Atlantic Community:Global Must Read Article "Fighting Anti-Americanism Through Foreign Policy"

Steven W. Barnes, Woodrow Wilson School | May 26, 2008

While every candidate seems to agree that "America's current public diplomacy efforts are badly flawed," each conceives a different solution to the problem. ++ The warnings which are currently circulating in academic and policy circles need to be taken into consideration: anti-Americanism is largely created by America's foreign policy failures. ++ Since the foreign policy decisions of the next president will determine the spread or decline of anti-Americanism, candidates and voters must engage in a constructive policy debate before the elections.

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Tue, May 27th 2008, 14:40

Leonie Holthaus, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Editor

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Anti-American sentiment is pervasiv across predominently Muslim countries. Therefore, the canditates should concentrate their suggestions for new public diplomacy efforts on this states.
One good example to illustrate the failure of the public diplomacy efforts of the Bush administration is the satellite television Al-Hurra. It was launched in order to create a counterpart to Al-Jazeera, but never reached much popularity among Mulim societies.
Nevertheless, establashing “American libraries with Internet access” to promote “American values, ideas, culture and education” (McCain) ignores some important aspects:
First of all it does not take the high illiteracy rate in account. McCains suggestions probably will reach only the educated elite who is less anti-American anyway.
Secondly, many Muslims do not have a problem with American values such as freedom and democrazy. But there is the perception that the US foreign policy does not respect Muslim values and beliefs and helps to increase the gap between rich and poor countries.
As a consequence direct benefits from public diplomacy without changing the foreign policy is unclear. However, some authors (Nawawy/Gher) empahsize the need to have more US officials who can speak Arabic confidently to describe the American point of view. They should also consider to work with so called anti-American satellite channels as Al Jazeera togehter. Al-Jazeera is popular among Muslim societies and has the capability to reach many people and to reduce anti-American attitudes.