Author: shivamkotak

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Issue #82

Rosa Brooks, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon,(Simon & Schuster, 2016).  Rosa Brooks (Georgetown University, Foreign Policy) brings practical experience in the State and Defense Departments and the insights of a smart law professor to two central questions.  How should we understand blurred boundaries between war and peace, domestic and foreign, military and civilian in today’s gray zone conflicts?  What are political, legal, institutional, and operational consequences for practitioners?  Her central focus is on a US military asked to be everywhere and do everything.  But this book is just as important for diplomats.  In part because she deals creatively with problems of concern: e.g., cultural awareness, strategic communication, rule of law, training, interagency relations, organizational transformation, leveraging civil society actors.  Her views also matter at a more fundamental level.  When lines between diplomacy, development, and defense are uncertain, and if it’s a “dangerous delusion” to hope that Congress will fund civilians at levels needed to accomplish many new tasks given to the military, then what is to be done?  Brooks provides informed and imaginative ideas for thinking about answers.
Beatrice Camp, “Neglecting World’s Fairs Doesn’t Make Them Go Away, So Let’s Do It Right,” The Foreign Service Journal, September 2016, 20-23.  Retired US diplomat Camp discusses the benefits of participation in world’s fairs and the disadvantages of a State Department policy of “half-hearted and last minute” planning, minimal oversight, and insufficient resources.  Drawing on her experiences with China’s Shanghai Expo (2010) and Expo Milano (2015), Camp makes a case for avoiding another “too little, too late presence” at the Kazakhstan Expo (2017) and Dubai Expo (2020).  Among the benefits of world’s fairs: opportunities to connect governments and people, a relaxed setting for diplomacy, support for American companies abroad, promotion of innovation on global issues, engagement by multi-lingual student hosts at US pavilions, showcases for architecture and design, and strong private sector involvement in funding, creating, and managing the US presence.
Costas M. Constantinou, Pauline Kerr, and Paul Sharp, eds., The Sage Handbook of Diplomacy, (Sage Publications, 2016).  Occasionally an edited volume comes along that connects the ideas and questions of leading scholars with insights and suggested answers in ways that shine a bright light on changes in diplomacy theory and practice.  Such volumes contain breadth and depth.  They offer observable continuities with the past.  They constructively analyze trends and conceptual categories.  They reflect learning from diplomatic practice.  Their systematic reflections illuminate and re-conceptualize diplomacy. The Sage Handbook of Diplomacy does all this and more.  In their “collection of sustained reflections on what it means to practice diplomacy today,” Constantinou (University of Cyprus), Kerr (Australian National University) and Sharp (University of Minnesota Duluth) provide a significant contribution to a literature in which there are few comparable compilations on offer.  (Others are Pauline Kerr and Geoffrey Wiseman, eds., Diplomacy in a Globalizing World: Theories and Practices,(Oxford University Press, 2013); Andrew F. Cooper, Jorge Heine, and Ramesh Thakur, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).  The Sage Handbook is institutionally priced, but its 53 essays offer good value.  Thought provoking content.  Abundant references.  Blocks of summary key points throughout each chapter.  For universities and foreign ministries it is a must buy.  Scholars will find it worth the investment.  Includes:
— Costas M. Constantinou and Paul Sharp, “Theoretical Perspectives on Diplomacy”
— Halvard Leira (Norwegian Institute of International Affairs), “A Conceptual History of Diplomacy”
— Sam Okoth Opondo (Vassar College), “Diplomacy and the Colonial Encounter”
— Markus Kornprobst (Diplomatic Academy of Vienna), “Statecraft, Strategy and Diplomacy”
— Brian Hocking (Loughborough University), “Diplomacy and Foreign Policy”
— Christer Jonsson (Lund University), “Diplomacy, Communication and Signaling”
— Rebecca Adler-Nissen (University of Copenhagen), “Diplomatic Agency”
— Fiona McConnell (University of Oxford) and Jason Dittmer (University College London), “Diplomatic Culture”
— Iver Neumann (London School of Economics and Political Science), “Diplomacy and the Arts”
— Corneliu Bjola (University of Oxford), “Diplomatic Ethics”
— Noe Cornago (University of the Basque Country), “Diplomatic Knowledge”
— Kishan S. Rana (DiploFoundation, Malta and Geneva; Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi), “Embassies, Permanent Missions and Special Missions”
— Ana Mar Fernandez Pasarin (Autonomous University of Barcelona), “Consulates and Consular Diplomacy”
— Paul Sharp and Geoffrey Wiseman (University of Southern California), “The Diplomatic Corps”
— David Clinton (Baylor University), “Diplomacy and International Law”
— Linda S. Frey (University of Montana) and Marsha L. Frey (Kansas State University), “Diplomatic Immunity”
— I. William Zartman (School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University), “Diplomacy and Negotiation”
— Karin Aggestam (University of Queensland), “Diplomatic Mediation”
— David Hastings Dunn (University of Birmingham) and Richard Lock-Pullan (University of Birmingham), “Diplomatic Summitry”
— Donna Marie Oglesby (Eckerd College), “Diplomatic Language”
— Alan James (Keele University), “Diplomatic Relations Between States”
— Cornelia Navari (University of Buckingham), “Great Power Diplomacy”
— Yolanda Kemp Spies (University of Johannesburg), “Middle Power Diplomacy”
— Baldur Thorhallsson and Alyson J. K. Bailes (University of Iceland), “Small State Diplomacy”
— Michael Smith (University of Warwick), “European Union Diplomacy”
— Alan K. Henrikson (The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University), “American Diplomacy”
— Tatiana Zonova (Moscow State University of International Relations), “Russian Post-Soviet Diplomacy”
— Zhimin Chen (Fudan University), “China’s Diplomacy”
— Pauline Kerr, “Diplomacy of East Asia”
— Sean W. Burges (Australian National University) and Fabricio H. Chagas Bastos (Universidad de Los Andes, Bogata), “Latin American Diplomacy”
— Stephan Stetter (University of the Bundeswehr Munich), “Middle East Diplomacy”
— Asteris Huliaras (University of the Peloponnes, Greece) and Konstantinos Magliveras (University of the Aegean, Greece), “African Diplomacy”
— Stephen Chan (University of London), “Southern Africa Diplomacy”
— Stephen Calleya (University of Malta), “Developing States Diplomacy”
— Ellen Huijgh (Netherlands Institute of International Relations, ‘Clingendael;’ University of Antwerp), “Public Diplomacy”
— William Maley (Australian National University), “Quiet and Secret Diplomacy”
— Edward Avenell (University of Birmingham) and David Hastings Dunn (University of Birmingham), “Crisis Diplomacy”
— Peter Viggo Jakobsen (Royal Danish Defence College), “Coercive Diplomacy”
— David Armstrong (University of Exeter), “Revolutionary Diplomacy”
— Paul Meerts (Netherlands Institute of International Relations, ‘Clingendael’), “Conference Diplomacy”
— Michele Acuto (University College London), “City Diplomacy”
— Melissa Conley Tyler (Australian Institute of International Affairs) and Craig Beyerinck (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva), “Citizen Diplomacy”
— Mark Wheeler (London Metropolitan University), “Celebrity Diplomacy”
— Eytan Gilboa (Bar-Ilan University), “Digital Diplomacy”
— Maaike Okano-Heijmans (Netherlands Institute of International Relations, ‘Clingendael;’ University of Leiden), “Economic Diplomacy”
— Huub Ruel and Tim Wolters (Windesheim University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands), “Business Diplomacy”
— David Joseph Wellman (DePaul University), “Religion and Diplomacy”
— See Seng Tan (Nanyang Technological University), “Military Diplomacy”
— Saleem H. Ali (University of Queensland) and Helena Voinov Vladich (Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne, Switzerland), “Environmental Diplomacy”
— Stuart Murray (Bond University, Australia), “Sports Diplomacy”
— Daryl Copeland (Canadian Global Affairs Institute; University of Montreal), “Science Diplomacy”
— J. Marshall Beier (McMaster University), “Indigenous Diplomacy”
— Hussein Banai (Indiana University, Bloomington), “Pariah Diplomacy”
Scholars and practitioners who focus on diplomacy’s public dimension will find of particular interest essays by Hocking, Adler-Nissen, Neumann, Rana, Oglesby, Spies, Henrikson, Zonova, Chen, Kerr, Stetter, Huijgh, Acuto, Tyler and Beyerinck, Wheeler, Gilboa, Tan, Murray, and Copeland.
Eugenio Cusumano, “Diplomatic Security for Hire: The Causes and Implications of Outsourcing Embassy Protection,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, published online March 2016. Cusumano (Leiden University) “analyzes the scope, causes and implications of outsourcing diplomatic protection” to private security companies in the context of increased deployment of diplomats in fragile and post-conflict environments.  Cusumano looks particularly at the problems in the US State Department’s privatization of diplomacy and offers policy recommendations on “how to improve the effectiveness and accountability of privatized diplomatic protection.”
Douglas A. Johnson, Alberto Mora, and Averell Schmidt, “The Strategic Costs of Torture: How ‘Enhanced Interrogation’ Hurt America,” Foreign Affairs, September/October, 2016, 121-132.  The authors, all associated with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, examine ways in which torture “greatly damaged” US national security and adversely affected the promotion of democracy and human rights abroad.  Their article summarizes findings in a study by Carr Center researchers: US use of torture “incited extremism in the Middle East, hindered cooperation with U.S. allies, exposed American officials to legal repercussions, undermined U.S. diplomacy, and offered a convenient justification for other governments to commit human rights abuses.”
Marco Vinicio Mendez-Coto, “Smart Power and Public Diplomacy: A Costa Rican Approach,” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, September 13, 2016, 1-11.  Mendez-Coto tests Joseph Nye’s smart power concepts in the context of efforts by Costa Rica – a small state without significant armed forces – to develop a public diplomacy strategy.  Drawing on the thinking of 40 career diplomats, his article questions the universality of smart power and looks at soft power in the Costa Rican context.
Miles O’Brien, “Why It’s So Hard to Fight Extremist Propaganda Online,” PBS Newshour, September 7, 2016.  Newshour science correspondent O’Brien interviews US Under Secretary of State Richard Stengel and civil society guests on the State Department’s decision to drop its government sponsored “Think Again, Turn Away” campaign in favor of market based approaches to countering Islamic State messaging.  Guests discussed a “Peer to Peer” project, in which college students in the US and overseas compete to develop an alternative online narrative, uses of disruption technologies by social media companies, and challenges to defining and shutting down extremist content.  Participants include: Tony Sgro (Edventure Partners), Jeff Weyers (Canadian police officer), Monika Bickert (Facebook), Hany Farid (Dartmouth College), and Emma Llanso (Center for Democracy and Technology).
James Pamment, guest editor, “Introduction: Why the Nordic Region?” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy (2016) 12-91-98, published online July 5, 2016. In this special double issue of PB&PD, Pamment (Lund University, Sweden) introduces a compilation of academic and practitioner articles that drill below widely accepted benign images of the Nordic countries and their public diplomacy and nation branding practices.  The authors seek to go beyond the perceptions of an attractive, “sanitized, squeaky clean” region to examine their significant political, linguistic, and cultural differences, country-specific contradictions, and tensions between national identities and complex patterns of competition and collaboration.  In addition to Pamment’s introduction, the issue includes:
Henrik Merkelsen (Lund University) and Rasmus Kjaergaard Rasmussen (Roskilde University, Denmark), “Nation Branding as an Emerging Field – An Institutionalist Perspective”
