Author: shivamkotak

J. Samuel Barkin, Realist Constructivism: Rethinking International Relations Theory, (Cambridge University Press, 2010).  Barkin (University of Florida) has written a book of primary interest to IR theorists.  However, his insights, clear prose, and careful inquiry into distinctions and common ground between realism and constructivism have much to offer diplomacy scholars as they struggle with implications for their integrative and relational models.  Barkin is especially useful in his assessment of the strengths and limitations of realism and constructivism.  Although he does not discuss diplomacy per se, his views on the meaning of public interest and political agency, the limitations of power, the logic and constraints of “the social,” differences between interest based and socially constructed norms and rules, and historical contingency inform thinking about diplomacy as an instrument used to achieve governance objectives and manage relations between groups.

Rosa Brooks, “Portrait of the Army as a Work in Progress,” Foreign Policy, May/June 2014, 43-51.  Drawing on an interview with US Army Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno and a visit to the US military base in Kuwait, Brooks (Georgetown University) looks at the Army’s planning for “regionally aligned forces” (RAFs) – meaning units with region-specific linguistic and cultural training and long-term relationships with particular geographic regions.  The intent is to enable the Army’s general purposes forces (not just special forces) to influence local populations, establish ties with local leaders, and strengthen military-to-military cooperation before, during, and after conflict.  Brooks assesses arguments for and against the RAF concept, issues born of conceptual ambiguity and confusing terms, internal resistance to change, training difficulties, challenges abroad (e.g., its problematic application in Kuwait), and challenges in the US (lack of enthusiasm in the Department of State and Congress).  Brooks addresses State’s concerns about “the militarization of foreign policy” and Odierno’s outreach plans to convince senior diplomats that “we are not conducting foreign policy” and that the Army offers a broad array of support capabilities.  In the end, she concludes, RAF’s value as a strategy is “rife with contradictions;” however, as a “canny effort” to protect the Army from budget cuts, “It’s brilliant.”

Robin Brown, “Systems, Chains, and Spaces: Towards a Framework for Comparative Public Diplomacy Research,” Paper prepared for the International Studies Association Convention, Toronto, March 26-30, 2014.  Download paper from bottom of linked blog at ISA 2014 v 6: Building on his earlier paper outlining four paradigms of public diplomacy, Brown (PDNetworks.wordpress.com) turns to organizational and material aspects of foreign public engagement as a way to organize studies of public diplomacy.  His paper introduces three concepts.  (1) “National public diplomacy systems,” linked to Brian Hocking’s idea of “national diplomacy systems,” emerge “from particular conjunctions of national and international factors.”  They demonstrate path dependency characterized by their origins and persistence in their reliance on particular “repertoires of activities.”  (2)  “Influence chains” are ways in which these repertoires of activities translate policy intent into action and outcomes.  (3)  “Operational space” is a concept that focuses on how public diplomacy actions are affected by context, e.g., the activities and attitudes of other governments and publics.  Brown develops these concepts as a way to make a case for going beyond seeing them “as idiosyncratic features of particular cases to recurring aspects of public diplomacy that need to be systematically investigated.”

For brief summaries of his arguments on influence chains and operational space, see “Introducing the Influence Chain,” April 22, 2014 and “Thinking about Operational Space,” April 25, 2014, Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence Blog.

Commander’s Communication Synchronization, Joint Doctrine Note 2-13, December 18, 2013.  Joint Doctrine Notes are the military’s way of providing bridging solutions to doctrine gaps and guidance on doctrine development — in this case its evolution from “strategic communication” (now out of favor) to the current framing term, “commander’s communication synchronization” (CCS).  Notes are officially supported statements, but not authoritative doctrine.  This lengthy, well-organized document defines CSS and provides insights at the Joint Staff level on a variety of issues: the central importance of communication; changes in the communication environment; new operational requirements; the high priority of “listening” and “knowing your audience;” the necessity for credibility and aligning words, images, and actions; integration of communication in all planning and operations; best practices; and variety of organizations and capabilities.  It includes definitions of such terms as audience, publics, stakeholders, message, narrative, information operations, public affairs, and “defense support for public diplomacy.”  Although the CSS definition states it is a joint force commander’s process for supporting “strategic communication-related objectives,” and there are references to strategic communication working groups in some combatant commands, the Note’s intent is to frame the conversation as “commander’s communication synchronization.”  (Courtesy of Stephanie Helm)

CPD Annual Review, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, Vol. 5, Issue 1, Spring 2014.  In this issue, the USC Center on Public Diplomacy examines global trends that shaped public diplomacy around the world in 2013.  The Review analyzes “media coverage of events and activities that have public diplomacy implications and impact.”  The issue includes introductory and concluding remarks and sections on PD 2013 at a glance and the 10 biggest public diplomacy stories in 2013.

“Diplomacy in a Digital World,” Clingendael, The Netherlands Institute of International Relations, April 6, 2014.  Clingendael Institute scholars Brian Hocking and Jan Melissen announce plans for a “deeper and broader look at diplomacy in the digital age.”  Their new project will build on Clingendael’s 2012 report,Futures for Diplomacy: Integrative Diplomacy in the 21st Century, and focus on such issues as the growth of social media in diplomacy, e-governance, performance enhancement in key areas of foreign ministry activities such as consular diplomacy, planning, and participation in policy process.  Interested partner countries are welcome.

Guy J. Golan and Evhenia “Zhenia” Vitchaninova, “The Advertorial as a Tool of Mediated Public Diplomacy,” International Journal of Communication, 8 (2014), 1268-1288.  Golan and Vitchaninova (Syracuse University) analyze Russia’s use of advertorials — defined as “a print advertisement disguised as editorial material” – in 303 advertorial supplements in The Washington Post and The Times of India.  The authors found differences between the US and India in Russia’s “attribute promotion strategies” and in the issues promoted.  “The Indian advertorials focused predominantly on Russia’s power attribute, whereas U.S. advertorials highlight Russia’s attributes as an innovative, developed, and investor-friendly nation.”  Their article includes a literature review, summary of their content analysis research method and its coding variables, discussion of the strengths and limitations of advertorials as a tool of public diplomacy, and reflections on implications for public diplomacy scholarship and practice.

