Smart Power Blog

I was thinking yesterday and today about this "cultures" idea and it occured to me that it is really a key challenge for all forms of diplomacy, especially public diplomacy, because it is really about the idea of mutual understanding.

Basically, even if we seek to understand another's culture, we are always going to be faced with a problem of asking or insisting or manipulating that other culture to "be more like us." Otherwise, what is accomplished? I mean, if in order to get them to understand we must show that we can think in their terms, how can we continue to advocate our own position which was developed out of our own terms and culture? I mean, if we see that there is a divide between two camps, aren't we always going to be in one or the other? Being able to fit into both doesn't really solve this problem because at any given time, advocating any given position, we have to be in one.

In thinking about it, it seems to me that a way to solve this problem is to see particular cultures as methods of understanding adapted to particular conditions. This is not to say that cultures are not real or unique or important, but that they do not exist apart from the issues that a set of people or an institution faces. More importantly, the salient elements of a culture are particularly matched to the salient issues of the day. In simple terms, what we think of as "the culture" is really just a PIECE of that culture -- a piece that is highlighted for particular reasons in a particular moment -- not the whole of the culture.

For example, American culture has a strongly religious element, but it also has a strong cultural tradition of the separation of church and state. Thus, it is not accurate to say that Christianity is not important to Americans, but it is also not accurate to say that Americans, even many fundamentalists, want to live in a theocracy. Rather, right now, the voice of fundamentalism is strong and so religious rule seems to be something very "American." But this is only a piece of America.

More specifically, even the fundamentalist movement itself is only highlighting a particular aspect of its larger culture. For example, the Puritannical obession with sexual politics (abortion, homo-sexuality) is on the one hand a deep seated American tradition, but on the other hand only a prominent aspect of our culture in recent times. At the turn of the last century, populist Christianity was much more concerned with the politics of liquor than the politics of sex -- temperance not abstinence -- and with good reason. Not to be too cavalier, but one could say this was because in 1900, it was a lot easier to get 180 proof whiskey than it was to get pornography -- the reverse would appear to be true today.

I would argue that culture thus has two aspects that is it important for the public diplomat to understand. One is the traditions and the meanings of culture one is engaging in a broad sense -- its "deep structures." For Americans concerned about the Middle East, this means understanding something about how Muslims see the world, their priorities for the future and their anxieties from the past. For a public diplomacy advocate trying to communicate with military leaders, this would be an understanding of how one must process events and information if one's goal is to gain and maintain advantageous positions for the exertion of violence (this is, after all, the military's job).

In both of these cases, we must recognize that to miss these deep patterns, or, as is more often the case, to act as though they ought to be abandoned in favor of our own deep patterns, is to ensure diplomatic failure before we have begun. If, as is my understanding, Muslims have a more communal, less individualistic notion of how society operates, it makes little sense to present the advantage of democracy as its indulgence of individual rights and liberties. Similarly, if the purpose of an institution is to wage effective violence, it makes little sense to advocate policies (to them) that dismiss the usefulness of violence. I do not mean to suggest that if one does not believe that violence is useful one should not advocate that position, but simply that if this is one's position, one should never expect the military as an institution to give you much credence. In other words, no matter how much you know about the other camp, you cannot just get them to come into your camp.

But despite the folly of attempting to change deep structures, I don't think all is lost from a diplomatic point of view. This is because I believe that while deep structures do not change easily, most of the cultural resistance we feel is not, in fact, deep structure resistance. Rather, it is the resistance of the particularly salient aspect of the culture to a particular set of ideas. The "cultural clash" is not fundamental but contextual, it is between the salient particulars of the other culture and the salient particulars of ours. Self-reflection -- understanding how we are narrowly interpreting our own culture, combined with a broad understanding of the complexities of the other culture -- can thus be combined to find common ground. Not common ground that is "new" or "outside" of the deep structures, but rather common ground that is simply not immediately event.

Continuing with the examples from above -- Islamic fundamentalism, or really Wahhabism, is NOT Islam. It is an aspect of Islam, a distortion perhaps but, even if not, still only an aspect. Critically, it's power comes not from it's relative "trueness" or "authenticity" to Islam as opposed to other aspects, which is what many seem to believe, but from its ability to address a particular concern that is of utmost importance in the Muslim world RIGHT NOW. That concern is the utter inability of "state" or "national" governments to build a strong and successful society, and the beholden-ness of these weak governments to outside influences. In light of these conditions, what is Islam's response? A version of Islam that says we should dispense with national identities and international influence and work to create the transnational, and highly insular, Umma.

The important point here is that, almost by definition, trying to sell Muslims on the idea of "freedom" is precisely the kind of thing that increases support for Wahhabism, because it furthers the case for excluding outside influence. The Wahhabist says "look, they don't understand our deep structures, they will force us to choose between them. We cannot work with them or listen to them, so they must die." But a smart cultural diplomat can see that this is not the only way to address the problem. If we look at what Wahhabists are responding to, rather than what they are saying, it is easier to see how we might approach inter-cultural communication in a more sensible way. In particular, we could point out that democracy is really about accountability of government to the people. In other words, it is a way for people to alter and, if necessary, replace bad governments. In this way, it is an alternative solution to Wahhabism, as it addresses precisely the same problems. Freedom for individuals -- our particular, salient understanding of our own history and democracy -- is irrelevant. They do n't need democracy to be more free, but they could use it to develop more effectively and become stronger.

Once we see the issue this way we might be able to go into Islamic history and see how the issue of bad government has been handled by this culture in the past. It has, I assure you. Perhaps the most ignorant thing we can believe is that "other people" are any less angry or disappointed when their leaders and governments fail them. It is just that they have a different way of expressing their concern. I don't know much about Islam, but my guess is that the clerics play a critical role in being a check against the government. If this is true, we address our advocacy of Middle Eastern democracy within a context of more appropriate power sharing between, people, clerics, and government officials.

To continue with the institutional example, we do not try to make the military into humanitarians. Their goal is not to get people to like us or, really, like anyone. However, we should recognize that within military procedures there are principles that align with humanitarian goals. These principles are not apparent to us not because they are not there, but because a variety of cultural and political factors in the U.S. have lead us to invest heavily in the "technical" aspects of the military. In simple terms, in recent years we have not been thinking about controlling areas of territory with troops -- that was seen as out of date -- we've been thinking about quick strike capability and deterrence to maintain strategic advantages over other states.

This "technical" military is not good or bad, but it is not well suited to certain conflicts. And, critically, it seems that these are the conflicts we are now more likely to face. For example, the Baghdad situation -- urban fighting. There is no reason that the military simply "cannot do urban fighting." It is not anathema to the strategic use of violence to be effective in cities. But it is anathema to being effective in cities to be ignorant of how city populations are organized and communicate -- to be ignorant of the local culture you are going to be working within. In particular, "effective violence" is violence that doesn't have to be engaged in over and over again to get the same objective, i.e. you don't need to "re-take" Fallujah multiple times. Unfortunately, in urban fighting, taking territory is much easier than holding territory (see Machiavelli). So the military's objective is best served by understanding local politics and culture, not because militaries "in general" need to understand urban fighting but because the military objectives over the next 25-50 years are likely to involve include lots of urban combat.

Ok, this has gone on way too long -- I apologize. I just wanted to give some examples. My main point is that while cultures, in a deep sense, may be distinct, we should never take a given expression of a culture in this moment to be its totality. There are hidden pieces which, in different circumstances, could be more prominent. These hidden pieces offer the opportunity for dialogue, because very often the hidden pieces in our own culture match nicely with hidden pieces in the other's.