Intended for teachers of public diplomacy and related courses, here is an update on resources that may be of general interest. Suggestions for future updates are welcome.
Bruce Gregory can be reached at BGregory@gwu.edu
Sohaela Amiri, “City Diplomacy: An Introduction to the Forum,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Online Publication Date, February 11, 2022. Amiri (USC Center on Public Diplomacy, RAND Corporation) provides a needed and useful framework for shaping city diplomacy research and an introduction to five articles in the HJD’s March 2022 edition. Key parameters in her well-organized framework are (1) contextual factors (relational, instrumental, and discursive) “that affect the success or failure of a city’s international affairs” and (2) five interdependent functions of city diplomacy understood as an instrument of “non-coercive statecraft.” Cities are an “in-between power in global governance,” she argues. They draw authority from their role in governance. They have legitimacy based on close proximity to the people they serve. Essays in the forum include: Max Bouchet (Brookings Institution), “Strengthening Foreign Policy Through Subnational Diplomacy;” Alexander Buhmann (BI Norwegian Business School), “Unpacking Joint Attributions of Cities and Nation States as Actors in Global Affairs;” Antonio Alejo (Galego Institute for the Analysis of International Documentation, Spain), “Diasporas as Actors in Urban Diplomacy;” Rosa Groen (The Hague University of Applied Sciences), “Understanding the Context for Successful City Diplomacy;” and Peter Kurz (Mayor of Manheim, Germany), “A Governance System That Supports City Diplomacy: The European Perspective.”
Andrew Bacevich, After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed, (Metropolitan Books, 2021). Bacevich (Boston University, founder of the Quincy Institute, and author of many books on US diplomatic and military history) writes with passion and clarity in this challenge to the idea that America’s global military primacy is the basis for a stable and sustainable world order. Readers will find familiar themes – his critiques of American exceptionalism, cumulative policy failures, and ill-advised adventurism abroad. What’s new in this book is his assessment of today’s “apocalyptic calamities” and his call to transform American statecraft “on a scale not seen since the outbreak of the Cold War.” Whether or not one agrees with his overall analysis, his argument that numbers tell the story of the nation’s subordination of diplomacy to military power is compelling. “Leading with diplomacy” and persuasive diplomacy reforms recommended by think tanks and respected senior diplomats cannot escape the headwinds of huge disparities between Pentagon and diplomacy budgets, some eight hundred military bases worldwide, massive military contracts in every state, and America’s long-standing prioritization of hard power instruments over soft power.
Shawn Baxter and Vivian S. Walker, “Putting Policy & Audience First: A Public Diplomacy Paradigm Shift,” US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy Special Report, December 2021. In 2017, the State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs expanded a review of position descriptions for overseas locally employed staff to create a “Public Diplomacy Staffing Initiative” (PDSI) intended to restructure public diplomacy operations overseas. Described by the Commission as “one of the most important transformations” in US public diplomacy since the merger of USIA and State, the PDSI is a staffing structure for US embassy public diplomacy sections organized around audiences and policies with updates to content development and resource distribution. It replaces the traditional PAO/Information/Cultural Programs field post model with a PAO and three “clusters” of collaborative work units. A Public Engagement cluster seeks to influence the actions and opinions of established opinion leaders, emerging voices, and press and media. A Strategic Content Coordination cluster focuses on planning, audience analysis, research, digital production, and community management. A Resource Coordination cluster encompasses budget development and aligning resources to policy priorities. The goal is to give field practitioners “universal access to the data, tools, and organizational structures needed to effectively conduct public diplomacy.” By March 2022, 73 overseas missions had fully implemented PDSI.
The Commission’s report includes a statement about its methodology, the Commission’s recommendations, and an overview of the PDSI’s origins and development. Especially helpful are sections summarizing the views and critiques of field officers, locally employed staff, and Washington based public diplomacy practitioners. Key Commission recommendations include: more and improved training, greater access to support materials and resources, precise and targeted guidance to the field, and more information sharing among key State Department stakeholders. Although intended to improve public diplomacy collaboration across the US mission, the project’s dominant focus is on the public diplomacy section, not the public engagement responsibilities of other mission elements. Case studies are needed that show how PDSI enables mission X to respond more effectively to complex problem Y in carrying out policy Z in the context of whole of government diplomacy. Still to be determined is whether the new model can be replicated in Washington. See also “Review of the Public Diplomacy Staffing Initiative,” Office of the Inspector General, US Department of State, April 2021.
