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Round 2 in Middle East charm
offensive
By R S Zaharna
(Posted with permission from Foreign
Policy in Focus)
With the end of
major military action in Iraq, US public diplomacy in
the Arab and Muslim world has entered a new, more
challenging phase. In the post-September 11, 2001, phase
of US public diplomacy, America was the undeniable
victim of a terrorist attack. That image fit with the
underlying message of America's "war on terrorism",
namely, "join us in fighting evil aggression against
innocent civilians". Even still, America's public
diplomacy initiative failed. Now, with the US-led
military action in Iraq, America is no longer perceived
as the victim but rather as the aggressor. If selling
Washington's message was tough before, it just got
infinitely harder. Before embarking on a new diplomacy
phase, it is critical to understand what went wrong in
the first.
The first phase of the current
American public diplomacy was heralded with great
fanfare almost immediately after September 11. The
terrorist attack on America was a wake-up call for many
in Washington about the importance of public diplomacy.
As Congressman Henry Hyde noted, "The perceptions of
foreign publics have domestic consequences." President
George W Bush echoed the sense of urgency when he said,
"We have to do a better job of telling our story."
Within days of the September 11 attacks,
Secretary of State Colin Powell suddenly answered a
longstanding invitation to appear on al-Jazeera, the
Arab satellite news channel. In less than a month, on
October 2, veteran advertising executive Charlotte Beers
was sworn in as the new undersecretary of state for
public affairs and public diplomacy. In November, the
House held its first hearings on public diplomacy.
According to Beers and the other experts who testified,
the problem was that the world did not know or
understand America. Thus, the first priority of US
public diplomacy was to inform the world about US
policies and values.
Efforts focused on the Arab
and Muslim world. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice followed
Powell's lead and also agreed to interviews on
al-Jazeera. The State Department compiled evidence
linking al-Qaeda to September 11 into a brochure, "The
Network of Terrorism". A new website and a series of ads
about Muslim life were created to emphasize the "shared
values" between America and Muslims. New Arabic, Farsi,
Dari and Pashto-language radio stations were launched,
and plans were developed for an Arabic-language
television network.
The US Congress and
administration similarly intensified their efforts.
Congress passed the new Freedom Promotion Act of 2002
that injected US$497 million annually into the budget of
public diplomacy. First the Pentagon, then the White
House, established special offices to help reach public
diplomacy goals.
With such a concerted effort at
the highest levels aimed at winning the hearts and minds
of Arabs, Washington officials expected increased
support in the Arab and Muslim world. That didn't
happen. Despite more than a year of intensive public
diplomacy aimed specifically at the Muslim and Arab
world, study after study from November 2001 to December
2002 showed US support steadily declining.
On
February 27, appearing before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, Beers described the gap between how
America sees itself and how others see America as
"frighteningly wide". Regarding the Muslim world, Beers
was even more graphic: "... millions of ordinary people
... have gravely distorted but carefully cultivated
images of us - images so negative, so weird, so hostile
that I can assure you a young generation of terrorists
is being created." The next week, Beers resigned her
position - for health reasons. America's public
diplomacy initiative had clearly backfired.
In
March, when America's war on terrorism led to US
military action in Iraq, support for America plummeted.
According to a newly-released study by the Pew
Charitable Trust, anti-American sentiment in the Muslim
world has intensified and spread. In several Arab
countries, more than 90 percent hold an unfavorable view
of the US, and negative perceptions have spread from the
Muslim countries in the Middle East to Indonesia in the
Far East and Nigeria in Africa.
Public diplomacy
may not have been the only answer to the post-September
11 crisis, but it was an important tool. The problem is,
it backfired. The critical question remains: What went
wrong? How did American public diplomacy result in
decreased support in the Arab and Muslim world?
Problems with current US policy
Key
problems
American public diplomacy is not culturally neutral
but reflects a uniquely American style of communicating.
While the American style of communicating positively
resonates with the American pubic, it negatively
resonates or fails to resonate with the Arab and Muslim
publics.
Cultural differences in public communication styles
undermined the effectiveness of American public
diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim world.
The
immediate explanation for declining Arab support for the
US would appear to be America's "war on terrorism". But
the whole purpose of public diplomacy is to garner
support for policies, even for unpopular policies and
even from skeptical foreign publics. To be effective,
public diplomacy must work not only in times of peace
but also in times of conflict. Two other factors loom
much larger in explaining the failure of public
diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim worlds: credibility and
culture.
