Loud Actions That Speak Wrongly

John Brown

April 09, 2007

John Brown, a former Foreign Service officer and senior fellow at the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy, compiles the Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review .

“Propaganda of the deed,” a phrase attributed to the 19th century Italian revolutionary Carlo Pisacane, has long been associated with the tactics of terrorism. The Bush administration’s image czarina and No. 1 overseas spin-stress, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes, has now provided humankind with an updated version of Pisacane’s term: “diplomacy of deeds.”  

In public statements, Hughes stresses that she sees carrying out deeded diplomacy as one of her most important functions. As she writes in the Washington Times on December 20, 2006:

Americans should know we are giving the gift of hope to thousands of people whose names we will never know. And I will continue to advocate we do even more, because the diplomacy of deeds serves our own national interests and the people of every nation.

Examples of the effectiveness of such diplomacy, she adds, are:

After the Navy hospital ship USS Mercy revisited areas of Southeast Asia ravaged by the tsunami last year, polls showed the favorable opinion of the U.S. rose to 87 percent in Bangladesh. When earthquakes devastated Pakistan, American military helicopters rushed emergency relief to thousands of people. The Chinook helicopter quickly became one of the most popular toys in Pakistan and favorable opinion of Americans doubled in polls.

But Hughes’ diplomacy of deeds has severe limitations. First, it cannot automatically be assumed that ostentatious public displays of what the Bush administration considers good deeds or charity (and Hughes’ handlers certainly make sure that her help-the-suffering-world actions are covered by the media) are always appreciated by the people for whom they are intended. A specialist in public diplomacy, R. S. Zaharna of American University, suggests this when she writes in Foreign Policy in Focus (June 2003) that the United States government tried to show how the war on terror was not a war on Islam by emphasizing U.S. efforts to help Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Emphasizing one’s good deeds is a coveted practice in U.S. public relations.

Washington officials were naturally confused and offended by apparent Muslim ingratitude. However, for most Muslims, calling attention to one’s charity or good deeds is frowned upon. The Koran admonishes, “Cancel not your charity by reminders of your generosity or injury."

Second, Hughes’ fascination with deeds meant to impress those who she thinks are bound to be “grateful” for them reflects what has been a major fault of the Bush administration from its very beginning: that it does not really believe in two-way communications with the rest of the world. Instead of supporting the exchange views with foreign publics, the administration just wants to impress citizens of the world with our goodness so that they'll stop hating us.

Finally, Hughes’ overseas deeds, in the global scope of things, are of small significance, for they are those of an administration that (in the eyes of the world) has committed some of the most horrid deeds in this new century, ranging from an unjustified war of aggression on an impoverished country to the establishment of a detainee camp at Guantanamo where prisoners are not granted basic human rights.

The true result of the diplomacy of deeds of the Bush administration, therefore, has not been Pakistani kids suddenly becoming pro-American by playing with Chinook helicopters, but the havoc, death and destruction our forty-third president has wreaked upon the world, at enormous cost to American blood and treasure and to whatever moral standing the United States has on our small planet.