally withdraw from Iraq.

DICTION Analysis of Cables from US Embassy, Iraq The 26 Iraqi cables published by Wikileaks and written by Ambassadors Crocker, Ford and Hill as well as other diplomatic staff date from July 2005 to February 2010. The subject titles range from ‘Militants Take Over Where Government Fails’, to ‘Basra Sheik’s Success Confronting JAM’ to ‘Ballot De-Baathification Sparks Provincial Celebration’, to ‘Recent Iranian Economic Involvement in Iraq’. The latter concern, the influence of Iran in Iranian politics, was the subject of several cables. Chart 5: DICTION Analysis of Wikileaks Cables from US Embassy-Iraq Word Count = 33,893 DICTION variable found in Definition of DICTION variable and examples of Wikileaks cables from US Embassy DICTION dictionary language/words indicating in Iraq containing phrase ‘hearts presence of variable in a text and minds’ Master Variable = Certainty (Lower than expected frequency)

Language indicating resoluteness, inflexibility, and completeness and a tendency to speak ex cathedra

Tenacity

All uses of the verb to be (is, am, etc), three definitive verb forms (has, must do). These verbs connote confidence and totality

Leveling

Words used to ignore individual differences and to build a sense of completeness and assurance; totalizing terms (everybody, each), adverbs of permanence (always, completely), resolute adjectives (unconditional, open-and-shut)

Similar to the larger corpus of Wikileaks cables containing the phrase ‘hearts and minds’, the Certainty variable in the Iraq cables was notable for its low score when compared to the normative corpus compiled by DICTION. In other words, the diplomatic writers were not speaking in unyielding and intransigent terms about their projects, and again, in spite of their desire to build a unified Iraq, they tend not to use words giving a sense of a comprehensive whole to the country. What led to the low score in the Certainty variable were corresponding low scores for Tenacity and Leveling. The language diplomats used revealed their lack of a working plan for a unity government; hence, they were unable to make definitive

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statements about what should be and what must be done resulting in a low Tenacity score. Similarly, Leveling terms were avoided because to use them would indicate a confidence in the days to come regarding projects that would pull the nation together. The cables are sewn up in a structure of neoliberal beliefs and attitudes that do not allow for consideration of wider possibilities for the Iraqi people.

Context of Butenis Cable: Iraqi Medical Care The cable written by Patricia A. Butenis, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Iraqi Embassy, 2007–2009 is in the Appendix. Butenis is a career diplomat and currently the Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Perhaps in spite of her good intentions and faith in the business practices she advocates, her prose exhibits many characteristics of neoliberal economics which include an emphasis on privatization of formerly state-owned properties such as the Iraqi public health system. Not surprisingly, medical care in Iraqi has suffered from decades of war and sanctions. However, during the 70’s and 80’s Iraq’s healthcare system was reputed to be one of the best in the region (2013). It was state run and free for all Iraqis. Unfortunately, the system’s state funding was cut after Saddam’s ruinously expensive attack on Kuwait and the First Gulf War. During the 90’s, economic sanctions further eroded the healthcare system, and the US led invasion of 2003 only exacerbated its problems. After the invasion, due to lack of security and corruption, thousands of doctors left the country, creating a desperate shortage of healthcare personnel, pharmaceuticals, and medical supplies (2009). The US answer to this disaster was a neoliberal marketing plan opening the Iraqi nation to private healthcare companies. In 2009, a Healthcare Summit was held by the Iraq’s Ministry of Health (MoH) with encouragement from US interests. Security in Iraq was among the many problems cited in the cable as detrimental to investments in healthcare and may have been what led the organizers to hold it in Istanbul. See the Appendix for the full text of the cable written about this summit. I will be quoting from it in my analysis below.

Quantitative and DICTION Analysis of the Butenis Cable Turning first to vocabulary in the Butenis cable, Norman Fairclough reminds us that ‘the structure of a vocabulary is ideologically based’ (2003). Indeed, in Chart 6, the word frequency count makes it clear that much of the focus and purpose of the Iraq Health Investment Summit was indeed to do business. As one would hope and expect, the word health was the word most frequently used in the cable, but the word business/es totaling 14 occurrences, was second, underscoring the dependent interrelation between the two words and worlds in the neoliberal view.

