The PD Blogger Interview series periodically features a blogger included on the Blogroll. The interviews provide insight as to the motivations, ideas and personalities of these international individuals who are speaking, thinking, and writing about Public Diplomacy.

Matt Armstrong is a December 2007 graduate of the USC Master’s in Public Diplomacy and the author of the widely visited and referenced blog MountainRunner, which is devoted to “Exploring the struggle for the minds and wills of men in the unrestricted warfare of the 21st Century”.

His key interests and studies in Public Diplomacy are echoed in the manifesto of MountainRunner: “This blog is a device to discuss, explore and even link ideas in the four major, and overlapping and often mutually dependent, areas important to the future of America's national security: public diplomacy, unrestricted warfare, privatization of force, and civil-military relations.”

Contributing researcher Rima Tatevossian asked Matt to share some of the conclusions he has been able to draw through blogging about that conceptual relationship:

Many people would not automatically think of the military or defense as a sub-field of public diplomacy. The military is generally understood to be as “hard” as “hard power” gets. And, while in Iraq and elsewhere U.S. service men and women’s boots are quite literally “on the ground” (thereby meeting and exceeding the prerequisite “last three feet” of engagement so often cited in public diplomacy literature), it still seems rather counterintuitive for most people to think of them as public diplomats. Could you clarify how you see this relationship?

Edward R. Murrow famously said the critical link in international communication is the “last three feet”. Unlike in the 1940’s and the 1950’s when the U.S. expended significant resources on non-military means of engagement through Truman’s international institutions and Eisenhower’s more direct “psychological struggle”, today our public diplomacy wears combat boots. This is a fact with consequences. Through both traditional and new media, America’s image is shaped by its military. This extends beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, and even Africa, to Pakistan and Indonesia where American humanitarian efforts are militarized. This isn’t inherently bad: the most popular toy in Pakistan after the earthquake was a Chinook helicopter, our twin-rotor, heavy lift chopper used to deliver supplies. (Not to spend more time on the earthquake, but we acknowledge the outreach value. Initially, the U.S. removed the American flag from the choppers but when our airborne Chinooks appeared on Iranian newscasts as Iranian aircraft delivering relief, we put the flags back on.)

Public diplomacy is about creating, shaping, and managing perceptions and overwhelmingly this century, the U.S. has put combat boots out in front of the media. For better or worse, the United States has positioned its military at the forefront of shaping foreign opinions about the United States. At present, there is no effort on the part of the Administration to change this, in terms of either mandate or budgets for the State Department.

Recently we have seen the Defense Department focus a lot more attention on its communications efforts (e.g.- anthropologists hired to assist in counter-insurgency efforts in Afghanistan, Secretary Gates’ recent calls for more communication and information work…), and you have been following and commenting on such developments on your blog. Do you see this as a militarization of public diplomacy or a ‘public diplomacification’ of the military?

Bullets and bombs represent only short-term tactical responses to a much larger strategic dilemma. Any text worth reading on insurgency or counterinsurgency recognizes and emphasizes the operational and strategic center of gravity is the people.

Al Qaeda, as well as the myriad of other insurgent groups fighting for religion, nationalism, and even criminal opportunity understands this. Modern conflict is based not on capturing capital cities, but on capturing the mind in a battleground that has little respect for geographic borders. The enemy actively seeks support in the form of money, moral support, and recruits from a dynamic international community in what can be called a War of Ideas. The U.S. must respond.

There’s merit to saying this is a militarization of public diplomacy. The Department of Defense (DoD) Department has certainly stepped into a space previously managed by the now-defunct USIA and the State Department. Today, State is largely silent, or drowned out, by the actions of DoD. I said the space was ‘managed’ because the military, by virtue of its overseas bases, has always been a public diplomat for the U.S. Little discussed is the tremendous diplomatic power of what we now call Combatant Commanders, but used to be known as Commanders in Chief. These are the guys in charge of Pacific Command (PACOM), Central Command (CENTCOM), etc. With the retreat of State in terms of budget and leadership, somebody had to fill the gap. It will be interesting to see how the new AFRICOM comes together to counter the militarization perception with its co-deputies, one from the State Department and one from DoD. However, it is still a DoD operation under the Secretary of Defense.

Back to your question, what I believe we’re seeing is the Defense Department stepping into a gap State should have filled or at least taken a leadership position in, but couldn’t for various reasons. It is interesting that until 2007, if you suggested Defense did “public diplomacy”, you’d get a knee-jerk reaction from DoD that they don’t do “public diplomacy,” only State does. I suspect this was a factor in the creation of the term “strategic communications”. But today, there’s an office of Support to Public Diplomacy in the Pentagon and the term “public diplomacy” is frequently used by DoD personnel.

Ideally, in what capacity are you most interested in working to improve U.S. national security/smart power? Through your writings you make quite a few arguments about legislation (Smith-Mundt) and management organization principles (such as terms of engagement and integration for PMCs and the military). Is this indicative of policy-making aspirations?

It is. The bulk of my writing, on the blog or elsewhere, focuses on the struggle for the minds and wills of people to prevent, shorten, or terminate conflict. Ironically, Smith-Mundt has turned into a handicap when it was intended to boost and improve the quality of our propaganda, truthful or otherwise.

The discussion on private military companies emphasizes their unintended (and too often unaccepted) role as public diplomats of the U.S. My goal is to help shape better and smarter policy as we move deeper into a world where kinetics (bullets and bombs) have less of an impact than information. I believe the concept of unrestricted warfare, put together by two Chinese colonels a few years ago, is the future. The next conflict will begin in the information realm and then maybe, and only maybe, shift to kinetics, but the effect will be the same on national prestige, power, and security.

What do you see to be the blogosphere’s contribution to the field of public diplomacy?

New media, not just blogging, democratizes the creation and consumption of information, increasing the speed of access, further reducing or eliminating the time to deliberate the news. Thus new media - the blogosphere included - has vastly increased the size of the audience public diplomacy must address, as well as the diversity, all the while competing in a cacophony of misinformation, intentionally spread or the result of premature judgment or a lack of research. The public diplomat can, if capable, elicit support from new media to replicate a message, reaching ‘swing voters’ and otherwise unreachable audiences.

This democratization can be manifested as Think Tank 2.0, a virtual think tank of subject matter experts coming together to analyze and recommend. The blog WhirledView recently completed an exercise like this on nuclear policy, and I’m involved in something similar with a different (not public diplomacy-centric) community. It is possible for a blogger to have a seat at the table, virtual or real, and help shape policy either directly or indirectly. On the other side, the blogosphere may be one of the first places to get a feel for how a policy is working, at least in those areas with the infrastructure to support indigenous blogging.