Public diplomacy includes the government-sponsored cultural, educational, and informational programs, citizen exchanges, and broadcasts used to promote the national interest of a country through understanding, informing, and influencing foreign audiences. My view of the field, similar to what we are doing at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, is to broaden that definition. While I recognize that “track two” diplomacy will never replace official diplomatic efforts, we’ve barely tapped the possibilities of what the United States might accomplish in gaining credibility if we shifted focus away from foreign policy lectures to international understanding.

Anti-Americanism has emerged as a term that, like “fascism” and “communism” in George Orwell’s lexicon, has little meaning beyond “something not desirable.” However it is defined, anti-Americanism has clearly mushroomed over the last six years, as charted in a number of polls. This phenomenon is, everyone agrees, intimately tied to the exercise of U.S. power and perceptions around the world of U.S. actions.