Global Television and the Shaping of World Politics: CNN ...



Royce J. Ammon

Global Television and the Shaping of World Politics: CNN, Telediplomacy, and Foreign Policy

Jefferson, NC and  London: McFarland & Company. 2001. ix+197pp.

This book traces the history of the relationship between dominant modes of communication and the practice of diplomacy, focusing on the present era of diplomatic relations, which the author dubs “telediplomacy.” Ammon makes extensive use of contemporary and historical foreign policy decisions to demonstrate that global television plays an increasingly important role in diplomatic relations. However, his singular focus on television tends to blind him to other media technologies that seem equally important for understanding contemporary foreign affairs. The book offers a compelling read for those wishing to learn about diplomacy in an age of global media, but its overall observations are primarily geared toward students and scholars of international relations.

Two main sections comprise the book, followed by a final, three-page section that summarizes the main arguments. Section One, “An Historic Relationship,” contains three historical chapters that establish the link between diplomacy and communication. Both communication and diplomacy have experienced three distinct paradigms, with changes in communication ushering in changes in diplomacy. During the first paradigm, stretching from the days of Plato to the development of mass printing in the 1830s, diplomacy was an “elite,” “unhurried” art. Because written communication took weeks or months to reach diplomats, they were relatively free to negotiate with their peers in an open time-frame. This “old diplomacy” was slowly replaced by a “new diplomacy” characterized by more openness, a decline in diplomatic autonomy, an increase in the pace of diplomatic negotiations, and the introduction of non-traditional actors into the diplomatic process, especially public opinion. These changes came about because of the mass free press in the U.S., which opened international issues to public scrutiny, and the telegraph, which collapsed the speed of communication between governments and diplomats.

Section Two, “Present Realities,” argues that the speed, ubiquity, and emotional impact of real-time global television news has brought about a new paradigm in diplomatic relations. This new “telediplomacy” differs from earlier practices because telecommunication can now independently affect policy decisions. The first chapter of this section details how real-time global television has changed the practice of diplomacy, specifically the rapidity with which foreign policy decisions must be made, the use of global television as a diplomatic channel, and the bypassing of traditional diplomats. During the 1991 Gulf War, for instance, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, President George Bush and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein communicated important message on live television via CNN, rather than through diplomatic channels. When Hussein broadcast a peace overture on CNN, Bush appeared on CNN to reject it twenty minutes later, demonstrating how quickly foreign policy decisions are made in an age of telediplomacy.

The concluding chapters in Section Two lay out the conditions under which and mechanisms by which global television directly influences policy. Chapter Six uses the cases of U.S. intervention in Kurdish northern Iraq immediately following the Gulf War, the non-intervention in southern Iraq at the same time, and U.S. non-involvement in the Rwandan genocide of 1994 to show how global television can and cannot shape foreign policy. In the wake of the Gulf War, the Bush administration abruptly changed its policy toward Iraqi Kurds after CNN broadcast vivid images of Kurdish suffering, leading to the largest humanitarian relief effort in U.S. history. At the same time, the administration maintained its non-intervention policy toward rebelling Shiites in the south, as refugees fled into the marshlands where television cameras could not follow them. According to Ammon, the main difference between the plight of the Kurds and the Shiites after the war was the presence of television cameras.

In the Rwandan case, a flood of images of human suffering did not change U.S. policy, providing a limit case of television’s diplomatic influence. Here, the horrific images of machete-hacked bodies did not sway public opinion sufficiently to bring about intervention, because they were not images of “living victims” that viewers felt empowered to help. In addition, the potential military costs were seen as too high to warrant intervention. In the section’s final chapter, Ammon identifies three direct mechanisms and one indirect mechanism through which global television influences policy. The direct mechanisms include setting the diplomatic agenda through differential coverage of issues, serving as the main source of diplomatic information, and getting directly involved in diplomatic negotiations. CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, for instance, helped establish a meeting between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin while interviewing the two leaders. Finally, television’s capacity to sway global public opinion can indirectly affect foreign policy.

While this study on the whole makes for compelling reading, it does suffer from a restrictive focus on television and a lack of engagement with current theories of media and society. One leaves the book wondering the extent to which broader changes in contemporary media influence foreign policy, including the growth of satellite television, the spread of cheap video equipment, and the rise of the Internet. Recently, we have seen Al-Qaeda use portable video equipment and the satellite news channel Al-Jazeera to communicate its international agenda. Furthermore, it seems that Al-Qaeda makes sophisticated use of the Internet to spread its messages and coordinate activities. These observations bear directly on the arguments offered in Ammon’s book, and need to inform his theory of telediplomacy.

The lack of attention to the broader media context that surrounds global television mirrors a more fundamental inattention to the complex relationships between media, culture, society, and politics, which comes out most strongly in the discussion of the Rwandan genocide. Ammon’s attribution of U.S. inaction in Rwanda to the absence of “living victims” on television is not well supported by evidence or argument. Rather, it seems more likely that a host of historical and cultural factors, including race, economics, and the history of relations between the West, Africa, and the Arab world shaped public reactions to the Rwandan images and policymakers’ perceptions about the “do-ability” of intervention. By isolating “global television” and “foreign policy” from the larger worlds in which these phenomena are embedded, Ammon tends to overstate the power of television’s imagery, and misses some of the other interesting ways in which the new media environment influences foreign policy. His arguments may be controversial for scholars of international relations, but most international communication scholars are likely to find his insights more suggestive than startling.

Timothy Havens

Assistant professor of television studies, Department of Communication Studies

The University of Iowa

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