Nowadays every state builds and maintains official relations with other countries for this purpose shall be drawn sets of methods, tools, actions and legal forms, which serve the public authorities and their representatives in the conduct of these relations – public diplomacy. Furthermore, it includes policy objectives that define how a country interacts with other countries worldwide. Public diplomacy is usually aimed at protecting national interests, national security, ideological beliefs and economic prosperity. This is a result of peaceful cooperation with other nations or through aggression, war and exploitation.In the 21st century the importance of public diplomacy is increasing dramatically, as each country actually has the ability to communicate with other countries in some diplomatic form.
In addition to this, the public diplomacy is the hierarchical structure of state institutions, the relations of domination and subordination between these institutions, and between officials and citizens. These interactions are public because of the fact that they are announced nationally and they underlie common, civic and nationwide interests. Thus, political organizations wrap, cover, and in some cases occupy the whole human society.
The first question pertaining to the public diplomacy is whether or not the mass media and its extreme forces in political arena are part of the public diplomacy. Usually the media circulated the authority of political organizations, parties, leaders or dispel them and show to the public their true nature. Also, the opinions of the respected politician, the great statesman, often, determine our sympathies and antipathies. This type of manipulation of the media in the so – called democratic and capitalist countries is made veiled. The universal idea suggests that in these states the press, radio and television are free and independent. However, some studies did show a very different picture. Noam Chomsky in his work ‘Necessary Illusions’ convincingly demonstrated by showing excerpts from the official seal of the USA, colossal distortions of actual events. According to Chomsky “the media serve the interests of state and corporate power, which are closely interrelated, putting their reports and analysis within the overall framework of support for the privileged and thus limiting debate and discussion”. In other words, in the mass media it is more important who speaks than what this person says.
Another essential question concerning the public diplomacy is how the propaganda affects it. Propaganda is inherently a well organized lie. In itself it may contain real facts or a half - truth, but interpreting them in an arbitrarily way. Moreover, it deletes the uncomfortable facts for the particular state and in that way puts forward the desired impression. In the historical aspect the propaganda is imperative from the ancient times when the information and knowledge were controlled by religious monopoly and to public reached only the official explanations, often with divine justification. Its real prosperity comes with the development of the modern technologies which give to countries such as UK, Germany, USSR and USA the chance to conduct large - scale propaganda, censorship and powerful implementation of policies that put millions of people in the circumstances of fabricated facts and allegations.
From my point of view, as a quite recent development of the sphere of public diplomacy is the peace – making diplomacy. This type of diplomacy can be illustrated by the conflict in South Asia. The clash is marked by bipolarity – Pakistan on the one side and India on the other. There are two powers which have antagonistic feelings towards each other. The key idea is that both India and Pakistan are members of the United Nations, which has a peace – making diplomacy. So, we can expect that they will be prevented from engaging in dangerous military conflicts. If India and Pakistan wage a war against each other, the United Nations is highly likely to intervene in order to stop the conflict from spreading and thus prevent a nuclear disaster. After all, international institutions have a set of standards and if a country is deemed to violate some of the stipulated regulations, certain actions are implemented against the aggressor so that tranquility is regained.
It is true that if a nuclear war begins between India and Pakistan, the deleterious impact of such a pernicious enterprise will have repercussions, which will not be confined only to the South Asian region. Furthermore, once the nuclear taboo is broken, many other countries may decide that they should use their nuclear weapons. Consequently, the anarchy that will ensue will probably lead to total obliteration. This macabre situation is far from pleasing to the great powers in the international system. So, they will try to ensure that such a situation is prevented from happening by applying the peace – making diplomacy. For instance, the USA may send warnings if it sees that the tensions between the two countries may escalate to a nuclear war. Moreover, if it is informed that either of the countries or even both of them are vent on using nuclear weapons, the USA may adopt the compellent use of force. Compellence is the deployment of military power so as to be able either to stop and adversary from doing something that he has already undertaken or to get him to do something he has not yet undertaken. Ultimately, India and Pakistan will change their military intentions. Thus, harmony will be restored and tensions will be extirpated, gratitude to the public diplomacy.
Web Links:
1) http://publicdiplomacymagazine.com/
2) http://knol.google.com/k/public-diplomacy-and-propaganda-their-differences#
3) http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/propaganda/?nid=6791
4) http://expertvoter.org/alternative-society/noam-chomsky-necessary-illusions-thought control-in-a-democratic-society-part-3-1989
5) http://home.nvg.org/~skars/ni/ni-c01-s01.html
6) http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~dib2/asia/conflict.html
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