Review: America’s extended Hand: Assessing the Obama Administration’s Global Engagement Strategy by: Kristin M. Lord and Marc Lynch

President Obama’s presidency began with a drop in America’s image, ridicule from foreign audiences and the questioning of America’s morality in preserving world peace. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before President Obama’s reign had strategically devalued American vision on: Peace, Power, Principles and Prosperity which in turn dismantled the machinations of Public and Cultural diplomacy.

The report offers strong evidence in the change of perception by foreign audiences in their view of what America is and stands for. However, remarks of increased optimism by approval of the masses in Bahrain (33%), Kuwait (19%), Egypt (12%) and Morocco (10%) are a controversial thesis which does not provide a true representation in the Middle East. Most of the countries mentioned are strategic American allies in the war against terrorism. For example: ‘Bahrain constitutes US fifth fleet and U.S. Marine Central Command (Forward) is headquartered in Bahrain’.

Economic injections have been the main source of bilateral agreements which has driven the economies in all those ‘friendly states’ which has also reflected employment in local economies just like US military bases in Germany have helped local economies. American images in the following countries: Syria, Iran, Iraq, Palestine and Yemen reflect different images which are constructed on the grounds of apathy in American foreign policies.

The criticism of ‘many policy makers seeking support for their missions complain that traditional public diplomacy fails to adequately grapple with vital, urgent challenges to American interests’ is a flawed analysis in contextual composition. Without understanding of the vehicle on which public diplomacy is utilized, state bodies are likely to underestimate its importance. The cold war propelled the use of public diplomacy in a different context which has no resemblance to contemporary politics. Cultural diplomacy has become the linchpin of public diplomacy, a structural mechanism which was absent in the cold war. A US advisory committee advised on the effective use of Cultural diplomacy that it: ‘demonstrates our values, and our interest in values, and combats the popular notion that Americans are shallow, violent, and godless’. The importance of America been religious through
Cultural diplomacy improves America’s stand on moral issues in foreign countries.

James K Glassman a former under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy emerged as a passionate advocate of what he called Public Diplomacy 2.0’. Internet-based dialogues are a commendable area which he rightfully identified. In The Middle East where more than half of the population use social media network platforms to utter their views is key in identifying, regulating and executing US Public and Cultural diplomacy policies. Civil unrest in the Middle East recently utilized Social Network platforms to strategically out manoeuvre state security apparatus. In past decades where access to the internet was denied in these societies, civil unrest was a trademark of Western nations. Social Networks has proofed to be a dynamic platform for oppressed populations to destabilize government arms. Channel 4 news assessed the effects and formulated: ‘Amid a near-total media blackout the internet has played a major role in distributing video, pictures and information about the ongoing unrest in Libya’.

‘It remains absolutely vital to understand the perceptions and priorities of the audience in question’. Much often, Public and Cultural diplomacy have disregarded the audience it formulates the policies to. The world does not see the world as a small city as America sees it. There are contrasting deliberations on politics, economics and social factors in regional and international relations and the execution of foreign policies. The State Departments’s oversight on information transmission should be curtailed by creating an internal body which is proficient in analyzing, transmitting and executing Public and Cultural diplomacy.

President Obama and America’s image is interdependent on the transmission of American policies through strong Public and Cultural diplomacy machinery which knows the strategic advantage it could achieve. Unless Congress funds an effective Institutional body to formulate American Public and Culture diplomacy, the struggle for a positive image will regularly be scrutinized.

Bibliography:

Bahrain, (2011), Foreign Assistance to Bahrain, (online), Available at: http://foreignassistance.gov/OU.aspx?FY=2011&OUID=252 Date accessed: 25/03/2011 at 19:47

Al Defaiya, (2011), $19.5 US Military Aid to Bahrain, (online), Available at: http://www.defaiya.com/defaiyaonline/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=916%3A195m-us-military-aid-to-bahrain-&catid=49%3Abahrain&Itemid=27&lang=en Date accessed: 28/03/2011 at 20:29

US State Department, (2005), Report of the advisory committee on Cultural Diplomacy, Washington

Channel 4, (2011), Arab Revolt, Social Media and the People’s Revolution, (online), Available at: http://www.channel4.com/news/arab-revolt-social-media-and-the-peoples-revolution Date accessed: 27/03/2010 at 23:21