Masha Gessen, “The War That Russians Do Not See,” The New Yorker, March 4, 2022, print edition, March 14, 2022.New Yorker staff writer Gessen reports on the “plainly Orwellian” view of the world in Russia’s state-controlled media, the dominance of broadcast television for older Russians, cessation of operations by independent media platforms, and Russia’s block of Facebook, the BBC, and Radio Liberty. Her article briefly assesses the Russian government’s use of framing terms to shape its narrative – and the effects of fines and closure of media outlets for dissemination of “false information.”
Jing Guo, “Crossing the ‘Great Fire Wall’: A Study With Grounded Theory Examining How China Uses Twitter as a New Battlefield for Public Diplomacy,” Journal of Public Diplomacy, Vol. 1, No. 2, 49-74.Jing Guo (The Chinese University of Hong Kong) examines China’s digital and public diplomacy strategies in the 2020s through analysis of Chinese Foreign Spokesperson Zhao Lijiang’s Twitter posts and global responses to them. Her article includes an explanation of “grounded theory” and its utility in the data collection and analysis of Zhao’s tweets. Jing Guo acknowledges the study’s limitations and that more research is needed. But she concludes her study provides new insights into China’s digital diplomacy as a hybrid of state propaganda and self-performance.
“Putting Subnational Diplomacy on the Map,” The Foreign Service Journal, January-February, 2022, 9 and 20-34. The FSJ under editor Shawn Dorman’s leadership continues to look at trending issues in diplomatic practice. Articles in this issue focus on the subnational diplomacy of cities and states.
— FSJ Editorial Board, “On a New Approach to City and State Diplomacy.” The FSJ welcomes the ideas and enthusiasm of proponents of subnational diplomacy and raises legal and policy-related questions that call for discussion.
— Maryum Saifee (career FSO), “Subnational Diplomacy: A National Security Imperative.” Saifee makes a case for the State Department to mainstream sub-state actors into policies, programs, and processes.
— William Peduto (former mayor of Pittsburgh), “The Benefits of International Partnerships.” Peduto shows how Pittsburgh has benefited from partnerships and mutual learning from international cities on climate change, food systems, social equity, and economic diversification.
— Frank Cownie (mayor of Des Moines, Iowa), “Using Subnational Diplomacy to Combat Climate Change.”Cownie, who serves as president of Local Governments for Sustainability, discusses how US diplomats and subnational actors can collaborate in transitioning to clean energy in line with global agreements.
— Emerita Torres (former FSO, Democratic state committee member for the Bronx), “The Future of Diplomacy is Local.” Torres argues substate diplomacy can promote US values and influence abroad and build local community trust in diplomacy and foreign policy priorities at home.
— Nina Hachigian (deputy mayor of Los Angeles), “Local Governments are Foreign Policy Actors.” Hachigian calls for an Office of City and State Diplomacy in the State Department and argues breaking down barriers between foreign and domestic policies will make international affairs more relevant for Americans.
J. Simon Rofe, “Sport Diplomacy and Sport for Development SfD: A Discourse of Challenges and Opportunity,” Journal of Global Sport Management, December 9, 2021; J. Simon Rofe and Verity Postlethwaite, “Scholarship and Sports Diplomacy: the Cases of Japan and the United Kingdom,” Diplomatica, 3 (2021), 363-385. In two recent articles, Rofe (SOAS University of London) continues his excellent scholarship on sports diplomacy. In the Journal of Global Sport Management, he examines complementary and conflictual interests and practices in relations between sport diplomacy and sport for development. He focuses his analysis on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Importantly, he argues practitioners, not only scholars, are vital to the study of sport diplomacy’s evolution. In Diplomatica,Rofe and Postlethwaite examine scholarship and practice in ways sport and hosting international sport events constitute a key dimension in diplomatic relations between nation-states, non-state actors, and individuals. His Japan and UK case studies focus on three issues: Olympic dominant discourse, Western-dominant discourse in “East” and “West” sport diplomacy, State-dominant discourse and the role of knowledge exchange and elite networks that transcend the state.
