Issue #126

November 14, 2024

Intended for teachers of diplomacy and related courses, here is an update on resources that may be of general interest. Suggestions for future updates are welcome.

Bruce Gregory

Affiliate Scholar

Institute for Public Diplomacy

and Global Communication

George Washington University

BGregory@gwu.edu | BGregory1@aol.com

Diplomacy’s Public Dimension Archive, Institute for Public Diplomacy & Global Communication, George Washington University

Bruce Gregory, American Diplomacy’s Public Dimension: Practitioners as Change Agents in Foreign Relations, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).

eBook text and paperback here. Kindle and paperback here.

Greg Barnhisel, Code Name Puritan: Norman Holmes Pearson at the Nexus of Poetry, Espionage and American Power, (The University of Chicago Press, 2024). In this exceptionally well written and deeply researched biography, Greg Barnhisel (Duquesne University and author of Cold War Modernists: Art, Literature, and American Cultural Diplomacy) tells the story of Norman Holmes Pearson. American studies scholar. Yale professor. Editor of anthologies. Public intellectual. Friend of leading modernist writers. Office of Strategic Services counterintelligence operative in World War II. CIA talent spotter. Cultural diplomat. And broker of “the marriage pact between American universities and the growing national security state.” For literature scholars, the book is filled with Barnhisel’s informed assessments of the works of mid-twentieth century modernist writers and debates on literary criticism through the lens of Pearson’s role as scholar, editor, critic, and friend. For international relations and diplomacy enthusiasts his book contains valuable chapters on the interconnected worlds of higher education, American studies departments, philanthropic foundations, learned societies, and the educational and cultural programs of the State Department and US Information Agency (USIA) during the early decades of the Cold War. Here the optic is Pearson’s career as Yale professor, Fulbright scholar, frequent lecturer abroad for State and USIA, dean of the Kyoto Seminar in American Studies, and master networker of scholars, students, and diplomats. Code Name Puritan is an important contribution to the literature on twentieth-century American culture and cultural diplomacy.

G. R. Berridge, Outposts of Diplomacy: A History of the Embassy, (Reaktion Books, 2024). This detailed history of the origin and evolution of the embassy by renowned diplomacy scholar G.R. Berridge (University of Leicester) covers a variety of topics relating to the structures and functions of resident diplomatic missions. Chapters, filled with stories of diplomats and events, examine terms for ambassadors and embassies, the role of special envoys, debates over rank and rules of precedence, duties of locally engaged staff, limited diplomatic opportunities for women and exploitation of wives as unpaid staff, embassies as locales for espionage, debates on diplomatic cover and norms of “honorable behavior,” pre-telegraphic communication, strengths and limitations of diplomatic telecommunication, diplomacy’s development as a profession, military attaches, commercial attaches, agricultural attaches, labor attaches, cultural attaches, press attaches, the “heroic age of American diplomacy” during the War for Independence and US practice of filling the best diplomatic posts through a “spoils system,” threats to resident missions from conference diplomacy, fortress embassies and walled compounds, twenty-first century advances in telecommunications, and representative offices for cities and provinces. Berridge’s treatment of these and other issues is invaluable.

The book reasonably does not focus on the history of consulates, a large, important and separate topic. Berridge’s examples are drawn primarily from England (later Britain), Venice, France, and the United States, a problematic choice he defends by saying the diplomatic practices of “leading states” are “always likely to be a window onto the practice of all.” Unconvincingly his book devotes scant attention to public diplomacy, which he treats dismissively as a “misnomer of heroic proportions since it had nothing to do with diplomacy; it was simply a more or less gentle form of propaganda” (p. 253) — a view the author has long held in the face of massive empirical evidence to the contrary.

Deborah Cohn, “Breaking Down the ‘Language Curtain’: Language Study in the United States During the Cold War,” ALD Bulletin, Vol. 48, No. 1, 2024, 12-34. In this article, published by the Association of Language Departments, a subsidiary of the Modern Language Association (MLA), Cohn (Indiana University) explores multiple issues relating to language study in the US during the Cold War. First, how did educational reforms undermine language study in the first half of the twentieth century? Second, why was language study included with math and the sciences as vital to national security in the National Defense Education Act of 1958? Third, what was the “outsized” role of the MLA in mobilizing federal and civil society support for language study? Cohn examines the role of leadership in the MLA, the influence of US Army training programs, the importance of language study to UNESCO and its supporters in the US, and the influence of the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Studies Association, and other civil society organizations. She concludes with observations on waning support for language study in the United States in decades since the Cold War — a trajectory that undermines national security, responses to crises, and the broader indispensability of languages in an interconnected world.

