Amb. Pamela Hyde Smith is a research associate and teaches a class on public diplomacy at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. She recently retired from the U.S. Foreign Service, having served as Ambassador to the Republic of Moldova.

Excerpts from the article follow

Much of the world today views the United States negatively, considering it dangerous and unpredictable. Recent polling overseas confirms the continuation of the downward slide in global public opinion that gathered force with the 2000 U.S. elections and accelerated sharply in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq.

Current approaches to building support for U.S. policies and American values, from the State Department's worldwide public diplomacy to the Defense Department's public affairs activities in war zones, have failed to reverse negative attitudes so severe that they thwart the United States' ability to achieve its foreign policy objectives. Anti-American forces are taking advantage of the collapse of U.S. popularity across the globe, making anti-Americanism a national security threat. The U.S. government should take a series of immediate steps to regain American credibility overseas. The Bush administration must revise some of its signature policies and moderate its style of international discourse in order to regain the goodwill the United States previously earned. Much more emphasis on public diplomacy is essential. Additionally, Congress and the executive branch should use the next two years to restructure the apparatus of governmental soft power instruments, making them more effective and powerful.

The Pew Research Center's June 2006 Global Attitudes Project demonstrates what other polls have been saying in recent years: world public opinion has turned ferociously against the United States. Favorable opinion has plummeted in nearly all countries surveyed in Europe, Asia, and especially the Middle East. The United States has never been as unpopular in Western Europe. Even in the United Kingdom 41 percent of those polled think the United States is a greater threat to world peace than Iran. Most countries polled now view China more favorably than the United States. In Turkey, a NATO ally country, only 12 percent of those polled have a favorable opinion of the United States -- down from 52 percent in 2000. In Indonesia favorable opinion declined from 75 percent in 2000 to 15 percent in 2003, and it has risen to 30 percent today chiefly because of our tsunami assistance. In not a single majority-Muslim population country polled in 2002 did a majority believe that Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks; these same majorities support Osama bin Laden and evince sympathy for suicide bombers.

Across the globe people believe that the Iraq war makes the world more dangerous, and this perception undercuts support for the overall war on terrorism. American actions at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Haditha combine with U.S. renditions, defense of torture, and violations of the Geneva Conventions to blacken the U.S. image. In the past, when foreign attitudes faulted the U.S. government, the American people still enjoyed favorable ratings, but this has been changing: between 2002 and 2005 favorability ratings of Americans fell in nine of twelve countries polled. As Roger Cohen memorably put it, the world has "stopped buying the American narrative."

A catalogue of further complaints completes the picture. World opinion faults the Bush administration for its unilateralism and preemption, unflinching support of Israel, and scorn for international organizations. The Bush administration's decision to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol and its dismissal of the threat of global warming have been met with dismay by key Asian and European allies. Additional irritants include stingy assistance to the world's poor in comparison with other wealthy countries and the slow and ineffective response to Katrina, which made the U.S. government appear less generous and even-handed than America claims to be....

From 1953 until its merger with the State Department in 1999, the United States Information Agency (USIA) conducted most of U.S. public diplomacy and amplified its soft power. Although never perfect, USIA earned a creditable record "telling America's story to the world" through a hard-won alliance of broadcasting, cultural, educational, information, and advocacy programs. USIA, with more overseas posts than any other U.S. government agency, was the largest public diplomacy operation of any nation ever, as well as the world's largest publisher and a formidable broadcaster. A recent analysis sharply contrasts USIA's effective performance during the first Gulf War with public diplomacy's current failures.

The decline began in the early 1990s when the executive and legislative branches decided that Cold War-era funding levels for public diplomacy were unnecessary and USIA suffered severe cutbacks and eventual elimination. The broadcasting function was peeled off and consolidated with other non-military U.S. government overseas broadcasters under the autonomous Broadcasting Board of Governors. The public diplomacy function has not fared well in the traditionalist State Department culture, nor has broadcasting prospered under its new umbrella.

