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Five Years After 9/11: Accomplishments and Continuing Challenges

Ideology and the Battle of Ideas

Accomplishments
  • Elevated democracy promotion on U.S. foreign policy agenda
  • Organized State Department to strengthen public diplomacy
  • Created Millennium Challenge Corporation/increased foreign assistance funding
  • Launched “Transformational Diplomacy”

Continuing Challenges
  • Public diplomacy undermined by perceived U.S. unilateralism
  • U.S. moral authority/image eroded by Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, etc.
  • Public diplomacy weakened by domestic security paranoia (visa frustrations, Dubai Ports, etc.)
  • Democracy and development assistance agendas viewed skeptically in many countries
  • Fortress mentality at embassies stifl es public access and outreach
  • Failure to create counternarrative to global radicalism

 

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