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Chart 6:  Word Frequency in Butenis Cable

Similar to the larger corpora of Wikileaks cables containing the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ in Chart 7, the Butenis cable outlining the ‘success’ of the healthcare summit has a lower than expected frequency of the Realism master variable, i.e., language describing typical events of ordinary personal existence. (See Chart 7 below) This could be because the diplomats lack contact with the Iraqi people themselves since they were unable to leave the Green Zone due poor security outside its walls. Contributing to the low score of the Realism master variable is the corresponding low score for Human Interest variable indicating again, a lack of awareness of particular individuals and their lives. On the other hand, the Optimism Master Variable has a higher than expected frequency, which in the case of this particular cable advocating for increased investment in Iraqi healthcare, must of necessity emphasize the positive aspects and goals of rebuilding the country to provide for the health and safety of all citizens.

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Chart 7: DICTION Analysis of Butenis Cable (See Appendix) Word Count = 1,291 DICTION variable found in cable Definition of DICTION variable and examples of from US Embassy in Iraq about DICTION dictionary language/words indicating healthcare summit and containing presence of variable in a text phrase ‘hearts and minds’ Master Variable = Optimism (Higher than expected frequency)

Language endorsing some person, group, concept or event or highlighting their positive entailments

Inspiration

Abstract virtues deserving of universal respect; desirable moral qualities (faith, self-sacrifice), attractive personal qualities (courage, dedication), social and political ideals (success, education)

Master Variable = Realism (Lower than expected frequency)

Language describing tangible, immediate, recognizable matters that affect people’s everyday lives

Human Interest

Concentrating on people and activities; personal pronouns (he, her), family members and relations (husband, cousin), generic terms (friend, baby)

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of the Butenis Cable I will now turn to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine the Iraqi cable about healthcare. According to Deborah Cameron and Ivan Panovic, CDA is ‘characterized by concerns about discourse as a site where ideologies, power relations and forms of social control are reproduced, and particular accounts of reality are naturalized…’ (2014: 79). Given that the George W. Bush administration was unabashedly neoliberal, the particular account of reality offered in the Healthcare Summit cable illustrates neoliberalist views and goals quite well. As David Harvey has argued, ‘Neoliberalism has, in short, become hegemonic as a mode of discourse and has pervasive effects on ways of thought and political-economic practices to the point where it has become incorporated into the common sense way we interpret, live in and understand the world’ (2007: 23). The neoliberal market-driven worldview as the functioning ideology of our age was the driving force behind much of the US endeavor in Iraq. Harvey continues, ‘If markets do not exist, (in areas such as education, health care, social security, or environmental pollution), then they must be created, by state action if necessary’ (2007: 22). As will be seen in my CDA analysis below, this is exactly what was and is being attempted in Iraq. One of the first acts of the Coalition Provisional Authority led by Paul Brener was a decree to privatize all aspects of Iraq’s formerly state-run economy. The CPA was given access to Iraq’s oil revenues and kept much of the economy afloat with those funds. Ironically, the 2005 Iraqi constitution, written

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with the help and pressure of many Bush era advisors guarantees state-funded healthcare for all in Iraq. Article 13 of the Constitution reads:  ‘First: Every citizen has the right to health care. The State shall maintain public health and provide the means of prevention and treatment by building different types of hospitals and health institutions. Second: Individuals and entities have the right to build hospitals, clinics, or private health care centers under the supervision of the State, and this shall be regulated by law’ (Dorlester 2009).

