March
26, 2004
Spanish Election Shows Bush Fails At Public Diplomacy
By Mort
Kondracke
If al Qaeda's March 11 attacks in Madrid were Spain's 9/11 wake-up
call on terrorism, the Spanish election defeat that followed should
be America's wake-up on public diplomacy.
The ouster of an allied government, plus a new Pew poll on global
attitudes toward the United States, should force the Bush administration
to face the fact that it's doing a terrible job of explaining
itself to the rest of the world.
The war on terrorism could suffer as a result, and fixing the
problem should be urgent business for the administration.
Various independent commissions and Members of Congress, led
by Reps. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) and Frank Wolf (R-Va.), have pointed
out what needs to be done - chiefly, reorganize and upgrade the
nation's message-shaping operations.
Wolf says the president should appoint a Cabinet-level counselor
for public diplomacy. Hyde agrees, and he also wants to give greater
power to the current highest-level official responsible for selling
American policy, the undersecretary of State for public diplomacy.
That post is now occupied by Margaret Tutwiler, a talented former
White House and State Department official and U.S. ambassador
to Morocco, who has told Members of Congress that she didn't want
the job and that she plans to leave at the end of the year.
While on the job, she has been pushing efforts to reach the Arab
"street" through sports programs, shipping books and
taped or compact disc translations to Muslim countries and sponsoring
televised discussions between American and foreign young people.
All of that's good. And so is the creation of Radio Sawa, a popular
music and news station that has become the most listened-to foreign
outlet in Arab countries, and Al Hurra, a satellite news channel
broadcasting to Arabs.
Al Hurra has the vital mission of transmitting balanced news
against the sensationalist anti-American diatribes of Arab channels
such as Al Jazeera, which last summer broadcast a two-hour interview
with former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who charged that Israel
had plotted the Sept. 11 attacks.
But all of this is late catch-up, as the Pew poll demonstrated.
It showed that public favorability ratings toward the United States
have fallen since the end of the Iraq War in Britain, France and
Germany, and that favorable attitudes toward Osama bin Laden remain
shockingly high in the Muslim world.
To fight back, Bush needs to give communicating with the world
almost the same priority as fighting terrorism. The two are connected.
Right now, impressions spread by America-haters in the foreign
media and Islamic groups threaten to dominate the minds of foreign
populations, forcing their governments to back away from cooperation
with the United States.
History shows that images of America can be changed for the better.
Ronald Reagan, a creature of Hollywood, did it, with help from
his irrepressible foreign information chief, Charles Wick, another
Hollywood veteran.
When Reagan became president in 1981 determined to counter the
Soviet Union and upgrade U.S. defenses, he was portrayed by the
European media much as President Bush is today - as a "cowboy,"
an irresponsible hawk sure to make the world more dangerous.
Much as Bush today faces militant international opposition to
his Iraq war policy and alleged "unilateralism," Reagan
faced massive protests against his plans to deploy Pershing missiles
in Europe to counter Soviet SS-20s.
But in a crucial test of strength that followed effective U.S.
public diplomacy, in 1984 the voters of West Germany re-elected
the conservative government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, which proceeded
to approve Pershing deployment, forcing the Soviets into negotiations.
In one respect, Bush's job is harder than Reagan's was. As Carnegie
Endowment scholar Robert Kagan demonstrates in his must-read book,
"Of Paradise and Power," Europe since the Cold War culturally
and politically has moved far from the United States, especially
in its preference for comfort and conflict-avoidance instead of
confronting enemies with force.
After the March 11 al Qaeda terror attack in Madrid and the election
of a Socialist government hostile to Bush, Kagan wrote in The
Washington Post that U.S.-European relations had come to "the
edge of the abyss."
"The Bush administration," he wrote, "needs to
recognize it has a crisis on its hands and start making up for
lost time in mending transatlantic ties and not just with chosen
favorites."
Kagan's main proposal went beyond imaging-making. He called for
dropping the administration's penchant for favoring so-called
"New Europe" allies and disparaging "Old Europe"
skeptics - especially because the populations of allies such as
Spain harbored distinctly hostile attitudes toward the United
States.
Bush ought to insist that Secretary of State Colin Powell, the
administration's most popular figure abroad, travel more frequently
- not only to confer with leaders, but also to speak to their
populations.
Hyde favors a new plan, pushed by Wick and former U.S. Information
Agency officials, to give Tutwiler's successor direct line authority
over public information officers in embassies overseas. At the
moment, they report to low-level public diplomacy officers in
regional bureaus.
Bush should also replace ambassadors who got their jobs in return
for political fundraising with people who can get on foreign television
and argue America's case.
And, he should make an effort - without yielding on the policy
front - to reconnect with estranged former allies. He may not
convince the French to trust him, but the effort might persuade
others that he's trying.
