Improving America's Image

John Brown November 02, 2006

John Brown, a former Foreign Service officer who practiced public diplomacy for over twenty years, now compiles the "Public Diplomacy Press Review," which can be obtained free by e-mail here. The bankruptcy of America’s public diplomacy—the effort to improve the nation’s image around the world—was in full display during the recent opera buffa involving Alberto Fernandez, director of public diplomacy in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department. Interviewed on Al-Jazeera, where he has appeared frequently, Fernandez said in his fluent Arabic that the United States had been “arrogant” and “stupid” in Iraq—a judgment with which a large number of ordinary Americans would agree. Fernandez’s comment caused a firestorm at the State Department (and among right-wing circles). At first, the department said that its employee’s remark had been mistranslated. After the media made it clear that this was not the case, Fernandez—either as a loyal soldier or a pressured bureaucrat, or maybe both—recanted his observations, announcing that he “misspoke.” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in one of her few noteworthy statements, admitted some time ago that “thousands” of mistakes were made in Iraq. So why was Fernandez expressing a mea culpa about what he said? Indeed, has he not lost credibility among Middle Eastern audiences by doing so? Did he, a person of considerable talent and independence, ever consider going public about what led him to “misspeak” —i.e., admit American policy failures in Iraq? The Bush administration, belatedly recognizing American unpopularity in other countries, has haphazardly sought magic solutions to improve the United States' negative image abroad through “new” public diplomacy initiatives. But, with so little change in Bush’s unilateral and aggressive foreign policy, the unimaginative projects undertaken by the State Department’s Under Secretaries of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs—the “branding” of Charlotte Beers, the “listening tours” of Karen Hughes—are widely recognized as ineffective, if not backfiring disasters, succeeding only in making America as ridiculed as it is disliked. Evidence continues to abound documenting Ms. Hughes’s shortcomings in her current position. According to Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, an internal memorandum sent from Hughes to National Security Council Principals earlier this month entitled "Thinking Bigger," the Bush administration’s strategy for "Public Diplomacy to Counter Insurgency in Iraq” rests on supporting more book publishing in Baghdad, and giving more scholarships to kids from Sadr City. Katulis calls these solutions “nice ideas in theory,” but when faced with civil war and the complete collapse of Iraq’s infrastructure and economy they are “small-minded, unambitious, and disconnected from reality." Another Hughes brainchild has been described thus by Patricia Kushlis, a respected former Foreign Service officer: The new fast media Brussels-based reaction operation is yet another Karen Hughes public diplomacy initiative which—as usual—was hyped to the hilt earlier this year—but also as usual, the hype promises far more than it can ever deliver even in an Edgar Alan Poe type-morphine induced dream. In the past century, the war in Vietnam marked a low point in America‘s international prestige. But demonstrations against the war not only forced the government to change its policy, but also let the rest of the world know that Americans were rejecting a war other nations considered brutal, imperialistic and unjustified. It’s time again for Americans to say “no” to the worst of U.S. foreign policy, this time under Bush. With such a challenge to the administration’s military misadventures, the vast array of public diplomacy programs long in existence before Hughes was at the helm—overseas radio/television broadcasts, educational exchanges, cultural performances abroad—will gain credibility and achieve their best purpose: to increase international willingness to cooperate with the United States so that America can achieve its short- and long-term national interests.