Eventually by 2007, with the healthcare system in total shambles after the US invasion, Iraqi medical care was put on the market. The US diplomatic cable is a genre unto itself and has a predictable structure. It begins with a title referring to the contents of the cable, followed by numbered paragraphs, the first of which summarizes the main points of the cable. The remaining paragraphs provide explanatory information about the points announced in the first paragraph. The last paragraph in the cable is frequently titled, Comment, and contains incidental information the writer thinks is pertinent or helpful. In my examination of the cable written by Butenis, ‘Iraq Health Investment Summit Highlights Progress, Challenges’, I will use CDA principles developed by Ruth Wodak and Teun A. van Dijk. His work is well suited to study the diplomatic discourse which re/produces the neoliberalism of late capitalism. Quoting from the Summary section of the cable (See Appendix for cable), Butenis reports on the summit held on 19–20 February 2009 in Istanbul, Turkey. Iraqi’s Minister of Health showcased Iraq’s 2009–13 strategic health plan and ‘solicited partnerships with private companies for iraq’s healthcare system’. Over 100 medical company representatives attended the summit as well as representatives from the World Health Organization. The potential investors said they believed there were budding markets in Iraq, but they were hesitant to invest because of the lack of security and the weak Ministry of Health (MOH) infrastructure. Both Iraqi and American investors complained about the difficulty of obtaining visas to the US, saying that this difficulty severely hampered business opportunities. Nevertheless, ‘Academics and medical professionals expressed optimism that after years of difficulty in the US-Iraqi healthcare relationship, partnerships and exchanges with the influential medical cadre can help rebuild Iraqis’ confidence in America’. In their book on CDA, David Machin and Andrea Mayr emphasize the importance of uncovering ideologically veiled ways of naming or representing ‘social actors’ or ‘participants’ in discourse (2012: 77). Butenis names and thereby restricts the social actors in the delivery of healthcare in Iraq to the dominant Shia representatives of the Government of Iraq (GOI), she also designates higher up

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governmental officials, both American and Iraqi, with the authority to make decisions about healthcare in Iraq. Nowhere does she reveal that there is no Sunni representative or even an average citizen or healthcare user at the summit. We are thus restricted to the opinions of hegemonic players in the neoliberal global view. Butenis boasts that attending the summit are 100 medical company representatives, the representative of the World Health Organization country lead, the US-Iraq chamber of Commerce, the Iraqi Minister of Health, Dr. Salih al-Hasnawi, and ‘his most knowledgeable and articulate Director Generals’, two Prime Minister’s representatives, a member of the Council of Representatives Health and Environment Committee, potential investors both American and Iraqi, leaders in Iraqi medicine and education, and the US Embassy Health Attache’. While it is certainly appropriate and beneficial to have business leaders and medical professionals from Iraq at the summit, it seems unfortunate and ill-conceived to have no members of the public present. And although Butenis remarks that Iraq is in desperate need of nurses, there appear to be none present. While she does allow that there is a ‘stigma’ attached to the nursing profession for women, their omission points to another oversight. This seeming lack of awareness of lower and middle class Iraqis’ medical needs or opinions ties in to the lower than expected Realism score mentioned above in the DICTION studies as well as to the higher than expected Optimism scores present as Butenis tries to sell the embassy’s view that ‘Iraq provides an excellent medical business market worth several hundred million dollars each year’. Machin and Mayr also adapt T. Van Leeuwen’s classification system of the ways social actors may be described and the ideological effects of these classifications (2003: 79). Their division of ‘personalization’ and ‘impersonalization’ is useful here since Butenis only personalizes the elite government representatives by including their names; her use of ‘honorifics’, when referring to the Minister of Health, for example, also accords him authority and prestige. Fairclough (2003) has pointed out that what is missing in a text is just as important as what is present. Machin and Mayr label it ‘suppression’ when a social actor or activity is absent from a text (2012: 85). We have already emphasized that there are no nurses present at the summit, nor any ordinary Iraqis or Sunnis. In fact, the important division between Sunnis and Shias, which at the time of the cable was the source of most of the ‘security concerns’, is not referred to. Moreover, the euphemism ‘security concerns’ is a way to avoid commenting on the terrifying death toll due to suicide bombers, sectarian attacks, murders of doctors practicing the wrong brand of Islam, and the tragic destruction of hospitals occurring daily in the country. Nevertheless, Butenis writes that Dr. Salih, members of his delegation, and several company representatives mentioned the ‘improvement in