Bruce Gregory, The Paradox of US Public Diplomacy: Its Rise and “Demise,” A Special Report for the Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication (IPDGC), George Washington University, February 2014, released by IPDGC in a new format May 2014.  U.S. public diplomacy faces a paradox. As diplomacy’s public dimension increasingly dominates study and practice, public diplomacy has less value as a term and conceptual subset of diplomacy. It marginalizes what is now mainstream.  This report examines transformational changes in diplomacy’s 21st century context: permeable borders and power diffusion, new diplomatic actors and issues, digital technologies and social media, and whole of government diplomacy.  It critically assesses implications for diplomatic roles and risks, foreign ministries and diplomatic missions, and strategic planning. In an attempt to bridge scholarship and practice, the report explores operational and architectural consequences for diplomacy in a world that is more transparent, informal, and complex.

Mark Harris,Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War, (Penguin Press, 2014).Entertainment historian and columnist Harris tells the stories of Hollywood’s relationship with Washington during World War II through the work of five directors:  John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra, and George Stevens.  Harris’s well reviewed and deeply researched narrative looks unsparingly at the lives of these filmmakers and provides critical assessments of their work in the charged political and ideological context of a nation at war. Importantly, he wrestles with questions relating to what it means to film combat and issues driven by conflicts between what is perceived to be truth and instrumental versions of truth used to serve government and military interests.  Includes lengthy sections on the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Office of War Information (OWI).

H.R. 4490, United States International Communications Reform Act of 2014, Committee on Foreign Affairs, US House of Representatives, marked up April 30, 2014.  This bill (text as introduced before markup), co-sponsored by Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) and Ranking Member Eliot Engel (D-NY), and passed with unanimous Committee support is intended to improve and restructure the management of US international broadcasting services.  According to the Committee, the bill would (1) establish a full-time agency head for US international broadcasting, (2) reduce the authority of the Broadcasting Board of Governors “to a more appropriate advisory capacity,” (3) make “clear that the Voice of America mission is to support U.S. public diplomacy efforts,” and (4) consolidate the “Freedom Broadcasters” — Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), and the Middle East Broadcasting Network (MBN) – into a single, non-federal organization to be called the “Freedom News Network.”

For comment on the bill, which is expected to be followed by a counterpart bill in the US Senate, see:  Ron Nixon, “House Measure to Change Voice of America’s Mission is Drawing Intense Debate,” The New York Times, May 20, 2014; “The Pitch of America’s Voice,” The New York Times Editorial, May 25, 2014; Craig Hayden, “Playing for Keeps,” May 21, 2014, Intermap Blog; Alex Brown, “Can Congress Make Journalists Do Propaganda,” National Journal, May 2, 2014; John Hudson, “Exclusive: New Bill Requires Voice of America to Toe U.S. Line,” The Cable, FP Blog, April 29, 2014; Helle C Dale and Brent D. Schaefer, “Time to Reform U.S. International Broadcasting,” Issue Brief #4206, The Heritage Foundation, April 24, 2014;“US Lawmakers Mulling International Broadcasting,” Voice of America, April 30, 2014.

See also Mathew Weed’s Congressional Reference Service report on U.S. International Broadcasting: Background and Issues for Reform, May 2, 2014, annotated and linked below.

John Kerry, Heather Higginbottom, Rajiv Shah, and Tom Perriello, “Remarks at the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) Launch,” US Department of State, April 22, 2014.  Secretary of State Kerry, Deputy Secretary of State Higginbottom, USAID Administrator Shah, and Special Representative (QDDR) Perriello frame their vision and rationale for the Department’s second QDDR.  The stated goal:  “It will guide the Department and USAID in becoming more agile, responsive, and effective in the face of traditional and emerging challenges as well as new opportunities.”

Amy Mitchell, “State of the News Media 2014,” Pew Research Journalism Project, March 26, 2014.  Mitchell (Director of Pew’s Journalism Project) finds new energy and reasons for optimism as well as challenges in the news industry.  Grounded in four original research reports and a searchable database of statistics from previous years, the 2014 report: (1) Digital-only news organizations are increasing global news coverage, “the first real build-up of international reporting in decades.”  (2) New money may be more about new ways of reporting than building a new revenue structure.  (3) Social and mobile trends are changing the dynamics of the news process.  (4) Online video is expanding, but the scale is small.  (5) Local television experienced massive ownership changes with hard to assess impact on consumers.  (6) Demographic changes in the US population are increasing Hispanic news operations and changing news coverage.

Barak Obama, “Remarks by the President at the United States Military Academy Commencement Ceremony,” West Point, New York, May 28, 2014.  In a speech filled with references to American leadership and terrorism “as the most direct threat to America at home and abroad,” President Obama called for broadening US tools to include “diplomacy and development; sanctions and isolation; appeals to international law; and, if just, necessary and effective, multilateral military action.”  Framing US diplomacy’s public dimension as forming “alliances not just with governments, but also with ordinary people,” he argued that America is strengthened by civil society, by a free press, by striving entrepreneurs, and by educational exchange and opportunity for all people, and women and girls.  “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,” he stated, “But what makes us exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law; it is our willingness to affirm them through our actions.”

Wally Olins, Brand New: The Shape of Brands to Come,(Thames & Hudson, 2014).  Olins (Saffron Brand Consultants) examines the future of corporate, NGO, and nation branding in the context of globalization and digital technologies.  If borders are more porous and globalization is occurring on an unprecedented scale, why is nation branding more important?  The answer, Olins argues, is “because now the national brand and, within the nation, the city brand and, sometimes, across nations, the regional brand, have a statistically measurable economic aim, as well as a traditional, emotional, ideological purpose.”  His chapters on “National Prosperity and Nation Branding” and “Branding the Place” update ideas in his chapter on “Making a National Brand” in Jan Melissen, ed., The New Public Diplomacy: Soft Power in International Relations, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, 2007).

