American Public Diplomacy as Pseudo-Education: A Problematic National Security and Counter-Terrorism Instrument
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American Public Diplomacy as Pseudo-Education: A Problematic National Security and Counter-Terrorism Instrument Wayne Nelles Sustainable Development Research Institute, University of British Columbia, PO Box 33739 Station D, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6J 4L6. E-mail: [email protected]
This1 paper examines American public diplomacy as a foreign policy, national security and ‘counter-terrorism’ tool. To illustrate, I discuss concepts, policy trends and three specific Presidential directives linked to Cold War Central America, the 1999 Kosovo conflict, and the recent American campaign against the Islamic and Middle Eastern world. I give greater attention to the latter noting Arab and Islamic responses to American initiatives. I further raise questions about America’s pledge to re-enter UNESCO with even more troubling implications amidst a significant rift in the Transatlantic relationship. I suggest that American public diplomacy has long been an instrument of ideological power that undermines authentic multilateral educational and cultural pluralist efforts; and that such efforts have increased during its ‘war on terrorism’. I conclude that the principal aim of American public diplomacy continues to be pseudo-educational and indoctrinational, reinforcing United States’ power advantage over weaker states and potential adversaries. International Politics (2004) 41, 65–93. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800044 Keywords: American foreign policy; counter-terrorism; cultural diversity; cultural policy; education; national security; propaganda; public diplomacy; UNESCO
Introduction Public diplomacy as a tool for influencing the views of foreign diplomats and their populations emerged as a tool of renewed strategic importance for the United States in its ‘war on terrorism’ responding to September 11, 2001 attacks (hereafter referred to as ‘9/11’) on New York and Washington. A year later, President Bush announced to the United Nations that ‘as a symbol of our commitment to human dignity, the United States will return to UNESCO’. Yet, he simultaneously gave an advance war declaration on Iraq (Bush, 2002b). The following week, America tabled its new National Security Strategy (NSS) epitomizing faith in military force, and its pre-emptive use, as
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a principal source of long-term security (White House, 2002a). American foreign policy has long had expansionist or hegemonic overtones, but the NSS is the boldest and most definitive recent statement to claim a right, ostensibly for national self-defense, to global military, moral, economic and cultural hegemony. America’s new public diplomacy agenda complements and reinforces the NSS. To help explain recent developments, this paper builds on so far limited and mostly dated studies of education and culture (public diplomacy is a subtheme of both) in American foreign policy. I discuss general policy trends, concepts and three specific initiatives to illustrate. I analyze Presidential public diplomacy directives that underscored 1
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