|
After the 2001 attacks, people around the world expressed shock and supportfor the U.S. government. Since then, however, negative attitudes about America haveincreased and become more intense, not just within Muslim populations, http://www.ukassignment.org/mgessaydx/ but worldwide.6 The Iraq War, begun in March 2003, exacerbated negative opinions ofAmerica in virtually every country polled — both traditional allies and non allies.7
2001年的恐怖袭击后，世界各地的人们表示对美国政府震惊。然而，自那时以来，美国的态度消极更加激烈，不仅在穆斯林人口，但worldwide.6 2003年3月伊拉克战争开始essay范文恶化的负面看法几乎在每一个国家的受访者都会由此情况出现，在传统盟国和非盟国也是。
Public diplomacy primarily consists of three categories of activities: (1)international information programs, (2) educational and cultural exchange programs,and (3) international nonmilitary broadcasting. The Under Secretary of State forPublic Diplomacy and Public Affairs administers the Bureau for InternationalInformation Programs and the Bureau for Educational and Cultural Affairs，while theBroadcasting Board of Governors manages and oversees international broadcasting.“If we don’t have long-term relationships with Muslim populations, wecannot have trust. Without trust, public diplomacy is ineffective.
公共外交主要包括三大类活动：（1）国际资讯节目，（2）教育和文化交流项目，及（3）国际非军事广播。国家部外交和公共事务局副局长，负责管理局为网络程序和负责教育和文化事务局，而理事会管理和监督国际广播
The Commission emphasized that the vast majority of Muslims worldwide aremoderates who do not agree with violence. In contrast, the Commission stated thatthe Islamist terrorists hate America and all that it stands for, and violence and terrorare their weapons against the United States. The Commission asserted that theUnited States, through public diplomacy, can find a way to drive a wedge betweenthe two groups. We can gain the support of the moderate majority by exportingoptimism and hope for a good future for their children through public diplomacy, theCommission reported.Some foreign policy experts and Members of Congress have cautioned,however, that public diplomacy is only good if the message is credible. Recentworldwide polls show that the United States government continues to be viewed withskepticism by much of the world, not just among Arab and Muslim populations.When the message isn’t consistent with what people see or experience independently,many assert, public diplomacy is not effective. Furthermore, they say, if U.S. foreignpolicy is the primary cause of negative foreign opinion, then public diplomacy maybe less effective than lawmakers would like. America could benefit, however, if inthis view, the government uses public diplomacy more proactively to clearly andtruthfully explain U.S. foreign policy actions, rather than appearing indifferent toworld opinion.
委员会强调指出，绝大多数的穆斯林的全球公民不同意暴力。相反，委员会指出伊斯兰恐怖分子恨美国和所有代表，以及使用暴力和武器来对付美国。 “
According to the Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab andMuslim World, “Spin and manipulative public relations and propaganda are not theanswer. ...Sugar-coating and fast talking are not solutions, nor is absentingourselves.
But the question is: We cannot change the truth, but we could choose the truth.
“公共外交工作，包括系统的沟通：外国政府的努力，但随着人们自己各项任务，美国要使世界更安全的需要一些正当利益，由其是公民。在过去的几年里，美国公众接受严格的整顿和改组，因为它需要在人民面前博取中心从而达到公众宣传作用。
“Public diplomacy—which consists of systematic efforts to communicate notwith foreign governments but with the people themselves—has a central roleto play in the task of making the world safer for the just interests of the UnitedStates, its citizens, and its allies. In the last few years, U.S. public diplomacyhas undergone intensive reorganization and retooling as it takes on a moreprominent propaganda role in the efforts to win the “hearts and minds” offoreign publics.
A “corporate-based” diplomacywould be developed throughout the 1990s, designed to reflect and exploitthe effects of media globalization and electronic technologies, promoting“soft power” strategies to “virtualize” public diplomacy and take advantageof “America’s information edge.”33 The NED’s strategic achievement lay in itsability to wed the objective of market and trade liberalization to the renewal ofpolitical warfare against those “countries of concern” that supposedly presenteda political or military threat to U.S. security.
