ABSTRACT:
U.S. Public Diplomacy has been facing much criticism over the past decade. As a foreign policy tool, public diplomacy, by definition, should be aimed at bridging divides among nations and searching for a common ground that would help foster mutual understanding of every nation’s foreign policy and culture. The United States, however, has misused, or rather failed to pursue a true public diplomacy effort that would find solutions to many foreign policy dilemmas facing both the United States and the Muslim World. In this paper, I will revisit the concept of public diplomacy in light of the two-way communication model, and more specifically, will present a critique of the one-way approach that characterized much of U.S. public diplomacy in the past decade. The role of civil society in an effective public diplomacy will be emphasized, as well as an examination of other players, such as the internet, and the youth in both sides.
INTRODUCTION:
Most of the criticism directed to U.S. foreign policy in the past decade has been related to the biased rhetoric used by U.S. officials with regard to the Muslim World. The use of terminology such as “Radical Islam,” “Muslim Terrorists,” and “Islamic Fascism” has been very common, particularly during the Bush administration, where U.S. public diplomacy has achieved its poorest results, as proved by the multiple public opinion polls during and after the Bush administration. Bush’s public diplomacy in the Muslim World has been criticized for three major reasons: first, it was largely based on one-way communication instead of a sincere effort to listen to and engage the other in real conversations; second, it revealed lack of understanding of the complex and diverse nature of the Muslim World, and worse, fostered stereotypes about this part of the world that were considered a major reason behind the rise of extremism in both sides since the attacks of 9-11 and afterwards; third, military power replaced soft power as a means to fight extremism. All these factors contributed greatly to the rising anti-American sentiments in the Muslim World, combined with anti-Islamic sentiments in the United States. In such a climate, a pressing need emerged for public diplomatic communication that would alleviate misconceptions on both sides, and enhance mutual understanding and peace. Such form of public diplomacy was rarely implemented in an honest strategic way, but rather U.S. public diplomacy has been primarily geared towards propaganda and pure self interest, albeit with little success. A successful public diplomacy, however, must take into account mutual interests and mutual understanding as its primary goal. To pursue self-interest alone in today’s globalized world is no longer a viable strategy, since national security has been threatened more than ever due to such self-interested foreign policies. Mutual understanding is, therefore, the best strategy to be sought by both the United States and the Muslim World in order to confront common international perils and threats. This can best be achieved through public diplomacy.
Public Diplomacy, a Background:
Most of public diplomacy’s early definitions revolve around the concept of propaganda and promoting the national interest of the United States, with very seldom mentioning of the goal of mutual understanding. According to the U.S. Department of State’s Dictionary of International Relations Terms, public diplomacy is defined as “government-sponsored programs intended to inform or influence public opinion in other countries; its chief instruments are publications, motion pictures, cultural exchanges, radio and television.” Similarly, the Planning Group for Integration of the United States Information Agency (USIA) into the U.S. Department of State defines public diplomacy as a process that “seeks to promote the national interest of the United States through understanding, informing and influencing foreign audiences.” Another definition is that of Richard J. Kilroy, Jr. from the Virginia Military Institute, where he describes public diplomacy as an arrow that “involves both diplomacy and the use of information to help sway public opinion overseas toward U.S. foreign policy goals and objectives” (Kilroy Jr., 2005). USIA, which was the agency in charge of U.S. public diplomacy from 1953 to 1999, defined public diplomacy as follows: “Public diplomacy seeks to promote the national interest and the national security of the United States through understanding, informing, and influencing foreign publics and broadening dialogue between American citizens and institutions and their counterparts abroad.” (www.publicdiplomacy.org). In the latter definition, the element of dialogue is emphasized for a typical public diplomacy, which gives the definition much more validity and thoroughness than the previous ones.
The Public Diplomacy Alumni Association (formerly the USIA Alumni Assciation) mentions in its website (www.publicdiplomacy.org) that “[a]ccording to a Library of Congress study of U.S. international and cultural programs and activities prepared for the Committee on Foreign Relations of the U.S. Senate, the term `public diplomacy' was first used in 1965 by Dean Edmund Gullion of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. It was created with the establishment at Fletcher of the Edward R. Murrow Center for Public Diplomacy." It further quotes the Murrow Center’s detailed description of the term public diplomacy as follows: “Public diplomacy . . . deals with the influence of public attitudes on the formation and execution of foreign policies. It encompasses dimensions of international relations beyond traditional diplomacy; the cultivation by governments of public opinion in other countries; the interaction of private groups and interests in one country with those of another; the reporting of foreign affairs and its impact on policy; communication between those whose job is communication, as between diplomats and foreign correspondents; and the processes of inter-cultural communications.” This is perhaps one of the most encompassing definitions of the term public diplomacy, as it sheds light on the role of publics, rather than governments, in the nature and practice of public diplomacy. It also mentions two key actors in public diplomatic communication: non-governmental groups and foreign public opinion, and stresses on the interaction between these and their domestic counterparts. Central to the previous definition is the idea of public diplomacy as “people-to-people” interaction that emerged over the years from government-to-government, diplomat-to-diplomat, then government-to-people, until it reached the era of “citizen diplomats” thanks to the massive developments in information technology and new media (Wang 2004).