James Pamment,“’Putting the GREAT Back Into Britain:’ National Identity, Public-Private Collaboration & Transfers of Brand Equity in 2012’s Global Promotional Campaign,” British Journal of Politics and International Relations, March 27, 2014.  Pamment (University of Texas at Austin) examines Britain’s efforts to promote trade, investment, and tourism during the Summer Olympics year 2012 through the “GREAT campaign” – a campaign that emphasized a unified national identity emphasizing British achievements.  Pamment’s case study addresses four objectives: (1) “GREAT’s promotional style, message and objectives;” (2) “practices surrounding commodification of collective identity;” (3) “coordination, inclusion and exclusion practices,” and (4) “conceptualizations of transfers between symbolic and economic resources.”  Particularly interesting are his thoughts for further research:  how terms such as public diplomacy, promotion, and nation branding can reflect political agendas and practitioner differences over budgets and priorities; the development of metrics that reflect “best practices” rather than the expectations of stakeholders; and the importance of transparency and inclusion in government activities that claim to represent national images and interests.

James Pamment, “Time, Space & German Soft Power: Toward a Spatio-Temporal Turn in Diplomatic Studies?” Perspectives: Review of International Affairs, Vol. 21, No. 2, 2013, 5-25.  Pamment (University of Texas at Austin) looks at an array of German soft power strategies beginning with creation of the German state in 1871.  His overview includes a variety of 20th century efforts by Germany to achieve cultural, political, and economic influence and concludes with a brief discussion of recent Land of Ideasand Year of Germany nation branding campaigns.  He analyzes questions raised by Germany’s soft power practices through the theoretical lens of the “spatio-temporal turn,” understood as an approach to “multi-layered dynamics of globalization,” using analysis of “interconnected political, economic, symbolic, and social phenomena in non-deterministic ways.”  Pamment’s goal is to suggest “a theoretical framework for adapting the spatio-temporal turn in Media & Communication Studies to debates within diplomatic studies and soft power research.”  In particular, he seeks to take studies of soft power “beyond inferences about diplomatic influence” to a more “carefully contextualized analyses of how attraction relates to social practices.”

Se Jung Park and Yon Soo Lim, “Information Networks and Social Media Use in Public Diplomacy: A Comparative Analysis of South Korea and Japan,” Asian Journal of Communication, 2014, Vol. 24, No. 1, 79-98.  Park (Georgia State University) and Lim (Hongik University) examine “how South Korean and Japanese public diplomacy organizations employ digital media to embrace the principle of ‘networked public diplomacy’ through analysis of the web and media practices.”  Using a combination of network analysis and content analysis, their case studies (1) map “interorganizational information networks” among these public diplomacy organizations through analysis of URL citations by web users, (2) analyze the web practices of key organizations in communicating with publics, and (3) assess degrees of public engagement and demographic characteristics.  Park and Lim conclude their findings suggest that, although the two countries have similar sociopolitical backgrounds and perspectives on public diplomacy, Korea’s public diplomacy was more successful at engaging with foreign publics than Japan’s.  They attribute this to differences in “forms of internal information networks, communication strategies, and social networking performances” with publics.

Geoffrey Allen Pigman, “International Sport and Diplomacy’s Public Dimension: Governments, Sporting Federations and the Global Audience,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, published online March 7, 2014.  Pigman (University of Pretoria) observes that international sporting competition has had a role in diplomacy since the ancient Olympiad.  Today sports competitors have far reaching capacity to represent governments, people, and sponsoring firms to foreign governments and global publics.  Taking a broad historical and analytical approach, his taxonomy includes (1) international sport as a tool of diplomacy used by governments and (2) “international sport-as-diplomacy,” which encompasses activities of an array of international sporting bodies and other “non-state diplomatic actors.”  The latter category affects public diplomacy, he argues, through both the impact of sports on diplomatic relations between governments and public diplomacy activities of the international sporting bodies themselves.  His article contains numerous references to current public diplomacy scholarship, and he calls for more study of how international sport relates to public diplomacy in light of trends in the number and variety of sporting competitions and growth in international sports exchanges, both virtual and personal.

Geoffrey Allen Pigman and J. Simon Rofe, guest editors, “Sport and Diplomacy,” Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics, 2013.  In their introduction to this collection of articles in Sport in Society, Pigman (University of Pretoria) and Rofe (University of London) frame the need to examine the under-studied relationship between diplomacy and international sport.  Systematic investigation of sport and diplomacy is needed, they argue, for two reasons. “First, nowhere has the diffusion and redistribution of political and economic power in our globalizing world been more visible to the general public and scholars alike than in international sport.”  A second rationale “is the relative rise in the importance of soft power, the power to persuade and attract, as a major development in international relations since the end of the Cold War.”  Includes:

— Geoffrey Allen Pigman and Simon Rofe, “Sport and Diplomacy: an Introduction”

— Caitlin Byrne (Bond University), “Relationship of convenience? The Diplomatic Interplay Between the Commonwealth Games Federation and the Commonwealth Games Host City”

— Anthony Deos (University of Otago)  “Sport and Relational Public Diplomacy: the Case of New Zealand and Rugby World Cup 2011”

— Stuart Murray (Bond University) and Geoffrey Allen Pigman, “Mapping the Relationship Between International Sport and Diplomacy”

— M. R. G. Pope (University of London), “Public diplomacy, International News Media and London 2012: Cosmopolitanism TM” 

— J. Simon Rofe, “It Is a Squad Game: Manchester United as a Diplomatic Non-state Actor in International Affairs”

— Blake Skjellerup (Olympics speed skater), “Playing out – Sport’s Ability to Bring About Change”

— Alan Tomlinson (University of Brighton), “The Supreme Leader Sails On: Leadership, Ethics and Governance in FIFA”

— Antoaneta Vanc, (Quinnipiac University), “The Counter-intuitive Value of Celebrity Athletes as Antidiplomats in Public Diplomacy: Ilie Nastase from Romania and the World of Tennis”

“The Power of Non-State Actors,” Public Diplomacy Magazine, Association of Public Diplomacy Scholars at the University of Southern California, Summer 2014.  This issue of PD Magazine includes:

Features and Perspectives

— Mary Finley Brook (University of Richmond), “Climate Justice Advocacy”

— Rook Campbell (University of Southern California), “Conflicting Interests in Non-State Actor Diplomacy: A Case Study of Corporate Diplomacy in Art and Sport,”

— Horacio Trujillo (Aegis Trust) and David Elam (Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, SAIS), “Operationalizing the Responsibility to Protect: The Potential for Transnational Public Diplomacy to Advance Effective, Domestic Responsibility”

— Joaquin Jay Gonzalez, (Golden Gate University), “Diaspora Diplomacy: Influences from Philippine Migrants”

