There is a lot of useful common sense advice in James Glassman’s essay in the Layalina Perspectives publication about President Obama’s Cairo speech. Glassman’s title is thought-provoking, in that he calls for Obama to assert a new narrative that recasts solutions for Arab and Muslim audiences, rather than focus too much on U.S. actions and motivations in the Arab and Muslim world. His advice is intended as a guide for future strategic communication efforts. Glassman agrees with Obama’s call for mutual interest, and somewhat begrudgingly acknowledges the necessity of Obama’s apology for previous U.S. historical transgressions against the Arab and Muslim world. I think Glassman is spot-on to suggest that the U.S. should rightly focus on the principal and enduring sources of negative opinion about the United States. But I also believe the U.S. can’t edit itself out of the narratives that Arab and Muslim audiences find meaningful anytime soon.
Glassman’s proposed solution is to remove the United States from the narratives that continue to frame the U.S. as part of the problems facing both Arabs and the Muslim world. Following this advice, a rhetorical strategy would be to portray the principle anxieties and pressing problems facing these crucial populations in such a way as to minimize the role of the U.S. in the stories that convey understanding about them (such as violent extremism, political corruption, the problem with Iran, democratic reform, and so on). U.S. rhetoric should emphasize how these problems and their solutions are endogenous.
I have a couple thoughts about this recommendation.
First and foremost, I think U.S. strategic communications (from presidential rhetoric all the way down the line to press relations) should think seriously about conflating U.S.-Islamic relations with ethno-political relations. Attempting to recast the narrative of the U.S. and Islam is as daunting as it sounds. And in the process, the U.S. inadvertently draws attention to Islamic relations, when it should more rightly be focusing its strategic relations on specific, regional concerns and grievances. U.S. relations with Arab countries are different that those with Indonesia, yet the U.S. somehow manages to let those concerns become consubstantial. To borrow from Reza Azlan, the U.S. plays into the “cosmic war” narratives when it continues to focus on Islam – when in fact many of the problems that these pivotal audiences are concerned about are political… matters of policy. Glassman rightly suggests that the U.S. try to break the stranglehold on the narrative – that specific grievances facing these audiences are somehow part of a larger U.S. epic struggle against Islam. I would amend the solution to suggest that U.S. rhetoric stop talking about Islam at all. Why fuel the concerns?
Second, a consideration of what narratives do might be in order here. Narratives are often convenient ways to assemble, perceive, and judge events within a scope of history. Narratives frame – in that they allow audiences to process what is happening in a convenient and predictable arc. So, when a bomb goes off in a mosque in Baghdad, propagandists can fashion the U.S. via the narrative template as somehow culpable – in a way that is often maddeningly easy.
While I am a firm believer in the power of rhetoric to transform or challenge the narratives that govern social life – I don’t think that the U.S. can directly the challenge the dominant narrative straight away with a counter-narrative. Sure, a presidential speech can set the terms and tone for subsequent specific policy advocacy… but it should also acknowledge what is reasonable and expected in its audience. If we believe that narratives can be powerful forces – perceptual lenses if you will – then how might one expect a U.S. presidential speech to play in Cairo if it did not acknowledge the accepted doxa of the target audience? To use the terms of rhetorical theorist Walt Fisher, engaging in some mea culpas challenges existing narrative fidelity and probability – if the U.S. is the kind of character that acts like it is portrayed and experienced, then an apology strikes directly at what is expected and understood. Playing against type destabilizes existing narratives, setting the ground for further elaboration and challenges to the received wisdom about the U.S.
To simply write the U.S. out of the script at this stage would be tone-deaf at best to the enduring narratives that govern framing of U.S. actions and intent. While I appreciate Glassman’s suggestions – I view his ideas as narrative objectives, not tactics of rhetorical appeal. The U.S. wants to end up where it is not automatically prefigured as a culpable party to the grievances of Arab and Muslim populations. Getting there, however, means directly challenging the dramatic assertions that hold up the narrative – the actions that demonstrate both intent and responsibility. It means a more vigorous “diplomacy of deeds” (a term borrowed from Karen Hughes), but also a flexible approach to rhetorical appeal that does not reaffirm the monolithic divides that pit the U.S. against a threatened Islamic community. Focusing on that narrative only makes the more substantive policy arguments harder to make persuasive, let alone heard.
