US President George W. Bush's controversial appointment of John Bolton, a reputedly abrasive Republican hawk, as US ambassador to the UN sits uneasily alongside the mission statement proclaimed only last week by Karen Hughes, America's new image maker-in-chief.
"There is no more important challenge for our future than the urgent need to foster greater understanding, more respect, and a sense of common interests and ideals among Americans and people of different countries, cultures and faiths," Hughes told the Senate.
She admitted her job as under-secretary of state for public diplomacy would be difficult. But she said the US' aim was to reach out to other countries rather than confront them.
ILLUSTRATION: YU SHA
"The mission of public diplomacy is to engage, inform and help others understand our policies. I am mindful that before we seek to be understood, we must first work to understand ... But I am confident our ideals will prevail," she said.
Unlike Bolton, Hughes' nomination was unanimously approved. But it likewise surprised some in Washington. She is a White House insider with scant foreign experience. At a time of unprecedented anti-American feeling, her task would daunt the most seasoned diplomat. But she has two advantages over her predecessors.
Improving overseas perceptions of the US and its policies has become a top second-term priority for the administration. And Hughes has a degree of influence and access to Bush to make even her boss, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, envious.
Hughes worked as Bush's press secretary when he ran for the Texas governorship in 1994. By all accounts, the two developed a fierce mutual loyalty.
As a White House counsellor from 2001, she was variously described as Bush's consigliere, minder and "human firewall". Her forthright manner also earned her the nickname of Nurse Ratched after the bossy supervisor of a mental ward in the 1975 film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
The Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum noted caustically that the US' biggest public relations challenge was not especially amenable to alliterative soundbites about "engagement, education and empowerment."
"What we call the `war on terror' is in fact a small part of a larger intellectual and religious struggle within Islam," she said.
"Friendly state visits by Laura Bush will not suffice ... Neither will more Britney Spears songs for Muslim teenagers on US-funded Farsi and Arabic radio," she said.
Hughes certainly needs some new post-Iraq tunes, as this year's Pew Global attitudes survey of 16 countries suggested.
"The United States remains broadly disliked in most countries surveyed, and the opinion of the American people is not as positive as it once was," Pew found. "The magnitude of America's image problem is such that even popular US policies [such as tsunami relief] have done little to repair it. Attitudes toward the US remain quite negative in the Muslim world, though hostility towards America has eased."
Yet, contrary to what the Bolton affair suggests, there is more to Hughes' appointment than touching up the paintwork on the Bush bandwagon. The US knows it has a problem -- and is moving tentatively to tackle it.
The administration's decision to drop the phrase "global war on terror" in favor of "global struggle against violent extremism" appears part of a wider effort to de-emphasize military solutions and to recruit European allies to help attract moderate Muslim opinion.
Rice's "practical idealism" in foreign policy is said to be gaining ground over the neo-conservative ideologues of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon. The refashioned White House emphasis is on promoting democracy, about which most can agree, rather than unilaterally bashing "rogue regimes."
The bottom line is whether Bush accepts that policies as well as presentation will have to change if the US' image is to be rehabilitated.
Why is Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not a “happy camper” these days regarding Taiwan? Taiwanese have not become more “CCP friendly” in response to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) use of spies and graft by the United Front Work Department, intimidation conducted by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Armed Police/Coast Guard, and endless subversive political warfare measures, including cyber-attacks, economic coercion, and diplomatic isolation. The percentage of Taiwanese that prefer the status quo or prefer moving towards independence continues to rise — 76 percent as of December last year. According to National Chengchi University (NCCU) polling, the Taiwanese
It would be absurd to claim to see a silver lining behind every US President Donald Trump cloud. Those clouds are too many, too dark and too dangerous. All the same, viewed from a domestic political perspective, there is a clear emerging UK upside to Trump’s efforts at crashing the post-Cold War order. It might even get a boost from Thursday’s Washington visit by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. In July last year, when Starmer became prime minister, the Labour Party was rigidly on the defensive about Europe. Brexit was seen as an electorally unstable issue for a party whose priority
US President Donald Trump is systematically dismantling the network of multilateral institutions, organizations and agreements that have helped prevent a third world war for more than 70 years. Yet many governments are twisting themselves into knots trying to downplay his actions, insisting that things are not as they seem and that even if they are, confronting the menace in the White House simply is not an option. Disagreement must be carefully disguised to avoid provoking his wrath. For the British political establishment, the convenient excuse is the need to preserve the UK’s “special relationship” with the US. Following their White House
US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House has brought renewed scrutiny to the Taiwan-US semiconductor relationship with his claim that Taiwan “stole” the US chip business and threats of 100 percent tariffs on foreign-made processors. For Taiwanese and industry leaders, understanding those developments in their full context is crucial while maintaining a clear vision of Taiwan’s role in the global technology ecosystem. The assertion that Taiwan “stole” the US’ semiconductor industry fundamentally misunderstands the evolution of global technology manufacturing. Over the past four decades, Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, led by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), has grown through legitimate means
RSS