Public Diplomacy and the Middle East - Foreign Policy Centre

The Foreign Policy Centre is an independent think-tank launched by Prime Minister Tony Blair (Patron) and former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook (President) to revitalise debates on global issues. The Centre has developed a distinctive research agenda that explores the strategic solutions needed to tackle issues which cut across borders – focusing on the legitimacy as well as the effectiveness of policy. The Foreign Policy Centre has produced a range of Publications by key thinkers on world order, the role of non-state actors in policymaking, the future of Europe, international security and identity. These include: The Post-Modern State and the World Order by Robert Cooper, Network Europe and Public Diplomacy by Mark Leonard, NGO Rights and Responsibilities by Michael Edwards, After Multiculturalism by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Trading Identities by Wally Olins and Third Generation Corporate Citizenship by Simon Zadek. The Centre runs a rich and varied Events Programme at The Mezzanine in Elizabeth House – a forum where representatives from NGOs, think-tanks, companies and government can interact with speakers who include prime ministers, presidents, Nobel Prize laureates, global corporate leaders, activists, media executives and cultural entrepreneurs from around the world. The Centre’s magazine, Global Thinking, is a regular outlet for new thinking on foreign policy issues. Features include profiles, exclusive interviews with decision makers, and opinion pieces by the Centre’s permanent staff and associates. The Centre runs a unique Internship Programme – the UK’s most competitive route for new graduates into the foreign policy arena. For more information on these activities please visit www.fpc.org.uk

About the authors Mark Leonard is Director of The Foreign Policy Centre and a member of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Public Diplomacy Strategy Board. Conrad Smewing is a researcher at The Foreign Policy Centre. They have worked on public diplomacy strategies for several foreign governments, and are currently working with the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Their previous publications include The Foreign Policy Centre’s influential report, Public Diplomacy.

Public Diplomacy and the Middle East Mark Leonard and Conrad Smewing

First published in 2003 by The Foreign Policy Centre The Mezzanine Elizabeth House 39 York Road London SE1 7NQ

Public Diplomacy and the Middle East

Email [email protected] www.fpc.org.uk

Introduction

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1. A New Policy Environment Stability at All Costs Reform as the New Paradigm Public Diplomacy at the Heart of Policy

22 22 24 29

2. The ‘Image Problem’ in the Middle East and the West Mistrust of Western Motivations Fear of a ‘Clash of Civilisations’ Desire for Engagement The New Communications Environment

35 36 40 42 45

3. The Goals of Public Diplomacy Public Diplomacy Goals in Three Dimensions Public Diplomacy as a Two-way Process Division of Labour

48 49 53 54

4. Reform without ‘Imperialism’ Imperialism, Accommodationism Contextual Universalism

56 56 57

© The Foreign Policy Centre 2003 All rights reserved ISBN 1-903558-25-5 Cover by David Carroll Typesetting by Richard Tite and Conrad Smewing

Acknowledgements

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Foreword by Helena Kennedy

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Executive Summary

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i

Acknowledgements

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4. Differentiating UK Policy Differentiation from the Americans Audience Reach A Trusted Voice Capacity for Response to Domestic Stories Presenting Alternative Viewpoints Actors in Communicating Policy

62 63 65 68 70 72 74

6. Challenging the ‘Clash of Civilisations’ Assertion and Proof against a ‘Clash of Civilisations’ Strategic Planks - General A Contextual Message Strategic Planks - Foreign Office Project a Clear ‘Mantra’ Reflect the Diversity of the UK Strategic Planks - British Council Operational Independence from Government Aim for Newsworthy Content Target Cascaders Mutuality: Proof of Impact in the West Tactics: Emphasise Europeanness, Differentiate from America

76 78 81 83 84 85 86 88 92 95

7. From Maintaining Relationships to Fostering Opportunity Public Awareness of Human Development Sustained Networks of Reform-minded People Access to Transnational Networks of Expertise Links to Reformers in Government Access to Knowledge Society Information and Communications Technology Joined-up Long-term Public Diplomacy

97 101 103 107 108 109 111 113

Conclusion

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This report exists thanks to the support and engagement of the British Council, who not only provided the intellectual spur for the project, but also worked tirelessly to provide the practical and logistical support necessary to complete it in a short time frame. At British Council Headquarters, thanks are due to Robin Baker for providing the project with its initial direction, and to Rod Pryde and Martin Davidson for bringing it to a successful conclusion. Sue Beaumont, Rosemary Hilhorst and Jim Taylor are due the most thanks. Their expert, enthusiastic and imaginative engagement throughout the process went beyond the call of duty for a steering group, and whatever merit there is in the report – in practical or theoretical terms – is in large part thanks to them. It is also a pleasure to single out for thanks Martin Rose, who gave generously of his time and even more generously of his ideas in reading and commenting on endless drafts. The project would have been impossible if the British Councils in our two case study countries, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, had not risen to the challenge set them with such dramatic success. In Tu r k e y, Ray T h o m a s and Tony Lockhart were welcoming and sagacious hosts in Ankara, and Banu Akdeniz was most hospitable in Istanbul. In Saudi Arabia, David Burton and Marcus Gilbert made the time spent in Riyadh extremely worthwhile, and Allen Swales made the visit to Jeddah a real pleasure. Special thanks are due to Tony Calderbank, whose knowledge, experience and engagement with the project were invaluable, both in Jeddah and on his visit to London, and to Peter Ellwood who lent his considerable experience of Pakistan as well as his knowledge of the Gulf. Sincere thanks are also due to all the staff in both Turkey and Saudi who helped arrange the programme for the visits and ensure that they went as smoothly as they did.

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Particular thanks are due to the outside members of our steering group, who provided help, guidance and ideas throughout. Sir Michael Butler was an enthusiastic chairman, and Chris Doyle and Pauline NevilleJones brought considerable expertise to the project. Thanks are also due to James Buchan and Nicole Pope, who provided expert working papers on Saudi Arabia and Turkey respectively that acted as the bases of research seminars. It would be impractical to thank all of those whose contributions of time, information and ideas went into the project, and who provided input through interviews, written papers or contributions to seminars. Particular thanks are due to those who took part in the two case study seminars. However, we would like to take this opportunity to thank some people individually, and ask forgiveness of those left out. In London: Mike O’Brien MP, Ben Bradshaw MP, Christina Lamb. From the Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Sir Michael Jay, Dickie Stagg, Simon Fraser, Asif Ahmed, Barry Lowen, Gerard Russell, Jane Stevens, and Amanda Hamilton. From the British Council: Edmund Marsden, Reem Shafiq, Ian Simm, Chris Brown, Justin Gilbert, Gavin A n d e r s o n (Iran), and Patrick Spaven. In Turkey: Sally Goggin and Serdar Dinler, British Council. David Fitton and Geoff Collier, British Embassy. Thomas Bagger, German Embassy. Vincent Ray, EU Delegation. Didier Gonzales, French Embassy. Sabine Hageman, Goethe Institute. Naoki Kurihara, Japanese Embassy. Frank Ward, American Embassy. Emel Osmançavusoglu, Nilgün Arısan, Bora Balcı, Burak Bekdil, Göktug Kara. In Saudi Arabia: Peter Ellwood, British Council Regional Director. Elmar Jakobs, Oliver Bientzle and Thomas Schneider, German Embassy. Pascale Saint-Sulpice Bodin, French Embassy. Michael Macy and Deborah Croft, American Embassy. Nick Abbott, British Embassy. Junya Matsuura, First Secretary, Japanese Embassy. The report draws heavily on previously published research, and it is appropriate to acknowledge that here. Chapter 2 draws material from 5 major polling sources: The 2002 Gallup Poll of the Islamic Wo r l d, T h e

Gallup Organisation, 2002; What the World Thinks in 2002. How Global Publics View: Their Lives, Their Countries, The World, A m e r i c a, T h e Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, December 4th 2002; What Arabs Think: Values, Beliefs Concerns, Zogby International, 2002; World Values Surv e y, University of Michigan; Connecting Future s Research, British Council, June 2002. Other works referenced in the report are: Public Diplomacy: A Strategy for Reform, Report of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Public Diplomacy, 2002; To P revail: An American Strategy for the Campaign Against Te rro r i s m, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, November 2001; Jihad vs. M c World: How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping the World, Benjamin Barber, 1995; Islam and the Myth of Confro n t a t i o n, Fred H a l l i d a y, 1996; What is Globalization?, Ulrich Beck, 1999; essays in ReO rdering the World, Foreign Policy Centre, 2002; The House of Commons Foreign A ffairs Committee Reports on Turkey and Foreign Policy Aspects of the War on Te rrorism (I and II), Stationery Office, 2002 and 2003; Mehdi Mozaffari, ed., Globalisation and Civilisations; Ayatollah Khomeini, Political Testament; Public Diplomacy, Mark Leonard with Catherine Stead and Conrad Smewing, Foreign Policy Centre, 2002; Karim H. Karim 'Making sense of the 'Islamic Peril'', in Journalism After September 11th, 2002; Changed Identities, Mai Yamani, RIIA, 2000; and the Arab Human Development Report, UN Development Programme, 2002. At the Foreign Policy Centre, thanks are particularly due to Sema Erg i n , who provided extensive research on the Turkish press and political scene, commented helpfully on the draft and who was invaluable in the org a n isation and smooth running of the project’s research seminars. Thanks are also due to Hicham El Amrani, who provided information on articles in the Arab press and comments on draft texts, and to Veena Vasista whose comments on the structure and content of the report were both profound and practical. Finally, thanks to Richard Tite bringing the pamphlet to publication. Mark Leonard and Conrad Smewing, London, Feb 2003

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Foreword

In time of war, the first casualty is truth. But in the uncertain terrain between peace and war which has prevailed since September 11th 2001, our capacity to conduct a rational international dialogue between differing cultures is in danger of coming close second. It is paradoxical that in an era of mass travel, increased cultural crosscurrents and instant news, when internet technology enables us to share information and knowledge across continents within split seconds, we run the risk not of understanding each other better, but of sliding into mutual incomprehension. Yet the Middle East and the West have never inhabited separate universes. We have been forming perceptions (and misperceptions) of each other since Homer and Aeschylus. Our histories have left us with legacies of wars, imperial occupation and plunder of resources. But there is also a richer heritage of learning from each other through scientific endeavour, cultural creativity and educational exchange. It is no co-incidence that when, in English, we use the verb "to orient", we mean not only to face east, but also to "adjust, correct, or bring into defined relations, to known facts or principles". Today as increasingly vitriolic exchanges take place between politicians, academics and columnists, as fundamentalists of more than one hue ferment religious hatred, and as fear of terrorism and war stalk the e t h e r, we may feel we are all in danger of losing our bearings.

It argues that a primary role for the British Council should be to refute the dangerous theory of a clash of civilisations. It is a challenge we readily accept. Our Connecting Futures initiative demonstrates that young people from diverse backgrounds rapidly see through stereotypes and caricatures to find a basis for dialogue about the values that unite them and the issues that divide them. The authors also rightly draw attention to the potential for reform outlined in the UN's Arab Human Development Report, written by economists from the Middle East. It provides an exciting framework for providing hope to the increasingly frustrated youth of the region through the creation of knowledge-based economies. In engaging in both endeavours, it is essential to demonstrate that we can overcome mistrust and inevitable cynicism about our motives. Our best answer is to point to our track record. Our commitment to the Middle East goes back to the 1930s: our first office abroad was established in Cairo in 1938. We have built up trust by concentrating on long-term relationships, promoting mutual benefit and being free from the shorter-term pressures faced by day-to-day diplomacy in the region. But above all, it is our conviction that at times of international tension, cultural dialogue becomes more, not less important. Our acceptance that there are genuine international differences of perception and opinion, and that we should listen to other voices, must lie at the heart of our participation in the great conversation of mankind. B a roness Helena Kennedy QC

That is why it is increasingly important to foster improved understanding between our societies as much as amongst our governments. T h e Foreign Policy Centre's report provides us with a route map to help us address the challenges in this complex relationship. vi


Foreword

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"This is the other danger: not just terrorism or WMD, but polarised opinion in how we deal with them: Europe dividing off from the US; the Arab world versus the West; Moslem versus Christian." - Prime Minister Tony Blair Speech at Lord Mayor’s Banquet November 11th, 2002 "How do I respond when I see that in some Islamic countries there is a vitriolic hatred for America? I’ll tell you how I respond: I’m amazed. I’m amazed that there is such a misunderstanding of what our country is about that people would hate us… Like most Americans, I just can’t believe it. Because I know how good we are, and we’ve got to do a better job of making our case." - President George W. Bush Press conference, The White House October 11th, 2001 "A consensus is emerging, made far more urgent by the war on terrorism, that U.S. public diplomacy requires new thinking and decisionmaking structures that do not now exist. We must make clear why we are fighting this war and why supporting it is in the interest of other nations as well as our own." - Public Diplomacy: A Strategy for Reform Report of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Public Diplomacy “for the world cannot be saved by governments and governing classes. It can be saved only by the creation - among the peoples of the world of such a public opinion as cannot be duped by misrepresentation or misled by passion." - G. Lowes Dickenson

Executive Summary

1) A New Policy Environment a) 11 September and the War on Terror place public diplomacy at the heart of Middle Eastern regional policy because: i) Regional public reactions strongly determine policy outcomes ii) Popular hostility, creating a permissive operating environment for terrorists, is now a central security concern

b) The reorientation of UK policy following 11 September, from pursuing stability by securing the political and economic status quo in the region to creating long-term stability through offering a partnership aimed at reform, entails a similarly far-reaching shake-up of public diplomacy goals, target audiences and methods. Public diplomacy must: i) Create relationships and a public image that can further an attempt at building a partnership for reform ii) Target much broader publics iii) Concentrate on civil society building, utilising the mass media and governance and human rights work

In this policy environment multilateralism is the key to legitimacy and 1


Executive Summary

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hence the success of the project. The UK’s perceived closeness to the US, verging on indistinguishability, means that it lacks the independence and credibility for the US to draw upon. It is correspondingly a less useful ally.

2) The ‘Image Problem’ in the Middle East and the West a) Anti-Americanism and hostility to the West are widely regarded as the major public diplomacy problems to be overcome in order to pursue policy effectively. b) The hostility that is taken to dominate relations between the ‘Muslim world’ and ‘the West’ is usually considered in terms of Muslim/Arab animosity and a corresponding Western ‘image problem’. This ignores the important fact that the West ‘hates’the Muslim World just as much, and this Western animosity is an important factor in shaping regional responses. The ‘image problem’ must therefore be seen as mutual and reciprocal. Attempts to tackle it must consider the problem in the round, looking at activity in both the Middle East and the West. c) Public opinion research in the region revealed three main findings: i) Mistrust of Western motivations and stated policy aims, leading to animosity ii) Animosity due not to a ‘clash of civilisations’but to the fear that the West is motivated by such a clash iii) Desire for deeper engagement, and for a relationship that is seen to tackle regional problems and concerns. This is particularly the case amongst younger age groups.

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d) These public perceptions are formed in a regional communications environment that has two important new aspects: i) It is an arena of conflict. Attempts by Osama bin Laden and his sympathisers to manipulate the media and regional opinion in his favour have had to be met by Western news management responses. ii) The media environment is increasingly open, thanks to freer regional media output and the necessary response of more closely controlled domestic outlets. This allows alternative viewpoints to be presented publicly and therefore means that public perceptions become more easily tractable.

3) The Goals for Public Diplomacy a) There has been some confusion, and a damaging lack of clarity about what are realistic and proper goals for public diplomacy in the Middle East. Based on the analysis of policy, opinion, and the environment of public debate discussed in chapters 1 and 2, the goals should be divided across three dimensions of public diplomacy – news management, strategic communication and relationship-building – as follows: i) The goal of news management should be to differentiate UK policy, particularly from that of the United States, rather than to emphasise Western unity or attempt to drum up enthusiastic support for UK policies. By ‘getting them to hate us for the right reasons’ the UK can avoid the most egregious dangers present in public hostility, and simultaneously build up the store of multilateral credibility on which the US needs to draw for the legitimacy of its policy.

Executive Summary

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ii) Strategic communication should attempt to refute the idea of a ‘clash of civilisations’ by demonstrating the existence of continuity between societies in the Middle East, Europe and America and by demonstrating the possibility of fruitful dialogue on mutual problems. This goal eschews national selfpromotion, which would only reinforce the existing push-pull dynamic in attitudes to the West. It also rejects the idea of showing that ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’ should be able to co-exist – a policy which dangerously concedes the existence of differentiated civilisations as actors. iii) Relationship-building should move from maintaining comfortable bilateral relations to fostering reform, in accordance with policy shifts. b) Public diplomacy activity must focus on activity in the UK as well as in the Middle East, as at each level there is a local Western as well as a Middle Eastern regional dimension to the problem. c) The distribution of responsibility between UK actors for these goals should be:

must apply to all, but recognises that their expression takes on specific contexts and that their nature must be an object of discussion. In order to influence the values of others, you have to be prepared to put your own up for discussion. As Deputy Director General of the British Council Robin Baker has expressed it: "Are we prepared to allow our values to change in the process? An entrenched ideological position is the hardest nut to crack. The only way we could expect them to legitimately abandon some of their values is to be prepared to do so ourselves." Strategies that are either accommodationist or that exhibit the hallmarks of a ‘liberal crusade’ cannot succeed in changing perceptions. i ) A ‘liberal crusade’ that presents Western values as universally applicable without reference to context will be ignored or resented. ii) An approach that seeks to accommodate ‘Western’ and ‘Islamic’value systems does not further policy or public diplomacy goals and in its own way reinforces damaging ideas about cultural essentialism. b) The advantages of a contextual universalist approach are that it:-

i) Differentiating UK policy: the Foreign Office ii) Refuting the clash of civilisations: - asserting: The Foreign Office - proving: British Council iii) Long-term relationship building to reform: British Council

i) Promotes reform rather than revolution, as it lays importance on the existing context. ii) Can be effective in achieving change because its reciprocity allows for change on the Western side as well, rather than insisting that it is the Middle East which must ‘measure up’.

4) Reform without ‘Imperialism’ a) In order to be successful, UK public diplomacy must pursue a strategy of ‘contextual universalism’. This approach affirms that values

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Applying a contextual universalist strategic approach to the hierarchy of goals laid out in chapter 3 yields the following conclusions and recommendations.

Executive Summary

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5) Differentiating UK Policy - Conducting awareness-raising ‘foreign policy roadshows’ at ministerial level, around the UK

a) The strategic planks necessary to effectively communicate and differentiate UK policy are:

- Creating a Home Office press team for the Arab media.

i) Differentiation from American policy by: - Emphasising differences on Israel/Palestine and on engagement with Iran, Syria and Libya.

v) Presenting alternative viewpoints through: - Funding a BBC Arabic-language TV service

ii) Audience reach achieved by: - Increasing funding to the BBC World Service Trust to assist local independent radio.

- Building and maintaining consistent links with regional media - Ensuring principal politicians appear more regularly on pan-Arab television - Creating innovative vehicles for policy stories through the work of the CIC iii) A trusted voice possible through: - The employment of local professionals rather than ambassadors as spokesmen - Utilising third-party communication routes.

b) British Council involvement in activity in the news management and policy presentation dimension would severely damage its effectiveness in other areas, because of the doubt it would cast on the independence of Council activity, and is to be avoided.

6) Refuting the Clash of Civilisations a) In order to refute the idea of a ‘clash of civilisations’, government must assert through strategic communication that there is no clash fuelling UK foreign policy, but this is not enough. The British Council must go on to prove that it does not, and could not, exist. b) The central aspects of a policy designed to refute the idea of a ‘clash of civilisations’ are:

iv) Capacity for response to domestic stories by: In general: - Actively and consistently making extremist expresions of anti-Islamic or anti-Arab opinion a target for government criticism

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i) A contextual message – public diplomacy should be conducted with reference to the circumstances of the country concerned, not with reference to the false civilisational logic it is

Executive Summary

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attempting to refute.

iv) Proof of impact in the West to demonstrate the mutual basis of the initiative.

The Foreign Office: i) Project a clear ‘mantra’ of facts and arguments refuting a clash, repeated at every opportunity ii) Reflect the Diversity of the UK by employing more people from the UK’s ethnic minorities. British Council: i) Operational independence from Government should not be jeopardised. ii) The production of newsworthy content should be the aim of all British Council activity toward this goal, assisted by: - Budgeting on a ‘magnification principle’ where every £1 spent on an event is matched by £1 spent disseminating material produced by it. - Recruiting a first-rank Arab media professional to design the programme of events - Locally recruiting skilled press officers. iii) Targeting ‘cascaders’ to multiply the impact of an event - In particular by depolarising the media environment through the leverage provided by the professed professionalism of the recently successful Arab news net works.

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- Organise a task force from the Middle East to advise on and produce teaching material on Islam, the Middle East and the West for use in Western education systems. - Encourage the creation of a translation service from Arabic to English to show the regional media in a more balanced light. - Platform discordant regional voices in the UK, begin ning with the ministerial ‘foreign policy roadshow’ recommended in chapter 5. v) Emphasise ‘Europeanness’ and Differentiate from America by concentrating on the shared problems created by what Benjamin Barber terms ‘McWorld’ globalisation.

7) From Maintaining Relationships to Fostering Reform a)The long-term activity of the British Council must work to harness the significant potential which network - and relationship - building offers to facilitate and further an agenda of reform in the region by concentrating on an agenda dictated by the requirements of human development in the region – as laid out in the UN’s ‘Arab Human Development Report’. This should concentrate on bringing expertise from Middle Eastern and other countries of ‘the South’to bear on local problems. i) This helps avoid damaging impressions of ‘imperialist’ influence as it is ‘demand-led’, responding to the professed needs of the region.

Executive Summary

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ii) The actual agenda of work in any given country depends on its particular circumstance: in Turkey, work should

populations through a three-tier supported online ‘membership’ of the British Council

concentrate on EU accession; in Saudi Arabia, it can focus on education reform and on reaching beyond public provision to the private sphere through long-distance learning provision for female education.

