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
Isaac Antwi-Boasiako, “African Governments’ Foreign Publics Engagement: Public Diplomacy in African Perspective,” South African Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 1, December 2022. In this article, Antwi-Boasiako (Technological University Dublin) looks at Africa’s public diplomacy through a continental lens. He discusses ways in which African governments use public diplomacy to attract foreign aid, tourism, and investments in nation-building and development. He examines diaspora engagement, the roles of public relations consultants, and tools such as nation branding, cultural diplomacy, media relations, and digital communication. And he assesses challenges facing African countries: insufficient opinion research, lack of human and financial resources, the absence of government media platforms, and social media accounts that exist as “noticeboards” rather than means for dialogic communication. Antwi-Boasiako sets the stage for additional scholarship and evidence-based research on the public diplomacy of individual African actors and public diplomacy’s relevance to nation building and development. By implication his thinking is foundational also to Africa’s understudied diplomatic engagement with foreign publics in the context of conflict mitigation and climate, health, migration, and other transnational challenges. His article is a welcome contribution to a western dominant and rising Asian public diplomacy literature.
Federica Bicchi and Marianna Lovato, “Diplomats as Skillful Bricoleurs of the Digital Age: EU Foreign Policy Communications from the COREU to WhatsApp,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Online publication, August 21, 2023. Bicchi (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Lovato (University College Dublin) rely on practice theory to assess the effects of digitalization on time, space, and confidentiality in blended diplomacy (physical, digital, and analog; simultaneous online and offline). They set their analysis in the context of face-to-face communication and digital technologies in EU diplomacy: the rise and decline of COREU, (CORrespondence EUropéenne, a secure cyphered communications node in each member state’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs), email, and texting. They argue that EU diplomats tend to operate as skilled bricoleurs who interact creatively with digital tools. That is, they embrace the medium most appropriate to a particular function and their socio-cognitive needs. They tolerate limited losses in security in order to embrace advances in speed. Diplomacy in the digital age, the authors argue, is shaped primarily by the agency and innovation of practitioners rather than technological determinism or institutional reluctance to change. Digitalization is constructively changing the center/periphery divide. But it also has adverse effects stemming from wealth divides (digital tools are expensive) and gender divides (expectations that female diplomats with home care responsibilities should be “logged in” most of the time). Bicchi and Lovato conclude that increasing reliance on technologies means face to face communication is no longer the primary way diplomacy is carried out. The next stage of digitalization (big data, AI, ChatGPT) will surely influence diplomatic practices, they contend, but it will not mean the end of written diplomacy. The full article is accessible online.
Nicole Dungca and Claire Healy, “Revealing the Smithsonian’s ‘Racial Brain Collection,’” and Claire Healy, Nicole Dungca, and Ren Galeno, “Searching for Maura,” August 14, 2023, The Washington Post.These articles are primarily concerned with the racist practices and body parts trade of the Smithsonian’s physical anthropology division in the late 19th and early 20th century. An important sub-theme is the US government’s decision to bring Indigenous Filipinos to be displayed for educational and entertainment purposes at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. Smithsonian curator Aleš Hrdlička used this as an opportunity to collect brains from those who died while being transported from the newly acquired US territory. “Searching for Maura” is an illustrated story of an Igorot woman brought to the US for display in the fair’s “Philippine Exposition.” The harsh conditions of her transport. Her death a few days before the fair began. The popularity of the 47-acre Philippine Exposition and the Igorot Village. News coverage stereotypes. Their exploitation for visiting crowds. And Hrdlička’s use of the remains of those who died for research purposes. The literature on international exhibitions focuses largely on their public diplomacy value, their strengths and limitations, funding challenges, and their regulation under international treaties. Issues raised by the St. Louis World’s Fair are an under-researched part of the literature. See also “1.1-1904-Worlds-Fair-Exhibition-of-the-Igorot-Filipino-People,” Asian American Education Project.
Philip S. Kosnett, ed., Boots and Suits: Historical Cases and Contemporary Lessons in Military Diplomacy, (Marine Corps University, 2023). This compendium, edited by retired Foreign Service officer and former US ambassador to Kosovo Philip Kosnett, consists of fourteen case studies on the US military’s role as a diplomatic actor. Topics include military diplomacy in the 19th and 20th centuries, conflict and collaboration between soldiers and diplomats, activities of political-military advisors and military attachés, and civil-military operations. Twenty-first century cases focus on hybrid warfare, counterterrorism, provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the role of military diplomacy in US relations with Turkey and China. Boots and Suits does not provide a systematic conceptual analysis of military diplomacy. Rather its value derives from an abundance of evidence-based insights on the practice of military diplomacy. The 440-page book is accessible online. See also the excellent review by Robin Holzhauer in The Foreign Service Journal, September 2023, 82-84.
