Public diplomacy? We don’t need no stinking public diplomacy!

29 June 2007, 0243 EDT

US President George W Bush has appealed for people to give his strategy in Iraq a chance – holding up Israel as a model for defining success there.

He said America would like to see Iraq function as a democracy while dealing with violence – just as Israel does.

Speaking at the US Naval War College, Mr Bush said success in Iraq would not be defined by an end to attacks.

His remarks come as members of his Republican party are increasingly turning against the war in Iraq.

The US president characterised the war in Iraq as primarily against al-Qaeda forces and their use of “headline-grabbing” suicide attacks and car bombings.

He said: “Our success in Iraq must not be measured by the enemy’s ability to get a car bombing in the evening news.”

The terms of success set out by Mr Bush included “the rise of a government that can protect its people, deliver basic services for all its citizens and function as a democracy even amid violence”.

Mr Bush suggested Israel as a standard to work towards.

“In places like Israel, terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in suicide attacks.

“The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy and it’s not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that’s a good indicator of success that we’re looking for in Iraq.”

Is this an unreasonable analogy? No, it isn’t. Is it a stupid &^@!)# thing to say? Hell, yes.

The Bush Administration still hasn’t figured, or at least adapted to, a basic rule of global media: US officials must assume that any messages intended for domestic consumption can, and will, be scrutinized abroad. And arguments that resonate well with an American audience may fair very, very poorly with important international audiences.

Consider that while the Bush Administration has certainly displayed a more unilateralist bent than the Clinton Presidency, the international backlash against Bush even before Iraq was far out of proportion to his substantive changes in US foreign policy. At least part of the problem was that Bush, Cheney and the gang were so relentlessly focused on their “Mayberry Machiavellianism” at home that they either didn’t pay attention to, or didn’t care, how their rhetoric–much of which worked well in the American context–would be interpreted abroad.

Which brings us full circle. Will Bush’s words be twisted in the coming days in the Arab world? Perhaps. I’d lay good odds that the coverage will not be favorable. Will they make an enormous difference? Probably not. But what’s the upside to handing your opponents a big shiny quote that the US wants Iraq to look like Israel? I think you all know the answer.

(image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Iraq
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Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.