Expanding U.S. Engagement in the Pacific Region

I want to thank Executive Vice President Terry Adamson and the National Geographic Society for graciously allowing us to use their board room this evening and for hosting this celebration of the Pacific region. The Geographic team also helped host our Malaria Summit earlier this year and we consider them special friends of public diplomacy. Terry, thank you.

I know that you had a chance to meet with a number of State Department officials yesterday, and I want to reiterate the special kinship we feel with our Pacific neighbors. During this year of the Pacific, we are both affirming America's historic role in the Pacific and expanding our engagement with your countries. I'm delighted for this opportunity to talk for a few minutes about the important role of Public Diplomacy in this expanded engagement.

I've now been at the State Department for almost 2 years, and I find myself increasingly focusing on three key areas:

The first is our education and exchange programs. These people-to-people programs foster life-long connections. I am convinced they are the single best way to build positive, lasting relationships with other peoples and nations. I'm happy to be able to tell you that worldwide participation in our education and exchange programs is up from 27,000 in 2004 to nearly 39,000 last year. We hope to increase that number even more next year, and to increase participation from the Pacific islands region.

A second area of focus is communications--and as you know the communications environment is changing dramatically--we used to talk about newspapers and editors, now we talk about bloggers and text messages. During the Cold War, we were trying to get information into largely closed societies whose people were hungry to hear from us--today we are competing for attention and credibility in a noisy and crowded communications environment. We're urging our ambassadors to be not only the face, but the voice of America--to get out on television and on the radio to communicate with the public, and I hope they are doing that in your nations. We have extensive web sites in English and six other languages, we have launched "digital diplomacy" to dialogue with people around the world on the Internet, and we have even posted videos created by some of our exchange students on You Tube. We are also in the midst of setting up a Counter-terrorism Communications Center to better coordinate experts in all our various agencies and more aggressively and effectively counteract the messages of violent extremists.

Third, we are highlighting what I call the "Diplomacy of our Deeds," the concrete ways in which our humanitarian and development initiatives are improving lives around the world, particularly in the areas people care most about--education, health and economic opportunity. America believes in the dignity and value of every person and our actions in the world demonstrate that conviction. You saw a good example in the Solomon Islands after the recent earthquake and tsunami--America sent the USNS Stockham to rescue people. This included a hair-raising night-time helicopter rescue of victims and aid workers after an assistance ship foundered on a reef. We want to continue reaching out to people in life-saving and life-changing ways--like President Bush's HIV-AIDS and Malaria initiative to reduce deaths and relieve suffering from those diseases. When I visited the Philippines earlier this year, I went to Mindanao where we donated computers for schools and opened a road to help villagers bring their products to market. Our military and intelligence communities are supporting the Philippines Armed Forces in their efforts to confront terrorists there. At the same time we recognize we have to reach out to the local population to earn their support and demonstrate that America wants to be their friend and partner.

America is committed to strengthening our connections with the peoples of the Pacific. We have strong historic ties and enduring memories of our shared sacrifices during the Second World War when the Pacific was the scene of so many important stands for freedom.

To build on our shared history and strengthen the ties between our peoples, we are establishing a new regional public affairs office at the U.S. embassy in Suva. This office will open this summer and will introduce a broad array of press, culture, and education programs in the region in conjunction with the American Embassies in Fiji, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Papua New Guinea.

We plan over the coming years to expand our flagship academic programs in the area--and we will be inviting the future leaders of your countries to participate in the International Visitor Leadership program, which brings young leaders in a variety of fields to the United States for 3 weeks of travel and meetings with their American counterparts.

And we will be more active in bringing speakers to discuss topics of mutual interest, as well as hosting digital video conferences (DVCs) with U.S. experts who cannot travel.

In addition, we will continue the existing Pacific Island Scholarship program, which brings five students each year from selected countries to the United States for undergraduate and graduate degrees. I will ask our new public affairs officer to look at the possibility of adding English language programs in areas where that is a need. I am a strong supporter of these English teaching programs--they give young people an important skill that helps them improve their lives and open the window to a wider world of knowledge. Last year, I visited one of the programs in Morocco, in the neighborhood where some of the suicide bombers grew up, and I asked a young man what difference English had made in his life and he said, "I have a job and none of my friends do." That young man also has hope--and a reason to live rather than be recruited to die in a terrorist attack.

We want to help you empower the disadvantaged of the region, especially disadvantaged young people. We want to work with you to promote civil society with small, targeted grants to NGOs to encourage grass-roots efforts to strengthen democracy. And, to give women more economic opportunities, we will be providing special training to educate them about tax-free trade benefits and opportunities.

America wants to partner with you in ways that result in a better life for the people of your nations. And I would love to hear your ideas about what types of exchanges and programs would most benefit your countries, so I encourage you to engage with our embassies. We don't just want to talk, we want to listen and have a dialogue. So I very much look forward to listening and learning from you.