Interviews with Guillain Koko (People Against Suffering, Oppression, and Poverty (PASSOP), Cape Town, South Africa); USC’s Master of Public Diplomacy delegation to Brazil; and Mike Medavoy, (CEO, Phoenix Pictures)

Case Studies

— Richard Wike (Pew Research), “Survey Research and International Affairs”

— Ira Wagman (Carleton University), “Celebrity Diplomacy Without Effects: Danny Kaye and UNICEF”

— Matthew Wallin (American Security Project), “For the Luiz: Anonymous’ Influence on the World”

— Linda Reinstein, (Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization), “Non-State Actors: 21st Century Activism for Influencing Public Policy”

— Kevin E. Grisham, (California State University, San Bernardino), “Surviving the Struggle: Engagement and the Transformation of Violent Non-state Actors”

— Laura Rubio Diaz-Leal, (Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México), “Displaced Religious Minorities in Chiapas: Communication Strategies for Agency”

“Re-Balancing the Rebalance: Resourcing U.S. Diplomatic Strategy in the Asia-Pacific Region,” A Majority Staff Report for the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, April 17, 2014.  In this report for the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the Committee’s staff calls for taking advantage of “our people and our values” through such interpersonal connections as Fulbright Scholarships, the Peace Corps, and “other pillars of American public diplomacy.”  Public diplomacy recommendations include: (1) redouble Obama administration efforts to encourage more Americans to study in China and other countries in East Asia, (2) take steps to arrest the slide in Japanese studying in the US, (3) fund a new Young South-East Asian Leaders Initiative and a Fulbright University in Vietnam to “rebalance within the rebalance,” (4) reduce travel restrictions and increase visa issuance, (5) better integrate the State Department’s East Asia public diplomacy efforts with other Department bureaus and civilian agencies, and (6) improve the US Government’s “messaging of the rebalance to the American public and the world at large.”  (Courtesy of Ellen Frost)

Daya Thussu, De-Americanizing Soft Power Discourse, CPD Perspectives on Public Diplomacy, USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School, April 2014.  Thussu (University of Westminster, London) examines “growing appreciation of the importance of soft power in a digitally connected and globalized media and communication environment.”  Arguing “media remain central to soft power initiatives,” he focuses his essay on global media, especially its televisual dimension.  Although fully recognizing that the US continues to dominate global media by a variety of measures, Thussu discusses powerful media and communication trends in the Global South, new forms of “globalization from below,” the growth of Chinese television news in English for a global audience, the soft power of “Bollywood,” and the rise of what he calls “Chindian” soft power.  These trends, he concludes, have loosened Western dominance of global media and led to a deepening “of the soft power discourse beyond its American remit.”  This suggests the importance of “serious engagement” between the two.

Mathew C. Weed, U.S. International Broadcasting: Background and Issues for Reform, Congressional Research Service (CRS), R43521, May 2, 2014.  With the evenhandedness for which CRS is known, Weed (CRS Foreign Policy Legislation analyst) provides an assessment of current issues facing the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and US international broadcasting.  His study looks briefly at the history of US broadcasting activities and legislative milestones, the BBG’s current structure, the structures and roles of federal and grantee US broadcasting services, key policy issues facing the BBG and international broadcasting, and the provisions of H.R. 4490, the United States International Communications Reform Act of 2014,

Amy Zalman, “Getting the Information Albatross off our Back: Notes Toward an Information-Savvy National Security Community,” Perspectives, Layalina Productions, Volume VI, Issue 2, April 2014.  Zalman (National War College) argues the US “organizes information activities on the basis of an outdated worldview set in the Cold War, ideologically, and the Industrial Age, technologically” and neglects “informational power as a strategic instrument.”  She calls for a “dramatic, systemic change of mindset;” installing “a new framework of information power” exemplified by the recent  J. Christopher Stevens Virtual Exchange Initiative; changes in the education of senior military and civilian leaders; and reorganization of US government informational activities on a whole of government basis.

Recent Blogs and Other Items of Interest

Patrick Blum, “Costs Drive Both Sides of Study Abroad,” The New York Times, May 4, 2014.

Robin Brown, “J. G. Herder, Nationalism and Cultural Relations,” May 31, 2014; “When China was Cool: Mao’s Little Red Book,” May 23, 2014; “Recent Report on the French Cultural Network,” May 21, 2014;“Reading China’s Aid and Soft Power in Africa,” May 1, 2014; “If It’s Not PD and It’s Not Aid What Is It?”April 16, 2014; Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence Blog.

Christian Carlyle, “How to Win the Information War against Vladimir Putin,” May 2, 2014, Democracy Lab, FP Blog.

P.J. Crowley, “The US Public Diplomacy Deficit,” Remarks to the American Foreign Service Association and Public Diplomacy Alumni Association, April 16, 2014, C-SPAN2 (approximately 1 hour video).

“The Diplomatic Academy of the Caribbean Holds First Graduation,” Trinidad and Tobago Newsday, May 7, 2014. (Courtesy of Jorge Heine and Andrew Cooper).

Craig Hayden, “US Public Diplomacy in a Digital Context,” 30 minute podcast interview by Michael Ardaiolo, May 1, 2014, thePublicDiplomat, Syracuse University.

Rosalind S. Helderman, “For Hillary Clinton and Boeing, a Beneficial Relationship,” The Washington Post,April 13, 2014.

David Jackson, “What is the Mission of U.S. International Broadcasting?” April 26, 2014, Public Diplomacy Council.

Joe Johnson, “Putin’s Russian Propaganda on Ukraine: Is the West Losing?” June 3, 2014, Public Diplomacy Council.

Robert E. Hunter, “What Did Obama Really Say at West Point,” May 28, 2014, LobeLog Foreign Policy Blog.

Emily T. Metzgar, “Public Diplomacy as a Corrective Lens?” May 23, 2014, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Juan Luis Manfredi, “Hacking Diplomacy,” April 2, 2014, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Tara Ornstein, “Public Diplomacy in Action: MSF’s Access Campaign,” May 7, 2014, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Adam Powell, “Is the US Losing the Propaganda War with Russia?” June 2, 2014, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Spiegel staff, “The Opinion-Makers: How Russia is Winning the Propaganda War,” May 30, 2014, SpiegelOnline.