Philip Seib, Information at War: Journalism, Disinformation, and Modern Warfare, (Polity, 2021). Books by the University of Southern California’s longtime journalism and public diplomacy professor Philip Seib can be counted on to be timely and well-written. They are filled with illuminating stories, insightful information, and grist for debate. His latest is no exception. Seib surveys the importance of mediated information in warfare from the Trojan War to today’s armed conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. Along the way, he discusses a huge variety of technologies and media forms, and the roles in different contexts of journalists, leaders, soldiers, diplomats, and citizens. His dominant focus is on modern warfare. Themes include uses of social media in conflict, Russia’s weaponization of information and diverse national responses to it, the evolution of media manipulation and media literacy, and a brief closing look at China’s “Three Warfares” strategy grounded in psychological, public opinion, and legal forms of conflict. Current relevance and vivid examples are strengths of this book. But its broad canvass comes at a price. Time and again analytical judgments are conveyed in a sentence or two that prompt interest in a deeper dive, something Seib is well able to provide. Perhaps in his next book.
Zed Tarar, “Analysis | When a Crisis Ensues, Embrace Dynamic Teams: Why the U.S. State Department Needs to Rethink Bureaucracy,” The Diplomatic Pouch, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University, February 15, 2022. In this short, compelling blog, Tarar (a career US diplomat serving in London) draws on two sources to argue the State Department needs agile, dedicated teams to handle problems and tame bureaucracy in the context of constant change: former Ebola “Czar” and now Biden chief of staff Ron Klain’s oversight of government efforts to contain the virus and views of business professor Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, author of The Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook. Tarar’s advice is to create temporary “project focused” teams and strategies for hard problems, not the deconstruction of State’s hierarchy. To critics of special envoys and ambassadors-at-large, he argues project teams with capable leaders should not be new parallel bureaucracies. To those who say State already does “task forces” in emergencies, he responds that they are “limited in scope and reactive in nature.” Ad hoc dynamic teams are proactive. They can respond to crises and unexpected contingencies. They should disband when objectives are met.
Ian Tyrrell, American Exceptionalism: A New History of an Old Idea, (The University of Chicago Press, 2021). The accomplished Australian historian Ian Tyrell (University of New South Wales) has written a carefully argued and perhaps the best account thus far of the meanings and evolution of American exceptionalism from the era of settler colonialism to the present. His book examines differences in the interpretations of historians (from rejection of the theory to qualified acceptance) and a range of opinions in public discourse (from minority opposition to a contested idea to majority belief and conflation with patriotism). Tyrell discusses American exceptionalism’s manifold meanings: political, religious, material plenty, the “American way,” the “American dream,” and its recent manifestations as a bipartisan “indispensable nation” rationale for foreign policy, a right-wing nationalist ideology, and a left-wing critique of the Trump presidency. Exceptionalism cannot be proved by logical reasoning or empirical evidence, he concludes, its existence “can be understood only as a cumulative set of beliefs.” It is a deep and entrenched “set of sedimentary deposits on American memory,” which have long informed personal and community beliefs about America’s role in the world. An idea that “is not about to die.”
US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, “2021 Comprehensive Annual Report on Public Diplomacy & International Broadcasting,” February 20, 2022. The Commission’s 361-page report presents data collected by the State Department and US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) on activities, funds spent, and budget requests for public diplomacy and international broadcasting in FY 2020. Organized by Washington bureaus and offices, US embassy Public Affairs Sections, and USAGM entities, the report’s granular detail and superb graphics make it an excellent resource for scholars, practitioners, public policy analysts, and Congressional staff. Although the report’s overwhelmingly dominant focus is on budgets and programs, the Commission’s “COVID spotlight” and 28 recommendations at pp.19-34 deserve a close look. The following are of particular interest and worthy of further explanation and debate: (1) Establish an NSC Information Statecraft Policy Coordination Committee to share best practices on information management and outreach strategies. (2) Update laws to allow public diplomacy funding “to be used for programs directed at both domestic and foreign audiences.” (3) Designate the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs as “the government-wide coordinating authority for public engagement with foreign publics.” (4) Integrate the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs leadership more fully into senior level strategic planning processes. (5) Provide an impact assessment of the merger of the Public Affairs and International Programs Bureaus into the Bureau of Global Public Affairs.
Mario Vargas Llosa, Harsh Times, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2019, translated by Adrian Nathan West, 2021). This novel by Vargas Llosa, Peru’s Nobel Prize winner for literature, recently translated into English, is about the US-backed military coup that overthrew Guatemala’s democratically elected government in 1954. Filled with historically accurate and fictional characters, it is a story of political intrigue, diplomacy, and covert action. What brings the novel to this list is the underlying theme that blends commercial interests of the United Fruit Company, the heavy-handed complicity of US ambassador John E. Purifoy, and the media strategy developed for United Fruit by Edward Bernays, often portrayed as the “father of public relations.” His books: Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923), Propaganda, (1928), Public Relations (1945).The first chapter sets the stage. Bernays quickly discovered the danger of communism wasn’t real, but he argued it would be convenient if people thought it was. The democratic and agrarian reforms of Juan José Arévalo and Jacobo Árbenz were the real threats to United Fruit. Bernays organized a public relations strategy. Scholarships, first aid centers, and travel grants for Guatemalans. A media campaign to convince North Americans that Guatemala was about to become the first Soviet satellite in the new world. Vargas Llosa’s novel demonstrates how events long past matter in modern diplomacy’s public dimension and that much depends on how stories get told.