- Making female education through online resources a major target for scaling up reach.

b) Human development work by the British Council is distinguished from the work of DfID because while DfID is not concerned with its profile, the measure of the success of British Council work is its impact and visibility in public discussion. c) In order to further this agenda successfully, the British Council must pursue or put in place: i) Public awareness of human development through events concentrating not on the failings of existing institutions and regimes, but on the benefits and successes of programmes in countries like Malaysia, Bahrain and Qatar that have made steps in this direction. ii) Sustained networks of reform-minded people through: - Market research profiling what potential agents of reform demand from the British Council, followed by aggressive targeting of contacts in these groups - Trawling existing and orphaned networks for potentially beneficial relationships with which to step up contact

iii) Access to trans-national networks of expertise by: - Building a global database of British Council networks allowing Council offices to draw on each other’s contacts and expertise. - Ring-fencing 10% of country budgets for joint regional work bringing these networks together iv) Links to reformers in government through the creation of a post to shadow important government departments in the host country and keep up with events and debates, and by drawing on the embassy’s expertise and contacts. v) Access to the knowledge society by: - Expanding funding for science and for human rights and governance programmes to create a reputation as the first port of call for expertise in implementing transition to a knowledge society - Building the broadest networks of beginner-level learners of English through into advanced courses and IT training. vi) Information and communications technology:

- Consciously targeting a massively increased proportion of society, aiming to reach 5% of

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- Expanding ICT teacher training

Executive Summary

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- Making British Council ICT facilities available to schools - Designing programmes and building contacts around Knowledge and Learning Centre (KLC) capabilities, and accelerating KLC roll-out to major regional offices. - Providing a professional ‘web update’ service to British Council networks. d) It should be a government priority to ensure that long-term public diplomacy is ‘joined up’ by: i) Reviewing visa practices with their public diplomacy impact in mind ii) Building the base of UK public knowledge of debates and aspects of the region through inviting journalists to tour British Council offices in the regional and meet their networks, and by considering the case for increased funding of regional studies.

Introduction

How can you talk about a ‘public diplomacy strategy for the Middle East’when carrier battle groups are sailing, troops are assembling and soon the bombs will begin to fly? What purpose can warm words, slick presentation and protestations of concern for the problems of the region serve in the face of the stark realities of war, terrorism, and political violence? It may seem that the time is long past when the right words can heal rifts with the Arab world or with Islamic countries, and that public diplomacy is altogether too ephemeral a tool in a time of war, but it is precisely when the bombs are flying and things are at their worst that the effort to deal with the tension, hostility, suspicion and hatred that exists between countries of the West and countries of the Middle East must be most vigorously and precisely pursued. The vital concern of those who are most cautious about prosecuting a war in Iraq is that it will be a blatant provocation of the already deep hostility of the ‘Arab street’to the West – a provocation that can only add fuel to Al Qaeda’s fire. Any attack on Iraq, they argue, must be accompanied by a breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations and a concerted effort to remedy the real problems of the wider region, else the West will have, in the words of the Secretary-General of the Arab League, "opened the Gates of Hell in the Middle East." It is part of the task of public diplomacy to make sure that efforts on that broader agenda of Middle East peace and development come across, and so hopefully help ensure that the Gates of Hell remain shut. It is suggested that the West is unpopular in the Middle East because its policies are prejudiced against and injurious to Islam and the Arab world, and that the only way to quell that hostility is to abandon the policies. This is true to an extent, and British and particularly American

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Introduction

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Middle East policy must change in some respects if there is to be a thawing of relations with the Arab world. But the dynamics of the problem are more complex than that argument assumes. In fact, the difficulty for the United States, the United Kingdom and the West as a whole is that it is beginning to develop a Middle East policy that has the potential to win support in the region, based around a partnership for economic and human development and political reform, and committed to peace and a workable two-state solution in Israel/Palestine, but that this policy is universally derided and mistrusted by those it should be winning over.This is a very serious problem indeed, because if that new, more open and progressive policy does not command the support of populations in the region, it will founder against a wall of suspicion and hostility. A concerted and carefully conducted public diplomacy effort is required to make sure that does not happen. But the roots of that corrosive suspicion of ‘the West’and its actions in the Middle East region are deep, going considerably beyond the ordinary suspicion which accompanies the initiatives of governments, foreign and domestic. That is why a public diplomacy strategy that is focused solely on "delivering information" - rather than fostering dialogue or building relationship - will run into the ground. The suspicion that attaches itself to any information or initiatives from the West can best be understood in cultural, rather than informational, terms. This was identified, back in 1992, by the American political scientist and adviser to President Clinton, Benjamin Barber, who warned of a conflict between two conflicting – but mutually reinforcing - trends in world politics that he called ‘Jihad’and ‘McWorld’. In a brilliantly prescient article for the ‘Atlantic Monthly’, he attacked the idea of a ‘clash of civilisations’, recently floated by Harvard’s Samuel Huntington, and showed that problems stemmed instead from a clash between perceptions of the two equally unattractive extremes of fundamentalist religion and unregulated consumer capitalism: "The first is a retribalization of large swaths of humankind by war and bloodshed: a threatened Lebanonization of national states in which culture is pitted

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against culture, people against people, tribe against tribe - a Jihad in the name of a hundred narrowly conceived faiths, against every kind of interdependence, every kind of artificial social cooperation and civic mutuality. The second is being borne in on us by the onrush of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast computers, and fast food - with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald's, pressing nations into one commercially homogeneous global network: one McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications, and commerce. The planet is falling precipitantly apart and coming reluctantly together at the very same moment." The roots of suspicion and hostility lie deeper than the daily headlines of diplomatic manoeuvre and military buildup; they lie within culture, or more specifically in cultural responses to globalisation and to demographic and political change. Until the dangerous myth of monolithic clashing civilisations is taken on, positive approaches to the Middle East region cannot have the public impact needed for their success. Consequently, the deeper work of building relationships needs to be carried out at onestep’s remove from the short-term imperatives of foreign ministries. This is why the kind of public diplomacy carried out by an organisation like the British Council – focused on the long-term, on social and cultural trends, and on relationships between people and organisations – can become such an important part of UK foreign policy in the Middle East. On the face of things, this looks too great a mountain to climb for public diplomacy activity to have any effect. It seems absurd to imagine that such deep-seated mistrust and hatred can be turned around by words. But there are historical examples of efforts at bridge-building that have had an impact on problems of a similar order of magnitude. Germany and Japan were able to transform their image and reputation from one of aggressive, destructive Axis powers following the Second World War to fully fledged members of the community of Western nations, overcoming a great deal of hatred and mistrust in the meantime, partly through hard work on their public diplomacy. Non-govern-

Introduction

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mental actors like the ANC, the PLO, Shell and BP have been able to transform immensely negative associations with terrorism, greed and environmental recklessness into reserves of trust and respect (in some quarters at least) through carefully thought-out public affairs strategies. Even fundamental ideological clashes have proved tractable through public diplomacy. It is widely recognised that the public diplomacy undertaken during the Cold War, the last time that such efforts were taken seriously and conducted on a large scale, was a significant factor in bringing its end. It is also the case that diplomatic hands can be played well or badly in the highly charged atmosphere of Middle East policy. It is clear that Israel’s ability to exert influence on the policy and politics of the United States far outweighs its strategic significance. It is able to do so in large part because its public diplomacy strategy, its public and private lobbying, its media relations and its presentation of itself to key sections of the US public are so well thought out, so clearly targeted, and so effectively carried through. It is equally clear that the United States has dramatically failed to convert what is, prima facie, a compelling case in favour of US policy into real support. The United States was the subject of a devastating surprise attack aimed at its civilian population; it reacted cautiously, giving a widely loathed (even in the Islamic world) Taliban regime ample opportunity to hand over for trial a man who claimed personal responsibility for the attacks; when it acted militarily, it did so multilaterally and with demonstrable and broadly successful measures to keep civilian casualties to a minimum; it supported a UN administration in Afghanistan which presented a clear timetable for handover to a democratic regime founded on a local interpretation of democratic legitimacy, the loya jirga; and it adopted the UN route in taking action against Iraq, gaining Syrian support, and demonstrated that it was prepared for the matter to be resolved peacefully through the UN’s weapons inspectors. It is a measure of the extent to which American public diplomacy has failed to tackle the suspicion that attaches to US action (over and above that wariness with which

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pre-eminent powers will always be treated) that to make a reasonable and balanced statement of facts like this sounds like propaganda. This is a dramatic illustration of the point that people’s perceptions of who you are will determine their response to you as much as what you actually do. Currently, an emerging interest amongst Western governments in tackling the underlying problems of the Middle East in its political and economic development is in danger of being undermined by ingrained suspicion and the tensions created in the run-up to a war with Iraq. It is possible for the UK to fill this gap between a policy with potential and presentation that remains so wanting. It has consistently positioned itself in international policy debates close enough to the United States to be able to influence it, making it the most effective (though not the most strident) advocate of a foreign policy agenda based on values. Now it needs to ensure that those initiatives it has helped to place on the policy agenda – like real pressure on Israel for peace in the Middle East, and like a long-term programme for partnership with the region to bring about economic and political reform – are conducted and carried through in a fashion that helps bring them popular support and that works to counter the overwhelmingly negative impression that the US and, dragged in its wake, the West have developed in the region. But to do that it needs to make changes in its approach and devise a layered strategy that draws fully on the institutional and cultural resources at its disposal. This report aims to make a first cut at laying out how that contribution can be made. It draws on previously available literature, polling data, and on field research in two case-study countries in the Middle East region: Turkey and Saudi Arabia. These case studies are not intended to be taken as representative of the region as a whole. Instead they play the role of illustrative, polar opposites – closed vs. open, secular vs. religious. Saudi Arabia represents one of the most difficult and culturally sensitive environments for public diplomacy, and so is taken to

Introduction

18

represent an important theme in the region – suspicious of Western influence and Western motives, fearful of a ‘clash of civilisations’. Turkey’s position as an EU accession candidate places it at the opposite end of the scale of relations with the West, providing evidence of the possibilities presented by working with Middle Eastern regimes in the pursuit of reform. Although the differences between Turkey and the Arab countries in the region are striking (as are those between the Arab countries themselves) it provides a useful and illuminating angle on several important topics. As a NATO ally with a new Islamic-i n f l u e n c e d government, a high proportion of Muslim inhabitants, a fiercely secular constitution and a development programme aimed at EU entrance, Turkey works as a clear demonstration that there is nothing ‘essential’ and unchanging about ‘Islam’or the social relations of countries in the Middle East region. It also acts as an important example of the progress that can be made toward political, economic and social reform through co-operation and partnership, and of the way in which a UK public diplomacy agenda can align behind and contribute to that process. Any conclusions and arguments based on the evidence and methodology employed by this report can only aspire to be partial illuminations of a broad, complex and important topic. Furthermore, one of the first points that must be made is to emphasise the importance of local particularities in a region as diverse as the Middle East, and so to caution against unwary extrapolation from one country or environment to another. If this report makes any helpful contribution, it is to present a framework for discussion of the broad strategy needed and to highlight the importance of further thought and research at a more detailed level on these topics. Briefly, it tries to examine four aspects of UK public diplomacy activity in the Middle East: the ‘Why?’, the ‘What?’, the ‘Who?’ and the ‘How?’

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Why? We argue that the new policy environment places very different demands on public diplomacy. In the past the goal of policy was to prop up the regional status quo which would ensure stability and continued access to oil supplies. Today there is a belief that the status quo is unsustainable and that the best route to stability will be to work with these countries to manage reform in order to avoid the explosion of violent change. What? The report argues that British public diplomacy should be spread across three time-scales. The most short-term is essentially about fire-fighting: differentiating ourselves from the Americans and reaching out to give people a true picture of UK policy. The second dimension is about containment: attacking the most corrosive perception that British policy is somehow motivated by a ‘clash of civilisations’. The only real way to tackle this perception is to focus on the causes of resentment in the long-term. In the report we argue that the long-term goal should be human development. This allows Britain to push for a reform agenda that is demand-driven and consciously tackle charges of imperialism. Who? In the past most public diplomacy was aimed only at elites in the region. This policy is not capable of supporting the change in direction in policy. This means that public diplomacy needs to change in two ways. First, it needs to consciously work through multipliers so that it reaches a much larger audience, what Western policymakers sometimes refer to as the ‘Arab street’. Secondly, public diplomacy should be aimed at tackling the roots of many of the negative perceptions of the West in the Arab world – and try to change levels of knowledge and discussion about Islam and the Middle East in our own backyard. This

Introduction

20

is not just because isolating our own extremists might stem the flow of negative stories written by Arab correspondents in the West, but because being seen to tackle our own problems will be excellent public diplomacy in itself.

1. A New Policy Environment

How? The final question is how to move forward with an agenda for change in an area where there is a good deal of suspicion of Western policies and Western motives, and a history of imperialism. In the report we suggest an approach which aims to avoid the dangers of collapsing into liberal imperialism, but side-steps the accommodationism that has been a feature of all diplomacy in the region. Drawing on the work of the German sociologist, Ulrich Beck, we develop a model that we call Contextual Universalism. This approach seeks to maintain our commitment to universal values, but apply them self-critically and in context through dialogue.

Foreign policy in the Middle East has become inextricably entwined with public diplomacy because opinions and perceptions in the region have become the central consideration of policy. This is so in both an immediate and a long-term sense. In the immediate sense, public reactions to Western acts in the region – to reconstruction in Afghanistan or war in Iraq – are a vital factor in the success of those actions, affecting the coherence of coalitions and the feasibility and security of operations. Furthermore, public diplomacy and foreign policy are linked fundamentally in the long-term because Arab and Muslim hostility to the West are now seen, in the wake of the September 11th attacks, as potential threats of the highest order. Attempts to ameliorate that hostility and improve the quality of relationships with broader publics in the Middle East – the work of public diplomacy – will now be a central part of foreign policy planning. Iraq will be the most important test case of policy in the region – both in terms of the content of the policy, and attempts to explain what we are doing. The way that the situation is handled has the capacity to challenge or reinforce many of the most damaging perceptions of the West in the region – from double-standards and a selective concern about democracy and human rights, to the primacy of oil concerns as a motivation for policy.

Stability at All Costs The basis of the old model of Western foreign policy in the region was an economic and political bargain which is no longer seen to serve the interests of Western countries. Support was proffered to authoritarian,

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ANew Policy Environment

22

autocratic and even tyrannical regimes in return for the assurance of stability in the supply of oil from those countries that had it, and political stability in the region, to the benefit of oil-rich countries and the West, from those that didn’t. As one Western diplomat in Saudi Arabia - the paradigm of a Western oil client - put it: "Most countries’interests in Saudi Arabia in the past, and to an extent still ongoing, are economic interests - economic co-operation." Those economic issues overrode existing concerns about human rights, standards of political accountability and participation, and even the awareness of deep-seated hostility to the West.

world aren't conventional; and they can't be fought by conventional means alone. We will not defeat terrorism only by security measures. We must accept that there is a significant part of the world that is, at present, deeply inimical to all we stand for and is so from a mixture of tradition, ignorance of our true motives and values and from a belief that we are governed by a one-sided view of what is just. I believe this view to be profoundly mistaken but I believe it to be real. And it menaces the very unity we need in confronting the dangers before us. What can we do?"

Reform as the New Paradigm Under this old model of policy, UK public diplomacy was a useful but marginal tool, whose main aim was to oil the wheels of bilateral relationships. Its targets were elites. Educational exchange and access to Western university education built the foundations of future business co-operation and presented opportunities for networking. Language teaching facilitated bilateral links and lowered the transaction costs of relationships. Public events attempted to raise country profiles, and presented Western cultural goods as a means of drawing in and co-opting elites. Although it represented an important contribution to the broader bilateral relationship between countries, its salience in policy terms was low. 11 September called that model of relationship into question, in some ways just as its perpetrators had intended. Previously Western governments felt it was possible to live with the hostility that many Arab and Muslim societies showed towards the Western role in the region, and also to an extent the character of Western societies themselves. Today, the Western foreign policy establishment’s position, particularly in the United States but also in the UK and elsewhere, is that action must be taken in the short term to ameliorate that hostility, and in the long term to eliminate its root causes. Tony Blair’s flagship annual speech on foreign policy to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, delivered on 11 November 2002, sketched out this new problem: "The new threats confronting the

23


Western governments are in the process of formulating a new paradigm for foreign policy in the Middle East. Short-term actions to hunt down terrorists or counter immediate threats like those represented by Saddam Hussein’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction will be coupled in the longer term with a reformation in Western policy positions toward economic, social and political progress in the region. The goal of Western foreign policy is no longer to preserve the status quo in the interest of short-term stability, but to pursue reform to create stability in the long term. Western governments will no longer help to sustain the political structures which have contributed to the threat of terrorist attack in their current form, but instead press for modernisation in the organisation of society; evolution in the representation of political grievances toward a pluralistic model of politics; and an attempt to broaden the base of economic integration with the world market beyond the oil-wealthy elite in order to benefit the poor in the region. The intellectual basis of these policies is a relatively widely shared analysis of the roots of anti-American and anti-Western hostility. This argument, broadly accepted by Western policy-makers, comes with differing degrees of sympathy for the plight of Middle Eastern states and Arab and Islamic populations, but can be briefly summarised as fol-


24

lows: a lack of modernisation – political, social and economic – is the root cause of both discontent in the Arab world and of the transfer of that discontent to the Western powers. The ‘clash of civilisations’, or the anti-American/anti-Western hostility that leads to terror attacks like 11 September, is a result of the conditions of political unfreedom that prevail in the Middle East, compounded by the growing economic and demographic crisis in those countries. Lack of internal political debate, and the deliberate rhetorical manipulation by Middle Eastern regimes, diverts growing discontent from the domestic to the international, and particularly towards the United States and Israel. The West itself is also culpable in so far as, as outlined above, its own regional policy for a long period was to ensure the stability of the very despotic regimes who diverted animosity towards it, and also in so far as it must share some blame for the lack of progress on the Middle East peace process – an area where bloody stasis has served as a provocation of anti-Western feeling and an impediment to economic and political progress both in Israel/Palestine and elsewhere in the region. There are variations in emphasis within this broad argument, placing more weight on the rulers or on the reactions of the populace, on policy decision or the impersonal forces of modernisation or globalisation. Barry Rubin, for example, one of the pro-Israeli commentators to write in this vein, emphasised the Machiavellian manipulation of Arab regimes and extremist political leaders in his article ‘The Real Roots of Arab Anti-Americanism’ in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs: "The basic reason for the prevalence of Arab anti-Americanism is that it has been such a useful tool for radical rulers, revolutionary movements, and even moderate regimes to build domestic support and pursue regional goals with no significant cost." In contrast Fareed Zakaria, former editor of Foreign Affairs and now international editor of Newsweek, writing in Re-Ordering The World, emphasised the peculiar role of globalisation in contributing to extremism:

products and billboards with little else. For some in their societies it means more things to buy. For the regimes it is an unsettling, dangerous phenomenon. As a result, the people they rule can look at globalisation but for the most part not touch it. Disoriented young men, with one foot in the old world and another in the new, now look for a purer, simpler alternative."

But the implications for Western policy-making are essentially the same: a desire to secure stability by propping up the old status quo is no longer a viable option. The most likely result of an unreformed status quo is a collapse, and violent rather than managed change. Instead the aim must be to promote modernisation in the Arab and Muslim world; to foster change in these societies. This change in policy has been signalled by both the American and British administrations. George W. Bush’s National Security Strategy was explicit that its goal was to "extend the peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent." He echoed this in his now infamous ‘pre-emption’speech to the graduating class at West Point, which concluded: "When it comes to the common rights and needs of men and women, there is no ‘clash of civilizations’. The requirements of freedom apply fully to Africa and Latin America and the entire Islamic world. The peoples of the Islamic nations want and deserve the same freedoms and opportunities as people in every nation. And their governments should listen to their hopes." The importance of this goal has been brought out by the eminent historian of American grand strategies, John Lewis Gaddis, who maintains that: "It's becoming clear now that poverty wasn't what caused a group of middle-class and reasonably well-educated Middle Easterners to fly three airplanes into buildings and another into the ground. It was, rather, resentments growing out of the absence of representative institutions in their own societies, so that the only outlet for political dissidence was religious fanaticism. Hence, Bush insists, the ultimate goal of U.S. strategy must be to spread democracy

"Globalisation in the Arab world is the critic’s caricature of globalisation – a slew of Western

25


everywhere. The United States must finish the job that Woodrow Wilson started. The world,


26

quite literally, must be made safe for democracy, even those parts of it, like the Middle East, that have so far resisted that tendency."

The Bush administration’s National Security Strategy therefore "turns out, upon closer examination, to be a plan for transforming the entire Muslim Middle East: for bringing it, once and for all, into the modern world." Bush’s National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice, supported this interpretation in an interview with the Financial Times during which she maintained that the values of freedom, democracy and free enterprise do not "stop at the edge of Islam", and that the US’s interest was in "democratisation or the march of freedom in the Muslim world." In December, Colin Powell explained how this will be operationalized with the launch of the grandly titled "US-Middle East Partnership Initiative", which will leverage the $1 billion that the US provides in aid to the Arab world behind a plan to modernise the region through educational reform, private sector development and the strengthening of civil society. When questioned about it, Powell signalled a clear change of policy: "I no longer think that it is affordable and sustainable [to stand back and say that we can’t discuss these issues with a particular country because there is some other geo-strategic priority]. There is not a country in the Middle East that I have not begun this conversation with and the President has not begun this conversation with".

Syria. It was clear from Mr al-Assad's inaugural speech that he was determined to bring about real change in Syria and there are encouraging signs... We welcome the recent release and amnesties for hundreds of political prisoners. Astart has been made on easing controls over the press. Steps have been taken to promote the rights of women. Non-government organisations are beginning to take over new roles. There is new legislation to enable foreign banks to operate and moves to reform public administration... The UK is already playing its part in encouraging such changes. The main author of Syria's information technology strategy is a British consultant. We are giving advice on economic reform. The British Council is supporting Syria's universities. Scholarships are being provided for Syrian students to take post-graduate courses here so they have the expertise needed to help in the liberalising of their country." The UK’s Foreign Affairs Committee June 2002 report on ‘Foreign Policy Aspects of the War on Terrorism’ foreshadowed this approach. Moving on from its discussion of counter-terrorist intelligence, it reported: "To ‘know thine enemy’is not enough. We also need to determine how the conditions that have contributed to the development of terrorism can be removed, or at least reduced. The answers to those questions will provide a far safer world than even the best intelligence and preparedness can provide. As the war against terrorism proceeds, this country and its coalition allies must seek out those answers, and must learn about and deal sensitively with the

A broadly similar approach is being developed, with perhaps less hyperbole, in the UK. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has been working on a new strategy for the Middle East which also stresses the importance of partnership and reform. The new tone comes out clearly from an article written by Tony Blair on the occasion of President Assad of Syria’s visit to the UK: "I strongly believe that candid dialogue is more productive than no dialogue at all... We must also work to help the continued evolution of

27


causes of terrorism."

