Thank you, Mr. Chairman (Senator Biden), and thank you, Mr. Chairman (Senator Helms) for the opportunity to appear before you today.

1) As we are all aware, we live in an information age. Television, the Internet, radio and other mechanisms of public information are decisive in shaping pubic opinion and informing the public.

2) As societies grow freer the impact of public opinion grows more important.  Where state-to-state diplomacy was appropriate to the agrarian and industrial ages, it is clearly inadequate in the information age.  If we cannot communicate with the people of countries we care about, we cannot sustain government-to-government relations.  When a people turn decisively against us their government will be at increasing risk if it does not acknowledge their people’s views.  Thus, the 1981-82 fight in Europe over matching the Soviet Union by fielding mobile missiles required a strong public information campaign to sustain the diplomatic initiatives.

3) When we are faced with an organized ruthless minority that is gaining ground through dishonest propaganda and through violence, we have to both meet its security challenge and its information challenge. In the late 1940’s a significant American education and information campaign in France, Italy, Greece and other countries played a major role in the survival of freedom and the defeat of communist tyranny.

4) When we win militarily we also have to be prepared to win culturally, educationally, informationally and economically.  People everywhere want to be safe, healthy, prosperous, and free.  To the degree they see America as their ally in that quest, they will be strongly in favor of allying with America.  We have to have fulfillment campaigns in Afghanistan and other countries after we defeat the extremist wing of Islam.  Instead of exit strategies we have to create fulfillment strategies that enable governments like that headed by Mr. Karzai to create safety, health, prosperity and freedom for its citizens.

5) We have been successful in the past and in Germany, Italy and Japan after World War II, South Korea after the Korean War.  If we apply the same techniques and the same investment of capital, values and education we can succeed again today.

6) This requires a five pronged continuing American effort against the extremist fanatical wing of Islam against those Islamic dictators who would acquire weapons of mass destruction, against disorder and barbarism and genocide and in favor of safety, health, prosperity, and freedom for all people. 

a.   Where necessary, the United States and its allies have to be the guarantor of its physical safety against the terrorists, the murderers, and the committers of genocide.

b.   Having established safety, the United States and its allies must implement strategies of wealth creation based on private property rights, the rule of law, and a rewarded work ethic, information age technological infrastructure, (e.g. mobile phones and the internet) modern systems of health and healthcare and the culture of freedom and self-government.  This is only partially a resource issue.  Most of the failures of development in the last four decades have been failures to export the ideas which underpin wealth creation and that is largely a function of public diplomacy or public information operations. 

c.   When confronted with a coherent ideological opponent such as Nazism, Fascism, Japanese Militarism, Communism or the extremist fanaticism of Islam it is necessary to develop a countervailing intellectual communications effort on behalf of freedom, modernity and individual rights.  Young people growing up have to be given the choice between hatred, violence and tyranny and the alternative of peace, opportunity, and freedom.  Only a systematic educational and public information campaign can truly give them a choice.  In our current conflict, the madrasas of extremism have to be replaced with schools that educate young men and women into productive modern lives that are the basis of prosperity and integration into the modern world. 

d.   In order to sustain these first three efforts there has to be a strategic public information campaign that explains to our own people, our allies in Europe and around the world, the non fanatic non extremist elements in Islamic world and others of our efforts, our sincerity and our idealistic goals.  This campaign has to be run within a framework acceptable to the White House but the White House cannot run it.  A single key figure, probably in the State Department, should be empowered to coordinate all American public information operations on a daily basis with the White House.  To the degree possible our allies, in non-governmental organizations, including celebrities, should be recruited and included and involved in a broad public information strategy and campaign. 

e.   The White House has to lead the daily public information effort because the President is so decisively the primary communicator of the American system.  The White House should shape and direct the first four stages but it should implement only the fifth stage.

The United States is today unprepared to engage in a public information campaign on the scale needed to create safety in the 21^st century.  I commend Chairman Henry Hyde for his important leadership in introducing and passing out of Committee the Freedom Promotion Act of 2002.  This important initiative provides for a significant increase in our efforts of public diplomacy.  While more must be done this act is an essential first step and I urge the Senate to join in passing something along those lines.

The ultimate scale of resources needed to defeat the extremist fanatic wing of Islam will resemble the resources we used to defeat Communism.  The combination of educational efforts, communications campaigns, covert activities, economic assistance and aggressive efforts to communicate our view of reality were the underpinnings for the nearly 50-year containment of Soviet Communism.

Creating a stable safe world requires a public information capability and a public diplomacy capability far beyond anything we have developed to date.  The new emerging information-age has new requirements for tactical information on a daily basis and complex requirements for the Internet, cell phones, satellite television, radio and long-term educational efforts.  These activities can often be implemented by non-governmental organizations but the resourcing and the general strategies and systems implementation require government leadership.

Newt Gingrich is a senior fellow at AEI.