~YOUTH VIEWS~ America in the world: not so beautiful by Jennie Kim

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~YOUTH VIEWS~ America in the world: not so beautiful

by Jennie Kim

25 July 2006

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Washington, D.C. - The world must seem like a cold place to Americans, as the question du jour, "Why do they hate us?" now invites another: "Which 'they' are you talking about?"

"They" no longer refers exclusively to terrorist groups. Indeed, American diplomacy has atrophied worldwide. Nowhere is this more painfully evident than in the Middle East, where for two weeks now Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged devastating blows, while Washington -- cut off from key regional powers in Tehran and Damascus -- did nothing to broker the peace. Tragically, Lebanon, one of America's precious few Arab allies, will bear the brunt of two costs: the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict and America's stunning diplomatic failure in the Middle East.

The Lebanon crisis will certainly not improve the dismal perception of America shared by Arab and Muslim publics, the key audiences of the Bush administration's Iraq and War on Terror policies. According to the newly released June 2006 Pew Global Attitudes survey, only 30 percent of Egyptians and 15 percent of Jordanians have a favourable opinion of America, despite receiving billions of dollars in U.S. bilateral aid over the years. In 2000, a solid majority of Indonesians (75 percent) held positive views of America -- today, only 30 percent do. However, the most dramatic decline was in Turkey, where positive views of America have tumbled more than four-fold in six years (from 52 to 12 percent).

In fact, America's image has fallen sharply worldwide in the years since 9/11. Today, 37 percent of Germans and 23 percent of Spaniards have a favourable opinion of the U.S. -- less than half the number from six years ago. During that time, America's favourability also dropped more than one-third in France (from 62 to 39 percent). Even in Great Britain, its strongest ally, America draws a lukewarm reception, with 56 percent of the British public expressing positive views of the US, down from 83 percent in 2000.

Being an object of global disdain is a relatively new role for this country, which has generally followed Willy Loman's philosophy in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, "Be liked and you will never want", to manoeuvre its way around the world. Indeed, no other country has capitalised on the relationship between popularity and global success better than the United States, a nation whose stunning military and economic resources have, until recently, been matched by an enviable store of soft power -- the power of influence and persuasion that comes from being respected and liked.

Some may dismiss soft power as irrelevant, arguing that America is mighty enough to pursue its interests without regard to international opinion. But hard power has its limits. Like globalisation, the worldwide spread of democracy is double-edged. Anti-American sentiment among foreign audiences can constrain would-be allies and have serious policy implications: consider Turkey's decision to prevent American troops from crossing its borders to fight in Iraq, or the repercussions of the Spanish elections after the Madrid subway bombing, which resulted in Spain withdrawing its troops from Iraq.

What can soft power do to reverse this trend? While we may never get the world to agree with our decision to invade Iraq, or our stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict, public diplomacy -- the act of understanding, engaging and influencing foreign public opinion -- can go a long way to dampen what Edward Djerijan, a former diplomat and expert on public diplomacy, calls "the dangerously reinforcing cycle of animosity". Furthermore, he recommends, the tools of public diplomacy must be used in the early stages of policymaking to avoid producing negative reactions that could undermine American interests.

To that end, Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes has taken several steps forward since she became the nation's public diplomacy tzarina last fall. After a rocky start -- Beirut's Daily Star derided her first Middle East listening tour as "not charming, but definitely offensive" -- Hughes has successfully pushed for much-needed reforms to raise public diplomacy's profile and budget (albeit to a scant $1.14 billion).

Public diplomacy is a generational endeavour and, after many years of idling, it will need a great deal more time, talent and funding to succeed. Of course, there will always be a limit to how much public diplomacy can do: bad policies, like bad products, won't sell. Nor can public diplomacy dismantle the historic peculiarities of American foreign policy, which is characterised by a gap between narrow interests and lofty ideals, creating a dissonance that an arrogant, at times messianic, sense of purpose feigns to obscure.

From Woodrow Wilson's solemn justification ("God helping her, she can do no other") for sending America to intervene in the First World War, to Bush's bold claim that "freedom is...the almighty God's gift to every man and woman in this world," American presidents have shown themselves willing to risk extraordinary over-reach, so long as they're erring on the side of the divine. Under the shade of this theory, international opprobrium is a burden secondary to moral duty -- a consoling thought. But if America alone could not "make the world safe for democracy" in the last century, how do we expect to make democracy safe for the world in this one?

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* Jennie Kim (jenniek@gwu.edu) is a graduate student at the George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs. She received her degree, in History, from Stanford University in 2005. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.

Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), July 25, 2006)

Visit the website at www.commongroundnews.org

Distributed by the Common Ground News Service - Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).

Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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