DATA:
This research project was conducted using several methods. First, a number of three relevant published journal articles were retrieved from the online research database Communication and Mass Media Complete (CMMC), each of them covering a different angle of the topic. Second, from U.S. think tanks, four major reports were reviewed, three of them are released by the Brookings Institution: The Need to Communicate: How to Improve U.S. Public Diplomacy with the Islamic World (2004), Voices of America: U.S. Public Diplomacy for the 21st Century (2008), The Opportunity of the Obama Era: Can Civil Society Help Bridge Divides between the United States and a Diverse Muslim World? (2009), and the fourth by the Council on Foreign Relations titled Finding America’s Voice: A Strategy for Reinvigorating U.S. Public Diplomacy (2003). A key database for the information presented in this paper is the official website of the Public Diplomacy Alumni Association, formerly USIA Alumni Association (www.publicdiplomacy.org), which offers a useful reference for definitions related to the topic as well as up-to-date links to related online articles.
In addition, three in-depth one-on-one interviews were conducted to cover various areas in the topic from multiple viewpoints. The interviewees are experts and practitioners of public diplomacy, each in their own context. They include former Egyptian Ambassador to the U.S. Nabil Fahmy, the deputy press attaché of the American Embassy in Cairo Robert Greenan, and Shamil Idriss, CEO, U.S.-based Soliya Online Connect Program.
DATA ANALYSIS:
Much of the theoretical framework for this research is related to theories of decoding and effects. In this case propaganda and persuasion are two close concepts to the topic under discussion. Yet they are not similar. Persuasion has been defined as “attitude change resulting from exposure to information from others” (Olson and Zanna 1993), while propaganda, according to Lasswell, refers to “the technique of influencing human action by the manipulation of representations” (1937). To make a clear distinction between the two, psychologist Roger Brown (1958) pointed out that persuasive efforts can be called propaganda “when someone judges that the action which is the goal of the persuasive effort will be advantageous to the persuader but not in the best interests of the persuadee” (p. 300). Therefore, as Severin and Tankard put it, “only when it is perceived that an act benefits the source, but not the receiver, can such an act or message be called propaganda” (p. 109). This paper is trying to show that propaganda is not the best tool for U.S. public diplomacy to be effective, since it mirrors one-way communicative approaches that further alienate foreign public opinion.
RESULTS:
The literature and interviews revealed three major critical issues in the current academic and intellectual debate on U.S. public diplomacy, which will be discussed in detail in this paper. First, inspired by the heavily one-sided discourse of the Bush administration, there is usually a critique of the one-way communication method typical of propaganda, and calls for a new two-way communication approach that would enhance public diplomacy and garner positive results both on the foreign and domestic public opinion fronts. Second, the role of civil society is reintroduced as an alternative and a more effective player than the government. Third, there is a renewed interest in engaging the youth as an important segment of the public diplomatic process, particularly with the advent of the internet and global information technologies.