Its opinion on at least some of those causes was made clear in the body of the report, which held: "The West's allies in the Islamic world need to address their internal problems, which appear to contribute to the popularity of Islamic extremism. We recommend that the Government consider carefully how to help allies in the Islamic world to address the social, economic and political conditions that have led to the growth of Islamic extremism among their populations." The UK Government’s response to the report is revealing of its approach to this issue: ANew Policy Environment

28

"We agree we need to address the political, social and economic factors that can create the conditions in which terrorism flourishes. This is a major task requiring sustained international engagement over the long term. Much of this work ties in with our broader foreign policy and development objectives. Well before the events of 11 September, we were actively engaged in working to spread the benefits of globalisation, to eradicate poverty, to improve respect for human rights and adherence to the rule of law and to promote democracy and good governance. Significant efforts have also been made to prevent and resolve regional conflicts, to tackle state failure and to promote better understanding between cultures and religions. Since then, this work has acquired additional importance."

Sections of opinion in the Arab world also agree with this general thrust of policy. One journalist in the region, speaking on condition of anonymity, argued that: "This whole area is going to be reshaped. But in whose image? Every regime is literally rotting. They were created in the 50s and 60s, and now they only survive by rigging elections or putting down demonstrations. Every single minister in the top levels of the Saudi government

difficulty is the populists’ view rather than the view of the educated. People who are well-briefed understand our policy. We have to engage with the Arab masses and explain what we are doing in a low-key way." Its importance in aiding short-term policy implementation has been frequently highlighted by analysts and policy-makers alike. The impact that hostility to the West was capable of having at every level and stage of Western pursuit of the ‘war on terror’was obvious. As the American CSIS think-tank’s ‘Strategy for the Campaign Against Terrorism’, To Prevail put it: "These perceptions fuel anti-American frustration among the many and hatred among the few – even as American ideals and America’s success remain powerfully attractive. Left unanswered, these perceptions threaten to hinder the US ability to prosecute the war against terrorism, and, over time, to erode US power and influence in larger parts of the world." Hostile public opinion could prevent the formation of coalitions, collapse vital public support in the prosecution of counter-terrorist campaigns, and destabilise friendly countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

was born before the introduction of electricity to Saudi Arabia. Every single minister. They are lacking in education, they are behind the wave of change. They see themselves as providential rulers – they are like the Sun king. President Bush and Prince Abdullah have nothing in common – these people cannot talk to each other, they do not speak the same language… The Western powers have always dealt with governments, now all of a sudden they need to speak to the man in the street. They need to go back to their ABCs, and identify their objectives: do they want to keep Hosni Mubarak, or do they want to allow the groundswell of opinion to elect who they want, and then deal with who’s elected?"

Therefore, as the influential New York Council on Foreign Relations blue ribbon committee on the role of public diplomacy in new foreign policy challenges argued, "now we are fighting a war on terrorism, we must come to understand and accept that ‘image problems’and ‘foreign policy’are not things apart: they are both part of an integrated whole," and that consequently "A consensus is emerging… that US public diplomacy requires new thinking and new decision-making structures that do not now exist."

Public Diplomacy at the Heart of Policy The implications of this approach, the significance of this new policy environment in the Middle East for public diplomacy, are enormous, catapulting it from a position of only marginal importance in maintaining bilateral relations to a central role in both long- and short-term policy. Foreign Office Minister Mike O’Brien signalled the increasing importance of public diplomacy in an interview with the authors: "The

29


Public diplomacy in the Middle East is therefore being asked to take on a considerable burden, and perform a role very different to that which has been asked of it up to now. Where previously there was seen to be no pressing need to communicate with those beyond small elites, the necessity of responding to deep-seated and widespread anti-Western feeling has expanded the target of Western public diplomacy to take in the majority of these societies – what is commonly referred to as the


30

‘Arab street’ – and also to take in previously marginal and isolated communities like the villages of Afghanistan. Where in the past the discussion of political issues, and particularly of areas of tension between Western society and the practice of Middle Eastern societies, was an area that it was advantageous for all to politely avoid, now the discussion of politics is central to the relationship. Where in the past public diplomacy – the buildings of relations with elites, the building of the social infrastructure to facilitate bilateral elite contact with the sponsoring country – made a contribution to stability and continuity, it is now expected to make a contribution to what is viewed as a necessary – but managed – change. The nature of this change in the expectations of public diplomacy can be seen most clearly by considering its role in a future war in Iraq. The success of any such war would depend in large part on its reception in the region. The encapsulation of success for a Western assault that deposed Saddam Hussein would be dancing on the streets of Baghdad; just as the final justification of the deposition of the Taliban in Afghanistan was seen in the celebrations in Kabul. It is essential that an attack on Iraq is not seen as part of a war fought against a Muslim government that threatens the West, or as a war fought in order to further secure what is taken to be the West’s one true interest in the region – oil supply. Consequently, Western public diplomacy has to ensure that those – widely held – misperceptions of intentions in the region are countered, and that a constituency of support for action – or at least some understanding of the motivation for action – is built. This will be difficult as there is a substantial constituency in the UK and other Western countries that believes that oil is the primary motivation, rather than just an important consideration. This is a task requiring communication with large numbers of people on difficult topics, and now of the highest importance for the success of Western foreign policy in the region. Without it, attempts to assure security for the United States and its allies through action in the region will turn out to be as counterproductive as its critics on the left fear – provoking further hostility and

31


further attacks. A hypothetical scenario of regime change in Iraq is also revealing of the longer-term demands made on public diplomacy within this new paradigm of Middle East policy. In the aftermath of a deposition of Saddam Hussein, the Western powers would be committed to a process of nation-building (or nation rebuilding) in Iraq, just as they have been in Afghanistan. If it is to be successful, it will have to involve considerable participation from the Iraqi people in partnership with Western agencies. The task of reconstructing Iraq would necessarily involve the kind of international co-operation between Iraq and the West that has been a vital part of the modernisation of Eastern Europe – culminating in the EU accession of the majority of the former Communist countries there – and of Germany and Japan before that. The burden of building this relationship capable of nurturing a modernising process in Iraq would fall in large part on the West’s public diplomacy institutions. That scenario, of reconstructing Iraq, is in fact only an extreme example of the policy tasks the West is looking to undertake throughout the region. The manner of Saddam’s removal will impact on our ability to pursue this agenda. If he is removed by the Iraqi people rather than by a Western military intervention it will be considerably easier to put this programme into effect. The long-term process of bringing change to the Middle East would not, in fact, take the form of a series of invasions and coups sponsored by the West. The model is much more likely to be close to that pursued in Africa, where the New Partnership for African Development envisages effective co-operation between African regimes and civil society and Western governments and civil society organisations. The idea of imposing ‘civilisation’on the Middle East from the outside is not one that appeals to Western governments as either realistic or desirable. The relationship-building aspects of public diplomacy work, linking civil society organisations and facilitating the exchange of expertise, would be central to a partnership based process of reform able to achieve progress in areas like effective


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governance and legal reform, the combating of corruption and the stimulation of sustainable economic development, and the encouragement of pluralist or democratic political frameworks and cultures of free exchange of information. For that effort to be successful, the public positioning of the West, and particularly of the relationship between the UK and the US, is vital. A Western alliance can’t afford to appear imperial, and the multilateral credibility of any action is vital in avoiding that impression. While it is clearly going to be difficult to achieve progress if different Western governments are sending out conflicting messages (meaning that it will be important to co-ordinate), being too closely associated with the US position, as we will see in the next chapter, is damaging the UK’s standing in the region and detracting from the credibility of international policy approaches. As one senior diplomatic source put it: "The Americans are feeding off our credibility but we do not have enough to give them. We should negotiate a new deal where we support their strategy but distance ourselves from them."

and target audiences of public diplomacy in the region can be very briefly summarised in the following table: Such an enormous change in the demands placed by policy on public Such an enourmous change in the demands placed by policy on public diplomacy raises vital questions. How much of what is demanded is feasible in the Middle Eastern environment? How does that environment a ffect the approach that public diplomacy adopts? What should the realistic goals of public diplomacy activity be? In the UK context, how should they be divided between the different public diplomacy institutions? The remainder of this report examines some of these questions.

The impact of the change in policy environment on the goals, methods

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Old Paradigm: Status-Quo

New Paradigm: Reform

Goal

Maintaining bilateral relationships

Fostering change

Target

Elites

Broad society

Means

Education in the UK/ELT

Mass media / civil society building / HR-governance / fostering change in education



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2. The ‘Image Problem’ in the Middle East and the West

of nine Muslim countries, the Zogby International Poll of attitudes to the United States, the World Values Survey, the Pew Global Attitudes Project and the British Council’s Connecting Futures research, aimed at a specific 15-25 age group. It also draws on some of our own interviews and focus groups.

Most discussion of the West’s ‘image problem’in the Arab and Muslim world stems from the unhelpful question ‘Why do they hate us?’Public diplomacy problems, and future policy initiatives to overcome them, are considered in terms of solving our image problems, changing their perceptions. Framing the question in this way is unhelpful because it treats hostility to the West as an exogenous force that is out of our control – rather than something which is related to our own public opinion and public discourse, as well as the policy decisions of Western governments.

Mistrust of Western Motivations

What is striking about the opinion data is that the negative views held by people in the West are echoed in the public discourse of countries in the region. It is interesting to note, for instance, that Lebanon, Indonesia, Turkey and Iran all returned higher rates of favourability to the US than the US did for those countries. This means that the question "why do we hate them?" could shed as much light on problems surrounding public opinion as an exclusive focus on hostility in Arab countries. There has been a lack of investigation directed at this issue, a factor that may be holding back efforts to reconcile antagonisms. Nevertheless, there are some useful themes which can be drawn from the extensive polling that has been carried out in the Muslim world. This chapter will argue that the various polls taken of countries in the Middle East and in the Muslim world revealed three important findings: a distrust of Western policy and official information; a fear (importantly, on both sides) of a ‘clash of civilisations’, but no actual clash; and a desire for a deeper relationship and further engagement. The chapter draws on five main sources of information: the Gallup poll

35


The first important dynamic to highlight in public opinion toward the US and ‘the West’ in general is that a dislike of real policies is mixed with fear and suspicion based on conspiracy theory about motives. Both translate to an antipathy to Western countries – with over half of respondents in the Gallup poll expressing ‘unfavourable’ views of those countries. The most striking finding to come out of the majority of polling undertaken was the level of distrust of Western foreign policy, information, and accounts of policy motivations. Sixty-one per cent of respondents in the Gallup poll were unwilling to accept that Arabs or Muslims could have been responsible for the 11 September attacks, and there were consistently voiced suspicions that the United States itself or Mossad, the Israeli security service, were in fact responsible. Following logically from these suspicions, the US’s motivation in attacking Afghanistan was brought into question, with the most common accounts of its aims focusing on power-grabbing, the takeover of peoples or land and the extraction of resources like oil, gas and even uranium. Similar suspicions prevail over the motivation of action in Iraq. One Saudi journalist interviewed in Jeddah insisted: "It is all about oil, about geopolitics. Think about it, they come within 100 km of Baghdad [in 1991] and Bush stops. Now they want to go back. Nobody likes Saddam, nobody wants Saddam… but he is not the reason." Unsurprisingly, the attacks on Afghanistan were also regarded as unjustified and unjustifiable by an average of 77% of respondents. Even in NATO Turkey, whose troops have led the ISAF force in Kabul, 59% of respondents regarded

The ‘Image Problem’in the Middle East and the West

36

the action as unjustified. It is also interesting to note that respondents claimed to be well informed about international events. 57% of Kuwaitis, for example, claimed to have closely followed news of the attacks in the media. Another contributing factor is a tendency (not restricted to the media in the Middle East, but probably more extensive there) to misinterpret statements made or positions taken by the swarm of quasi-governmental b o a r d s, legislators and other public figures as statements of policy, rather than as contributions to an ongoing debate. An example of this in recent months has been the leak of the briefing by a RAND analyst to Richard Perle’s ‘Defence Advisory Board’ describing Saudi Arabia as ‘the kernel of evil’. Aradical statement by a non-government analyst who, at the time, was not even speaking for the RAND think-tank, let alone the Pentagon, was interpreted as an insight into the inner workings of the Bush administration’s mind. It is equally clear that suspicions of Western motivations in the liberal press in the UK and other Western countries will inevitably bleed across into the Arab media – which shows the importance of adopting a holistic public diplomacy strategy. Default mistrust is so powerful that even when the United States adopts policies which should command support in the region, they run into a wall of suspicion. The most extreme example of this trend is a story, published in the Egyptian paper Al Ahram, about American humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan. The article claimed that American humanitarian aid had been genetically modified, and dropped in heavily land-mined areas, presumably with the aim of killing or injuring Afghan civilians. Discussion and interviews on television news reflect similar sentiments: a Saudi opposition Sheikh interviewed on Al Jazeerah in July 2002 gave a not unusual portrait of American foreign policy strategy: "America unhesitatingly enters into war anywhere in the world – unless it assesses that the

that will permit American companies to sign profitable contracts, with the aim of usurping resources under the slogan of cooperation in development. Thus, we notice that America is always seeking an enemy…"

Debate in the Turkish press is less extreme (often not that different from what one could read in a left-wing daily in the UK or a weekly in the US) and not prone to identify a ‘war against Islam and Muslims’, but is nonetheless relatively consistently hostile to recent American foreign policy, particularly in Iraq. Writing in Hurriyet, a major daily, in September, Serdar Turgut maintained in his article that "In the US, the regime has changed". "The ‘fight against terrorism’" he maintained, "is merely a pretence the United States is using in order to act from a position of moral superiority in dealing with other countries. This argument has got nothing to do with the real aim, with the real goal [of policy]. In fact this is no secret. The U.S. intentions are quite clear, judging by the official documents… The hawks at the Pentagon that want to strike against Iraq have prevailed. The U.S. administration now seems quite determined to change the world order on its own."

This distrust of motivations and pronouncements translates into an antipathy toward Western foreign policies. The US is seen as ruthless, conceited and easily provoked, according to the Gallup poll, and the West is not seen to care for or support Arab causes, particularly in Palestine. In the Zogby poll, only 8% of the Arabs surveyed would express support for US policy. In the Connecting Futures survey, which did not concentrate so closely on international events, the US was criticised both for indifference to events in Palestine and for assuming a role as the ‘world’s policeman’. George Bush’s personal favourability ratings, closely associated with American foreign policy, were very low, with only 11% saying that they liked him, as against 58% expressing unfavourable views. The three countries toward which the Arab world felt least favourable were Israel, the United States, and then the UK – revealing quite clearly a response overshadowed by the political problems of the Middle East peace process. This tendency was under-

benefit of such a war will not satisfy its insatiable appetite. Then it calls for a kind of peace

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lined by the fact that the non-Arab countries to which respondents felt most favourable were first France, then Iran, and then Japan – all countries which have studiously avoided any association with Israeli policy, and in the case of Iran gone rather further. When respondents were asked to name the negative aspects of the UK, 37% named its political stance. When asked to account for declines in the favourability of views of the UK since 11 September, the closeness of the UK to the USA was the most frequently cited factor. The undifferentiated nature, in people’s minds, of the US-UK axis in international affairs is particularly worrying for Britain. It is interesting that the ‘you’ referred to in the following quotation (from an English teacher in Saudi Arabia) takes in both the US and the UK, with little attempt to separate their position on Palestine or record of relations with the Muslim world: "You kill us in Palestine, in Afghanistan, soon in Iraq. You stood by while we were massacred, and women raped until they were pregnant, and we were tortured in concentration camps in Bosnia and Kosovo." The Gallup survey’s attempt to elicit comparative data for favourability toward George Bush and Tony Blair was thwarted in Iran when 68% of respondents were unable to answer questions about their attitude to the British Prime Minister, indicating that they were not aware who he was, and that perhaps therefore the UK was "guilty by association" with the United States when people were considering it. This tendency is exacerbated by the political closeness of the ‘special relationship’. Many draw a contrast between the British and the Continental European positions, particularly on Iraq. As one Saudi journalist put it: "It’s even worse than America. The British are trying to be more royalist than the king. People look down on them condescendingly, almost insultingly… They should at least give a semblance of neutrality, it’s worse than Guam, and that’s a US territory." The Connecting Futures research reported that the UK’s closeness to the US was the most frequently cited reason for declining favourability post-11 September. This is clearly an important consideration for the UK when it is planning its public diplomacy activity.

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Fear of a ‘Clash of Civilisations’ The second problem is a perception that Western policy reflects a ‘clash of civilisations’. This idea is frequently referred to in the Arab media. To take two examples from many: the Egyptian Gazette columnist Ramadan Abd Al Qader wrote on 10th October 2002 that Condoleeza Rice's interview with the Financial Times expressing a desire to bring democracy to the Arab world "smacks of such patronizing arrogance that it has entrenched belief among many Muslims that they are the target of a latter-day Crusade"; and the Jordanian daily Al Dustour wrote that when Rice claims that "'the United States wants to be a liberating force, and dedicate itself to liberating the Islamic world, starting with Iraq, and to establish democracy and freedom,' she is ignoring more than one and a half billion Muslims who suffer from America's greed and oppression and from its cruel and visible war against Islam and Muslims." There is polling evidence to back up the idea that the Islamic world feels itself threatened as a civilisation. Fifty-two per cent in the Gallup poll claimed that the Western value system had a negative impact on Islam, as against only 14% claiming that it might have a positive impact. The idea that ‘the West’ had respect for Islamic values attracted almost no support at all: Turkey recorded the highest percentage of people claiming this, at only 21%, while Kuwait and Morocco recorded figures of only 5% and 4% respectively. This cultural suspicion is echoed by Western opinion polls and newspapers. An ICM survey in October 2001 found that one in four British citizens see Islam as "a threat to Western values". The survey by the Pew Centre concluded that "For the most part, Americans feel much more favorably about exporting their culture than they do about welcoming other cultures... Asizable minority of Americans say they dislike foreign cultural products. Generally, publics in other countries like A m e r i c a n popular culture much more than Americans like foreign culture.” The Arab media also delights in reporting statements made by ‘tele-


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vangelists’ and other high-profile preachers in the United States which feed the impression of current events as reflecting a war of Christians versus Muslims. Recent examples have included Rev. Jerry Falwell labelling the Prophet Muhammad as "a terrorist" and Rev. Jimmy Swaggert insisting that "We ought to take every single Muslim student in every college in this nation and ship them back to where they came from." Sections on Al Jazeerah covering UK foreign policy will drop in out-of-context references to racist attacks on Muslims in the UK, or even entirely fictive references to widespread imprisonment without trial of Muslims by the UK government. One interesting example in the case of Saudi Arabia was the decision by families of the victims of the World Trade Centre attack to sue those in Saudi Arabia whom they held responsible: one example of a response was from Saleh Al Shihi, a columnist for the Saudi daily Al Watan, who in an article entitled ‘This is America’ wrote: "According to American concepts, it is not important what the world loses; what is important is what America gains. This is American logic and American language. This is America, the civilization that arose on the skulls of others." The importance of this domestic angle should not be underestimated, particularly as it is an area where little systematic work is being undertaken to deal with negative results.

wants to be close to the West, we want to bring Islam to them – a clash is the opposite of what we want." The damaging nature of the idea was also explicitly highlighted by a Saudi journalist: "The ‘clash of civilisations’is the sort of fallacy that plays into bin Laden’s hands. We dress differently, we do different things, but that doesn’t mean there is a clash. There was a clash with the Soviets, because they didn’t believe in God – there is still no Saudi embassy in Cuba – but not with the West."

It is important to emphasise that this is not a ‘clash of civilisations’, but only the fear of a clash. Respondents in focus groups and interviews in Saudi Arabia were keen to emphasise that there was no clash of civilisation from the Islamic side. One former Chevening scholar insisted that, "the religious dimension is there – Islamic scholars often talk about it – but it’s not like ‘Christianity against Islam’. Instead, the US is afraid of an Islamic superpower. I don’t think it’s a clash of civilisations. It’s a directed clash. ‘The West’didn’t decide to attack Islam, it’s the decision-makers – it’s a question of power. Islam has been in existence peacefully for 1400 years, did they suddenly discover that there is a clash?" This sentiment was backed up by the response of a religious scholar from Jeddah: "There can be no clash of civilisations. Islam

This underlying similarity of values and desires brings us to the third important general point about Middle Eastern attitudes to the West: their desire for engagement and a relationship with what they view as a highly successful and desirable society. The Gallup poll recorded this feeling negatively in its executive summary, which stressed that respondents were depressed about their own situation and resentful that the West seemed neither to know nor to care. A similar result was reported in Connecting Futures: "Overall we [the UK] were thought not sufficiently to value relations with these countries. In most cases the focus groups thought their own countries had a poor image in the West, with perceived stereotyping around economic weakness, and in some cases also political instability and extremism." Yet it also comes


This idea that there is no fundamental clash of values is backed up by the interesting findings of the World Values Survey. In that survey, a higher percentage (around 88%) of Muslims agreed with the statement ‘I approve of democratic ideals’ than Western Christians – higher in fact than all other religious groups. In a ranking of priority of personal concerns, Arabs placed work first, family second and foreign policy only eighth. Americans, in stark lack of contrast, placed family first, work second and foreign policy seventh. Finally, the Zogby poll, which had recorded only 8% of Arabs as favourable to American policy, recorded 55% as favourable to its ‘freedom and democracy’.

