On the left is the meteor crater near Winslow, Arizona. Nature can make big footprints on its own.
I read an interesting article re environmental footprints. The author makes a good point that has long concerned me. The idea of an environmental (or carbon) footprint strongly implies that humans are fundamentally bad and that the best we can do limit the damage we create. Environmentalism has become a religion for some people and this “footprint” idea is the equivalent of original sin. Unfortunately, in this new religion there is no way to salvation. It is a pernicious & narcissistic viewpoint, in that it paralyses action. Those espousing it get to feel superior and in their narrow minds the notion that people are just a blight on the environment removes the responsibility any proactive duties.
Humans are in nature; humans are of nature and humans are part of nature. This is THE truth, not merely a truth and we should just acknowledge it because the silly pretense that we can make a clear separation between man and nature is destructive to both the environment and the humans that live in it. On the other hand, if we recognize the reality of the situation, we can make things better all around.
Below is a secondary growth forest near the Milwaukee airport
Ignoring environmental progress is irresponsible and all those ticking doomsday clocks are dishonest. Making good choices requires an accurate assessment of conditions, not one that is too optimistic, but also not one that is unjustifiably gloomy. The American environment is cleaner now than it was ten years ago. It is a lot cleaner than it was a generation ago and it will be cleaner still in the future. It is fashionable to focus on the failures and ignore the massive success. This is an example of the pseudo-religious aspects of environmentalism.
Below is a traditional Navajo lodge. Pre-industrial life was no picnic … maybe it was – all the time.
No matter how much some peculiar people claim to speak for or to Animals, trees, rocks etc, they are speaking to and as humans. The earth is not sentient. If it were, it would be hopelessly cruel. There was no life on earth at all for most of the planet’s existence and after that life suffered several mass extinctions well before the advent of humans. The dinosaurs went extinct at the end of the Mesozoic era. The Paleozoic extinction wiped out 90% of the species on earth and there were many others. And none of them mattered because there was nobody around who knew or cared. The current health of the earth matters a lot to us but all the judgments depend on human emotions and intelligence. There will come a time when the earth no longer supports human life. The earth will be no better or worse off. Nature doesn’t have a plan. Natural communities are complex and beautiful to US. They matter to US. I love nature but I know that my love is unrequited.
Below is Austin St in Milwaukee. The ash trees were planted in the middle of the 1970s.
Below same street in 1949. The little trees are elms that died in the early 1970s, so this is now the second growth. The guys standing there, BTW, are my father and my grandpa Haase.
That is what leads me to blasphemy against the environmental religion that I am about to voice. Man can improve on nature. I am not saying that we usually do. There are plenty of examples of human greed and rapaciousness. But sustainable development is indeed possible. We can simultaneously make conditions better for humans and do so in an environmentally responsible way. The good news is that the bad news is wrong.
Tree farming is an excellent example of a human activity that produces useful products while sustaining and improving the environment. It wasn’t always like that. Timbering used to be very destructive and it still is in many parts of the world. But here in Virginia, it is now sustainable and if fact improves the environment in terms of making the water cleaner, removing pollution from the air and providing wildlife habitat. This is a tremendously hopeful development. What is possible in forestry is possible in other industries.
Below is a Colorado pasture, very beautiful, sustainable & natural looking but very much the result of human intervention and domestic animals.
In the long run, we cannot address our environmental challenges by turning down thermostats, doing w/o things we need or by not allowing economic development. And we certainly cannot make progress if we stupidly deny that progress is possible. We have to be smarter and we can be. A working forest in Virginia today is nearly twice as productive as it was 100 years ago in terms of the wood it produces per year, but it goes much beyond that. It is also better for the soil than it was, better for the wildlife, kinder to the water resources and in the course of production more attractive. It is a win all around, by everything we can measure. We can use forest land to absorb municipal waste in an environmentally sustainable fashion.
Below is Albert Einstein statue at National Academy of Sciences.
Does it really make any sense to talk about “footprints?” That assumes a one-way relationship, which is just not reflective of reality. All of us consume wealth & resources but most of us also create them. Humans come into the world with mouths to feed and various needs to meet. But they also come with hands to work and – more importantly – brains to think. Sometimes they figure out how to make things better.
You used to have to travel to get special things. It used to be fun to shop at the duty free shops. Globalization has changed all that. Now in America you can get almost anything from almost anywhere. There are loses that go with this gain of globalization and diversity. It takes a lot of the fun out of discovery when you discover the same stuff wherever you go.
There are still some things that you can’t get easily even in America. These are mostly things that don’t travel well. Bread is a good example. Bread must be baked locally and I have never been able to find European quality bread in the U.S. I don’t really understand why that should be the case, but it is. Cheese and sausages are also like that. Sausage made in Milwaukee is better than the Euro variety, except for salami. French soft cheese is better than the same varieties in the U.S. We also make great hard cheeses and these travel well. Not so the soft varieties, IMO. A Frenchman once told me that it was because of American health regulations and practices. We require a level of sanitation that is beyond actual health requirements and some of the good flavors come from types of “impurities”. The same goes for Polish ham. Ham tastes better when the pigs get a variety of food, i.e. slop.