One-way versus Two-way Communication:
The central goal of U.S. public diplomacy in the past decade has been the transmission of information to foreign publics, which is the traditional mission of public diplomacy. “Public diplomacy involves the communication of a government to the people of another nation with the goal of influencing their image of the sender nation,” as Dutta-Bergman states, “it is government’s process of communicating with foreign publics with an attempt to bring about understanding for its nation’s ideas and ideals, its institutions and cultures, as well as national goals and current policies” (Dutta-Bergman, 2006, p.4). In her analysis of U.S. public diplomacy in the Middle East, Dutta-Bergman proposes a “culture-centered approach” as an alternative to “colonizing one-way stance that breeds further violence” (p.24). The culture-centered approach, according to Dutta-Bergman, concentrates on relations between cultures instead of the typical one-way approaches whose purpose and emphasis is on “massaging” the mind of receivers, driven by “motives of gaining public support for U.S. policies in the Middle East, securing profitable markets, and creating a positive image of the United States” (p.20). This one-way flow embodies the “oppressive force” of public diplomacy which “seeks to alter one culture in order to suit the preferences of another culture, based on differences in access to power” (p.21). Thus the one-way communication approach heavily used by the Bush administration was to a large extent the driving force behind much of the violent events that erupted since the election of George W. Bush in the year 2000. This violence was largely the result of the accumulation of negative foreign public opinion about the U.S. due to the failed public diplomacy agenda of the U.S. government. The rising mutual misconceptions between the U.S. and the Muslim World constituted another negative result of the one-way approach. As Dutta-Bergman further states, “[t]he articulation of problems by the sender without engaging the cultural members of the receiving space reflects a myopic conceptualization of the communicative process, leaving a great deal of space for misconception of the problem and the accompanying solutions … The absence of the receiver from the initial communicative process inundates the discursive space with noise and misunderstanding” (p.23). Alternatively, dialogue is the main constituent of the culture-centered approach, and is aimed at relationship building rather than persuasion and hegemony, and it should lead to mutual understanding and respect, which are the essential targets of an ideal public diplomacy.
Inherent in the discussion of communicative public diplomacy efforts is the messenger problem. A central question here is: who is the public diplomat? Traditionally, this job has been filled by government officials and is now the duty of the Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the U.S. State Department. However, to limit the public diplomacy mission to government efforts alone is a rather flawed perception of the term. As Wang argues, “with worldwide proliferation of communication media and affordable information access, the credibility of the government, as the primary communicator, is now often suspect” (Wang 2004, p.12). In fact, even when the U.S. state department hired public diplomacy officials, there have always been criticisms of the qualifications of those in charge. For instance, what received most criticism, to effect public diplomacy, the State Department initially hired people from Madison Avenue and they had focus groups, who were mostly American, trying to decide what the problem was (Fahmy, 2009). Following the dissolution of the USIA, Bush nominated Charlotte Beers to be the Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Beers was a Madison Avenue professional before she was appointed to this job. According to Kilroy Jr., she brought “an advertiser’s approach” to public diplomacy, leading many to see the job as “a matter of selling America overseas” (Kilroy Jr., 2005). As former Egyptian Ambassador to the United States Nabil Fahmy narrates, she produced a video at the beginning of her short tenure titled Muslim Life in America depicting how well Muslims lived in the United States and portraying American tolerance towards Islam in a post 9-11 attempt to “win the hearts and minds” of Muslims. According to Fahmy, who was consulted before the video was broadcast, this was one example of the failed public diplomacy campaign during the Bush administration. When he was asked to give his opinion on the video, Fahmy’s answer was, “nice video, but it’s not going to achieve the purpose. First reason, it is too much propaganda, and propaganda has very little shelf life. Secondly, you are talking about Muslims in America, while nobody was questioning U.S. position on Muslims in America. The problem in the minds of Muslims around the world is why you are biased on some of the political issues that concern them, specially the Arab-Israeli conflict.” So, according to Fahmy, the United States chose the wrong people to carry out the public diplomatic role, and as a result, public diplomacy has totally missed the point. Since they were hiring the wrong messengers, they consequently “did not define the problem properly, did not understand the Muslim-Arab context correctly, and dealt with this as if it were a short-term commercial problem.”
Role of Civil Society:
Civil society in recent years has gained much weight as an integral part of the public diplomatic function. As defined by the Center for Civil Society, civil society refers to "the arena of uncoerced collective action around shared interests, purposes and values. In theory, its institutional forms are distinct from those of the state, family and market, though in practice, the boundaries between state, civil society, family and market are often complex, blurred and negotiated. Civil society commonly embraces a diversity of spaces, actors and institutional forms, varying in their degree of formality, autonomy and power. Civil societies are often populated by organisations such as registered charities, development non-governmental organisations, community groups, women's organisations, faith-based organisations, professional associations, trades unions, self-help groups, social movements, business associations, coalitions and advocacy group" (http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/CCS/what_is_civil_society.htm). In a globalize world, those actors have in fact become an essential mediator in cross-cultural encounters, particularly with the declining role and credibility of governments. Civil society has exponentially grown in the aftermath of 9/11 both in the United States and the Muslim World with the aim to bridge the two region's divides.
