UNIVERSITY FOR PEACE
MASTERS OF ARTS IN INTERNATIONAL PEACE STUDIES AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION
BY: ELIZABETH LISA REYNA
PUBLIC DIPLOMACY INITIATIVES
DATE: 1 MARCH 2006
ADVISOR: DR. AMER ABDALLA AND DR. JENNIFER HAZEN
Thesis Abstract
One of the key challenges to the international stability and prosperity of the United States, in the last couple of years, lies on its response to the ever-increasing international phenomenon of anti-Americanism. This escalating development of subvert ethnic discrimination and overt irrational hostility toward the United States has forced politicians and government officials in Washington DC and embassies around the world to examine the destructive transformation resulting from international public opinion and how such sentiments have had a negative impact on its image around the world. As a result, the United States’ understanding the disastrous effects that anti-Americanism has had on its economy, international image, and on its ability to retain and form international alliances has responded to this escalating epidemic by increasingly investing in a multitude of cultural, educational, and informational initiatives that promote American interests and values abroad. These initiatives, namely U.S. public diplomacy, focus on building mutual understanding and relationships through two-way dialogue. Public diplomacy seeks to promote the national interest and the national security of the United States through understanding, informing, and influencing foreign publics and broadening dialogue between American citizens and institutions and their counterparts abroad in the pursuit of building mutual understanding. Ensuing from 9/11, the United States has allocated millions of federal dollars to public diplomacy initiatives serving so-called international hot spots, such as the Middle East, and has gained considerable merit and attention by congress. This large investment by the United States in international human capital, to promote its political, cultural, and social values, largely revolves around the United States’ need to strengthen ties at the individual, communal, and societal level where such investments assist in preventing and ameliorating future conflict. As a result, building mutual understanding through public diplomacy initiatives by focusing on lessening or eliminating negative strong emotions, misperceptions, stereotypes, poor communication or miscommunication, and repetitive negative behavior assists with this objective. However, the impact that cultural, informational, and academic and educational initiatives have on fulfilling this mission differs greatly. The dynamic embedded in academic initiatives advances intellectual and professional development, total immersion and exposure, and two-way dialogue; thus inherently serving as a long-term success means through which the validity and legitimacy of American cultural, political, and social values are self-assessed, selected, and accepted intrinsically by the individual rather than being imposed on extrinsically.