It used to be that beer didn’t travel well, but modern packaging has changed that. Good tap beer is still a local pleasure, however. I think that comes more from the psychological aspects than reality. Although I doubt I could pass a blind taste test, the same beer tastes better in pleasant surroundings served in the right kind of glass.
They have a unique kind of vodka in Poland called Zubrowka. It is what you see in the picture. It is named after the bison that lives in the forests of Eastern Poland and it has a piece of grass and some herbs that give it its special flavor. Some people like to mix it with apple juice; I just like to drink it straight and cold.
Zubrowka is hard to come by in the U.S. I guess globalization doesn’t work for everything. A Polish friend brought me this bottle.
The Polish bison has an interesting story. They were wiped out in the wild early in the 20th Century, but restored with stock from zoos in Sweden & Germany and reintroduced into Bialowieza, the biggest area of old growth deciduous forest in Europe. Bialowieza used to be completely in Poland, but the Soviets moved the border in 1939, when they and the Nazis cooperated to dismember the second Rzeczpospolita. In an odd twist of history, Hermann Goering was instrumental in protecting the bison in Eastern Poland in the Bialowieza forest during WWII. He and his fellow Nazis were more interested in animal than human rights.
I visited Bialowieza back in 2002, but didn’t see any wild bison, although they had some injured ones convalescing in a compound. I did see some semi-wild bison near Bielsko. They were more recently introduced there. The European bison is smaller than the American bison and doesn’t have the characteristic hump. (We saw a herd of American bison in the Custer National Forest in 1992. They are really magnificent animals.)
I remember the trip to Bialowieza and the really massive oak trees. The biggest ones are named after Polish kings. They are not the biggest oak trees in Poland, however. The biggest one is near Poznan. I didn’t see that one. The second biggest is near Kielce. They call it “Bartek” (the Poles name big trees) and it was supposed to be around 1200 years old, but I heard that it is “only” a little more than 600. The story is that Jan III Sobieski rested under the tree on his way back from the battle of Vienna where the Poles saved Europe from the Turks in 1683. I saw that tree in 1995. Near Raclawica, where Kusciuszko defeated the Russians in 1794 there is a big linden, under which Kusciuszko rested after the battle. A living link with the past makes history a lot more immediate. Our driver, Bogdan, knew I liked trees and he took me to these sorts of places on the way to programs in other cities. He was a great guy, who knew the countryside. Those were the days before I kept a blog or took digital photos. It is a pity not to have a record.
About a week ago, somebody sent a couple blank email messages to a large number of State Department recipients, me included. I supposed it was a mistake and deleted them. Most people did the same, but not everybody. Dozens of our cognitively challenged colleagues insist on sending “reply to all” messages complaining about getting messages. I suspect there is more than just stupidity at work. My latest is from an ambassador who evidently is affronted that he cannot turn off the flow with a wave of his mighty hand. It goes to show that high intelligence and high position do not always correspond perfectly.
A couple messages created dozens more and are still creating them. Some fool always wants to get in the last word. Maybe some sociologists can understand this. I can’t. I just keep on deleting them.
I want to write back on email to these idiots and explain the situation to them, but then I would just be among them. I just have to get this frustration over with, so I am putting it here on the blog. If anybody who responded to all in this recent email chain is reading this (and you know who you are) please understand that you are too stupid to be allowed to use Internet. Turn off your computer and go away. I know that it is unlikely that any of my readers are in this group, but I am sure we have all suffered from this sort of thing.
Today was bright and cool with a persistent west wind. I am still working on the CENTCOM assessment and getting sick of it. Actually, I am just anxious to get to my ordinary job. That is what I signed up to do and there are many places where I think I can add value … once I get to focus on it.
I don’t have anything good to write today, but I did walk from HST to NDU and have pictures. I have to walk around when I have a problem to solve or a system to understand. It makes thinking easier. Man is meant to be in motion. I just don’t think clearly sitting at my desk. I can sit looking at my work for hours w/o making much progress, but if I go out and walk around I have no trouble finishing when I get back. When you are clear on what you need to do, doing it usually easy. Besides, Washington is such a beautiful city and the monuments provide a constant inspiration for anybody working for the government.
Above are sycamore trees near the WWII memorial.
Above WWII Memorial looking east.
Above is the next generation of cherry trees around the Tidal Basin near the Jefferson Memorial. In a couple of months, this place will be covered in flowers.
It rained much of yesterday and today, making the walk from L’Enfant Plaza Metro to NDU less pleasant. It is interesting to walk around SW, however. It takes around twenty five minutes from the metro to walk to the Lincoln Hall at Ft. McNair. SW is undergoing really big changes with lots of new construction. The projects are moving along ahead of schedule, since the generally bad housing and building environment has freed up a lot of construction assets.
SW is also improving since the new metros (such as Waterfront & Navy Yard) and the stadium have come on line. I have never been to the stadium and probably will never go, but lots of people like sports so it improves values. SW used to be a dangerous place to walk and there is still some crime, but less. Washington generally has improved.