A recent Brookings report titled The Opportunity of the Obama Era: Can Civil Society help Bridge Divides between the United States and a Diverse Muslim World? Stresses on the urgent need to reinvigorate civil society initiatives that aim at better understanding between the United State and the Muslim World. The report specifically argues that building support between civil society actors in the two worlds is a top priority that would greatly help to strengthen international security through mutual understanding and open communication channels. With the election of Obama, and the significant change in rhetoric from the "either with us or against us" discourse to the quest for "mutual interest and mutual respect" as articulated in Obama's historic speech to the Muslim World, many voices in both arenas have elevated hopes for a real improvement in mutual understanding to face their mutual challenges. The paper, as its author states, provides "guidelines for how engagement on the people-to-people front, can best be conducted to bridge the divide," offering four key recommendations:
· It is vital to define success and measure it. For the most part these initiatives seek to transform attitudes across the divide, but few if any have defined how to measure these shifts in attitudes. Initiatives must develop success indicators, and undertake pre- and post- participation evaluations of attitudes by participants of the “other”. In this situation, "success," is considered to be achieving the desired impact of the project, and thus can be measured when specific goals are laid out. Further, funders should develop indicators to be used in cross-initiative analysis.
· Jointness is key. Joint partnerships are the key to successful initiatives. Ideally, projects should be jointly funded, jointly managed, and jointly implemented across the divide that the initiative is attempting to bridge—and generally, in this case, with one partner in the United States and one in the Muslim world. Jointness should begin with project design, and continue throughout the life of the project so that both sides can learn from one another and improve the overall initiative.
· Stakeholder outreach is needed. The third strategic step for initiatives is to decide who to invite to the table. Initiatives should reach beyond the “usual suspects” and avoid “preaching to the choir.” Outreach should target segments of society that normally do not talk, including conservatives and ideological opposites from each side of the divide.
· Results can be multiplied. Initiative managers can and should have a plan to multiply the impact of their work whether through the media or other public relations mechanisms. All but the most secret, closed door sessions can be conveyed to a broader audience in some way for broader social impact. (Amr 2009)
Such policy recommendations are themselves vital in improving the status quo. Polling data are perhaps the key indicator for any such improvement, which is yet to take place due to the lack of a strategic endeavor in that direction.
Role of Youth:
Besides improvement of civil society, outreach to the youth constitutes a strategic segment in public diplomacy efforts. Not only are they the future of countries, but they also represent a quarter of the Muslim World's population (http://www.isesco.org.ma/arabe/publications/machakil%20chabab/p4.php) and a similar figure in the United States. Another policy report by the Brookings Institution included in its key recommendations a call for engaging the youth as one important opportunity: "the rapidly growing cohort of youth in Muslim-majority countries should be seen as an opportunity, rather than just a threat… Technological connectivity often familiarizes them with American culture and policy and Is a cornerstone for expansion" (Amr 2004). An interview with the deputy press attaché at the United States Embassy in Cairo revealed that most of their public diplomacy outreach is targeting the youth, starting from high school students to university graduates (Greenan 2009). Their most important program is the YES program (Youth Exchange Program) that sponsors youth exchanges between youth in Egyptian high schools (particularly Islamic schools) and their U.S. counterparts.
Soliya and Terana:
One of the remarkable U.S. non-governmental initiatives that target dialogue between the Muslim World and the United States is the online social network Soliya (http://www.soliya.net). Founded in 2005, the site attracted significant participation from University students across the Muslim World and results showed positive and encouraging attitudes among participants after the program. Under "what we do" link the website states that "Soliya is a pioneering non-profit organization using new technologies to facilitate dialogue between students from diverse backgrounds across the globe." Its flagship program, the Connect Program, uses the latest web-conferencing technology to bridge the gap between university students in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and the United States. "In a time when media plays an increasingly powerful role in shaping peoples’ viewpoints on political issues, Soliya provides students with the opportunity, skills, and tools to shape and articulate their own viewpoints on some of the most pressing global issues facing their generation." Soliya’s Connect Program is facilitated by a cross-cultural team of young leaders drawn from over 25 different countries. Each semester, Soliya carefully evaluates its Connect Program to ensure that it is effectively enabling students to build skills, knowledge & relationships. Each semester the evaluation results have demonstrated that the Connect Program has been very effective in meeting Soliya’s Objectives. The connect program, as mentioned in the site, has three key objectives:
• ENGAGE in weekly facilitated dialogue sessions via Soliya’s online videoconferencing application. The medium is remarkably intimate: participants can see one another’s facial expressions, hear tone of voice, and even share a joke. The dialogue is far-reaching, covering a wide range of issues that currently divide the West and the Arab & Muslim World. The conversation is carefully facilitated, ensuring that students directly address the difficult issues that divide them in a way that enables genuine understanding of alternate perspectives and reconsideration of previously held views.
