In late May Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported that the Kremlin had set up a special coordinating body led by the Presidential Chief of Staff Sergey Naryshkin in order to improve Russia’s image abroad. The new body, also includes Aleksey Gromov, the deputy head of the Presidential administration, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and Sergey Prikhodko, the assistant to the President for international affairs.The mission of this new coordination body is to play a more proactive role in policy coordination than its predecessor the Foreign Ministry commission.
Instead of applauding the move the pundits mostly Americans and/or Europeans started to question the validity of the efforts undertaken. For example, Mr. Ethan S. Burger, Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown University Law Center writes that ‘Russia does not need to establish a commission to determine how best to enhance its international image… it merely needs to change its behaviour.” or take the comments of Mr. Edward Lozansky, President of the American University in Moscow who writes that “the West will always look at Russia with suspicion…. and no PR efforts will dramatically help its standing in the West” and then comes the comments of Professor Stephen Blank, U.S. Army War College, in Pennsylvania who says that he doubts that “the decision to establish such a coordination body will markedly improve the presentation of the Kremlin’s image in foreign lands because the problem is the policies and the system, not their presentation.” and he goes on to declare that” indeed for Russia to have a better image abroad… Russia needs to change its policies and its tone which is increasingly aggressive and mendacious” and last but not least Sergei Roy, Editor of the Guardian in Moscow who asks if “the new commission is intended to be a discussion club, another talking shop for airing the views of various dignitaries, a sort of board of directors with powers to issue binding directives”.
With “friends” like that Russia can do without. I happen to think differently. The coordination body that has been put in place will be in the best position to scrutinize the activities taking place within the overall reputation remit and make the necessary adjustments. The point is to ensure that the efforts undertaken are harmonious to guarantee a joint national vision.
It is indeed a very good approach to have established a liaison system to encourage supportive action from appropriate organisations. It is important to modulate and articulate messages for all relevant channels. Therefore coordination is essential because the development of a national brand must be done in a coordinated way that adheres to a long term strategy. I view this commission as a move on the part of Russia to proactively attend to its image in the world market, to communicate to the world how things have progressed and how they are different.
This new commission is like a steward who is invested with the authority to direct and to implement. There simply needs to be an authority in place that has the power to act. Beside the private sector, there are many ministries whose efforts need to be aligned e.g. Foreign Affairs, Defence, Economy, Finance, Interior, Education and Science, Culture, Transport, Justice, Agriculture, Duma and Federal Council.
All countries communicate all the time. They send out millions of messages every day. Collectively, all these millions of messages represent an idea of what the nation as a whole is up to, what it feels, what it wants, what it believes in. Indeed it is the task of government to set the tone for these messages in a credible, coherent and realistic manner. This is the reason why this new commission should be endorsed by the external world instead of being challenged right from its creation.