Desire for Engagement


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through in a positive fashion. Connecting Futures recorded a significantly higher favourability towards the West than did the Gallup poll which recorded only 18% favourable to the UK and 22% to the US, in contrast with Connecting Futures at 67% and 68% respectively – a result that can be explained by the contrast between Gallup’s focus on political questions and international events as against Connecting Futures’ broader approach. The attraction of Western countries for respondents in the Connecting Futures poll was broadly associated with economic success. Of the five countries most frequently named as the country ‘valued most highly other than your own’ – USA, Japan, Egypt, UK and France – four are among the world’s five largest economies. In a separate question inquiring about the most positive aspects of the UK, 37% of respondents named, unprompted, a cluster of values around economic strength, technological advancement and managerial competence. The aspirational nature of lifestyles in the West, and the opportunities which contact with the West offered to adopt that standard of living, came through as the strong ‘pull’ side of attitudes to the West. The personal nature of this relationship, in that the West was seen to offer opportunities that could have an impact on the individuals themselves, can also be seen in the importance of education and education standards in the opinion-forming of at least the young constituency interviewed in Connecting Futures. Education standards, and particularly the existence of educational opportunities for outsiders, was the second most frequently cited positive aspect of the UK. This desire to experience and benefit from the economic and social advantages that Western societies offered is the flipside of the feeling expressed in Gallup and in, for example, results reported in the UN’s Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) that emigration to the West could offer a way out of current personal difficulties. The AHDR reported that "remarkably, 51% of older youths expressed a desire to emigrate to other countries, clearly indicating their dissatisfaction with

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current conditions and future prospects in their home countries." The AHDR elaborated on that finding: "Among those contemplating emigration, European countries were the favorite destination (46% of respondents, 21% of whom chose the United Kingdom alone) followed by the United States and Canada (36%), and other Arab countries (13%). The implicit judgement of how liveable these young people consider Arab societies to be is evident." This trend was not simply a desire for emigration, however. It was also a desire for a proper relationship that could be responsive to Arab and Muslim needs. Almost 80% of Iranians polled by Gallup were in favour of restoring ties with the United States even though less than 5% of them regarded the US as ‘friendly’. In a focus group with 17-year-old boys in a Saudi private school, the boys placed a great deal of importance on correcting a biased presentation of themselves and their country. Two of the three messages they most wanted to send back to people in the UK were "We are not terrorists" and "Don’t believe what you see on the news. Especially don’t believe what you see on the US media." Resentment and fear of stereotyping was also an issue for female Saudi teachers, who responded to questioning about the image of Muslims in the West by saying: "When I see black and white movies with the Indians in, and then it was the Germans, and then it was the Russians, I think the US tries to compensate like this. I hope this bad image will go away eventually, like those did." Finally, when the evidence from Connecting Futures of desire for economic opportunity, admiration of Western education systems, desire to learn English and to spend time in the UK and the US among young people is combined with results from polling in Saudi Arabia, where ten times more 18- to 19-year-olds than 40- to 50-year-olds regarded themselves as modern, it is clear that there is greater capacity for engagement on these terms with younger generations. This is a significant finding when placed in the context of British Council activity in


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the region, indicating that young target groups are both the most receptive and the easiest to reach.

The New Communications Environment This mistrust, misperception, and misinterpretation is not particularly new. However, there have been two changes in the nature of this problem in recent times that are significant. The first is that, as outlined in Chapter 1, the salience of public opinion in the Middle East to policymakers has greatly increased. The appearance of the Osama bin Laden videos on Al Jazeerah galvanised Western governments – particularly the US and the UK – into combating his strategy to manipulate popular opinion in the Arab world with their own. As Alastair Campbell, one of those involved in setting up the ‘Coalition Information Centre’ (CIC), explained in an interview with the BBC, "They [Al Qaeda] were able to operate a communications policy that consisted of hiding in a cave and throwing out a video every now and again. And you guys were just absolutely fascinated by this and it became another propaganda success for Bin Laden. If our communications strategy had been to hide in a cave and throw out the odd video, you'd have said we'd completely lost it… " Along with the Taliban’s own news briefings, this amounted to a serious problem for the West, as Campbell put it: "He [the Taliban’s Ambassador to Pakistan, Zaif] was commanding CNN live, BBC World live, Sky live and the rest of it. I think that again was part of our response in the CIC, actually to say look, we can't let these guys get away with it. We have got to be far more aggressive, proactive about getting the truth about the situation out there." There has been, in short, a recognition that it is necessary to counter damaging perceptions of the West and Western policy. As one female school teacher interviewed in Saudi Arabia expressed it: "The media is a weapon – my word fighting yours – the most powerful media wins." The second relatively new aspect to this issue is that media presentation of the West in the region is now in some ways tractable, thanks to

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an opening of the available media, particularly in the form of regional satellite stations broadcasting from outside the region or, in the case of Al Jazeerah, from positions of relative safety within it. This is the case in tightly controlled Saudi Arabia, and so all the more so elsewhere. In Saudi, consumer research on regularly watched TV channels revealed that almost half (48%) of respondents’ ‘top of mind’ responses were accounted for by MBC and Al Jazeerah, the two main pan-Arab stations. The only other station to get a double-figure response was Saudi Channel 1, accounting for a quarter of responses. There is also evidence that there is a market for news and comment lacking Al Jazeerah’s boisterous tone – one Saudi school teacher reported that "My husband watches Al Jazeerah and we fight. I hate listening to the news on Jazeerah, it fills you with hatred, trying to blow matters out of proportion. They have more reasonable phone-in programmes on Orbit. I prefer them." Another added: "I don’t understand the media putting fuel on the friction. This is not the role of the media." On a regional level, the Connecting Futures research of young people showed that, although the largest number (30%) of people still said that their opinions of Britain were formed by national TV and radio, significant minorities said that BBC TV and radio (15%), other satellite and cable (10%) and the internet (10%) were the major influence. Furthermore, as former Financial Times correspondent in Saudi Arabia James Buchan suggests, "state control of information [in Saudi Arabia] has diminished since the time of the 1979 insurrection in Mecca, when the government was able to cut off all non-diplomatic telephone contact with the outside world." Several diplomats interviewed in Riyadh reported some freeing up of the domestic Saudi media, resulting in increased criticism of some elements of governance. This was particularly evident following a girls’ school fire where the religious police prevented the escape of uncovered pupils, provoking a national outcry and the transferral of control of female education from religious to direct government authority. The import of this tendency was highlighted by a Saudi Chevening scholar: "If you allow people to speak


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freely its difficult to ask them to shut up again." These findings – distrust and suspicion, but similarity in goals and values and desire for engagement – are an important context for considering the appropriate goals for public diplomacy in the Middle East. They also indicate how those goals might relate to one another, presenting both synergies and discontinuities between them. Furthermore, they have implications for the kinds of institutions that should undertake different goals. These issues will be discussed in Chapter 4.

3. The Goals for Public Diplomacy

In spite of the huge investments being made in public diplomacy activity in the region, there is very little consensus around the goals for public diplomacy activity – or the indicators for success. As Yezid Sayigh of the International Institute of Strategic Studies put it in a seminar on public diplomacy in Saudi Arabia "What is it that you are trying to sell? If it’s stability and not being subject to Qaeda attacks then that is one thing, if it is getting them [Middle Eastern countries] to change their act then that is a wholly different issue. I think you need to work out what it is you are trying to achieve in order to be able to measure whether you are doing it right and whether it is feasible and whether it is sensible – and whether it is justified." There is a danger of burdening public diplomacy with unrealistic goals. The CSIS report To Prevail has a maximalist vision of what public diplomacy can achieve: "Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda are competing with the West politically and morally, not just violently. They and their terrorist brethren are beyond the call of reason. But the people and countries sympathetic to their issues if not their means are not beyond reach. A failure to seek these people’s and countries’ understanding if not endorsement will broaden the base from which terrorists can draw sanctuary, support, and even successors. Winning the war against terrorism and securing the resulting peace will be as much an act of persuasion as of coercion. In that effort, public diplomacy should play a central role." The idea that it is possible to deploy ‘soft power’, as Harvard’s Joe Nye calls it, to persuade, mollify, or begin dialogue with terrorists themselves is unconvincing. As Nye himself has said: "11th September showed the importance but also the limits of soft power. You can’t imagine that soft power is going to convert Mohammed Atta or the Taliban."

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The Goals for Public Diplomacy

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Public Diplomacy Goals in Three Dimensions One of the difficulties in defining an agenda for public diplomacy is that possible goals span different time-scales – from rebutting today’s misperceptions and building support for today’s policies to developing a constituency for long-term human development. The Foreign Policy Centre report Public Diplomacy set out three dimensions for public diplomacy strategy: news management, strategic communications and relationship-building.

News Management Reacting to news events as they occur in a way that tallies with our strategic goals

Strategic Communications Proactively creating a news agenda through activities and events which are designed to reinforce core messages and influence perceptions

Relationship-Building Building long-term relationships with populations overseas to win recognition of our values and assets and to learn from theirs

The relationship between these different dimensions is fluid. The first dimension could be seen as the domain of fire-fighting; the second dimension is about containment – controlling the worst elements of the environment; and the third dimension is about addressing the roots of resentment. The table above illustrates how the third dimension can be seen as the root of any public diplomacy strategy – it acts as the basis

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on which the other dimensions will fail or succeed. If there is no longterm relationship with a section of the elite and the wider population in particular countries, there is no infrastructure for delivering strategic messages. And if the strategic messages are terminally out of kilter with the reality, day-to-day news management will be crippled by the hostility of the news environment. From the evidence we reviewed in the first two chapters, it is possible to suggest a goal for each dimension. On the first dimension, the key goal should be to differentiate UK policy from US policy. It is unrealistic to hope that public diplomacy could achieve active support in the Middle East for UK foreign policy. In many cases British foreign policy goes directly against the selfdefined interests of publics in the region. Policy on Israel and Palestine, because it takes into account Israeli as well as Palestinian interests, simply cannot go far enough to expect widespread public support in the region. Similarly, it is unrealistic to expect a conversion in attitudes to Western interference in the region. Western intervention is undesirable per se for the inhabitants of the Middle East. As one Saudi teacher interviewed for this study expressed it: "If my father beats me, you cannot then come and beat my father – it will only humiliate me more. It is the same with Saddam.” However, it is clear that perceptions of UK policy do not take into account the distinctions between UK and US policy on Israel-Palestine, Syria, Iran or other issues. Whilst it is impossible to get people to enthusiastically support UK policy, the goal should be to achieve a situation where they ‘hate us for the right reasons’. On the second dimension, it is important not to focus too narrowly on national self-promotion. The opinion data reveals an interesting dynamic where public opinion of the UK in the Middle East values many aspects of British society (particularly economic opportunity and dynamism) whilst rejecting its foreign policy and politics. If major public diplomacy messages concentrate, as is traditional, on promoting


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the United Kingdom as a creative country or attractive destination for holidays or education, it will simply reinforce this dynamic. In fact, the most damaging perception of the UK and other Western governments is that their foreign policies are motivated by a ‘clash of civilisations’. T h i s suspicion of Western motivations corrodes any attempts to communicate on individual issues. Challenging the idea of a ‘clash of civilisations’ must therefore be the core task of strategic communications. There are two ways of doing this. One is to say that Islam and Christianity do not necessarily clash and are able to coexist in peace. But this approach is in danger of conceding too much ground to theorists of a clash of civilisations like Samuel Huntington and Osama bin Laden, because it accepts that ‘Islam’ and ‘Christendom’ or ‘the We s t ’ are valid units of analysis. The other, preferable, course is to reject the idea that there are clearly delineated civilisations, and demonstrate the continuities across Middle Eastern, European and North American societies.

Our strategy for public diplomacy in relation to the Middle East is therefore structured around three dimensions – short, medium and long-term. These goals can then be related to particular target audiences. It is clear that the challenges will be very different in an open transition country with a secular history like Turkey and in a closed country like Saudi Arabia. The table below shows how this could work. Table Two: Translating the Public Diplomacy Strategy into different contexts Goal

Differentiating UK policy

The goal of work on the third dimension of public diplomacy, relationship-building, is dictated by the new policy environment outlined in Chapter 1. Rather than oiling the wheels of bilateral relations between elites, the core goal should be to build relationships for the sake of achieving social, economic and political progress within the region. Table One: AThree-Dimensional Public Diplomacy Strategy Timescale News Management

Strategic Communication

RelationshipBuilding

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Problem

Goal

Mistrust of Western motivations

Differentiating UK policy

Fear of ‘clash of civilisations’

Challenging the ‘clash of civilisations’

Unrequited desire for engagement

Partnership for reform




Saudi Arabia

Turkey

The UK stands with Europe in actively pressing for a settlement in IsraelPalestine, and in pursuing a policy of engagement with, rather than isolation of, Syria and Iran

The UK is a strong supporter of Turkish accession to the EU

Assert: The UK is not an anti- Assert: the EU is not a Muslim society. Clashes of Christian club. values occur within societies, Prove: events not between ‘civilisations’. emphasising ‘Europe’ Prove: through hosting as a tool to tackle the debates within the Middle problems of modern East and bringing European societies contributions to the UK like Turkey Aid the ‘Saudi-sation’reforms designed to bring more Saudis into the workforce by providing assistance and networks needed for educational reform. Move into the private sphere through long-distance learning.

Build support networks for Copenhagen criteria reforms


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Public Diplomacy as a Two-way Process

Division of Labour

The research in chapter two demonstrated that the responsibility for antipathy between ‘Islam and the West’ is – at the least – shared between Western and Arab publics. On each of the three dimensions, domestic considerations could terminally undermine a public diplomacy strategy. As many of the articles written about British policy originate from journalists posted in the UK there is a real danger of the attempts to communicate policy on the ground being contradicted by messages coming out of London. This is as much about legitimate suspicion of Western motives among liberal elites as it is about Muslim communities in the West mistrusting policy. Furthermore, much of the material that is cited in the Middle East as proof that there is a ‘clash of civilisations’is produced as a result of ignorance or prejudice in the West. It will be impossible to attack ideas of a clash of civilisations in the Middle East if we have not managed to destroy these myths at home. Finally, on the question of leveraging long-term relationships to achieve change, Western public diplomacy agencies will risk running into charges of imperialism if the agenda is not pursued against a backdrop of mutuality. The table below shows how a public diplomacy strategy must work in the UK as well as the Middle East.

Lastly, it is important to consider the appropriate institutional actors for each of the goals in a UK context. Although more detailed discussions of the advantages, disadvantages and potential dangers of involving different actors in different levels of work will be contained in the following three chapters, it is useful to sketch out the overall shape of institutional responsibility envisaged in this strategy here.

Table 3: Public Diplomacy: a two-way process Goal Differentiating UK Policy



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The UK

The Middle East

Influencing the policy debate on the Middle East. Communicating with Muslim and other diaspora in the UK/ the West

Communicating what policy is to new region. Tackling misperceptions.

Unpacking the nature and image of Islamin the West

Refuting the ‘clash of civlisations’ by : -Showing that it is not the basis of policy -Unpacking the West

Building the capacity to sustain fruitful and mutual relations with the region


Maintaining relationships capable of fostering reform

The key institutional players in UK public diplomacy activity are the Foreign Office, the British Council, the BBC World Service and the various organisations whose interest is to sell Britain abroad for economic purposes, such as the British Tourist Authority (BTA) or British Trade International (BTI). In general, the division of responsibilities leaves government policy presentation and news management to the Foreign Office while promotion, presentation and ‘positioning’ of the UK over the medium and long term is shared between the Foreign Office, British Council and BTA and BTI. The BBC World Service plays an indirect role in the UK’s public diplomacy, as its reputation for even-handed and quality broadcasting reflects well on the UK. In broad terms, and as might be expected, communicating policy will be the responsibility of the Foreign Office and without contribution from the British Council, because of the serious damage such a contribution would cause to the British Council’s more important work at the long-term end of the spectrum, as explained in Chapter 5. The task of strategic communication, refuting the clash of civilisations, is one where there is distinct synergy between the aims and capabilities of the Foreign Office and of the British Council, and is consequently a shared role. There is however a distinct division of labour within that goal. The Foreign Office has the means and the responsibility to show to large target audiences that religious or civilisational motivations do not lie at the heart of policy. However, in order for that message to be


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believed in an environment which is fundamentally hostile to accepting such statements at face value, it is incumbent upon the British Council to help that message by ‘living the brand’– by demonstrating both the insufficiency of civilisational logic and the real possibility of dialogue that is the necessary basis for the acceptance of shorter-term messages on this topic. Table 4: Distribution of responsibilities between the Foreign Office and British Council Goal

Differentiating UK Policy

Challenging the ‘clash of civilisation’

Partnership for Reform

Activity Communicating what policy is to new audiences in the region. Tackling misperceptions. - Claiming the clash of civilisations it is not the basis of policy

Lead Agency

Foreign Office

- Proving there is no clash of civilisations

British Council

Maintaining relationships capable of fostering reform

British Council


Imperialism, Accommodationism The danger for governments of Western countries is that, in seeking to make contributions to and influence debates in other countries, they are open to accusations of ‘imperialism’. Any contribution to a debate that is accused of being imperiaistl, of being motivated by a desire to dominate for selfish purposes, will likely provoke a hostile reaction. Governments may even use the ‘imperialism’ accusation as an excuse to remove the British Council’s licence to operate. It is vital, therefore, to find ways to participate in and contribute to debates about values in countries in the Middle East that effectively deal with or avoid such accusations.

Foreign Office

Finally, the burden of relationship-building capable of nurturing reform falls upon the British Council. This is a task it is well equipped to carry out, but which will require some re-orientation of aims and resources, particularly in terms of ensuring that the long-term basis for fruitful relationships is present in the UK.

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4. Reform without ‘Imperialism’

There is an equally strong danger of slipping into ‘accommodationism’ when dealing with issues concerning values. This goal is ostensibly attractive. The idea of a mutual understanding and respect for different value systems, an agreement not upon values themselves but on their relative worth within different ‘civilisational contexts’, seems on the face of things humble, wise and practical in current circumstances. If there is a ‘clash of civilisations’, caused by the rugged expansionism of different value systems, then isn’t a non-interference pact the vital measure required? Shouldn’t public diplomacy activity in the region abandon attempts at critical discussion on governance and human rights, except in so far as to give the message that ‘we have our views and you have yours, an unbridgeable chasm lies between, so let’s just accept this and move on?’ There are serious difficulties with this viewpoint. Whether we like it or not, our values pretend to universalism, and are meaningless otherwise. The concept of a human rights violation has no moral or intellectual

Reform without ‘Imperialism’

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content whatsoever if it is a geographical concept. There is therefore a problem here for public diplomacy, which can be boiled down to the question: ‘What do you say about adultery in Nigeria?’ British discomfort over Shari’a law can lead some to see the Nigerian case as an example of a ‘clash of civilisations’. In fact, heated debates between Nigerian Muslims on the issue illustrate the vital point that values are not distributed by ‘civilisation’, nor are particular positions coterminous with ethnicity or religious affiliation. There is a clash of values, not of civilisations, and it takes place within communities as much as between them.

Contextual Universalism The German sociologist of globalisation, Ulrich Beck, offers a constructive way of approaching these issues that he calls ‘Contextual Universalism’. He begins with an account of a cartoon. A Spanish conquistador arrives on the shores of the Americas, armed and armoured, declaring to the puzzled natives, "We have come to speak with you of God, civilisation and the truth." The natives reply, "Of course. What would you like to know?" The significance of the cartoon is that, although couched in the language of dialogue, both sides claim knowledge of essential truths that, as we know, will only lead to tragedy. These viewpoints along with other possibilities can, says Beck, be plotted on a simple chart, with two axes and four fields. The first axis runs from Universalism (of values) at the top to Relativism at the bottom, and the second from Contextualism (of application) on the left to Absolutism (of application) on the right. Thus, we have four fields: Absolute Universalism, Absolute Relativism, Contextual Relativism, and Contextual Universalism. In the Absolute Universalism box we have the conquistadors who believe that their values should apply universally without regard to

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context. It is in this box that the ‘liberal crusade’ vision of bringing Western values to the rest of the world, by force if necessary, belongs. The danger of this position is that it would destroy the possibility of dialogue. If we maintain, as President Bush did at West Point, that there is a "single sustainable model of human progress", our audiences in other countries will switch off and reject everything that we say. The second and third boxes, Absolute Relativism and Contextual Relativism, are where the ‘accomodationist’ ideal lies. They are based on the idea that differences of values everywhere are incommensurable, and the best that can be hoped for is peaceful co-existence. As Beck puts it: "A wish to be left, and to leave others, in peace is justified by arguing that the trenches between cultures can never be crossed, that dialogue only ever reflects back one’s own certainties… It is precisely this which is the important aspect: the affirmation of exclusive standpoints without trial and error." The interesting parallel that needs to be drawn between both absolutist boxes is that neither requires any engagement with other viewpoints, nor do they allow the possibility of changing perspectives within any given value system.