A week before the terrorist attacks of September 11, U.S. Secretary of StateColin Powell declared to a State Department audience: “What are we doing?We’re selling a product. The product we are selling is democracy. It’s the freeenterprisesystem, the American value system. It’s a product very much indemand. It’s a product that is very much needed.”38 Powell’s assertive promotionof “Brand America” confirmed that the confluence of public relationsand public diplomacy in the post–cold war period was now an official platformfor strategic communications.
The goal was to virtualize the role of public diplomacy “to communicate notwith foreign governments but with the people themselves,” reaching beyondthe more rarefied spaces of embassy diplomacy to the imaginary sphere of “theMuslim street.” media. One of the more controversial discoveries was that late in 2001 the Pentagon hadquietly established an Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) designed to fosterpropaganda “from the blackest of black programs to the whitest of the white.”50After revelations in the New York Times in February 2002, the OSI was closeddown amid accusations that it would spread disinformation in foreign newsreports that could be picked up by U.S. news outlets.In July 2002 the Council on Foreign Relations issueda damning report: “The promise of America’s public diplomacy has not beenrealized due to a lack of political will, the absence of an overall strategy, adeficit of trained professionals, cultural constraints, structural shortcomings,and a scarcity of resources.”dissent through background comments in the New York Times: “Some seniorState Department officials say that the problem is American policy, not inadequatepublic relations, and that no amount of marketing will change mindsin the Muslim world about the war in Iraq or American support of Israel.”
The failure of current attempts at U.S. public diplomacy can be attributedin part to their dependence on old paradigms of ideological warfare. The conditionsfor the production and enactment of public diplomacy have changedsignificantly because of the ways that global “interdependence” has radicallyaltered the space of diplomacy. The founding premise of traditional diplomacy,that it was an activity between states and their formal representatives,began to break down as the bipolar, state-centered context of the cold wargave way to multilevel relations conducted not only by national governmentsbut by multinational corporations, nongovernment organizations (NGOs),private groups, and social movements using new technologies of communicationto interact with and petition foreign publics.“public diplomacy [that] has value as a strategic element ofpower in the information age.
Public Diplomacy underlined that “in the information age, diplomaticinfluence and military power go to those who can disseminate credibleinformation in ways that support their interests and effectively put publicpressure on the leaders of other countries.
Yet, even as the U.S.government promotes the assumption that “public diplomacy helped win thecold war, and it has the potential to win the war on terror,” it has establisheda framework for the waging of the contemporary battle that is very differentfrom that promoted fifty years ago.66 In both instances, a “war of ideas” isevoked to frame a bipolar clash of civilizations and promote a national ideal ofliberal democracy, yet the combination of value and security in each instanceis shaped by different geostrategic frameworks of “national security.”
Duringthe cold war the (publicly stated) regulatory paradigm was that of “containment,”which functioned to segment publics and information; in the war onterror the leading paradigm is “integration,” which seeks to draw publics intoan American designed “zone of peace.”that “ridding the world of terrorism is essential to a broaderpurpose. We strive to build an international order where more countries andpeoples are integrated into a world consistent with the interests and values weshare with our partners.”
We would caution against conflating public diplomacy withIdeas of cultural imperialism or globalization or seeing it as a surrogate of“Americanization,” but Smyth is right to suggest public diplomacy is a greyzone in much cultural and political scholarship. In part this is due to theblurred relations between state-sponsored and corporate diplomacy and perhapstoo to the fragmented history of public diplomacy within governmentstructures, but it is also due to the vagaries of academic interest and disinterest,the methodological frames used to study it, and the theoretical assumptionsattending these.
Assumptions
attending these.
On the one hand, those who conflate public diplomacy with cultural imperialismhave a tendency to elide the role of state power and foreign policyinterests in the formation of public diplomacy initiatives. On the other hand,those who focus closely on state power as demonstrated by policy-makingelites or within the political economies of world systems tend to ignore or playdown the productivity of culture in international relations.Amy Kaplan notes: “We have thought much about ‘national identity’ inAmerican studies, but we also need to study more about the differences amongnation, state, and empire, when they seem to fuse and how they are at odds, tothink of how state power is wielded at home and abroad in the name ofAmerica.”77 The study of public diplomacy (and, more broadly, political warfare)can advance such critical thinking, bringing the state into fresh analyticalfocus in American studies.#p#分页标题#e#
|