Louis Clerc (University of Turku, Finland), “Variables for a History of Small States’ Imaging Practices – The Case of Finland’s ‘International Communication’ in the 1970s and 1980s”
Andreas Akerlund (Uppsala University, Sweden), “Transition Aid and Creating Economic Growth: Academic Exchange Between Sweden and Eastern Europe Through the Swedish Institute 1990-2010”
Katja Valaskivi (University of Tampere, Finland), “Circulating a Fashion: Performance of Nation Branding in Finland and Sweden”
Nicholas J. Cull (University of Southern California), “A Region Speaks: Nordic Public Diplomacy in Historical Context”
Jesper Falkheimer (Lund University), “Place Branding in the Oresund Region: From a Transnational Region to a Bi-national City-region”
Cecelia Cassinger (Lund University), Henrik Merkelsen, and Jorgen Eksell (Roskilde University), “Translating Public Diplomacy and Nation Branding in Scandanavia: An Institutional Approach to the Cartoon Crisis”
Julian Stubbs (UP There, Everywhere, Sweden), “Stockholm the Capital of Scandinavia: Ten Years On”
Johannes Magnus (The Nordic Council, Denmark), “International Branding of the Nordic Region”
Samantha Power, “US Diplomacy” Realism and Reality,” The New York Review, August 18, 2016, 52-54.  The US Ambassador to the United Nations argues “it is now objectively the case that our national interests are increasingly affected not just by what happens between states but also by how people are treated within states.”  Improving human security is in our self-interest.  How should diplomats respond?  Broaden the spectrum of engagement.  Spend more time out of the office.  Meet the people affected by policies.  Develop expertise and instincts to anticipate consequences of decisions.  Build relationships not just with well-known civil society organizations but also with teachers’ associations, workers’ unions, and business leaders – both their vocal majorities and harder to find minorities.  Invest more in diplomacy.  Resist pressures to “cloister diplomats in fortress-like embassies in parts of the world where such local connections are actually needed most.”  Deepen partnerships and capacities to confront threats that require a global response.  Make the case to publics at home for less isolation by their diplomats as a national security imperative.
Kishan Rana, “Diplomatic Training: New Trends,” The Foreign Service Journal, September 2016, 41-43. India’s scholar/diplomat and former ambassador Kishan Rana (Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi) looks at how foreign ministries are changing and expanding training for diplomacy practitioners.  He compares a “focused selective training” model with a brief orientation and short thematic courses (the US, France, and the UK) and a “full time entry training” model with courses running from a year to two years (Germany, India, and most Latin American countries).  Rana examines the value of distance learning, training linked to experience levels, training of locally employed staff, making successful training a pre-condition to promotion, robust commitment to mid-career training and year-long professional education, and participation of corporate managers and non-state actors.
Philip Seib, The Future of Diplomacy, (Polity Press, 2016).  Journalism and media scholar Philip Seib (University of Southern California) continues his inquiries into the worlds of diplomacy, public diplomacy, and the impact of new actors and new media in this slim volume.  With anecdotes, good writing, and insights drawn from current scholarship and practice, his purpose is to explore and raise questions about how diplomacy is changing.  Seib advances several key judgments.  The futures of diplomacy and media are inexorably connected.  Public diplomacy is becoming central in diplomacy and an essential part of statecraft.  The breadth of diplomacy is expanding with new actors, new publics, and new issues.  His argument raises a fundamental question, implied but not directly addressed: if public diplomacy is central, should we continue to treat it as a separate term, concept, and sub-set of diplomatic practice?
Vivian S. Walker, The Reem Island Ghost: Framing State Narratives on Terror, CPD Perspectives, Paper 5, 2016, Center on Public Diplomacy, University of Southern California.  Walker (National War College, retired State Department diplomat) provides an informed, teachable case study that focuses on the United Arab Emirates’ efforts to shape an external counter-terrorism narrative for global audiences following the murder of an American school teacher in Abu Dhabi by an Emirati national in 2014.  Using Internet-based English language sources, her study describe contextual events and issues, construction of the UAE’s narrative framework, relevant actors, how facts were selected and shaped, and UAE’s success in “folding the trial and conviction of the murderer into a broader counter-terrorism narrative” that “projects unambiguous national power even as it champions internationally shared values.”  This is Walker’s third contribution to much needed case studies in diplomacy’s public dimension.  See also “Case 331 – State Narratives in Complex Media Environments: The Case of Ukraine,” Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD), Georgetown University, 2015 and Benghazi: Managing the Message, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, University of Southern California.
“Worth the Trip? Debating the Value of Study Abroad,” Eric R. Terzuolo, “Don’t Believe the Hype” and Sanford Ungar, “Ungar Replies,” Foreign Affairs, September/October, 2016, 162-164.  Retired US Foreign Service Officer Terzuolo takes exception to former Gaucher College President Ungar’s article, “The Study Abroad Solution,” Foreign Affairs, March/April, 2016.  Drawing on 21 years as a career diplomat and work of researchers affiliated with the Forum on Education Abroad and IES Abroad, Terzuolo questions Ungar’s contention that “a dramatic long-term expansion” of study abroad will improve US foreign relations.  Participants do not necessarily change in expected ways.  Benefits are not reliably achieved or equally distributed.  Changes reflect pre-existing cultural differences more than experiences abroad.  Given costs, it’s worth looking at other ways to increase inter-cultural competence, such as experiences with diversity on US campuses.  Such efforts should go beyond the elite schools that disproportionately account for US study abroad.  Ungar counters that he seeks a one-third increase in the current “pathetic study abroad participation rate of 1.5 percent” of US students, not a universal mandate.  If Americans are to understand and cope more effectively with global events, “they will have to see with their own eyes and absorb with their own minds the challenges their country faces.”
Timothy Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside our Heads, (Knopf, 2016).  Years ago, Harvard scholar Joseph Nye wrote about the “paradox of plenty” (a plenitude of information creates a poverty of attention) and its implications for communication in the digital age.  In The Attention Merchants, Wu (Columbia University and author of the highly regarded The Master Switch, 2011) offers argument and examples to demonstrate that efforts to “harvest our attention” are not just a consequence of recent Internet and mobile related inventions, but rather go back a century or more to industrial age technologies.  Wu addresses important issues that are central to communication in all domains – including public and private dimensions of diplomacy.
US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, 2016 Comprehensive Annual Report on Public Diplomacy and International Broadcasting, September 20, 2016.  This 416-page annual report, written by the Commission’s executive director Katherine Brown, her staff, and members of the bipartisan, presidentially appointed panel follows a pattern set in recent years.  Commission findings and more than 50 recommendations constitute one-third of the report.  The remainder is a detailed reference guide to the public diplomacy budgets, programs, and objectives of the Department of State and Broadcasting Board of Governors.  In a key recommendation, the Commission argues it is imperative that diplomats in the Department’s information and educational and cultural exchange programs “work together to more efficiently plan” for the allocation of their resources in “programs and public affairs sections worldwide.”  The Commission reaffirms recommendations in its recent White Paper, Re-imagining Public Diplomacy’s Organizational Structure at the U.S. Department of State.  The Commission devotes proportionately less attention to broadcasting, but calls for increased original and local VOA news reporting in Africa, expansion of RFE/RL and VOA coverage in response to Russia’s “negative influence” in Europe and Asia, and reaffirms its call for significant increases in research and evaluation.  Interesting data sets for FY 2015 include rank order public diplomacy spending totals for diplomatic missions and BBG language services, and spending for educational and cultural affairs programs ranked by cost per participant.  Fascinating historical profiles of origination dates for exchange and cultural programs and US broadcasting services reinforce scholarly consensus on their correlation with external threats and conflict.
R. S. Zaharna, “Reassessing ‘Whose Story Wins’: The Trajectory of Identity Resilience in Narrative Contests,” International Journal of Communication, 10 (2016), 4407-4438.  Zaharna (American University) makes several key arguments. Narratives contain distinctive and connected elements of identity and image.  Contested narrative are identity battles in which challenges to lead to divergent narrative spheres and trajectories.  Images are contestable and lead to linear trajectories of narrative coherence (self expression).  Challenges to identity lead to identity resilience (self preservation) and cascades of narrative paradoxes.  She explores these concepts in a study of contested Israeli-Hamas narratives on Twitter in the Gaza 2014 conflict.
Recent Blogs and Other Items of Interest
Robin Brown, “The Russian Firehose of Falsehood,” September 1, 2016, Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence Blog.
Daryl Copeland, “Gathering Clouds Threaten Trudeau’s ‘Sunny’ Ways,” September 19, 2016, iPOLITICS.
Ali Fisher, “Interpreting Data About ISIS Online,” October 6, 2016, USC, Center on Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
David Ignatius, “The Cold War is Over. The Cyber War has Begun,” September 15, 2016, The Washington Post.
“Janet Steele Named New Director of the Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication,” September 16, 2016, School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University.
Erik Nisbet and Elizabeth Stoycheff, “Why Russians Support Putin’s Foreign Policy,” September 9, 2016, USC, Center on Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Donna Oglesby, “Diplomatic Language,” August 28, 2016, Winnowing Fan Blog.
Ishaan Tharoor, “The Long Historyof U.S. Interfering with Elections Elsewhere,” October 13, 2016, The Washington Post.
Jian (Jay) Wang, “Cultural Relations: Moderating a Volatile World,” September 6, 2016, USC, Center on Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Gem From The Past
Kristin Lord. The Perils and Promise of Global Transparency: Why the Information Revolution May Not Lead to Security, Democracy, or Peace, (State University of New York Press, 2006).  It’s been ten years since Lord (then an Associate Dean of George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and now President and CEO of IREX) analyzed the double edged nature of transparency — its potential for conflict as well as harmony, hate as well as tolerance, and destructive as well as constructive consequences of the distribution of information, knowledge, and power.  Her analysis used reasoned argument, empirical evidence, and case studies to support and challenge optimistic assumptions about the implications of transparency.  A decade later, her book and especially a chapter on “Transparency and Intergroup Violence” – that addresses the benefits and the dark side of cross-cultural communication – continues to prompt thought and remains useful to teachers of cultural diplomacy and practitioners of people-to-people exchanges.
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Issue #81

