Globe Trekking for American Public Diplomacy

Last year 22-year old Harvard graduate Amar Bakshi embarked on a world tour that was a bit different than the usual post-college international tour d’hostel. His globe trekking had a specific mission: Find out what the world thinks about the United States.

(Bakshi's Itinerary)

Armed with a digit camera, a microphone and a laptop, Bakshi travelled extensively through four different continents talking with regular folks on the street, recording his encounters and then blogging about them on the Washington Post/Newsweek's global blog Post Global.

Bakshi recently returned to the US and spoke about his experiences with NPR's Bob Garfield. He started the interview by sharing some critiques of current US’ public diplomacy efforts.

“One problem that the United States has in terms of its public diplomacy efforts is it tries very hard to sell ideals that I think are already fairly popular , freedom, democracy, etc. , but have been corrupted by actions, for example, supporting Saudi Arabia or the kind of debacle going on in Iraq. So more salesmanship I don't think is what the United States needs I think we need to reconceive how we’re doing public diplomacy so it's more about dialog and less about branding and salesmanship”

Next he describes four basic categories into which he can place most of his interviewees’ anti-American attitudes. While Bakshi's encounters shouldn't be considered representative of all residents in each country he visited, since his polls were informal and not scientifically conducted, he did forge some general patterns of public opinion cutting across all the countries he visited.

(Amar Bakshi, as pictured on his My Space page)

He calls these four patterns, or categories of Anti-American attitudes among foreign audiences fit into four general categories: “liberal,” “social”, “sovereign” and “radical.” During the interview Bakshi explains:

• “Liberal is Americans don't live up to their own values. We support torture even though we say we don't. You hear this a lot in England.
  
• Social is Americans don't take care of their poor. They’re too hyper-capitalist. And people will turn to Scandinavian democracies rather than American ones, because they say there's a better social safety net.
  
• Sovereign is, you know, America's impinging upon our right to self-governance. You hear this from Zimbabwe to Venezuela as populist leaders try to drum up a foreign enemy to justify their strong rule.
  
• And then radical is the toughest one to define, but it's basically everything about America is antithetical to who you are and what you want to be. Islam is a cohesive way of life. America's too afraid of it. Therefore it wages a war against Islam.”

His point: The shift from the first three categories towards that final one are what we should be worried about.

Bakshi's first characterization of anti-American attitudes echoes those found by global public opinion researcher Steven Kull, who reported on the issue to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs last year. During his testimony Kull noted: “In focus groups that I have conducted throughout the world, the most common complaint I hear is not about American values but that the US is being hypocritical; that it is not living up to its values” Kull uses polling date to demonstrate that “of late there has been a growing perception that the US is not living up to its principles.”

Sadly, the “radical” category of Anti-Americanism is also supported by scientifically conducted public opinion polls as well. A study conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org last April found that among the four Muslim publics polled, Morocco, Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia, on average 79% believe that it is a goal of the US to “weaken and divide Islam.”

For a much longer list of reasons to be critical of America, I highly, highly recommend listening to this listen presentation by Lord Maurice Saatchi at the London School of Economics this past January. Titled “Sleeping Beauty: Awakening the American Dream,“ Saatchi's lecture investigates why accusations against the US have “spread into a global phenomenon, crossing boarders, classes, religions, and generations.” I lost track after his 12^th accusation, but all are eloquently stated, points well taken and worthy of our‚ the PD watchers as well as US policy-makers’ attention.