Andrew Little and Anne Meng, “Measuring Democratic Backsliding,” revised August 13, 2023, available at SSRN, and forthcoming in PS: Political Science and Politics. Little (University of California, Berkeley) and Meng (University of Virginia) challenge reliance on democracy decline indicators based on the “subjective” judgment of expert coders. They point to annual reports by think tanks such as Freedom House and Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), numerous academic papers, and a conventional media narrative that democracy is in recession worldwide. Little and Meng call for empirical studies that examine “objective” indicators such as whether incumbents who lose accept defeats in an election and whether ruling parties violate term limits. Their study examines the role of coder bias and leaders engaged in “subtle undemocratic action.” They recognize the difficulties in defining and measuring democracy, and they cautiously conclude they “cannot rule out that the world is experiencing major democratic backsliding.” However, they argue that empirical evidence does not support the claim that it is.
Ilan Manor, “Domestic Digital Diplomacy: Digital Disruption at the Macro and Micro Levels,” The Hague Journal of Public Diplomacy, Online publication, August 3, 2023. For Manor (Ben Gurion University of the Negev), the phrase domestic digital diplomacy describes how diplomats use social media and other digital technologies to communicate with their own nation’s citizens. He focuses in this article on domestic digital disruption as a dynamic technology-induced turbulence at and between two levels: a macro level in societal and national domains and a micro level in diplomats’ working routines. Because research has emphasized the micro level, he turns his attention to how disruption at the macro level influences working routines and how it can have societal level consequences. He argues persuasively that digital disruption exists not just in the diplomacy of ministries of foreign affairs but in how government ministries as a whole conduct external and domestic facing diplomatic activities to domestic audiences. The article is grounded in a case study of how the UK’s foreign office (FCO) used Twitter to circulate images to the British people with intent to illuminate an uncertain post-Brexit future. It divides into four parts: a literature review of the semiotic approach to image analysis and how images can serve as “memory carriers,” a statement of his research question and hypothesis, analysis of images used by the FCO, and discussion of the importance of domestic digital diplomacy to an understanding of digital disruption.
Ilan Manor and Elad Segev, “Follow To Be Followed: The Centrality of MFAs in Twitter Networks,” Policy & Internet, 2023: 1-26. Manor (Ben Gurion University of the Negev) and Segev (Tel Aviv University) address three research questions based on network analyses conducted between 2014 and 2016. Why do some ministries of foreign affairs (MFAs) attract more peers to Twitter than others? Why do some MFAs follow more of their peers compared to others? And what factors relate to increases in the number of peers an MFA attracts? They conclude digital reciprocity is a key factor — followed by regional proximity, technological proficiency, and national media environments — in explaining why some MFAs do better than others in gaining scarce attention in a world of information abundance. What Joseph Nye calls the “paradox of plenty.”
Office of the Director of National Intelligence, National Intelligence Strategy 2023, August 2023. The US Intelligence Community (IC) outlines six goals in its 2023 strategy document. (1) Position the IC for intense strategic competition. (2) Recruit, develop, and retain a talented and diverse workforce that operates as a united community. (3) Deliver interoperable and innovative solutions at scale. (4) Diversify, expand, and strengthen alliances and partnerships. (5) Expand IC capabilities and expertise on transnational and transboundary challenges. (6) Enhance the resilience of the United States, its allies, and its partners. The document leads as usual with geopolitics, but it gives ample space to transnational issues, the rising power of non-state entities, and open-source intelligence. See also “The Lawfare Podcast: The National Intelligence Strategy with Michael Collins of the National Intelligence Council,” September 1, 2023.