Michael Barr and Valentina Feklyunia, eds., “The Soft Power of Hard States,” Politics,Special Issue, Vol. 35, Nos. 3-4, November 2015.  Barr and Feklyunia (Newcastle University) have compiled a strong collection of articles that examine the soft power of authoritarian states, focusing principally on China, Russia, and Iran.  Their goal is to provide a “needed corrective to soft power studies by de-Westernizing the concept” through studies of how “non-democratic regimes promote and manage their image.”  Full online access to the articles is available through August 31, 2016.
Michael Barr, Valentina Feklyunia, and Sarina Theys, “Introduction: The Soft Power of Hard States.”
William A. Callahan (London School of Economics and Politics), “Identity and Security in China: The Negative Soft Power of the China Dream.”
Alexander Sergunin (St. Petersburg State University) and Leonid Karabeshkin (Euroacademy, Estonia), “Understanding Russia’s Soft Power Strategy.”
Christian Bueger and Frank Gadinger, “The Play of International Practice,”International Studies Quarterly, (2015), 59, 449-460.  Bueger (Cardiff University) and Gadinger (University of Duisburg-Essen) summarize current thinking on the “practice turn” in international relations – its core theoretical arguments and challenges for future research.  Theories that situate knowledge in “how groups perform their practical activities” rather than “mental frames” or “discourse,” they argue, offer useful alternatives to such traditional approaches as rational calculation of interests, mainstream constructivism, and the evaluation of norms.  The everyday practices of diplomats and other international actors become the primary objects of research.  Their pragmatism and emphasis on taking contingency and change into account hold considerable promise for diplomacy scholars looking for new ways to connect study and practice.
Department of State & USAID Joint Strategy on Countering Violent Extremism, May 2016.  This 12-page report describes elements in a State Department / USAID strategy to “counter efforts by violent extremists to radicalize, recruit, and mobilize followers” and “address specific factors that facilitate violent extremist recruitment and radicalization.”  The statement defines countering violent extremism (CVE), delineates strategic end states, summarizes five strategic goals, discusses a variety of ways and means to achieve these goals, identifies criteria for setting priorities, and briefly points to intent to measure “results and effects.”  It concludes with a short description of structural changes and creation of a “working group of core State, USAID, and interagency stakeholders” to “oversee and coordinate implementation” of the strategy.
Larry Diamond, “Democracy in Decline: How Washington Can Reverse the Decline,”Foreign Affairs, July/August, 2016, 151-159.  Diamond (Stanford University) laments the US loss of interest in promoting democracy and argues the 2016 national interest case for making commitment to democracy abroad, anticorruption, Internet freedom, digital rights, and remedies for political failings at home pillars of US foreign policy.  He notes Congressional increases in funding for the nonprofit National Endowment for Democracy (supported by Republican lawmakers since the Reagan Administration) from $115 million in 2009 to $170 million in 2016.  During the same period, US government support for democracy, human rights and governance, mainly through USAID, has fallen by nearly $400 million.
In the same issue of Foreign Affairs, John J. Mearsheimer (University of Chicago) and Stephen M. Walt (Harvard University) argue against the “democracy delusion” as problematic “large scale social engineering in foreign societies that Americans understand poorly.”  If Americans want to spread democracy, they should set a good example by doing more to improve political “conditions at home and less to manipulate politics abroad.”  See“The Case for Offshore Balancing: A Superior U.S. Grand Strategy,” 70-83.
Gregory Evans Dowd, Groundless: Rumors, Legends, and Hoaxes on the Early American Frontier, (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015).  The growing literature on American colonial history continues to provide insights into the study and practice of modern diplomacy.  Dowd (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) provides a well written, deeply researched account of ways in which plausible rumors shaped perceptions and influenced diplomacy, warfare, trade, and cross-cultural connections in colonial and early US national history.  His book examines a variety of unverified rumors and legends: dreams of gold, responsibility for small pox pandemics, exploitations of slaves, intentions to enslave indigenous Americans, British conspiracies to scalp Americans, and routine attribution of imminent frontier violence to manipulation by European rivals.  Dowd devotes a chapter to Benjamin Franklin’s use of deception as a legitimate instrument of diplomacy both during the Revolutionary war and in the Treaty of Paris negotiations that followed.  Dowd’s thinking is also valuable for his conceptual arguments on the meaning of rumor and social consciousness, motivated lies as truth claims, improvised news, and manipulation of information to advance political agendas and achieve personal gain.  An important sub-theme is the link Dowd draws to contemporary US statecraft.
Tom Fletcher, Naked Diplomacy: Power and Statecraft in the Digital Age, (William Collins, 2016).  Former British Ambassador to Lebanon Tom Fletcher has written an indispensable guide to diplomacy in the digital age in short, clearly written chapters filled with insights, wit, and telling examples.  He honors the past with a brief survey of diplomacy’s historical transformations and then devotes his attention to how “The role of diplomats is being transformed faster than at any point in human history.”  Fletcher is a passionate digital media pioneer, but he is no casual technology enthusiast.  Perhaps because he combines experiences as a diplomat in the field, an advisory role to three Prime Ministers, and the perspective of a scholar-practitioner, he brings unusual analytical depth to understanding diplomacy’s legitimate ongoing connections to power, governance, and non-state actors.  He challenges traditional diplomacy even as he defends the continuing importance of expertise, secret negotiations, and public interests.  It is no accident that he is also the author of the UK foreign ministry’s recent Future FCO report.  Fletcher’s book is a true “must read” for entry-level diplomats and every experienced diplomat before beginning his or her next assignment.
For comments on Fletcher’s views see “Review Roundtable: Naked Diplomacy: Power and Statecraft in the Digital Age by Tom Fletcher,” London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), July 18, 2016.  Includes an introduction by LSE’s Nick Kitchen and comments by Alexis Wichowski (Columbia University), Lina Khatib (Chatham House), Iver Neumann (LSE), Alaa Murabit (physician and UN Sustainable Development Goals Global advocate), and John Robert Kelley (American University). (LSE link, courtesy of Donna Oglesby)
Biancamaria Fontana, Germaine de Staël: A Political Portrait, (Princeton University Press, 2016).  In this biography, Fontana (University of Lausanne) provides new insights on the importance of public opinion in the thinking of Germaine de Staël (1766-1817), novelist, literary critic, and political activist during the French Revolution. De Staël’s views on public opinion as “a visceral, collective emotion that linked a people to its leaders” are profiled in historian Robert Darnton’s excellent review, “Mme de Staël and the Mystery of the Public Will,” in The New York Review of Books, June 23, 2016.
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume XXX, Public Diplomacy,June 8, 2016.  Edited superbly by State Department historian Kristin L. Ahlberg, this volume documents the public diplomacy of the Jimmy Carter administration from 1977-1980.  Its 215 documents focus on the merger of the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the US Information Agency, the establishment of the International Communication Agency in 1978, organizational and conceptual challenges created by the merger, and the variety of public diplomacy initiatives taken in support of the Carter administration’s foreign policy.  The volume’s online accessibility and editorial notes make this a remarkably useful resource for scholars and practitioners.
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1917-1972, Public Diplomacy, World War I,Office of the Historian, US Department of State.  Edited by State Department historian Aaron W. Marrs, the compilation focuses on the creation and overseas work of the Committee on Public Information (CPI), also known as the “Creel Committee, from 1917-1919.  The online volume includes 44 documents, 8 helpful editorial notes on the CPI’s activities and personalities, and a collection of multimedia items showing CPI reading rooms, pamphlets, and other examples of its overseas work.  Researchers will find this an accessible and authoritative source of information on the CPI’s practitioners, the global scope of its activities, and its relations with the Department of State and the Military Intelligence Branch of the War Department.
Glenn J. Guimond, “Examining State’s Foreign Service Officer Hiring Today,” The Foreign Service Journal, July/August 2016.  Guimond, a State Department public diplomacy officer on assignment with the Board of Examiners (BEX), discusses the variety of written and oral tests, and other administrative requirements, in the entry process to becoming a Foreign Service officer.  The BEX evaluates candidates for five Foreign Service generalist career tracks and 16 career tracks for specialists and limited non-career candidates.  See also “State Department Opportunities for Students,” The Foreign Service Journal, July/August 2016,
Ellen Huijgh, The Public Diplomacy of Emerging Powers, Part 2: The Case of Indonesia, CPD Perspectives on Public Diplomacy, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.  Huijgh (Netherlands Institute of International Relations and University of Antwerp) continues her work on the public diplomacy of emerging powers with this informed and timely case study of Indonesia’s public diplomacy during the administration of President Joko Widodo.  Her paper begins with a brief survey of broad trends in diplomacy studies grounded in an integrative approach, national diplomatic systems, and her own work on blending diplomacy’s international and domestic dimensions.  She discusses characteristics and recent developments in what she calls Indonesia’s “niche narrative public diplomacy” (co-existence of Islam, democracy, and modern society) and concludes with concern that it “faces stagnation and isolation today.”  Her earlier study in USC’s series is Ellen Huijgh and Jordan Warlick, The Public Diplomacy of Emerging Powers, Part 1: The Case of Turkey, CPD Perspectives, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, January 2016.
“Lateral Entry into the Senior Foreign Service,” Section 206, S. 2937, Department of State Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 2017, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, introduced May 17, 2016.  Although the Senate Committee remains committed to the practice of “grooming generalists for careers in the Foreign Service,” it also supports authorization of a pilot program to “permit mid-career entry into the Foreign Service for qualified individuals who are willing to bring their outstanding talents and experiences to the work of the Foreign Service.”  The goal is to leverage skills and creative imagination in civil society that diplomats need and do not have in abundance.  For a brief analysis, see Domani Spero, “New @StateDept Authorization Bill Includes 3-Year Pilot Program for Lateral Entry Into the Foreign Service,” Diplopundit, April 28, 2016.