• EXPLORE a multi-media online library containing a wide range of resources including raw news and interview footage, academic and policy articles, websites, and lectures from relevant experts. These resources form the basis for many of the discussions.
• EXPRESS their understanding of the issues discussed by creating two media projects over the period of the semester. For the first, they edit together a short video segment using simple video editing software and raw footage provided by Al Jazeera and APTN. This experience empowers students to voice their own opinions and encourages them to develop a personal connection with the issues. It also provides them with insights into the video production process, thereby demystifying television journalism and providing them with critical media literacy and media production skills. For their final project, students work together in cross-cultural teams to collaboratively develop a Joint Project. Students are able to choose between a number of different options for the Joint Project. The most popular option is the Joint-Editorial, in which students write editorials with their counterparts on issues relevant to the relationship between the Arab & Muslim World and the West. Selected articles that particularly exemplify this collaborative process are then distributed via the Common Ground News Service. Approximately 25% of student articles written in 2005-7 were published by international newspapers such as the Daily Star in Beirut and the Washington Times.
Moreover, the project has a diverse Board of Directors and Advisory Board that reflect the policy of the initiative, that is a cross-cultural staff that is aware of the diversity of backgrounds in the dialogue. Lately, Soliya has planned to launch Terana, another online social network with a renewed vision to bolster understanding, but in this case with a special focus on the United States and the Muslim World, inspired by Barack Obama's remark "Kansas to Cairo" in his speech to the Muslim World in June 2009. As Soliya CEO, Shamil Idriss, stated in an interview with the author, "through extensive consultation with our staff and with diverse students who went through Soliya's university-based Connect Program, we have chosen the name "Terana" for the network - deriving it from the Arabic suffix "na" for "our" and the Latin word "terra" for "Earth". Just as the name Soliya was developed with the intention to evoke the principles of illumination and education, Terana is intended to connect that illumination to the concrete actions we take here on Earth." Participants in this program will "use new media technologies collectively to promote cross-cultural understanding within and between their societies." In addition, Idriss added that " At the center of our strategy for developing Terana is a belief that the "Core" of that network, the "seed" from which the online community will ultimately grow, will be a critical determinant of its long-term success. Therefore, our primary goal from now until our public launch (planned now for early November 2010), is to identify 150-250 extraordinary young adults from around the world who collectively represent a broad diversity of cultural, religious, ideological, political, and socio-economic backgrounds, to cultivate their individual capacities, and to develop a strong sense of community and common purpose among them in line with our mission."
Such projects as Soliya and Terana are perhaps much more constructive than any government efforts, particularly with the retarding credibility of governmental programs. In fact, when Shamil Idriss was offered government support for his program at the White House, he rejected and preferred to remain independent, yet with mutual benefits to all. What is unique about this initiative is how it combines three instrumental elements of modern public diplomacy, that is the Youth, the Internet, and Civil Society.
Discussion:
The above analysis demonstrates that current public diplomacy needs a paradigm shift in both theory and practice. When it comes to U.S. public diplomacy in the Muslim World, a new strategy is required to achieve "mutual interest and mutual respect," which should be dealt with as the benchmark of the Obama administration's public diplomacy efforts. In facing common challenges, the U.S. and the Muslim World need to identify mutual understanding as a strategic goal in the fight against extremism worldwide. Propaganda must not be equated with public diplomacy, since the former is an inherently one-way approach that necessarily involves incoherent rhetoric that further widens the divide between the two worlds, while the latter is essentially a two-way communicative process that requires engagement and cooperation between the two sides. "In the increasingly interconnected and integrated global society," as Wang puts it, "enhancing understanding between nations and peoples through strategic public diplomacy fulfills an ethical and moral imperative of promoting global peace and development" (Wang 2004).
Conclusion:
This paper represents an attempt to revisit the notion of public diplomacy from a contemporary perspective. What has been tackled in the paper, particularly the role of civil society and youth, requires further investigation and analysis to identify factors for a more effective U.S. public diplomacy with the Muslim World. Case studies are needed for this purpose, as well as a deeper research into the meanings and significance of new public diplomacy terminology associated with the Obama administration, such as the concept of "smart power" put forth by Harvard Professor Joseph Nye and used recently by U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton as a characteristic of U.S. foreign policy under Obama, triggering a heated debate about the efficacy of the term, which combines the use of soft power and military power in dealing with external challenges and threats.
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