The credibility problem derives from
the fact that many in the Middle East perceive a sharp
contradiction between the words of US public diplomacy
and the actions of US foreign policy. This discrepancy
between America's words and actions creates a
credibility problem that can discredit even the best
campaign.
The other key factor, which typically
receives less emphasis, is culture. Not all public
diplomacy problems are communication problems, but
effective communication can help resolve policy and
credibility issues. The fact that Washington's
communication backfired with foreign audiences points to
culture as the primary culprit. Different cultural
styles of communicating often produce opposite and
unintended results.
Ironically, US officials may
have been so focused on studying their audience's
culture that they neglected the influence of their own.
US public diplomacy very much reflects a uniquely
American style of communication, public relations and
advertising. While the American public responded
positively to the style, the Arab and Muslim publics,
who have a different culture and style entirely,
responded negatively or not at all. Several examples
stand out.
First, US public diplomacy focused on
getting America's message out. This information-centered
approach parallels the "information overload" syndrome
found in America, where communication problems are
solved by the supply of information. The Arab world has
a more relationship-centered view of communication.
Rather than focusing on one-way message strategies to
inform people, the Arab culture tends to use two-way,
relationship building strategies to connect people.
America's information-centered goal resulted in a flood
of information that was neatly packaged but which failed
to connect with the Arab people.
Second,
American public diplomacy relied heavily on the mass
media to get the US message out to the most people in
the least time. In the Arab world, meeting people face
to face may not be the most efficient means of
communicating, but it is the most effective, and
interpersonal channels are preferred. Besides, the Arab
media do not have a stellar history of credibility and
trust with the public. Thus, relying on the mass media
to communicate with the Arab and Muslim worlds is likely
to prove both ineffective and counterproductive.
For example, Washington officials were
repeatedly shocked by the tenacity of rumors when the US
attacked the Taliban in Afghanistan. Despite a rapid
response team of US spokespersons covering the news
cycle from Karachi to Washington, vicious rumors
persisted. Rumors speak to the advantage that social
networks have over the media in spreading information;
misperceptions speak to the advantage that interpersonal
communication has over mass communication regarding
credibility.
The State Department's multi-million
dollar advertising campaign promoting Muslim life in
America failed for the same reason. Television
advertisements cannot compete with personal phone calls
from Muslims and Arabs in America about the immigration
and discrimination problems they have faced in the US
since September 11.
America's style relied on
facts and evidence as the primary persuasive tools in
making the case against Saddam Hussein and Osama bin
Laden. For most Americans, the facts speak for
themselves. For most people in the Muslim world,
impersonal facts ring hollow, while metaphors and
analogies persuade. Not coincidentally, the dominant
persuasive devices found in the Holy Koran are
analogies, metaphors and rhetorical questions. These are
the tools bin Laden wields so effectively.
Directness is another stylistic difference.
Bush's penchant for "speaking straight" communicated a
resolve that most Americans cheered. In many Muslim
countries, such directness in public settings is
perceived as confrontational, threatening the
recipient's public face as well as its collective social
fabric.
Finally, many of the message appeals
also missed the mark. One outstanding example was
Washington's attempts to show how the "war on terror"
was not a war on Islam by emphasizing US efforts to help
Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Emphasizing
one's good deeds is a coveted practice in US public
relations. Washington officials were naturally confused
and offended by apparent Muslim ingratitude. However,
for most Muslims, calling attention to one's charity or
good deeds is frowned upon. The Koran admonishes,
"Cancel not your charity by reminders of your generosity
or injury."
In general, US officials appear to
have overlooked culture as an inherent feature of public
diplomacy, viewing the problem as a lack of information,
and lamenting that "people don't know about us". US
public diplomacy got the message out but had no control
over how it was interpreted. In some cases, efforts by
administration officials to explain US policies were as
offensive as the policies themselves.
Since the
American communication style elicits such a positive
response from the American public, Washington officials
were at a loss to explain why their best efforts were
failing and the US image was spiraling downward.
Toward a new foreign policy
Key
recommendations
Culture, combined with crisis, produced the
unintended consequences of US public diplomacy in the
Arab and Muslim world.
