Ugly American

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One way to do this is called the U.N., an organization that was initiated by a great U.S. president, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Some Americans might not like the U.N.. They might even think it’s bureaucratic or corrupt. They might be mad that it lets people like Chavez call George W. Bush “the devil.” Yet there is absolutely no alternative I can see to embracing it, if Americans want to show the world some respect and thus salvage their national image for generations to come.

The question of how to deal with the U.N. is a question of foreign policy as well. I have no doubt that foreign policy, or rather, to call the devil by its name, the foreign policy of the Bush administration, has been instrumental in tarnishing the image of America throughout the world. This essentially has two reasons.

The first reason is that image-wise, in international politics, what is most important is success. If the U.S. had won the war in Iraq, if in some way Iraq was a peaceful and stable nation by now, the image of America would look very different. I don’t know whether it would have been possible to win this war. I’m just looking at the way this war has reflected on America’s image. Yet this war was not prosecuted successfully, and an indication of that is all the hate and resentment at the U.S. to be found around the world today.

The second reason is that U.S. foreign policy is generally more successful if America shares the work, if it shares responsibility with others. This was actually one of the major differences between World War II and the Vietnam War, and it contributed to their respective outcomes. If the U.S. wants to share the burden, particularly if it is the driving force behind a military or diplomatic initiative, not only does it have to convince others that its cause is legitimate. It also has to consult with others and include them in the decision making. If the U.S. doesn’t, or if it misleads its allies, at some point it won’t have many friends left. At first, it will still have the ones who owe it something. Then those will have paid their dues, and they will be gone too.

What is certain is that the Bush administration has awakened to the fact that the standing of the U.S. in the world has reached a low-point on its watch. For one thing, the administration has gone out of its way to mend fences with its estranged allies. Thus, in July 2006, President Bush spent an evening barbecuing with villagers in Germany. The villagers present were charmed and described the event as quite a success. Shortly afterward, a camera caught Bush giving the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, an impromptu backrub at the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. That didn’t go over as well, as viewers of the videotape around the world could deduce from the startled look on Merkel’s face.

The biggest effort the current administration has made so far to make over the American image is taking place in an arena called public diplomacy. Karen Hughes, a Bush confidante, was put in charge in 2005, and there is no denying  she has done some smart things. She has secured additional funding for exchange programs, but she has stopped short of rebuilding the U.S. Information Agency, which was folded into the State Department under the Clinton administration in 1999. Rather than revive an independent agency that might be hard to control, Hughes has used the existing infrastructure to respond more quickly to hostile representations of the U.S. abroad. Mainly, her activities have been geared towards the Muslim world. She has changed the way the U.S. government deals with Arabic news channels like Al Jazeera. The U.S. military no longer bombs Al Jazeera’s offices in Baghdad. Instead, American diplomats go on the air, confront tough questions and defend the U.S. position, in programs seen by millions of viewers around the world.

Ambassador Hughes operates on the theory that to reclaim your image you need to draw out your adversaries and engage them in debate. In May 2006, at the Council on Foreign Relations, she talked about how she has “unleashed the ambassadors” to go out and respond more quickly and more aggressively to accusations leveled by extremists.  What she was saying is that the U.S. has to fight with words as well as with arms. Even if you agree to frame public diplomacy as just one way of fighting the so-called war on terror, that’s easier said than done. For one thing, Hughes lacks the troops. In 2005, three out of ten relevant U.S. public diplomacy positions in the Muslim world were filled with officers without the necessary language skills, according to a 2006 GAO report. In other words, the U.S. sends people to communicate with the other side, but they can only communicate through a translator, which is going to make them less effective in getting their point across.

Secondly, there are some things that public diplomacy cannot undo. The most egregious example of this was the Abu Ghraib scandal, which uncovered the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.

I fear that many Americans still underestimate the shock people around the world felt when they first saw those pictures in 2004 and learned about this crime. It pretty much wiped out any sympathy still lingering after September 11. It really scarred the face of America in a deep and lasting way.