Author: natalie.geelmuyden

January 13, 2026

Intended for teachers of diplomacy and related courses, and for diplomacy practitioners, 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

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

eBook text and paperback here.                              Kindle and paperback here.

Practitioners, scholars, and journalists continue to create an abundance of content on the dismantling of US diplomacy and the Trump administration’s adverse actions directed at individuals, instruments, and institutions. This list begins again with selected items available on the date of publication.

US State Department

“Service Disrupted: The Costs of the Government Shutdown,”  | John “Dink” Dinkelman, “Above and Beyond Partisanship,”  | Rohit Nepal, “Breaking State?”  January/February 2026, The Foreign Service Journal.

Ledyard King, “Trump’s Ambassadors Are Largely [91 percent] Political Appointees,”  January 12, 2026, National Journal.

Edward Wong, “Trump Administration Orders Nearly 30 U.S. Ambassadors to Leave Their Posts,”  December 22, 2025, The New York Times. | John Hudson and Hannah Natanson, “Trump Administration Abruptly Recalls Scores of Career Ambassadors,”  December 22, 2025, The Washington Post.

“Court Blocks Trump-Vance Administration from Firing [State Department] Federal Workers in Violation of Federal Law,”  December 17, 2025, Democracy Forward, AFGE, AFSA. NFFE.

American Foreign Service Association, “America’s Diplomatic Corps in Crisis,” Press Statement, December 3, 2025. [See report summary below.]

Daniel Wiessner, “US Judge Blocks 250 State Department Layoffs for Now,”  December 4, 2025, Reuters.

Michael Crowley, “US Diplomats Report Broken Morale and Abandoned Careers,”  December 2, 2025, The New York Times. | “AFSA: State Department Intends to Violate Congressional Mandate,”  December 2, 2025, American Foreign Service Association

Madison Alder, “Foreign Service Officers Pursuing Legal Action After State Moves Forward with RIFs,”  December 2, 2025, FedScoop.

Michael Gfoeller, “Reforming the Department of State: A Vision for an Elite, Agile Diplomatic Corps,”  November, 2025, The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune.

Joseph Gedeon, “State Department to Cut 38 Universities from Research Program Over DEI Policies,”  November 19, 2025, The Guardian.

International Exchanges

Johanna Alonso, “2025 Brought Chaos for International Students. In 2026, Institutions Hope to Adapt,”  January 7, 2026, Inside Higher Ed.

[Letter from former senior State Department officials objecting to surveillance, arrest, and threats against foreign students and faculty],  November 17, 2025, posted by Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Julie Moyes, “Dutch Fulbright Board Members Resign Over U.S. Pressure on Academic Freedom,” | Lonnie R. Johnson, “Observations on the Fulbright Board Resignations in The Netherlands and the State of the Fulbright Program,” November 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Todd Wallack, Maham Javaid, and Susan Svrluga, “How Foreign Student Enrollment Is Shifting in the U.S., in 6 Charts,”  November 17, 2025, The Washington Post.

US Agency for Global Media

Editorial Board, “Trump’s Closure of Voice of America is Coming Back to Bite Him,”  December 5, 2025, The Washington Post.

Minho Kim, “Trump to Close Voice of America’s Overseas Offices and Radio Stations,”  December 2, 2025, The New York Times.

Federal Employee Unions: AFGE and AFSA

Daniel Wiessner, “US Judges Skeptical of Union Lawsuits Over Trump Bar on Federal Worker Bargaining,”  December 15, 2025, Reuters.

Lawrence Ukenye, “House Passes Bill to Restore Federal Workers’ Bargaining Rights,”  December 11, 2025, Politico.

“Service Disrupted: The War on Federal Labor Unions,”  November 20, 2025, [YouTube, 60 minutes], American Foreign Service Association.

American Foreign Service Association: At the Breaking Point: The State of the US Foreign Service in 2025, December 3, 2025. This report by the union and professional association of the US Foreign Service documents an extraordinary loss of personnel and institutional capacity in America’s diplomatic services during the second Trump administration. Grounded in survey responses from more than 2,000 members of the Foreign Service, it describes massive and capricious firing of employees, adverse operational and policy consequences of diminished capabilities, politicization of a nonpartisan, professional service, and destruction of collective bargaining rights based in law and regulation. An existential challenge is manifest in AFSA’s statement that “one in four Foreign Service members has left or been removed since January [2025] and nearly every remaining diplomat reports diminished morale and capacity to carry out U.S. foreign policy.” The report makes three recommendations. (1) Congress must work through legislation to reaffirm the principles of a merit-based nonpartisan diplomatic service. (2) Congress should conduct robust and sustained oversight of the executive branch’s management of the Foreign Service. (3) Needed reforms in US diplomacy’s career services must be undertaken in partnership with their elected representatives.

Greg Grandin, America, América: A New History of the New World, (Penguin Press, 2025). In this sweeping, splendidly written book, Pulitzer Prize winning historian Grandin (Yale University) provides a riveting account of five centuries of conflict, diplomacy, and braided influences of political and religious thought in North and South America. He begins with Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas’s humanistic critique of Spanish imperialism and its impact on the abolition of slavery, principles of international law, juridical equality, state sovereignty, and belief in individual reason and free will. Chapters address the important role of Spain and its colonists in the US war for independence, the influence of Venezuela’s Francisco de Miranda and Simon Bolivar on US leaders and revolutions against Spain and Portugal, diverse interpretations of the Monroe Doctrine, the Texas Revolution, and the US war against Mexico. Other chapters discuss twentieth century US interventions in the region, Latin America’s social democracies and influence on multilateralism, the Good Neighbor policy, Pan-Americanism, and the Cold War. Prominent among the many other Americans Grandin profiles: Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, Woodrow Wilson, Sumner Welles, Ernest Gruening, Nelson Rockefeller, Jorge Marti, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, Camilo Tores, Salvador Allende, Augusto Pinochet, Fidel Castro, and many more. Donald Trump is mentioned only in passing on a single page. Grandin’s America, América is essential context, however, not only for a reimagination of what Yale historian Ned Blackhawk calls “an urgent vision of the relational history of the hemisphere,” it is a predicate for understanding US policies and diplomacy in 2026.

Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication (IPDGC), George Washington University, “25th Anniversary Conference: The Future of Public Diplomacy,” November 6-7, 2025. Led by director Babak Bahador and a team of talented faculty and student organizers, IPDGC celebrated 25 years as a leading university-based community of scholars and practitioners committed to academic study and support for the practice of public diplomacy. During a two-day conference at GWU’s School of Media and Public Affairs, leading voices in the US and abroad focused on the current upheaval in public diplomacy and future challenges in scholarship and communities of practice. In doing so, they carried forward IPDGC’s founding vision: to honor the past by looking ahead. The reasoned discourse of conference participants provided welcome affirmation of the university’s role in modeling norms of civility, free speech, and evidence-based examination of events in diplomacy’s public dimension. The website contains summaries of conference panels and links to keynote and panel presentations.

César Jiménez-Martínez, “Citizens as Problems or Resources: Power, Diplomacy, and the Contested Voice of the Nation,”  in Jan Melissen, HwaJung Kim, and Githma Chandrasekara, eds, Home Engagement in Diplomacy: Global Affairs and Domestic Publics, 40-65, (Brill, 2025). In this important contribution to the conversation on diplomacy’s societization, Jiménez-Martínez (London School of Economics and Political Science) argues that emphasis on the communication and representation roles of the state overlooks the roles of other actors in cultivating, disseminating, and contesting versions of national identity. He develops a conceptual framework that interrogates the literature on the media and the nation-state, the roles of elites in each, the affordances of digital media, and the limitations of what he calls “methodological statism.” Then, drawing on a variety of examples in Latin America, he explores two areas of friction between states and citizens, with implications for public diplomacy, nation branding, and other forms of soft power. The first examines how citizen protests confront and change the symbolic power and policies of states. The second discusses how, in part due to these frictions, governments seek to leverage citizens as resources, not just as implementers of policies, but in projecting versions of national identity. Jiménez-Martínez’s reasoning stands out both for its welcome attention to diplomacy in Latin America and its nuanced assessment of evolving boundaries between governments and citizens in diplomatic practice.

Ilan Manor, “Disruption in Public Diplomacy: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Term,”  in Anna Popkova, ed., Disruption and Dissent in Public Diplomacy, 17-37, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). Manor (Ben Gurion University of the Negev), widely recognized for his cutting-edge scholarship on diplomacy and digital technologies, explores the variety of ways disruption can occur in public diplomacy other than through digitalization. Defining disruption as “disorder or the interruption of the normal course of unity,” he discusses the impact of disruptive events (e.g., 9/11, Covid-19, the Peace of Westphalia), metaphors (e.g., globalization, soft power, publics), ideas (e.g., image management, nation branding, domestic public diplomacy), and politics (e.g., nationalism, populism). Manor seeks to decouple disruption in public diplomacy from a singular focus on digitalization. Broader trajectories, he argues, call for examination of different sources of disruption and diverse governance and societal disruptors. 

Efe Seven, César Jiménez-Martínez, and Pablo Miño, Nation Branding in the Americas: Contested Politics and Identities, (Routledge, 2025). Sevin (Towson University), Jiménez-Martínez ((London School of Economics and Political Science), and Miño, (Universidad de Los Andes, Chile) build on a nation branding literature that traditionally has largely neglected the Americas. In this volume they examine four key questions. What are the meanings and conceptual boundaries of nation branding and how does it relate to other practices such as marketing, tourism, and public diplomacy?  What is meant by the terms America, the Americas, and “nation”? How has nation branding changed since its emergence as a concept and practice in the 1900s? And what are the controversies and operational consequences of nation branding as a process wielded by governments and citizens between and within countries. The co-authors develop provisional answers to each in the context of 12 country case studies: Canada, the United States, Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile. Their carefully researched study, distinguished by its geographical focus and academic excellence, has value for students and practitioners.

Katherine Stewart, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, (Bloomsbury, 2025). With careful research and exceptional clarity, journalist Katherine Stewart divides radical antidemocratic networks in American society into five categories. “Funders,” beneficiaries of massive concentrations of wealth. “Thinkers” associated with the Claremont Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and other advocacy groups. The “Infantry,” a large group with diverse economic, educational, and regional identities and agendas. “Sergeants” who turn money and messages into votes at the local level. And “Power Players,” leaders of the Christian nationalist movement, super lobbyists, and media influencers. Some have relevance to public diplomacy. Darren Beattie, currently the State Department’s “Senior Bureau Official in Public Diplomacy” and acting head of the US Institute of Peace. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Michael Pack, former head of the US Agency for Global Media and former CEO of the Claremont Institute. Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought. And Lt. Gen (ret.) William Boykin, committed to fostering Christian nationalism in the military and NGOs abroad. Stewart’s superb guide provides foundational context for understanding events in 2026 and beyond.Writing in Foreign Affairs, the Carnegie Endowment’s Jessica Mathews calls it “one of the most closely reported and cogent” books on the political movement that brought Donald Trump to power.  

