Selling Uncle Sam

December 01, 2004

Many conservative pundits have just woken up to the fact that being widely disliked in the world is nothing to gloat about—the president’s cowboy rhetoric on the campaign trail notwithstanding. But the calls for a renewed emphasis on “public diplomacy” miss a crucial fact: You can’t paper over lousy policy. Uncritical support for Ariel Sharon’s brutal and illegal occupation policies, a pre-emptive war launched on false pretenses and a disregard for international law in Iraq and in Guantanamo—these are the U.S. actions that make the rest of the world deaf to Bush’s claims to be spreading “freedom.”

John Brown, a former Foreign Service officer, compiles a daily Public Diplomacy Press Review (PDPR) available free by requesting it at johnhbrown30@hotmail.com. Aside from public diplomacy, PDPR covers items such as anti-Americanism, cultural diplomacy, propaganda, foreign public opinion and American popular culture abroad.

If there’s a term that’s not part of the Bush White House vocabulary, it’s “public diplomacy” —defined by the State Department as “engaging, informing, and influencing key international audiences.” Newly re-elected President George W. Bush didn’t discuss public diplomacy during the presidential campaign, and when Vice President Dick Cheney did so, it was only to dismiss it as “inadequate” in the war against terrorism. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, while acknowledging in August that “we are obviously not very well organized for the side of public diplomacy,” nevertheless took issue with the 9/11 Commission’s conclusion that America’s message to the world was muddled.

Democratic opponents of the Bush administration—including Sen. Kerry—have repeatedly condemned it for failures in public diplomacy. These failures—they argue—cause the United States to be disliked and misunderstood by the rest of the world. Since 9/11, numerous reports have outlined the drawbacks of public diplomacy under the current administration, including a report published in September by the Science Defense Board, which advises the Secretary of Defense.

In recent days, however, the sharpest criticism of Bush’s handling of public diplomacy is coming from the right, including from neoconservatives.  These commentators make a number of valid points, but their arguments suffer from a fatal flaw: they don’t examine the relationship between the Bush administration’s public diplomacy and its policies.

Conservative Chorus Pushes Public Diplomacy

The recent attacks on Bush’s public diplomacy come from such high-profile conservative pundits as Max Boot in The Los Angeles Times (November 18) and leading neocon Eliot Cohen in The Wall Street Journal (November 17). 

Condoleezza Rice, Boot suggests, will do little as secretary of state to improve America’s image abroad; the person for the job, he argues, is a “seasoned politician with centrist credibility—someone like Sam Nunn, John Danforth or Joe Lieberman.” Boot makes a solid point, even if one does not agree with his specific choices:  From a public diplomacy perspective, the U.S. secretary of state should be a person foreigners will look up to.

Cohen argues that Rice “must reinvent our public diplomacy, articulating abroad the values for which the U.S. stands, using not the techniques of Madison Avenue executives (one of the failures of the first part of the administration) but speech rooted in America’s history and politics.”

A day before Cohen’s piece appeared in its pages, The Wall Street Journal —usually a cheerleader for the administration’s foreign policy—carried an editorial fulminating about “the near-collapse of U.S. public diplomacy,” which it blamed in part on “the [state] department’s misbegotten efforts to sell American values to the Middle East by way of a Madison Avenue-inspired ad campaign.” America—the media mouthpiece of capitalism tells us—can’t be sold as a “brand, like Cheerios”; what the United States has to offer are freedom and democracy. 

Even Mr. Axis-of-Evil himself, David Frum, has come out to bash Bush’s public diplomacy. “The Bush administration,” he proclaims in The Wall Street Journal (November 9), “has careened from disaster to disaster in this area.” Right after the election, a “plea for better public diplomacy” was made by Helle Dale of the Heritage Foundation, who has composed, in collaboration with Stephen Johnson, one of the better-written reports critical of the Bush administration’s handling of the issue, titled “How to Reinvigorate U.S. Public Diplomacy.” In The Washington Times (November 3) Dale notes that “the incoming administration must try to explain its decisions and actions better to the great global audience, which follows our every move here in Washington with rapt attention. Foreign audiences may not be able to vote in our elections, but they can still form strong opinions that affect how we deal with the world.” 

The ever-chattering member of the commentariat, David Brooks, a gentle-sounding neocon in sheep’s clothing, hasn’t failed to give his take on the Bush public diplomacy mess.  In a piece appearing during the later days of the election cycle, “How To Reinvent The GOP,” (The New York Times , August 29), he argues that “public diplomacy needs to be rethought. Somebody has to develop a counterideological message that is more than just: ‘We’re Americans. We’re really decent people. We’re nice to Muslims.’”

Mr. Brooks is, of course, on the right track. For the United States to be understood and maybe even liked in the world, it is definitely not enough to say “have a nice day” to foreigners with an all-American, bleached-white toothy smile—especially after horrors like Abu Ghraib, a chilling symbol of torture with which the United States, once associated with the Statue of Liberty, has now become identified (let us hope not permanently).

It’s Our Policies

Give credit where it’s due. The right wing’s current critique of Bush’s failed public diplomacy is making not insignificant contributions to the debate on how this crucial function of our foreign policy can be improved. It has stressed a number of key (but not very original) points, including the urgent need to have the right kind of organization to carry out public diplomacy programs; reintroducing ideas and principles in the U.S. message to the world; presenting the American viewpoint not through superficial Madison Avenue tricks, but by skillful and articulate persuasion and rhetoric; taking world public opinion seriously; and having a secretary of state capable of representing the best of the United States.

But the essential issue—how Bush’s policies have shaped (misshaped is a better word) U.S. public diplomacy -- is, quite incredibly, not raised by our concerned and well-intentioned right-wingers. The idea that the United States is increasingly unpopular abroad because of its actions in the Middle East and elsewhere is simply not on the right’s radar screen—with rare exceptions like Patrick J. Buchanan’s The American Conservative , some of whose views about the Israel-Arab conflict, however, leave little room for comfort. 

This failure to consider public diplomacy within the context of a policy that repulses millions throughout the globe (as polls have indicated for years) leads us to an uncomplicated, but fundamental, observation: No matter by whom or how the current U.S. administration tries to “sell” its policies, there is little, if anything, public diplomacy can do to “move the needle” of world public opinion in the U.S.’s favor when many of these policies continue to be globally despised for what they are.

If a product sickens its consumers, no amount of packaging or experienced salesmen can ever salvage it. Indeed, on those rare occasions when Bush has tried to present a credible case for his policies, his explanations (such as bringing democracy to the Middle East) are considered abroad as false and hypocritical. The editorial cartoon that appeared in the influential French daily Le Monde in May depicting a U.S. soldier’s boot stamping on the head of an Iraqi with the caption “REPEAT AFTER ME: DE-MO-CRA-CY!” tells it all.

To be sure, some of public diplomacy’s long-term programs—such as educational exchanges—can keep the dialogue between America and the world open to some extent and sow the seeds of better mutual understanding in the future. But policies perceived as unilateral and militaristic that are causing death and devastation—and is that not the case with our actions in Iraq?—will be seen in a world where access to information is increasing by the day as the application of brute, illegitimate force.

The right—while it’s to be lauded for finally seeing how catastrophic Bush’s public diplomacy has become—should take the advice of Dr. James J. Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute (“Don’t Blame Arab Media,” Al-Jazeera, August 17): “As long as US policy in the region remains as it is…public diplomacy efforts are, at best, fingers plugging holes in a leaking dyke. The central problem separating Arabs from America is not the Arab media, nor is it a lack of information—it is all about policy.” Or, in the words of the Science Defense Board report, “Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather they hate our policies.”