Why America Is Such a Hard Sell: Beyond Pride and Prejudice

Looking at the dilemmas of American public diplomacy, Pilon (politics and culture, Institute of World Politics) finds that America is a "hard sell" in that it is both hard to sell against a pervasive anti-Americanism and sold to hard by American officials who have adopted a "Madison-Avenue-style, in-your-face public diplomacy qua marketing, which predictably misfires when local sensitivities and customs are ignored, either out of ignorance or insensitivity or both." In addition to reviewing the roots of this situation and its manifestations in American public diplomacy practices, she proposes a program of "strategic outreach" that would encompass foreign aid, educational and academic exchanges, democracy building, and other public diplomacy practices that would be coordinated by a putative American Global Outreach and Research Agency coordinating the activities of the State Department's Bureau of Public Diplomacy, the Peace Corp, the US Agency for International Development, and other government entities and work in cooperation with the private sector. Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Juliana Geran Pilon teaches politics and culture at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. The author of The Bloody Flag and Notes From the Other Side of Night, her writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, The National Interest, The Freeman, Humanitas, and many other publications both in the United States and abroad. Born in Romania, she received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago, then held post-doctoral fellowships in international affairs at Stanford UniversityOs Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace and the Institute of Humane Studies. During the 1990s she was Vice President of Programs at IFES (International Foundation for Election Systems) and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.