US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, 2025 Comprehensive Annual Report on Public Diplomacy and International Broadcasting, November 2025. The bipartisan, presidentially appointed Commission, led with astonishing dedication for many years by Chairman Sim Farar and Vice Chairman William J. Hybl, faced significant challenges in producing this 174-page report. Chaos in US diplomacy’s institutions. Destruction of the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) and the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. White House and Congressional failure to fill Commission vacancies. Public diplomacy funding cuts, program suspensions and terminations, and numerous operational and planning uncertainties in 2025. Most of the report, edited by executive director Sarah Arkin and Daniel Langenkamp, consists of FY 2024 budget data and program descriptions provided by the State Department’s bureaus, overseas US missions, and USAGM. Granular and graphically well-presented, they will be useful to scholars, Congressional staff, practitioners, and partner organizations as a baseline context for assessing current and future changes. 

Readers should give priority to the report’s recommendations to the White House, Congress, and State (pp. 15-18). Some the Commission has advanced for decades (e.g., funding prioritization, National Security Council coordination, leveraging the expertise of PD professionals in decision-making, streamlining exchanges, and better use and management of research and evaluation). Others are new (e.g., branding strategies, advanced messaging tests and marketing techniques, and greater focus on visual storytelling). Especially welcome are the Commission’s extensive views on USAGM and the future of US government media (p. 22 and pp. 161-166). Grounded in its belief that government supported media are essential to US interests, the report summarizes relevant history and the state-sponsored media activities of adversaries. It then provides an abundance of foundational questions and suggestions for what should be done with the Voice of America, US-funded grantee networks, and the Open Technology Fund. The Commission’s recommendations will spark needed debate. They also will provide lawmakers, policymakers, and practitioners with insights and information needed for reimagining tools, methods, and structures in US diplomacy’s public dimension.

Jonathan Vickery, Stuart MacDonald, and Nicholas J. Cull (eds.) Understanding Cultural Diplomacy and International Cultural Relations, (Edward Elgar, 2025). Vickery (University of Warwick), MacDonald (ICR Research Ltd), and Cull (University of Southern California) ground this ambitious and instructive volume on three assumptions. (1) A separation between cultural diplomacy and “international” cultural relations. (2) Their evolution in “a common space of development, contradiction and possibility.” (3) Heterogeneous characteristics that elude single definitions and conceptual frameworks. The collection divides into three parts — analytical and historical approaches, tools and practices, and critical issues. Each part contains chapters and illuminating case studies. The 46 contributors, a globally diverse gathering of scholars and practitioners, the 39 chapters, too numerous to identify here, and an overview in the book’s preface can be located in Elgar’s open access “Look Inside” feature. The authors examine definitional debates, historical approaches, identity narratives, normative values, policy issues, research trends, the meaning of soft power, digital cultural relations, critical theory, cosmopolitan constructivism, and more. Case studies that include sports diplomacy, museum diplomacy, popular culture, music, art, and the trajectories of cultural diplomacy in Japan, Turkey, China, Russia’s cultural institutes, the British Council, and the EU’s National Institutes of Culture illuminate the chapters. 

Although the collection is far from comprehensive, as the editors are quick to acknowledge, it is an exceptionally useful framing of ideas, instruments, institutions, and strategies in today’s geopolitical and technological environment. Researchers and practitioners will have much to build on as they explore cultural domains that have endured throughout human history, that are notoriously hard to define, that are context dependent, that are hard to evaluate, and that can reinforce negative perceptions and stereotypes as well as trust and mutual understanding. 

Recent Items of Interest

“AFSA Achievement and Contributions to the Association Award: Vivian S. Walker,”  January/February 2026, The Foreign Service Journal.

Anne Applebaum, “The Beacon of Democracy Goes Dark,”  October 14, 2025, The Atlantic.

Matt Armstrong, “‘Cognitive Warfare’ Fails the Cognitive Test,”  November 17, 2025, Arming for the War We’re In.

J. Brian Atwood and Andrew Natsios, “What Americans Lost in the Dismantling of USAID,”  January 8, 2026, The Hill.

Robert F. Cekkuta and Eric Rubin, “The Mass Recall of Experienced U.S. Ambassadors Endangers American Security,”  December 28, 2025, The Steady State Substack.

John Fer, “Measuring and Mitigating Cognitive Dissonance in Public Diplomacy,”  January/February 2026, The Foreign Service Journal

Thomas L. Friedman, “Welcome to Our New Era. What Do We Call It?”  November 16, 2025, The New York Times.

Barry Fulton, “Looking Back and Struggling Forward,”  December 23, 2025, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, GWU.

“Jim Goldgeier Elected President of International Studies Association,”  December 12, 2025, American University.

Paul Hare, “The Peacemaker President and U.S. Public Diplomacy: How Trump Could Reshape the U.S. Peace Corps,”  December 17, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

“How the Exasperating, Indispensable BBC Must Change,”  November 12, 2025, The Economist. 

Nate Jones, “State Department Erases 15 Pages of Nuclear History [Foreign Relations of the United States] — With No Warning,”  November 13, 2025, The Washington Post.

James Ketterer (Bard College) and Kevin Maloney (Carnegie Council on International Ethics), interviewed by Nick Cull, “Values-Based Narratives in U.S. Foreign Policy,” transcript and YouTube video, January 5, 2026, Public Diplomacy Council of America. 

Steven Levitsky, Lucan A. Way, and Daniel Ziblatt, “The Price of American Authoritarianism: What Can Reverse Democratic Decline?”  January/February 2026, Foreign Affairs.

