Blogging for peace

The Washington Post reported today on a new program in the State Department that has "official bloggers" joining online conversations in Arabic on Arabic blogs in order to promote moderate views and positive viewpoints about the United States. Upon first reading about this program, it sounded to me like a strange, subversive way of manipulating international opinion. But after thinking about it a bit, and taking into consideration that the State Dept. employees apparently readily identify themselves as such on the blogs, it seems like a great strategy to me to promote better international relations.

By integrating themselves into online community discussions, the State representatives give the impression to regular citizens that there is a desire on the United States' side to engage our country in a dialogue and relationship with their respective country. This could temper the public's impressions when the United States officially limits its engagement with that country. For instance, the United States clearly has a careful line to walk with Iran. Measures like economic sanctions are, of course, useful in displaying the United States' power and communicating that it will not be too tolerant of actions that go against our democratic ideals. On the other hand, enforcing sanctions or using other measures that may appear too draconian in the eyes of regular citizens in Iran, or wherever, is obviously not going to win the U.S. any Iranian fans. The key is to act in a manner that communicates to the Iranian public that their own government is to blame for their international isolation-- not the United States. This would be a lot easier to accomplish by actually communicating directly with people --not just through actions.

Obviously, the government has means of doing that (Voice of America, for instance), but clearly any regular person would be more inclined to trust someone they talk to directly, in an informal discussion, than they would be to trust an official source. Even Americans don't always trust the official communications of our federal government. It's no suprise to me that the State Department says the feedback has been good so far. When you reach out to people and try to engage them in a sincere discussion, they will usually listen.