rocios – The Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication

November 15, 2024November 15, 2024

Visiting Scholar Welcome Lunch

Global Communication MA Welcome Dinner

November 15, 2024November 15, 2024

Preventing Election Violence Using Media and Technology Panel Discussion

On November 1st, 2024, the IPDGC hosted a panel where experts shared their international experience on preventing election violence using media, communications, and technology. Panelists were:

Vasu Mohan, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems’ Senior Advisor for Conflict and Displacement
Susan Benesch, the Founder and Director of the Dangerous Speech Project
Theo Dolan, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Digital Technology and Civic Activism Advisor

Read about this event here.

November 14, 2024November 14, 2024

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.

Issue #125

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 can be reached at BGregory@gwu.edu and BGregory1@aol.com

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

Get the eBook text and paperback here.

Get Kindle and paperback here.

Sherwood Demitz, “Memories From a Cold War Summit,” American Diplomacy, August 2024. In this vivid personal recollection, retired US Foreign Service officer Sherwood “Woody” Demitz discusses his memories of the historic 1972 Nixon-Brezhnev presidential summit in Moscow. It led to détente and signings of the SALT I Treaty, the ABM Treaty, and the US-USSR Incidents at Sea Treaty. Surrounding the substance were pressures on diplomats of a possible last-minute cancellation (the US had dropped aerial mines in North Vietnam’s Haiphong harbor trapping Soviet cargo ships), massive international media coverage, and a dinner for Brezhnev and the Politburo at Spaso House, the residence of the US ambassador. Demitz’s public diplomacy career combined foreign service postings, audience and media research, and international broadcasting.

Mervyn Frost, “The Global Diplomatic Practice: Constituting an Ethical World Order,” in J.E. Spence, Claire Yorke, and Alister Masser, eds., A New Theory and Practice of Diplomacy: New Perspectives on Diplomacy, (I.B. Taurus, 2021), 15-36 [see book review below]. Frost (Kings College London) makes interesting and debatable claims pertinent to discourse on practice theory, ethics and diplomacy, and public diplomacy. First, in contrast to many scholars who treat practice theory as what practitioners do instrumentally and situationally, Frost analyzes diplomatic practices as constitutive components of “the global society of sovereign states” and “global civil society.” Second, it follows, he argues, that in a world of diverse ethical codes, ethical standards for diplomats cannot be drawn from beyond diplomacy. Rather, they “can only be understood from within the social practices in which they are constituted as actors.” He divides everyday global diplomatic practices into “administration” (e.g., issuing passports, facilitating trade, and managing exchanges) and “politics” resolving disputes between states “about the rules of association within the global practice of states” (e.g., about claims to territory, reparations after wars, and constitutional issues in international organizations). Third, Frost contends these practices have become more complex due to media and communication forms open to publics and the “extensive strategic communications” of government leaders, which he states is sometimes “misleadingly referred to as ‘public diplomacy.’” A more accurate term, he argues, is simply “international politics” or the struggle for power and material advantage.

Frost’s chapter is useful because it prompts reflection on salient issues in practice theory and ethics in diplomacy. However, it is problematic in its assumption of a hard binary between the society of sovereign states and a “macro practice” of anarchy in the absence of central government — a category distinction that overlooks a vast domain of governance rules, norms, and institutions in the space between anarchy and government. His offhand dismissal of public diplomacy fails to consider that in essence it is a political instrument central to diplomatic practice and relationships between government and governance actors and their publics. For an insightful review of the book and Frost’s chapter, see Kristin Anabel Eggling, “Review Feature: New Perspectives on Diplomacy,” E-International Relations, July 9, 2022.

Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, (Random House, 2024). In this sweeping new book, Harari (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind) challenges what he calls the “naive view” of information. By this he means the idea that information’s primary role in history is to represent a preexisting reality, that sufficient information can lead to truth, which in turn can lead to power and wisdom, and that good information will drive out bad information in the marketplace of ideas. For Harari, most information does not represent reality, although sometimes it does. Rather, because information always connects different points in a network, our starting point should be how information connects people and new networks over time. Part one of the book discusses ways humans invented information technologies that improved connectivity — shared stories, clay tablets, print, mass media. Chapters explore how information networks have been used to create myths and bureaucracies, authoritarian and democratic power structures, resurgent populism, fantasies of infallibility, and self-correcting mechanisms.

