APDS Blogger: Naweed Lemar

While the Arab political system is being rebuilt after this year’s regional upheaval, Arab states should also look outward and consider how they wish to reposition themselves within the global community.

Those who follow attitudes toward the West on the Arab street need to make room these days for nuance. As the daily televised drama of revolt in Libya and Syria makes plain, the desperate internal struggles, unleashed during the Arab Spring, still command center stage. As long as they continue, the United States, in particular, is likely to be viewed through the prism of these upheavals.

And how precisely is that?

What should President Barack Obama do next as a U.S. public diplomacy measure vis-à-vis the Arab world? As the regime in Libya crumbles to the cheers of Arab citizens across the region, the Syrian regime is still clinging to power, and even lending a voice to Libya’s fallen leader Muammar Qaddafi, who has been broadcasting defiant messages on a private pan-Arab satellite channel called Al-Oroba, which now shares its broadcasts with Syrian-based pro-regime channel Al-Rai.

Yet again we are confronted with a dilemma: when is culture an instrument of soft power? We talk about cultural diplomacy, cultural exchanges and even cultural influence. What is less discussed is how cultural paraphernalia connect to, integrate with, and ultimately enhance a nation’s soft power capital.

The U.S. State Department has been using the term 21st Century Statecraft to describe policies and activities promoting a networked society.

For a field that is predicated on communication, we public diplomats don’t always do as good a job as we could in communicating what is public diplomacy to the public that we serve.  As such, it remains an ongoing challenge for the field to create awareness of what public diplomacy is and what it entails.