Whither Obshestvennaya Diplomatiya: Assessing U.S. Public Diplomacy in Post-Cold War Russia Author: Margot van Loon, School of International Service University Honors Advisor: J. Robert Kelley Spring 2013 Although a substantial amount of literature analyzes American public diplomacy in the Soviet Union, the level of scholarly interest in the region appears to have fallen with the Iron Curtain. There exists no comprehensive account of U.S. public diplomacy in Russia over the last twenty years, or any significant discussion of how these efforts have been received by the Russian public. This study addresses the gap in the literature by reconstructing the efforts of the last twenty years, providing an important case study for scholars of public diplomacy and of U.S.-Russia relations. Twelve policy officials, area experts, and public diplomats who had served in Moscow were interviewed to create a primary-source account of events in the field from 1989-2012. The taxonomy of public diplomacy, originally defined by Dr. Nicholas Cull, was then used to categorize each activity by primary purpose: listening, advocacy, cultural diplomacy, exchanges, and international broadcasting. These accounts were contextualized against the major events of the U.S.-Russia bilateral relationship in order to identify broad trends, successes and failures. The resulting narrative illustrates that U.S. public diplomacy in Russia suffers from a lack of top-down support from the U.S. government, from a restricted media environment that limits the success of advocacy and international broadcasting, and from the incongruity of messaging and actions that characterize the last two decades of the bilateral relationship. Other findings include that: 1) listening among public diplomacy practitioners in Russia is improving; 2) cultural diplomacy and exchange programs have been the elements of public diplomacy most immune to the kind of political fluctuations that have obstructed advocacy and broadcasting efforts; 3) an increased reliance on digital platforms is expanding U.S. public diplomacy practitioners’ ability to act as facilitators in Russia, but concern remains among practitioners that this will create an overreliance on social media as the “silver bullet” to all problems. 1 Whither Obshestvennaya Diplomatiya? Assessing U.S. Public Diplomacy in Post-Cold War Russia Margot van Loon Spring 2013 American University Honors Capstone Advisor: J. Robert Kelley 2 Acknowledgements I owe a major debt of gratitude to the public diplomacy and policy communities for opening their doors to me throughout the course of my research. Anne Chermak, Ambassador Jack Matlock, Matt Rojansky, Jeff Trimble, Ambassador Bob Gosende, Robert Schadler, Anton Fedyashin, and Yale Richmond all provided the insights and recollections that make up the substance of my narrative, and without them, this paper could never have become a reality. I am further indebted to Ambassador James Glassman, Nicholas Cull, Eric Novotny, Alex Sokolowski, and John Brown, all of whom not only provided crucial input and information, but also reached out on my behalf to help me take the project further. I am very grateful to Robert Kelley for his tireless advice and patience. And a final thank you to Erik Weiderpass, Nina van Loon, Helen Killeen, Katie Alexander, and Lizzy Johnsen, who were there for the take-offs and the crash landings. 3 Whither Obshestvennaya Diplomatiya? Assessing U.S. Public Diplomacy in Post-Cold War Russia ........................ 2 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................................. 3 I. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................... 5 II. Public Diplomacy’s Role in Foreign Policy ............................................................................................... 6 Conceptualization of Foreign Policy ................................................................................................................... 6 Russian Political Mentality ...................................................................................................................................... 7 The Role of Diplomacy ............................................................................................................................................... 8 U.S. Public Diplomacy ............................................................................................................................................... 10 III. U.S. Public Diplomacy in Russia – A Chronological Reconstruction ......................................... 12 End of the Cold War: 1989-1991 ........................................................................................................................ 12 The Yeltsin Years: 1991-1999 .............................................................................................................................. 15 Putin’s First Term: 1999-2008 ............................................................................................................................. 21 Medvedev and the Reset: 2008-2012 ................................................................................................................ 25 The Future Under Putin: 2012-Present ........................................................................................................... 30 V. Whither Obshestvennaya Diplomatiya? .................................................................................................. 38 VI. Works Cited ...................................................................................................................................................... 42 4 I. Introduction The dynamic of U.S.-Russia bilateral relations since the end of the Cold War has never been easy to manage. But the first few months of 2013 have witnessed levels of tension and uncertainty even greater than normal for the relationship. In such a changing landscape, it is crucial for U.S. policymakers to understand what kind of engagement can and should be pursued. Public diplomacy is one of the most important tools of influence in the U.S. diplomatic arsenal. On its website, the U.S. Department of State formally defines public diplomacy’s mission, which 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 the Government of the United States and citizens of the rest of the world. Judging by the amount of treatment that U.S. public diplomacy in Russia receives among the scholarly community, one would presume that the field has been extinct since the Cold War ended. This is, of course, an illusion: public diplomacy is alive and well in Russia, albeit out of the spotlight, ignored in favor of the post-9/11 public diplomacy priorities in the Middle East. While some information exists on the individual elements of U.S. public diplomacy, it is scattered and unconsolidated, with no attempt made to create a cohesive picture of public diplomacy in Russia as a whole. Yet this is a subject that demands attention, for, without addressing all of the aspects of public diplomacy’s role in the structure of U.S. diplomacy with Russia, there can be no hope of fixing any existing problems or articulating a future strategy. Reconstructing and analyzing public diplomacy in post-Cold War Russia serves an important purpose to policymakers, practitioners, scholars, and the U.S. public itself. Since the American media focuses on the negativity of the U.S.-Russia relationship, it is important to testify that there have been unceasing government efforts to foster strategic goodwill between the U.S. and the Russian people. It is also important to situate public diplomacy in the context of the broader U.S.-Russia bilateral relationship. By doing so, it becomes easier to spot trends and patterns, and to make judgments about successes and failures. It also provides a crucial study for public diplomacy practitioners elsewhere who can learn from the successes and failures of the Russian case. Finally, it humanizes the public diplomacy practitioners that have played vital roles throughout the course of U.S.- Russia relations; it honors those who have devoted themselves to “telling America’s story” by telling their story in turn. Hypothesis Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. public diplomacy efforts have had a broadly positive influence in supporting U.S. strategic interests in Russia by maintaining high levels of exchange between the two nations and affecting Russian public opinion for the better. 5 Methodology Public diplomacy does not lend itself well to quantitative metrics. The majority of this methodology for this research consists of investigative tactics to instead use primary sources to reconstruct the last two decades of U.S. public diplomacy in Russia, and then analyze it for successes and failures. First, an extensive literature review was compiled to give context to the role accorded public diplomacy by the U.S. policy community, as well as to analyze the Russian political mentality in order to understand the environment in which U.S. public diplomacy operated. Post-Cold War history was divided then into five logical categories based on the different periods of Russian