For a predictable negative response from the American Foreign Service Association and other retired diplomats, see Domani Spero, “12 Former AFSA Presidents Express ‘Deep Concern’ over proposed FS Lateral Entry program,” Diplopundit, June 27, 2016 and James Bruno, “Back Door Diplomats: Screw Merit,” Diplo Denizen, July 14, 2016.
For a discussion of comparable issues relating to US Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s interest in opening the door to lateral entry for talented civilians, particularly those with digital technology skills, in the military’s senior officer ranks, see Andrew Tilghman, “The Pentagon’s Controversial Plan to Hire Military Leaders Off the Street,” Military Times, June 19, 2016.
Marc Lynch, The New Arab Wars: Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East, (Public Affairs, 2016).  Lynch (George Washington University), a deeply knowledgeable scholar of Middle East politics and media, and of US policies in the region, provides a fundamental rethinking of assumptions and ideas that shaped his views on the broad Arab uprising of the past five years.  Drawing on his own research, local Arab voices, and analysis he credits to others, he offers numerous conclusions on the increase in violence and repression.  It is too soon to conclude the uprisings have failed.  Their causes have grown worse and the frustrations of empowered youth are greater.  There will be no return to stable and friendly authoritarian regimes.  Another wave of mass protests is “almost certainly coming.”  Partisan American policy disputes exaggerate US influence and role in the uprising.  And the nuclear agreement with Iran is “a historic opportunity to establish new foundations for regional order.”  Diplomacy scholars will find especially useful his insights on public opinion and the impact of a radically transformed information environment on Middle East politics and society.
Stephen G. McFarland, “A Roadmap for New Hires: 30 Rules to Survive and Thrive,”The Foreign Service Journal, July/August 2016.  McFarland (retired US diplomat and former Ambassador to Guatemala) offers his thinking on the desirable attributes of Foreign Service practitioners and advice on how to hone and master these attributes.  His 30 rules cover such issues as geography and language expertise, embassy operations, “corridor reputation” and personal skills, security awareness, crisis preparation, leadership, resilience, health, and passion for the vocation.  His roadmap is useful for those aspiring to a career in diplomacy as well as new hires.
Adam Nossiter, “‘That Ignoramus’: 2 French Scholars of Radical Islam Turn Bitter Rivals,” The New York Times, July 13, 2016.  NYT correspondent Nossiter profiles the intensely personal dispute between two leading French academics, Olivier Roy (European University Institute, Florence) and Gilles Kepel (Sciences Po, Paris), on the origins, development, and future of violent jihadism.  Once friends, Roy and Kepel now differ on France’s relations with Islam and the motives of terrorists who carried out recent attacks in Paris.  For Roy, they are “mostly marginalized young men and petty criminals” in a relatively well integrated Muslim population who use Islam as a cover for lethal violence.  The problem is the “Islamicization of radicalism.”  For Kepel, the violent jihadism is consequent to the evolution of “Islamist radicalicaliztion that took shape over decades because of a failure of integration.”
Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews, The Russian ‘Firehose of Falsehood’ Propaganda Model, RAND, 2016.  Drawing on experimental research in psychology, RAND social scientists Paul and Matthews analyze characteristics of Russia’s “propaganda model”: effective use of multiple media channels and messages, rapid, continuous and repetitive communication, and lack of commitment to consistency and objective reality.  Although they suggest some effort to counter with facts and truth is worthwhile, the authors are not optimistic about traditional countermeasures such as refutations and fact checking.  Their suggested responses include seeking to create first impressions by forewarning and priming audiences with correct information, highlighting Russia’s methods of manipulation “rather than fighting the specific manipulations,” countering the effects of Russia’s propaganda rather than the propaganda, focusing on Russia’s audiences rather than Russia as the source, and using a range of information warfare capabilities.
J. Simon Rofe and Heather L. Dichter, “Sport and Diplomacy: A Global Diplomacy Framework,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, 2016, VOL. 27, No. 2, 212–230, published online May 16, 2016.  Rofe (University of London) and Dichter (Western Michigan University) have two goals in this thoughtful article.  First, they examine a variety of approaches to conceptual boundaries in sport and diplomacy, discourse between the two, and terminology in each domain.  Second, they develop a framework, grounded in an understanding of “global diplomacy,” for exploring “concepts of communication, representation, and negotiation.”  Their article raises useful questions and ideas for continuing research, and provides an extensive review of recent literature and work by other scholars.
Mary Thompson-Jones, To the Secretary: Leaked Embassy Cables and America’s Foreign Policy Disconnect, (W. W. Norton and Company, 2016).  Thompson-Jones (Northeastern University) draws on State Department cables released by Wikileaks and her experiences as a career US diplomat to examine “the practice and conduct of American diplomacy through the eyes of those posted overseas.”  Chapters explore negative and positive consequences of the leaks, anti-Americanism and challenges to US public diplomacy, diplomacy during and after crisis events, diplomacy with “frenemies,” diplomacy in war zone Iraq, and Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.
Gregory M. Tomlin, Murrow’s Cold War: Public Diplomacy for the Kennedy Administration, (Potomac Books, 2016).  Tomlin (a career US Army officer and former history professor at the US Military Academy) has written a carefully researched and much needed history of Edward R. Murrow’s years as director of the US Information Agency (USIA) during the administration of John F. Kennedy.  His book draws extensively on USIA’s archival records, Murrow’s personal papers, oral histories, secondary sources, and interviews, including importantly with his son Charles Casey Murrow and former Voice of America Deputy Director Alan Heil.  Tomlin provides insights and new information about Murrow’s views on public diplomacy, his leadership, and his relationships with Congress, the National Security Council, President Kennedy and other senior officials.  Chapters focus on USIA’s role during a presidency that included the Alliance for Progress, tensions over the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, tense race relations in the United States, the nuclear test ban treaty, and involvement in Southeast Asia.  USIA in the Kennedy administration was rethinking its mission, functions and structure a decade after its founding.  Its officers were developing a sense of their work as a profession.  Tomlin sheds light on a pivotal era in the institutionalization of US public diplomacy practice.
Twiplomacy Study 2016, Burson-Marsteller, May 31, 2016.  The global communications firm Burson-Marstellar surveyed 793 Twitter accounts of heads of government and state and foreign ministers in 173 countries.  Its largely quantitative study analyses their Twitter profiles, tweet history, uses of video and text, and inter-connections.  Included are Burson-Marsteller’s ten tips for building engagement on social media, views on social media platforms other than Twitter, and assessments of the relative strengths of digital diplomacy actors.
Recent Blogs and Other Items of Interest
Matt Armstrong, “There’s a New #1,” July 1, 2016, MountainRunner.us Blog.
Corneliu Bjola, “Practicing Digital Diaspora Diplomacy,” June 3, 2016, USC, Center on Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Robin Brown, “The CNN Effect circa 1910,” July 14, 2016; “The Chilcot Report and the Problem of Strategy,” July 6, 2016; “Brexit: Three Thoughts,” July 4, 2016, Public Diplomacy, Network and Influence Blog.
Helene Cooper, “U.S. Drops Snark in Favor of Emotions to Undercut Extremists,” July 28, 2016, The New York Times.
Daryl Copeland, “Opinion: Science Diplomacy for the Age of Globalization,” June 6, 2016, IIASA, Options Magazine.
Simon Denyer, “China’s Lesson to the World: Censoring the Internet Works,” May 23, 2016,The Washington Post.
Alan Heil, “Revival of ‘The Last Three Feet’ in Media Training Abroad,” June 11, 2016, Public Diplomacy Council Blog.
David Ignatius, “The Islamic State Feeds Off Western Islamophobia,” June 2, 2016, The Washington Post.
David S. Jackson, “The VOA is Not a Wire Service,” July 13, 2016; “International Broadcasting: The Nuclear Option,” June 1, 2016, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
John Kerry, “Remarks on People-to-People Exchange Plenary Session,” June 7, 2016, National Museum, Beijing.
Nicholas Kralev, “The State Department Has a Diversity Problem,” May 22, 2016, Foreign Policy Blog.
Ilan Manor, “Turkey Launches Belated #DigitalDiplomacy Blitz,” July 28, 2016; “Selfie Diplomacy: An Analysis of MFA Profile Pictures on Twitter,” July 7, 2015, USC, Center on Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Jan Melissen, “Diplomacy in the Digital Age: More Than Twiplomacy,” May 31, 2016, Clingendael.
Burcu Gultekin Punsmann and Senem Cevik, “Pathways to a Common Future: Youth Perspectives on Turkey-Israel,” 2015, APM Ankara Politikalar Merkezi.
Dan Robinson, “The Great Clean-up Act at the BBG,” June 7, 2016, USC, Center on Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Shaun Riordan, “Diaspora Diplomacy: A Double Edged Sword,” June 6, 2016, BideDao Blog.
Kathy Schalow, “Celebrating One Year of Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review Implementation,” May 5, 2016, US State Department, Dipnote Blog.
Philip Seib, “An Important CVE Step From the State Department,” May 26, 2016, The Huffington Post.
Tara Sonenshine, “DNC Hack Shows Its Time to Rein in the Russians,” July 25, 2016, The Hill.
Gem From The Past
James Robert Mock and Cedric Larson, Words That Won the War: The Story of the Committee on Public Information, 1917-1919, (Princeton University Press, 1939).  Next year marks the centenary of the Committee on Public Information (CPI) headed by George Creel and the beginning of institutionalized public diplomacy in the United States.  With a few notable exceptions, most studies make only brief references to the CPI – and to Creel’s zeal, methods and disputes with colleagues and Congress – before moving quickly to more recent history.  Publication of the Department of State’s Foreign Relations of the United States, 1917-1972, Public Diplomacy, World War I, annotated above, draws attention to the need for deeper inquiry.  A reductionism that equates CPI with Creel misses a rich tapestry of people, methods, and ideas in Washington and especially in CPI’s field offices and US missions abroad.  The origins of most professional practice issues in America’s institutionalized public diplomacy can be found in Mock and Larson’s informed and analytically perceptive mid-20th century account and in the Department of State’s online documentation.
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2016: John Melville