Universalism Contextual Universalism

Absolute Universalism ‘Liberal crusade’

Contextualism

Absolutism Contextual Relativism

Absolute Relativism ‘Accommodationism’

Relativism


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It is in the final box, Contextual Universalism, that we ought to place ourselves. This position allows criticism of the values of others by consciously putting up for discussion our own values, examining their applicability and expression in context. As Beck puts it: "Contextual universalism implies that the things we hold most sacred must be opened to criticism by others. The sacrilege of polytheism must be committed in the cause of universalism, and first of all with regard to oneself." Alternatively, as Robin Baker, the Deputy Director General of the British Council, has expressed it: "Are we prepared to allow our values to change in the process? An entrenched ideological position is the hardest nut to crack. The only way we could expect them to legitimately abandon some of their values is to be prepared to do so ourselves." The pre-eminent scholar of the region, Fred Halliday, seems to back this position when he claims: "It is a relativist appeasement to say that [human rights] issues should be ignored on the grounds of pragmatism or anti-imperialist [but at the same time] imperialist domination is not a legitimate policy for the end of the twentieth century; a firm, multilateral, always self-critical insistence on universal codes of political practice, as embodied in the conventions and documents of the UN to which all member states supposedly subscribe, definitely is." This standpoint can be translated into a concrete strategy to pursue the goals outlined above. In the first place, a contextual universalist approach takes seriously the ‘double standards’ point, one of the most powerful points made on the Arab/Muslim side of policy debates in the region. It does so by encouraging critical engagement with the problems that flow from it, for example the perception enforced by the Western media that more consideration is given to Western than to nonWestern lives. One Saudi journalist was adamant that, "there is clearly a double-standard on human rights, on democracy, on Palestine. It’s like this Bali thing – it makes Australian blood seem like it’s worth more than Arab [blood]." By acknowledging the real possibility of

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debate on these issues, it is possible to engage in constructive dialogue on them. Secondly, it allows for a reformist rather than a revolutionary approach to change in the region. Holding Middle Eastern countries to account against an absolute scale of Western values and institutional norms – an absolute universalist approach – cannot yield progress. Contextual universalism, however, explicitly acknowledges the importance of working through and with the structures already in place across the region. That this is a fruitful nexus for the exchange of ideas and experiences between European and Middle Eastern peoples – perhaps primarily scholars – can be seen from these two quotations, one from a Western academic work on civilisation in an era of globalisation, and one from the Ayatollah Khomeini. From Khomeini’s Political Testament: "If civilization means innovations, inventions and advanced technology, neither Islam nor any other monist religion opposes. But if civilization and modernization (tajaddud) implies – as the professional intellectuals put it – freedom in all illicit (prostitution, even homosexuality) and other such things, these things are in contradiction with all religions since they are in contradiction with scientists and rationalists." From Mehdi Mozaffari [ed], Globalisation and Civilisations: "The very existence of different civilizations - each preserving their own set of values, world vision, ethics and political organizing principle, and operating with their own parochial economic system is hardly plausible. How can different civilizations continue to live together in a world governed by global capitalism… In such a world, different cultures can easily live together and mutually enrich. However, civilisation in my definition can hardly be more than one." Both quotations represent attempts to wrestle with the implications of modernity for differing societies. Noone has a monopoly on consideration of the problem of McWorld. Joint work to consider the problem would help to reject the most damaging false answer: a ‘clash of civilisations’. The most important lesson is that public diplomacy activity should not


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exclusively concentrate on the Middle East, but should take place within Western countries as well. The importance of this dimension has been largely ignored by the public diplomacy efforts of other countries, particularly the United States. Lip service paid to ‘dialogue’, as in the case of the cartoon conquistadors, fails to acknowledge not only the theoretical importance of mutuality in changing perceptions, but even more importantly the close attention paid to Western debates and the desire for reciprocity that came over very clearly in extensive polling research commissioned by the US government to discover ‘why they hate us’.

5. Differentiating UK Policy

The reception of US, British and broader Western foreign policy in the Middle East region is a clear public diplomacy problem. The research outlined in Chapter 2 demonstrated that a large majority of publics in the region – in Turkey as well as in the Arab states – were hostile to UK policy, and suspicious of its motives. Little attention was paid to this problem before 11 September. Before this date, policy aimed at maintaining the status quo was based on the implicit assumption that, while hostility on the Arab street was unwelcome, it was largely irrelevant. There is now a considerable Western interest in the management of news coverage and the communication of policy in the region. Western policies are unpopular in part because of misperceptions about, and unjustified suspicion of, their aims. This is compounded by the fact that there is very little differentiation between UK and US policy in the region. The short-term goal of UK public diplomacy – through news management and communications – should therefore be to communicate as accurately as possible and to as broad an audience as possible, the content and motivation of UK foreign policy, in an attempt to separate legitimate grievances from more serious chimeras regarding future plans and imperial motivations. Put crudely, as we said above, it should be to get them to hate us for the right reasons. There are two major target audiences for this work. The first and most obvious audience is general publics in the region. The whole purpose of public diplomacy in the new policy environment, as we have argued, is to communicate, and create a connection with what has now become an actor of central importance in policy-making and policy implementation – the Arab (or Turkish, or Iranian) street. There is, however, a second important audience that it is easy to forget when public diplomacy is conceived as a public relations exercise targeted at foreign populations: the domestic ‘Western street’. For positive messages

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about UK foreign policy to have credibility with Egyptians or Saudis, a visible effort must be made in the UK and the United States to stamp on the idea that suicide bombers are simply ‘evil’, motivated by a malice inexplicable to the ‘civilised West’. Communication with the mass regional audience is enhanced by communication with the mass Western audience. In order to achieve this goal of accurate communication of policy and policy-motivation, certain strategic planks are required (see figure 1). These necessary preconditions for success, which effectively amount to intermediate goals, are: the differentiation of the UK position from that of the Americans; broad audience reach; a trusted voice for communications; the ability to respond to domestic stories; and the presentation of alternative viewpoints to those of hostile or state-controlled media. There is already some government action in many of these areas, but they are not currently viewed as being elements of a single strategy, aimed at a limited and realistic goal. This approach enables policymakers to determine where extra attention is needed and where relaxing current efforts would be damaging. This chapter will briefly deal with each plank in turn, before examining the appropriate actors in this section of the public diplomacy spectrum.

Figure 1: Differentiating UK Policy

Audience reach

DIFFERENTIATING UK POLICY

Trusted voice Capacity for response to domestic stories

Differentiation from the Americans The first way to improve the communication of UK foreign policy in the region, and to escape some of the false perceptions of UK motives, is more tactical than strategic: ensure that the differences between UK and American positions and thinking are emphasised. As discussed in Chapter 2, the idea that the UK apishly follows every American lead has blurred the lines between UK and US foreign policy in the region, and is very pervasive in the Middle East as well as Europe. This perception must be overcome not only because it is damaging to the UK, but also because it actually diminishes the usefulness of UK support to the US. The Bush administration has framed its actions multilaterally

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Differentiation from the Americans

Presenting alternative viewpoints


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to allow it to draw on the credibility of its multilateral partners. The UK can offer the US no credibility at present, as we have little enough to spare for ourselves. "It is becoming less and less convincing to global public opinion," said one Turkish student interviewed for this study, "when the British say ‘We support the US’ that the US should be supported just because the British do. There are diminishing returns." The single most effective way to create a distance between the US and the UK on Middle Eastern policy is by emphasising strongly and at every opportunity the differences that exist between their policies in the region – not just on Israel-Palestine, but also the policy of engagement with Iran, Syria and Libya. The UK government should be more openly critical of the policies of Ariel Sharon. It should not be afraid of ‘bloodying the Americans’ noses’ when discussing international attitudes to the peace process. It should not miss any opportunity to condemn, on Arab regional media and in the Western media, statements from either the Israeli right or the Evangelical right in America proposing ‘transfer solutions’ rather than two-state solutions. It should constantly reaffirm its refusal to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of an Israeli state, and its condemnation of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. In short, it should do everything to demonstrate the UK’s unwillingness and unease at complicity in double standards in the region.

Audience Reach The second requirement for communicating policy to a large public audience in the region is the capacity to reach that audience with a message formulated by the UK, and not one filtered, partially obscured or even deliberately twisted by local media and political actors. This objective – to speak directly to the audience rather than be spoken about by local politicians or state-run media – has to a great extent only become possible in recent years. Because of the emergence of comparatively free regional media organisations and the partial opening of

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domestic media as a response to the new competition, it is now possible for direct statements and even policy-based interviews by UK and other Western politicians to reach large numbers of people living in Middle Eastern countries. Media presentation of the West and of Western policies to these audiences is therefore now in some ways tractable through appearance on and news management of these regional media. Continuous contact with the regional media, particularly the Arab media, is the first part of achieving audience reach. Initiatives like politicians’ appearances on regional broadcast media (Tony Blair’s recent appearance on Radio Monte Carlo broadcast into Iraq being a celebrated example) and the creation of the Islamic Media Unit (IMU) to make available government spokesmen fluent in Arabic for presentation of policy are recent moves to take advantage of this channel of communication. They contrast with past work, when news management and communication were largely reactive, and when there was no focused or sustained communications strategy. It is important that newfound interest in and commitment to these initiatives does not tail off. The danger that this might happen was recognised by Alastair Campbell in an interview carried out in spring 2002 for Public Diplomacy in which he admitted that: "We do regular briefings with the Arab media at the moment. But to be frank, that is likely to slip if the Middle East calms down a bit." Foreign Office Minister Mike O’Brien admits that this has happened to an extent: "We had a lot of briefing of Arab journalists during the Afghan war, but when the war finished, that briefing finished. That upset a lot of the journalists. We now need to, and are trying to, get that started up again." The impact of allowing this to happen is serious, because such media relationships are most effective when they are maintained over the long term. The message that a tailing off in interest in communicating with these audiences sends can be very damaging. A recent article in the London Arabic daily Al-Harat demonstrates this: "Naturally, the


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American administration stopped pushing its officials to address Arabs and Muslims through their own media… [it is] reasonable to assume that Washington had become convinced that there was no need to speak to [Arab] public opinion [since] it is under the complete control [of its rulers]." The negative message which a merely sporadic concentration on links to these media can send was recognised by a senior White House communications official, who confessed in Public Diplomacy that: "We haven’t made any attempts to communicate with ordinary Arabs unless we are bombing them or imposing sanctions on them – I wouldn’t like us if I were them." Therefore, the Foreign Office must build and consistently maintain links with the regional media. Merely maintaining contact with these media, and providing spokespersons and briefings on demand, is not however enough to communicate policy effectively. It is not possible to achieve the kind of reach, impact and exposure necessary to convey messages about the content and particularly the motivation of UK foreign policy without the involvement of principal politicians, particularly the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary. The words of Islamic Media Unit (IMU) spokesmen cannot be expected to carry the same weight as those of the decision-makers themselves. Despite the high-profile appearances of decision-makers like Don Rumsfeld and Tony Blair on Al Jazeerah, there remains no continuous and concerted schedule of ministerial appearances on pan-Arab channels. As former Foreign Office Minister Ben Bradshaw says: "We still don’t do enough on Al Jazeerah. There are still ministers who are reluctant to appear." The Foreign Office should ensure that principal politicians appear regularly on panArab television. Furthermore, the Government should continue to create vehicles for policy stories by ensuring the continued existence and high priority of the Islamic Media Unit (IMU) and the Communications and Information Centre (CIC). The IMU is exemplary as a unit focused on direct liaison with regional media, but the CIC are of equal

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importance because its work, although primarily but not exclusively designed with Western public debate in mind, has considerable indirect effect in the region through its reflection of what is considered a story in Western media. The CIC (the offshoot of the original Coalition Information Centre established for the Afghan campaign) has been responsible for a number of high-profile communications events, such as the ‘Blair Dossier’ on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, and the Afghan football match following the fall of the Taliban. The work of the CIC is occasionally criticised as propagandist and hence counter-productive, and it is important not to be so naïve as to believe that things like the Blair dossier are taken at face value in what is an intensely suspicious atmosphere of information consumption. One response to the Blair dossier on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, from a Saudi journalist, was: "That dossier, even the Americans wouldn’t be gullible enough to swallow it." However, what the CIC is able to do, currently very successfully, by creating ‘media events’that resonate in Western and then regional media, is to engineer regular opportunities for discussion and communication of UK foreign policy positions on Middle Eastern media outlets. This is an important role.

A Trusted Voice While it is vital for UK and other Western foreign policy messages to have continued exposure on regional media, on its own this will not ensure that policy messages are communicated effectively. For that exposure to translate into a successfully delivered message (let alone a change in opinion of policy) it must avoid a tone that evokes the highhanded certainties of the colonial period. It must find, in contrast, a trusted voice, and couch its messages in the context of local norms and idioms, in line with Beck’s contextual universalist approach. It is easy to fall into a universalist, even an imperialist, tone when trying to communicate and correct misperceptions about policy. The outraged response which such a tone tends to provoke makes it impossible


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for any message to get through, and means that public diplomacy carried out in this idiom is of negligible or even negative impact. One example of the ease with which this fall into what is perceived as unjustifiable high-handedness is made is the attempt by the American Ambassador in Cairo, David Welch, to tackle some of the conspiracy theories about 11 September and American foreign policy in the Egyptian press. Ambassador Welch published an article, in Arabic, in an Egyptian government daily which, though it made every attempt to be complimentary toward the Egyptian press and government and was reasonable in its approach, took the press to task for the quality of its reporting. He found it "difficult to fathom" how commentators could simply ignore the Al Qaeda admissions of responsibility for 11 September, and threatened that "such disregard for the facts in such a serious matter can tarnish the reputation of the Egyptian media." The response of the Egyptian press to what, in Western eyes, was valid criticism clearly demonstrated regional sensitivities to criticism from the West. The recurring theme of complaint was that criticism was an intervention, reminiscent of an ‘imperial’ approach. One article in response called him ‘The American High Commissioner’, a reference to Egypt’s imperial past, and complained: "It is not the first time, nor will it be the last time, that this ambassador and his government have blatantly interfered in Egyptian affairs." An open letter from journalists and intellectuals said that he "spoke as if he were addressing slaves or the citizens of some banana republic, not those representing the voice and conscience of the Arab nation." The Egyptian journalists’ union also weighed in, saying: "The bureau wants to clarify to the Ambassador that his attempt to intervene in the Egyptian papers' publication policy is unacceptable and harms independence of the press." It is evident that a successful public diplomacy strategy must avoid this dynamic, and it can best do so by contextualising its communications. One way of ensuring that messages are couched in ways that are not open to ‘anti-imperialist’responses is for the Foreign Office to utilise

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third-party communication routes. Following Ambassador Welch’s article, there were articles in the Egyptian press in support of objective standards of journalism, which nevertheless insisted that the US Embassy should keep its nose out of local press reporting. It would be much more effective to correct factual errors or misperceptions of policy by assisting local third parties in putting forward these messages. Another option is for the Foreign Office to employ a local spokesperson to liasie with media, make statements and appear on television programmes. Instead of using ambassadors, embassies could employ local professionals to carry out these tasks. Aside from presenting a very different public face for UK foreign policy, which places any message in a different context straight away, they naturally have the ability to couch messages in local idiom, avoiding the pitfalls of context into which Ambassador Welch stumbled. There have been experiments in this direction, most notably by the United States, with its employment of Nadeel Khoury, an Arab-American, as a Washington-based spokesman. The danger with this, demonstrated by the American experience, is that a local spokesman can appear as a turncoat, or traitor, and so actually lose credibility for messages presented. It is therefore important to approach this issue with caution, and if possible select a someone whose credentials could withstand this pressure.

Capacity for Response to Domestic Stories A government’s capacity to respond to domestic stories is a vitally important but neglected plank of communications strategy. Reporting of these stories in regional media can fuel speculation over the West’s motivations. An effective public diplomacy strategy should, therefore, ensure that the same attention is paid to policy presentation and news management for domestic stories that have international interest as is paid to foreign policy stories. To this end, embassy press offices should work to criticise and correct domestic media stories – in effect acting self-critically in alliance with those voices critical of Western media output coming from the Middle East region. The Egyptian government


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daily, Al Shadhli, took up this point in response to Ambassador Welch’s criticism of the country’s media. Although recognising the falsity of Egyptian media statements about 11 September, their article countered this by saying: "I would like to direct the ambassador's attention to the great number of mistakes published by the American media, in the press and on television, for many long years, about Islamic, Arab, and Palestinian issues. We all know that these mistakes came long before the terror events of 11 September, and that they increased following the attacks – which affected the reputation and credibility of the American media among the Egyptian intelligentsia and the Egyptian people in general." Those mistakes and prejudices are real, and a government press strategy correcting them and similar mistakes in the UK media sends a far more important message about what the standards of objective reporting ought to be to people in the region than articles attacking mistakes in the local press. The first obvious step in tackling misrepresentation in the Western press is to isolate our own extremists. It would be advantageous both for opinion in the region and for the quality of debate domestically if efforts were made by government and politicians to more aggressively tackle those like Jerry Falwell, whose pronouncements on Islam and on the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist are so damaging. When Falwell and Swaggert made the remarks quoted in Chapter 2, the Bush administration were slow to criticise them because, as critics of the administration have charged, they wanted to wait until after the mid-term elections. This consideration, legitimate or not, did not apply to UK or other European governments, and a very critical response from the UK would have been possible. The Foreign Office and/or Downing Street should actively and consistently target extremist expressions of opinion against Islam in the UK and elsewhere in the West. More constructively, the quality of debate in the UK could be improved by more consistent commitment of principals, particularly the Foreign Secretary, to raising the profile and debating the issues around the Middle East peace process and the relationship between Islam and ter-

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rorism. One model which could be adopted is that of the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which conducts a ‘foreign policy roadshow’ where debates on a given international issue of importance are brought to parts of the country beyond the capital. The Foreign Secretary should adopt this model, and travel around the country, taking with him a press corps which in this case would obviously involve large numbers of the regional press present in London. This could build on the outreach work already being undertaken by the Foreign Office’s Community Relations Unit, which focuses on building links with ethnic communities, including Muslim communities, in the UK. Another example of an initiative that could be taken in this direction would be to create a Home Office press team for the Arab media, to present a critical government line on the inevitable stories about racial tension, the election of British National Partycouncillors, and allegations of the detention of Muslims without trial under counter-terrorism legislation that are of considerable interest to the Arab and other regional press abroad.

Presenting Alternative Viewpoints The fourth important strategic plank towards the goal of accurately communicating policy is achieving alternative perspectives on international events to those presented by either state-controlled or hostile media. These perspectives are provided by international broadcasting, which already has some impact in the region. The BBC World Service, for example, claims 16% reach in its target markets in Saudi Arabia, and according to some Saudi watchers, Hard Talk with Tim Sebastian on BBC World has some considerable following. It is important however to remember that international broadcasters like the World Service should not be seen as showing ‘the truth’ – a standard against which local media can be judged – but instead as presenting a different standpoint which allows the viewers/listeners to judge more accurately for themselves the material they are receiving from both sources.


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American efforts in international broadcasting have received considerably increased funding under the Hyde ‘Freedom Promotion Act’, amounting to almost US$150 as a first instalment. However,American channels will continue to provoke suspicion – one Saudi journalist’s comment on the US’s Radio Sa’wa, an FM station combining regional and Western pop music with short Voice Of America (VOA) news broadcasts in Arabic, was that "Radio Sa’wa is spending millions on nothing. It’s never going to work. The US is no longer competing with Soviet propaganda, it’s competing with the facts." The idea that Sa’wa is an exercise in propaganda is hard to get away from, given VOA’s attachment to the State Department and the station’s conscious attempt to reach younger listeners using pop music as a ‘piggy-back’. Initiatives like this can be doubly damaging because not only do they give international broadcasting a reputation for propaganda, they also foul the patch for other international broadcasters by bidding up the prices of FM frequencies and other necessary resources. The BBC ought to be able to avoid being dismissed as propagandists, and they should capitalise on their position in the region to set up a BBC Arabic-language TV service. This idea was first envisaged in the 1990s, but its collapse through lack of funds led indirectly to the creation of Al-Jazeera, by providing not only an open market for Arabic 24-hour TV news but also in many cases the trained journalists necessary to operate such a station. There are several good reasons to push on with this initiative now. First, as can be seen from the success of AlJazeera, the media environment in the region is very much tuned to regional broadcasting, and has a voracious appetite for news. Second, the BBC already has brand-name recognition and positive associations. The BBC’s reputation for honesty – reflected in the Connecting Futures finding that on average it was regarded as more trustworthy than domestic media – gives it a clear advantage over the mooted US Arabic- language TV service. Third, the provision of a safe and neutral space for discussion and debate of political issues in the region – particularly domestic issues around the liberalisation of politics in Middle Eastern regimes – is a vital part of the process of reform for the region 73


as a whole. At present this role is partially filled by the debates on AlJazeera, meaning that discussion takes place in a somewhat heated antiWestern context. As Pauline Neville-Jones, International Governor of the BBC, has said: "The World Service is more than just a vehicle for communication, it is a way of dynamising these societies – through online discussion, radio phone-in and in the future interactive TV – to engage local people in their own debate." Consequently, money should be made available for the BBC to establish an Arabic-language TV service. The establishment of such a service is a large-scale and costly enterprise, and smaller-scale initiatives could be undertaken in the meantime to contribute to this ‘alternative viewpoints’ plank. These initiatives concentrate on encouraging and helping local actors to present such viewpoints. The BBC World Service Trust’s programme for training of journalists should be expanded in the Middle East region. It should also look into the part-funding of local radio stations, as the BBC was able to do in the Balkans, with the co-operation of DfID. Such funding could be made conditional on the maintenance of the BBC’s objective standards of reporting. Alternatively, an increase in the number of BBC advisers contracted to indigenous stations could help improve the breadth of viewpoints expressed. Funding to the BBC World Service Trust in the region should be increased to facilitate these activities.

Actors in Communicating Policy The responsibility for public diplomacy activity towards the short-term aim of communicating policy lies solely with the Foreign Office, except for those recommendations which in particular circumstances bring in outside actors like the Home Office or (a very particular instance) the BBC World Service. There have been suggestions that the British Council’s networks could make excellent resources for the distribution of material on UK foreign policy on such critical issues. However, this temptation should be resisted. The British Council should not be directly involved in the communication of policy for Differentiating UK Policy

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three reasons. In the first place, its networks are the wrong target audience for this activity. Necessarily limited in size and, where possible, carefully selected, they do not have the mass communication capabilities necessary for this goal, which really only come via media outlets. In the second place, Council staff do not have the skills, information or experience to begin communicating policy.As intelligent and engaged British and local staff overseas they are obviously more than capable of discussing British foreign policy, but this is a very different task from communicating a government line – giving them roles associated with this task could be risky. Finally, and most importantly, involving the British Council too directly in the business of communicating policy would irreparably damage their ability to work effectively toward the medium- and long-term goals outlined in the following two chapters. The importance of the Council’s arms-length position vis-a-vis government for the process of trust and relationship-building has been frequently emphasised. It is doubly important in an environment like the Middle East where the culture of dietrologia, the pervasive idea that there must always be an ulterior motive to any official activity or statement and its associated imparting of significance to the smallest signs, would quickly render a messaging effort by the British Council on behalf of government ineffective and almost certainly counter-productive. A Chevening scholar in Saudi Arabia, a participant in the Council’s Connecting Futures Forum, expressed this importance directly: "I remember when I was in London, on Connecting Futures, and they took us to the House of Lords, and we met and had lunch with [Baroness Kennedy]. I asked her, ‘What is the relationship between the Foreign Office and the British Council?’And she said, ‘I will not answer directly, I will give you an example. After 11 September, I got a call from the London Office saying that the Foreign Office had sent round pamphlets about the attacks for the British Council to distribute at its offices. I said send them back in the next taxicab.’ I appreciated that. That, I think, is vital in Saudi Arabia."

