Amb. Kate Byrnes – “No better investment” Than Exchanges, by Bill Wanlund
This article appeared as a "Worth Noting" item in Public Diplomacy Today, PDCA's weekly newsletter.
The last time Public Diplomacy Today presented Nicholas Kralev’s Diplomacy Podcast was Nov. 9, when our occasional column “Worth Noting” highlighted Kralev’s interview with State Department vet Tom Countryman, who sounded off on Trump Administration foreign policy.
More recently, Kralev spoke with Ambassador Kate Byrnes, who spent much of her early career as a PD officer, starting as a USIA junior officer in Türkiye, with the American Studies portfolio. Later tours included Hungary, Spain, and the U.S. Mission to NATO in Brussels, where she served as senior public affairs adviser. She went to Athens as Deputy Chief of Mission 2017-19, and was named Ambassador to North Macedonia in 2019, serving until 2022.
Byrnes wrapped up 34 years as an FSO in Stuttgart, Germany, where her final posting was Civilian Deputy and Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to the U.S. European Command, USAREUR’s highest-ranking civilian post. She retired last July and is now a Distinguished Fellow of National Security and Foreign Affairs at the University of Tennessee Baker School for Public Policy and Public Affairs in Knoxville.
In her interview with Kralev, Byrnes produced a 23-minute, Foreign Service Institute-quality Intro to PD class while showing she hasn’t lost her PD commitment. Kralev’s opening question dealt with the news from the Institute for International Education (previously reported in PDT) that new foreign student enrollment in U.S. universities had dropped 17% from 2023 to 2024. She acknowledged that, “if it is a trend, we should be concerned,” then noted that there was better news concealed in the details — that international student enrollment overall had remained relatively steady and that there was actually a slight increase in undergrad studies.
Then Kralev asked about allegations that the U.S. was abandoning its commitment to free speech by scouring social media postings by students seeking to study in this country. Byrnes replied, “the value of freedom of speech is a compelling American value, and I understand very much not only why people want to protect it here in the United States, but why it is such a magnet for individuals from around the world. It is really part of our superpower that we not only endorse, but we have institutions that support, freedom of speech.”
Byrnes then reflected on her assignment in the Office of the Under Secretary for PD and Public Affairs in the aftermath of 9/11, “to look at how would we manage to protect our security interests while also…reaching out to the rest of the world and encouraging them that we remain the United States based on our values, that we can protect our own citizens, but still connect with other cultures.”
“I think we're in a similar moment now,” Byrnes went on, “although it looks a little different… It’s important that we stay in the moment, focused on being clear about [the fact that] protecting our national security means not just protecting our homeland security, but also protecting our image abroad. We have to find that balance…. I certainly hope it does not discourage international students from coming because they are so vital. And it is such an opportunity for Americans to have that experience, particularly Americans who don't get to travel and have experiences abroad, to have those exchanges here at home…. [T]here's probably no better investment than our education and cultural exchanges.”
Kralev probed a little deeper into the value of PD in the wider scope of American diplomacy. Byrnes replied that, for her, “the vast majority of what we do and should be doing with countries is public diplomacy. My very first ambassador [Marc Grossman] once told me that, ‘The idea that 75% of our relationships are government to government is not only wrong, it's not the right objective. At the end of the day, the United States’ relationship with a country should be about 25% government to government, with at least 75% being people to people.’ That includes businesses, universities, civil society, nonprofit organizations, and just individuals having... direct exchanges, whether that's professionally or personally.”
The interview ended with Byrnes delivering a soliloquy on returning to the U.S. at the end of 33 years as a diplomat:
“I have the opportunity to explain to [fellow Americans] how interested the rest of the world is in who we are and what we do. And most of it is genuine curiosity. It’s affinity with a lot of what they know. And it concerns some of the things that they hear. And that is important for Americans to recognize, that the rest of the world wants to know about us, wants to feel connected to us, wants to trust us, and wants to commit to that relationship. I think we forget that there’s that community out there that if we let them, will root for us and who will support us. So that’s the hope that I have in terms of using public diplomacy abroad, but then also here with our own citizens to help them understand how the rest of the world cares about what we do.”
Bill Wanlund is a PDCA Board Member, retired Foreign Service Officer, and freelance writer in the Washington, DC, area. His column, Worth Noting, appears occasionally in PD Today and the PDCA Blog; it seeks to address public diplomacy and related topics of interest to all.