John Melville, 2016.

John Melville is the 2016 recipient of the Walter Roberts Award for Public Diplomacy Studies. A second year Master’s student in the Global Communications program, he also works as the speechwriter to the Ambassador at the Embassy of the Republic of Korea where he helps communicate, advocate, and explain South Korean policies to American audiences.                                                   

John’s interest in public diplomacy stems from his background in both strategic communications and working with international audiences. Before his job at the Embassy, John worked at a speechwriting firm and as an English teacher in South Korea, where he quickly learned the importance of understanding foreign perspectives when communicating cross-culturally. His coursework at GW has strengthened both his theoretical understanding of issues in Public Diplomacy and his practical skills in cross-cultural persuasion.

After graduation, he hopes to either become a Public Diplomacy Officer in the US Department of State or continue his career in international speechwriting and strategic communications.

The other recipients of this award are:

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Issue #80

John Brown, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Cultural Diplomacy: A Non-Desultory Non-Philippic,” American Diplomacy, March 2016.  Brown (compiler of the Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review) examines a variety of “cultural diplomacy” definitions on offer from scholars and practitioners for more than half a century.  His knowledgeable essay discusses tensions that derive from lack of consensus on the meaning of cultural diplomacy and differences in the priorities and methods of practitioners.  He examines distinctions between cultural diplomacy and cultural relations and attempts by some to differentiate between cultural relations and cultural exchange.  Brown presents a lively discourse at the intersection of government, diplomacy, politics and culture.  Detailed footnotes and numerous web links add to the mix.
Louis Clerc, Nikolas Glover, and Paul Jordan, History of Public Diplomacy and Nation Branding in the Nordic and Baltic Countries, (Brill / Nihoff, 2015).  Clerc (University of Turku), Glover (Stockholm University), and Jordan (University of Glasgow) achieve two goals in this excellent collection of essays.  First, they provide an innovative conceptual framework.  The title’s conventional categories, public diplomacy and nation branding, are a point of departure.  Their primary intent, however, is to develop an innovative conceptual distinction between domestic “imaginings” and external “images” of nations – and the complex ways in which they interact – as a heuristic tool to explore patterns of national representation.  Second, the case studies contribute much needed analysis of the representation practices of small states and fresh insights into the historically contingent tools of branding and public diplomacy.  Brill continues its steep pricing of high quality academic books in diplomacy studies.  However, good used copies at reduced cost may be available at online booksellers.
— Louis Clerc and Nikolas Glover, “Introduction: Representing the Small States of Northern Europe: Between Imagined and Imaged Communities”
— Andreas Akerlund (Uppsala University), “The Nationalization of Swedish Enlightenment Activities Abroad: Civil Society Actors and Their Impact on State Politics”
— Chiara Tessaris (Columbia University), “Open Diplomacy and Minority Rights: The League of Nations and Lithuania’s International Image in the Early 1920s”
— Kaarel Purimae (Tartu University), “Countering ‘The Obtuse Arguments of the Bolsheviks’: Estonian Information Work in Sweden, the United States and Britain, 1940-1944”
— Svein Ivar Angell (University of Bergen), “The Office for Cultural Relations: Representing Norway in the Post-War Period”
— Kristine Kjaersgaard (University of Southern Denmark), “A Public Diplomacy Entrepreneur: Danish Ambassador Bodil Begtrup in Iceland, Switzerland and Portugal, 1949-1973”
— Nikolas Glover, “A Total Image Deconstructed: The Corporate Analogy and the Legitimacy of Promoting Sweden Abroad in the 1960s”
— Louis Clerc, “‘Gaining Recognition and Understanding on Her Own Terms’: The Bureaucracy of Finland’s Image Policy, 1948-66”
— Carl Marklund (Sodertorn University), “American Mirrors and Swedish Self-Portraits: US Images of Sweden and Swedish Public Diplomacy in the USA in the 1970s and 80s”
— Una Bergmane (Sciences Po, Paris), “Diplomacy and Diasporas, Self-Perceptions and Representations: Baltic Attempts to Promote Independence, 1989-1991”
— Paul Jordan (University of Glasgow), “Walking in Singing: Brand Estonia, the Eurovision Song Contest and Estonia’s Self-Proclaimed Return to Europe, 2001-2002”
— Mads Mordhorst (Copenhagen Business School), “Public Diplomacy vs. Nation Branding: The Case of Denmark after the Cartoon Crisis”
— Kazimierz Musial (University of Gdansk), “Benevolent Assistance and Cognitive Colonization: Nordic Involvement with the Baltic States since the 1950s”
— Christopher Browning (University of Warwick), “Concluding Reflections, Small-State Identities: Promotions Past and Present”
Future FCO, Report Commissioned by the Permanent Under Secretary, British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, May 9, 2016.  This report recommends ways to make Britain’s diplomacy more efficient and flexible in an era when state hierarchies and authority are weaker, global challenges are greater, and digital technologies empower rival sources of influence.  Written by an FCO team led by former British Ambassador Tom Fletcher, its key judgments focus on clarity of purpose, flexible structures, empowered heads of mission “who own cross government strategy,” new professional skills, imported expertise, calculated risk, and priorities that favor networks and supporting other government actors.  Recommendations include:  Abolish the home/diplomatic service divide.  Develop cross-government country or regional strategies.  Accelerate digital diplomacy.  Establish a data director with a small team to drive innovation. Decide where the FCO can best add value to the rest of government, where it should lead, and where it should advise.  Move to two security tiers with 95% unclassified information accessible on personal devices.  Require all embassies to implement soft power strategies embedded in country plans.  Assign 25% of directorate staffs to project-oriented, time-limited “campaign teams” run from London with posts as virtual participants.  Reboot “desk officers” as “policy officers” who, “far less deskbound,” form relations with academics, think tanks, and others in expertise networks.
For British scholar Robin Brown’s informed take, see “The Future FCO Report,” May 11, 2016, Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence Blog.
Kailey Hansson, Canadian Public Diplomacy and Nation-Building: Expo 67 and the World Festival of Arts and Entertainment, CPD Perspectives on Public Diplomacy, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, Paper 3, 2016.  Hansson (Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario) explores the variety of ways communist and non-communist nations used Canada’s 1967 Montreal Expo to showcase their architectural creativity and talent in the performing arts and to channel their conflicting Cold War ideologies.  For Canada, Expo 67 was an opportunity to demonstrate the nation’s performing arts and an attractive cultural identity that differed from the mass entertainment culture many perceived to be dominant in the United States.  It was also viewed as a way to build national unity between Anglophone and Francophone Canada.  In discussing these issues, Hansson contributes to an understanding of world fairs as venues for public diplomacy and cross-cultural communication.  Her paper is a well-researched and evenhanded critique of strengths and limitations in Canada’s attempt to construct a link between public diplomacy and internal nation building.
IREX 2020 Strategic Plan, International Research and Exchanges Board, April 2016.  IREX’s new strategic plan focuses on four goals: empowering youth populations, cultivating leaders, strengthening institutions dedicated to prosperity and social justice, and broadening access to quality education and information.  IREX was established in 1968 to consolidate exchanges with the countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.  Today, this non-profit organization has very different goals and a worldwide commitment to the exchange of scholars, students, and ideas through partnerships with government and private organizations in the US and abroad.
Michael Mandelbaum, Mission Failure: America and the World in the Post-Cold War Era, (Oxford University Press, 2016).  Mandelbaum (Johns Hopkins, SAIS) provides a full-throated critique of US foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.  His central argument is that the US has used its military power and diplomacy in attempts to instill American values and transform internal political and economic systems in too many places (e.g., Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, NATO expansion, Iraq, Afghanistan) where US interests were not at stake.  Of particular interest to diplomacy scholars are his arguments on American exceptionalism, soft power and hard power, democratic transformation initiatives, counter-insurgency strategies, human rights policies, and counterterrorism strategies.
Ilan Manor, Are We There Yet: Have MFAs Realized the Potential of Digital Diplomacy?  Results from a Cross-National Comparison, (Brill, 2016).  In this cutting edge monograph, Ilan Manor (Oxford University) addresses gaps in the growing literature on diplomacy and digital technologies and offers a series of claims relating to digital diplomacy models of foreign ministries (MFAs).  (1) MFAs have institutionalized uses of social media through best practices and training for diplomats.  (2) MFAs tend to use social media to influence elites rather than foster dialogue with broader publics.  (3) Both MFAs and social media audiences are “negotiating their respective roles in the online communication process.”  (4) MFAs remain state-centric and “fail to collaborate with non-state actors or use social media as a source of information for policymakers.”  (5) Ambassadors “now serve as digital gatekeepers.”  Manor provides empirical evidence for his claims through a comparison of foreign ministries in four countries: Poland, Finland, Norway, and Israel.  Particularly useful are his literature review and thoughtful conclusions regarding his own and further research.
The Office of American Spaces 2015 Annual Report, Bureau of International Information Programs, US Department of State, March 2016.  The report profiles the mission, characteristics, activities, funding, management, and challenges facing libraries and information resource centers, binational centers, American Centers, and American Corners.
Alex Oliver, “Do We Need Embassies Anymore?” Foreign Affairs, March 14, 2016. “The embassy,” Australia’s Lowy Institute Director for Polling observes, “at least in its traditional form, is facing an existential crisis.”  Her reasons include 21st century transformations in diplomatic practice, shrinking budgets, reluctance to embrace innovation, lack of diversity, insufficient priority for social media and other digital technologies, competition from media reporting and exhaustive country analyses by NGOS and risk consultancies, increasing national preferences for trade offices and innovation hubs, and threats to embassy security.  Nevertheless, Oliver cites reasons why embassies still have many significant roles in diplomacy and foreign relations.  Whether they continue to have value, she concludes, will depend on whether they “can become more nimble and adapt to an increasingly fluid global environment.”
Office of the Inspector General (OIG), US Department of State and Broadcasting Board of Governors,“Evaluation of Embassy Baghdad’s Implementation of Line of Effort 6 in the President’s Strategy to Counter ISIL: Exposing ISIL’s True Nature,” March 2016.  The OIG’s key findings:  (1) Embassy Baghdad operates public diplomacy activities “without formal strategic planning and goals;” (2) None of the embassy’s Integrated Country Strategy Goals contain language relating to public diplomacy or to countering the Islamic State’s messaging; (3) The Embassy is focusing more resources on social media; (4) About half of Iraqi Sunnis and Shia say they “completely oppose the global coalition to counter the Islamic State.”  The OIG recommends that the Embassy include public diplomacy in its Integrated Country Strategy action plan and complete a public diplomacy implementation plan for fiscal year 2016.