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6. Challenging the ‘Clash of Civilisations’

The perception that the broad sweep of Western foreign policy is driven by the pernicious logic of a civilisational clash, that it is an attempt to fight a conquering war against the Muslim world, is the most serious danger which public diplomacy in the Middle East must tackle. The impact of this perception poisons ideas about all of the West’s approaches to the Middle East. Those who believe that Western military action in Afghanistan and Iraq is an expression of an existential war between civilisations (provoked by the West) will view all Western attempts to further political, economic or social reform as insidious bids for hegemony, or attempts to undermine ‘Islam’ from within. Refuting the idea of a clash of civilisations, as well as sweeping away the habits of thought and interaction which contribute to it in the West and in the region, is therefore one of the most pressing public diplomacy goals. In short, ‘The West’should not be allowed to be identified with ‘Christendom’, nor can ‘The Middle East’ be identified with ‘Islam’. The message that there is no clash of civilisations has been instinctively adopted by both the British and American governments, and by all other Western governments with the brief exception of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy. It is, at present, very much at the heart of the Foreign Office’s strategic communication strategy. But there has been insufficient attention paid to the most dangerous aspect of a ‘clash of civilisations’ discourse: that it is insidiously self-fulfilling. There is a particular danger that a public diplomacy strategy that tries to explain and justify American and British actions in the region by emphasising that they are taken with reference not to ‘civilisational logic’but to universally applicable Western values which the West has a right and duty to uphold will simply serve as more proof that a ‘clash of civilisations’ exists. Approaching the issues around a clash with the goal of accom-

Challenging the ‘Clash of Civilisations’

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modation between ‘the West’and ‘Western values’and ‘Islam’in mind simply plays into the hands of those that argue that a clash exists. The writer Fareed Zakaria has pointed this out, in arguing against those in the West who have explained conditions in the Middle East on the influence of Islam he predicts: "They will find that the one group of people who most strongly agree with them are the Islamic fundamentalists, who also believe that Islam’s true nature is incompatible with the West, modernity, and democracy." Fred Halliday makes a similar point: "Both sides shared the view of a historically determined, essential 'Islam' which is supposedly able to account for all that Muslims say, do, and should say and do. Khomeini, Turabi, the Muslims Brothers and the rest are as insistent on this score as any anti-Islamic bigot in the West... To evolve a policy to solve or reduce what is presented as the conflict between the 'West' and the Islamic world requires a dual programme: first, separate the real, material, specific and secular difficulties faced by both Islamic and Western society from their confused religious expression; then address these difficulties themselves." Making ‘the clash of civilisations’ the subject of discussion between two groups identified as ‘Westerners’and ‘Muslims’, and then looking for ways in which the two can rub along together, only serves to reinforce the false thinking that feeds the idea of a clash in the first place. A public diplomacy strategy that is either univeralist or accommodationist will not only be ineffective in tackling this dangerous misperception, it will worsen it. The goal of refuting a clash of civilisations, therefore, has to be pursued as a two-way process, focusing on opening dialogue, on the intermixed quality of what are inaccurately called the ‘Muslim and Christian worlds’, and working to change perceptions on both sides at the same time. It must, in effect, be pursued in the spirit of contextual universalism outlined above if it is to have a chance of success.

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Assertion and Proof against a ‘Clash of Civilisations’ But there is a difficulty here. A one-way communication strategy, aimed at getting a particular message – that the West is not bent on a destructive policy of its own but open to dialogue with countries in the Middle East, that it does not reflect ‘Christian’ thinking but is in fact populated and run by many people of different faiths including Islam, that there is no war on Islam – across to a large number of people has great difficulty in making that message persuasive, particularly in the peculiar environment of the Middle East. First, as a one-way message, it competes with a thousand other images of ‘the West’beamed into the region with different agendas from different sources. The simplest illustration of this is to note that while US public diplomacy spending is $1billion, US overseas advertising spend is $222 billion. Second, focusing on Muslims living in the West as a communication vehicle – as the State department has done with its short television programmes focusing on the lives of Muslim Americans – risks merely reinforcing the aspirational nature of Western living standards (a point that, given the UN figures suggesting that 51% of Arab youths wish to emigrate to the West, needs little underlining). In a one-way attempt at information projection, the projecting party has no influence on what the audience takes away from its broadcast. Third, the level of scepticism that a Western government message must overcome in order to be effective as a communication tool at this level (rather than at the level of simply informing about policy, as discussed in Chapter 5) may simply be too great. As one Australian Islam expert said of the US government TV broadcasts in Indonesia: "If they believe the Bali bombing was the work of the CIA, what credence are they going to give to some highlypackaged advertisement like this?" The television broadcasts, which went out under the title Shared Values and cost $15m, are now being phased out, despite having been a favourite initiative of US UnderSecretary of State for Public Diplomacy (and former high-flying adwoman) Charlotte Beers.


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The final point here is the impossibility of effectively putting across the message that the West is open to dialogue, and capable of undertaking it, through a one-way messaging campaign. In a public diplomacy effort that puts across a government policy, talk of ‘listening to the Arab world’ can only remain empty words. Ambassador Chris Ross, the US envoy whose fluent Arabic has seen him used frequently as a spokesman and interviewee on Al-Jazeera and the other Arab media, unintentionally rams this point home in an interview with the BBC about the importance of his listening tour of Arab capitals. He was keen, he said, to improve upon the dialogue between the US and the Arab world. "The message we got back at one level was very clear," he said, "That seemed to be: You want to improve dialogue, the single most important thing you can do to improve dialogue is to change your policy.And clearly that’s not in the cards. Our policy is our policy. It is a policy that is widely misrepresented and widely misinterpreted in the Arab world. But, be that as it may, it is our policy and it doesn’t change because someone here or someone there isn’t entirely in sync with it." It is at this point that a simulacrum of dialogue and mutuality comes crashing down around one’s ears. The consequence of this fact is that it is vitally important to have a way to prove the messages about dialogue, complexity of position (in the West and the Middle East) and interest in mutual benefit that broad communication efforts like those undertaken by the Foreign Office and the American State Department can only really assert. It is vital to have a base of real dialogue upon which these messages can rest. Government communication attacking the idea of a clash of civilisations is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for achieving the important strategic goal of refuting such an idea. This role, proving that there can be no clash of civilisations, is the preserve of the British Council.

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Figure 2: Challenging the ‘Clash of Civilisations’ Foreign Office Project a clear ‘mantra’

Reflect the diversity of the UK

Asserting

CHALLENGING THE ‘CLASH OF CIVILISATIONS’

Proving

Independence from Government

Target cascaders

Mutuality: Proof of impact in the West

Aim for newsworthy content

Tactics: emphasise Europeaness, differentiate from America British Council


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Strategic Planks - General Having taken these two central aspects of refuting the clash of civilisations – asserting and proving – into account we have, as before, sketched out a series of necessary strategic prerequisites and considerations (illustrated in Figure 2). They are divided into areas that are the responsibility of the Foreign Office (having a clear mantra; reflecting the diversity of the UK) and those which are prerequisites of the British Council’s work in this area (independence from government; newsworthy content; the need to use ‘cascaders of proof’ as the target audience; proof of impact in the West; and, again a tactical consideration, differentiation from the Americans.) The first, the importance of a contextual message, applies to both Foreign Office and British Council activity in this medium term.

A Contextual Message As this public diplomacy effort must be pursued contextually, it translates into different goals in different countries. The great differences in context that exist between Muslim countries mean that thought must be given as to how the overall message – that ‘civilisational thinking’ plays no part in UK foreign policy – can best be put across. In Saudi Arabia, for example, that strategic message must be to refute the idea that religion underpins the foreign policy thinking of the UK and the West by getting away from the notion that the UK is an expression of ‘Christian civilisation’. It must show that the UK is as much Muslim as Christian, as much secular as either, and that religion or civilisation forms no part of its foreign or domestic policy decision-making. It must also ensure that Saudi Arabia is not regarded in the UK simply as an expression of ‘the culture of Islam’but rather as a country with a series of problems – demographic, political, economic – that are not a result of the religion of its inhabitants and with which the UK is able to proffer help.

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The situation in Turkey – a country allied with and already very closely linked to Western European countries - provides another illustration of this point. Basing a communications strategy in Turkey on an explicit ‘clash of civilisations’programme could only raise hackles. As British Council Country Director Ray Thomas puts it: "It would cause irreparable damage to our position here if we launched a high profile programme which said: ‘We’re the West. You’re the Muslim world, and we’re going to build bridges with you.’ Because most Turks would have said, ‘You’re crazy, we’re in the West as much as you are. Western civilisation was born in Istanbul!’ As one Turkish university student commented on the West’s perceived tendency to treat Turkey alongside Arab countries as part of ‘Islam’: "It’s like the ways of a stranger. It’s the first time they’ve been to a continent and they say, ‘You are similar people.’" Instead, public diplomacy in Turkey on this theme must concentrate on the implications of ‘civilisational’ thinking on the process of Turkey’s application for EU membership. Specifically, the strategic communications message must be one which works to refute the idea that Europe is a ‘Christian Club’ and that reluctance to admit Turkey rests on religious grounds. It is very easy for public diplomacy work undertaken on the clash of civilisations to fall into the ‘self-fulfilling’ trap discussed earlier in the chapter. Even an initiative like Connecting Futures, whose emphasis on dialogue and on treating participants on their own terms is precisely the kind of approach we would encourage, had difficulty avoiding this trap. Its initial title, Open Minds, was perceived as reflecting the idea that while Western minds were open, Muslim minds were not and needed to be opened. The impression that there would be a ‘meeting of minds’ from different civilisations only serves to reinforce that civilisational discourse. Even as the renamed Connecting Futures, it could still be suggested that the initiative reinforces that divide by dealing solely with Muslim countries and the UK. Despite its best efforts, it has been hard for Connecting Futures to escape the impression that it is a postSeptember 11th initiative aimed at healing the rift between Islam and


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the West. In order to try and avoid this damaging impression in future activity, public diplomacy should be conducted with reference to the particular context of the country concerned, not with reference to the kind of civilisational logic from which we are trying to escape. Strategic Planks – Foreign Office

Project a Clear ‘Mantra’ The most important prerequisite for the success of the Foreign Office in refuting the ‘clash of civilisations’ is to have a sustained message, asserting that it is a fallacy, which runs through every effort at strategic communication and is reiterated at every opportunity. To this end it must have a set of sub-messages that, as Ben Bradshaw puts it, "should become a mantra." Those messages cluster around two areas. The first is the role and position of Muslims in the UK: Muslims have the freedom to practice; there are Muslim parliamentarians; there are Muslim schools in the state and private sector; there are this number of Mosques in the Foreign Secretary’s constituency; there are that number of Muslims working in the Prime Minister’s office. The aim of this ‘mantra’ is to communicate to the broadest audience possible the most telling facts which undercut the idea that the UK, or ‘the West’, is a homogenous land of Christians inimical to Islam – that there is in effect no ‘West’for Islam to clash with. The second cluster of issues is around the motivations of Western foreign policies: Saddam Hussein is a threat to his neighbours and his own people; he has killed this many Muslims since coming to power; that number of Muslims died in the attack on the World Trade Centre, along with people from this many countries. This cluster of points is designed to illustrate that the aims of Saddam, Al Qaeda or of US and UK foreign policy are not understandable in civilisational terms, because of the points brought out by the first cluster that ‘the West’and ‘Islam’are not homogeneous blocs.

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These clusters of messages should be repeatedly communicated through statements on widely consumed media outlets via interviews with ministers and government spokesmen. Another important route is the creation of stories for the media which illustrate one or more of these important points. This has been the task of the IMU and the CIC, pursued through efforts like the organisation by the IMU of visits by Muslim parliamentarians to Indonesia, which have provoked considerable local media interest. A third method is via the kind of broadcast material and touring events on which the US State Department in particular has concentrated efforts. The important point is that the Foreign Office should ensure that its raft of key messages is repeated as often and as widely as possible. As Chris Powell, of advertising agency BMP DDB Needham, put it in Public Diplomacy: "When you are so bored with it that you feel like giving up, the listener may just have begun to register the message."

Reflect the Diversity of the UK The importance of the Foreign Office recruiting more from ethnic minorities within the UK has been emphasised many times for several different reasons. It is important and necessary to reiterate it here for three reasons. First, tapping the UK’s own diaspora population from the region provides the native language skills vital for presenting messages in the vernacular, by far the best medium for communication with another society. Second, drawing on the UK’s Muslim population and on emigres and the children of emigres from Middle Eastern countries provides the Foreign Office with the invaluable ability to frame a message from within the context of the target audience, a capability whose importance was discussed in Chapter 5. The ‘Islam Awareness’training which has recently been instituted by the Foreign Office is a good initial step to take in developing that capability, but the best way for the UK government to demonstrate that it is not a manifestation of the goals of ‘Christian civilisation’ is to have as its spokesmen, advisors and decision makers in foreign affairs people that represent the many


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other sides of the UK. The Foreign Office should strengthen its recruitment from the UK’s Arab and Muslim population. Strategic Planks – British Council

Operational Independence from Government The importance of the British Council’s role, particularly of its independent position at arm’s length from government, in successfully undertaking the kind of exchange and dialogue envisaged in this strategy cannot be underestimated. As we have argued, government agencies are thwarted in their attempts to demonstrate mutuality and dialogue between Middle Eastern and Western countries because they have a set government policy, in which they are implicated, and which they cannot put up for debate no matter how much they want to. The British Council’s independence, both operationally and in terms of its public position as a separate body from the British Government, allows it to act as a genuine forum for dialogue. The British Council is able to carry out this activity without its being perceived as merely an exercise in government public relations. That there is much sensitivity for prospective participants around becoming involved in a Western propaganda exercise is demonstrated by this statement from a Connecting Futures participant interviewed in Saudi Arabia: "When they asked me to do it, I said I will not do it if it is just PR. I won’t do it if it is just about taking Muslims to the UK, and showing them Muslims in the UK, and projecting an image of Britain. But [the British Council Director in Jeddah] convinced me that it was not PR, that they were really interested in listening to us, in dialogue. So I agreed." Being able to engage in real dialogue is central to proving that there can be no clash of civilisations, and the maintenance of the British Council’s operational independence is of vital importance. No steps should be taken which jeopardise British Council freedom of action, or damage the appearance of independence.

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Aim for Newsworthy Content The major difficulty for British Council public diplomacy work that seeks to prove the falsity of a clash of civilisation model through engagement in mutually informing dialogue is the issue of ‘scaling up’. It is comparatively easy to bring ‘one-way’ public diplomacy to large numbers of people through mass media. It is very hard, however, to conduct initiatives aimed at provoking real dialogue with large numbers of people. The thinking behind the Council’s Connecting Futures project was that perceptions could best be changed through face-to-face contact between young people, who were eager for engagement with the West and whose minds were more open to new ideas. Whilst the Connecting Futures research and the activity carried out so far confirmed that this approach could indeed have great impact on individual perceptions of the UK and the West, in terms of having impact on what is widely recognised as a public diplomacy problem of great magnitude and critical importance, this reasoning was not so helpful. By limiting the kind of activity undertaken such that only small numbers of individuals could be reached at any one time, and also by limiting the target audience to an age group where influential individuals were hard to identify, it exacerbated the problem of ‘scaling up’ work based on mutuality. The most viable solution to this inherent difficulty of scale is to multiply the impact of individual events and activities. The first step is to involve the types of people likely to act as ‘cascaders’, who will transmit ideas through their contact with others. Some ideas about how to do this and which groups to engage in the Middle Eastern context will be discussed in the next section. The second aspect of a solution is to magnify an event’s effects by ensuring that all activities produce material which can be transmitted broadly by the media. It is imperative for the British Council to utilise the multiplying power of the media, particularly real-time media – radio and television – which can most evocatively project the quality of mutuality and dialogue which we


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have identified as central. British Council work must, in short, get on the television. In orderto achieve this, the British Council should be aiming in all its activities challenging ‘the clash of civilisations’ to produce newsworthy content. There are several things which the British Council could do to work towards this goal which it currently does not. The first is to apply, as a rule of thumb, a ‘magnification principle’. The budgeting and design of British Council activities should reflect the magnification principle that, for every pound spent on producing an event, a pound must be spent on creating and disseminating newsworthy material from that event to the media. Money spent on programmes of events intended to pursue this strategic communications goal is money wasted unless it can reach significantly beyond the physical audience of an event. Given that the aim of this work should be, effectively, to co-produce events and content with Al-Jazeera, the first step should be to recruit, no doubt at very considerable cost, an Arab media professional with credibility and a record of creating impact as Programme Director to assist with designing the Council’s programme of events. The effective implementation of strategic communication activity by the Council requires a ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’ who has the experience and the professional networks to ensure that the strategic direction and conception of the programme is sufficiently attractive to Arab media organisations. This is unlikely to be a post that can be filled from outside the region, as the great diversity of media environments in the different countries in the region, as well as the imperatives of the regional news agenda, are currently proving a challenge that Western public diplomacy is struggling to get to grips with. If UK ministers and journalists are at present being ‘shocked and appalled’at the news values expressed by the Arab media, it seems too much of a stretch to expect a Western public diplomacy professional to be able to work within them as effectively as this post requires . The second step is to locally recruit skilled press officers for the British 87


Council offices whose task is to secure media coverage for Council activities. These officers would work with the overall programme director to create country programmes aimed at producing this newsworthy content. Their role would be analogous to that of a TV producer, creating or co-creating events that can secure media impact. The important point is that everything the Council does, all events and activities, has to be driven by the goal of newsworthy content. The question of the exact content of Council programmes is a difficult one to consider at a regional level. The media environments in different countries in the region vary considerably, as do the conditions under which the Council is able to operate. The overall regional direction of the programme, however, should concentrate on tackling the problems presented by modernity and globalisation in a mutually beneficial context. The concentration should not be on the ‘clash of civilisations’ as such, but on the issues that surround it, treated as mutual problems in and of themselves. Thus symposia, debates and discussions would cover issues like females in the workforce, young unemployed, exportled industrialisation, the creative industries and the economic costs of terrorism in such a way as to demonstrate that the positions, concerns and interests of the UK are a lot closer to those of, say, Lebanon, than the positions of another, supposedly similar, Islamic country like Saudi Arabia. In dealing with issues like these which may provoke government objections in countries like Saudi Arabia or Syria, country programmes should be backed up by strong regional programmes aimed at the free Arab TV networks and based close to them, in Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Lebanon. Any issue that cannot be touched on by activity within a country like Saudi Arabia can nevertheless be brought to audiences in that country via regional work.

Target Cascaders As alluded to above, in order to turn a programme of activity into a strategy for communication, it is vital to target those who are in a position such that their ideas and opinions will reach out to large numbers Challenging the ‘Clash of Civilisations’

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of others. As the British Council’s Middle East Regional Director in Abu Dhabi, Peter Ellwood, puts it: "We must use people as our cascaders, our interlocutors." Efforts like Connecting Futures, he argues, must "focus on creating and fostering networks of multipliers – teachers, journalists, NGOs – plugging them into one another and to the outside world." The identity of important multipliers will change between different countries in the Middle East with the considerable variation in their political systems, level of openness and development of civil society. In the research process for this report, working papers were commissioned from experts on Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and the authors were asked to consider this issue. James Buchan, a journalist with considerable experience of Saudi Arabia, pointed out that: "in a country with so few institutions of civilian society as Saudi Arabia, it is exceptionally hard to institute professional, cultural or academic exchanges." The multipliers he identified included the formal Consultative Council or majlis al-shura - "a key channel for reaching respected and articulate Saudis" and Saudi clerics – "a crucial constituency neglected by Western public diplomacy." (An American initiative aimed at a difficult but important multiplier community in Saudi Arabia also provides a good model for this activity: the State Department sought to reach the crucial religious establishment audience by holding an exchange visit of Saudi religious educators to religious education institutions in the United States. A similar exchange, bringing Saudi imams to Muslim and Catholic schools in the UK, could produce an effective multiplier for the UK.) His account of the Saudi media was that there are "eight Arabic, and two English-language, newspapers in Saudi Arabia. All are licensed by the Ministry of Information and subject to closure without warning. Material supplied must be chaste to the point of blandness. There are two state television channels, one in Arabic, one in English. They are regarded by Saudis as boring." Nicole Pope, a journalist and historian based in Istanbul, authored the working paper on Turkey and identified several important groups and 89


movements in Turkish society which could act as important Western partners. These suggestions illustrate the kinds of partnerships that might become available as processes of reform proceed in other countries of the Middle East region. These included "business groups, such as TUSIAD or the Economic Development Foundation (IKV)… trade unions, chambers of commerce and industry, students’ organisations, women’s associations and many other NGOs" as well as “the ‘Avrupa movement 2002’, which has succeeded, with very limited means, in making a big impact through billboards and newspaper advertisements.” Suggestions for multiplier effects to pursue included “Dialogue between European and Turkish NGOs, such as women's groups, students' organisations, trade unions or chambers, which have become actively involved in the EU membership project" and also "Organisations like the Economic Development Foundations which have long been involved in the EU project. TUSIAD, the Businessmen, and Industrialists’ Association, is also very influential. Chambers of commerce and Industry have an even broader network, with members all over Turkey. So do trade unions and professional associations, many of which have joined the Platform of Civil Society.” Most importantly, though, she identified the press, and especially television as the most powerful instruments of mass communication. “Power,” she said, “is concentrated in the hands of a few media barons, such as Aydin Dogan or Cem Uzan, who are often close to the political elite. Information on domestic and foreign policy is usually channelled through a few columnists or television personalities, who have a strong public following. People like Mehmet Ali Birand or Ismet Berkan represent the liberal camp, while columnists like Emin Cölasan or Fatih Altayli represent more nationalist views. Providing them with accurate information about the West and about the European Union is therefore an important step toward informing the Turkish public.” It is clear from the great differences in these lists of cascaders to target that a fine-grained approach, conducted with the backing of considerable country expertise, is needed to identify the right targets. One group


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of multipliers common to all countries in the region, however, are journalists. The media play a pivotal role in public opinion forming in all societies where they are present, and increasingly so in the Middle East now that they are being freed. The progressive development of a comparatively open regional TV media in the last decade, symbolised by the dramatic rise of Al-Jazeera, along with the rise of the internet as a source of news, has forced tightly controlled national media into liberalisation as a necessary response. This presents a historic opportunity for the British Council to build networks with these journalists, who now have an increased opportunity to exercise freedom in their opinions. Consequently, one central aim of the British Council’s work with multipliers on the clash of civilisations should be to depolarise the current situation in the media, and build relations with a vital group. The Council should use the public emphasis placed by networks like Al-Jazeera on the professionalism and objectivity of their journalism as a way of building the links that will achieve that aim. It should organise a programme of seminars specifically targeted at journalists, based in Qatar or in the Dubai ‘media city’, that approach the issue of ‘civilisations’ via an issue of common interest to Western and regional journalists. One such issue would be the portrayal of suffering on television in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The seminars could examine case studies of Western and Al-Jazeera coverage from the mutual professional standpoint which both sets of journalists profess. An initiative like this is perhaps more likely to have an effect on the way such things are reported, through a common attempt to reach consensus, than the model of news management where a government spokesman or diplomat takes a journalist or network to task for inaccuracy. As we have seen with Ambassador Welch’s attempts to influence the Egyptian press, that approach immediately creates an unhelpfully adversarial situation.