With part one as an essential historical perspective, part two interrogates AI — a fundamentally different technology that does not rely on human mythmakers and human bureaucracies to function. What happens when computers with autonomous agency run bureaucracies and invent new myths? How should we distinguish between consciousness and independent decision-making capabilities? What are the implications of computer-to-computer information chains without humans, relentless networks that are always “on,” and computer-generated narratives that a computer’s algorithms alone curate and interpret? What do these inorganic information capabilities mean for democracy, economic models, cultural norms, and instruments of governance and political power? Harari is not a technology determinist; we have choices. In part three he explores the implications of unfathomable AI algorithms for democracy, populism, and authoritarianism, possible “digital empires,” and the heavy responsibility of making good choices and building strong self-correcting capabilities. Harari earned his global reputation by making powerful arguments through impressive storytelling, humor, and conceptual clarity. Some reviewers, including technology experts and scholars bent on writing for other specialists, are critical of Harari’s account. But there is broad reader and reviewer enthusiasm for his creative bridging of scholarship and public discussion of one of the most important issues of our time. His book is a compelling read for teachers and students of diplomacy’s public dimension.

Stuart MacDonald and Andrew Murray, Soft Power at a Turning Point: A Comparative Analysis, 2024, British Council. In this 50-page report, commissioned from ICR Research Ltd, London, the authors compare the “cultural diplomacy and public diplomacy” activities of the British Council and counterpart organizations. Key findings include the following. (1) Countries are focusing soft power assets more on national interests and their foreign and economic policies than shared global challenges. (2) More programs are designed for domestic audiences. (3) Soft power is increasingly mobilized to promote national identities “sometimes assertively or controversially.” (4) More control is “exerted by governments over arm’s length bodies like the British Council.” The report, filled with instructive graphics, compares resources, “digital maturity,” and global reach. The authors recognize a variety of challenges in their comparative analysis: dissimilar connections between governments and civil society, differences in definitions of soft power, complexities in operationalizing digital and analog tools and methods, and structural contrasts between foreign affairs ministries and organizations comparable to the British Council. Despite these analytical concerns, the report is an instructive global overview and online resource for teachers and practitioners.

Jessica T. Mathews, “What Was the Biden Doctrine?” Foreign Affairs, September/October, 2024. The Carnegie Endowment’s Distinguished Fellow Jessica Mathews argues four years is insufficient time to establish a foreign policy doctrine. Nevertheless, Biden’s commitment to diplomacy backed by strength is an approach well-suited to today’s world if it is not overturned by a successor. Her article is a report card on Biden’s achievements and strategic mistakes. High grades: winning the trust of allies, institutionalizing a deep American presence in Asia, restoration of a US presence in multilateral organizations and agreements, ending the longest “forever war” in Afghanistan, and an innovative response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Low grades: undermining an ambiguous “one China” policy and escalating tensions over Taiwan, a stubborn unwillingness to use US leverage with Israel to reduce staggering levels of death and suffering in Gaza, trade protectionism, lack of sustained nuclear arms control and nonproliferation diplomacy, a Manichean division between autocracies and democracies, and an unproductive “Summit for Democracies.” Mathews makes no predictions in the face of historical uncertainties, but overall Biden has used diplomacy to bring about profound changes in foreign policy “not to accommodate American decline but to reflect the country’s inherent strength.”

Ahmed Nabil, “Contact Groups as Diplomatic Intervention Tools in Civil Wars: US Diplomacy,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Online publication July 25, 2024. Nabil (Wayne State University and a former diplomat) examines contact groups as a distinct mode of diplomatic intervention and engagement in conflicts. Contact groups are different from track one and track two negotiations, he argues, and they do not include parties to civil wars. Using qualitative methods, consisting primarily of unstructured and anonymous interviews with mid-career, senior, and former US officials who participated in conflict group meetings, his article examines case studies of contact groups in civil conflicts in Libya’s P3+3, the Syria Small Group, and the Yemen Quartet. His interview questions explored each groups’ formation, meeting dynamics, relations with UN processes, and effectiveness from the US perspective. Nabil concludes the three groups failed to achieve success in achieving a final settlement. Nevertheless, they served US interests. They were a forum for dialogue and advancing US policies. They were a means to build support for UN envoys in these conflicts. And they helped to achieve US interests such as guaranteeing Libyan oil exports and financial support to territories liberated from ISIL in Syria. Nabil also argues this mode of diplomacy can support engagement between stakeholders with different views of conflict and provide a useful supplement to other modes of multilateral diplomacy. His article is a good example of how analysis of practice can illuminate conceptual issues in diplomacy.