Evan Cooper, Dan Spokojny, Vivian Walker, Benjamin Poole, and Dani Nedal, “Can We Fix American Diplomacy,” October 16, 2024, InkStick. Experts associated with Inkstick’s “Adults in a Room” series and The Stimson Center’s “Reimagining US Grand Strategy” project assess pluses and minuses in the State Department’s modernization agenda and discuss what needs to be done. Evan Cooper (Stimson Center) argues Congressional parsimony and an American culture “hostile to the core tenets of diplomacy” are beyond State’s control. Real change will depend on “a bold political agenda that sells diplomacy to the American people.” Dan Spokojny (CEO, fp21) contends State’s decision-making process, “largely unchanged since World War II urgently requires attention, investment, and upgrade.” Reform requires a “culture of diplomacy” centered not just on the “art of diplomacy” but also on expertise, new analytical tools, modern knowledge management structures, investment in monitoring and evaluation, and a doctrine for diplomacy. Vivian Walker (Georgetown University) advocates overcoming obstacles to effective monitoring and evaluation of public diplomacy practices: (1) consolidation of four siloed monitoring and evaluation units whose data and analytics are not readily available across the Department and to interagency, Congressional, foreign policy, and academic stakeholders, and (2) faster data sharing to overcome the time disconnect between data collection and demands of fast-paced operations. Benjamin Poole (Air Force Fellow, Stimson Center) calls for State to redress a significant imbalance between its dominant focus on operations and insufficient attention to evaluation and lessons learned. Dani Nedal (Unversity of Toronto) argues State’s problems derive from decades of neglect by politicians and the militarization of foreign policy. State needs to “pick its battles,” value flexibility and creativity, and take risks.

Larry Diamond, “How to End the Democratic Recession: The Fight Against Autocracy Needs a New Playbook,” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2024, 126-140. Veteran democracy activist and theorist Larry Diamond (Hoover Institution, Stanford University) finds a “glimpse of sun behind the clouds” in an era of political extremism and polarization. His examples of autocracies under assault include Bangladesh, Thailand, Turkey, Guatemala, Poland, and Malaysia. Nevertheless, democracy’s 18-year global decline — as measured by Freedom House, Sweden’s V-Dem project, and the Economist Intelligence Unit — continues for reasons he attributes to technological and geopolitical trends and actions by both democracies and illiberal actors. Diamond argues most autocrats gain and maintain power while maintaining a façade of competitive elections. This makes them vulnerable. Democracy advocates must thoroughly understand how authoritarian populism works, expose its duplicity and venality, marshal the full range of countervailing institutions in governments and civil societies, mobilize early and before institutional constraints are destroyed, and “get back in the game.” Elections in autocracies, “even when they are not free and fair, are mobilizing events charged with opportunity for change.

Kathy R. Fitzpatrick, Lori Melton McKinnon, and Jami A. Fullerton, “Ethics in Public Diplomacy: Insights from Practitioners,” Journal of Public Diplomacy, Vol. 4, No. 1, Summer 2024, 1-17. In this article, valuable for its inquiry into views of serving diplomacy practitioners, Fitzpatrick (University of South Florida), McKinnon, and Fullerton (Oklahoma State University) examine the “neglected” topic of ethics in public diplomacy’s study and practice. Their findings are grounded in Fitzpatrick’s 2007 survey of US Information Agency alumni (The Future of U.S. Public Diplomacy: An Uncertain Fate, Brill, 2010) and interviews with US public diplomacy practitioners in one large US embassy in Europe in 2022. The authors discuss practitioners’ views in the context of four categories. (1) Overall, the practitioners interviewed perceive ethical best practices to be morally and pragmatically beneficial. Implied in their responses was a belief “their work is inherently ethical,” because they represent US interests and defend democratic values. (2) The “practitioners struggled to identify specific sources” of ethical guidelines. (3) Ethical principles cited as most important included “honesty, integrity, respect, dialogue, and transparency.” (4) Asked to describe challenges to ethical practices, practitioners cited disinformation, building relationships based on truth, boomerang effects of digital tools, State Department clearance processes, and loss of message control when relying on local partners with different goals. The authors recognize their findings cannot be generalized given the small number of interviews and other limitations in the study. But the issues raised can inform needed further research. The authors conclude a formal code of ethics would clarify what is implicit in diplomatic practice and advance the professional standing of practitioners.

