Cultural Outreach and the "War on Terror"

In last week's class, the inestimable John Brown spoke at great length about the failure of the United States to truly comprehend the concept of Cultural Diplomacy and outreach. His chief example concerned his time as a cultural affairs officer in Moscow during the Cold War. The United States had a series of Cultural Libraries and Offices attached to Embassies in many countries that were deemed "at risk" of communist persuasion. Today, while we certainly have some cultural component to our Embassies' services, the primary role of ambassadors is to deal in more traditional diplomacy, at least according to Brown. Most of the Cultural offices were closed post-Cold War, indicating that Cultural outreach programs were viewed as a more active, traditional form of foreign relations. Cultural relations, however, could solve many of the US' current concerns in the Middle East, where one of the continuing goals of the US presence is to "win hearts and minds."

Considering the situation in Egypt and the rest of the Middle East right now, there is really no better opportunity for the United States to start showing that it wishes to understand the Muslim world. The United States has already fumbled its reputation in the Middle East, through unpopular foreign policy, and fairly one-sided alliances in the region. In order to restore the US' reputation, the State Department must first restore the US' credibility.

According to Corman, Hess, and Justus in their article "Credibility in the Global War on Terrorism," the US has essentially lost the three key dimensions of credibility: trustworthiness, competence, and goodwill. Taking Egypt as an example, the US failed to take a strong stand on either side of the situation, making it appear both soft on backing its allies, and unfaithful to the values it claims to uphold. In light of this, reopening centers of cultural understanding, creating a greater role for ambassadors in public displays of cultural understanding and rapprochement, and changing the face of the US in the region from military to civilian would go a long way towards engendering positive feelings from average Arab citizens. It is far harder for a person to become violent against something that he or she understands or has some positive knowledge of. We do not need to set up "Democracy Outlets," but we do need to remake our image in the region to be more consistent with the message that we are trying to "translate." Of course, this is likely to be a relatively long and involved process, but any good translation takes time.