Full spectrum diplomacy is a combination of traditional, government-to-government diplomacy with the many components of public diplomacy as well as the integration of these two functions with other instruments of statecraft. The term was coined by John Lenczowski, founder and president of The Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. in his book Full Spectrum Diplomacy and Grand Strategy: Reforming the Structure and Culture of U.S. Foreign Policy which was released in May, 2011.
Origin Lenczowski's book appears to be the first attempt to define the term. In it, he references the military concept of "full spectrum operations" (or "full spectrum dominance") indicating that it inspired his derivation for diplomatic use. He writes that the diplomatic community does not have a comparable term to full spectrum operations, "but there should be, in order to end the systematic neglect of some dimensions of the larger art of diplomacy." In a chapter of the Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy, Matthew Armstrong provides a historical perspective on the use of full spectrum diplomatic action:
In 1948, George Kennan developed a plan for “organized political warfare” to counter the Soviet Union’s growing power and influence. To be effective, it required the United States to employ all means possible to achieve its national objective, including overt activities such as political alliances, economic measures, and “white” propaganda, to covert operations such as clandestine support of foreign elements, “black” psychological warfare, to encouraging underground resistance movements in hostile states. This was not the “diplomacy in public” we know today, but a full-spectrum “diplomacy with publics” that engaged people at all levels and with all means available. Seven years later, Nelson Rockefeller recognized the struggle as “shifting more than ever from the arena of power to the arena of ideas and international persuasion.” A then-young Henry Kissinger, stressing the importance of the people, noted the “predominant aspect of the new diplomacy is its psychological dimension.”
Components
Full spectrum diplomacy is an integrated strategy that encompasses all instruments of engagement including traditional diplomacy and public diplomacy. Of particular note is advocacy for the use of cultural diplomacy to enhance contact with people at the grassroots level. To increase the role of public diplomacy, Lenczowski advocates the foundation of a U.S. Public Diplomacy Agency. This would not only take the place of the former United States Information Agency (USIA), but would expand to coordinate all aspects of the public diplomacy instrument. Juliana Pilon advocates a similar organization in her book Why America is Such a Hard Sell in which she promotes an "American Global Outreach and Research Agency." Her idea culminates in a system that links the instruments of public diplomacy throughout the whole of government. Yet another proposal is that of Professor Carnes Lord of the Naval War College writing for the creation of a "Policy Coordinating Committee on Foreign Information, Assistance, and Democracy Promotion" that would serve to integrate the leadership of the many organizations involved in public diplomacy to other agencies of strategic influence. Lenczowski provides further explanation of the construct here:
Thus, a full realization of the possibilities of public diplomacy must take into account the necessity of its proper integration with other arts of statecraft where, for example, military strategy incorporates public diplomacy into its calculations (e.g., in behavior toward foreign populations, the treatment of prisoners, etc.), or where the need to exert political influence requires the collection of “opportunities intelligence” on targets of potential political influence, or the use of offensive political counterintelligence operations. It is the entire range of these public diplomatic instruments combined with traditional diplomacy, and finally integrated with the other arts of statecraft that comprise what is missing in U.S. foreign policy: full spectrum diplomacy.
Orchestra analogy
In support of the concept of full spectrum diplomacy, Lenczowski writes that "the achievement of foreign policy goals requires a multiplicity of means that can be likened to instruments in an orchestra." Additionally, he states that "the conduct of full spectrum diplomacy thus involves the proper orchestration of both traditional and public diplomacy in such a fashion that the policies governing each function do not jeopardize the effectiveness of the other." This collected orchestration becomes a part of what Lenczowski calls an “integrated strategy” defined by "a concept that requires the coordination of all the instruments of statecraft, including military policy, intelligence, counterintelligence, economic policy, etc." A previous use of this musical ensemble analogy for an instrument of statecraft is found in a World War II Soviet anti-Nazi espionage element commonly known as the Red Orchestra.
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