Rhonda Zaharna, “Culture Posts: Propaganda by Default in Ukraine,” April 9, 2014, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Gem From the Past

Wilson Dizard, Digital Diplomacy: U.S. Foreign Policy in the Information Age, (Praeger, 2001).  The late Wilson Dizard, a long-serving US Information Agency Foreign Service Officer, found time to write six books on international communication issues during his career.  His early work focused on communication satellites, spectrum issues, and radio/television broadcasting.  He then turned with considerable acuity and prescience to assessing the impact of computers and the Internet on diplomatic practice.  Although he did not live to assess the meaning of today’s social media challenges for diplomacy, his book addressed transformative issues he knew Internet-related technologies would bring in “an information intensive postindustrial environment.”  Whether or not he was the first to use the term “digital diplomacy,” he cautiously suggested it raised a new set of profound and strategic issues in relations between nations.  As he put it, “I have had occasional qualms about suggesting a new name . . . digital diplomacy.  For the present it may be a useful, if temporary, addition to a long tradition that has seen such predecessors as gunboat diplomacy, dollar diplomacy, quiet diplomacy, shuttle diplomacy, ping-pong diplomacy and, more recently, public diplomacy.”

Hisham Aidi, “America’s Hip-Hop Foreign Policy,” The Atlantic, March 20, 2014.  Aidi (Columbia University) examines changes in the musical genre hip-hop, its political and cultural dynamics, and its use by US and European governments as an instrument of public diplomacy.  He compares the State Department’s hip-hop initiatives to the Cold War’s jazz diplomacy and discusses their perceived value over hard rock and heavy metal for deradicalization purposes.  Aidi explores hip-hop’s strengths and limitations in the context of US foreign policy debates on countering extremism and suggests they may be more effective with marginalized Muslim populations in Europe than in North Africa and the Middle East.  The article is drawn from Aidi’s recently published book, Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture, (Pantheon, 2014).

Janna Anderson, Lee Rainie, and Maeve Duggan, Digital Life in 2025: 15 Theses About the Digital Future. Pew Research Internet Project, March 11, 2015.  In this collaborative report, Anderson (Elon University), Rainie, and Duggan (Pew Research) collate and assess the views and predictions of hundreds of experts on the digital future in 2025.  Their findings are grouped in 15 categories; eight are described as hopeful, six as concerned, and one as neutral.  The report finds considerable common ground on an “ambient information environment” with ubiquitous connectivity and further change in “how and where people associate, gather and share information, and consume media.”  At the same time, wide variation exists among the experts on the ramifications of digital change.

Martha Bayles, “The Struggle for Hearts and Minds: America’s Culture War and the Decline of US Public Diplomacy,”The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, Spring 2014, 59-72.  Bayles (Boston College) argues that in the decades since the 1960s, “America seems to have squandered its natural advantage in the art of winning hearts and minds around the world.”  Although partially attributable, in her view, to the demise of the US Information Agency and lack of a strong domestic constituency, she contends “America’s domestic culture war played an even more decisive role in the decline of US public diplomacy.”  Bayles cites numerous historical examples to support her argument and conclusion that America’s “rich artistic and literary heritage is now all but unknown.”  Her article is drawn from her recent book, Through a Screen Darkly: Popular Culture, Public Diplomacy, and America’s Image Abroad (2014).

Michael A. Cohen, “The Game Has Not Changed;” Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore “Reply,” “Hypocrisy Hype: Can Washington Still Walk and Talk Differently?” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2014, 161-165. Cohen (Century Foundation) challenges Farrell and Finnemore’s (George Washington University) argument (“The End of Hypocrisy,” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2013) that leaks of classified information by Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden “undermine Washington’s ability to act critically and get away with it.”  The leaks are embarrassing and may damage diplomacy in the short term, Cohen argues, but they are unlikely to have lasting effects because countries act on interests and US allies “continue to rely heavily on American diplomatic, military, and economic power.  Farrell and Finnemore respond that Cohen is wrong.  Hypocrisy is pervasive in US foreign policy, and if the US wants to convince through legitimacy, rather than just threats or bribes, it “must acknowledge the past importance of hypocrisy as well as its new limits.”

“Does the Academy Matter? Do Policy Makers Listen? Should You Get a PhD? And Where are All the Women?” Foreign Policy, March / April, 2014, 60-69, posted March 14, 2014.  In this panel discussion moderated by J. Peter Scoblic (FP’s Executive Editor, print), nine scholars look at the role of academia in the making of foreign policy:  Peter Cowhey (University of California, San Diego), Stephen Walt (Harvard University), James Goldgeier (American University), Bruce Jentleson (Duke University), James Reardon-Anderson (Georgetown University), Robert Gallucci (MacArthur Foundation), Ian Johnston (Tufts University), Cecilia Rouse (Princeton University), and James Levinsohn (Yale University).  Questions and issues include:  How do scholars and policymakers see their roles?  What are the pressures on junior faculty to write for academic disciplines rather than general audiences?  What is the impact of scholarship on policymaking?  What are the merits of master’s degrees and PhDs?  The article includes numerous graphics based on research conducted by Paul C. Avey and Michael C. Desch.

“Gastrodiplomacy,” Public Diplomacy Magazine (PD), Center on Public Diplomacy, University of Southern California, Winter 2014.  In this issue, the Magazine looks at “gastrodiplomacy” defined by the editors as “a form of cultural diplomacy,” “a form of edible nation branding,” “a growing trend in public diplomacy,” and “the practice of sharing a country’s cultural heritage through food.”  Interviews and case studies include discussions of “gastrodiplomacy” in India, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and Greece.  Featured articles include:

• Paul Rockhower (Levantine Public Diplomacy), “The State of Gastrodiplomacy”
• Yelena Osipova (American University), “From Gastronationalism to Gastrodiplomacy: Reversing the Securitization of the Dolma in the South Caucasus”
• Johanna Mendelsohn Forman (Stimson Center), “Conflict Cuisine: Teaching War Through Washington’s Ethnic Restaurant Scene”
• Braden Ruddy (The New School University), “Hearts, Minds, and Stomachs: Gastrodiplomacy and the Potential of National Cuisine in Changing Public Perceptions of National Image”

PD Magazine, now in its 6th year, is published by the USC Association of Public Diplomacy Scholars (APDS).  Its editorial board is comprised of graduate students in USC’s Master of Public Diplomacy program.

Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014).  These reflections of former Secretary of Defense Gates have much to offer diplomacy scholars and practitioners at both macro and micro levels.  His views on relations with Congress, the White House, the press, and Defense Department subordinates, with discounts for organizational differences, contain an abundance of “best practices” for the Department of State.  More narrowly, we discover his Kansas State University speech urging more resources for diplomacy and development was not a fight he intended to take on, but mood music to smooth relations with leaders in the interagency process.  We also learn about his views on Bush’s freedom agenda (“too simplistic”), Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech (“one of his best” but “it raised expectations very high”), the President’s National Security Strategy documents (“of little practical use”), the State Department’s security contractors (they “caused most of our headaches” with civilians), our lack of understanding of Afghanistan (“very profound”), the term “Global War on Terror” (not worth a fight to eliminate), civilian advisors in Afghanistan (“deep doubt” that enough could be found), State’s unwillingness to accept a loan of Defense civilians, efforts by US diplomats Karl Eikenberry and Richard Holbrooke to unseat President Karzai in 2009 (“our clumsy and failed putsch”), Wikileaks (unfortunate but not a “melt-down” and “game changer”), and the micro-management of an oversized National Security Council staff (“an operational body with its own policy agenda, as opposed to a coordination mechanism”).

Nils Petter Gleditsch, ed., “The Forum: The Decline of War,” International Studies Review, (2013) 15, 396-419.  In this forum, based on a panel at the 2013 International Studies Association conference in San Diego, five scholars offer thoughtful and contrasting views on the decline of war debate.  Gleditsch (Peace Research Institute Oslo) provides an overview of the literature and summarizes some of the main issues.  Steven Pinker (Harvard University) makes a “war appears to be in decline” claim based, not on a romantic view of human nature, but on a massive array of statistical indicators and arguments from cognitive psychology.  Bradley A. Thayer (Utah State University) challenges Pinker, arguing he and others focus disproportionately on the West and neglect systemic in-group/out-group distinctions, threat of predation, resource scarcity, and international relations as an anarchic and hostile environment that tends to trigger egoism, dominance, and group bias.  Jack S. Levy (Rutgers University) and William R. Thompson (Indiana University) argue Pinker gives too much causal weight to ideational and cultural factors and too little weight to material and institutional factors.

Bruce Gregory, “The Paradox of US Public Diplomacy: Its Rise and ‘Demise,'” Report for the Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, George Washington University, February 2014.  US public diplomacy faces a paradox.  As diplomacy’s public dimension increasingly dominates study and practice, public diplomacy has less value as a term and conceptual subset of diplomacy.  It marginalizes what is now mainstream.  This report examines transformational changes in diplomacy’s 21st century context:  permeable borders and power diffusion, new diplomatic actors and issues, digital technologies and social media, and whole of government diplomacy.  It critically assesses implications for diplomatic roles and risks, foreign ministries and diplomatic missions, and strategic planning.  In an attempt to bridge scholarship and practice, the report explores operational and architectural consequences for diplomacy in a world that is more transparent, informal, and complex.

Christopher Hill and Sarah Beadle, The Art of Attraction: Soft Power and the UK’s Role in the World, The British Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences,March 2014.  Cambridge University scholars Hill and Beadle ground their report in the concept of soft power as developed by Joseph Nye (Harvard University and a British Academy Fellow).  After briefly summarizing the well-plowed ground of Nye’s central concepts, they examine the UK’s abundant tangible and intangible soft power assets as a “cultural superpower.”  Much of the report focuses on the UK’s higher education systems, the BBC’s global reach, and the work of the British Council.  Hill and Beadle argue that soft power is likely to become more important, that the UK government’s ability to mobilize soft power assets is limited, that serious questions exist regarding the extent to which it should do so, and that the soft power assets that really matter are “the deeper, slow-moving qualities of a society and not the surface glitter of a successful Olympics or a royal wedding.”  Their observations conclude with separate categories of thoughtful recommendations for governments, citizens and voters, and those engaged in private socio-cultural activities.  For a critique, see Robin Brown, “Do You Really Want Another Report on British Soft Power?” March 12, 2014, Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence Blog.

Iver Neumann, Diplomatic Sites: A Critical Enquiry, (Columbia University Press, 2013).  Neumann (London School of Economics) states his book is “about possible changes in diplomacy as a result of general incremental changes in the global social environment within which diplomacy functions.”  Although how we arrived at where we are is of interest, his primary focus is on the concept of sites, physical and virtual, where diplomacy takes place and on “how globalization reconfigures space so that old sites take on new characteristics and new sites emerge.”  His chapters examine five sites:  Europe as an “originary site of diplomacy,” the diplomatic meal as a sustaining site, third-party mediation in interstitial sites (increasingly within states and involving non-state actors), the virtual site in popular culture as exemplified by television and Star Trek, and “sublime diplomacy” understood as finding ways to use the effects of events and aesthetic resources on others to advantage.  To the extent contemporary diplomacy is new, Neumann argues, it is not due to its internal dynamics or new core tasks, rather its newness derives “from change in the general political and social fields that surround diplomacy.”

Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era, (Princeton University Press, 2013).  In this book, based on his 2012 Richard Ullman Lectures at Princeton University, Nye (Harvard University) examines the effectiveness and ethics of eight US presidents in the 20th century.  He challenges scholarship that gives easy priority to “transformational” leaders (e.g., Wilson, Reagan) and makes a case for the under-appreciated effectiveness of “transactional” leaders (e.g., Eisenhower, the elder Bush).  Nye draws on his thinking about power, leadership, and contextual intelligence, and there are references throughout to American exceptionalism, public diplomacy, and smart power.  A closing chapter offers early speculation on the Obama presidency.  His chapter on ethics and foreign policy leadership nicely focus his thinking from his numerous other writings. Graceful writing makes the book accessible to students and general audiences.

