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The Public Diplomacy Blog is intended to stimulate dialog among scholars, researchers, practitioners and professionals from around the world in the public diplomacy sphere. The opinions represented here are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.

ANTI-AMERICANISM AND THE RISE OF CIVIC DIPLOMACY
DEC 13, 2006 - 3:50PM PST
Posted by Nancy Snow
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This article originally appeared in Foreign Policy in Focus, December 13, 2006. Anti-Americanism has emerged as a term that, like "fascism" and "communism" in George Orwell's lexicon, has little meaning beyond "something not desirable." However it is defined, anti-Americanism has clearly mushroomed over the last six years, as charted in a number of polls. This phenomenon is, everyone agrees, intimately tied to the exercise of U.S. power and perceptions around the world of U.S. actions. To counter this anti-Americanism, the U.S. government has embarked on a largely clumsy effort at public diplomacy to convince the world of the benignity of U.S. aims and the universality of U.S. values. Structured like an advertising campaign, this effort has failed to sell the product. Even those who hitherto expressed brand loyalty toward the United States, such as the denizens of "old Europe," have had second thoughts. Neither U.S. global policy nor the public diplomacy designed to mitigate its more noxious effects has arrested the steady decline in U.S. popularity in the world. It's not too late to rescue public diplomacy. To do so, however, requires a fundamentally different approach. This new strategy must rely more on the ear than the mouth, more on "second track" rather than official diplomacy, and more on civic engagement than the actions of government representatives. Axis of Anti-Americanism In September 2006, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Sudan's Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir all earned headlines for their harsh and very personal commentary at the UN about all things America. El Presidente Bush became El Diablo, head of the imperialist empire that bullies sovereign states. Chavez and Ahmadinejad claim to represent the people's will by calling out the uber-sovereign Bush who terrorizes in his declared war on terror. The "axis of evil" of Bush's 2002 State of the Union address has been replaced by a more expansive axis of anti-Americanism. This anti-Americanism is the glue that holds together all the third world naysayers who have long opposed what the United States represents culturally, militarily, and economically. This new axis running through the global South has gained legitimacy thanks to a steep decline in American credibility in the world. The Pew Global Attitudes Project, which has been tracking global public opinion since 2001, indicates that America's image in the world remains consistently negative, particularly as a result of the war in Iraq. The first widely publicized survey released in December 2002 showed that, despite an outpouring of global sympathy after 9/11, the world's superpower fared poorly in image and reputation. The majority in most countries viewed "U.S. policies as contributing to the growing gap between rich and poor nations and believe the United States does not do the right amount to solve global problems." Those problems included the spread of AIDS and other infectious diseases, followed by fear of religious and ethnic violence, and nuclear weapons proliferation. On the precipice of the Iraq War, U.S. leaders should have paid attention to the finding that "the war on terrorism is…... FULL TEXT
 
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David on March 1, 2007 @ 6:51 am:
Americans are now, always have been, and always will be SCUM!

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