I am having the various routine medical exams, the ones I neglected when in Iraq. So far, it looks good. Blood pressure is 110/80; cholesterol is 135 (thanks to Lipitor); blood sugar is okay. I had them check for Lyme disease, since I spend so much time in the woods. I don’t have it. I have the eye tests and dentists coming up, as well as that nasty test that you have to get after 50. The dentist is the worst. I didn’t take good care of my teeth when I was a kid and I have been paying for it ever since. Otherwise, I don’t get sick. My father only went to the doctor one time between when he got out of the Army in 1945 until the day he died. I don’t go that far, but it is possible to get too much medical attention. I think this will be about enough for a while.
This is the gloomiest time of the year, but spring will come soon. Besides the rain is good for the trees. Below is a very big Japanese zelkova. These trees look like American elms, but they are shorter, with a flaky bark. They were used as a replacement for the elms, but now are less in favor, as Amerian elms resistant to the Dutch elm disease are available. The prefered variety is called the Princeton elm. It has the traditional vase shape (some of the earlier generation of hybrids were gangly, runtish and unattractive) and grows around ninety feet tall, as a normal elm would. You don’t see those big ones very often anymore. The next generation will have them back. There are lots of elms planted near the Smithsonian, the White House and around the Mall. They will be superb in around twenty-five years.
Below are some young American elms at the American Indian Museum on 4th St SW.
Energy independence is neither possible nor desirable. Well … it is possible for the U.S. to become energy independent. We could do it in short order if we were willing to pay the price in terms of money and environmental degradation. The U.S. has the world’s largest reserves of coal. We have the technology to extract natural gas from oil shale in our western states. Of course, we could burn wood to heat our homes.
The best energy policy is “all of the above.” We should have a diversity of sources and a wide choice of options. We lean too heavily on oil and especially imported oil. But if we are to address this problem, it is probably a good idea to figure out how we got here.
Why do we import oil and other sources of energy? Because it is cheaper and easier than the alternatives. It is that simple. It is not the result of mistakes or stupidity. Importing cheap oil instead of using dirtier or harder to use domestic energy makes perfect sense. Except that oil is not really as cheap as it seems.
Economists talk about external costs and benefits. When I plant trees, I personally get only a part of the benefits. The cleaner air & water as well as the wildlife & aesthetic benefits are provided free to others. When I burn a gallon of gas, I personally pay only part of the cost. The air pollution & CO2 are part of the cost I impose on others. But oil has other costs.
It seems like something of a divine joke that so much of the world’s easily accessed oil lies near or under unstable countries run by despots or other nasties that are not particularly attached to the values we hold dear. It is just not smart to be too dependent on these sorts. Oil to despots is like steroids to petty thugs. It makes them bigger. What kind of threat would Saddam have been w/o oil? He would have been a pissant dictator like Robert Mugabe – a very bad man, but just a local menace. W/o the wealth poured in by oil, most of today’s terrorists would be neighborhood bandits. W/o oil, Hugo would be a second class stand-up comic.
Anyway, a gallon of gas would cost a lot more if it included more of the expenses associated with its provision & protection, the costs of encouraging despots and terrorists as well as the pollution and CO2 it produces. I will say again, that while I am not a big believer in raising taxes, I believe in taxing gas, or more precisely carbon. This has many good knock off effects.
As I mentioned above, we burn gas for good & logical reasons. It is cheaper and easier than the alternatives. You cannot convince most people to use less gas or switch to alternatives because using gas makes sense. Many alternative fuel enthusiasts seem not to understand this and persist in thinking that they just need to explain things to the ignorant fossil fuel users. Maybe just a few more public service adverts will do the trick – not.
If you want to change the fuel mix, you have to change the incentives. Nothing works faster than price, as we saw in 2006, when gasoline consumption declined and U.S. CO2 emissions overall actually dropped. This is the first time this ever happened in a time of robust economic growth. Higher oil prices are an automatic stimulus to alternatives. Alternatives that are money losers when oil is $40, suddenly look really good when oil reaches $80. We are now seeing the reverse begin to set in as the price of gas plummets. Already drivers are putting on more miles and looking at those bigger cars and SUVs.
We have a another big chance to make a dent in the oil addiction, make our air cleaner, encourage alternatives and screw some international bad guys. If we blow it, this will be the third time. In the middle 1980s, the price of oil dropped and wiped out lots of alternative investments. In 1998, oil was at an all time low in dollars adjusted for inflation. Instead of taking advantage, we bought the big SUVs. A year ago, experts told us that we would never again see cheap oil. They were wrong. Let’s make sure not to fall into that cheap oil trap again.
We really cannot have cheap oil in the long run. The only real question is whether we pay it in American taxes and stabilize prices to some extent or pay to oil producers and tolerate wild swings that preclude the development of viable alternatives and enrich and corrupt people who don’t like us. Let’s not make Hugo, Vlad and Mahmoud any happier than necessary. Opportunities don’t last forever. This one won’t last very long.
The New Year season is a time for reflection. I have been thinking a lot about the new communication technologies and my job. I know this is boring to some/most of the people reading this, and I know that I am being repetitive, but I still don’t have this sorted out in my own mind.
