• Corpus ID: 150588294

Preventing the Clash: Reexamining U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Middle East

@inproceedings{Martin2012PreventingTC,
  title={Preventing the Clash: Reexamining U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Middle East},
  author={Clifton Martin},
  year={2012}
}

• C. Martin
• Published 2012
• Political Science

This paper analyzes U.S. public diplomacy in the Middle East. In explaining the concept of public diplomacy itself and its evolution in the United States, four factors are identified as most crucial to the capabilities and limitations of U.S. public diplomacy in the region: U.S. foreign policy options, institutions, strategies, and tools. These factors are shown to affect the outcome of U.S. public diplomacy programming in the Middle East and are the foundation for a new U.S. public diplomacy model. The paper continues by examining the development of contemporary U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, providing a traceable landscape upon which U.S. public diplomacy sits and responds to increasingly negative public opinion of the United States. Generally, U.S. foreign policy has shifted toward more aggressive containment policies while promoting support of democratization despite partnership with repressive regimes. While the United States is able to pursue a containment strategy, such contradictory elements exacerbate the structural and institutional limitations of its public diplomacy outcomes in the region. Finally, this paper considers whether or not U.S. public diplomacy has been an underdeveloped foreign policy tool. The conclusion is that the capabilities of the current U.S. public diplomacy experiment are substantially limited due to a lack of institutional participation in the outset of policy formulation. As such, brief recommendations are put forth to correct these contradictory elements of U.S. foreign policy. iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professor Nader Hashemi who served as my thesis advisor. I would also like to thank Professor Andrea Stanton, Professor Paul R. Viotti, and Professor Lewis Griffith for serving on my defense panel. Each of these scholars prompted me to approach this topic critically. I am grateful to the practitioners of public diplomacy who provided unique insight: Andrew Koss, Matt Armstrong, Ambassador Christopher R. Hill, and Dr. Condoleezza Rice. I must also thank Doug Garrison, Brett Schneider, and Kara Kingma, who shared their encouragement, commiseration, and willingness to listen to my ideas for the past two years. And I am forever thankful to Meghan Moynihan, who will get to hear my ideas for the rest of her life.