In his “Memo to:  Karen P. Hughes,” executive director of the Washington Institute Robert Satloff suggests a list of do’s and don’ts that the President’s nominee for undersecretary of state for public diplomacy might wish to follow:

* Focus on mission, not message: Your job is not to win friends for America. Your job is to support Muslims committed to the political, social, and cultural battle against Islamist extremism and to advance the cause of freedom within Muslim societies. If we do that properly, friendships will follow.

* Fight to win: Defeating Islamist extremism is not some policy fad, it’s a war. We should wage this battle by supporting our friends, isolating our critics, and punishing our adversaries. And remember–our allies are not an abstraction; they are a hardy band of real-life, flesh-and-blood democrats. In the Middle East, we need more democrats, not just more democracy.

* Compete for the minds of young Muslims. Squeeze every dollar you can find into promoting education, especially English-language education. As the president said, the ideological war is a generational fight, and education is our most effective strategic weapon. At the moment, however, the Islamists are winning this fight.

* Banish the terms “Arab world” and “Muslim world” from America’s diplomatic lexicon; be as country-specific as possible, in both word and deed. Radical Islamists want to erase borders and create a supranational world where the lines of demarcation run between the “house of Islam” and the “house of war.” Don’t cede the battlefield to them without a fight.

* Don’t be condescending or bashful. Talk to Muslims as you would have them talk to you–maturely, candidly, openly. Many may oppose certain U.S. policies–such as the war in Iraq or our support of Israel–but that’s okay. We should be ready to listen to complaints about U.S. policies, engage in continual dialogue, and “agree to disagree” in order to join forces in an anti-extremist coalition. Whether they are orthodox, pious, lapsed, or secular Muslims, if they are willing to serve on the front line in the struggle against

radical Islam, America should be ready to hear them out.

* Never read polls: If you judge your success by America’s poll numbers, you will fail–both in your mission and your job. In the Middle East, polls tend to distort and exaggerate; public opinion is episodic and driven by news cycles; and popular attitudes seem to have little impact on people’s behavior. In your old job, polls may have been essential; in this job, they are toxic.

* Don’t try to accommodate, co-opt, or “dialogue” with Islamists. They are much better at this game than we are and, in the process, we confuse and demoralize our allies. And don’t try to tell Muslims how to be “good Muslims” or suggest that America knows what is “true Islam.” Focus on what we really know something about, i.e., running a reasonably well-functioning democracy for 229 years.

Here are two last pieces of advice.

First, recognize from your first day on the job that you sit in a building whose mission can run counter to yours. While your task is to reach out to foreign publics, the State Department is set up to engage with foreign governments. Even if your fellow tenants of the seventh floor have all the right intentions–which certainly seems the case–you need to ready yourself to do battle with a bureaucracy hard-wired for quiet, capital-to-capital diplomacy. At best, you can trigger some creative tension with regional bureaus; at worst, you will go hat-in-hand to them for personnel, resources, and access […]

Second, and this may be the toughest part–do no harm. Since 9/11, dozens of smart, well-meaning people have taken a look at America’s public diplomacy problems; some of the ideas they have come up with are clever and creative; others run the gamut from silly and stupid to downright masochistic. Put every suggestion to this simple test: If it were implemented, would radical Islamists be better off or worse off? You would be surprised how many reasonable-sounding proposals fail this test.

The appointment of Hughes—along with the appointments of Bolton and Wolfowitz (and earlier, Condi Rice)—are as clear an indication of the direction the Bush administration is taking vis-a-vis foreign policy in its second term as anything the President has said or done since his reelection.  Positions held until recently by establishment get-alongs are being taken over by decidedly pro-American advocates; which, I suspect, will give teeth to what has long been a toothless, almost perfunctory delivery of the US foreign policy message.

Looks like the western European cabal of US “counterbalance” advocates will have their work cut out for them…