James Pamment, “Rethinking Diplomatic and Development Outcomes Through Sport: Toward a Participatory Paradigm of Multi-stakeholder Diplomacy,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, Volume 27, Issue 2, 2016, 231-250, published online May 10, 2016.  Pamment (Lund University) analyzes how “sites and practices of sport diplomacy and sports development” can contribute to theorization of participatory models of multi-stakeholder diplomacy and ways stakeholders act as both “partners in, and objects of, diplomacy.”  His article makes three arguments.  First, sport diplomacy and sports development demonstrate the relationship between diplomacy, public diplomacy, and development and the possibilities for overcoming “knowledge silos” in diplomatic studies.  Second, his article illuminates tensions between “instrumentalist and participatory paradigms of diplomatic influence” – and shows how sport diplomacy challenges instrumental approaches with participatory qualities that make diplomacy more diffuse and inclusive.  Third, Pamment analyzes how evaluation techniques of diplomatic organizations buttress his case that changes in practice support “the participatory potential of multi-stakeholder diplomacy.”
Bryan Price, “A View From the CT Foxhole: The Honorable Juan C. Zarate, Former Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism,” CTC Sentinel, April 22, 2016.  In this interview with CTC Sentinel, Zarate (a private consultant and former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes), summarizes an array of counterterrorism challenges facing Europe and the United States.  To deal with them, Zarate calls for strategies on two fronts:  first, continued use of financial intelligence and tools, strengthened by increased “financial diplomacy;” second, a more robust “battle of ideas” against violent extremist ideologies.  Because the US government “is neither expert nor credible in confronting an ideology grounded in interpretations of Islam,” the US must “empower a new type of coalition” – a “network of networks” that connects governments, civil society NGOs, philanthropists and others willing to engage not just in “counter-messaging but confronting directly the outbreaks and manifestations of this ideology, as with a pandemic.”
“Public Diplomacy.”  Wikipedia.  Wikipedia’s article on “public diplomacy” is remarkably thin for a concept that figures so prominently in diplomacy studies and practice.  Wikipedia states “the article has multiple issues” and cites two in particular:  (1) Its examples and perspective deal primarily with the United States and do not reflect a global view of the subject.  (2) The article may contain published material that conveys ideas not attributable to the original sources.  Readers of this list may wish to contribute to much-needed improvement of the article.
“Public Diplomacy in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Public Diplomacy Magazine, Association of Public Diplomacy Scholars, University of Southern California Issue 15, Winter 2016.  This edition of PD Magazine, edited by graduate students in USC’s Public Diplomacy MA program, includes interviews, case studies, and brief articles intended to start a dialogue about the “practice and possibilities” of public diplomacy in Africa.  Topics include Ethiopian millennial diasporas, basketball diplomacy, film and cultural diplomacy, and China’s public diplomacy in Africa.
Jedediah Purdy, After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene, (Harvard University Press, 2015).  US military and civilian leaders repeatedly identify global climate change as a severe and imminent threat greater than terrorism, WMD, and the current menu of regional conflicts.  Yet leaders, as well as diplomacy scholars and practitioners, have paid relatively little attention to what Purdy (Duke University) calls “planetary engineering without design.”  The facts of what geologists call the anthropocene (an epoch in which nature no longer exists apart from humanity) are scientific, he argues.  But their meaning for how groups behave and connect in a global landscape of inequality creates questions for a politics that does not yet exist.  Purdy’s book explores ways to think about one of the “wicked problems” in diplomacy’s context.  He first discusses traditional ways of imagining the world and the place of humanity in it.  He then argues the anthropocene requires new ways of imagining and discourse that adds emotional and bodily experiences to linguistics of political reasoning.  We must “learn from, live with, and improve upon our panoply of failures,” he contends, in dealing with a global threat that confounds traditional ethical and political responses that have succeeded elsewhere.
Alec Ross, The Industries of the Future: How the Next 10 Years of Innovation Will Transform Our Lives at Work and Home, (Simon & Schuster, 2016).  Ross (Visiting Fellow, Johns Hopkins University, and former Senior Advisor for Innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) examines six transformational global trends: robotics, genomics, coded money, weaponization of code, big data analytics, and the geographic spread of domain expertise and urban innovation hubs.  Ross uses stories, many drawn from his work at the Department of State, and evenhanded analysis of promises and challenges to convey his ideas about coming changes in markets, governance, diplomacy, war, and “what it takes for societies, families, and individuals to thrive.”
David Samuels, “The Storyteller and the President,” The New York Times Magazine, May 8, 2016, 44-54.  Samuels (a freelance writer for Harpers, The New Yorker, and other publications) profiles the rise and work of Ben Rhodes, Obama administration speechwriter and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communication.  His controversial account portrays Rhodes as “the single most influential voice shaping American foreign policy aside from Potus himself” – influence Samuels’ sources attribute to his “mind meld” with the President.  Samuels quotes Rhodes’ dismissal of the average press corps reporter as 27-year olds who “literally know nothing” about foreign affairs, cites his denigration of the American foreign policy establishment (he refers to it as the “Blob”), and provides a lengthy account of White House digital strategies on the Iran nuclear deal and other issues using non-traditional sources and an understanding of where constituencies are on each issue.  “Now the most effectively weaponized 140-character idea or quote will almost always carry the day.”  The article generated widespread critical comment on both Rhodes and Samuels.
US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, Reimagining Public Diplomacy’s Organizational Structure at the U.S. Department of State, May 12, 2016.  Presented as a “white paper” intended to contribute to “the conversation on structural reform on public diplomacy in the State Department,” the Commission makes five core recommendations for how it believes “the PD enterprise can become more strategically oriented and efficient in advancing global, regional, and bilateral policies and better support PD professionals in Washington and on the frontlines.”  (1) Create a Global Strategic Priorities Unit and emphasize the need for regional planning.  (2) Strengthen the PD administrative back office.  (3) Coordinate PD financial resources with global, regional, and bilateral strategies.  (4) Consider embedding regional representatives from the Bureaus of International Information Programs and Educational and Cultural Affairs inside the State Department’s regional bureaus.  (5) Create a task force to review PD services that can be co-located or consolidated.
The Commission’s “white paper” treats public diplomacy as an enterprise in diplomacy with distinct structures and processes, and a separate career path within the Department of State.  Its US model and approach to recommendations for change contrast sharply with the British model described in the Future FCO report listed above.  British practitioners no longer use the term public diplomacy, although they give high priority to soft power, civil society actors, networks, and the way digital technologies are changing diplomatic practice.  These reports, released almost simultaneously, were written largely by insiders who focused on how their foreign ministries are dealing with forces driving change in diplomacy.  Although the focus of the British report is broader, comparative assessments of the two reports would benefit scholars and practitioners.
USC Center on Public Diplomacy, Social Media Analytics for Digital Advocacy Campaigns: Five Common Challenges, Discussion Paper, April 2016.  The authors of this 13-page paper examine challenges in “bridging the measurement gap between advocacy operations (outputs) and ultimate outcomes” in digital advocacy campaigns.  They discuss five areas in social media analytics that hold promise: search parameters, social media share of voice, the qualitative “who,” sentiment analysis, and demographics.  The paper focuses on policy advocacy by governments using Twitter to target foreign publics on specific policy issues.
Manuela Zechner and Bue Rubner Hanson, “More Than a Welcome: The Power of Cities,”OpenDemocracy, April 7, 2016.  Zechner (Berlin Institute for Migration Research) and Hanson (University of Aarhus) explore how city governments are collaborating and reaching agreements in welcoming refugees, while challenging state governments that are inactive or deadlocked in creating imaginative migration policies.  Networks of cities, they argue, are transforming governance and diplomacy.  Cities are becoming essential actors in achieving security and social solidarity and dealing with the politics of fear “beyond the abstract notions of nation.”  Their article suggests numerous ideas for case studies in city diplomacy.  (Courtesy of Donna Oglesby)
Recent Blogs and Other Items of Interest
Corneliu Bjola, “Does Diplomacy Still Matter,” April 8, 2016, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Robin Brown, “Plans! We Don’t Need No Stinking Plans!” April 5, 2016; “Hard and Soft Power as Metaphor,”March 30, 2016, Public Diplomacy Networks and Influence Blog.
Daryl Copeland, “Restoring Canadian Diplomatic Leadership in Five Uneasy Pieces,” March 31, 2016, Guerrilla Diplomacy.
Rebecca Connolly, “Acknowledging Devotion; Disrupting Recruitment,” May 16, 2016, GWU’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, Take Five Blog.
Kim Andrew Elliott, “Avoiding Misinformation About Disinformation,” March 24, 2016. CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
James Glassman, “Bring Back the USIA and Defeat ISIS,” April 18, 2016, American Enterprise Institute, InsideSources.
Emma Grundhauser, “Women in Film: The Effects Abroad of Hollywood Stereotypes,” May 10, 2016, GWU’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, Take Five Blog.
Katherine Hess, “Digital Diplomacy: Social Media and Data Collection as a Bridge to Cultural Differences,”May 16, 2016, GWU’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, Take Five Blog.
Katie Kamins, “Best ‘American’ Film: How America Lacks International Perspective with Its Movies and Awards Shows,” May 9, 2016, GWU’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, Take Five Blog.
Ilan Manor, “Have MFAs Realized Digital Diplomacy Potential?” April 21, 2016, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Emily T. Metzgar, “The Plus ça Change,” April 7, 2016, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Adam Clayton Powell, III, “New VOA Director, ‘Great Journalism is Great Public Diplomacy,’” May 10, 2016, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Shaun Riordan, “Cyber Diplomacy vs. Digital Diplomacy: A Terminological Distinction,” May 12, 2016; “Digital Diplomacy 2.0: Beyond the Social Media Obsession,” April 25, 2016, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
GWMSantiago, “Before Speaking, Make Sure They’ll Listen,” May 17, 2016, GWU’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, Take Five Blog.
Pascal Siegel, “The Next Step in Countering ISIS Messaging,” March 21, 2016, American Security Project.
Ruth Stenhardt, “How to Create ‘Wikiplomacy,’” March 28, 2016, GWToday.
Mathew Wallin, “Analyzing the 2016 Arab Youth Survey,” April 13, 2016; “Rebuilding the American Message,”March 31, 2016, American Security Project.
Gem From The Past
Walter R. Roberts, “The Evolution of Diplomacy,” Mediterranean Quarterly, 17.3 (Summer 2006), 55-64.  Summer 2016 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of US diplomat and scholar Walter Roberts.  His family and friends, colleagues, and former students remember a distinguished career that began in the Voice of America in 1942 and thereafter included diplomatic assignments in the former Yugoslavia, service as an associate director of the US Information Agency, and a presidential appointment to the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.  Following his retirement, Dr. Roberts pioneered the teaching of public diplomacy at George Washington University in the 1980s.
The occasion prompts this re-listing of his seminal article on the transformation of diplomacy during the second half of the 20th century.  Listed by Mediterranean Quarterly as one of the most frequently cited articles in its 27-year history, Roberts’ article provides a succinct overview of how government-to government diplomacy evolved to include widespread government-to-people diplomacy – a transformation that led to a global conversation on the meaning and methods of “public diplomacy.”  It is a useful foundational reading as scholars and practitioners in the 21st century ask whether another transformation is occurring.  Has public diplomacy become so central to diplomacy that it is no longer helpful to treat it as a siloed concept and subset of diplomatic practice?  “The Evolution of Diplomacy” is available online courtesy of the Public Diplomacy Alumni Association.
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Issue #79

