On American Public Diplomacy in the Era of Post-Cold War

Abstract

Public diplomacy, which is a specific concept in international relations research, refers to "guiding the public attitude" in other countries, and thus affecting foreign policy of its government. Public diplomacy is different from "traditional diplomacy", and is also different from the ordinary "non-governmental diplomacy". Public diplomacy transcends the formal diplomatic relations between countries, and gradually affects the people’s political beliefs and political behaviors in other countries by this informal diplomacy. The active and extensive public diplomacy carried out by the American government played an extremely important role in the victory of the Cold War. But after the end of the Cold War, public diplomacy was marginalized in the United States. In the 21st century, the United States wavered in its world hegemony, so American government urgently needed to reshape its image of hegemony and repropose "public diplomacy" for its foreign strategy. New media, such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter in the US, becoming the main tools usually used by the American politicians, rapidly spread American history, culture, values and social system in the world, and Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are used to create a favorable public opinion environment for the American political project. Meanwhile, the other countries’ communication platforms are restrained seriously in the US, in order to promote the implementation of American foreign policy. The heyday of American public diplomacy is coming step by step from Joe Biden being the owner of White House. His main purpose, advocated by the policy of "restoring middle-class diplomacy", is to expand the global influence of "American globalism" by secretly curbing the development of rival countries, and ultimately serve the national foreign strategy of the United States. But the strong hegemonism inevitably makes American public diplomacy set narrow shackles. Sovereign states must pay attention to their image positioning in the international community and avoid being shaped by other countries and the public as their enemies. Profitable public diplomacy is important to sovereign states in the world, and should not be ignored or limited.