Ways to burnish America's image abroad

The White House - and America in general - may get an overseas image czar as one result of fresh findings that foreign opinion of the US has slumped to dangerous lows.

For more than a year, a string of private and government reports and independent polls has found that the battle to sway the world's hearts and minds to a favorable view of the US - especially in the Arab and Muslim worlds - is falling further behind.

Alarmed by its flagging image overseas, the United States pumped up its public- relations spending after the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks to more than $1 billion a year. But now a bipartisan advisory panel is warning that the issue reaches beyond a Madison Avenue image problem to a serious national security threat.

The panel is calling for a "new strategic dimension" in what is called "public diplomacy" that treats the problem with warlike urgency. It's a war that will require more resources, more focused attention from the White House, and everything from many more fluent speakers of key foreign languages in the foreign service to more points of contact for skeptical foreigners to meet and talk with Americans.

"If America does not define itself" to the world, says the panel's chairman, former Ambassador Edward Djerejian, "the extremists will do it for us."

But it is also a war that Americans with experience in cities from Amman and Riyadh to Jakarta and Istanbul report the US is losing - and quickly.

"We had a sense a year and a half ago that Arabs and Muslims liked our values, liked our products and people, but hated our policies," says John Zogby, a specialist in opinion research who was a member of the panel. "Now, many of us fear, with some degree of empirical evidence, that they don't even like us any more."

Why the world's hearts and minds even matter can be seen concretely in the US effort to persuade other countries to contribute money and troops for postwar Iraq. The more unpopular the US is, experts note, the more difficult it is for leaders to buck their constituents and lend the US a hand. More broadly, they add, a poor US image globally makes achieving international policy goals and pursuing key national interests more difficult.

"We have a great story to tell, and it is in our interest not only to tell it but to spread out values. But the problem is we have left the field," says Rep. Frank Wolf (R) of Virginia, whose congressional subcommittee ordered the report. Mr. Wolf, who has traveled to Arab countries and seen firsthand "the damage done when our ideas aren't even present," says he plans to pursue the report's recommendations - including the naming of a special counselor to the president on public diplomacy.

The panel, which was created by Congress in June to study the problem of America's sinking image, finds that unpopular US policy goes a long way toward explaining increasingly anti-American foreign publics. Key unpopular policies include what is perceived as a one-sided stance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war and occupation in Iraq, and US support for unpopular Arab regimes.

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