DEC. 3, 2003: PUBLIC DIPLOMACY
My good friend Fareed Zakaria said some powerful things in yesterday’s Washington Post about the defects of the Bush administration’s public diplomacy. I don't disagree with much of what he had to say, especially since he was kind enough to quote this weblog.
But as we all urge the Bush administration to do better, we also need to bear in mind that this administration faces a radically different strategic environment from that which faced, say, the Reagan administration. During the Cold War, American public diplomacy sought to rally the nations of the world against a threat that ultimately threatened them more than it did the United States. Americans had a lot to lose from Soviet imperialism – but the Germans and Norwegians and Turks had a whole lot more to lose. And as the Soviets infiltrated Latin America and the Middle East, it became apparent that even the Iranians, Mexicans, and Chinese had more to lose.
This time, the United States faces a very different kind of enemy, one for whom the United States is the primary target and everybody else is secondary. It is possible, maybe even natural, for non-Americans to think that they can somehow protect themselves by distancing themselves from the United States (and Israel of course). It is possible, and again maybe even natural, for non-Americans to come to blame the United States (and ditto Israel) for the emergence of the threat. Against the Soviets, the argument more or less presented itself. This time, the United States has to make the case in a way that it never really did before.
Actually it’s even tougher than that. From 1917 until 1991, the world was threatened by a series of would-be global empires that could be defeated by nobody except the United States. All the things that are said against the United States today – that American culture is commercial and vulgar, that Americans are unilateral and insular, that they are too moralistic and religious – were equally true in 1918 and 1941 and 1947 and 1982. Back then, however, the people of the world had no choice but to accept these faults (if they are faults) as the price of American protection against totalitarian savagery.
The world got that protection. The totalitarians have been defeated. And now the United States is the only global power left standing. Suddenly it has become safe for the peoples of the world to express all the grievances and resentments against the United States accumulated during nearly a century of dependency upon the United States. Those grievances and resentments are the force against which the Bush administration’ s public diplomacy must contend. And it is no easy matter to do so.
Listen to people in other countries talk about the United States, and you will be overwhelmed by a cataract of uncountable – often wildly contradictory – complaints and accusations. It is not possible that this cataract could have been stored up over merely the past 35 months. It extends back years, decades even.
I say all this not to deny the Bush administration’s mistakes, of which there have been many. But if they have made many mistakes, it is because they have confronted a more wholly new situation than any administration since America’s rise to global power. They have to grope their way in a radically new and in many ways radically more unfriendly world. Of course they should do better. So should we all - because we are all in this together.
11:01 AM
DEC. 3, 2003: BOOMING
Black's FDR
The dead-tree edition of The Wall Street Journal has a glowing review this morning of Conrad Black’s FDR biography. I’ve been interviewing Lord Black about his book for NRO and will be posting questions and answers shortly.
Bush's Boom
In all the economic good news this quarter, the stats on the manufacturing rebound tend to get overlooked. So pay attention: The index of manufacturing activity has bounced to its highest level since December 1983. Manufacturing hiring is now recovering too. Why does this matter - that is, matter more than any other positive data?
I don’t endorse the theory that a job in manufacturing is somehow “better” than a job in services – that’s a piece of Marxoid junk that is in turn derived from ancient superstitions that only farming counts as work. Politically, though, manufacturing industries have been more effective at lobbying for protectionism than others. The manufacturing job losses since January 2000 (more than 150,000 in the state of Michigan alone) tempted the Bush administration into its disastrous steel quotas – and could have lured the administration to worse mistakes still. It’s a relief that the threat seems to be passing …. And so as the superb Canadian economic columnist Terence Corcoran points out is the threat of Kyoto …
nationalreview.com |