A flood of studies in the last few years broadly concludes that public diplomacy's ills since the merger include serious deficiencies in strategic planning and in coordinating activities across the government, within the State Department, and between State and U.S. embassies. However, the persistent inadequacy of personnel and program resources to sustain basic outreach overseas remains the most serious problem. Congress allots approximately $630 million to State Department public diplomacy and $645 million to non-military broadcasting, which together total approximately 4 percent of State's overall international affairs budget and 0.6 percent of the Pentagon's budget. To put these numbers into context, the United States spends the same amount on public diplomacy as Britain or France, despite the fact that it is five times bigger than either and has much more serious credibility problems. If the United States were to spend as much per person on public diplomacy in the Muslim world as it did in Germany and Japan after World War II, the budget for these countries would be $7 billion. The number of U.S. public diplomacy officers, which reached 2,500 in 1991, has since been cut in half, with technology replacing much of their personal contact work overseas....

Several steps by the U.S. government, combined with more vigorous support from the American public, can begin to reverse the damage to the U.S. image overseas. Karen Hughes's most pressing task is to persuade the president of the need for rebuilding credibility, an effort that will fail without his buy-in. Shifts in policy, the prime factor in forming public opinion, are the first priority. The Bush administration's marginal retreats from its first-term doctrines of preemption and unilateralism have failed to mollify our critics or nullify the threat anti-Americanism poses to U.S. security. Consequently, further U.S. work within international institutions, treaties, and alliances will be helpful, along with conspicuous fair play in trade relations. The U.S. government must take responsibility for mistakes it has made, punish those at fault, and move to rectify the consequences. Reviving the U.S. role as honest broker between the Israelis and the Palestinians is also crucial. Ultimately, the U.S. government will bolster its image abroad by treating other nations with renewed respect; listening to world opinion; and matching policy more consistently with American ideals and values such as fairness, the rule of law, human rights, opportunity, and humility.

To address the next priority, rebuilding soft power, the U.S. government should re-establish its good global citizenship by deploying American knowhow to solve global problems: fighting poverty, disease, tyranny, and environmental degradation as well as terrorism.

Even where the United States finds few friends, American science, technology, medicine, and education earn respect and provide an entrée for expanded hands-on programs. In the Muslim world education of the very young is critical, given the depth of suspicion and misunderstanding. Enhanced foreign assistance should be tailored to local milieux in order to leverage shared principles and help countries transform themselves rather than expecting them to transform in the U.S. image. People-to-people programs excel, demonstrating American diversity, generosity, and talent and exploding the deadly myths circulating about the United States, especially among people lacking personal experience with Americans.

As its third priority, the U.S. government must combat anti-Americanism with as much energy and capital as it dedicated to winning hearts and minds during the Cold War. During that time the United States funded 50,000 Soviets -- and many more from Warsaw Pact countries -- to come here on exchange programs, which together with American broadcasting helped win the ideological battle. Given the Islamic world's estimated population of 1.2 billion, the United States should start building relationships with 200,000 Muslim students, professors, teachers, journalists, political activists, and other influential people, not handfuls here and there as at present. Public diplomacy, consequently, needs more funding immediately, at least ten times the amount now allocated....

While these difficult, urgent steps are taken to halt the damage to American credibility, structural changes should be initiated so that the next president can rebuild soft power on a more stable foundation. The State Department should retain the policy advocacy and information functions of public diplomacy, which should be married with the policy formation process, but public diplomacy's long-term relationship building or "mutual understanding" programs should be divested from State. These activities -- academic and cultural exchange programs, speakers, and libraries -- would benefit from joining the U.S. government's other soft power efforts under the umbrella of a bipartisan supervisory board, thus forming a Smithsonian-like institution for outreach to overseas publics -- the "Public Diplomacy Institute."

A grouping of the State Department's exchange programs, the Peace Corps, the Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, the U.S. Institute for Peace, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors would enable these activities to network with each other and NGO and private-sector partners at home and abroad. This bundling would greatly increase the clout of soft power work in Washington. The Institute should also coordinate with the soft power efforts of the Defense Department, the National Science Foundation, and other agencies....

The full text of the article is found on the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs Web site.