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  • “Waging Peace”:A New Paradigm for Public Diplomacy
  • Karen P. Hughes (bio)

The challenging times that we face around the world today demand a new post–Cold War paradigm for public diplomacy. The way people communicate and access information in today's world is rapidly changing, so our diplomatic efforts are adjusting to meet the times.

When people talk about the contest of ideas in the twenty-first century, the comparison often is made to the Cold War. That was the era when broadcast services like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe were launched to promote democratic values by broadcasting information and ideas to people behind the Iron Curtain.

But today's communications environment is dramatically different. When I started my career in television back in the mid-1970s in Dallas-Fort Worth, one of my first jobs as an intern at the TV station was to make what was called "the meet." Making the meet required a person to get in a car in Dallas and drive halfway to Fort Worth on the freeway in order to meet a person who had driven by car from Forth Worth, so film could be transferred by hand to take back to Fort Worth for processing for that night's news. Within a year, the meet was totally irrelevant because we'd gone digital and electronic. When I served as communications director during President Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, I didn't have a BlackBerry. By 2004, I couldn't imagine how you would participate in a campaign without a BlackBerry.

So the technology has changed and the political landscape has changed. In the Cold War, we were primarily trying to get information into largely closed societies where people were hungry for that information. But that remains [End Page 18] the case in only a very few places in the world. People are not sitting around waiting eagerly to hear from America anymore. Today we are competing for audiences in a very crowded communications environment. In the Middle East, for example, people have a choice of more than 260 satellite television networks. Look across the rooftops in Cairo and you will see an array of shiny new satellite dishes. Most people in the broader Middle East have access to the Internet at cybercafés, if not in homes or offices.

Today the United States must compete for attention and for credibility. We must reach the grandchildren of the World War II generation and their children. Sometimes governments have a hard time keeping up with such dramatic changes, but a new US architecture for public diplomacy has been steadily evolving. Today's public diplomacy has to be rapid, it has to be global, it has to be multimedia, it has to be people-centric, and it has to be a team effort because all of us are involved in painting a very complex tapestry that is the picture of America across the world.

I like to describe that new diplomatic paradigm as "waging peace"—reaching out to the rest of the world in a spirit of respect and partnership. President Dwight Eisenhower used that phrase as the title of the memoir about his second term, and it seems appropriate for this era of bridge building as well.

Three strategic priorities are guiding all our public diplomacy programs: First, America must continue to offer people across the world a positive vision of hope that is rooted in our deepest values, our belief in liberty, in justice, in opportunity, in respect for all. I saw an interview of a young man in Morocco who was asked, "What do you think when you think of America?" And he said, "For me, America represents the hope of a better life." Our country must continue to be that beacon of hope, that shining city on a hill that President Ronald Reagan talked about so eloquently. That's why we speak out for democracy and against human-rights offenders, for a free press and against those who would stifle religious freedom, for equal treatment for women and minorities and against sex trafficking, because America believes that every person has worth and dignity and value, and we proudly stand...

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