Journal of Public Diplomacy, Vol. 4, No. 1, Summer 2024. In addition to its lead article, “Ethics in Public Diplomacy: Insights from Practitioners” (reviewed above), open access articles in this special issue, edited by JPD’s inaugural and guest editor Kadir Jun Ayhan (CEO, Diplomacy Analytics), provide a much-needed exploration of the literature on public diplomacy in non-English languages by a broad range of scholars.

Kadir Jun Ayhan, “Public Diplomacy in Other Words: Unpacking the Literature in Non-English Languages.”

Angel M. Villegas Cruz (Pennsylvania State University), Maria Montemayor de Teresa (Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education), Antonio Alejo (University of Granada), and Astrid de la Torre Luderitz, “Diplomacy en Espanol: An Analysis of Spanish Language Public Diplomacy Scholarship.”

Rui Wang (Communication University of China), Zhao Alexandre Huang (University Gustav Eiffel, France), Jing Bi, and Siling Dong (Communication University of China), “From a Global Perspective to a Chinese Perspective: A Comprehensive Analysis of Chinese Research Articles on Public Diplomacy.”

Kyungsun Karen Lee (Zayed University, UAE), Felicia Istad (Korea University), and Seowon Kim (Seoul National University), “Public Diplomacy in Other Words: Mapping Korean-language Research.”

Banu Akdenizli (Northwestern University, Qatar), Senem Cevik (Woodbury University), Gozde Kurt (Beykent University), and Efe Sevin (Towson University), “Public Diplomacy in Other Words: A Meta-Review and Analysis of Turkish Language Literature.”

Zhao Alexandre Huang (University Gustave Eiffel, France) and Rui Wang (Communication University of China), “Public Diplomacy in French Scholarship: Analysis of an Emerging Field.”

Eriks Varpahovskis (Higher School of Economics), “Public Diplomacy in Other Words. . . Russian Words: Systematic Literature Review on Public Diplomacy in the Russian Language.”

Junko Nishikawa (J.F. Oberin University) and Tadashi Ogawa (Atomi University), “Public Diplomacy Research in Japanese Language: A Systematic Review of Patterns and Trends in Academic Literature from 2001-2022.”

Ratih Indraswari (Parahyangan Catholic University), Firstyarinda Indraswari (Brawijaya University), and Ardila Putri (Pertamina University), “Public Diplomacy in Different Languages: Mapping Analysis on Bahasa Indonesia.”

Also, in JPD’s special issue:

Katherine A. Brown (President and CEO, Global Ties U.S.), “A Review of American Diplomacy’s Public Dimension: Practitioners as Change Agents in Foreign Relations by Bruce Gregory, Palgrave Macmillan, 2024, 481 pp., $39.99 (Softcover).”

Gary D. Rawnsley (University of Lincoln, UK), “[A Review of] Taiwan Cinema as Soft Power: Authorship, Transnationality, Historiography, by Song Hwee Lim, Oxford University Press, 2022, 225 pp., $135.00.”

Robert LaGamma, Episodes from a Foreign Service Career: Africa, Democracy, and Public Diplomacy,(Palmetto Publishing, 2024). In this memoir, retired Foreign Service officer Bob LaGamma provides stories, insights, and lessons learned during public diplomacy postings in eight African countries and Italy. Following his government career his international activities included missions for the Carter Center and National Democratic Institute and leadership in the Council for a Community of Democracy. LaGamma’s welcome narrative illuminates issues in Africa during the Nelson Mandela era in South Africa and challenges in public diplomacy’s Foreign Service and democratization practitioner communities.

Mandate for Leadership: Project 2025, Paul Dans and Steven Groves eds, The Heritage Foundation, 2023. The Heritage Foundation’s 920-page presidential transition report is worth a fresh look heading into a second Trump presidency. Key public diplomacy findings and recommendations at page numbers in the easily searched document are listed below. The report does not discuss State’s Global Engagement Center or Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for Democracy, or military information and public affairs activities.