Paul.C, (2010), “Strategic communication is vague: saywhat you mean,” Joint Force Quarterly, New York

U.S. Advisory Commission,(2008), "Getting the People Part Right: A Report on the Human Resources Dimension of U.S. Public Diplomacy"

US Commission on National Security, (2001), As recommended by the U.S. Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, Road Map for National Security: Imperative for Change, New York

Another US Deficit - China and America - Public Diplomacy in the Age of the Internet

Critical Review of a Government Report


On the 15th of February 2011 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee released a report, commissioned by Senator Richard Lugar, which presents the disparities between China’s and America’s public diplomacy (PD), and calls the US government to reinvigorate US PD, particularly bestowing the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) a prominent role within it. In fact the report stresses that the rise of China on the international stage poses new questions for the US economic and military security, therefore the US has to address the issue as soon as possible to avoid predicaments.

The report offers an insight into China’s PD, which relies mainly on its ancient culture, on language teaching institutions, the Confucius Institutes and Classrooms, and its increasing role in the UN peacekeeping operations, where China does not sent combat but engineers. This is all part of the public diplomacy campaign that China inaugurated in 2005 called “Peaceful Rise of China”. However the report stresses that the success of this campaign, which has also been supported by the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2010 Shanghai Expo, plays down the possible negative effects of China’s rise. In fact China has a number of liabilities, from poverty to environmental degradation, from corruption to poor working conditions and from abuse of human rights and harassment of journalists to territorial issues and its support for suspicious regimes. The Foreign Relations Committee is also particularly concerned over the fact that while China enhances its PD, it also restricts the American voice to reach Chinese people, limiting American platforms for PD in its territory both physically - resisting further opening of US public diplomacy facilities - and virtually - censoring the internet. China is alleged to take advantage of America’s openness while skewing America’s efforts to reach the Chinese public.
In order to tackle this predicament the US relies on a limited number of US citizens working in China and on still limited, but increasing, student exchanges. However the report stresses the necessity for the US government to supports the Internet Censorship Circumvention Technology (ICCT), and this task must be enforced by the BBG rather than the State department because the former is immune to political pressures and already uses on a daily basis ICCT

The report offers a valuable asset to assess the recent developments of China’s PD, it identifies the major problem confronting US PD, the censorship of the internet, and therefore proposes a possibly successful strategy to tackle the issue without further deteriorating China-US relations.
However it is clearly politically motivated insofar as China is portrayed as a potential enemy which the US has to get ready to fight against. Of particular concern is the association of China to the Soviet Union, and the fact that the report envisions a US-China confrontation not only in the economic sphere, but possibly also in the military field.
Moreover the focus on internet restriction in China and the concern it rises for the US suggests that the latter is still clearly interested in sending its message out there rather than engage with the people. In fact despite the fact that China’s restriction of internet freedom is deemed to be worrying in many respect, the US should focus mainly on long-term engagement with the Chinese people, especially through cultural exchanges. As the report notes, the US has already an embryonic settlement in China constituted by the US Peace Corps Program, and President Obama has expressed the will to increase the number of Americans studying in China, therefore the US PD should concentrate on this aspect which can offset internet restriction. Relying on American people in China the US puts down allegations of propaganda that often sprang from governmental communication in foreign countries, does not risk to upset the Chinese government, and enhances the possibility to build long-term relations between the two countries.

Sources:

Armstrong M., 2011, “Another US Deficit - China and America - Public Diplomacy in the Age of the Internet” at http://mountainrunner.us/2011/02/Lugar_US_Deficit_China_America_Public_Diplomacy.html.