R. S. Zaharna, Boundary Spanners of Humanity: Three Logics of Communication and Public Diplomacy for Global Collaboration, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022). Zaharna (American University) is renowned in public diplomacy and communication studies for her scholarship, attention to professional practice, and willingness to mentor and chair panels for younger scholars. This book, the product of years of research, represents her considered break from a state-centric public diplomacy perspective, Battles to Bridges: US Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy After 9/11 (2010). Her intellectual journey has taken her to a humanity-centered diplomacy driven by the shared needs and goals of human societies. In the company of diplomacy scholars Costas Constantinou, James Der Derian, and Iver Neumann, she stretches diplomacy’s meaning beyond mindsets of separateness and interests to a humanistic mindset of connectivity and diversity that exists in a dialectic with statecraft. Her book focuses on “boundary spanners” who are driven by an “ability to identify commonalities,” not bridging or negotiating the interests of separate entities. Much of the book centers on examination of three foundational “communication logics” that, she argues, have been present since pre-history and offer insights for the digital era: “Individual Logic” (the public square of Aristotle’s Athens), “Relational Logic” (the reciprocal exchanges of the ancient Near East), and a “Holistic Logic” (cosmologies used to explain a relational universe). Her claims are supported by images, graphics, and evidence-based arguments. Zaharna’s book will prompt debate. Does diplomacy lose meaning if it is stretched to include relations between almost any individual or group in almost any setting? Diplomacy’s boundaries are expanding, but we still need them if diplomacy is to have meaning. Diplomacy’s particularity is that it is an instrument of political intercourse in the context of governance defined by representation of collectives that increasingly are configured above, below, and beyond states.
Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence, (Princeton University Press, 2022). Including a book on intelligence in a diplomacy resource list may seem odd. But there are good reasons. Zegart (Stanford University) has studied the history, organizations, and practice of the US intelligence community in ways that are instructive for understanding American diplomacy’s public dimension. Her landmark book, Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC (2000), remains a compelling account of the modus operandi of rival practitioner communities and the enduring influence of the National Security Act of 1947. Zegart’s body of research and clear prose help us understand the reorganizations, reform impulses, adaptations to new technologies, cognitive biases, evolving patterns of practice, and ways of intelligence that are deeply rooted in America’s past. Intelligence is a distinct instrument of statecraft that often overlaps with diplomacy. Understanding its past, present, and future sheds light on cultural and institutional forces in diplomatic practice.
Recent Items of Interest
Matt Armstrong, “The Rhyming of History & Russian Aggression,” February 26, 2022; “Gross Misinformation: We Have No Idea What We’re Doing or What We Did,” February 2, 2022; “It is Time To Do Away With the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy,” January 14, 2022, MountainRunner.us.
Julian E. Barnes and Helene Cooper, “U.S. Battles Putin By Disclosing His Next Possible Moves,” February 12, 2022, The New York Times.
Peter Beinart, “When Will the U.S. Stop Lying to Itself About Global Politics?” January 13, 2022, The New York Times.
Donald M. Bishop, “Seven Modern Wonders,” January 26, 2022, American Purpose.
Corneliu Bjola, “Public Diplomacy and the Next Wave of Digital Disruption: The Case of Non-fungible Tokens (NFTS),” March 1, 2022, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Beatrice Camp, “Captive Nations Once, NATO Allies Now,” Februrary 2022, American Diplomacy.
Brian Carlson, “The Ukrainian Porcupine Needs More Public Diplomacy,” January 10, 2022, Public Diplomacy Council.
John Dickson, “History Shock: Too Many Diplomats Are Ignorant of the Past,” January 23, 2022, Diplomatic Diary.
Renee M. Earle, “Public Diplomacy in Newly Independent Kazakhstan,” February 2022, American Diplomacy.
Jane Harmon, “To Defend Ukraine, Fortify Our Public Diplomacy,” March 1, 2022, The Hill.
Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine Minister of Foreign Affairs, 2020-present, Government of Ukraine website.