Sanjana Patel, “Does UNGA Matter? Examining the Research for Face-to-Face Diplomacy,” September 21, 2023, fp21. Diplomats have long maintained that face-to-face dialogue — what Edward R. Murrow called “the last three feet” bridged by personal conversation — has unique value in diplomatic practice. Patel (University of Pennsylvania and an fp21 researcher) examines evidence for this proposition in social psychology, political science, and other disciplines. Her brief article discusses the impact of face-to-face meetings on individuals, face-to-face diplomacy and public opinion, the economic impacts of face-to-face diplomacy, and whether digital formats are more or less effective. She concludes that academic literature provides a neurobiological foundation for face-to-face diplomacy and demonstrates a variety of benefits. The literature is less supportive of alternative propositions: for example, that personal relationships are merely symbolic or that they represent underlying power structures. Her research also indicates, however, that effects of face-to-face diplomacy are not huge, and they cannot overcome flawed policies or intractable differences — views long held by most public diplomacy practitioners.
Christopher Paul, Willam Marcellino, Michael Skerker, Jeremy Davis, and Bradley J. Strawser, Planning Ethical Influence Operations: A Framework for Defense Information Professionals, RAND, 2023. Military scholars and practitioners in information operations often develop concepts with relevance for diplomacy. A principles-based framework for determining whether influence operations are ethically permissible, developed by Christopher Paul and his colleagues at RAND, is a prime example. They argue their framework is needed for three reasons: concerns about manipulation, disinformation, and propaganda as threats to individual autonomy; insufficient attention to ethical concerns in planning military influence operations; and a need to separate ethics of influence from ethics of force. Based on their review of relevant scholarship and research on ethics in war, they argue practitioners should follow principals of necessity, effectiveness, and proportionality. They discuss these principles in a framework with five criteria. “Military influence efforts should (1) seek legitimate military outcomes, (2) be necessary to attain those outcomes, (3) employ means that are not harmful (or harm only those liable to harm), (4) have high likelihoods of success, and (5) should not generate second-order effects beyond what is intended.” Their study develops the meaning of these criteria and recommends ways for military practitioners to implement them in planning and operations. A pdf file of the report can be downloaded.
Rosemary Salomone, The Rise of English: Global Politics and the Power of Language, (Oxford University Press, 2021). Salomone (St. John’s University School of Law) travels in many instructive directions in this exploration of the advantages and downsides of English as today’s global common language. Benefits include communication advantages for tourists, political leaders, diplomats, and academic researchers; commodification for economic value; and its use as a source of soft power. Downsides include (1) its generation of intense legal and political conflicts as value-added dynamics compete with pride in national languages; (2) societal stratification as English language proficiency competes with traditional languages in India, South Africa, Morocco, Rwanda, and other countries; (3) control of language in colonialism, and (4) deprivation for citizens in anglophone countries of the economic, cultural, and political benefits of multilingual proficiency. Her book is populated by an abundance of historical trends, evidence-based claims, and diverse narratives (e.g., controversies over China’s Confucius Institutes, the rise of English as the language of protesters for international audiences, and contrasting official language policies of the UN and EU). See also David Priess, “Chatter: Geopolitics and the Rise of the English Language with Rosemary Salomone,” Lawfare podcast, August 31, 2023.
Giles Scott-Smith, “Beyond the ‘Tissue of Clichés’?: The Purposes of the Fulbright Program and New Pathways of Analysis,” All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace, 11(2), 2022: 177-192. Scott-Smith (Leiden University) brings years of deeply researched scholarship to this insightful article on how evaluative perspectives and social science concepts advance critical thinking on the functions of exchange programs. He surveys the Fulbright literature to assess how its purposes have been framed in the context of US global influence, the production and dissemination of knowledge, and liberal internationalism. He then discusses analytical approaches in the social sciences that offer innovative ways to conceptualize exchanges in international interactions: “geographies of exchange” (management scholar Chay Brooks), “brain circulation” (geography professor Heike Jöns), “centers of calculation” (philosopher and anthropologist Bruno Latour), “enlightened nationalism” (political scientist Calvert Jones), and “parapublics” (international relations scholar Ulrich Krotz). Scott-Smith concludes that interpersonal relations are at the core of the Fulbright program’s method, but moving beyond the “tissue of clichés” requires “situating these relations within economies of exchange that reveal the wider power relations at work.” Beyond the “soaring rhetoric of the Fulbright-Hays Act and Fulbright ideology as a whole,” he argues, there is a field of research that needs to be pursued.
