Public Diplomacy

The State Department describes itself as implementing a comprehensive public diplomacy strategy based on three strategic objectives:

• Offer people throughout the world a positive vision of hope and opportunity that is rooted in America's belief in freedom, justice, opportunity and respect for all;
• Isolate and marginalize the violent extremists; confront their ideology of tyranny and hate. Undermine their efforts to portray the west as in conflict with Islam by empowering mainstream voices and demonstrating respect for Muslim cultures and contributions; and
• Foster a sense of common interests and common values between Americans and people of different countries, cultures and faiths throughout the world.

Public Diplomacy has been a part of U.S. foreign policy at least since the time of Woodrow Wilson, and is a much larger part of the foreign policy of many other nations.

Public diplomacy has been the subject of a number of studies in recent years, including:

• Strengthening U.S. Public Diplomacy Requires Organization, Coordination, and Strategy (The Heritage Foundation, 2005)
• Obsolete Restrictions on Public Diplomacy Hurt U.S. Outreach and Strategy (The Heritage Foundation, 2007)
• Perceptions of U.S. Public Diplomacy (The Council on Foreign Relations, 2005)
• Changing Minds and Winning Peace: A New Strategic Direction for U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World (Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World, 2003) commonly termed the Djerejian Report after the chair of the Group.

Our leaders have noticed that large numbers of people in the Muslim world think the United States Government is involved in an anti-Islamic crusade, that many or our European allies think the Government is not addressing their interests; that anit-American attitudes are growing in Russia and Latin America; and (I hope that they recognize) that many of the poor people and poor countries think the U.S. government does not recognize their legitimate needs and aspirations, putting our greed before their survival.

In the minds of many American leaders, public diplomacy is confused with propaganda. On the one hand, efforts in public diplomacy are hindered by rules and regulations that prevent the U.S. government from propagandizing at least its own citizens. On the other hand, it really appears that there has been a history of U.S. public diplomacy in fact being propaganda in the negative sense of "saying one thing while doing another".

If we want the people of the world to think we are fair, generous, responsible, even handed, and worthy of the leadership position among nations that our economic, political and military strength require, then we must actually be those things!

Public diplomacy should be a long term goal. A major element of public diplomacy must be education not only for Americans about other peoples but real education of other peoples so that they have both better lives and a more complex and complete understanding of the nature of the world and the relations among nations.

A major element of public diplomacy should be exchanges, and these exchanges should include not only educational exchanges, but cultural exchanges and scientific exchanges.

Communications have always been an important part of public diplomacy, but with the improving global information infrastructure they are of ever increasing importance. Freedom of the press and of information is an obvious objective and instrument of public diplomacy.

If we see public diplomacy as fundamentally achieving a situation in which countries understand each other, and peoples have a realistic understanding of the economic and political, not to mention physical world in which they live, then public diplomacy should be a shared interest among the nations of the world, or at least among those governments which feel truth is more to their benefit than lies.

For that reason, intergovernmental programs should be seen as critical elements in our public diplomacy strategy. UNESCO especially is a collaborative effort among nations to create peace by building its defenses in the minds of men, focusing strongly on exchanges among nations and among peoples that build mutual understanding. Yet few of the theorists seem to recognize the importance of United Nations and Bretton Woods Institutions as instruments of U.S. public diplomacy.