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security’. Also, several news reports had emphasized the truly deplorable state of healthcare in Iraq at the time, yet Butenis does not mention this fact because to do so would cast doubt on the wisdom of the past invasion and attempt to impose a privatized healthcare system along with a western style, capitalist democracy on a conquered nation (Mohammed 2010, Reilly 2009, Walker 2014). Of course, there is no mention of the US culpability in any of the Iraqi healthcare problems although it is well known that the destructive invasion added to the severe inadequacy of healthcare infrastructure. ‘Iraq’s health system lies in a fragile state 8 years after the war. Thousands of doctors have left the country and the pace of health-care reconstruction remains slow’ (Webster 2011). And the neoliberal bias against publically owned and operated institutions comes through in the assertion from the MOH that ‘mechanisms [are] being put into place to reform some archaic systems, such as Kimadia, the state-owned and operated medical equipment/pharmaceutical procurement and distribution organization for the MOH’. That this system produced some of the best medical care in the entire Middle East during the 70’s and 80’s is omitted. Suppression with a gendered dimension revolves around the statement that ‘The MOH will focus on actions to garner positive publicity about nurses and the nursing profession to combat years of neglect and lack of training’. Although ‘neglect and lack of training’ are certainly serious obstacles, the greater one is likely the Islamic traditions still in place that defame women nurses. The reference to the need to ‘rebuild Iraqis’ confidence in America’ of course indicates that there was a time when Iraquis had confidence in America, a dubious proposition, but one that leads Butenis to quote Dr. Shawki who expresses the desire for the U.S to ‘implement programs that would help win the battle of trust by regaining the hearts and minds of the educated middle class which can influence younger generations’. This quotation reveals the hidden class bias that underlies Butenis’ use of the phrase under study here. Again, there is no awareness of the fact that the majority of Iraqis will not be able to pay for the private healthcare she is advocating and will have to rely on the problematic public healthcare system which the US is trying to undermine. Butenis uses the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ a second time in the Comments section of her cable when she writes that ‘health diplomacy through increased medical exchanges will become an effective tool at winning the hearts and minds of the educated middle-class Iraqis’, again, ignoring the ‘hearts and minds’ of lower class Iraqis. In summary, tracing the use of the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ from Ngram viewer’s early American Christian references to the materialism of the Butenis’ cable published by Wikileaks, one can observe the demise of spirituality in guiding

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American political life and the rise of a neoliberal faith. In publishing the trove of diplomatic cables, Wikileaks exposes the US hegemonic worldview for what it often is, intent on privatizing previously public entities and selling them to the highest private corporate bidder in the unproven faith of market altruism.

Bibliography Antelava, N. (2009). ‘Iraq’s Quiet Healthcare Crisis’. BBC News Middle East. 1 May accessed 10 October 2014. Butenis, P. A. (2009). ‘Iraq Health Investment Summit Highlights Progress, Challenges’. Wikileaks: Public Library of US Diplomacy. 9 March. accessed 15 March 2014. Cameron, D., and Panovic, I. (2014). Working with Written Discourse. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. ‘DICTION Is a Computer-Assisted Text-Analysis (CATA) Program’. (2014) accessed 20 December 2014. Dorlester, M. (2009). ‘Guaranteed Health Care In Iraq – But Not For You’. Huffington Post. 9 November. accessed 10 March 2014. Fairclough, N. (2003). Analyzing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge. Fairclough, I., and Fairclough, N. (2012). Political Discourse Analysis: A Method for Advanced Students. London and New York: Routledge. ‘Google Ngram Viewer’. (2014). accessed 13 August 2014. Harvey, D. (2007). ‘Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction’. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 610 (21): 22–44. ‘Help Manual DICTION 7.0’. (2014). Digitext, Inc. ‘Iraq 10 Years on: War Leaves Lasting Impact on Healthcare’. (2013). IRINnews--A Service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. 2 May. accessed 10 August 2014. Machin, D., and Mayr, A. (2012). How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis. Sage Publications Ltd.

