WiRED: An Exemplary Use of "Soft Power" Abroad

WiRED International is a California-based non-profit foundation that has brought the riches of the Internet and other computer technology to a number of less developed or war-ravaged nations. It was founded in 1997, the brainchild of communications professor Gary Selnow of San Francisco State University. The foundation's original purpose was to bring educational materials to the Croatian city of Vukovar, which Selnow calls "the poster child for destroyed cities."

Soon, however, Selnow changed WiRED's mission to bringing modern medical information to parts of the world where it was sorely needed. By 2000, WiRED was in Kosovo, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro and Albania. In 2001, Kenya and Nicaragua joined the list, and in 2003, the most challenging place of all: Iraq'in mid war. Several of WiRED's Iraq facilities have been destroyed; still, by 2007, the foundation had also moved into Honduras and Sierre Leone, and in June 2007, the U.S. State Department provided WiRED partial funding that will enable Selnow and his 20 U.S. volunteers to re-open the foundation's Iraq telemedicine center, allowing real-time video connections between U.S. and Iraqi physicians in that country's medical schools. The focus will be on children's and women's health.

Selnow and his helpers have opened more than 100 medical information centers, of which more than 90 are still functioning. WiRED operates three types of facilities. Most expensive are the telemedicine centers, which allow local medical personnel to collaborate with doctors at U.S. medical centers and to participate in seminars and patient consultations. Second are WiRED's medical information centers, providing CD-rom or hard-drive materials on the latest medical treatments. Third are the community health information centers for use by anyone who needing information about HIV/AIDS, nutrition, and the like. Part of WiRED's method of operation is to set up all these centers and train locals to operate them. Locals are the only WiRED employees paid for their work. Neither Selnow nor any of his U.S. volunteers takes any money for their work; and, remarkably, only 3% of the foundation's funding goes to administrative costs. Also remarkable is that WiRED facilities now benefit more than one million people each year. "In a single day," says Selnow, "WiRED can convert an empty room into an information center that provides doctors with instant access to the finest medical information in the world." Now his greatest challenge is fund raising. To equip and set up an Internet-connected center costs around $400 a month. The monthly cost of a teleconferencing center that requires satellite connections (not all do) is about $7,000.

In sum, WiRED's medical diplomacy, a form of soft power, demonstrates to people in other parts of the world the essential decency of the West at a time when the use of force, a form of hard power, has been our administration's preference. "Many differences separate us," Selnow says. "Our pursuit of good health is a tie that binds."