Ilan Manor, “AI Companions: The New Frontier of Disinformation,”  November 25, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Sandra Montoya, “Disruptive Cultural Diplomacy: A Transformative Tool for Peacebuilding,”  January 8, 2026, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Yelena Osipova-Stocker, “Russia’s Investment in Dual Track International Engagement: Sharp Power and Public Diplomacy,”  December 9, 2025, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, GWU,

Ben O’Loughlin, “The Future of Soft Power and Strategic Narratives,”  November 24, 2025, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, GWU.

Maria Repnikova, “The New Soft-Power Imbalance: China’s Cautious Response to America’s Retreat,”  November 20, 2025, Foreign Affairs.

Neal Rosendorf, “A Post-Trump Domestic Policy Roadmap to Restore U.S. Soft Power,”  December 15, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Thomas Scherer, “How to Predict the Future in Foreign Policy,”  November 25, 2025, fp21.

Efe Seven, “The Last Three Feet: An Idea Ever Popular,”  December 16, 2025, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, GWU.

Amro Shubair, “Smart Power: A Framework for Influence,”  January 2, 2026, “Pressure Without Consent,”  November 20, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Zachary Small, “Alma Allen, American Sculptor, Is Selected for Venice Biennale,”  November 24, 2025, The New York Times.

Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, “Exposure Therapy: The Case for a Domestic Exchange [Fulbright] Program,”  November 25, 2025, Commonweal.

Adam Taylor and Hannah Natanson, “Under Trump, U.S. Human Rights Reports Will Flag Abortion, Gender Care,”  November 20, 2025, The Washington Post. | Daphne Psaledakis and Simon Lewis, “New US Rules Say Countries with DEI Policies Are Infringing Human Rights,”  November 21, 2025, Reuters.

Eriks Varpahovskis, “The Role of Piracy in Cultural Diplomacy,”  January 2, 2026, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Bill Wanlund, “Of Values and Narratives,”  January 2026, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Gem from the Past

Geoffrey Wiseman, ed., Isolate or Engage: Adversarial States, US Foreign Policy, and Public Diplomacy,  (Stanford University Press, 2015). Ten years ago, Geoffrey Wiseman (DePaul University) compiled nine case studies that examined how (and how effectively) the United States seeks to engage the people in adversarial states when it also seeks to isolate their governments through the absence or limited presence of diplomatic relations and other means. Public diplomacy methods used to influence publics — with the intent they will constrain or change their government’s behavior — include international broadcasting, track two diplomacy, and cultural and educational exchanges. Cases and contributors include USSR/Russia (Robert D. English), China (Robert S. Ross), North Korea (Scott Snyder), Vietnam (Mark Philip Bradley and Viet Thanh Nguyen), Libya (Dirk J. Vandewalle), Iran (Suzanne Maloney), Syria (William Rugh), Cuba (William Leogrande), and Venezuela (Michael Shifter). Patterns of behavior, key questions, and lessons discussed in the cases have relevance in extended adversarial relations that in many instances continue today. A central theme of the study is that while public diplomacy in adversarial relations can project national interests and national identity, it can also have a mirror effect in reshaping American identity and culture. Wiseman and most contributors are skeptical of the isolationist approach and question the wisdom of “carrying out official, state-based public diplomacy while refusing to have formal diplomatic ties with such states.” At this writing, the Venezuela case is particularly relevant. 

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 of America, and Len Baldyga’s email listserv.

November 17, 2025

Intended for teachers of diplomacy and related courses, and for diplomacy practitioners, 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

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

eBook text and paperback here.                              Kindle and paperback here.   

Practitioners, scholars, and journalists continue to create an abundance of content on the dismantling of US diplomacy and the Trump administration’s adverse actions directed at individuals, instruments, and institutions. This list begins again with selected items available on the date of publication.

US State Department

“Service Disrupted: Views from the Field,”  November/December 2025, Foreign Service Journal.

“AFSA Responds to State Department’s Misleading Foreign Service Application Figures,”  October 24, 2025, American Foreign Service Association.

“AFSA Statement on Impacts of Shutdown on Work of American Diplomacy,”  October 17, 2025. | Sharon L. Papp, “Urgent Message from AFSA’s General Counsel” Your Rights Are at Risk,” October 2025, American Foreign Service Association.

Nahal Toosi, “Trump is Breaking US Diplomacy, State Department Staffers Say,”  September 21, 2025, Politico

International Exchanges

Michael McCarry, “Ben Franklin Fellowship Critique of BridgeUSA,”  October 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Bethany Allen and Jenny Wong Leung, “Trump’s Crackdown on Chinese Students Ignores a Startling New Reality,”  October 19, 2025, The New York Times.

Aatish Bhatia and Amy Fan, “Nearly 20 Percent Fewer International Students Traveled to the U.S. in August,”  October 6, 2025, The New York Times.

US Agency for Global Media

Ryan Knappenberger, “Trump Blocked From Gutting Voice of America Collective Bargaining Rights,” November 14, 2025, Courthouse News Service. |“AFSCME and AFGE Win Major Victory Against Trump Administration’s Efforts to Silence Voice of America Workers,”  November 14, 2025, AFSCME.

[Liquidation of international production, broadcast, and headquarters equipment],  November 2025, Rasmus Auctions.

Ja’han Jones, “Kari Lake Gives Viktor Orban a Major Gift Ahead of Trump Meeting,”  November 6, 2025, MSNBC.

Minho Kim, “Radio Free Asia Will Halt News Operations Amid Shutdown,”  October 29, 2925, The New York Times. | Scott Nover, “Radio Free Asia Will Stop Publishing Amid Funding Crisis Spurred by Trump,” October 29, 2025, The Washington Post.