Efe Sevin, “The Humanistic Turn in Public Diplomacy,” in Robert E. Brown, Burton St. John III, and Jenny Zhengye Hou, eds., The Global Foundations of Public Relations: Humanism, China, and the West, (Routledge, 2022), pp. 162-181. Sevin (Towson University) explores the “turbulent history” of public diplomacy as a term and category of practice and academic study. His objective is to evaluate whether “the humanistic turn in public relations and public relations of everything (PRe) idea” might provide an intellectual home. Sevin’s inquiry is grounded in a deeply researched literature review. He examines debates on whether public diplomacy is a bounded field with multidisciplinary characteristics. Importantly, he demonstrates how practitioners have shaped its evolution. He explains Robert E. Brown’s idea that public relations is ubiquitous — an activity engaged in by everyone as an act of self-creation, self-expression, and self-protection. And he explores “parallels between public relations and public diplomacy.” Sevin concludes that public diplomacy is too “multi-faceted” to be situated in a single discipline or institution. He finds both promise and difficulty in “the humanistic turn” in public relations. Its promise lies in a holistic framework that emphasizes emotional, aesthetic, performative, and social aspects of public relations, and is not limited by singular methods and circumstances. At the same time, he is sensitive to conceptual overreach. “If public relations is in everything, including public diplomacy, then nothing really is public diplomacy.” His analysis is an imaginative contribution to debates on boundaries in diplomacy’s public dimension and the problem of limits in diplomacy’s ascending societization.
Zed Tarar, “Analysis | Harnessing AI for Diplomacy: Five Tools to Make Your Work Easier” August 28, 2023, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University. US diplomat Zed Tarar, currently on assignment in London, continues his thoughtful series at the intersection of technology and diplomacy with this first of three articles on AI. After extensive personal testing, he offers five tools that have significant potential for diplomacy practitioners. (1) UpWord.ai enables research by helping users summarize large texts. (2) Translations powered by GPT-4 do not replace skilled linguists, but it frequently outperforms Google Translate. (3) Transcriptions by OpenAI’s Whisper of large quantities of audio and video at machine speed and “acceptable levels of accuracy.” (4) Personal AI, meaning tools such as chatbot, PI that give constructive feedback to ideas and arguments through voice interaction. (5) Grammerly does a “fair job” of improving written text.
US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, “The Use of Artificial Intelligence in Public Diplomacy,”Transcript of Panel Discussion, June 2023. In this Commission meeting, executive director Vivian Walker and Commission members hosted a virtual panel of experts to discuss AI and the future of public diplomacy: Alexander Hunt (Public Affairs Officer, US Embassy Guinea), Jessica Brandt (Brookings Institution), and Ilan Manor (Ben Gurion University of the Negev). They agreed, with qualifications, that AI can be “a force for good” in public diplomacy despite the risks, and they explored its potential for a broad range of planning, operational, and assessment activities. Among their conclusions: machine tools can perform work that expands time for practitioners to engage publics; AI can amplify not replace human activity; and practitioners must be vigilant about AI’s capacity to generate biased, inaccurate, and inappropriate content. See also Vivian S. Walker, “AI and the Future of Public Diplomacy,” August 22, 2023, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Recent Items of Interest
Matthew Algeo, “The Diplomat Who Started a (Culture) War,” September 2023, The Foreign Service Journal.
Matt Armstrong, “What’s Up With the Advisory Commission, and Personal Stuff,” September, 7, 2020, Arming for the War We’re In.
Julian E. Barnes, “Russia Pushes Long-term Influence Operations Aimed at the U.S. and Europe,” August, 25, 2023, The New York Times.
Martha Bayles, “The Spirits I have Summoned, I Cannot Banish Now! The Future of A.I. in Hollywood—and Beyond,” Summer 2023, Claremont Review of Books.
Antony J. Blinken, “The Power and Purpose of American Diplomacy in a New Era,” September 13, 2023, Remarks to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Max Boot, “In Vietnam, Biden Discovers the Limits of Democracy Promotion,” September 10, 2023, The Washington Post.
William J. Burns, “American Diplomacy with William J. Burns,” Podcast with James M. Lindsay (30 minutes), Council on Foreign Relations.
FP Contributors, “Is Soft Power Making a Comeback?” September 24, 2023, Foreign Policy.
Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware, “American Hatred Goes Global: How the United States Became a Leading Exporter of White Supremacist Terrorism,” September 19, 2023, Foreign Affairs.
Ash Jain, “The Scrambled Spectrum of U.S. Foreign-Policy Thinking,” September 27, 2023, Foreign Policy.
David J. Kramer, “Presidential Centers Affirm That ‘Democracy Holds Us Together,’” September 7, 2023, George W. Bush Institute.
