Adam is wrong—and Jim is right—when Adam sells short the vital and potentially lasting contribution that Jim can make even if his tenure as “commander-in-chief in the battle of ideas” ends up being only six months long. That contribution is to change attitudes (and, by extension, metrics of success) about the mission of public diplomacy both here and abroad, from the highest levels of government to our diplomats in the field. Progress toward that goal would alone be a huge achievement.

Jim is wrong—and Adam is right—when Adam critiques the Administration’s commitment to an effective, coherent strategy to wage the battle of ideas until recently. As a close observer of this sad story, I can say with regrettable certainty that for much of the last seven years, PD was essentially an effort to get foreigners to like America more, not an effort to defeat the ideology of our Islamist adversaries. (There were exceptions—Karen Hughes, despite lacking ideological moorings, did implement well and her creation of media response units was a plus.) A loyal team player, Jim cannot but defend the record of his administration, but there is no doubt that his appointment represents a seismic shift from his predecessors’.

Yes, it has taken far too long for the Bush administration to take this issue seriously. But in a generational struggle, I’ll take “better late than never” than “not at all.” Jim’s task is to put into place priorities, structures, and a sense of mission so that the next Administration doesn’t have to fight an internal “battle of ideas” on the right direction for public diplomacy of the sort that bedeviled this one.

Robert Satloff is a member of MESH.

But Mr. Garfinkle goes way too far in his condemnation of organization. With the changes we’ve made in the first few weeks after my swearing-in on June 10, we have a perfectly workable structure right now.

First, Education and Cultural Affairs—the part of the Under Secretary’s realm that manages exchanges and spends the majority of State’s public diplomacy money—runs exceptionally well. So does International Information Programs, which handles speaker programs and publications and runs our websites, including America.gov.

The third element is the war of ideas, for which the President designated the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy as the interagency lead. Mr. Garfinkle writes, however, that the Under Secretary has “no effective means of coordinating, let alone leading, anything of the kind.” He adds that “no one, not the President, the Vice President, the NSC Advisor or the Secretaries of State or Defense, ever really made public diplomacy and fighting the war of ideas a strategic priority.”

In both of these claims—structure and priority—Mr. Garfinkle is dead wrong. The structure—for you organizational wonks out there—now looks like this, in its recently altered form:

• A Policy Coordinating Committee, meeting monthly, is at the top of the pyramid. I chair the PCC, with Deputy National Security Advisor Mark Pfeifle as vice chair. The PCC includes participation at a high level from such agencies as the Department of Defense (whose representative is Eric Edelman, the Under Secretary for Policy), the Intelligence Community, Treasury, and Homeland Security. The National Counter-Terrorism Center provides strategic and analytical support to the PCC.

• A sub-PCC—called the Global Strategic Engagement Center—manages the day-to-day operations. The GSEC is located at State and headed by a State official and is staffed with representatives of State, DoD, and the IC.

• The PCC has two other appendages: an interagency communications group and a private-sector council, now in formation, that will include 10 senior leaders from five sectors: technical, business, academic, foundations, and marketing.

As for priority: This administration, from the President on down, places a high priority on the war of ideas. The National Strategy for Combating Terrorism of 2006 stated: “In the long run, winning the War on Terror means winning the battle of ideas.” In a speech on July 15, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said: “Over the long term, we cannot kill or capture our way to victory. Non-military efforts—these tools of persuasion and inspiration—were indispensable to the outcome of the defining ideological struggle of the 20th century. They are just as indispensable in the 21st century—and perhaps even more so.” The National Security Advisor has been extremely supportive of our efforts, as, of course, has the Secretary of State.

One of the advantages of having my confirmation drag on for six months is that I was able to spend a good deal of time with war-of-ideas thinkers and leaders in the private sector and the interagency. All of them—and I’ll single out Joint Staff in particular—have been tremendously supportive. They are looking to the Under Secretary for leadership, and if we can’t make this machine fly, then the fault lies not with the structure (either of State or the interagency) but with the pilot.

James K. Glassman is Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.