| Abstract [eng] |
In the beginning of the 21st century the U.S. suffered an image crises, which was rooted in the behavior of the U.S. government preceding the war in Iraq in 2003. In 2005 it was realized that the U.S. must explain itself better to the world and especially to Europeans who were considered to be the traditional allies. A campaign of public diplomacy (PD) that is supposed to be the means to increase soft power of a country was started in the “old” Europe, but public opinion did not change. The question here is what went wrong that the PD campaign didn’t produce any results. That is the aim to be met in this study. The study is limited to U.S. PD towards Germany and France. It might seem that the PD campaign was aimed at explaining the U.S. policies concerning Iraq war. But as the “constituency – adversary” hypothesis, raised by Ch.Wolf and B.Rosen, states, it’s impossible to change attitudes towards an issue if they are highly negative. So it’s doubtful that the U.S. would have started a PD campaign on such an ill-based tactics. This study raises a hypothesis that the U.S. seek to create a new image of a benevolent hegemony. In order to verify the hypothesis it’s necessary to perform the following tasks: to go through the main points of PD theory; to analyze the phenomenon of anti – Americanism; to asses whether the PD messages are directed at the substance of anti – Americanism or at the common values and threats. 1. Public diplomacy as a means to conduct foreign policy. PD is the effort of a government to address the public and/or certain groups of a foreign country in order to create a positive image of the country and finally to influence the policies of the government through public opinion. The purpose of influencing elites is the hope that they will make impact on the policies of the government and creating favorable public opinion serves as a pressing or legitimizing background for the policy. There are a lot of subjects acting in the global field of information and seeking their goals by the means of communication. But PD should not be mixed up with subjects that are neither official nor seek political aims. Only the action that satisfies the two criteria mentioned above can be called public diplomacy. 2. The substance and tendencies of anti – Americanism. The analysis of anti – Americanism, based on opinion polls carried out from 2003 to 2006, had shown that the French and the Germans didn’t oppose the war in Iraq as such. The cause of anti - Americanism was the manner in which the U.S. behaved with its European allies, that is the hegemonic point of view towards France and Germany. On the other hand, the publics in France, Germany, and the U.S. acknowledge that they share common values and the understanding of global threats. 3. The analysis of substance of the U.S. public diplomacy. In order to find out whether the U.S. PD is aimed at explaining policies or at building new type of relationship with target publics, the substance of PD was examined. The examination disclosed the tactics that lies behind the messages: the U.S. does not challenge the views of the audiences concerning the issues that make up the substance of anti – Americanism. The attention is paid to common values and threats facing Europeans and Americans. The examination of substance of the U.S. PD verifies the hypothesis, raised in the study. That provides the answer to the question why PD campaign didn’t affect the attitudes of the French and the Germans towards the U.S. The tactics chosen for the PD campaign is based on relationship building. It’s not the question of understanding, but of trusting the things the U.S. declares. The nearest future will show if the tactics applied towards France and Germany is effective. The actual policies will play the decisive role in the process of improving the image of the U.S., because PD is only the wrapping but not the substance of foreign policy. |