Drew Gilpin Faust, “John Hope Franklin: Race and the Meaning of America,” The New York Review of Books,December 17, 2015.  Harvard University President Faust pays tribute to the life of the late historian John Hope Franklin on the 100th anniversary of his birth.  She explores the unflinching excellence of his scholarship, tensions between his activism and scholarly ideals, and his influence on a younger generation of advocates such as Bryan Stevenson and Ta-Nehisi Coates.  Franklin served on the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy (he was appointed by President Jimmy Carter) during an era when its members included such other prominent Americans as CBS President Frank Stanton, opinion pollster George Gallup, journalist John Seigenthaler, novelist James Michener, conservative activist William F. Buckley, Jr., and media market researcher Arthur Nielson.
Alberto M. Fernandez, “Countering the Islamic State’s Message,” The Journal of International Security Affairs,Number 30, Winter, 2016.  The former State Department Coordinator for Strategic Counterterrorism Communication argues the Islamic State’s rise is the product of the historical circumstances — “events on the ground and the changing political-reality in the region.”  He argues the response to ISIS has been especially deficient in countering its ideology.  He offers a two-fold approach: (1) Deep comprehension of the main elements of the “ISIS package” – its Salafist worldview, its “grievance collecting,” and its utopianism.  (2) Building a counter-narrative grounded in increasing the number of “anti-ISIS messengers,” content appropriate to a utopian, grievance-laden version of jihadist Salafism, amplifying disaffected voices, citizen empowerment, and personal outreach.
Eytan Gilboa, Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert, Jason Miklian and Piers Robinson, “Moving Media and Conflict Studies Beyond the CNN Effect,” Review of International Studies, published online March 3, 2016.  Gilboa (Bar-Ilan University), Jumbert (The Peace Research Institute Oslo), Miklian (The Peace Research Institute Oslo), and Robinson (University of Manchester) argue transformative changes in media and conflict environments require new conceptual and theoretical approaches to media-conflict interactions.  New research must account for (1) the impact of multiplication and fragmentation of media outlets on news gathering and (2) the roles of local media in conflict zones and national media that cover conflicts in their periphery.  Drawing in part on Roger Mac Ginty’s concept of hybridity and Gilboa’s analysis of multilevel interactions, their article proposes five streams of “research on glocalised conflict:  from the national level to the global; from the local to the global; from the glocal to the local; from the global to the global; and from the near local to the far local.”
Eytan Gilboa, “Public Diplomacy,” in G. Mazzoleni, ed., The International Encyclopedia of Political Communication, (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), pp. 1-9.  In this concise, informed, and tightly written overview, Gilboa (Bar-Ilan University) discusses traditional definitions of public diplomacy, its uses in the Cold War, and theoretical distinctions between public diplomacy and soft power.  His essay provides useful summaries of differences between public diplomacy and “new public diplomacy,” digital public diplomacy’s uses of digital technologies, and nation branding.  Gilboa has written extensively on the strengths and limitations of public diplomacy as a multidisciplinary field of study.  He concludes with brief reflections on challenges facing scholars and practitioners.
David Greenberg, Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency, (W. W. Norton & Company, 2016).  Greenberg (Rutgers University) has written a readable and well-researched account of the ideas and personalities that shaped presidential level efforts to influence public opinion at home and abroad from Teddy Roosevelt to Barack Obama.  Although much of his focus is on domestic politics, Greenberg has a lot to say about the evolution of US diplomacy’s public dimension.  Specialists will find new insights on George Creel, Walter Lippmann, Woodrow Wilson, Harold Lasswell, Edward Bernays, Archibald MacLeish, George Gallup, Robert Sherwood, Elmer Davis, William Benton, C. D. Jackson, Ted Sorenson, Michael Deaver, and Karen Hughes.  Greenberg’s themes include the impact of new technologies, debates on rational arguments and emotional appeals, contrasting views on leadership and public opinion, media strategies, organizational issues in White House and executive branch agency approaches to managing “psychological warfare” and “information,” and multiple conceptual issues (e.g., deeds vs. words, attribution of information, messaging, news management, framing terms, selective perceptions, and image making).
Alison Holmes with J. Simon Rofe, eds., Global Diplomacy: Theories, Types, and Models, (Westview Press, 2016).  Holmes (Humboldt State University) and Rofe (University of London) have written and compiled chapters that portray global diplomacy as a historically durable institution that is separate from and parallel to governance and “constantly evolving to reflect shifts in structure and power.”  They argue the essence of diplomacy has not changed and mainstream analytical narratives have value.  However, a new theoretical framework is needed that focuses on understanding the purposes of diplomacy through practice, the relevance of “diplomacy-as-dialogue” throughout history, and a perspective that goes beyond Western states to include diplomatic practices of non-Western states in all stages of development.  Scholars and practitioners concerned with diplomacy’s public dimension will find Giles Scott-Smith’s (Leiden University) chapter on “Cultural Diplomacy” particularly useful.  He bridges theory and practice with informed assessment of the difficulties in defining cultural diplomacy, “signposts” in its development, and how it differs from nation branding and propaganda.
Ellen Huijgh and Jordan Warlick, The Public Diplomacy of Emerging Powers, Part 1: The Case of Turkey, CPD Perspectives, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, January 2016.  Huijgh (Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’) and Warlick (Center for Public Diplomacy) explore the history of Turkey’s domestic politics and socio-cultural developments as factors in the country’s public diplomacy and role as an emerging power.  The authors argue Turkey is a strong example of ways in which “intermestic” narratives (where a bright line no longer exists between foreign and domestic) shape public diplomacy and empower civil society actors equipped with digital technologies.  Their paper makes considerable use of the US Open Source Center’s “Master Narratives Report: Turkey” (2014).
James Pamment, ed., Intersections Between Public Diplomacy and International Development: Case Studies in Converging Fields, CPD Perspectives, USC Center for Public Diplomacy, February 2016.  Pamment (Lund University) usefully conceptualizes three levels of analysis for understanding “the sites and contexts” in which public diplomacy and development “appear to converge”: (1) aid itself as a form of public diplomacy, (2) communication of aid activities as public diplomacy, and (3) discourses within institutions and in practitioner and stakeholder communities about public diplomacy.  The case studies in this accessible collection offer a variety of perspectives on the intersection of two fields that have often been viewed separately by scholars and practitioners.  The volume – a result of collaboration between USC’s CPD and the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy – is a significant analytical contribution and an inviting foundation for further research.
— James Pamment, “Introduction”
— Hyunjin Seo (University of Kansas) and Stuart Thorson (Syracuse University), “Empathy in Public Diplomacy: Strategic Academic Engagement with North Korea”
— B. Senem Çevik, (University of California, Irvine), “Turkey’s Development Aid: An Ecosystem of Conservative Grassroots and Progressive Foreign Policy”
— Larisa Smirnova (Xiamen University), “Eurasian Students in China: A New Angle in Understanding China’s Public Diplomacy”
— Valerie Cooper (Hong Kong Baptist University), “Soft Power Development: The Values and Priorities of Foreign Media Interventions in South Sudan”
— Mohammad Ibahrine (University of Sharjah, UAE), “Nation Branding in the Gulf Countries”
— Kazumi Noguchi (Kobe Women’s University), “Impact of Government-Philanthropy Collaboration on Global Health Diplomacy: A Case Study of Public-Private Partnerships in the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)”
— James Pamment, “The International Aid Transparency Initiative: Communication for Development or Public Diplomacy?”
Hallvard Notaker, Giles Scott-Smith, and David J. Snyder, eds., Reasserting America in the 1970s: U.S. Public Diplomacy and the Rebuilding of America’s Image Abroad, (Manchester University Press, 2016).  In their fine introduction to this excellent collection of 17 essays on US public diplomacy in the 1970s (framed as 1965-1980), Notaker (University of Oslo), Scott-Smith (University of Leiden), and Snyder (University of South Carolina) identify six broad themes: (1) the influence of civil rights and the Vietnam War on public diplomacy efforts, (2) the importance of public-private cooperation, (3) the unexpected results abroad of America’s increasingly raucous social diversity, (4) the new resonance for America’s “universalist ethos” in a changing global context, (5) the crucial importance of both ends of the “transmission and reception” axis to understanding public diplomacy practice, and (6) the close connection between hard and soft power.  Half the chapters focus on problems and methods in public diplomacy projection.  The others examine how US public diplomacy efforts were received.
— Thomas W. Zeller (University of Colorado Boulder), “Historical Setting: The Age of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt”