Minho Kim, “Under Trump, Voice of America is Down, Not Out,” October 26, 2025, The New York Times.

Timothy Noah, “The New Deal Masterpieces Threatened By Trump’s D.C. Downsizing [Part 1],”  September 30, 2025. | “There Was a Plan to Save These New Deal Masterpieces. Then Trump Won,”  October 3, 2025, The New Republic.

Minho Kim, “Voice of America Stops All Broadcasting After Government Shuts Down,”  October 1, 2025, The New York Times.

“Memorandum Order,” Widkuswara v. Lake; Abramowitz v. Lake, September 29, 2025, US District Court for the District of Columbia.

US Foreign Assistance

Zach Montague, “The Monthslong Legal Battle to Save Foreign Aid,”  November 3, 2025, The New York Times.

Corneliu Bjola and Alicia Fjällhed, “Public Diplomacy in the Crossfire: Decoding Ukraine’s ‘Strategic Self’ During Wartime,”  International Affairs, published online October 20, 2025. Bjola (Oxford University) and Fjällhed (Lund University) explore the meaning of public diplomacy (PD) in wartime using Ukraine’s response to Russia’s invasion as a case study. They make two claims. First, in hostile geopolitical contexts PD actors construct both a “Strategic Self” — understood as a “Projecting Self” that emphasizes values and resilience — and a “Distancing Self” that frames an adversary’s aggression and destabilizing actions. Balancing their interplay in strategic narratives is essential to credible and effective public diplomacy at home and abroad. Second, the authors argue that in wartime PD actors adopt forms of “othering,” meaning initiatives that widen rather than narrow political and cultural space between countries. Othering can have positive and negative characteristics. They support their conceptual arguments with a qualitative content analysis of the Twitter/X activities of ten Ukrainian governmental and non-governmental during three phases of the war. The article includes a literature review of PD during wartime, examination of the concepts of “othering” and identity, and discussion of the “Strategic Self” concept in public diplomacy. Well-constructed graphics help explain their research design and methodology. 

Bjola and Fjällhed frame three findings in their conclusion. (1) “Othering” in wartime is both relational and adversarial. (2) PD in wartime need not lose credibility and become propaganda. (3) Balance and adaptability in PD are critically important in rapidly changing conflict dynamics. Scholars will find numerous ideas for further research in this thoughtful study. Testing its assumptions in the context of different digital platforms and other wars — and in gray zone conflicts and situations of non-hostile competition between war and peace. Development of the “Strategic Self” concept in the context of contemporary discourse on soft power and reputational security. And the concept’s relevance to the PD activities of government and non-government military and intelligence organizations.

Alice Ciulla, “Spreading Anti-Communism Among Elites? Public Diplomacy, Transnational Intellectual Exchange, and the Journal Problems of Communism,” European Journal of American Studies, 20(2), Summer 2025. Ciulla (Roma Tre University, Italy) examines the rise and historic significance of Problems of Communism, a journal of analysis and ideas published by the US Information Agency (USIA) throughout the Cold War and subsequently by the publisher Taylor & Francis as Problems of Post-Communism. Her deeply researched study places Problems of Communism in the context of US public diplomacy and Cold War ideological conflicts. It discusses the influence of the journal’s founding and longest serving editor, Abraham Brumberg, and its content, editorial trajectory, and contributors, many of whom were world-renowned scholars, emigres, and journalists. Ciulla compares the journal with other USIA publications and analyzes its impact on détente and adaptation in the post-Cold War context. Problems of Communism was “intellectually credible, ideologically engaged, yet editorially autonomous,” she argues, an effective hybrid form of public diplomacy. Founded at the height of McCarthyism, it stood apart as an informed critical analysis of communism by intellectuals in the liberal tradition. 

Henry E. Hale and Ridvan Peshkopia, “Public Diplomacy—Dissonant Events and Country Favorability: Effects of Trump’s Election in the Balkans,”  Foreign Policy Analysis, Vol. 21, Issue 4, October 2025.Hale (George Washington University) and Peshkopia (University for Business and Technology, Kosovë) develop a theoretical claim that events dissonant with a country’s longstanding public diplomacy can weaken its reputation in countries where its public diplomacy resonates strongly — and can strengthen its reputation where this resonance is weak or negative. Their article discusses the impact of Donald Trump’s election in 2016 on US favorability in three case studies. In pro-American Albania and among Albanians in Kosovo, Trump’s election had a substantial negative impact on American favorability. Among Russia-oriented Serbs in Serbia and Kosovo, Trump’s election enhanced America’s reputation. The authors argue their article casts new light on sources of country reputation and soft power, and the challenges democratic countries face when dissonant events in their democratic politics undercut traditional efforts to strengthen soft power through democratic reputation. The authors discuss their research methodology, its limitations, and special circumstances in the three case studies.

Robert Kelley, “Outsiders Running Amok: Disruption, Dissent, and Diplomatic Representation” in Anna Popkova, (ed), Disruption and Dissent in Public Diplomacy, pp. 39-55, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), [see below]. Eleven years ago, Kelley (American University) wrote convincingly about new ways to understand diplomacy’s actors, actions, and institutions in Agency Change: Diplomatic Action Beyond the State. This chapter builds on some of his earlier ideas. He opens with a discussion of conceptual and territorial boundaries — writing as a boundary skeptic who nevertheless understands the problems of boundary obliteration. He then offers thoughts on the meanings of “sustaining” and “disruptive” innovation in communication technologies and diplomatic space, rebels and dissenters as diplomatic actors, what he calls “the slippery concept of representation,” and reflections on the work of diplomacy scholar Paul Sharp, his views on representation, and his revised thinking a quarter century ago about citizens as diplomatic actors (“Making Sense of Citizen Diplomats: The People of Duluth, Minnesota, as International Actors.” [See Gem from the Past below.] Kelley’s chapter contains much to ponder, debate, and learn from.