Chapter 1, White House Office

The Office of Communications should include a director, deputy director, deputy director for strategic communications, and a press secretary. pp. 29-30

Chapter 3, Federal Personnel Agencies

Create exemptions to competitive hiring rules and examinations under a new Schedule F. pp. 80-81

Chapter 6, Department of State

“Large swaths” of State’s workforce “are left-wing and predisposed to disagree with a conservative President’s policy agenda and vision.” p. 171

State’s “failures are not due to a lack of resources.” Its ineffectiveness is due to the “institutional belief” that it “knows what is best for the United States, sets its own foreign policy, and does not need direction from an elected President.” p. 172

Evaluate “the Diversity Visa program, the F (student) visa program, and J (exchange visitor) visa program” to ensure they are “consistent with White House immigration policy . . . national security obligations and resource limitations.” p. 178

Put political appointees “in positions that do not require Senate confirmation, including senor advisors, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretaries, and Deputy Assistant Secretaries.” p. 173

“Make public diplomacy and international broadcasting serve American interests.” p. 194

“Public diplomacy has historically been, and remains, vital to American foreign policy success. Unfortunately, U.S. public diplomacy, which largely relies on taxpayer-funded international broadcasting outlets, has been deeply ineffective in recent years.” p. 194

Chapter 8, US Agency for Global Media

Overview of USAGM’s history, firewall issues, allegations of airing foreign adversaries’ propaganda and partisan messaging in the US, reform efforts of Trump-appointed USAGM CEO Michael Pack, and “operational failures, security failures, and credibility failures of Biden-appointed USAGM CEO Amanda Bennett. pp. 235-240

“Although a firewall should ensure journalistic independence, it has been used without formal regulation for decades in order to shirk legitimate oversight of everything from promoting adversaries’ propaganda to ignoring journalist safety . . . or promoting politically biased viewpoints in opposition to the VOA charter.” p. 239

“[T]he USAGM, by and large, is not fulfilling its mission, which remains . . . ill-defined and ambiguous.” p. 240

“[T]he agency is mismanaged, disorganized, ineffective, and rife with waste and redundancy.” USAGM should consolidate numerous redundant language services in VOA and its grantees. pp. 240 and 242

“Proven and durable” shortwave radio technology has been “grossly deemphasized” in favor of vulnerable web-based technologies. p. 242

Transfer USAGM’s “personnel security programs and suitability determinations” to the Department of Defense and Office of Personnel Management. p. 241

“If VOA is not put in the direct chain of command under the NSC, serious consideration should be given to putting VOA under the direct supervision of the Office of Global Public Affairs at the Department of State.” p. 244

“Reform USAGM “top to bottom” and consolidate its “subparts” to make it an effective tool to “tell America’s story” and “promote freedom and democracy.” p. 245

Jan Melissen, “Strategic Functions of Future Diplomacy,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Online publication, November 6, 2024. HJD’s Editor-in-Chief Jan Melissen introduces this practitioners’ Forum on diplomacy’s strategic functions with reflections on the conceptual and theoretical value of public commentaries by forward-looking diplomacy insiders. His overview examines challenges diplomats face when planning in the context of rapid change; knowledge deficits in ministries of foreign affairs (MFAs); and the impact of domestic politics, multiple bureaucracies, and emotions in polarized publics on whole of government external relations. HJD will continue to publish original academic research, he promises, but practitioners’ Forums can contribute to setting agendas in diplomacy studies and provide research opportunities for scholars. Forum articles by Manuel Lafont Rapnouil and Arjan Uilenreef, policy planning directors in the French and Dutch MFAs, are discussed below.