Decisions are easy when values and priorities are clear. The hard part is figuring them out.
I got along well with Internet in its early incarnations. It fulfilled dreams of my youth. They were nerdy dreams, I admit. I dreamed of a comprehensive searchable data base that could answer all my questions if I posed them correctly. We got it. I wanted easy access to the accumulated knowledge of mankind. We got that too. I dreamed of instant communications networks to pass new ideas. Got it.
My dreams were myopic, just projections and amplifications of what I already knew. But the world doesn’t stop and innovations spawn unexpected changes. The Internet shot clean past my slow moving dreams.
Internet revolutionized the pursuit of knowledge in mostly good ways. You can find out almost anything you want to know and connectedness of the web is increasing scientific and practical knowledge immensely. Knowledge and politics, however, don’t always intersect. Metastasizing politics on the Internet has been less a good thing. Let me clarify with an example.
Blogs made it possible to write about your opinions and experience and easily publish it for others to read and comment. This is just an old technique adapted to new technologies. It is kind of the Federalist Papers on steroids; a quicker marketplace of ideas, this I like. But it didn’t stay on that high plane very long. The messages slid downhill and became shorter and more vitriolic.
The blogosphere and cyberspace in general experienced a kind of evolution, where selection favored the nastiest and the most extreme. Rather than a universe of ideas, it debauched into a multiverse of pseudo-intellectual hostility. Many of the online communities became intolerantly self-policing, driving out anybody with divergent views and in the process increasingly coarsening the rhetoric. Too many online communities became autoerotic circles of hatred, where participants confirmed each other’s prejudices, sharpened their collective teeth, and pulled their groups farther out of the mainstream. We often cannot persuade or be persuaded by others because we occupy completely different dimensions.
There used to be a saying that you are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts. The new media has developed different fact-universes, each with its own specific sets. This is a challenge and it gets worse.
Now we have all the interactive systems, the Facebooks etc, Twitter as well as interactive gaming. I just don’t know what to do with them. I am not sure it is possible for government based public affairs (i.e. someone in my job) to use these technologies because they are so labor intensive and the messages so often intensely idiosyncratic.
Consider the strengths and weaknesses of a government information operation. My job is to explain the U.S. and U.S. policies to people in other countries. In what we see in retrospect as the golden age (it didn’t seem that back then), we had certain advantages. Most important was that government had a monopoly over some sorts of information, but there were other structural advantages. The technologies favored the one speaker to many listeners paradigm, so a relatively small number of writers could reach a large number of readers/listeners/viewers. Beyond that, our enemies were easy to identify and possible to count. The Soviets produced a lot of deceitful propaganda, but we could usually find the return address if we looked hard enough.
None of this is true anymore. The government no longer has information dominance and is often not the first or the best source even of things about its own activities. The information market has splintered into millions of pieces and our adversaries are harder to identify. Essentially, we went from a situation with one big and dangerous bad guy (or a couple of them) to a world where there are thousands of little ones. The dragon has been replaced by insects, each one inconsequential, but collectively heavier and more intractable. And they are more quickly adaptive to changing circumstances. You could always expect the Soviets to be slow and ponderous, not so our new adversaries.
When it was one-to-many communications, we happy few at State or USIA had a chance to move the communication needle. In the one-to-dozens communication environment, we just don’t have enough people and never will. We can get the occasional “viral” hit, but not with any predictability.
I think we still have a chance. The Internet is starved for content. We can produce content and/or pictures. We can also build relationships that might leverage to larger populations. We can succeed, but I am worried that we will not. I am also worried that I cannot go along on this ride. I have been in this business for a quarter century, but I am afraid I might have reached a river I cannot cross. I have always believed that with the proper tools and permission, I could make a difference and sometimes I have succeeded. I have not always had the means, but I always had the vision, at least I thought I did.
My vision is now failing with the newest technologies. I can understand how something like Twitter can be used to organize a demonstration, communicate sports scores or stock averages, or help maintain an existing social network, but I cannot figure out how we can pass the nuanced explanation of policy over these sorts of networks, nor can I see a way that government officials like me and my colleagues make ourselves trusted participants in enough social networks to make a significant impact. I can understand the theoretical potential for online communities, but cannot stand the profound lameness of “worlds” like Second Life and I cannot figure out its wider impact. It is a big world out there and our efforts may just be a p*ss in the ocean.
This worries me. I don’t know whether it cannot be done in general or if it is just ME that cannot do it. I have a responsibility to add value and I always promised myself that I would not hang around after I outlived my usefulness. I don’t want to try to apply yesterday’s solutions to tomorrow’s problems. It is funny how things come in circles. I am having the equivalent of adolescent angst at my age.
I guess I will figure it out, or more correctly I will find people who have figured it out to work with me. I really don’t understand much of anything, but I have always had the good fortune to find people who do and I have been able to bring out their talents. I add value the old fashioned way – through good people. Maybe the old tricks still work for the old dog. When I cannot do that anymore I will go quietly into that good night – someday, but probably not today. I still have a lot of thinking to do.