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Mohammed, A. (2010). ‘Iraq’s Crumbling, Corrupt Healthcare | Abeer Mohammed’. The Guardian. 25 March accessed 13 September 2014. Obama, B. (2008). The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. Reprint edition. New York: Vintage. Reilly, C. (2009). ‘Iraq’s Once-Envied Health Care System Lost to War, Corruption | Iraq | McClatchy DC’. McClatchyDC. 17 May accessed 20 August 2014. Shakespeare, W. (2014). ‘Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene 2 :|: Open Source Shakespeare’. Open Source Shakespeare. accessed 3 August 3 2014. Van Dijk, T. (1993). ‘Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis’. Discourse and Society 4 (2): 249–83. Van Leeuwen, T. (1996). ‘The Representations of Social Actors’. In Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge. Walker, K. (2014). ‘Iraqi Children Endure a Crippled Healthcare System’. Nature Middle East, September. doi:10.1038/nmiddleeast.2014.219. Webster, P. C. (2011). ‘Iraqi Health System Yet to Heal from Ravages of War’. The Lancet 378 (9794): 863–866 accessed 3 September 2014. ‘WikiLeaks’. (2014). Wikileaks: Public Library of US Diplomacy. accessed 21 December 2015. Wodak, R., and Meyer, M. (2001). ‘What CDA Is about--a Summary of Its History, Important Concepts and Its Developments’. In Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. pp. 1–14. London: Sage Publications Ltd.

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Appendix for Quantitative Linguistic Analyses of the Phrase ‘Hearts and Minds’ by Karyn Hollis Wikileaks Cable: ‘Iraq Health Investment Summit Highlights Progress, Challenges’ by Patricia A. Butenis, Deputy Chief of Mission, Iraqi Embassy, 2007–2009. 1. SUMMARY. The Iraq Health Investment Summit, held on 19–20 February in Istanbul, Turkey, was a key opportunity for the Minister of Health (MOH), Dr. Salih al-Hasnawi, to showcase Iraq’s 2009–2013 strategic health plan and to solicit partnerships with private companies for Iraq’s healthcare system. Potential investors said they believed there were opportunities to be tapped in this new healthcare market. Despite repeated assurances from the Minister of Health that security in Iraq has improved and has been stable for over a year, the optimism was tempered by concerns over the fragility of the security situation and weak MOH infrastructure capacity. Iraqi and American investors complained about the ‘cumbersome’ U.S. visa process hampering business opportunities in Iraq. Academics and medical professionals expressed optimism that after years of difficulty in the US-Iraq healthcare relationship, partnerships and exchanges with the influential medical cadre can help rebuild Iraqis’ confidence in America. 2. FIRST EVER IRAQ HEALTH INVESTMENT CONFERENCE A SUCCESS. The MOH hosted over 100 medical company representatives and the World Health Organization to its 19–20 February Iraq Health Investment Summit in Istanbul. The conference outlined the ministry’s strategic plan for 2009–2013 and acknowledged shortfalls and mechanisms being put in place to reform some archaic systems, such as Kimadia, the state-owned and operated medical equipment/pharmaceutical procurement and distribution organization for the MOH. The U.S.-Iraq Chamber of Commerce also provided practical investment guidelines to companies looking to do business in Iraq. The GOI delegation was comprised of the Minister of Health and his most knowledgeable and articulate Director Generals, as well as two of the Prime Minister’s representatives, a member of the Council of Representatives Health and Environment Committee, and leaders in Iraqi medicine and education. Members of the Iraqi delegation challenged each other during the general sessions, asking tough questions, including discussion on decision making processes and the length of time to turn contracts around. 3. PRIORITIES FOCUS ON PRIMARY HEALTHCARE AND NURSING. The MOH presented an ambitious strategic plan covering 26 areas, many aimed at achieving the Millennium Development Goals as well as international standards of improved healthcare. The MOH presented in great detail its construction plans to expand the primary healthcare center (PHC) network as well as