Lugar R., 2011, “Another Us Deficit - China and America - Public Diplomacy in the Age of the Internet”, at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1574605/Blog/Reports/2011-2%20Another%20US%20Deficit%20-%20Public%20Diplomacy%20in%20the%20Age%20of%20the%20Internet%20%28SFRC%20report%29.pdf

Cultural Diplomacy Is Ours

Globalization is a highly contested concept. It is an uneven process, it is quite unclear if it benefiting or harming people across the world, it is not clear-cut whether is bringing a new world order, characterized by multi-polarism, or reinforcing the old hegemonic one. Globalization rises many questions which for the time being are still unanswered. However what is self-evident about globalization is that it is driven by the technological revolution. This is the underlying force of globalization that allows “time-space compression” (Harvey quoted in Baylis, Smith, Owens, 2008, 17), in the form of international flights, international communications and information, the internet as so forth. Globalization is bringing people from different parts of the world closer to each other, and whether this would result in a clash of civilizations, as Huntington foresees, or in greater cross-cultural understanding, as liberals would claim, is still a matter of debate.
It can be argued that cultural diplomacy has a paramount role to play to build bridges of understanding among different cultures and avoid a clash of civilizations. Cultural diplomacy is often referred in the literature as a feature component of public diplomacy (Bound, Briggs, Holden, Jones, 2007; Mark, 2009), or as a form of soft power (ICD, 1999). This implies that cultural diplomacy is a tool in the hands of governments. However this is a major mistake of our century, for the very reason that people around the world are increasingly coming to see governments as a corrupt form of power, and there is a strong tendency to mistrust their activities. As Bound, Briggs Holden and Jones remark, cultural institutions work better than diplomats in times of political difficulties ( 2007, 56). Nevertheless they maintain that these cultural institutions must be underpinned by “strong governance arrangements” (ibid. 64), and this does not solve the general mistrust against governments.
The focal point is that people have been provided with the channels to cut distances, especially through the internet, and we can be diplomats on our own right. This is particularly relevant for two main reasons: firstly within a state can coexist different nations, each of which with different cultures, and governmental cultural institutions often tend to promote the dominant culture at the expense of minorities and to foster homogenization of culture within a state, reinforcing the Foucaultian relation of knowledge and power and therefore non-governmental cultural institutions are better deemed to promote cultural heterogeneity and plurality; secondly the intentions of ordinary people to promote their culture are often more genuine that those of governments, because the latter are mainly concerned with national security, while the former are often moved by the desire to know what is behind their spatial barriers for personal curiosity, will to understand the world and entrepreneurial aspirations.
I know that all this can sound very utopian, but states and governments have been proved wrong in many respects, moved by ideological concerns as it was during the Cold War or by economic motif that have not benefit the people but the elite in power. Culture is ours, of the people, and now we have the means to promote our cultures by ourselves, not to enhance our government image, but to build bridges of understanding among us. Culture is a fundamental defining feature of our identities and I am sure that a great majority of the world population does not accept that governments make of this another instrument for power politics as it was in the case of America during the Charlotte Bear era. The freedom to promote our culture for our sake rather than for governments’ sake could be the key for a pacified world inhabited by different cultural identities that accept and respect each other.

Sources:
Baylis, Smith, Owens, 2008, The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations, 4th ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Bound, Briggs, Holden, Jones, 2007, “Cultural Diplomacy”, Demos, at http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Cultural%20diplomacy%20-%20web.pdf?1240939425.

ICD, 1999, “What Is Cultural Diplomacy?” at http://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/index.php?en_culturaldiplomacy.

Mark S., 2009, “A Greater Role for Cultural Diplomacy”, Clingendael Discussion Papers in Diplomacy, at http://www.clingendael.nl/publications/2009/20090616_cdsp_discussion_paper_114_mark.pdf.

Libya: NATO's 'Lost Opportunity'.

It took quite a considerable amount of time for the Security Council to react to the brutal nature of abuses in Libya. The people of Libya had voice fully called for intervention in the attacks colonel Gaddafi had orchestrated against his own population.

Western decision making in the past decades has come under scrutiny and public ridicule in the Arab world. Immediately the crisis started, I wondered what the strategy would be to convince a questioning and suspicious Arab audience. Never before in the past decade has such an opportunity avail itself for Western allies to utilize a strategic and constructive plan to change the minds and hearts of the oppress, however, it took weeks before a concerted effort was approved by the security council for the implementation of a no fly zone in Libya. Under UN resolution 1979 a open clear optimistic door went open for the use of public diplomacy to convince Arab audiences, that Western allies would protect sovereignty and dispose tyrannical rule if only accepted by the masses. The resolution read: ‘Reaffirming its strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national unity of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya’. Furthermore, a strong analytical critique was approved in the justification of implementing a no fly zone, ‘determining that the situation in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya continues to constitute a threat to international peace and security.

