Whose face to the world? by Steven Barnes, ABU ARDVAARK

ABU ARDVAARK



5/28/08

Whose face to the world?

Steven W. Barnes

There is a growing debate in the United States and abroad over which presidential candidate is best positioned to improve America's standing in the world.

The candidates themselves are taking this issue seriously; all seem to agree that America's current public diplomacy efforts are badly flawed.

On the Democratic side, Senator Barack Obama outlined elements of his public diplomacy program in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in February. He talked of funding "America Houses" overseas that would "incorporate youth centers and libraries that are needed throughout the broader Muslim world."

He also promised to establish a "Voice Corps" - an administration would "rapidly recruit and train fluent speakers of Arabic, Bahasa, Farsi, Urdu and Turkish who can ensure our voice is heard - and that we listen - throughout the world."

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's foreign policy speeches have included the theme of re-establishing America's "moral authority" on the world stage.

The Clinton supporters Lissa Muscatine and Melanne Verveer recently argued on the popular Huffington Post blog that "Hillary Clinton has been practicing public diplomacy for years and is widely respected around the world for her longtime commitment to international development, human rights and America's global leadership."

On the Republican side, Senator John McCain, last year outlined a key element of his plan for overseas outreach in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel.

"I would establish a single, independent agency responsible for all of America's public diplomacy," he said. Such an agency would, among other things, establish "American libraries with Internet access throughout the world" and create "a professional corps of public-diplomacy experts who speak the local language and whose careers are spent promoting American values, ideas, culture and education."

The candidates' positions have generated a lively debate among analysts, particularly online. One contributor to a public-diplomacy blog hosted by Marc Lynch of George Washington University, Steve Corman of Arizona State University, recently wrote of the candidates' positions: "They all seem to assume that the problem is in the way we have been designing, organizing and/or deploying messages [overseas], and that if we just correct that we will start winning the 'war of ideas.' But the problem goes much deeper than that: As study after study has shown, the international credibility of the U.S. is in the basement, if not underground."

A former American diplomat, John Brown, also weighed in on Lynch's blog, saying that the next president should "take foreign public opinion into serious consideration at the beginning, not at the end, of the policy-making process."

On a blog cohosted by the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy and the Foreign Policy Association, a representative of the Association of International Educators asserted, "U.S. foreign policy must be underpinned by a strong foundation for dialogue and collaboration with other nations."

This goal may be accomplished, they advised, by "building the international knowledge and cross-cultural skills of Americans through study abroad and foreign-language and area studies; and attracting the international students and scholars who are the world's next generation of leaders and innovators."

Recently, Justin Logan, blogging for the libertarian think-tank, the Cato Institute, as part of a wider public diplomacy discussion, hit on a key aspect of the larger debate, citing a 2006 U.S. Government Accountability Office report evaluating how the State Department engages Islamic audiences abroad.

The GAO, Logan noted, unequivocally stated that "U.S. foreign policy is the major root cause behind anti-American sentiments among Muslim populations and that this point needs to be better researched, absorbed, and acted upon by government officials."

The presidential contenders and voters should ignore this dialogue at their own peril, for the next president's foreign policy will determine whether and how America's standing in the world improves or founders.

By engaging in this important policy debate now, the candidates will be better prepared to achieve a consensus on the way forward, so that the full measure of America's diplomatic strength may be brought to bear come January 2009.

Fortunately, there is a wealth of research and analysis being conducted in policy and academic circles that can inform how the next president employs the various elements of public diplomacy, so that U.S. foreign policy more effectively shapes, rather than is shaped by, global public opinion.
Steven W. Barnes is assistant dean of public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School.