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the construction of new hospitals across Iraq. In the coming years, the MOH infrastructure expansion plan includes construction of an additional 1,500 PHCs (estimates for existing PHCs range from 1,200–1,900 depending on how clinics and satellites are defined) and increasing the number of hospital beds available for secondary and tertiary care. The GOI has developed plans to construct seven ‘turn-key’ hospitals in 2009 and has already awarded over $1.5 billion in hospital contracts to Turkish, Australian and German companies. The Minister of Health also announced that 2009 was the ‘Year of Nursing’. Follow-up discussions with the World Health Organization (WHO) country lead indicated that further commitment from the MOH was needed in addressing the nursing sector. The MOH will focus on actions to garner positive publicity about nurses and the nursing profession to combat years of neglect and lack of training. The WHO has already been working closely with the Ministries of Health and Higher Education on key projects aimed at improving education of and services provided by nurses and addressing the stigma associated with the nursing profession. 4. SECURITY AND MOH CAPACITY A LINGERING CONCERN. The improvement in security was noted several times throughout the conference, both by Dr. Salih and members of his delegation. Despite repeated reassurances, conference participants remained cautious about making any concrete commitments despite the potential of a growing health market. Several company representatives already active in Iraq’s health sector, with some employing hundreds of individuals across the country, noted to other potential investors that the security situation had improved, yet reforms in MOH procurement and contracting were still needed. Dr. Salih urged companies to ‘become partners’ with Iraq to improve the healthcare system and service delivery as they developed business contracts. 5. AMERICAN BUSINESSES AND IRAQIS CALL FOR REVISED U.S. VISA POLICY. While security was identified as a hindrance to doing business in Iraq, no other issue was raised more vehemently than the difficulty in obtaining U.S. visas. Both American businesses and Iraqis spoke at length about the negative impact the cumbersome visa process was having on investment and educational exchanges. One Iraqi complained of a rising cardiologist having to turn down a fully-sponsored invitation to the American Cardiologist Association meeting in Florida because he was invited with less than a four month window. 6. The Health Attache explained the visa process and encouraged attendees to plan their travel to the U.S. well in advance. While the group appreciated the various checks built into the visa processing system, they were ‘sad to see that U.S. policies are preventing U.S. businesses from investing in Iraq’ and

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noted that European countries, which issue visas to Iraqis in approximately two weeks, were ‘running over’ American businesses. A group of conference participants are currently in the process of mobilizing support from Congressional leaders to ask the Department to reexamine Iraqi visa regulations. The business representatives contended that improving the visa process has the potential of saving many small American businesses, which lose from foreign competitors who are able to host Iraqis in their countries. 7. WAY AHEAD THROUGH U.S.-IRAQI PARTNERSHIPS. The Health Attache and NEA/I Desk Officer met with a prominent Iraqi cardiologist who has been responsible for overseeing a physician exchange partnership funded by the United Kingdom’s Department of Health. Dr. Hillal Shawki shared in great detail the implementation process of this successful exchange program, which in two years has trained 400 Iraqi medical professionals in the United Kingdom for $9 million. This program includes rigorous selection criteria and a strong monitoring and evaluation component carried out by Dr. Shawki and a group of volunteers from Iraq’s medical and higher education professional cadre. As part of the eight week observerships, participation includes courses on Change Management and Clinical Observation. Dr. Shawki believed this successful UK model could be replicated by the U.S. as a joint commitment under the Strategic Framework Agreement. Dr. Shawki encouraged the U.S. to implement programs that would help ‘win the battle of trust’ by regaining the ‘hearts and minds’ of the educated middle class which can influence younger generations. 8. COMMENT. Despite security concerns, conference participants agreed that Iraq provides an excellent medical business market worth several hundred million dollars each year, and this is a critical time for businesses to enter the market. As Iraq rebuilds its healthcare infrastructure, the MOH will need to make significant investments in businesses and systems to meet its public health needs. In addition, health diplomacy through increased medical exchanges will become an effective tool at ‘winning the heart and minds’ of the educated middle-class Iraqis. This conference, initiated and funded by the MOH, is reflective of an Iraqi Ministry actively seeking willing partners to advance its strategic goals. In recent months, we have increasingly registered louder frustrations by Iraqis and American investors on the visa process in this and other fora; this will continue to be a thorny issue as Iraq opens up for business throughout all its sectors, and travel to the U.S. becomes a key component of bilateral exchanges. As Iraq’s health sector continues to develop its investments and reforms, we will remain engaged in our programs and foreign assistance in healthcare programs with a focus on maintaining stability and further improving service delivery.