Michael McFaul, Autocrats vs Democrats: China, Russia, America and the New Global Disorder, (Mariner Books, 2025). McFaul (Stanford University, media commentator, democratizer, former US ambassador to Russia) has written a deeply researched account of contemporary geopolitics through the optics of Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, and Trump’s United States. Three questions frame his narrative. How did we transition from post-Cold War enthusiasm for democracy and globalization to an era of trending illiberalism internationally and autocracy at home? How should we understand today’s great power competition? And what new policies should be adopted? McFaul’s clear prose and measured assertions are grounded in an overview of several centuries of US-Russia and US-China relations. Chapters provide data-based assessments of great power competition (current as of April 2025) using categories of military, political, and economic power; ideology and soft power; and competing visions of global order. McFaul provides plenty of content on US public diplomacy’s tools, methods, and institutions: the rise and demise of democratization since the 1980s; Fulbright scholarships and other exchanges; and Trump’s destruction of US government media services and State Department programs. He also discusses the tools and methods of “global Putinism” and “Chinese instruments of ideological export.” McFaul concludes with a detailed policy agenda, reform proposals for institutions and future American leaders, and reflections on recovering from polarization and autocracy at home. His informed and provocative recommendations for US government media services and advancing democracy abroad will animate seminars, think tank forums, and the planning of reform minded practitioners.

Jan Melissen, HwaJung Kim, and Githma Chandrasekara, eds., Home Engagement in Diplomacy: Global Affairs and Domestic Publics, (Brill | Nijhoff, 2025). The innovative and wide-ranging chapters in this volume, edited by Melissen (Leiden University), Kim (Ewha Womans University), and Chandrasekara (independent researcher, Sri Lanka), are a significant contribution to the literature on diplomacy’s domestic dimension. A term understood by the editors to include mutual engagement between diplomats and domestic publics, the agency of citizens as stakeholders in foreign policy, diplomacy as a process co-constituted by societal actors, and the centrality of state-society interactions in addressing global problems. Their lead chapter examines “theories, concepts, and blind spots” in IR, foreign policy analysis, and diplomacy studies. It explores diplomacy’s growing societization and domestic engagement. Other conceptual frames include domestic publics in diplomacy, evolving relations between diplomacy and democracy, participatory governance in diplomacy, and people’s agency and identity in the digital age. Home Engagement in Diplomacy makes a persuasive case for a trending diplomacy research agenda focused on state-society interactions, diplomacy’s engagement with domestic publics, and disciplines in the social sciences beyond traditional IR and communications disciplines. 

Jan Melissen, HwaJung Kim, and Githma Chandrasekara, “Introduction.” 

Jan Melissen and Githma Chandrasekara, “Theorizing and Debating the Domestic Deficit in IR and Diplomatic Studies.”

César Jiménez-Martínez (London School of Economics and Political Science), “Citizens as Problems or Resources: Power, Diplomacy, and the Contested Voices of the Nation.”

Christian Opitz (Helmut Schmidt University), Hanna Pfeifer (University of Hamburg), and Anna Geis (Helmut Schmidt University), “The Evolution of Domestic Public Diplomacy in Germany: Engaging the ‘Public’ at Home on Foreign and Security Policy Since 1990.”

Christian Lequesne (Sciences Po), “Home Diplomacy Across Borders: Consular and Diaspora Diplomacy in France.” 

Toshiya Takahashi (Shoin University, Japan), “Social Legitimacy, State-Society Relations and Non-State Actor Diplomacy in Japan.”

Yun Zhang, (Nanjing University), “Internal Societization of Diplomacy: The Disintegration of State-Society Relations and Its Moderating Effects on Japanese Diplomacy Toward China.”

HwaJung Kim, “Diplomacy and People: Contrasting Cases of the Two Koreas’ People-Empowerment Approaches to Diplomacy.” 

Geoffrey Wiseman and Allison Scott (Depaul University), “Engaging Citizens in a Polarized Society: The Choices for US Diplomacy.”

Anna Popkova (Western Michigan University), “United States Citizen Diplomacy and the Domestic Publics Navigating the Contested Terrain of Diversity, Inclusion, and Representation in State-Supported Programs.” 

Scott Michael Harrison (Simon Fraser University) and Quinton Huang (University of British Columbia), “Democratic Middle Grounds: Theorizing and Expanding the Role of Domestic Societies in Paradiplomatic Relations.”

Štěpánka Zemanová (Prague University of Economics and Business), “The Benefits and Pitfalls of Engaging Youth in Diplomatic Affairs: A Case Study of the Junior Diplomatic Initiative.”

Andrew F. Cooper (University of Waterloo), “Concluding Reflections.” 

