On 25 September, Karen Hughes, the recently confirmed under-secretary of state for public diplomacy for the United States, began her first tour with a note of humility: I hope to listen, to seek to understand, to show respect. But arriving in Saudi Arabia from Egypt, she was taken aback by her reception at an unpredictable meeting with Saudi women, where her observations on equal rights met with vehement objections to the unfair image of Saudi women in western countries.
In a press briefing before she embarked on the tour, Ms. Hughes had spoken about how Americas public diplomatic efforts have changed since the cold war. Then, she said, the US wanted to get information to people who had little coming in; now it is trying to be the credible voice rising above a cacophony of ideas and interpretations. Her Saudi experience revealed just some of the difficulty involved in overcoming mutual stereotypes which block such communication.
Ostensibly, these post-cold war efforts were begun in reaction to the terrorist attacks against western interests that have plagued the world since the 1990s. Regardless of politicians rhetoric, the goal of any nations diplomacy and political action corresponds to the fundamental promise of the civic contract to protect its citizens. Following the most deadly terrorist attack, on 11 September 2001, the US and its closest ally Britain took political steps to do this, by attacking two countries (or a select group of people in them, a distinction that those being bombed may not make) and subsequently occupying them. The reactions to these actions both inside and outside the occupied countries have been to put it succinctly negative.
Since the 7 July attacks in London, Britain too has been grappling with government responsibility to protect its citizens, as military invasion has not removed the threat of terrorism. There are two prevailing opinions that officials like Ms Hughes and her British counterparts are trying to manage through public diplomacy: a particular dislike of foreign attack and occupation, and a general disdain for the US and other western cultures. In the interests of the US, Ms Hughes responsibility is to change such opinions.
A University of Chicago scholar, Robert A Pape, has made a convincing argument that most suicide bombings are pursuing the cessation of a foreign occupation. Yet many such terrorists, including those responsible for the New York and London attacks, were not from occupied countries. They were people who disliked western culture, whose dislike either emanated from or took on a religious and moral gloss, and it is likely that they are not alone in their feelings.
The post-11 September governmental rhetoric would have one believe that those attacks stemmed from a network of confused or malevolent people who had no firsthand knowledge of the west and its free society and therefore could be convinced, falsely, that western society was immoral, materialistic disturbingly off-putting in some way. Since then it has become apparent that there are people who have intimate experience of the liberal-democratic societies of the west yet still find them wanting. (These people are mostly men women who immigrate from societies that limit their movements and civic and legal representation rarely seem to experience the violent negative reaction to the liberal democracies that men do.)
Perhaps these men were upper-middle class aspirants who chose to go to graduate school or college in the west in some way they once believed in the liberal-democratic song of democracy, opportunity and freedom, yet felt humiliated because in a society that claims infinite promise for its citizens and residents, layers of racism or religious prejudice prevent those with dark skin, funny names or different worship practices from fulfilling that promise. What good is a society of unlimited opportunity and infinite promise if one is still a third-class citizen, or lives a separate ghettoised life?
I am a black woman and I am still surprised when I see a chief executive officer of an American company who is black or Latino, middle eastern or Asian, or when I meet someone who has managed to become successful in the US while married to someone of a different race. This despite the fact that the black community in America is one of the most successful national-minority lobbies.
So what will Karen Hughes, and others like her in the UK, do? How will she go about convincing people abroad that the west stands for freedom and opportunity and equality and democracy, when it has proven difficult to convince people who have firsthand experience of it?
Right now the US has numerous diplomatic programmes directed at foreigners underway. They include the Middle East Partnership Initiative, a programme that finances educational and professional training and provides economic grants in north Africa and the middle east (and is run by vice-president Dick Cheneys daughter Elizabeth); Radio Farda, a US-produced Farsi-language radio station to reach Iran; Radio Sawa, an Arabic-language radio station; al-Hurra, a US-financed Arabic-language satellite television station; and Hi magazine, an Arabic-language magazine targeted at 18-35 year olds in countries like Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Algeria, Egypt, and Cyprus.
Whether these efforts will manage to convince people that foreign occupation is a good thing remains to be seen. But for those with a broad antagonism towards the west and its culture, the most Ms Hughes and these various programmes can hope to convince them of is the idea that the US stands for a better life, since the prevailing opinion that liberal democracies represent the end product of the historical quest for the best political system offends those who feel diminished within them.
Public diplomacy is people-driven and it's policy driven, because our policies affect people's lives. I don't see this as a matter of opinion polls or public relations, I see this as a matter of policy, Ms Hughes said as she prepared to leave for her middle east tour. She left in the wake of scenes of poor Americans, most of them black and living in abject poverty, abandoned to perilous floodwaters. If this is what US policy creates, Ms Hughes will have a hard time convincing people that a better life is available to most minorities in the US itself.
It may be that the public diplomacy is focused on the wrong part of the world. In countries like the United States and Britain, all signs indicate that the minds and the policies that need to be changed first are domestic ones from every social, racial and religious and ethnic group.