Phil Taylor's papers
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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE GWOT Year 5 - 2006
An Interview with John H. Brown 
Wednesday, January 11, 2006 The People's Diplomat: An Interview with John H. Brown John H. Brown performed a great service in behalf of the citizens of the United States and the rest of the world when, in March 2003, he resigned from the State Department in protest of the Bush administration's war plans against Iraq. During the build-up to the U.S. invasion, Brown, a member of the Foreign Service since 1981, joined a highly select group of courageous American diplomats who decided they could no longer work for the State Department in good conscience because of the direction of U.S. foreign policy. "The president's disregard for views in other nations, borne out by his neglect of public diplomacy, is giving birth to an anti-American century," Brown wrote in his March 10, 2003 resignation letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Brown's decision to go public with the reasons for ending his long career at the State Department - and the resignations of other senior diplomats - helped to kindle domestic opposition to the approaching war. But Brown's work since his public resignation from the State Department could prove even more important to the cause of altering the course of U.S. foreign policy. Brown, a scholar who received a Ph.D. in Russian history from Princeton University in 1977, serves as a research associate at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. He also serves as a senior fellow at the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy. One of his responsibilities in the position at USC involves aggregating recent public diplomacy-related news into a product called "John Brown's Public Diplomacy Review." The "PD Review" serves as an excellent resource for policymakers, scholars and the general public who seek to comprehend Bush administration diplomatic efforts and foreign policy initiatives. Brown also is under contract with Praeger Publishers to write a book, Propaganda and American Foreign Policy: A Historical Overview, a scholarly work that will place current U.S. government propaganda campaigns into their proper historical context. Through his lectures and writings in his post-State Department life, Brown might be discovering that a private citizen with the appropriate level of expertise and the right connections can have as much, if not more, impact on U.S. foreign policy as similarly minded members of the diplomatic corps who have opted to continue working in Foggy Bottom. Below is an email interview Press Action recently conducted with Brown. -Mark Hand -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Press Action: How did your colleagues at the State Department respond to your resignation from the Foreign Service in March 2003? John H. Brown: I was struck by the positive and supportive response. I received several hundred e-mails from persons from all walks of life, and the overwhelming majority approved of my decision. I wasn't at all upset by the reaction of a critic to my resignation, who said that it was just as well I was no longer in government service since I didn't approve of what it was doing. PA: Did your superiors at the State Department try to convince you not to go public with the reasons for your resignation? Brown: No. I shared my decision only with a close friend, a distinguished lawyer in the private sector who argued very convincingly (but not, for me, convincingly enough) for the Iraq invasion. I never got a reply from the State Department to my letter of resignation (sent by e-mail to Secretary Powell). PA: What has been the impact of your resignation and the resignation of others in response to Bush administration foreign policy initiatives? Brown: I would say it was minimal. But at least it's there for the historical record. And I hope it is not too minor a signal to the rest of the world that not all Americans approved of Mr. Bush's decision to invade Iraq. PA: Are you surprised that more officials at the State Department have not resigned in protest of U.S. foreign policy since 9/11? Brown: Yes, given the reservations I encountered among State Department staff about the war. But a resignation is an intensely personal decision. Also, U.S. government employees have mortgages - and college tuitions - to pay. And they are, as they should be, loyal to their organization. But this loyalty, in my view, should not extend to implementing or approving foreign policy misadventures such as the war in Iraq. PA: What is your position on the continued U.S. occupation of Iraq? Brown: In the 1960s, my late father, who also was in the Foreign Service, told me apropos of Vietnam: "We should get out of there as quickly as possible." That is my view about our presence in Iraq. PA: Do you think Karen Hughes, in her position as public diplomacy chief for the State Department, will have better luck in changing Middle East opinion on U.S. foreign policy than her predecessors in the Bush administration, Margaret Tutwiler and Charlotte Beers? Brown: Ms. Hughes may be a clever Bush confidante but she has a parochial mind, as her recent ineffective trips abroad suggest. She owes it to the American public to explain what her role was in WHIG - the secretive White House Iraq Group that led our country into war. A key person in the creation of the crude propaganda that led our country into war is now in charge of American public diplomacy abroad. It is not a reassuring thought. PA: The Lincoln Group has received a lot of press for its role as a propaganda conduit for the U.S. Department of Defense. Some have argued that DoD's relationship with the Lincoln Group and its use of psy-ops to change public opinion in Iraq is justified when dealing with groups such as al-Qaeda. What is your opinion of the effectiveness and legitimacy of the U.S. government's outsourcing of propaganda initiatives to companies such as the Lincoln Group and the Rendon Group? Brown: The Pentagon has been criticized for not winning the "hearts-and-minds" war overseas, as a recent Defense Science Board report [pdf] contends. So, in my view, what the Pentagon did in reaction to these criticisms was to "outsource" the handling of public opinion in Iraq to private firms, to show Congress and other critics that the military was "doing something" about the "foreign opinion problem." The result: a PR disaster, both domestically and internationally, which has backfired against the U.S. and its armed forces. PA: When is your book about propaganda and U.S. foreign policy scheduled for release and who is the publisher? Can you give a brief overview of the book? Brown: Praeger is the publisher as of now. The book seeks to understand the current problems of American public diplomacy - which can have propagandistic elements but cannot be reduced to propaganda, especially of the baser kind - from a historical point of view. The book essentially begins with World War I, when Woodrow Wilson created the Committee on Public Information, meant to convince the American public - and overseas audiences - of the need to make the world safe for democracy by U.S. military intervention in Europe. An overview of the possible conclusions of the book can be found at "Historical Patterns of US Government Overseas Propaganda, 1917-2004" (Phil Taylor's Web Site, The Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds, UK) PA: It seems like the press uncovers a new propaganda initiative or project of the Bush administration every week. Based on your expertise and research, can you share with our readers any new revelations about U.S. propaganda initiatives that we can expect to learn about in 2006? Brown I think what the American public is increasingly discovering is that the current administration sees foreign policy as just one more way to mold American domestic opinion. The White House doesn't really distinguish between home and overseas propaganda, contrary to the spirit of the Smith-Mundt Act 1948, which prohibits the dissemination to domestic audiences of USG-produced or supported overseas information products. There is a strong anti-propaganda tradition in the United States, so I don't think the American public will continue to accept what I've described as Bushprop. The Iraq mission, it has become all too clear, was not "accomplished" as the administration boasted. Indeed, it should never have been undertaken. John Brown's "Public Diplomacy Press Review" is available free by requesting it at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. |