Donna Marie Oglesby, “The Political Promise of Public Diplomacy,” Perspectives, Layalina Productions, Volume VI, Issue 1, March 2014.  In framing public diplomacy as political argument, Oglesby (Eckerd College) challenges the idealism of those who “imagine they are responding to a transformed global space in which a vastly increased number of people everywhere are empowered by globalization and technology to rise above domestic politics, national boundaries, and bickering leaders to engage each other individually in seeking solutions to common problems of humanity.”  Her brief article draws on popular culture, tweeting ambassadors, political activism, and concepts of power and persuasive rhetoric in making her case for a public diplomacy that gives “primacy to politics” and “the pluralism inherent in the international public realm today.”

James Pamment, “Articulating Influence: Toward a Research Agenda for Interpreting the Evaluation of Soft Power, Public Diplomacy, and Nation Brands,” Public Relations Review, 40 (2014) 50-59.  Pamment (University of Texas, Austin) urges scholars to pay more attention to empirical investigation of results in public diplomacy than to goals or outputs.  Public diplomacy rarely turns on rational choices between communication options, he argues.  Outcomes are rarely contingent on conformity with an ideal model, and good evaluation seldom results from applying best practice methodologies.  Rather public diplomacy practices and their evaluation “are bound together in complex organizational and power structures that generate pragmatic responses both to the ‘problem of influence’ and the reporting of results.”  Pamment’s closely reasoned article develops a concept of “articulation” in which ideal forms and methods “bend to the overall articulation of the toolset within foreign policy goals and oversight structures.”  Public diplomacy evaluation needs to take into account how institutional pressures discipline and “rearticulate ideal categories of PD and evaluation to suit pragmatic goals.”

James Pamment, “Strategic Narratives in US Public Diplomacy: A Critical Geopolitics,” Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture, 12:1, 48-64, published online, February 11, 2014.  Pamment has three objectives in this article.  First, he outlines a conceptual framework for understanding geopolitical space and strategic narratives.  Second, in a broad overview of geopolitical discourse from the Monroe Doctrine to the end of the Cold War, he examines ways in which policy declarations became accepted frames for interpreting shifts in international power relations.  Third, he concludes with a discussion of US geopolitical discourse and public diplomacy in the 21st century — the inability of the US to create a compelling post-9/11 narrative and the potential for public diplomacy to create consensus on defining problems and finding common solutions.  Strategic narratives can be important tools for achieving consensus, Pamment argues, and successful narratives seek shared responsibilities over geopolitical space rather than control.

Kevin Peraino, Lincoln in the World: The Making of an American Statesman, (Crown Publishers, 2013). Peraino (former Newsweek Middle East Bureau Chief) argues the case for Lincoln as a strong foreign policy president in chapters that focus on his relations with Secretary of State William Seward, his avoidance of war with Great Britain following the US Navy’s removal of two Confederate diplomats from the British mail ship Trent, the complex diplomacy that averted European intervention in the Civil War, and his handling of Napoleon III’s intervention in Mexico.  For public diplomacy scholars, Peraino’s narrative offers detailed accounts of Lincoln’s views on public opinion; his uses of the penny press and the daguerreotype; the new era of the telegraph, steamships, undersea cables, and other 19th century globalization technologies; Lincoln’s public letters to mill workers in Manchester, England in the competing contexts of their anti-slavery rallies and cotton shortages; and the Emancipation Proclamation’s influence on European public opinion and the policies of Britain’s Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston.

Simon Reich and Richard Ned Lebow, Good-bye Hegemony! Power and Influence in the Global System, (Princeton University Press, 2014). Reich (Rutgers University) and Lebow (Kings College London, Dartmouth) challenge realist and liberal theories of international relations grounded in a disproportionate focus on material power and hegemony as an organizing concept.  Their critique rests on a considered distinction between power and influence, and the proposition that effective influence involves persuasion.  Persuasion in turn depends on “shared values and acceptable practices,” on “considerable political skills,” and on “sophisticated leaders and diplomats, shared discourses with target states, advocacy of policies that build on precedent, and a willingness to let others help and shape initiatives.”  Reich and Lebow advance their theoretical claims though case studies on Europe, China, and the United States.

Mark Rolfe, “Rhetorical Traditions of Public Diplomacy and the Internet,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 9 (2014), 76-101.  Rolfe (University of New South Wales) examines thematic recurrences in the rhetoric of public diplomacy (and democracy) grounded in complex tensions between political classes and diplomats on the one hand and public opinion, on the other, which is seen to confer legitimacy and must be taken into account.  Recurring language patterns, from the 1790s to the present, reflect popular distrust of political elites, repeated calls for new diplomacy, and claims of credibility.  Rolfe argues that calls for a “‘new’ public diplomacy” that privileges the Internet as a tool to reach public opinion are recent manifestations of periodic attempts to reinvent diplomacy and democracy for each generation of public opinion.

Evan Ryan, Douglas Frantz, and Macon Philips, “Digital Diplomacy: Making Foreign Policy Less Foreign,” New York Foreign Press Center, US Department of State, February 18, 2014.  Ryan (Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs), Frantz (Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Public Affairs), and Philips (Coordinator for International Information Programs) respond to questions from Emily Parker (New America Foundation) on ways social media are changing diplomacy.  Issues addressed include: the pace and volume of information; the continuing value of journalism’s mediating role; virtual exchanges; the Philippines typhoon; Ukraine; Zimbabwe; South Sudan; downsides and challenges facing social media; taking “responsible risks” and tolerance for “small mistakes” in a risk averse State Department; putting humor and “a more human tone in content;” tensions between speed, informality and serious purpose; and “public diplomacy as a central part of our overall diplomatic strategy.”

Clay Shirky, “The Key to Successful Tech Management: Learning to Metabolize Failure,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2014, 51-59.  Shirky (New York University) uses the Obama administration’s HealthCare.gov website to make broader points about government’s ability to handle people and planning in complex technological management issues.  His bottom line: “The hardest challenge in creating new technology is not eliminating uncertainty in advance, but adapting to it as the work uncovers it.”  Shirky argues for breaking projects into small, testable chunks, adopting “agile development” methods, changing managers’ incentives structures by “embracing failure,” and penalizing “opacity and information hoarding.”

