| |
COMMENT
There's more to the US image than
PR
By Ehsan Ahrari
The United
States' standing abroad, especially in the Muslim world,
had deteriorated to such an extent that "it will take as
many years of hard, focused work" to restore it. That
was the latest testimony of Margaret Tutwiler, Under
Secretary of State for public diplomacy, before a House
Appropriation sub-committee. What Tutwiler said, though,
has been a well-known fact for anyone tracking public
opinion polls on the subject. But what should be part of
high public attention is that solutions to this problem
are still being sought through the wrong strategies.
In an era of information revolution, information
savoir-faire has become a global phenomenon.
However, this reality has yet to make a lasting
impression within the US government. The information
specialists who reside in the bowels of foreign
policy-related organizations continue to view Muslim
masses as backward, inward looking, and ready to be
manipulated by the current hegemon. That was one reason
why the Department of State (DOS) hired Charlotte Beers
back in 2001. She was the former head of Ogilvy and
Mather and J Walter Thompson, two of the world's
advertising behemoths. Her claim to fame was
successfully marketing Uncle Ben's Rice and IBM. In the
case of IBM, she was successful in recreating its
previous image "as an arrogant, out of touch
powerhouse". That might have been the closest she ever
got in terms of her qualifications about recreating a
new image for the lone superpower.
As such,
Beers brought to her DOS job a heavy marketing approach.
In other words, then prevalent thinking in the DOS was
that escalating global anti-Americanism could be tackled
by developing new ways to market the US image abroad.
She said in an interview: "The whole idea of building a
brand is to create a relationship between the product
and its user. We're going to have to communicate the
intangible assets of the United States - things like our
belief system and our values." She added that skills she
honed during four decades in advertising had prepared
her for the task.
The most visible
accomplishment of Beers turned out to be a series of
slick commercials in which Muslim-Americans described
their good life in the US. Needless to say, most Muslim
countries refused to air them. Wherever they were aired,
they remained the object of public scorn about the
continued American contempt about the sophistication of
the Muslim populace. Consequently, Washington was not
satisfied with the "remaking" America's image campaign,
and decided to run it from the White House.
One
of the predominant predilections of the American
political system is that solutions to problems of major
policy issues are almost invariably sought in tweaking,
or, at times, even reshaping the bureaucracies that are
in charge of implementing them. Both Republican and
Democratic administrations suffer from this malady. It
also explains what is wrong with the issue of remaking
America's image in the Muslim world. In the making of
major foreign policy, scant attention is paid to its
global implications.
For instance, when
President George W Bush gave his "axis of evil" speech,
he was substantially focused on the American audience in
denigrating Iraq, Iran and North Korea. However, that
speech, according to one source, had an "unexpectedly
explosive impact on the wider international audience".
But when America's image suffered in the immediate
aftermath of that speech, US officials expressed dismay.
Another phenomenon that drives America's dismay is a
pervasive belief within this country that the US
national security objectives not only serve America's
interests, but also those of other countries.
Problems related to the US image in the world of
Islam have only intensified after September 11 because
of a prolonged focus of Washington to rely on
militaristic solutions at the expense of other
approaches. The recent examples - in Afghanistan and
Iraq - underscore that the former country is edging
toward stability largely because the issue of
nation-building was carried out from the get go and on a
multilateral basis. Keeping the Afghanis in charge of
their destiny was an eminently more preferable solution
than following the Iraqi model of ruling though the
Coalition Provisional Authority and using the Iraq
Governing Council as merely a rubber stamp entity. It
should be emphasized, however, that the US recently
started developing a multi-dimensional approach to
transferring sovereignty in Iraq, and in getting the
United Nations involved in determining how feasible
direct elections really are, as demanded by the Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. These developments are likely
to have their positive effects on the US image in the
long run, especially if terrorists don't succeed in
scoring major victories in those two countries.
So, no matter how hard the US strives to improve
its image in the world of Islam, the real solutions
reside in changes in a variety of significant policies
affecting those countries. Seeking purely bureaucratic
solutions or conducting slick public relations campaigns
promise only one thing: a continued deterioration of the
US image, in conjunction with rising spirals of
anti-Americanism.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD,
is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent
strategic analyst.
(Copyright 2004 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