Anna Popkova, ed., Disruption and Dissent in Public Diplomacy, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). In this timely and original book, Popkova (Western Michigan University) invited accomplished scholars to examine the public diplomacy of an under-studied category of non-state diplomatic actors — diaspora groups, governments in exile, and others engaged in dissent and disruption. The book is grounded in three assumptions. First, although states possess significant power and authority, their claims of political legitimacy and representation are frequently challenged by non-state actors. These actors engage directly with publics and exercise public diplomacy capabilities that can matter as much or more than status. Second, disruption and dissent occur when groups believe the state does not represent, or misrepresents, their interests. In using diplomatic capabilities, and sometimes claiming representation, these nonstate actors can achieve political goals. Third, disruption and dissent — often perceived by states as negative when they occur within the state — can be a creative means to achieve advocacy and dialogue. Popkova does not treat disruption and dissent as inherently positive. But “they can be sources of diplomacy not “anti-diplomacy” by challenging the state abroad and engaging in construction of narratives at home. Disruption that interrupts a monologue, she argues, often helps to create a dialogue and mediate estranged relations. Her book is the latest in the Palgrave Macmillan Global Public Diplomacy Series, edited by founding co-editor Kathy R. Fitzpatrick (University of South Florida) and Series co-editor Vivian S. Walker (Georgetown University). Chapters include:

Anna Popkova, “Introduction.”

Ilan Manor (Ben Gurion University of the Negev), “Disruption in Public Diplomacy: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Term.”

Robert Kelley (American University), “Outsiders Running Amok: Disruption, Dissent, and Diplomatic Representation.”

Nicholas J. Cull (University of Southern California), “Reputational Insecurity and Breaking Apartheid: Non-governmental Networks of Disruption and Dissent and the Case of South Africa.” 

Colin R. Alexander (Nottingham Trent University, UK), “Ethical Public Diplomacy? Dissent as Collective Momentum or Collective Consciousness.”

Anna Popkova, “Dissent Beyond Borders: The Russian Opposition, Boris Nemtsov Plaza, and the Public Diplomacy of Transnational Advocacy.” 

Aliaksei Kazharski (Charles University, Prague), Katsiaryna Lozka (Egmont Institute, Brussels), and Alesia Rudnik (Center for New Ideas, Warsaw). “Belarus’ Pro-Democracy Movement as a Public Diplomacy Actor: Identities and International Engagement.”

Nur Uysal (Depaul University), “Diaspora Publics as Disruptive Non-State Actors: The Case of the Kurdish Diaspora.”

Sara Shaban (University of Washington) and Anna Popkova, “Diaspora Positionality and Contested Diplomatic Representation: Iran’s Opposition Coalition and Woman, Life, Freedom Movement.”

Vanessa Bravo (Elon University), “When Migrants Oppose Other Migrant-Sending Countries’ Policies: Fighting Countries Who Are Supposed to Be Your Friends”

Tania Gómez -Zapata (Universidad de las Américas Puebla, Mexico), “Disapora Protests Abroad and Their Effect on Diplomatic Endeavors: The Ayotzinapa Case and ‘The Year of Mexico in the United Kingdom.’”

Anna Popkova, “Conclusions.”

Neal Rosendorf, “Only American Voters Can Reinvigorate U.S. Soft Power: A Rumination After Joe Nye’s Memorial Service,”  October 10, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy. Rosendorf, a former IR professor at New Mexico State University and a research assistant to the late Harvard University professor Joseph Nye, reflects on his human qualities, his monumentally influential scholarship on the nature of power, and his insights into the consequences of Donald Trump’s dismantling of American soft power. Rosendorf summarizes Nye’s public comments on the damage done by Trump’s policies and actions, which he made until just days before his death in May 2025. His blog points to the relative ease and speed with which soft power can be lost — and the difficulties that must be overcome for soft power to be regained. Nye understood the stakes, for the interests of the United States and others, in rebuilding soft power. Rosendorf argues “America’s reputation has indeed been ruined,” and that American voters hold the key to reestablishing American soft power. In Nye’s absence, he urges, it is time for “academics, influencers, policy makers, and politicians . . . to get to work.”

“Michael Schneider Oral History,” 2025, Interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy, 2015, Foreign Affairs Oral History Program, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Arlington VA, ADST.org. In a lifetime devoted to public service and education, Mike Schneider’s career has spanned Foreign Service and Senior Executive Service assignments, senior leadership positions in the US Information Agency and State Department, many years teaching and advising students as head of Syracuse University’s Washington Program, and leadership in the Public Diplomacy Council of America and its predecessor organizations. His recently released 121-page oral history is filled with insights and first-hand information on US public diplomacy from the 1960s to the present. For scholars it is a rich addition to the literature on American diplomacy’s public dimension. For practitioners and others, it is a map of the past that contextualizes pathways forward in diplomacy and foreign relations.

Stephanie Christine Winkler, “‘Conceptual Entrapment,’: Understanding the Researcher-concept Relationship in Critical International Relations and Beyond.”  European Journal of International Relations, Published online August 11, 2025. In this original and analytically penetrating article, Winkler (University of Stockholm and Goethe University Frankfurt) achieves several goals. First, she develops the idea of “conceptual entrapment” — “the complex and often constraining relationship between researchers and the concepts they engage” — as an under-studied element in Critical IR and the emerging field of Critical Concept Studies. She finds positive and negative elements in what on first impression sems an invidious term. Second, she introduces “autoethnography” as a method to illuminate complex and reflexive dynamics in researcher-concept relationships. Researchers, she argues, are not just external concept observers, but often they become “entangled” with concepts as theorists, critics, practitioners, and at times “concept entrepreneurs.” Meaning they “become enmeshed in the conceptual politics they seek to critique.” Third, she provides a compelling example of her arguments through an autoethnographic narrative of her research on soft power. A project that took her to fascination, skepticism, ambivalence, struggles with maintaining critical distance, experiences with soft power entrepreneurs, and a surprise email from Joseph Nye. He sent a positive review of her work that led her to reassess whether she had been sufficiently critical or become “too close to the soft power establishment I intended to critique.”