Mutuality: Proof of Impact in the West For public diplomacy in the region to be effective, it must be contextually universalist - it must be seen to be contributing to domestic debates 91


about values as well as those in the Middle East region. In other words, it must be mutual. In order for that mutuality to have the desired effect, for it to help to change perceptions about a clash of civilisations, the UK must be able to show proof of effective work in the West to change perceptions of Islam and the region. Fred Halliday suggests: "There needs to be greater awareness of and hostility to the racism and general ethnic-religious prejudice that is directed against Muslim immigrants in Western European societies, and Islamic countries outside [Europe]. Not least must come the recognition of how often Western Europe has permitted and indulged the oppression of Islamic peoples, whether in Palestine or in Bosnia. Beyond this it is essential that the West frames a long-term policy of economic interaction with these countries designed to assist them on the path of development." So there are two related tasks within this plank: change perception in the West; and make sure that change is widely recognised in the region. This effort is helped by the complementary desire to alter perceptions of the region and of Islam which exists at government level in the Middle East. The Saudi Arabian government, for instance, has been all too acutely aware of its sharp image decline in the West and particularly in the eyes of its key ally and strategic guarantor, the United States. Its efforts to turn this around have included opening itself up more to foreign journalists, including issuing visas to the then Sunday Telegraph diplomatic correspondent Christina Lamb, and making Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal available for interview by the BBC’s Correspondent programme to speak about the alleged torture of suspects in the Saudi legal system. (The damaging impression given by his unconvincing blanket denials of torture represent an unfortunate public diplomacy blunder.) There is a general regional concern that there should be action taken to correct misperceptions of Muslims in the West. As Karim H. Karim has written in 'Making sense of the 'Islamic Peril’ (in Journalism After September 11th): "A significant responsibility for the failure of the Northern mass media to provide informed coverage of Muslim societies rests with Muslims themselves.


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They have not explained sufficiently the ethical and humanistic content of Islam; by default, they also often allow militant Islamists to become the spokespersons for all Muslims." There have been moves to make this a co-operative effort – the Tunisian and Syrian information ministers recently met in Tunis to discuss the issue. There is consequently an opportunity to greatly increase mutual co-operative effort in this area. It is therefore important for the British Council to respond to the demand from people in the Middle East for a dialogue based on understanding with efforts at awareness-raising and educative seminars in the West. The aim should be to create an educated constituency in the UK interested in and capable of engaging with people from the Middle East. At present, much of that constituency lies in UK diaspora and UK Muslims. It should be part of the role of the British Council to ensure that that constituency expands by undertaking increased activity in the UK. The best way to do that on a large scale is to provide usable classroom material on the topics of Islam, on the challenges facing Middle Eastern countries, and on the parallels that exist between those problems and those of Europe, thus using education as a multiplier in the We s t . The material should be created through collaboration with people from the region, utilising the Council’s networks there, and should consist of a curriculum designed to cover issues like the region’s colonial history, the Israel/Palestine conflict and the contributions of Islam and Christianity to societies in Europe, the US and the Middle East. The finished product would be materials tailored for use as teaching packs, made available on the internet and aimed also at an American audience – a key constituency for regional partners. The public emphasis should be on the contribution from the region in preparing the material, which should bring in regional education experts, religious teachers and imams, secular historians, women’s groups and others. It could also be possible, given the trends discussed above, to secure some funding from regional governments for the initiative – advantageous both financially and as a way of underlining the role of partnership in the project. To this end, the British Council should assemble a high-profile task forc e , consisting of elements discussed and drawn from the Council’s net93


works, to advise on and produce teaching material on Islam as a religion, the Middle East and the West for use in Western education systems. Another way to help Muslims enhance the understanding of Islam and of Middle Eastern countries in the West, one which utilises an existing multiplier route, is by improving the way the output of the regional media is covered. At present, the various ‘outrages’ and misdemeanours committed by the Arab press and by the coverage of the AlJazeera network are extensively reported by the Western media. Newspaper columnists use anti-Semitic statements or anti-American opinions as the basis for articles, and politicians (particularly on the American right) repeat them in condemnatory speeches. This repetition of existing extreme media output, a kind of feedback loop, is at present a harmful multiplier of damaging perceptions of Islam. Agreat proportion of this translated material is provided by institutes like the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). MEMRI is a selective translation service which provides email updates on the Arabic media. It is staffed in part by former members of the Israeli intelligence services and linked to the cluster of pro-Israeli think-tanks whose commentary on Middle East issues is so disproportionately represented in the American media. An alternative translation and dissemination service, presenting a more balanced picture of the Arab press, could utilise this existing multiplier route for positive purposes. The British Council should run a series of events bringing together journalists from the various national presses in the region with NGOs dedicated to improving understanding of Middle East and Islamic issues here, and encourage the creation of a translation service to show the regional media in a more even light. The second part of this task, raising the profile of this work in the UK, must be accomplished using essentially the methods discussed above – i.e. by providing newsworthy content and by working through multipliers like the media feedback loop just mentioned. It is worth noting


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that there is an added advantage of this activity for the purposes of scaling up: it is naturally of interest to media and public opinion in the region. The standing of Islam in Western countries is a product in which the target audience in the region is already interested, and consequently is well suited to developing strategies for multiplying its impact through media channels. One way of doing that would be to ensure that the British Council mobilises its networks to ensure that some discordant voices from the region are placed on the platform with Foreign Office ministers in the foreign policy roadshow discussed in Chapter 5.

Tactics: Emphasise Europeanness, Differentiate From America The final plank of a UK strategic communications effort aimed at refuting the ‘clash of civilisations’should be to emphasise the UK’s European credentials, and differentiate its approach from an American position that is regarded as arrogantly universalist and invasive. The problem of McWo r l d , l a rgely identified with its home, the US, is central to the dynamics underlying public hostility, and is in fact one shared by Europe and the Middle East. The model for this effort should be the French strategy on cultural d i p l o m a c y, mentioned in Public Diplomacy. The French emphasis on the importance of diversity in culture and society has obvious advantages in engaging in dialogue with societies sensitive about ‘cultural invasion.’B y breaking down stereotypes about the ‘McWo r l d ’ nature of European culture, and bringing out both its complexity and the fact that it too is dealing with the same issues of preserving cultural goods in an age of globalisation as the Middle East, an important point and an important area of mutual interest between Europe, the UK and the region can be brought out. T h i s can best be achieved by co-operating on activity with European partners like the Goethe Institute or DGCID/Alliance Française.

a dozen may mean new economic opportunity, but a thousand will begin to feel like radical homogenization and the extinction of all cultural diff e rences. American films and television programs enrich the global entertainment fare - until there are only American films and television programs around the globe. When does a fair market share become a cultural monopoly that diminishes rather than increases diversity? When do aggressively marketed materialist commodities inflected with sex and violence (commodified values) imperil religious and cultural values? Check out the multiplex, the internet and the mall, and you will discover a radical materialist ideology in which profit and hedonism are the chief values and in which private consumer choice masquerades as 'liberty’. You will find consumers who think that spending their dollars and euros and yen is the same thing as citizenship. Farewell traditional culture. But farewell, too, democracy. " This does not mean that efforts should exclude American participants. T h e United States is the most important audience for the region’s attempts to alter perceptions of itself. The UK can offer access to, and to an extent mediation with, that audience, and hence it can play a nodal role whilst maximising the interest of regional interlocutors. Furthermore, positioning of the UK, and other European countries, as to an extent the hosts as well as the participants in this debate works to differentiate the UK from the worst aspects of American cultural and political universalism. A m e r i c a n public diplomacy efforts at present seem to concentrate almost exclusively on broadcasting as loudly as possible its openness and love of dialogue, rather than actually engaging in it. British and European public diplomacy has the potential to actually create that dialogue, particularly over diff i c u l t issues which in some ways divide the trans-Atlantic alliance, like Palestine. The contrast between these two styles would in itself be beneficial to a UK which is in danger of being swamped as a distinct entity in people’s minds by its closeness to the US.

Benjamin Barber makes this point with his usual force and clarity: "One McDonalds in a third-world society may introduce cuisinary diversity and

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7. From Maintaining Relationships to Fostering Opportunity

As argued in Chapter 1, public diplomacy must move away from servicing bilateral relationships in the interest of maintaining the status quo to activity that can help promote reform. In a policy environment where the overall goal is to work toward managed change in the region in the interest of long-term stability, it is no longer of utility for public diplomacy activity to be aimed solely at developing and maintaining relationships for their own sake. This logic is further reinforced by the analysis of public feeling in the Middle East presented in Chapter 2, which showed that publics harboured a strong desire for a relationship with the West that could help create solutions to the individual problems they experienced in society, and also revealed the resentment felt that those countries’ collective problems were perceived not to be taken seriously by the West. The long-term work of the British Council must therefore work to harness the significant potential which network- and relationship-building offers to facilitate and further an agenda of reform in the region. The difficulty with pursuing reform in the Middle East, as noted above, is the vehement negative reaction which would follow actions perceived as undue interference. As we have suggested, the best way to avoid such a damaging imperial attitude is to ensure that public diplomacy work concentrates on mutuality and partnership. It is to the advantage of the UK and other Western countries that there is a congruence between the increasingly locally recognised need for reform in societies in the Middle East and our own interest in fostering that reform. This congruence allows the UK to work ‘with the grain’ of these governments and societies by pursuing a programme that is demand-led; that takes issues of concern to mainstream sections of

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society, raises their profile, and helps build the capacity in government and civil society to create solutions through co-operation between groups in the region and groups in the UK, Europe and in other Middle Eastern countries. The scope for impact through a demand-led reform agenda is demonstrated by the British Council’s work in Turkey, which concentrates on furthering Turkey’s EU accession reform agenda. The rationale of the Council’s operation there, as country director Ray Thomas describes it,is that, "We don’t impose. We come in as partners, we come in to serve their needs" is the best way for public diplomacy work to contribute to the overall aims of policy. Helping Turkey achieve its goals on the way to EU accession is the context of all work in Turkey because this is the relationship which Turks demand of the UK and Europe; the context for the whole relationship is a public opinion based on economic interest - as Andrew Mango makes clear, "Turkish public opinion just now is preoccupied by the hardships of the economic restructuring programme. That is the main item on the agenda. Foreign policy in general, and accession to the EU and Iraq in particular, are viewed primarily from the point of view of their effect on people’s standard of living." In order to avoid an impression of unwarranted foreign interference, of an ‘imperial mission’, it is vital to be seen to be responding primarily to local demand – it is this which makes the relationship-building aspect of public diplomacy vital to the success of any wider policy effort to promote reform in the Middle East. It is relations built on local demand that demonstrate that reform is locally led, and hence legitimate. The goal of the British Council’s strategy in the broader Middle East region should be to replicate this demand-led development agenda. The best way to accomplish this is to align the Council’s work and programmes behind the agenda laid out by the UN Development Programme’s recently published Arab Human Development Report (AHDR). This human development agenda has several crucial advan-

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tages as a basis, and a rationale, for British Council activity in the region. In the first place, it was locally conceived (the report’s authors were Arabs) and hence a clear case of mutual co-operation toward a progressive goal. Secondly, the overall goals laid out in the report marry closely with those of Western countries: a managed reform of society to a more open and broad basis, easing political and social as well as economic conditions. Furthermore, the areas of concentration suggested by the report – literacy and education, access to a knowledge society, an open media and then political environment – are precisely those where structural changes would help propagate more accurate, balanced and sympathetic views of the UK and the West. This would be achieved by creating the kind of environmental preconditions – access to differing viewpoints, a de-polarised environment for discussion – that would moderate existing viewpoints. Finally, the UK itself is well-placed to deliver significant aid in precisely the areas identified by the AHDR: it is a world leader in provision of education services, has the advantage of operating in English as a first language, and has large diaspora of professional Arabs and Muslims whose expertise can be harnessed to the advantage of the Middle East. The overall aim is to respond to the demand voiced by an Algerian official quoted in Fred Halliday’s Islam and the Myth of Confrontation, that "the way in which Europe could best help overcome the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) would be to provide guidelines on how to employ millions of young people." It is important to understand how British Council work under the heading ‘Human Development’ would differ from the work carried out by Department for International Development. The first difference is that, while both programmes would haveas their ultimate goal the economic development of society, DfID’s work is explicitly and exclusively targeted at poverty reduction while the British Council, in working to a human development agenda, would be undertaking work that would contribute to the political and intellectual environment of partner countries. The second crucial difference is in how work is to be judged.

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Figure 3: From Maintaining Relationships to Fostering Opportunity

Links to reformers in government

Joined-up public diplomacy

Sustained networks of reform-minded people

Information and communication technology

Access to knowledge society

Access to transnational networks of expertise

Public awareness of human development


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While DfID operates in every country in the Middle East region with the exception of Saudi Arabia (in some cases, as in the Palestinian Territories, with its projects administered by the Council itself) without publicising its activity, the Council would be judged on its success at getting the human development message out to as broad an audience as possible in the region and in the UK. While it would be counter-productive in the long run if the Council engaged primarily in publicity activity – eventually provoking cynicism towards its motivations – it would be undertaking beneficial activity in a fashion which ensured it maximum visibility.This is a role which differs fundamentally from the work of DfID which, for good reasons partly surrounding the often unpopular nature of some of its activity in the short term, eschews all traditional public affairs work. The remainder of the chapter will consider the strategic planks needed to successfully pursue a human development agenda as the basis of long-term British Council activity. (Those planks are summarised in Figure 3.)

Public Awareness of Human Development The first plank of a strategy aiming to use human development as the basis for public diplomacy work responding to demand from the region has to be to ensure that the constituency which demands such cooperation is strengthened, and the rationale behind such work finds broad acceptance in the partner society. To achieve that, it is necessary to raise the profile of human development as a concept, and as a positive programme of activity for the Middle East to undertake. At present, as can be inferred from the research cited in Chapter 2, the public agenda in the Middle East is dominated by international political issues like the Arab-Israeli conflict and the role of the United States and the UK in the region, whilst the private agenda of individuals focuses on the same topics as human development – access to knowledge, skills, jobs and growth. The British Council’s activity should seek to publicise that private agenda. 101


An attempt to achieve that publicisation that focuses on the faults of institutions and regimes in the region, and that talks about reform in a way that focuses on the interest of the West in that process – in short, one that follows the paradigm discussed in Chapter 4 as ‘imperialism’ – is bound to be, and has in fact proven to be, dramatically unsuccessful. One clear example of this has been the drive in sections of American public life to reform the Saudi school system. American media interest in Saudi schooling following 11 September, for example in a series of stories in the Boston Globe titled "Driving a Wedge: Saudi schools fuel anti-US anger" led to calls to end the religious concentration of Saudi schooling. These demands provoked a violent reaction, for example in this comment by a Saudi imam: "The Saudi Education system, and Wahhabism, does not promote extremism. This is completely wrong. Many of the extremist groups, from Algeria to Palestine to Indonesia, do not believe that Wahhabi is Islam at all. If you tried to tamper with the Saudi education system, then you would create extremism, because the Saudi education system is the Koran, and the saying of the prophet. [A Middle East expert] was asked on television if the Saudi education system promoted extremism, and she said yes. When she was asked how, she quoted verses from the Koran. The Koran doesn’t promote extremism, but the opposite. If you tried to force change there, then you would create disaster, you would create holy war." Another example of this counter-productive approach was the Bush administration’s insistence that reform was required in the Palestinian Territories to reassure Israel before the peace process could continue. This was a goal commanding considerable support with the Territories right up until the moment when that goal was justified as an Israeli interest. Instead, the British Council should concentrate on using spokesmen from within the region to raise awareness, and make the case for, reform in the direction of human development. The British Council should organise seminars and conferences at a high level which highlight the policies of successful examples of knowledge societies in the region. By using Malaysians, Bahrainis or professionals from From Maintaining Relationships to Fostering Opportunity

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Dubai and Qatar to discuss the merits of educational reform, the problems and solutions of the Saudi-isation programme to replace immigrant labour in the kingdom with Saudis, the challenges and opportunities presented by the Middle East’s demographic explosion in such a way as to create media coverage and also content – op-eds, debates – the UK and the British Council can simultaneously publicise the progressive agenda that exists in private in the region and present the UK as a host and partner in constructive discussions on the needs of Middle Eastern societies.

Sustained Networks of Reform-minded People The second plank of a British Council human-development-as-publicdiplomacy strategy is Council links to networks of reformers, people with an interest in increasing the effectiveness and suitability of local institutions for the contemporary world, within these countries. Linkage with those networks is vital both so that the Council has a market with which it can build co-operative links, and also so that the Council can add to the effectiveness of those networks by bringing them together. Furthermore, the Council must be looking to encourage its larger networks into an atmosphere where they are encouraged to become agents for change themselves. The ideal is to convert an interest in private improvement through, for instance, English language training, into a commitment to public progress. The role of the Council here is vital and irreplaceable in a policy agenda of partnership for reform in the Middle East because, as a result of its own quasi-nongovernment status, it can successfully build non-government links in a way that few other organisations – government or non-government – would be able or permitted to do in many of these countries. There are several steps which the Council can take to achieve the necessary transition in its relationship-building from the old emphasis on bilateral facilitating relationships to the new model of relationships for reform. The first step is to identify the profile and needs of the

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Council’s new reforming target audience in the different countries of the Middle East. In order to do this the British Council should conduct market and opinion research to find out what is demanded from a network-relationship by the ‘authority generation’, the elites that would make up an effective network of reform. The research undertaken for the Connecting Futures project, aimed at the young and intended, in part, to establish what needs they had which could be filled by the British Council, should be replicated for an older age-group and a professional/elite target group. This quantitative research should then be complemented by expert country-by-country analysis of the pivotal groups to target in a reform process. These groups will likely differ considerably in the many different societal and state make-ups in the region. Once that research has been conducted, the Council can then develop products to bring those potential reformers into the Council’s network. For example, if in Syria the key reforming constituency is the military, then developing ‘English for Soldiers’ products and a digest service of publications such as Jane’s Defence Weekly should be a priority for the Council. Once the broad constituency for this work is established, the Council must then aggressively target agents of change for contact and networking opportunities. Marketing and selection of Chevening scholars should be concentrated within this group, as should programmes of activity designed to bring new contacts into the Council office. As well as preparing to target new contacts, Council offices should reexamine their existing networks and those networks where activity has been allowed to lapse in light of the new necessity to identify and build relationships with those in a position to be agents of change. As Martin Rose has argued, there exist many ‘orphaned networks’and contacts where insufficient resources for long-term followup have meant that the relationship has been lost. These lost contacts may constitute a very important resource for new networking goals. Former Chevening scholars, alumni from UK universities and others whose contact with the Council has been tangential should be contact-


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ed and assessed with the new policy priorities in mind. Furthermore, the Council should attempt to identify those with a generally progressive outlook that come into their orbit by administering questionnaires, obviously in a sensitive way, to those who utilise its teaching or exams services. Once groups and individuals with a predisposition towards developing their own and their societies’ capacities to operate in the contemporary world have been identified, they can then be brought more firmly into the Council’s networks through effective follow-up work. Furthermore, the Council must aim to massively scale up its level of contact with these societies, and explicitly aim to reach 5% of their populations through a supported online membership. The British Council India Office is aiming to reach an audience of 7 million through an online offering supported by its office resources, and a similar scale of effort is required in the Middle East. An order-of-magnitude increase in reach like this is possible if the idea of a supported online ‘membership’ of the British Council, designed to respond to the key demand of the Council’s target audience, is pursued to the fullest extent of its potential. A model for this scheme would be to produce a three-tiered system of ‘clubs’. The first tier, the broadest, would for a nominal fee present online access to British cultural products, with content provided through the BBC and supporting programmes of events in offices, to a relatively young audience. The widespread demand for access to Western popular cultural goods could in this way be used to bring large numbers of people into the Council’s orbit. The middle tier would be an online training and distance-learning offering, targeted at young professionals whose demand from a relationship with the Council is for it to help improve their personal competitiveness, to help them get on in their professional lives. Members join the online training scheme, and receive a ‘communications package’ with English-language training, presentation and study skills training, and a time management module.