A comprehensive ground work had been envisaged in context with the Security Council approval under the UN’s VII chapter to use force, stating clearly to Arab audiences that: The International community did not seek invasion or occupation. American and European reluctance to start a ground war illustrated a perfect picture of non - westernization of the conflict, however, ignoring the suffering of the population tinted the new short lived ‘positive’ image of the West.

The structural strategy of NATO forces not to align with ‘the rebels’ also came as disappointment to Arab audiences as the civilian toll and rise of internally displaced persons (IDPs) threatened to cause humanitarian crisis. NATO forces have also constantly struck ‘rebel’ fighters in ‘friendly fires’ but refuse to apologise: ‘alliance commander Rear Admiral Russell Harding spoke merely of his “regrets” at the loss of life. And he blamed the blunder on not knowing anti-Gaddafi forces had tanks, believing the vehicles were government ones. He said bluntly: “I am not apologizing’.

The act of ignorance and unwillingness to admit mistakes to appease an expectant faction (The Arab Constituent) is indeed a lost opportunity in the failings of NATO public diplomacy in an era of strategic advantage.

Bibliography: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12782972

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/04/09/nato-refuses-to-apologise-for-libyan-friendly-fire-blunder-115875-23047746/

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/04/08/libya.war/index.html

Britain’s Clumsy Public and Cultural Diplomacy

It seems laughable at times, when serious issues concerning foreign publics are twisted around clumsily and the content of a laudable vision becomes obsolete. ‘ Of course, the risks—of coming across to the world as clumsy rather than canny, of provoking more anger than intended, of gaining nothing for all the candour - are serious’.

‘But we cannot tolerate the idea that this country is allowed to look both ways and is able, in any way, to promote the export of terror whether to India, Afghanistan or anywhere else.’ Those were the punch lines Mr Cameron threw in a ring fiercely contested by raging parties of nationalistic machination.Thus provocative, Mr. Cameron didn’t elaborate constructively but sparked a diplomatic row in a region fragile to common rhetoric.

Public and Cultural diplomacy is an important tool to envisage a strategic advantage, but without any understanding of complexities in regional configuration, most common policy outlines will be sidelined by negative diplomatic disposition. Most at times, foreign governments forget to be constructive in differentiating countries from each other even though they are located in the same geographic position. India and Pakistan are located in warring environments which makes the careful coordination of public and cultural diplomacy a tricky endeavor. The nature of fragmentation is deeply entrenched in the public fabric on grounds of factorial dispensations such as: Patriotism, Religion, Geopolitics and Governance. Public and Cultural diplomacy can only be envisaged through the recognition of the factors mentioned. Public and Cultural diplomacy has a strong ability to unite all nations on structural grounds, with a good attitude by external bodies who recognize the solid vehicle Public and Cultural diplomacy deploys on. The historical links between India, Pakistan and India makes it easier for Britain to conduct a soft power approach detached from all sort of irresponsible comments.

The move to deploy a Pakistani (Muslim) cricketer to promote the values of Britain is a laudable adventure which recreates a new face of British Public and Cultural diplomacy. ‘Muslim Ahmed is a role model to many young Pakistani men and is seen as being able to reach people in both Britain and his home country who may be at risk of being radicalised’. Another welcoming development to build a recognizable positive image for Britain is the recent aid grant to Pakistan to help it improve education, which Britain perceives as a sign to stabilize Pakistan. ‘David Cameron vowed to hand hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money plus vital military secrets to Pakistan yesterday to make amends for offending the Muslim nation last year’.

However, the question is: will Pakistan make use of the funds to encourage education and give credit to British adventurism to create a new brand for itself in the Islamic world or fund rapid Talibanization.

Bibliography:

httphttp://www.metro.co.uk/news/836434-david-cameron-tells-pakistan-not-to-promote-terror

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/836434-david-cameron-tells-pakistan-not-to-promote-terror

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23934317-muslim-cricket-stars-anti-terror-video-message-with-no-spin.do

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1373478/David-Cameron-Pakistan-650m-spend-education.html