There is trouble in Gaza again. Like so many other places around the Middle East, the longest time of sustained peace and prosperity came courtesy of the Romans. Under the Roman Empire, Gaza enjoyed six centuries of peace and prosperity.
Above – This is in Amman. In Roman times it was called Philadelphia. This is the marketplace where merchants met and scholars discussed.
At that time, the inhabitants spoke Greek and the city was a center of culture, known for its sophistication and love of the ancient customs. Probably for that reason, Gaza remained pagan longer than many other cities. It didn’t become Christian until the middle of the fourth Century.
Anyway, the point is that Gaza is not naturally a terrible place. If Hamas would wise up, it could be a nice place to live, as it was when it was under better management for six centuries during the Roman times. Too bad the Romans are no longer in the business. Please see this link for our visit to the Roman city of Jarash.
It reminds me of Monty Python, when the militants ask “What have the Romans ever done for us?”
From “Monty Python’s Life of Brian”
Reg: They’ve bled us white, the bastards. They’ve taken everything we had, not just from us, from our fathers and from our fathers’ fathers. Stan: And from our fathers’ fathers’ fathers. Reg: Yes. Stan: And from our fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ fathers. Reg: All right, Stan. Don’t labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return? Xerxes: The aqueduct. Reg: Oh yeah, yeah they gave us that. Yeah. That’s true. Masked Activist: And the sanitation! Stan: Oh yes… sanitation, Reg, you remember what the city used to be like. Reg: All right, I’ll grant you that the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done… Matthias: And the roads… Reg: (sharply) Well yes obviously the roads… the roads go without saying. But apart from the aqueduct, the sanitation and the roads… Another Masked Activist: Irrigation… Other Masked Voices: Medicine… Education… Health… Reg: Yes… all right, fair enough… Activist Near Front: And the wine… Omnes: Oh yes! True! Francis: Yeah. That’s something we’d really miss if the Romans left, Reg. Masked Activist at Back: Public baths! Stan: And it’s safe to walk in the streets at night now. Francis: Yes, they certainly know how to keep order… (general nodding)… let’s face it, they’re the only ones who could in a place like this. (more general murmurs of agreement) Reg: All right… all right… but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order… what have the Romans done for us? Xerxes: Brought peace! Reg: (very angry, he’s not having a good meeting at all) What!? Oh… (scornfully) Peace, yes… shut up!
BTW – The ancient Middle East was nothing like the modern one. First off, there were almost no Arabs. Around the coast, most people were Greek, at least in language and outlook. In Egypt the upper classes spoke Greek and had a Hellenistic culture, while the common people lived a lot like they had under the pharaohs. Inland in much of what is now Israel, Jordan and Iraq, people spoke Aramaic. This was the language had been a common language of the Persian Empire. There were many nationalities in the region, but Arabs were not prominent among them at this time. Arabs arrived in the 7th Century, when they conquered those places from the Roman (Byzantine) rulers.
The Arab conquest is one of the great historical anomalies. They came just at the right time. The Byzantine Empire had just finished a long and mutually exhausting war with the Persians. Either of these great Empires could have dispatched the Arab raiders at almost any other time, but in these particular decades they were weakened. The Byzantines also had a schism problem. The Christians of Egypt and Syria had a doctrinal dispute with the Christians in Constantinople. In other words, the armies of the prophet came upon a weakened and divided empire. Such is the role of chance in history.
No matter how it happened, it is truly astonishing to anybody who studied ancient history to contemplate the complete transformation and in many cases destruction of the ancient cultures of the region. A thousand years of Greek culture was submerged in a couple of decades. It was a much more complete change than happened in the West, where the lands of the Western Roman Empire still speak languages descended from Latin and still have cultures that can be traced to their ancient heritage. Northern Africa, which is now Libya, Algeria and Tunisia, were very Roman, but that heritage is gone.
I think some of it has to do with the natural environment. Barbarian invasions in places like France or Italy destroyed much of the infrastructure of civilization, but the environment was more forgiving. Ancient cities could grow back as times improved. Roman and Greek cities in the arid places like the Middle East or North Africa were more dependent on the engineering infrastructure. The Arabs invaders in the south and the Germans in the north were all interested in taking the riches of the Roman Empire, but didn’t really understand the complexities of making it work.
When the Roman engineers died off or left their work, and no new ones were trained, the great aqueducts broke down. This didn’t happen all at once, but in the course of some years, the knowledge was lost. In the areas of the German conquests, natural rainfall allowed a fall back. Not so in the more arid regions. That is why you see those Roman cities in the middle of the deserts. The Romans knew how to make these places productive.
I went to see the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace. It is not as good, IMO, as the old Bond movies because Bond has lost his edge, or more correctly, the rest of us have caught up. In one scene, Bond calls back to his HQ for a name check. After a couple seconds, the super spy commuter comes up with a picture of the miscreant. Very impressive, but you or I could come up with the same result on Google Images in around 0.9 seconds. Bond would have been better off just using his I-Phone himself. This is the new world of communications.
