UNIVERSITY OF OSLO FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Department of sociology and human geography The Geopolitics of ‘Hearts and Minds’: American Public Diplomacy in the War on Terrorism Era Master’s Thesis in Human Geography Spring 2008 Anja Sletteland Public diplomacy helped win the Cold War, and it has the potential to help win the war on terror. (Djerejian 2003, 13) ii CONTENTS List of Figures …………………………………………………………………………………………………......v List of Abbreviations ………………………………………………………………………………………….......v Acknowledgements……………………………….……………………………………………………………….vi 1 INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................................................7 1.1 RESEARCH QUESTION ..................................................................................................................................8 1.2 THE STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS ..................................................................................................................8 2 CONTEXTUAL FRAMEWORK...................................................................................................................10 2.1 WHAT IS PUBLIC DIPLOMACY?.................................................................................................................10 2.1.1 Public Diplomacy as Strategic Communication ................................................................................13 2.1.2 Perpetrators of US Public Diplomacy ................................................................................................16 2.2 THE ‘WAR ON TERROR(ISM)’ ....................................................................................................................18 2.3 THE POWER STRUCTURE OF THE WAR ON TERRORISM ...........................................................................20 2.3.1 The Soft Power of Terrorism ...............................................................................................................21 2.3.2 Public Diplomacy against Terrorism..................................................................................................23 2.4 SUMMARY ..................................................................................................................................................24 3 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .................................................................................................................25 3.1 DISCOURSE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK..................................................................................................25 3.1.1 The Social Production of Meaning .....................................................................................................26 3.1.2 Relational Discourses ..........................................................................................................................27 3.1.3 The Struggle for Discursive Hegemony ..............................................................................................29 3.1.4 Framework for a Differentiated Security-‘Order of Discourse’-Analysis .......................................31 3.2 GEOPOLITICAL APPROACH ........................................................................................................................33 3.2.1 The Origin and the Critical Turn ........................................................................................................33 3.2.2 Pre-genres and Representations Guide Spatial Practices.................................................................34 3.2.2.1 Geopolitical Pre-genres.............................................................................................................................. 34 3.2.2.2 Geopolitical Representations ..................................................................................................................... 36 3.2.3 Spatial Practices Reproduce the Geopolitical Order ........................................................................38 3.3 SUMMARY AND OPERATIONALISATION OF THE RESEARCH QUESTION ...................................................40 4 ANALYTICAL APPROACH .........................................................................................................................42 4.1 PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE...........................................................................................................................42 4.2 METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH.................................................................................................................43 4.3 ANALYTICAL STRATEGY AND -PROCESS ..................................................................................................45 4.3.1 Analytical Operationalisation .............................................................................................................47 4.3.2 Interviews..............................................................................................................................................49 4.3.2.1 Ethical Issues .............................................................................................................................................. 50 4.4 RESEARCH ASSESSMENT ...........................................................................................................................51 5 THE GEOPOLITICAL RATIONALE .........................................................................................................53 5.1 THE GEOPOLITICAL PREMISE OF PUBLIC DIPLOMACY DISCOURSES.......................................................55 5.2 THE RULES OF PUBLIC DIPLOMACY IN THE VARIOUS DISCOURSES........................................................60 5.2.1 Marketized Public Diplomacy .............................................................................................................61 5.2.2 Politicized Public Diplomacy..............................................................................................................62 5.2.3 Securitized public diplomacy...............................................................................................................65 5.2.4 The Difficult Coordination Process ....................................................................................................67 5.3 DIVERGING DISCOURSES – CLASHING MESSAGES...................................................................................68 5.4 THE RELATIVE POWER OF THE DIVERGING DISCOURSES ........................................................................71 5.5 THE GEOPOLITICAL RATIONALE OF PUBLIC DIPLOMACY IN THE PDWTE.............................................74 6 SHARED VALUES INITIATIVE: CONTROVERSY AND GEOPOLITICAL VISIONS .................76 6.1 SVI AS A GEOPOLITICAL COUNTER DISCOURSE ......................................................................................77 6.2 THE GEOPOLITICAL TALES OF THE SVI SPOTS ........................................................................................78 6.2.1 Baker: Relational Identities Based on Religion and Nationality ......................................................78 6.2.2 Doctor: Assimilation and Universal Egalitarianism .........................................................................80 iii 6.2.3 Teacher: Equivalence and Difference ................................................................................................81 6.2.4 Journalist: Shared, Rather Than Imposed, Values ............................................................................82 6.2.5 Fire fighter: Associated Religion and Collective Guilt .....................................................................83 6.2.6 Summary ...............................................................................................................................................84 6.3 GEOPOLITICAL ALLIANCES IN THE SVI SPOTS.........................................................................................85 6.4 CONTROVERSY REVEALS THE RULES OF THE DISCOURSE.......................................................................87 6.4.1 The Propaganda Controversy .............................................................................................................88 6.4.2 The Message Approval.........................................................................................................................90 6.5 THE STANDING OF THE SVI IN THE PUBLIC DIPLOMACY CULTURE........................................................91 7 CONCLUSIONS ...............................................................................................................................................94 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................................................98 APPENDICES………………………………………………………………………………………………….102 List of Informants………………………………………………………………………………………………. 103 Project Proposal for Interviewees………………………………………………………………………………. 105 Transcript of the Shared Values Initiative Television Spots…………………………………………………… 107 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1: Public diplomacy: The range of definitions 13 Figure 2.2: Subcategories of strategic communication 13 Figure 2.3: Timeline of Public Diplomacy Chiefs at the SD 16 Figure 3.1: The Boundary Between Discourses 28 Figure 3.2: How Meaning and Attitudes Leak between Realms 28 Figure 3.3: Subcategories of Genres 30 Figure 3.4: The Geopolitical Culture (Ó Tuathail and Dalby 1998) 35 Figure 5.1: The geopolitical premise of the different discourses 60 Figure 6.1: The Re-mapping