New Century Public Diplomacy

Since the theory of Soft Power has been proposed by Joseph Nye in the 20th century, the important role of it in the international relationship has attracted more and more attention. Therefore, as a form of Soft Power, public diplomacy has also become a major concern. Despite of the nations'own interests, definitions of public diplomacy differ from country to country; they have the same origin. The functions of public diplomacy lie in propagandizing the policies, broadcasting the culture, promoting mutual understanding, and supporting the government.The Washington Government pays much attention on public diplomacy. As a result, public diplomacy has become an essential part of the American strategy. During the Cold War period, public diplomacy was being used as its offensive weapon of anti-communist. After that, the activities of American public diplomacy as well as its influence were gradually reduced, which touched the bottom at the end of the last century. After the terrorist attack on September 11th, public diplomacy has regained attentions, for U.S. wants to find the reason why the world hates America. The important geopolitical and geo-economic values make the Middle East plays a prominent role in the American global strategy, which forces the US government to take a series measures to improve its country image in this region. Public diplomacy, though, to some extent, can promote policies, enhance communication, and remove the misunderstandings etc., is merely one of the methods of carrying out policies and achieving strategic goals. Meanwhile, due to various reasons such as the biased cognition of the Washington administration, the over-displayed American Creed and incorrect global and regional strategies of the government, the public diplomacy activities developed by the USA in the Middle East are not so good as they were expected—neither of the basic policy objectives has been achieved. However, we cannot deny that, in the future international political games, it is still worthy of paying attentions to the activities of the public diplomacy to rebuild the oversea image, safeguard the interests of the nation, and promote the global strategy.The paper seeks to examine U.S. public diplomacy and to analyze the public diplomacy policies carried out by the USA in different period through making full use of the related historical literatures and documents in the use of diplomacy approaches. And for the reason that the American public diplomacy involves different programs, it is not practical to conduct analysis on each program. Thus, the author selects programs of the American public diplomacy that practiced in Arab-Islamic world after 9/11 attack as the cases to study, hoping to better explore the diplomatic value, limitations, and the chances and challenges of the USA public diplomacy.