By Michele Acuto, Contributing Editor
A few days ago American ‘soft power’ pundit Joseph S. Nye reminded the public at large —from the columns of his Thought Leaders Series on Project Syndicate—of the importance of public diplomacy in an age where the right “story”, rather than the right weapon, is often the means to success.
Much earlier and with a notable level of intuition, English writer Aldous Huxley stated in his 1936 manuscript The Olive Tree that “the propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.” Indeed, this reasoning becomes even more accurate in times of conflict, where the “Other” has to be constructed as a peril.
To this extent, the greatest divergence between propaganda and public diplomacy is in their goals: while the first aims at deceiving and selling ideas, the second is meant to complement conventional diplomatic activities, promote norms, and shape identities, thus ‘enrolling’ people in common understandings. Nye is right in underlying how the “smart power” inherent in these cross-cultural mediated relationships is a function of its capacity to promote and participate in, rather than control, such cross-border networks.
Yet, the practice might still linger far behind theoretical evolution. The widespread realist approach to this type of international relations has blurred the distinction between the two, generating disastrous effects as in the case of the U.S. post-9/11 public diplomacy in Arab countries. “Great powers—underscored Nye—try to use culture and narrative to create soft power that promotes their advantage, but they do not always understand how to do it.” The overall American ethos might be slowly changing, but some of the practices ‘on the ground’ are still perilously hedging their bets between public diplomacy and propaganda.
Public diplomacy differs fundamentally from traditional state-to-state schemes of diplomatic activity because its targets are not the officers of other international entities, but rather foreign populations or, more generally, the wider public. In a broader theoretical understanding, public diplomacy is an instrument of soft power that utilizes means of communication to spread a message amongst individuals instead of materially coercing them. The realm in which it takes place is less regulated by protocols and leaves much space to manoeuvre for a number of different applications. Although this description might suggest that this set of interactions can do no harm, in reality the misuse of public diplomacy has created hazardous effects at a global level.
The most dangerous interpretation of ‘public diplomacy’ is the one that derives from a realist viewpoint: through this understanding, diplomatic activity becomes a form of propaganda, as it is exclusively used to protect and promote national interests. In this sense, the dissemination of information is employed to build images, increase foreign support, and make use of reputation as a force-multiplier. Thus, propaganda becomes nothing more than another capability on the global balance of power chessboard. Consequently, the stronger actors engage in propaganda wars as it happened on the eve of World War II, and during the Cold War years. Consequently, “propaganda” and “public diplomacy” are treated as synonyms, as they were understood in the Fifties. However, this equation is not limited to these historical cases, since the realist paradigm still plays a dominant role in the decision-making units of many international actors, leading many scholars as Geoff Berridge to define public diplomacy as a “modern euphemism for propaganda.”
The United States’ policy after September 11, 2001 is a more recent example of realist public diplomacy. This held especially true towards Arab countries, where the Bush Administration has tried to “win the hearts and minds” (in the words of the State Department) of the Muslims not involved in the jihadist struggle.
The spread of messages with a highly fabricated content has been based on the understanding that, as republican congressman Henry Hyde put it, the “perceptions of foreign publics have domestic consequences.” By paying more attention to the images projected abroad, and hiring expert marketers as Charlotte Beers in the ranks of the State Department, the White House has tried to fight the waves of anti-Americanism with censorship and counterpropaganda.
However, after almost seven years, the U.S. is probably losing, rather than winning, the propaganda war. The reasons for this debacle can be found in two main factors that the realist perspective has overlooked while putting in place its public diplomacy: culture and credibility.
As R.S. Zaharna recently pointed out, the U.S. policy has backfired due to the lack of cultural neutrality in its messages. Further, several preconceptions about the necessary format through which these were meant to be delivered have marked the ‘American way’ to communicate to Islamic audiences. Therefore, the interest-oriented calculations, and the propagandistic assumptions of the State Department, created more divergence than agreement. Further, the media used to spread the message have been labelled across the Arab world as pro-American and tendentious, undermining their credibility and the supposed independence of sources such as Voice of America, which have in turn provoked upraises in nationalist sentiments.
In view of this lesson, it is imperative to shift the comprehension of public diplomacy from the realist paradigm to the constructivist one, as this latter can offer more useful and successful perspectives to engage with foreign publics. The tendency to formulate explanations of the global scenario, which, in constructivist terms, is seen as a realm of perpetual change, is a necessary onset for a wise and prudent public diplomacy. This paradigm can highlight how ideas and norms are constructed realities, which can be changed and even ‘constructed’ through socialization. For instance, seen from such a viewpoint, the U.S. activity in Arab countries can be pointed at for the aforementioned failures, mostly grounded in social, rather than material reasons.
In this view, what public diplomacy can achieve is even greater than the mere persuasion of foreign populations. A constructivist would, in fact, conclude that public diplomacy can foster the acceptance of widely shared norms in the international systems, as for example in the case of the recent promotional activity for a moratorium on death penalties, or in the cases of the landmines ban treaty signed in Ottawa in 1992. Additionally, this view can also offer a better comprehension of how public diplomacy can influence the identity of those to which it is addressed, changing or enhancing their self-understanding. In this latter instance, as for the contemporary promotional activity of the EU Commission, sentiments of commonality and shared qualities can cement the bases for the emergence of regional security communities. Thus, instead of deceiving the Others to protect Us the goal can be shifted to convincing the Others of the value of some shared norms and ideas, in order to create a common ‘Us’ as a synthesis of two previously opposing entities.
It is always useful to remember that the results of diplomacy can be disruptive, if this realist-constructivist distinction is not taken into serious account: as Robert Cooper wrote in his The Breaking of Nations: “Soldiers and diplomats are, in the end, trying to do the same thing: to change other people’s minds; mistakes in foreign policy can be as disastrous as mistakes in war.”
