Besides the Early Alerts, during my seventh week at the Media Hub I received a tour of the Consular Office, attended a press briefing and conference on eVehicles, and was shown around the Public Diplomacy section of the Bilateral embassy.
This week we continued to focus on Libya for the Early Alert. Many continued to debate the merits of a no-fly zone in Libya, and bemoaned the lack of leadership in the West, with Europe divided and the US taking an equivocal position. Early in the week many were still skeptical of whether the UN would ever endorse the imposition of a no-fly zone, but on Friday all the papers noted that the “UN gives the green light to use force against Qaddafi in Libya” (El Mundo).
We also discussed for several days the earthquake in Japan. Of course, there was a ton of coverage of the crisis in the European press, but most of it was irrelevant for us. This is because Washington wants us to focus on just three main angles for the Early Alert: what the European press is saying on the US, what it is saying on the EU/European policies, and what rifts, gaps, alliances, etc they are seeing within Europe, between the US and Europe, and between the US/EU and other parts of the world. For that reason we limited our press analysis to discussing the strengthening of anti-nuclear sentiment in Europe that resulted from the crisis. As Spain's Publico put it, across Europe “The nuclear debate explodes.” Coverage primarily centered on Germany, where public opinion against nuclear energy was quite strong even before the crisis, but in many other countries governments also made sure to announce new safety measures or safety reviews. We also wrote a few general sections on speculation about the potential impact of the earthquake on the global economic recovery.
On Tuesday morning Todd Stern, the United States Special Envoy for Climate Change, came into our office for a video interview, but since I was busy working on the Early Alert I didn’t have a chance to meet him or see much of the interview. The next day I did get a chance to sit in on some interviews – in this case, of former Peacecore volunteers.
On Thursday I had the opportunity to get a tour of the American Consular office in Brussels and sit in on a couple of interviews with people seeking visas. Officially, the Consular Office's top priority is assisting Americans. For instance, they help if someone loses their passport, they return bodies in cases of Americans dying abroad, they provide assistance to Americans arrested abroad, and in the event of emergencies they help evacuate Americans. All that said, what winds up taking up most of the Brussels Consular Office’s time is screening visa applications from non-Americans. Those applying for such visas generally are not Belgians, as Belgium is part of the US visa waiver program (meaning that after completing a quick online registration most Belgian citizens can travel to the US for up to 90 days in a 180-day period without a visa). Instead, most of those who come to the Consular Office for US visas are non-EU citizens who are for whatever reason in Brussels. Besides security checks, for these applicants, the bulk of whom come from third world countries, the main task of the Consular Office is to evaluate whether they are likely to return to their home country or whether there is reason to suspect that they will illegally overstay their visa to remain in the US.
Especially since it wasn’t what I was expecting, I found my visit to the Consular Office very rewarding, and perhaps will try to go back there to sit in on more visa applicant interviews (my time on the 17th was cut short by needing to return early for the Early Alert, which is still due an hour early because of Europe hasn’t yet moved to daylight savings time). I’m not sure whether I would like doing consular work myself, but if I do pursue a career in the Foreign Service I would essentially be required to complete at least one tour of Consular duty. At any rate, I imagine it must be pretty satisfying to have a job where each day you assist overseas Americans and aid non-Americans in visiting the US, while protecting the country against possible threats.
Thursday afternoon I sat in on a press briefing at the Hub. Press briefings are off-the-record meetings between journalists and officials that allow officials to give journalists background information that can't be published. The point of this is to help journalists better understand the situation in question so that they can ask better questions of interviewees. The press briefing I attended featured the Department of Energy's Advisor on eVehicle Technologies, Keith Hardy. Mr. Hardy currently leads the Grid Interaction Tech Team – a joint Department of Energy, auto industry and utility team to address technical issues of the electric vehicle-grid interface – and leads the International Cooperation task.
Later in the afternoon, Mr Hardy hosted a public workshop with his EU counterparts and industry leaders in a meeting room across from the Media Hub to discuss US-EU technical cooperation on eVehicles and continuing efforts in the U.S. to meet the climate, clean energy and oil dependency challenge through the use of innovative technologies. I found this conference very interesting, particularly as there was a strong transatlantic-angle I wasn’t expecting beforehand. Everyone present emphasized that US-EU agreement on regulations and standards makes life much easier for manufacturers on both ends of the Atlantic, and in the eVehical context this concurrence has the added bonus of speeding the development and adoption of eVehicle technology in America and Europe. Fortunately, the message I took from the discussion was that we don't really need to worry about harmonizing eVehicle standards between the US and EU, as the two have been working in close cooperation. However, they are quite concerned at the lack of agreement between the US/EU and Asia (specifically, China). Part of this disconnect comes from the fact that while the government is the sole body behind creating standards in China, in the US and EU standards are followed voluntarily, and companies, rather than governments, take the lead in developing them (because, after all, it makes more sense to leave the development of industry standards to the experts, the manufacturers).
Another interesting point was that officials in both the US and EU agree it's a good idea to share technology when it doesn't adversely impact market competition – for instance, Mr Hardy showed at the conference a standardized “smart meter” developed jointly in the US and EU that can be used in eVehicles in all markets (though at the moment China is pushing its own very similar but slightly modified so as to be incompatible smart meter). The development of this smart meter fits in with the goal of governments helping to accelerate the adoption and proliferation of eVehicles. Overall, harmonization of eVehicle standards is a good example of the type of transatlantic issue that doesn’t receive much attention (certainly isn’t as notable as a major trade or political dispute), but nevertheless has a major impact on Americans and Europeans – and if done right, will help speed the adoption of eVehicles in both the US and EU.
Friday was a rather bizarre day in the office, as half-way through working on the Early Alert the Microsoft Outlook server crashed, thereby cutting off our access to State Department email. Luckily we had already received submissions for the other embassies, so we could still complete the Early Alert, but when it came time to submit it we could not access the usual distribution list. Instead, we used Gmail to send copies to a few senior officials whose emails we had saved outside Outlook. Eventually when the server came back on online I submitted the report to the rest of our distribution list.
While the server was down, Friday afternoon I went on a tour of the Public Diplomacy (PD) section for the bilateral embassy above the Media Hub. Something interesting that I hadn’t really thought about before is that Belgium is unusual in having two separate media markets – one in French and one in Dutch. As a result, the PD staff is split between those who cover the French media and those who cover the Dutch media. English-language content on Dutch TV is generally subtitled while on French-language media they are generally dubbed over – meaning that French TV has to have time to prepare an audio translation of what the Ambassador or other officials say, while Dutch TV, only needing to produce a transcript to provide subtitles, doesn’t mind conducting English-language interviews. As the French press often takes a pass on non-French language speakers, this results in US officials receiving much more exposure and coverage on in the Dutch-language press in Belgium.
The PD department is split between press and cultural sections. Something I learned is that, far from only doing stereotypical cultural exchanges, the cultural section has increasingly been focusing on policy work, and in fact winds up working on pretty much any issues that isn't explicitly media-related. Part of this is outreach to locals. The goal isn't to try and completely convince everyone of the US position, but rather to nuance the debate, emphasizing that the US is not monolithic. For instance, on the Kyoto climate change protocol several years ago, there was a negative reaction to the US position and a perception that America is not doing anything. In response, the PD section made an effort to show that in fact the US does have many policies in place to protect the environment.
Overall, I really appreciated having a chance to visit the bilateral public diplomacy section, and gained a better sense of how the more traditional country-specific media sections operate. After the Outlook server came back online and I was able to send out the Early Alerts, I left the Hub a bit early to attend the ECON section's happy hour, thrown in advance for the last day of its intern.
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