Shifting the Tide

Abstract

Upon taking office in 2009, the world anticipated that US President Barack Obama might follow through on campaign promises to improve America’s tenuous relationship with the Muslim world. While reluctant to blatantly trumpet the American brand, it has instead relied upon Bush era top-down engagement approaches and the persuasive single-actor model to bolster target audience confidence in the Muslim world. Presently, Washington is confronted with the enormous task of defining a new way forward that takes into consideration both the perspective of nonelites at the grassroots level, while sustaining ties with state actors in Muslim majority nations. Based on the many missteps encountered, it is evident the US Department of State has no alternative but to take seriously the prospects of exercising bottom-up engagement measures that operate within a fair and balanced communicative context. Despite shifting the tide by promoting a more conciliatory tone in the 2010 US National Security Strategy, red flags appear as to whether the Obama White House and State Department are equipped with sufficient tools to restore relations with global Islamic communities beyond applying short-term symbolic gestures. Given the strategies exercised since 2009, this chapter argues that a commitment to restore relations with 1.5 billion Muslims necessitates exercising a new form of public diplomacy capable of convening state and nonstate actors in dialogue-based engagement.KeywordsArab WorldMuslim CommunityMuslim WorldObama AdministrationPublic DiplomacyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.