Luigi Di Martino, Lisa Tam, Eriks Varpahovskis, “As Trust in Social Media Crumbles, Are These Platforms Still Adequate for Public Diplomacy?” January 20, 2022, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy; Link to video (about 1 hour).
Daniel W. Drezner, “Why Bridging the Gap is Hard,” January 27, 2022, The Washington Post.
Alberto M. Fernandez, “The American Public Diplomacy Vacuum,” February 9, 2022, MEMRI Daily Brief.
Senators Bill Hagerty (R-TN) and Ben Cardin (D-MD), “Hagerty, Cardin Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Create Commission on State Department Modernization and Reform,” January 18, 2022.
Shane Harris and Olga Lautman, “The Information War in Ukraine,” (58 minutes), February 24, 2022,
The Lawfare Podcast. Patricia H. Kushlis, “From Soviet State to Independent Estonia,” February 2022, American Diplomacy.
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Has Putin’s Invasion Changed the World Order,” March 1, 2022, The Spectator.
Bryan Pietsch, “Radio Free Europe Says It Was ‘Forced’ To Shutter Russia Operations Amid Putin Crackdown on Media,” March 6, 2022, The Washington Post.
Sudarsan Raghavan, “Suspension of Afghan Fulbright Program Shatters Dreams for 140 Semifinalists Now Stuck Under Taliban Rule,” February 15, 2021, The Washington Post.
John Sipher, “Evacuating U.S. Embassies in a Crisis Just Leaves Us Uninformed,” February 19, 2022, The Washington Post.
Ryan Scoville, “An Important Development in the Law of Diplomatic Appointments,” January 31, 2022, Lawfare.
Robert Silverman, “Is Diplomacy a Profession?” January 2022, The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune.
Larry Schwartz, “A New Season for Public Diplomacy,” January 13, 2022, Public Diplomacy Council.
Volodymyr Sheiko, “The Cultural Voice of Ukraine,” February 24, 2022, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Zed Tarar, “Analysis | Optimizing Foreign Service Assignment Rotations,” ISD, The Diplomatic Pouch.
Yoav J. Tenembaum, “International Society and Uncertainty in International Relations,” January 12, 2022, Blog Post, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy.
Vivian S. Walker, “A Public Diplomacy Paradigm Shift,” January 24, 2022, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Vivian S. Walker, “Case 331 – State Narratives in Complex Media Environments: The Case of Ukraine,” 2015, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy Case Study, Georgetown University.
“VOA, BBC Vow to Keep News Flowing Despite Russian Ban,” March 4, 2022, VOA News.
R. S. Zaharna, “Envisioning Public Diplomacy’s Global Mandate” January 26, 2022, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Gem From The Past
Barry Fulton, “Leveraging Technology in the Service of Diplomacy: Innovation in the Department of State,” The PricewaterhouseCoopers Endowment for the Business of Government, March 2002. Change agents in the State Department and foreign policy-oriented think tanks are devoting increasing attention to harnessing the power of data, analytics, emerging technologies, and evidence-based diplomacy practices. (fp21, “Less Art, More Science: Transforming U.S. Foreign Policy Through Evidence, Integrity, and Innovation;” Atlantic Council and fp21, “Upgrading US Public Diplomacy: A New Approach for the Age of Memes and Disinformation;” US Department of State, “Enterprise Data Strategy: Empowering Data Informed Diplomacy.”)
Two decades ago, Barry Fulton, a retired and IT savvy Foreign Service officer who had risen to the top ranks in USIA, wrote a pioneering report on using technology more effectively in the service of diplomacy. He argued technology and diplomacy intersect at three levels: administrative practices, support for core diplomatic practices, and in the context of environmental forces that drive the substance of diplomacy. He summarized twelve case studies that focused on the second level. Five key judgments stand out. Almost all technology innovations were initiated and developed by individuals in State’s user communities. Most innovations occurred in areas of State thought to be out of the mainstream (e.g., consular affairs, public diplomacy, office of the geographer). State should decentralize development and support of IT applications, encourage a cadre of IT-literate diplomats whose specialty is foreign affairs with IT competence, and promote innovation by funding pilot projects and recognizing excellence. Fulton wisely put the diplomacy horse before the technology cart. His report is worth re-reading today.
An archive ofDiplomacy’s Public Dimension: Books, Articles, Websites (2002-present) is maintained at George Washington University’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication. Current issues are also posted by the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy, the Public Diplomacy Council, and MountainRunner.us.