— Nicholas J. Cull (University of Southern California), “The Devil at the Crossroads: USIA and American Public Diplomacy”
— Brian C. Etheridge (Georgia Gwinnett College), “The Sister-City Network in the 1970s: American Municipal Internationalism and Public Diplomacy in a Decade of Change”
— Kenneth Osgood (Colorado School of Mines), “The Exposure of CIA Sponsorship of Radio Free Europe: The ‘Crusade for Freedom,’ American Exceptionalism, and the Foreign-Domestic Nexus of Public Diplomacy”
— Laura A. Belmonte (Oklahoma State University), “USIA Responds to the Women’s Movement, 1960-1975”
— Michael L. Krenn (Appalachian State University), “‘The Low Key Mulatto Coverage’: Race, Civil Rights, and American Public Diplomacy: 1965-1976”
— Claire Bower (University of South Carolina), “Paintbrush Politics: The Collapse of American Arts Diplomacy, 1968-1972”
— Teasel Muir-Harmony (American Institute of Physics), “Selling Space Capsules, Moon Rocks, and America: Spaceflight in U.S. Public Diplomacy, 1961-1979”
— Alessandro Brogi (University of Arkansas), “America’s Public Diplomacy in France and Italy During the Years of Eurocommunism”
— John C. Stoner (University of Pittsburgh), “Selling American Between Sharpeville and Soweto: The USIA in South Africa, 1960-1976”
— Benjamin P. Green (Bowling Green State University), “Selling the American West on the Frontier of the Cold War: The U.S. Army’s German-American Volkfest in West Berlin, 1965-1981”
— Paul M. McGarr (University of Nottingham), “Unquiet Americans: The Church Committee, the CIA, and the Intelligence Dimension of U.S. Public Diplomacy in the 1970s”
— M. Todd Bennett (East Carolina University), “Time to Heal the Wounds: America’s Bicentennial and U.S.-Sweden Normalization in 1976”
— Barbara Keys (University of Melbourne), “‘Something to Boast About’: Western Enthusiasm for Carter’s Human Rights Diplomacy”
— John M. Rosenberg (Brown University), “To Arms for the Western Alliance: The Committee on the Present Danger, Defense Spending and the Perception of American Power Abroad, 1973-1980”
— Robert J. McMahon (Ohio State University), “Afterword: Selling America in the Shadow of Vietnam”
Mark Seip, “Harnessing Communications and Public Diplomacy: Four Rules for Success in Strategy Development,” Atlantic Council, Issue Brief, January 2016.  Seip (Atlantic Council Nonresident Military Fellow) argues the US “appears out of touch” in the “use of information and public diplomacy” and is losing ground to ISIS, Russia, and China.  He calls for national policymakers to emphasize four “core communication elements” in developing strategies and policies: (1) understanding how today’s audiences use technologies and receive information, (2) find mutuality and common ground, (3) create space for conversations that are sustainable over the long term (a goal undercut by the risk aversion of lawmakers and Washington officials), and (4) engage in conversations, not monologue.
Steve Tatham, ed., Defence Strategic Communications, Volume 1, Number 1, Winter 2015.  This new peer-reviewed journal is published by the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence in Latvia, a collaborative project of seven European NATO partner nations.  Its goal is “to bring academic rigor to the study of defence strategic communications,” assist NATO in its various missions, and “bring together military, academic, business, and governmental knowledge” in the field.  The journal’s editor in chief Steve Tatham is author of the highly regardedBehavioural Conflict: Why Understanding People’s Motivations Will Prove Decisive In Future Conflict.  Articles are the views of the authors and do not reflect NATO policies.  (Courtesy of Stephanie Helm)
— Timothy Thomas (US Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth), “Russia’s 21st Century Information War: Working to Undermine and Destabilize Populations”
— Christopher Paul (RAND) and Elizabeth L. Petrun Sayers (RAND), “Assessing and Moving Past the ‘Funnel’ Model of Counterterrorism Communication”
— Lee Richards (PsyWar.org), “The Rainbow in the Dark: Assessing a Century of British Military Operations”
— Jeff Giesea, “It’s Time to Embrace Memetic Warfare”
— Theron Verdon (State University of New York College at Oneonta), “The Return of Khilafah: The Constitutional Narratives of Daesh”
— Christine A. Ralph MacNulty (Applied Futures, Inc.), “Method for Minimizing the Negative Consequences of Nth Order Effects in Strategic Communication Actions and Inactions”
— Miranda Holsom (US Army), “The Narrative and Social Media”
— Caitlin Schindler (Institute of World Politics), “Proactively Preserving the Inward Quiet: Public Diplomacy and NATO”
Sanford J. Ungar, “The Study-Abroad Solution: How to Open the American Mind,” Foreign Affairs, March/April, 2016.  Ungar (President Emeritus, Goucher College) takes issue with “the almost universal failure of the broader U.S. public to know and understand others, except through the military lens.”  His approach to this dangerous problem is to “massively increase the number of U.S. college and university students who go abroad for some part of their education and bring home essential knowledge and new perspectives.”  His article discusses challenges to expanding learning abroad and provides evidence of its educational, economic, and public policy benefits.
Antoaneta M. Vanc and Kathy R. Fitzpatrick, “Scope and Status of Public Diplomacy Research by Public Relations Scholars, 1990–2014,” Public Relations Review, January 2016.  Vanc (Quinnipiac University) and Fitzpatrick (American University) assess a significant increase in public diplomacy research by public relations scholars during the past quarter century.  Their article looks at leading public relations scholars working on public diplomacy, their research topics and methodological approaches, and their contributions to theory building and diplomatic practice.  Findings include the promise of a relational approach to public diplomacy research, the need for empirical studies, and development of comparative studies to identify public diplomacy best practices.
Recent Blogs and Other Items of Interest
Robin Brown, “More on the Closing Space Problem,” February 16, 2016; “The Secret of Public Diplomacy,” February 22, 2016; “French and German Cultural Action in Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s,” February 25, 2016, Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence Blog.
Daryl Copeland, “Seven Steps to a Higher Functioning Foreign Ministry,” March 1, 2016, Embassy.
Ryan Crocker, “Divided We’ll Fall,” February 12, 2106, The Hill.
“Fact Sheet: Maintaining Momentum in the Fight Against ISIL,” January 15, 2016, The White House, Office of the Press Secretary.
Paul Farhi, “Low Ratings Finally Sink Al Jazeera America,” January 13, 2016, The Washington Post.
Thomas L. Friedman, “Social Media: Destroyer or Creator,” February 3, 2016, The New York Times.
Gardiner Harris and Cecilia Kang, “Obama Shifts Online Strategy on ISIS,” January 8, 2016, The New York Times.
Alan Heil, “A New Era in U.S. International Broadcasting,” March 4, 2016, The Public Diplomacy Council.
John Hudson, “Growth of Islamic State Forces State Department Overhaul,” February 1, 2016, Foreign Policy Blog.
Greg Miller and Karen DeYoung, “Obama Administration Plans Shake-up in Propaganda War Against ISIS,” January 8, 2016, The Washington Post.
Thomas Miller, “Prerequisites for Using Social Media to Oppose the State,” March 1, 2016; “Return of the First Quadrant of Public Diplomacy,” February 10, 2016, GW’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, Take Five Blog.
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Five Truths About Terrorism,” February 4, 2016, Project Syndicate.
Cynthia P. Schneider, “The Problem With John Kerry’s Trip to Hollywood,” February 19, 2016, Foreign Policy Blog.
Richard Stengel, “Remarks on Waging a Digital Counterinsurgency,” January 18, 2016, U.S. Department of State.
Patrick Tucker, “America’s New Plan to Fight ISIS Online,” January 11, 2016, DefenseOne.
Matthew Wallin, “Ch-Ch-Changes in the US Anti-Extremist Messaging Strategy,” January 14, 2014, American Security Project.
“West Point Students Plan to Counter ISIS Online,” February 14, 2016, National Public Radio.
R. S. Zaharna, “The Parallels and Paradoxes of Ant-Terrorism Communication,” March 1, 2016; “Culture Posts: Between Image and Reality,” January 28, 2016, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Gem From The Past
Robert Entman, “Theorizing Mediated Public Diplomacy: The U.S. Case,” The International Journal of Press/Politics, 13(2) April 2008, 87-102.  Entman (George Washington University, author of Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy, 2004) is widely recognized for his path breaking scholarship in media and communication studies.  Eight years ago, he used his cascading network activation model of media framing to create a theoretical model of “mediated public diplomacy.”  His model focused on the importance of political and cultural congruency as a factor in US efforts to promote favorable framing of its policies in foreign media.  It is a model he hoped would be generalizable to the mediated public diplomacy of other countries.  Digital technologies have changed the global media environment significantly in the intervening years.  Nevertheless, his article remains a fruitful source of ideas for research and a significant contribution in efforts to create theoretical frameworks relevant to study and practice in the public dimension of diplomacy.
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2016 WR Annual Lecture: David Ensor

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The Role of Voice of America & Values Journalism in Combating Propaganda and Violent Extremism

This year’s Walter Roberts Annual lecture featured David Ensor, former Voice of America Director, in a conversation with Frank Sesno, Director of the GW School of Media and Public Affairs.

He spoke on American public diplomacy, and how Voice of America and the Radio Free programs help contribute to the successful communication with foreign publics.

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