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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.

READING BETWEEN THE LINES
SEP 13, 2007 - 6:20PM PDT
Posted by Craig Hayden
All posts by this author

The New York Times published an interview with the United States Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy, Karen Hughes, on August 28, 2007. The interview was conducted by Robert McMahon of the Council on Foreign Relations and can be found here. McMahon posed some relatively straightforward, if not overly provocative questions, for the Undersecretary. In this blog post I take a critical look at her responses. It is not my aim to simply reject her statements -- but I do think it is important to look at the implications of her policy rhetoric. Hughes’s appointment as the steward of U.S. public diplomacy was heralded as a significant elevation of its importance in the Bush administration back in 2005. More recently, after last year’s critical Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on U.S. public diplomacy efforts, it is more common now to find public discussion of public diplomacy in the U.S. skewed towards either a rejection of administration overtures which are seen as simply posturing, or, that U.S. public diplomacy is effectively on hiatus until the next administration. Do Hughes’ statements prove otherwise? First, Hughes is asked whether there is a way to improve the U.S. image, given the recent global public polls showing low views of the United States in light of the Guantanamo detention facility and the war in Iraq. Hughes responds with what has become one of her signature arguments about public diplomacy: it takes a long time. In the interview, she calls it a “generational task” and notes that opinion of the United States reflects a “complex tapestry” of influence. In other words, what people believe about the United States is not just what the United States says or does, but what others may be saying or doing. That public diplomacy is a long-term task is certainly true -- especially if you consider the objectives. But to lead with this response sounds somewhat like a deflection, rather than an answer. It defrays the very real fact that U.S. public diplomacy -- whether it is international broadcasting or cultural exchange programs (to name a few) compete with wildly unpopular foreign policies that largely overshadow post-hoc justifications and peripheral routes to persuasion embodied in exchange programs. Hughes also states that the United States does not receive credit for its support of a Palestinian state. However, U.S. dedication to resolving the Palestinian crisis has effectively been on hold as part of the “Road Map” Middle East policy -- which requires a stable Palestinian state to move forward. As such, the Arab media haven’t exactly framed U.S. dedication to the Palestinian cause in favorable terms. The Undersecretary is also asked about the purpose of state-sponsored media such as Al-Hurra television and Radio Sawa -- which take up a considerable chunk of the U.S. public diplomacy budget. She responds by claiming that it is important that “we offer credible news and information about America and our policies and our values across the world.” She then emphasizes the institutional “firewalls” between the federal government and the…... FULL TEXT
 
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john brown on September 14, 2007 @ 6:14 am:
Craig,

Thank you for your illuminating article. Perhaps your analysis could have mentioned Ms. Hughes's "diplomacy of deeds," which arguably is her unique (but not, in my view, entirely satisfying) contribution to American public diplomacy. See my piece, "Karen Hughes and Her 'Diplomacy of Deeds'" (Common Dreams, April 9)
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/09/411/

Best, John

Daniel Kumermann on September 14, 2007 @ 12:35 pm:
I am afraid this text is a lot of nonsense. I spent most of my life under communist regime and therefore know something about American public diplomacy (propaganda) from the consumer point of view.
I do not know if Ms. Hughes is doing a good job or not. I do not follow this topic closely and I have not read the interview. I can, howeve quite exactly say that Mr. Hayden seems unable even to conceive something like a recipient's point of view and therefore his whole criticism is much more about his own ideological viewpoints than about affectivity of Ms. Hughes's work.

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