Web 2.0/PD 2.0
Initial use of the web for public diplomacy and strategic communications involved online versions of familiar delivery methods, such as magazines, radio and television. Despite vast differences among them, all these shared the paradigm of one-way communications, where a set message was delivered to a passive audience in a one speaker to many recipients model. It ignored the web’s special capacity for interaction. Web 2.0 refers to the way the web has changed the nature of communications, making it interactive, more fluid and less centrally organized. Last year, Internet passed newspapers as a source of news in the U.S. For young people Internet is beginning to rival television. [1] This new world can make many people in governments or powerful institutions uncomfortable, since it signals a diminution of their power over information and a dilution of their messages.
We tend to focus on the instant communication aspect of the Internet, but the sinews of its influence are its capacity to find, sort and distribute information. Powerful search engines give individuals the power enjoyed only by world leaders few decades ago and before that time by nobody at all. Governments have lost what monopolies they once enjoyed and are now sometimes not even the most prominent voices. Controlling information is no longer possible. On the other hand, there is a greater opportunity for engagement to harness the power of the nation and the wisdom of the crowds to produce better and more robust products. There is no option of ignoring the development. Internet users demand a degree of interactivity and accept a measure of ambiguity unpredicted a decade ago. These trends will accelerate as the first generation of digital natives (i.e. kids who don’t remember a world w/o Internet) has reached adulthood. This is the new world of communications. Whether we are ready or not, the future has already arrived.
Interactivity and interrelations
The two concepts to keep in mind are interactivity and interrelatedness. The first concept is more obvious but the second is more pervasive. Internet users ostensibly love the possibility of interactivity, but most don’t use it to an extent commensurate with their stated preferences. On any blog, there are dozens, hundreds or thousands of “lurkers” for every active participant. On the other hand, interrelatedness represents the fundamental power of the Internet and its search engines. It is the interrelatedness – the unexpected relationships – that makes the Internet such a wonderful and terrible place to do public affairs. Some say the web provides a venue for the best and the brightest to share ideas w/o the constraints of status or station; others contend it is a place where peculiar people congregate to accrete one dumb notion on top of another. Both points of view are correct. The medium of free and often anonymous exchange produces the best and the worst as it emphasizes people on the long tails of the normal distribution.
Mass customization
The ubiquity and interactive aspects of Web 2.0 offer public diplomacy the possibility of direct engagement with thousands of individuals on a global scale. We can bypass the state run media and the various despotic gatekeepers that have long hounded the quest for truth & knowledge. In the exchange, however, we get a world of constant change, requiring flexibility and creativity, where you have to earn attention again and again every day. The interactivity means just what the word says. When we are trying to influence others, we need to open the possibility of being influenced by them. In a free marketplace of ideas, this would be all to the good. It would produce a synergy greater than the sum of the parts. The caveat is that this marketplace of ideas is not as free and open as it would appear.
Our own presence in the mix is the first sign of a constrained freedom. Although our opponents disagree, our activities are generally benign and broadly truthful. The USG is constrained to tell the truth by its own rules as well as the continual monitoring by our own free media, interests groups and political leaders in opposition. For the most part, we are probably too timid in the defense of our positions. Not so our adversaries. Most of them are heavy handed and incompetent peddlers of web influence, but there are so many out there that some get it right sometimes and others get it right a lot. When it works for them, their campaign is based on plausible lies, ones that play to stereotypes and prejudice, and often based on caricatures and exaggerations of our own real and verifiable mistakes and missteps. In a world where significant numbers of people doubt that there was ever a moon landing and where in communities where majorities don’t think Arabs were responsible for the 9/11 attacks, conspiracy theories go a long way. And the U.S. is probably the single biggest victim of conspiracy theories. In a world often driven by dispersed impersonal forces, people look for someone to blame. The U.S. is always there for that purpose.
Countering conspiracy theories with facts and information is futile. Most conspiracy theories have a built in defense against such quaint ideas as truth or fact. They are, after all based on “hidden,” “denied,” “secret,” or “occult” information. True believers in conspiracies derive significant personal status and feelings of self worth from the idea that they know things overlooked by or kept from the masses of people. It is a true Gnosticism. As they see it, any counter arguments are merely examples of clever attempts to discredit them. We have to recognize that some people are incurable conspiracy theory believers. Others are susceptible to the contagion, but can be cured, but through relationships, not information alone. A trusted and credible source of the information is what makes the difference. Web 2.0 provides the opportunity to create such relationships.