The challenge of effective public diplomacy is
bridging cultural differences, so that an
administration's communication style positively
resonates with domestic and foreign publics.
As the promise of US liberators fades into the
reality of US occupiers in Iraq, the Arab world conjures
up highly negative and emotionally charged images of
Israel's military occupation of Palestine.
Culture, combined with the crisis America faced,
produced the unintended consequences of US public
diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim world. The
post-September 11 phase of US public diplomacy was, in
effect, crisis public diplomacy. Unlike traditional
public diplomacy, which enjoys the luxury of time to
cultivate favorable publics individually, crisis public
diplomacy entails communicating simultaneously with
multiple audiences - including hostile ones - in a
rapidly changing, highly visible and politically
competitive communication environment.
American
officials appeared to overlook the immediacy and glare
of the international media that crises engender. US
officials tried to communicate with foreign publics as
if they were separate from the American public. Such a
distinction between foreign and domestic publics has
become purely hypothetical. In today's global and
instantaneous communication environment, a nation can no
longer separate its domestic public from foreign
publics. What one hears, everyone hears.
American efforts to intensify its public
diplomacy may have inadvertently magnified
misunderstandings and tensions between America and the
Arab and Muslim worlds. Although both the domestic and
foreign publics heard the same message, both interpreted
it differently. When America amplified its message
through stronger language and more vigorous
dissemination, American domestic support grew and
foreign support weakened. The more America intensified
its public diplomacy efforts - using an American style -
the greater the gap became between the domestic and
foreign publics.
This gap may have been widened
by Washington's need to gain and solidify American
domestic support. During times of conflict, rallying
domestic support often means identifying a foreign
enemy. If the foreign public identifies with the foreign
enemy, efforts to demonize the enemy only further
alienate the foreign audience and widen the gap between
the domestic and foreign publics.
As the US
embarks on a new round of public diplomacy, the
challenge is how to span cultural barriers, so America's
public communication positively resonates with the
domestic and foreign publics. Meeting this challenge
requires that US officials not only coordinate their
message among America's many spokespersons, but also
harmonize communication with America's many publics. The
two must go hand in hand.
If there was a success
in the first round of US public diplomacy, achieving
coordination was it. America's initial public diplomacy
efforts highlighted the need for coordination. Disputes
within the administration were producing conflicting
messages. However, by the time the US entered Iraq, all
officials were speaking with one powerful voice.
Now that the US occupies Iraq, the problem of
coordination has reemerged. When the US military entered
Iraq, it became the new face of American public
diplomacy. US troops are now both the medium and the
message of US public diplomacy in the region.
In
this respect, the US military is at a distinct
disadvantage. The promise of America as a "liberator" is
rapidly fading into the reality of US troops as
"occupiers". Americans tend to have a historically
positive view of military occupation; the US occupation
of Germany and Japan helped transform both into world
economic powers. In the Arab and Muslim world, military
occupation conjures up highly negative and emotionally
charged images of the Israeli military occupation of
Palestinian land. These images are fertile ground for
rumors, stereotypes, and fears. Already one can
substitute photo captions from the US military
occupation in Iraq, such as the walking patrols and
checkpoints, with those of the Israeli military
occupation in Gaza. The more entrenched these images
become, the more difficult they will be to remove later.
American credibility, matching words about Iraq
with deeds in Iraq, will be closely monitored. Given the
presence of US troops, it is important that the Bush
administration's public statements correspond to the
actual situation in Iraq. Credibility and public
diplomacy effectiveness will not be measured by mass
media efficiency but rather by the tenor of the personal
stories circulating during the evening social visits
among Iraqi families and neighbors.
Harmonizing
America's communication with its internal and external
publics will be equally challenging and will require
large doses of cultural awareness. The effort to be more
culturally attuned will entail fewer Washington-driven
initiatives that sound good at home and more
field-driven initiatives that work well abroad. Also,
implementing some of the institutional recommendations
proposed by the Council on Foreign Relations and the US
Information Agency Alumni Association may help make US
public diplomacy more responsive, flexible and proactive
in the region. Through a dual approach - coordinating
communication internally and harmonizing it externally -
US officials can avoid the unintended consequences of
crisis public diplomacy.
R S
Zaharna is a Middle
East analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus and an
assistant professor of public communication at American
University. She specializes in international and
intercultural communication.
(Posted with
permission from Foreign Policy in Focus)
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