Jack Spence, Alastair Masser, and Claire Yorke, eds., New Perspectives on Diplomacy, A New Theory and Practice of Diplomacy, Volume 1, Contemporary Diplomacy in Action, Volume 2, (I.B. Tauris, 2021). Spence (Kings College London), Masser (Legatum Institute), and Yorke (Yale University) argue a seismic shift in world order and complex emerging challenges pose fundamental questions for the nature, practice, and study of diplomacy — fading American hegemony; rising multipolarity; geopolitical, technological, and demographic changes; and diminished distinctions between war and peace, state and non-state actors, formal and informal dialogue, and values and interests. Chapters in two volumes explore what these trends mean for continuity and change in the study and practice of diplomacy. Volume 1 includes chapters on diplomacy and ethics, identity, and empathy; relations between diplomacy and conflict resolution, small state politics, summitry, and intelligence; and the theoretical value of practice theory. Volume 2 includes chapters on diplomacy and social media, the environment, information war, domestic populations, emotions, and social movements. Diplomacy remains indispensable, the editors contend, and its “widening aperture” embraces more actors and more sub-disciplines. Central questions going forward: what skills and experiences will next generation diplomats need; how should we study and teach diplomacy; and how should we bridge the academic / practice divide? (Suggested by Kathy Fitzpatrick, University of South Florida)

Daya Kishan Thussu, Changing Geopolitics of Global Communication, (Routlege, 2024). Thussu (Hong Kong Baptist University and previously University of Westminster in London) examines issues at the intersection of geopolitics — shaped by decline in a US-led West, the rise of China, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and global communication — shaped by transformative digital technologies and the role of artificial intelligence in weaponizing information. Chapters explore the historical origins of the 21st century’s global information infrastructure, “digital democracy vs. digital imperialism,” how military conflict has been framed by Western media to advance geopolitical interests, weaponization of information in the Russia-Ukraine war, cyberwarfare, and emerging characteristics of a new global information order.

Kate Wright, Martin Scott, and Mel Bunce, Capturing News, Capturing Democracy: Trump and the Voice of America, (Oxford University Press, 2024). Efforts by government officials to politicize news coverage by the Voice of America (VOA) have been present from its creation. Senior VOA broadcasters were fired for their coverage of Italy’s King Victor Emanuel III in 1943. Senator Joseph McCarthy mounted vile attacks on VOA in the 1950s. The White House and senior USIA officials deleted content in VOA’s coverage of the US evacuation from Vietnam in 1975. The State Department tried to prevent VOA from airing an interview with Taliban leader Mullah Omar in 2001. Examples from a very long list. In this timely book, Wright (University of Edinburgh), Scott (University of East Anglia), and Bunce (University of London) take a deep dive into VOA’s politicization by US Agency for Global Media CEO Michael Pack during the last seven months of the Trump administration. Adopting the theoretical framework of “government capture” — understood as ways governments and civil society allies directly and indirectly politicize journalism in public service media — the authors discuss Pack’s actions in detail, their cumulative effect in undermining democratic checks and balances, and VOA’s vulnerabilities to future politicization.

The book brings needed scholarship to examination of historical, conceptual, and practitioner issues in government media. It is distinguished by its evidence-based research, much of it derived from Freedom of Information Act requests. It also serves as a needed reform primer for those seeking to strengthen VOA’s journalism firewall and address continuing risks of politicization. There is one significant weakness in their research. The authors did not seek to interview Pack, his appointees, and others on the questionable grounds that doing so risked disrupting the “delicate processes” of investigations that might result in criminal and civil lawsuits.

Irene Wu, Measuring Soft Power in International Relations, (Lynne Reiner Publishers, 2024). Irene Wu (Georgetown University, US Federal Communications Commission) takes a deep dive into the meaning and measurement of soft power. She argues soft power can be quantified in ways that make possible comparisons across societies and political entities and analyses across time. Her soft power rubric has three people-to-people interactions — emigration, studying abroad, and traveling abroad — and a fourth mediated interaction, watching foreign movies. These indicators are arranged on a spectrum spanning short- and long-term attraction. Part one of the book explores recent conceptual developments in soft power research and how ideas from related fields of study can provide tools to study soft power. Part two applies her conceptual framework to case studies: US movies and popular culture, international education hubs, India’s emigrants, Russia’s and China’s soft power compared, soft power in Southeast Asia, and the strengths and limitations of global soft power rankings.

Author: rocios

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