In a New World Where Nobody is Well-Loved
We also need to recognize that the constant vetting and finding of flaws, even when done honestly, will create a permanent state of dissatisfaction among large numbers of people. This is what happens when campaigns go negative and it is just easier to go negative than to defend a positive position. The U.S., as the most ubiquitous presence in the history of the world, will naturally come under the most scrutiny, fair and foul, but it is a general trend that affects everybody. The good new in this is that it applies to our adversaries as well as to ourselves. Al Qaeda’s popularity has also plummeted in recent years among Muslims, for example. [2]
Insiders & Outsiders
Internet 2.0 will strengthen “tribes” as people can go online to find others with whom they identify even across great geographical distances. (Of course, the tribes I am not talking about are not kinship of linage, but kinship of ideas.) This may lead to greater trust within groups, as they become more uniform and homogeneous, but also lead to a general decline in tolerance overall, since most people will be out-groups to any particular in groups. Early hopes that Internet would weave the world together in a kind of cyber age of Aquarius have been dashed against the reality of self-selection and segregation. In a mass information market, differing viewpoints must be tolerated, not so in the case of core groups of believers autoerotically communicating among themselves on the Internet. Where websites and blogs are most developed, disagreements have become sharper and more venomous. However, the impersonal/personalization of web interactions allows people with very divergent views to coexist and performs mutually beneficial transactions that would be impossible in a face-to-face world. General “approval ratings” have already become more transactional and unstable, making it even more important to discount what people tell opinion pollsters and watch what they do and get an idea of their true beliefs by their revealed preferences.
Public diplomacy and the marketing mix
The analogy of public diplomacy with marketing is far from perfect, but it provides some useful insights. When marketing a product or service, you have to understand which communications techniques are appropriate. Those useful for selling Coca-Cola are often not valuable for selling passenger jets or legal services. The same goes for public diplomacy. Our business is more analogous to selling high end legal services than consumer products. This informs and constrains our choices.
Public diplomacy involves communicating complicated concepts to people who come from a variety of backgrounds and the U.S. operates in a truly global environment. It involves long term relationship and trust building. Messages are more problematic. Some of our world audiences will react in sometimes violently different ways to the same subject. Imagine the discussion of U.S. attitudes toward same sex marriage at venues in Amsterdam and Jeddah. Aspects of the discussion popular in one venue would be odious in the other. In this interconnected world, messages cannot be neatly targeted to a discrete audience. Even more challenging is that the more extreme members of each audience will seize on the aspects they find most objectionable rather than look for areas of compatibility. This has long been a problem, but web 2.0 exacerbates it, since one blogger in an audience of hundreds can characterize a discussion for thousands of his compatriots back home.
In other words, web 2.0 has as much or more capacity to puncture and disassemble public diplomacy messages as it does to deliver them. The shorter the attention spans media, the more likely this is to be the case. Twitter with its 140 character limit is a good example. We have used Twitter successfully to send short messages and a give a “heads up” about bigger things, but it doesn’t easily lend itself to any proactive public affairs task beyond notices and reporting the equivalent of scores or stock averages. One the other hand, 140 characters is plenty of space for a slogan or attack. BTW – the last two sentences of the paragraph above had 327 characters counting spaces. These two directly above are 140 characters – exactly the right size for a tweet. Good luck with deep explanations.
So what do we do?
We look beyond or through the technology to our purpose. You cannot answer the how question until you have address they why question. Communication and relationship building is our goal. Rather than be beguiled or intimidated by technology, we simply need to keep our focus on the goal and use whatever technological tools are most appropriate. But we do need to acknowledge that changing technologies have changed the game.
Common themes not unified messages
There is much talk in public affairs about having a unified message. The new technologies, with all the links and leaks they entail in the information net, mean we can no longer have one unified centrally crafted message. We can have themes and goals that are interpreted and alerted by the individuals on the ground and closest to the challenges. We will, however, need to tolerate significant local variations on the themes and welcome the ambiguity of message delivery.
Delivering variations on the themes is much more labor intensive than cranking out a single message because rather than one voice speaking to millions (on the model of the national television program) we will have many voices speaking to thousands or maybe even to hundreds and not only varying the theme to suit particular audiences, but also responding to them and quickly responsive to changes in the environment. It is important that the theme be consistent but the delivery is protean. It requires more of a robust process than a comprehensive plan.
Set the Proper Goals for Each Situation
There are many degrees of distinction between active opposition and enthusiastic support. Americans are particularly afflicted by the desire to be loved in the world, but all that is often required is compliance or even indifference. Although outright opposition constrains our policy options, America’s image in the world has no discernible impact on the sale of U.S. goods or the acceptance of U.S. cultural products. Much of the sound and fury of anti-American prejudice signifies nothing or not very much. The fragmentation of media on the web means that those who dislike us will always have an outlet for their vitriol and they will probably be among those yelping the loudest. The majority may not have a strong opinion on a particular issue. They may voice support for our opponents, but take no steps to provide anything practical.
Military action, which by its very nature is coercive, will almost never be popular and any exercise of power, which inevitably means choosing among priorities, will annoy somebody. Since you usually get less credit for the good things you do than blame for the bad, any use of power will probably create more perceived losers than winners. (The world’s superpower is always on the hot seat. President Clinton gets blamed for not sending troops to Rwanda; President Bush is excoriated for sending troops to Iraq.) Lack of practical support for extremism and neutrality or even indifference toward our policies among the mass of a country’s people may be sufficient to accomplish our purposes. Often neutralizing or discrediting opposition will be the most appropriate tact, and Internet is well suited to this task. We should consider this on a case-by-case basis, rather than compromise practical goals by pursuing the chimera of seeking full throated outright approval.