About the Authors Mehmed Ali served as a Cultural Affairs Specialist at the US Embassy Baghdad from 2008 to 2012 where he oversaw numerous cultural heritage and development projects. Mehmed has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from the University of Hawai’i and his doctorate in history from the University of Connecticut. A veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and formerly assigned as a diplomat to the US Embassy in Afghanistan, he currently serves as the City Historian of Lowell, Massachusetts. Matthew Chambers is an assistant professor at the Department of American Studies and Media at the University of Lodz, Poland, where he also serves on the editorial board of the International Studies: Interdisciplinary Political and Cultural Journal (University of Lodz). He has published a monograph on modernism and cultural poetics. His current research investigates the interrelationship between the humanities, NGOs, and governmental institutions, specifically organizations such as PEN International, UNESCO, and Amnesty International. Michael C. Davies is currently a freelance researcher and editor. Most recently, he was a Research Analyst with the Center for Complex Operations at the U.S. National Defense University (NDU) in Washington, DC, independently contracted through Old Dominion University to study the U.S. Department of Defense’s Civilian Expeditionary Workforce. He has previously been an Adjunct Research Fellow with the Center for Strategic Research and the Contributing Editor for the Center for Technology and National Security Policy at NDU. He is one of the coauthors of Human Terrain Teams: An Organizational Innovation for Sociocultural Knowledge in Irregular Warfare, and co-edited Changing Mindsets to Transform Security: Leader Development for a Complex and Unpredictable World. He is one of the progenitors of the Human Domain concept for the U.S. Strategic Landpower Task Force. He studied at the Australian National University receiving a Master of Strategic Affairs at the Strategic and Defense Studies Center and a B.A. in International Relations and Political Science. Yasmin Djabarian is an American Studies PhD student at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and a PhD fellow of the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes). She studied at Johannes Gutenberg University

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Mainz (M.A. 2012), American University in Washington, DC, and Georgia State University in Atlanta. Her research interests include U.S. public diplomacy and soft power, U.S. international broadcasting to Iran, and the American self-image. Robert Eldridge is a 26-year resident of Japan and a former tenured associate professor of Japanese Political and Diplomatic History at the Graduate School of International Public Policy, Osaka University. He is the author of dozens of books and hundreds of articles and commentaries on U.S.-Japan relations. He served as the Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff, G-7 (Government and External Affairs), Marine Corps Installations Pacific, as well as the political and public diplomacy advisor to the command, from September 2009-April 2015, during which time he was also a visiting researcher at Okinawa International University in Ginowan City, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, and a visiting researcher at the Institute for International Policy Studies in Tokyo. He served as the political advisor to the forward command element of U.S. Forces Japan during Operation Tomodachi. He became the president of an Okinawan-based think tank in May 2015. Serena Fusco teaches Comparative Literature at the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’, and has extensive experience in the field of international education. She is the author of Incorporations of Chineseness: Hybridity, Bodies, and Chinese American Literature (2016). Her research work is transcontinental and multilingual in scope and centers on Asian and Chinese America, globalization, photography and intermediality, international education as cultural and literary trope, and more generally on the circulation of tropes that have a high level of crosscultural and metacultural potential. Natalia Grincheva is a PhD researcher in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture (CISSC) at Concordia University. Her doctoral research encompasses new museology, cultural diplomacy, and social media. Her project focuses on the use of social media in museums’ international outreach and diplomatic activities and aims to evaluate the impact of cultural diplomacy programs implemented online within a museum context. Natalia is a holder of several prestigious international academic awards including the Fulbright Scholarship (2007–2010), Quebec Fund Fellowship for Research on Society and Culture (2011–2013), Australian Endeavour Research Fellowship (2012–2013), and others. Her most recent publication, ‘ ‘Psychopower’ of Cultural Diplomacy in the Information Age’, published by the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, received Digital Humanities Award for the best 2013 short publication.