Winkler’s article, directly and by implication, raises interesting issues in the ethics and methods of critical scholarship. Does autoethnography produce criteria sufficient to achieve a higher standard of critical distance, more questions with elusive answers, or both, as she seems to suggest in her reflections on Nye’s email? Is critical distance more a journey than a destination? Is critical distance an unalloyed good, or are there research problems that benefit from critical proximity (e.g. democracy studies, diplomacy studies)? How does the reflexive researcher / concept connection alter the subject and object. That is, do the processes of observing and selecting lead to distortions in concepts and what is observed? Can researchers ever escape subjective influences or assumptions about human nature, norms, and the meaning of politics and society? Diplomacy scholars, practitioners, and those who travel between these domains will find Winkler’s article a significant contribution to the literature. (Article suggested by Geoffrey Wiseman)

Geoffrey Wiseman and Allison Scott, “Engaging Citizens in a Polarized Society: The Choices for US Diplomacy,” in Jan Melissen, HwaJung Kim, and Githma Chandrasekara, eds., pp. 211-249, Home Engagement in Diplomacy: Global Affairs and Domestic Publics, (Brill | Nijhoff, 2025), [see above]. Media voices and practitioners dominate the literature on US diplomatic practice in the era of Donald Trump. This makes the insights of diplomacy scholars Wiseman and Scott (DePaul University) especially welcome. Their chapter is a conceptually grounded comparison of US diplomacy during the first “populist” Trump administration (2017-2021) and the “conventional” Joseph Biden administration (2021-2025) — with a focus on diplomacy’s domestic dimension and whether American diplomats ameliorate or contribute to domestic political alienation and social polarization. It opens with a clear literature-based statement of their theoretical assumptions and definitions of politicization, populism, and polarization. Their empirical research includes reviews of the American Foreign Service Association’s website, issues of the Foreign Service Journal, writings of former diplomats, and academic and policy-related publications. The chapter explores “illiberal populist capture,” Trump’s politicization and sidelining of the State Department, and strategies of serving and retired US diplomats to resist political capture. It then examines Biden’s and Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s efforts to reclaim State’s professional role, focus more on diplomacy at home, adoption of diversity and inclusion principles, and restore “liberal internationalist engagement.”

Among their conclusions: (1) Trump’s politicization created a sense of urgency among US diplomats to strengthen home engagement competencies; (2) commitment to DEI principles is a test of any US administration’s domestic engagement as “whole of society” or “select-sectors-of-society;” (3) Biden and Blinken’s laudable objectives were perhaps weighted toward already well-disposed sectors of society and could not bridge the gap with rural America, and (4) US diplomats need to find more effective ways to manage populist capture and engage with American society. This timely chapter foregrounds issues in the second Trump administration and opportunities for further research.

Recent Items of Interest

S. Altay, S. Valenzuela, and P. N. Howard (eds.), “Trends in the Information Environment: 2025 Expert Survey Results,”  October 2025, International Panel on the Information Environment.

Anne Applebaum, “The Beacon of Democracy Goes Dark,”  October 14, 2025, The Atlantic.

Matt Armstrong, “Forgotten History of the Wilbur J. Cohen [Voice of America] Building,” October 16, 2025, Substack. 

Joseph Copeland and Jocelyn Kiley, “Americans Say Politically Motivated Violence is Increasing, and They See Many Reasons Why,”  October 23, 2025, Pew Research Center.

Shawn Dorman, ed., “In Their Own Write,”  November/December 2025, Foreign Service Journal.

Bruce Gregory, “Reflections on IPDGC’s Origins, Vision, and Future,”  November, 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Peter High, “The State Department’s CIO on Aiding Diplomacy By Modernizing Using AI,” October 14, 2025. Forbes.

Katherine Knott, “U.S. Continues to Drop in The World University Rankings,”  October 9, 2025, Inside Higher Ed.

Julie Moyes, “The Soft Power of Historical Connections,”  November 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Suzanne Nossel, “We’ve Forgotten What Soft Power Is,”  October 28, 2025, Foreign Policy.

Rick Ruth, “The High Ground of Soft Power,”  November, 2025. Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Amro Shubair, “Where Did Diplomacy Go?”  October 15, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Karl Stoltz, “Democracy Dies in Discordance,”  September 25, 2025, deft9 Solutions.

Mark Taplin, “25 Year Anniversary Special Blog Series: A Flagrant Act of Cultural Diplomacy,”  November 2025, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication.

Karen Walker, “Life After State: Employment Opportunities in Academe,”  November 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Lamia Zia, “YouTube As A Tool of Soft Power in the Digital Age,”  November 13, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Gem from the Past 

Paul Sharp, “Making Sense of Citizen Diplomats: The People of Duluth, Minnesota, as International Actors,”  International Studies Perspectives, Vol. 2, No. 2, May 2001, pp 131-150. Robert Kelley’s chapter in Anna Popkova’s edited collection [see above] prompts this note on Paul Sharp’s (University of Minnesota, Duluth) prescient article a quarter century ago. His considered analysis of citizen diplomacy, a term long used by practitioners in people-to-people exchanges, prompts reflections on its value in today’s diplomacy landscape. In part one Sharp explained why he changed his views from thinking citizen diplomacy unimportant to an evidence-based assessment of its meaning and value. In part two he offered a typology of citizen diplomats and assessments of what professional practitioners might say to them. The full scope of his reasoning cannot be summarized here. Almost every paragraph prompts reflection on his arguments in the context of current issues in academic research and diplomatic practice. His article is well worth reading today as the scholarly literature focuses increasingly on diplomacy’s “societization” and “home engagement,” “boundary spanners of humanity,” and diplomacy’s “public dimension.” 

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 of America, and Len Baldyga’s email listserv.