Philip Kosnett and Michael Keating, “A Corps of Battlefield Diplomats for the Next Hot War,” September 8, 2023, Center for European Policy Analysis.
Raja Krishnamoorthi, “The U.S. Cannot Afford to Lose the Soft-Power Race With China,” September 29, 2023, Foreign Policy.
Carol Lee, Courtney Kube, and Peter Nicholas, “White House Told U.S. Ambassador to Japan to Stop Taunting China on Social Media,” September 20, 2023, NBC News.
Christina Lu and Clara Gutman-Argemi, “Biden Puts U.S.-China Science Partnership on Life Support,” August 24, 2023, Foreign Policy.
Jason Miller, “New Top-secret Cloud Strategy Underpins State Dept. Bureau’s Modernization Efforts,” August 28, 2023, Federal News Network.
Suzanne Nossel, “Cultural Decoupling From China Is Not the Answer,” September 26, 2023, Foreign Policy.
Ben O’Loughlin, “On Strategic Ontologies,” July 2023, PDx Podcast with Will Youmans (21 minutes), GWU, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication.
Jimmy Quinn, “House GOP Bill Seeks Targeted Cuts to Voice of America over Mismanagement Allegations,” September 18, 2023, National Review.
“Reassessing Obama’s Biggest Mistake: How Much Was His Red Line in Syria to Blame for America’s Lost Credibility,” August 22, 2023, The Economist.
Liam Scott, “Indonesian Officials Harass White House Pool Reporter [VOA’s White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara] After Harris-Widodo Meeting,” September 6, 2023. VOA News.
Maria Sherman, “Quincy Jones is State Department’s First Peace Through Music Award As Part of New Diplomacy Push,” September 27, 2023, ABC News.
Tara D. Sonenshine, “The Battle Over Borders and Why They Remain Important Today,” September 28, 2023; “Despite Threat of Shutdown, Congress Cannot Afford to Give Up On Ukraine,” September 21, 2023, The Hill.
Ian Thomas and Nikki Locke, “Taking a Cultural Relations Approach to Sustainable Development: British Council Case Study,” September 7, 2023, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
W. Robert Pearson, “Secret Baseball in China,” August 2023, American Diplomacy.
Shearon Roberts, “Black Women Elected Officials: Advancing Equity Through City and Nation-State Public Diplomacy,” May 2023, CPD Perspectives, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
David Satterfield, ”The Role of US Diplomacy in a Changing World,” August 2023, American Diplomacy.
Joseph Stieb, “Two Cheers for the Cold War Liberals,” September 15, 2023, War on the Rocks.
Tracy Wilkinson, “State Department Visits L.A., Other Cities to Drum Up Biden’s Efforts Abroad,” September 26, 2023, Los Angeles Times.
Zachary Woolfe, “John Cage Shock: When Japan Fell for Cage and Vice Versa,” September 23, 2023, The New York Times.
Gem from the Past
Brian Hocking, “(Mis)Leading Propositions About 21st Century Diplomacy,” Crossroads: The Macedonian Foreign Policy Journal, April-October, 2012, 73-86. As scholars and practitioners wrestle with diplomacy’s ambiguous boundaries and an explosion of diplomatic actors and “adjectival diplomacies,” this 2012 article by the distinguished British diplomacy scholar Brian Hocking has enduring value. His argument is grounded in concerns that debates about diplomacy in an era of profound change obscure its “fundamental character” and that some propositions about diplomacy mislead.
First, much of the discourse on modalities of diplomacy in an era of rapid change confuses ongoing essential functions of diplomacy process with structures and methods adopted in a given period of time.
Second, preoccupation with “newness” in diplomacy’s actors, hybrid forms, and post-modern characteristics emphasizes discontinuities at the expense of continuities.
Third, unclear boundaries and an “expansive” approach to diplomatic agency risk “emptying diplomacy of much of its meaning and employing it as a synonym for broad patterns of global interaction.”
Fourth, emphasis on decentered networks obscures their reality as multidimensional phenomena with varieties of organizational designs that are context-contingent and that blend hierarchical and network forms.
Fifth, we must move from a perspective that privileges the role of foreign ministries to one that focuses on their value added in national diplomatic systems.
Sixth, there is a compelling case for the continuing importance of traditional “generalist” diplomatic skills in shifting patterns of global, regional, and local power; increasingly complex policy networks; and radical changes in diplomacy’s practices and institutions.
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, and the Public Diplomacy Council of America.