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Karyn Hollis is an associate professor in the English Department at Villanova University where she directs the Concentration in Writing and Rhetoric and is acting director of the Cultural Studies Program. Her research projects include discursive analysis of Wikileaks cables, the relationship between new forms of media and social activism in the case of worker co-ops in the US and abroad, and the history of gendered discursive practice. She has published Liberating Voices: Writing at the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers (2004), which was supported by a year-long research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. More recently she published an anthology with Silvia Nagy-Zekmi, Ph.D., entitled, Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals In and Out of Academe. A further volume, Global Academe: Engaging Intellectual Discourse, was published in December of 2011. She also teaches in Villanova’s Latin American Studies Program and has published Poesía del Pueblo para el Pueblo: Talleres Nicaragüenses de Poesía on the poetry workshop movement in Nicaragua (1991). Tess Lea is Chair of the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, the University of Sydney. An anthropologist who specializes in organizational ethnography and the anthropology of settler colonial policy, her most recent book, Darwin (NewSouth Books, 2014), tells the changing social history of this frontier garrison town. Juan Luis Manfredi Sánchez is Senior Lecturer at the University of Castilla-La Mancha and teaches International Communication and Media Policy, and Associated Researcher at Real Instituto Elcano, a leading Spanish think tank. For the last three years, he has been in charge of ‘Network Diplomacy’, the Spanish MFA course to revamp diplomacy in the digital age. Manfredi is the editor of Challenges of Our External Action: Public Diplomacy and Marca España, a playbook designed to support digital transformation. Stuart Rollo is a writer and essayist focusing on Asia-Pacific politics, international security, and Australian national affairs. He is currently working at Sydney University on a research project dealing with strategic minerals, imperial resources, and international politics. Eunice Castro Seixas holds a PhD in sociology (from the Faculty of Economics, Center of Social Studies (CES), University of Coimbra, Portugal), a Master in social psychology and a degree in health psychology (the latter by the Faculty of Psychology and Sciences of Education – FPCE, of the University of Porto, Portugal). She is

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currently working as a research assistant at CIPSI (Center of Research in Psychology), School of Psychology, University of Minho, Campus of Gualtar. She was a Post-Doctoral Scholar in CIS-IUL, Lisbon, Portugal. She was also a researcher at the Communication and Society Research Center (CECS) at the University of Minho, Portugal. Her current research interests include: global governance, democratization, civil society, peacebuilding, environmental governance, climate change governance, citizen engagement with environmental issues, higher education studies, discourse analysis, critical theories, postcolonial and decolonial theories.

AMERICAN STUDIES AND MEDIA

4 This volume looks at a key component of recent US foreign relations, namely, its emphasis on “hearts and minds” as part of its cultural management of the global Other. The authors collected here analyze to what extent we can frame the intent and consequences of this term as a coherent policy, discussing how to think about foreign policy strategies that involve the management of cultural relations.

Edited by Elżbieta H. Oleksy and Wiesław Oleksy

AND MEDIA

www.peterlang.com

US Cultural Management in 21st Century Foreign Relations

AND

Hearts and Minds

STUDIES

STUDIES

Matthew Chambers is Assistant Professor at the Department of American Studies and Mass Media, University of Łód´z, Poland. He has published a monograph on modernism and cultural poetics.

Matthew Chambers (ed.) · Hearts and Minds

“This fascinating collection reveals the nuance and complexity behind a seemingly banal phrase.” Professor David Schmid, State University of New York at Buffalo

Matthew Chambers (ed.)

AMERICAN

AMERICAN

“Including fascinating first-hand and deeply-researched accounts of the workings of various US institutions (many of them ‘cultural’), this volume is a must for an understanding of the power the US projects worldwide.” Professor Laleh Khalili, SOAS University of London

MEDIA

Volume 4