All of the above
Using technology to communicate will be an all of the above proposition, with a cocktail of technologies usually more appropriate than reliance on any one. We will never find the Holy Grail or silver bullet of communications technology and we will never again have anything comparable to the nationwide television network where everybody is watching at the same time. The ability to reach the whole nation was a historical anomaly. Throughout most of history and in the future, the communication environment was and will be fractured. It is only because we all grew up in that unusually homogeneous media environment that we think of it as normal in any way.
The right tools
We cannot prescribe the particular technological tools for any public affairs task until we have assessed the task and the environment. What we should be looking for is synergy among the tools. For example, a live speaker is very compelling but not particularly memorable, while an internet page has the built in memory (you can refer back to it) but is unlikely to be compelling. Twitter can announce the availability of some piece of information or some event, but it cannot explain the nuances. An event might be very informative, but nobody comes unless they can be told and reminded. Obviously a combination of technologies works best, changing them to adapt to circumstances. BTW – technology is not only high tech or electronic. A technology is merely a way of doing something. A personal meeting is a kind of technology. Sometime the thousands year old technology is the way to go. We seek the right MIX of technologies, not the right ONE technology. There is no silver bullet or Holy Grail of communications. It is easy to be beguiled by the new or the latest big thing, but technology is not communication and the medium is not the message. It is only the method.
Other information is based on personal interviews with those doing public diplomacy as well as extensive personal experience working with USG webpages and blogs.
Below is the personal story from one of the blog readers about his great grandfather who came from the city of Anah. It is an interesting and tragic family history. With his permission I am posting it here. I will let professional historians sort out the connections and timelines. I just think it is worth reading and have placed it as it is.
I am going to tell you the story about my great grandfather Isaak El Eini. As I mentioned El Eini means in Arabic from Anah. The picture I am attaching is not a good picture taken in the 1930s in Khartoum, Sudan. He is the elderly man in the back alone. He was thin, tall, dark. The lady in the front was his niece whose parents had moved from Anah to Khartoum around 1900.
He was born in the 1860s. He came from a Jewish family. Anah had been a part of the ancient Babylonian Empire. The Jews had been brought over from Judea by King Nebuchadnezzar in 586BC.
Jews, Christians and Moslems lived in the town in harmony with no problems. Each in their own neighborhoods. The family were in the Caravan business. They took care of the camels, merchandise etc. Anah was an important station on the Damascus to Baghdad caravan route (it took 33 days). The caravans comprising of as many as 1,200 camels carrying textiles from Britain, sugar, tobacco, drugs etc would stop in Anah for 3 days as it was here where they would cross the Euphrates river. From Baghdad there were caravans to Basra where merchandise would continue to India and Asia by ship.
After 1888 when the Suez Canal was opened for all shipping it was quicker to transport goods by ship. This devastated the family business. So Isaak left Anah and moved to Egypt, which was prospering from the construction of the Canal. In those days there was no Iraq. It was known as Mesopotamia and like Egypt was part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire.
He moved to Aswan in southern Egypt and began trading with the tribes in the Sudan. In the late 1890s the British decided to take over the Sudan which was ruled by the Mahdi. Lord Kitchener headed the Anglo Egyptian Army. Isaak followed the army as a civilian trading with the Sudanese all the time. When they arrived in Omdurman (Khartoum) they put a siege on the city. However the siege was not working and the Mahdi was holding out.
Lord Kitchener chose Isaak to act as a spy, enter Omdurman and to pretend he was a trader who had crossed the Red Sea from Arabia. He brought many gifts to the Mahdi. In return the Mahdi gave Isaak a young boy and girl as a gift to be raised as slaves. Isaak had no choice but to accept the gift.
While in Omdurman Isaak found out that the Mahdi was holding off the siege because some Egyptian Officers were giving / selling arms to him. He left the city and gave all the information to Lord Kitchener.
Kitchener won the battle and became a hero in Britain. As a reward he gave Isaak a lot of fertile land in Omdurman. Soon later he told all his brothers and sisters to leave Anah and come live in Omdurman / Khartoum. They lived there till 1967 and became Sudanese citizens. But in 1967 when Israel and the Arabs went to war, Sudan expelled all the Jews. The family then moved to Britain and Switzerland.
Now Isaak stopped working. He lived off the land holdings and every few years he would sell some acres to live on. He was a terrible husband. and playboy. His wife lived in Cairo all the time with his only daughter Massouda, my grandmother. He would travel to Cairo about once a year to see them. It was basically like being divorced.
In his 70s he had spent all his money. In the early 1940s my father living in Cairo, heard a knock on the door and it was Isaak. He was sick and died soon afterwards.
As to the two children who were given as gifts by the Mahdi: one was a boy and the other a girl. Isaak’s wife and my grandmother raised them and sent them to school. At 16 the girl got pregnant. Because they wore long wide dresses my grandmother did not realise that she was pregnant. She tried to give birth to the baby and kill it. My grandmother rushed her to the hospital. The needle was infected and she died in the hospital; so did the baby.
The boy later got a job at a bank. His son became a very important official at the same bank.