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This initial package would then be followed up by the member with stand-alone online study modules covering more advanced topics, like report writing or web-navigation skills, all with the potential of personal support through the Council office. Once people are brought into the Council’s network in this fashion, they can then be moved through into more serious study programmes – HNDs, MSCs, MBAs – that can be followed online via the Open University, E-University and Learn Direct. On top of this package, a professional updating service, covering the latest developments in a particular field (law, biology, medicine) would be delivered, as initial market research in India has shown that people lacked the time to search out high-quality content on the internet or via journals etc. Much of the support to this scheme could also be provided on a telecommunication basis via a call centre. The same process of consciously seeking to identify those interested in cooperation toward human development within this network as was discussed above should be applied to identify key targets within this group. The final, smallest tier would be personal networking aimed at authority-generation figures, coupled with programmes providing access to the debates and expertise in which they are interested. The overall goal of such a membership package would be to draw Council contacts through from the broadest, lowest level of contact, through a period of training and professional development into networks of authority-generation reformers. In some countries in the region, moving heavily into distance learning in this fashion has particular important advantages for furthering a programme of human development. Much of the difficulty surrounding British Council operation in a country like Saudi Arabia flows from the fact that its work is predominantly carried out in the public sphere. This makes it more difficult to target women, an audience that is a crucial resource for the progress of a human development agenda regionally and in particular in a country like Saudi. By moving online, the Council moves into the private sphere, instantly allowing easier access to large numbers of women. That contact can then allow an opportunity for the


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large numbers of highly educated Saudi women to engage more directly in public affairs. Consequently, where appropriate the Council should make female education through online resources a major target for scaling up reach.

Access to Transnational Networks of Expertise A vital plank in this strategy, and one where the British Council’s own make-up and resources create highly significant, if not unique, added value is to build a network of human development expertise that links countries within the region as well as building relationships to practitioners in the West. The Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) insisted that, for the Arab world to make significant advances towards human development, it would have to make use of ‘connectivity and external linkages’. In particular, it advocated building links with what it estimated were the one million highly qualified citizens now living in OECD countries who have emigrated from the Arab world. The British Council is uniquely situated to help with this task. It needs to be able to use its network of offices in the Arab world and across Europe to bring together these key expatriate Arab professionals with experts and institutions within Middle East countries. The important step is to imagine this not as a bilateral ‘Arabs in the UK and the region’ link but as a multi-country effort using the British Council as the centre of a broad network. The British Council needs to have links with, and be able to provide access on demand to, the ten best people on job creation for young people, or to key Tunisian and Turkish experts with experience of creating export-led industrialisation programmes in a Middle Eastern context. The ideal is for the Council to host an inter- and intra-regional conversation on ‘know-how’ that can platform experts from the third world and the region on these development issues. The renowned Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, for instance, has done essentially the same micro-capital work for the Filipino, Peruvian and Egyptian governments – if the UK can be seen

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to be providing a forum for the dissemination of this kind of expertise, then the reform project loses all semblance of ‘imperial imposition’, coming as it does from outside the West. In order to facilitate this, the British Council needs to establish a global database of its networks, to allow access to Council contacts throughout the region and beyond. Furthermore, much activity in bringing together and disseminating material from this network of expertise needs to be undertaken at a regional rather than a country directorate level. As the multilateral angle of this work is so important, British Council offices in the Middle East should have 10% of their budgets ringfenced for joint regional work. Finally. as an effective way of bringing those networks into being, the British Council should organise a flagship annual conference in London, bringing together stakeholders from the region and other European countries, to kickstart the process of network building.

Links to Reformers in Government A third prerequisite for pursuing a human development strategy is the maintenance of links to reformers within, as well as outside, government. This is a necessity in order for the Council to maintain a licence to operate when shifting into what is undoubtedly a more proactive role, and one that may be perceived by some parties in the region as potentially threatening. The identity and routes of access to reformers within government is something that will vary very considerably across the region. Consequently this is one area where it makes little sense to treat the issues regionally, and where local knowledge is central to success. However, it is possible to highlight some tools which may be of use in several situations. The first is for the Council to create a post at office level to shadow key government departments, keeping up with personnel and, to the extent possible, internal debates. The specific breakdown of those key departments may vary from regime to regime,


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and extends beyond education, trade and technology ministries to include in many cases the armed forces, sections of the judiciary or the ulema and other institutions. An important resource for such political intelligence is of course the Embassy, and the Council should regularly draw on the Embassy’s expertise to co-ordinate approaches to reforming sections of government.

Access to Knowledge Society The fourth plank of a Council strategy based around human development is to undertake projects to maximise access to the knowledge society for Middle Eastern populations. As the AHDR reported, progress toward this goal in the Arab world is strikingly limited, and is holding the region back economically and politically. Two measures of the challenges facing the Arab world are striking. First, the number of academic research articles published with 40 or more citations in other work (a measure of output quality): in 1987, the US had 10,481 such articles (42.99 per million people). Israel had 169 (38.63 per million). Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Kuwait each had one – the only four articles in the Arab world. Second, book translation: the Arab world translates about 330 books every year, roughly one fifth of the number translated by Greece. The cumulative total translated books since the ninth century is about 100,000, just less than the average that Spain translates in a single year. David Burton, Council Director in Saudi Arabia, has expressed the importance of access to knowledge in tackling animosity in the Arab world: "The route into this is through education – 11 September didn’t change that." Much of the work the Council already undertakes in the region contributes to this agenda. English-language teaching, one of the Council’s largest and most successful activities, is quite clearly a demand-led activity that aids access to the benefits of globalisation and to the international job market. One possibly very fruitful multiplier is the chance to feed into English language teaching in public school teaching at the

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elementary level. Asurvey reported in the Arab News showed that 73% of Saudi parents surveyed felt that English should be taught at elementary level, reflecting the new economic realities of a country with a vast and dangerously unemployable population of young people. Furthermore, the Council’s work on educational reform to equip pupils for work in contemporary knowledge environments addresses the problem of educational quality seen as a priority by regional governments and academics – as the AHDR put it: "Poor quality has become the Achilles heel of education in the Arab world." The necessity of educational reform was, for instance, highlighted in Mai Yamani’s work on the Saudi youth, Changed Identities, which reported that "the domination of higher education by the ulema has led to a general rise in complaints by Saudi students about the curriculum's lack of relevance to their everyday practical needs." These shortcoming have been further highlighted by the difficulties found in implementing the ‘Saudi-isation’ programme – a necessary effort to gainfully employ the huge younger generation in Saudi rather than the present armies of expatriate workers. There are some adjustments and initiatives which the Council could pursue to produce further impact under this heading. Firstly, the Council should expand funding for its governance, human rights and science programmes to ensure that is recognised as the first port of call for expertise in implementing a move to a ‘knowledge society’. By ensuring that it is a repository for high-level expertise in this area, and also that it is able to act as an access point for expertise it doesn’t possess, the Council can facilitate the international co-operation necessary to create significant advances in the knowledge base of Middle Eastern societies. Second, the Council should ensure that it works to build its long-distance or low-level learners through into more advanced professional courses. If the Council can help make its networks into a base for future progress in this area, then it can simultaneously demonstrate a UK contribution in the region and raise its own profile as a gateway to a knowledge society.


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Information and Communications Technology ICT is a vital part of human development, both in terms of provision of access to information and skills and as a tool for furthering human development as an agenda. The ‘digital divide’ between the Middle East and the rest of the world was highlighted by the AHDR. It notes that although Arabs represent 5% of the world’s population, they make up only 0.5% of its internet users. This trend is reversing, and initiatives like Dubai’s ‘Internet City’, providing sophisticated communications infrastructure and other preconditions for ICT development in the region, present opportunities for the Council to link up with nodal points of activity. Its greatest contribution, however, is likely to come in two areas: content, and ICT education. As the AHDR notes, "Many users in the Arab world today complain of the shortage of Arab content and information resources on the Internet." This is the parallel of the dearth of translated books mentioned above. The US public diplomacy effort in Saudi has included initiatives to translate books which the US would like to see available in Saudi schools and universities; for instance Thomas Friedman’s Lexus and the Olive Tree. This initiative is the wrong way round: Western efforts to make available information, knowledge and expertise ought to be demand- rather than supply-led, else the books and other content will not be read. One way that the British Council could accomplish this, and respond to the demand for more internet content in Arabic, would be to follow the model of ‘professional updating’ membership of the British Council being pioneered in India (mentioned above) and provide an update and short precis of interesting or important professional content available on the web in Arabic, distributed to its networks. Secondly, and with the potential for even greater impact, the British Council could concentrate on helping Middle Eastern societies combine ICT into their education and training systems. As the ADHR

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notes, "Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have formulated ambitious plans to introduce computers at various stages of education. There are additional plans to introduce Internet services in a communications laboratory in each school." The British Council can assist with this first of all by expanding programmes in training of teachers in ICT. Furthermore, as the roll-out of computers in schools may well be a halting process, making the Council’s ICT facilities available for schools to come into the Council for lessons would be a good way of reaching large numbers of younger children. In the long term, the ADHR envisages the training of NGOs to "use the internet in polling opinions, rallying support and coordinating positions so that their web sites become alternative channels of expression to the Stateloyal official media." While this is not something that the Council is likely to be able to get involved in very soon, as a long-term goal of its ICT training operations it would be an important step in linking up new networks which will become increasingly important if reform in the region is able to progress. Furthermore, the Council’s efforts to fit out its offices with cutting edge ICT, including video conferencing, through the creation of Knowledge and Learning Centres is a key asset in facilitating access to the transnational networks discussed above. This point was identified by the AHDR, which notes that "ICT-based networks offer innovative approaches to the rapid transfer of geographically disturbed knowledge and expertise." In order to exploit this potential, the Council should design programmes and contacts around Knowledge and Learning Centre (KLC) capabilities, and accelerate their roll-out beyond Cairo to Istanbul, Dubai, Riyadh and other major offices. An important resource that the Council could help bring to bear on this issue is the Indian experience in building a thriving ICT sector in a developing economy. The capabilities which the Council possesses to link networks in third- party countries could be very fruitful if they are able to bring Indian expertise to bear on Middle Eastern ICT problems.

Conclusion

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Joined-up Long-Term Public Diplomacy The final aspect of a successful contextual universalist long-term public diplomacy strategy is ensuring that the domestic side of the relationship is dealt with within the same strategic outline as work overseas – to have a joined-up approach to strategy. It is important to try and ensure that relationships are not damaged by bad experiences in one side of the relationship balancing good impressions formed by British Council outreach. The UK needs to take a holistic approach to the relations it has with foreign publics, which is not simply an issue of British Council responsibility but a matter of joined up government. The prime example of the importance of this point, and the area where action is needed, is the issue of visa applications. If enticing foreign students to study in the UK (and in other Western countries) is the major part of building deep and long-term relationships with a key target audience, then visa applications are the major friction in that effort. This difficulty is best illustrated by looking at Turkey, a country with very close educational links with western Europe – links that will increase still further when the EU’s Socrates programme comes onstream. The problem with the visa section of the embassy in Turkey has been raised at the level of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, whose report quoted Professor Norman Stone: "the present visa business makes enemies for us. The system does seem to be unnecessarily harsh and humiliating. Turks from all walks of life dread it, and horror stories abound." Despite recognised action on this issue, it was re-iterated during field work in Turkey, with further ‘horror stories’ of academics denied visas to pursue research, businessmen denied visas required for the completion of business deals, and British Council-sponsored students turned away.The same issue applied in Saudi Arabia with respect to the United States, where the British Council reported increased interest from Saudi students whose visas to return to American universities and complete their courses after the summer vacation had been denied. The visa issue between Saudi and the US was in fact so bad that it led

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to tit-for-tat regulations placed by the Saudis on US entrants – including fingerprinting and decreased visa durations – amounting to a fruitless and damaging scar on relations. As a general principle, one of the best ways to convince people from the Middle East that we do not regard them all as terrorists is by not treating them as such – visa regimes should be reconsidered accordingly. The Foreign Office and Home Office should therefore conduct a complete review of its visa practices, with their public diplomacy impact in mind. Another important aspect of a joined-up public diplomacy approach is to ensure that the domestic constituency exists in the UK to sustain the relationships we are seeking to build with the region. The principals that apply to building support for the British Council’s work in other countries apply equally in the UK: multipliers and the creation of networks are the central features of this work. In that regard, there is an area of concern for government more widely in the paucity of funding and hence of scale of the relevant area studies departments. Groups of interested students and professors, with a desire to create links with institutions in their areas of study and with the capability to create broader networks between research institutions of the kind envisaged by the AHDR, are a vital part of building sustainable relationships with these countries. Yezid Sayigh made this point well: "It strikes me that the important part of the public diplomacy effort is what we do in the UK: in particular education in universities. What the US has done since 11 September is to pour a lot of money into teaching courses. I know from my field that in this country, Middle East studies and general regional studies have declined tremendously, as have students applications." The Foreign Affairs Select Committee’s report on Turkey picked up precisely this point. Quoting David Barchard on "the striking poverty of Turkish studies in the UK" and Professor Clement Dodd on the fact that "six of the ten or so specialists in this field are either well into retirement or on the point of retiring", it recommended that "the Government examine


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ways of encouraging an increased interest in Turkey in the United Kingdom, and of building links between British and Turkish educational institutions to promote mutual understanding." There is already, thanks to recent international events, considerable public interest in the region. That awareness needs to be converted into an informed interest. This large-scale task is obviously not one solely for the British Council, and requires the concerted action of government and the Department for Education and Skills. However, one way in which the British Council could contribute to this effort is by beginning with UK multipliers – journalists and columnists who have written freely on the subject of Islam and the Middle East in the past year, and who would benefit from increased contact with the region. The British Council should invite sets of journalists to tour the region, to meet and talk with its networks, and so increase its value to its contacts as well as help to create an informed interest in the UK.

Conclusion

The UK must recognise three important aspects of its current relationship with the Middle East, and respond accordingly. Firstly, it must recognise that it is the feelings, perceptions and reactions of people – as much as governments – that are now central to the success of UK foreign policy in the Middle East. This places public diplomacy at the heart of effective policy. Second, current animosity between ‘the West’ and ‘Islam’ is reciprocal. To ease this tension it is vital to work to change opinions both at home and abroad, and to break down the pervasive habit of thinking in ‘civilisations’. Third, building a strong longterm relationship with the people of the Middle East, which must be the basis of progressive policy in the future, relies on co-operation to tackle the obstacles which stand in the way of human development. This must be a priority of British public diplomacy efforts in the long term. Fareed Zakaria has written before that, "For the Arab world, modernity has been one failure after another. Each path followed—socialism, secularism, nationalism—has turned into a dead end." Currently, there is a pervasive feeling that the regimes of the Middle East have once again run out of road. The brittle fragility of the old order means that change will have to come soon. It is in the interests of all that the necessary changes are brought through reform, rather than unrest or revolution. Yet it is precisely when autocratic regimes begin to reform that they are at their most vulnerable, as the examples of Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, Zedillo in Mexico, De Klerk in South Africa and Kerensky in the summer of 1917 illustrate. The clearest example, and one not lost on the autocrats and oligarchs scattered around the Middle East, is that of the Shah in Iran. Public diplomacy will not dispel the militarised image of the West in

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Conclusion

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Also available from The Foreign Policy Centre

the region, nor the suspicion that attaches to its policies. But it is able to put in place the personal relationships and institutional contacts which can act as a foundation for political, economic and social progress. If that progress is to be achieved without a bloody reaction or a chaotic collapse, then all concerned – regional governments, local populations, Western allies and domestic public opinion – must be convinced of the case for it. Public diplomacy, providing it is not hollow public relations, can be the vital tool to achieve that consensus. If we are to prove that the Iranian revolution is not the only model for political change in the Middle East, we must demonstrate, rather than simply claim, that our role in the region really has changed since the days of the Shah.

Individual publications should be ordered from Central Books, 99 Wallis Road, London, E9 5LN tel: 020 8986 5488, fax: 020 8533 5821 email: [email protected] To order online go to www.fpc.org.uk/reports (Subscriptions are available from the Centre itself) THE FOREIGN POLICY CENTRE MISSION STATEMENT March 1999; Free, with £1 p+p, or free with any pamphlet.

‘Likely to be controversial with Mandarins and influential with Ministers’, Financial Times

THE KIDNAPPING BUSINESS Rachel Briggs March 2001; £9.95; plus £1 p+p, ISBN 1-903558-16. Kindly supported by Hiscox, Control Risks Group, ASM Ltd., Marsh Ltd. and SCR

This report sets out a new policy for economic kidnapping. It puts forward recommendations for the UK government, the business community and the aid community aimed at helping them to prepare better for the risk of kidnapping.

RE-ORDERING THE WORLD: The Long-Term Implications of 11 September Mark Leonard (editor), with essays by Ehud Barak, Ulrich Beck, Tony Blair, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Malcolm Chalmers, Robert Cooper, Fred Halliday, David Held, Mary Kaldor, Kanan Makiya, Joseph Nye, Amartya Sen, Jack Straw and Fareed Zakaria March 2002; £9.95; plus £1 p+p, ISBN 1-903558-10-7.

‘Caused a storm…’, The Observer

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Publications

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PUBLIC DIPLOMACY Mark Leonard with Catherine Stead and Conrad Smewing In association with the British Council, BBC World Service, and the Norwegian Government. June 2002; £14.95; plus £1 p+p, ISBN 1-903558-131.

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NGO RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES: A New Deal for Global Governance Michael Edwards In association with NCVO. July 2000; £9.95; plus £1 p+p, ISBN 0-9053558-00-X.

‘First-rate. An extraordinarily important book to make the case for public policy that recognises the role of the soft power’,

‘Timely and thought-provoking… balanced, objective and written with great sense and flashes of humour’,

Jospeh Nye,Dean, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard

David Bryer, former Director, Oxfam

REINVENTING THE COMMONWEALTH

TRADING IDENTITIES: Why Countries and Companies Are Becoming More Alike

Kate Ford and Sunder Katwala In association with the Royal Commonwealth Society November 1999; £9.95; plus £1 p+p, ISBN 0-9535598-4-5.

Wally Olins October 1999; £9.95; plus £1 p+p, ISBN 0-9535598-3-1.

‘Intelligent and wide-reaching’, The Times

‘A fascinating pamphlet’, Peter Preston, The Guardian

THE PRO-EUROPEAN READER

GLOBALIZATION – KEY CONCEPTS

Dick Leonard and Mark Leonard (editors), with essays by Winston Churchill, Jean Monnet, Roy Jenkins, Mikhail Gorbachev, Milan Kundera, David Puttnam and Tony Blair. Published by Palgrave, November 2001; £16.99; plus £1 p+p, ISBN 0-333977211.

David Held and Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt and Jonathan Perraton April 1999; £4.95; plus £1 p+p, ISBN 0-9535598-0-7.

‘Here’s a book full of cures for prejudice and phobia. Some of the antidotes are bold, some wry, some profound, some sharp – all short. The treatment is worth every Euro’, Neil Kinnock

‘This is the agenda on which a new politics must be constructed and new alliances forged’, Clare Short, Secretary of State for International Development, New Statesman

THE FUTURE SHAPE OF EUROPE

THE POSTMODERN STATE AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER

Mark Leonard (editor) Kindly supported by Adamson BSMG Worldwide. November 2000; £9.95; plus £1 p+p, ISBN 1-903558-02-6

Robert Cooper In association with Demos. 2nd edition 2000; £8.95, plus £1 p+p, ISBN 1-84180-010-4.

‘The Europe of Nice is a building site waiting for new master builders. A booklet by The Foreign Policy Centre makes the point more eloquently than any polemicist’, Peter Preston, The Guardian

‘Mr Cooper’s pamphlet explains, lucidly and elegantly, how the emergence of what he calls the postmodern state has changed international relations’, New Statesman


‘An indispensable counterweight to optimists and pessimists alike’, Will Hutton

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NETWORK EUROPE

THE NEXT GENERATION DEMOCRACY PROJECT

Mark Leonard In association with Clifford Chance. September 1999; £9.95; plus £1 p+p, ISBN 0-9535598-2-3.

The ‘Next Generation Democracy’ project explores the theme of legitimacy in an enlarging Europe, organised around five themes: Matching Policies to Public Priorities, Accountability, Political Competition, Participation and Representation.

‘A radical agenda for reform from the government’s favourite foreign policy think-tank’, Stephen Castle, Independent on Sunday ‘A welcome contribution to the important debate about Europe’s future’, Tony Blair

FROM WAR TO WORK: Drug Treatment, Social Inclusion and Enterprise Rowena Young In association with Globalegacy. March 2002; £16.95; plus £1 p+p, ISBN 1-903558-07-7.

‘This report will spark major debate’, The Observer ‘An insightful analysis that gets us beyond the anachronistic hard on/soft on drugs debate, and points up the key dilemmas facing governments in the search for an effective drug policy’, Mike Trace, Director of Performance, National Treatment Agency

THIRD GENERATION CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP: Public Policy and Business in Society Simon Zadek November 2001; £19.95; plus £1 p+p, ISBN 1-903558-08-5. Kindly supported by Diageo and Friends Ivory & Sime

‘Zadek strikes at the very heart of this debate’, CraigCohon, Globalegacy

NEXT GENERATION DEMOCRACY: Legitimacy in Network Europe By Mark Leonard and Tom Arbuthnott, November 2001 The framework document for the Next Generation Democracy programme.

‘A most important policy brief... It is good to see new and clear thinking on the future of the EU.’ Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne MEP ‘It certainly is an intriguing project, which I shall follow with interest.’ Sir John Kerr, Secretary General, the European Convention

LINKING NATIONAL POLITICS TO EUROPE By Simon Hix, March 2002

The second output from the series. Hix argues that the European institutions are increasingly disconnected from the citizens they are meant to serve. He maintains in this policy brief that the answer is to allow national parliamentarians to elect the Commission President. This would create a stronger link between national politics and EU politics. ‘Very interesting document.’ Ana Palacio, Spanish Foreign Minister ‘The Convention may choose not to endorse [Hix’s] ideas, but it should at least give them serious consideration.’ European Voice

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CAN BRUSSELS EARN THE RIGHT TO ACT? By Mark Leonard and Jonathan White, July 2002

In the Matching Policies to Public Priorities theme, Mark Leonard and Jonathan White argue that the European Union is suffering from a delivery deficit, and that EU institutions must earn their powers by proving their ability to execute them effectively. ‘The report provides a robustly pro-European critique of where the EU is failing the delivery test, most obviously in areas such as the Common Agricultural Policy and the delivery of overseas aid’, The Observer ‘Provides interesting ideas for my work at the convention’, Gisela Stuart MP

Subscribe to The Foreign Policy Centre The Foreign Policy Centre offers a number of ways for people to get involved. Our subscription scheme keeps you up to date with our work, with at least six free publications each year and our quarterly newsletter, Global Thinking. Subscribers also receive major discounts on events and further publications. Type of Subscription

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