ABSTRACT
Despite a short history of mutual relations with the region, the policy of the United States towards the Middle East has already undergone profound changes during the last decades. Accordingly, U.S. policy perception has passed through different stages. In its rst part, this paper explains the broad structure and tactics of U.S. foreign policy towards the Middle East focusing on how historical events and policy decisions shaped the actual perception of U.S. policy in the region. This part aims at providing a framework for understanding policy perception in the Arab World. In the second part, the concept of public diplomacy as a tool of in uencing public perception is examined and criticized. The main focus lays on the variables that intervene in communicating policy, which can be identi ed as, rst, the dichotomy between the individual and mass medial construction of reality, and, second, the problem of simpli cation of political issues that often leads to the construction of foe images. Also, by distinguishing between European and U.S. approaches to public diplomacy, the special characteristics of U.S. public diplomacy will be emphasized.