Manuel Lafont Rapnouil, “The Brutalization of Diplomacy?” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Online publication, October 30, 2024. Rapnouil (Director, Center for Analysis Planning and Strategy, French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs) argues diplomats are not just acting in a “more competitive, transactional, distrustful, fragmented and contested space,” diplomacy itself may be “under deliberate attack.” Diplomacy as “the management of separateness” — Paul Sharp’s consequential idea in Diplomatic Theory of International Relations (2009) — Rapnouil writes, may be under assault from actors seeking radical separation. Diplomacy is becoming a “combat activity.” Diplomatic communication takes place in “a much more competitive terrain.” Foreign policies are becoming more militarized. Distinctions between issues of competition and cooperation are more difficult to maintain. In this context of “brutalization,” he contends, future diplomacy will require “more effective and diverse communication and public diplomacy,” better security for a diplomatic presence in adversarial environments, investment in artificial intelligence tools and open-source intelligence, and attention to frustrations of domestic publics more inclined to support coercive capabilities and less supportive of cooperative tools and methods. Rapnouil’s claims are framed in if/then sentences, and the language of possibility and certainty. If diplomacy is being “brutalized,” then it will need “hardened capabilities.”

Arjan Uilenreef, “Catching Up With the Future: Diplomacy for New Global Landscape,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Online publication, October 30, 2024. Uilenreef (Strategy Director, Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs) examines three structural trends that will affect skills, tools, and methods in diplomatic practice. First, is the return of realpolitik in which, he argues, hard power and the ethics of responsibility (compared with the ethics of conviction) is eroding the multilateral system and liberal win-win goals. This heightens demand for diplomatic professionalism, cross-generational learning, and institutional memory. It also requires enhanced strategic capacity, breaking organizational silos, and a whole of government approach in ministries of foreign affairs. Western diplomats will need to change their attitude and tone in relations with rising middle powers. Second, is the existential risk posed by global warming and its exacerbation of other security risks. Third, are transformational challenges presented by artificial intelligence to international governance, security (disinformation proliferation, risk of autonomous weapons systems), sustainable development, and incorporation of AI technology in diplomatic practice. Diplomacy practitioners confronting these frontiers will require new skills, deeper knowledge, and new policies and methods.

Thomas Scherer and Dan Spokojny, “The Marginalization of Career Diplomats,” Foreign Service Journal, November 2024, 56-58. Think tank fp21’s Research Director and founding CEO argue the decades-long practice of filling approximately 30 percent of US chief-of-mission positions with political appointees “obscures a worrying decline” in the influence of career diplomats. A different measure – the total gross domestic product (GDP) of countries with Foreign Service ambassadors – shows that career diplomats are assigned to countries with less than 20 percent of global GDP. Political ambassadors lead embassies in countries with more than 80 percent of global GDP. Host country GDP is an imperfect measure for many reasons, they point out, but nonetheless it is instructive as appointments of political ambassadors are on the rise and as the US transitions to a new administration. Political appointees exceeded 30 percent in the Biden administration. The first Trump administration’s political appointees exceeded 40 percent. Scherer and Spokojny make a strong case for career diplomats. But they also assert career diplomats have been ineffective at proving to presidents their skills are superior and differentiated from political appointees. The US Foreign Service has done little to advance meaningful professional standards and doctrine. Its “muted response to the State Department’s new Core Curriculum for diplomacy is a case in point.”

Vivian S. Walker, “Reimagining Public Diplomacy for the Digital Age,” Foreign Service Journal,October 2024, 38-41. In this FSJ feature article, retired Foreign Service Officer Vivian Walker (Georgetown University) reviews three new books with “practitioner, policy, and academic perspectives” on public diplomacy. My American Diplomacy’s Public Dimension: Change Agents in Foreign Relations (Palgrave Macmillan 2024) examines American public diplomacy’s origins, evolution, and how innovative and rival practitioner communities transformed US diplomacy and foreign relations. In Reputational Security: Refocusing Public Diplomacy for a Dangerous World (Polity, 2024), Nicholas Cull (University of Southern California) reformulates the concept of soft power for a world dominated by geopolitical conflicts and disruptive information technologies. Chapters in A Research Agenda for Public Diplomacy, a compendium edited by Eytan Gilboa (Bar-Ilan University), examine trends and critical questions in public diplomacy scholarship, teaching, and practice. Walker’s informed and generous reviews summarize each book’s central themes. Separately and collectively, she argues, they “make a powerful case for the emergence of a multidisciplinary, innovative, and expansive practice equal to the challenges of a digital age.” Missing in all three, however, are solutions to persistent leadership and resource deficits and advice on how public diplomacy, which she describes as “the most undervalued element of foreign policy,” can be operationalized in bureaucracies.