“Should Leaders Tweet Personally?” Twidiplomacy, Google+ Hangout, March 24, 2014. This 44-minute video addresses the following questions.  “Should ambassadors and political leaders tweet personally?  And if they do, how do they find the time?  Can their staff tweet for them?  What are the tips and tricks for successful personal tweets?”  The panel discussion, moderated by Matthias Lüfkens, Digital Practice Leader EMEA, Burson-Marsteller, includes: Nicola Clase, Swedish Ambassador to the UK; Tom Fletcher, UK Ambassador to Lebanon; Andreas Sandre, Press and Public Affairs Officer at Embassy of Italy, Washington, DC; Charlotta Ozaki Macias, Head of Communication, Swedish Foreign Ministry; Martha McLean, Deputy Director, Online communications, Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development, Canada; Andrew Stroehlein, European Media Director, Human Rights Watch; and Róisín Traynor, Online Editor, International Crisis Group.

Phil Taylor’s Web Site, British Library.  In 1995, University of Leeds Professor of International Communication Philip Taylor created a website intended to be a “One Stop Shop” for publications relating to strategic communication, public diplomacy, military-media relations, propaganda, and a host of related topics.  Following Taylor’s untimely death in 2010, the University discontinued its link to this valuable and widely used archive.  Fortunately, through the efforts of Professor Gary Rawnsley (Aberystwyth University), Phil Taylor’s Website is now hosted by the British Library.  Many thanks to Gary who maintains his own very useful blog on Public Diplomacy and International Communications.

Jian Wang, Shaping China’s Global Imagination: Branding Nations at the World Expo, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).  Wang (University of Southern California) uses a comparative analysis of national pavilions at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo to examine the concept of nation branding.  He focuses on ways in which Brazil, India, Israel, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, the United Arab Emirates and the United States used their pavilions to portray their cultures to Chinese audiences.  Chapters explore definitional issues, communicating nation-brands, the uses of brands in enhancing a nation’s image and soft power, nation-branding as strategic narrative, and opportunities for future research.  Wang’s book builds on his Center for Public Diplomacy Perspectives Paper, written with Shaojing Sun (Fudan University),Experiencing Nation Brands (2012).

Recent Blogs and Other Items of Interest

Robert Albro, “Cultural Diplomacy Of And By The Book,” March 28, 2014, CPD Blog, USC Center for Public Diplomacy.

Danielle Allen, “Professors Are Working To Understand and Solve Policy Problems,” February 21, 2014, The Washington Post.

“BBG to Become More Nimble and Streamlined Under the FY 15 Budget Request,” March 25, 2015; “BBG Budget Request Tied to Global Priorities and Evolving Media Environments,” March 4, 2014, Broadcasting Board of Governors; Charles S. Clark, “Broadcasting Board of Governors Reshuffles Management Team,” January 22, 2014,Government Executive.

Donald Bishop, “Operational Public Diplomacy: Brought to You by the Number 4,'” April 3, 2014, Public Diplomacy Council.

Rosa Brooks, “Winthrop’s Warning: How Politicians and Pundits Misread ‘City on a Hill’ and Butcher the Real Meaning of American Exceptionalism,” March 17, 2014, FP Blog.

Katherine Brown (moderator), Peggy Blumenthal, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Macon Phillips (panelists), “2013 Forum: The Future of Public Diplomacy,” November 12, 2013, posted online February 13, 2014, The Public Diplomacy Council.

Robin Brown, “House of Lords Report on UK Soft Power,” April 4, 2014; “Interpreting Nation Branding,” April 3, 2014; “EU and Cultural Relations: New Reports,” March 5, 2014; “More on French Cultural Relations,” February 28, 2014;”The Closing Space Problem and Democracy Support,” February 26, 2014; “Is the BBC World Service Being Held Hostage by the BBC?” February 5, 2014, Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence Blog.

“Crafting Public Diplomacy for an Urbanized World,” Atlantic Council, March 20, 2014.

Nicholas J. Cull, “Editorial, Africa’s Breakthrough: Art, Place Branding and Angola’s Win at the Venice Biennale, 2013,” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Vol. 10, 1, 1-5.

Ambassadors Cynthia Efird, Linda Jewell, and Greta Morris, “Three Public Diplomacy Officers Reflect: Part 1, Part 2,and Part 3,” March 16, 2014, Public Diplomacy Council.

Peter Engelke, “Foreign Policy for an Urban World: Global Governance and the Rise of Cities,” August 2, 2013, Atlantic Council, Strategic Foresight Initiative.

Ellen Huijgh, “Indonesia: ‘A Thousand Friends,’ But No BFF,” February 28, 2014, USC Center for Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.

“We Need to Elevate the Environment in Everything We Do,” Personal Message from Secretary Kerry, US Department of State, Dipnote Blog.

Jason L. Knoll, “U.S. Ambassadors to Europe on Twitter,” March 31, 2014, US and European Politics blog.

Kristin Lord and Stephen J. Hadley, “America the Gentle Giant,” April 2, 2014, FP Blog.

Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “The Myth of Isolationist America,” February 10, 2014, Project Syndicate.

James Pamment, “Reflections from the International Studies Association Conference, 2014,” April 3, 2014, USC Center for Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.

David Remnick, “Patriot Games: Vladimir Putin Lives His Olympic Dream,” Letter from Sochi, The New Yorker, March 3, 2014, 30-35.

Walter R. Roberts, “Tito: Personal Reflections,” February 2014, American Diplomacy.

Eric C. Schmidt and Jared Cohen, “The Future of Internet Freedom,” The New York Times, March 11, 2014.

Cynthia Schneider, “Challenging the Pakistani Taliban Through Culture,” March 7, 2014, Brookings.

Mike Schneider, Mary Della Vecchia, and Sarah Batiuck, “2013 Forum: USIA and the Foundations of Public Diplomacy – Valuable Reflections for Today’s Practice,” November 2013, posted March 21, 2014, Public Diplomacy Council.

Philip Seib, “Economic Development as Public Diplomacy,” February 27, 2014; “Public Diplomacy and Press Freedom,” February 24, 2014; “Putting a Hard Edge on Soft Power,” February 7, 2014, USC Center for Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, “Foreign Policy in Stereo: Power and Leadership in a World of States and People,” February 5, 2014, Embassy of Italy in the United States.

“Twittersphere Lets Us In On Diplomats ‘Normal’ Banter,” February 11, 2014, Renee Montaigne interviews Alec Ross, National Public Radio, Morning Edition.

Patrick Tutwiler, “State Department Steals Atlantic Media CEO,” March 31, 2014, FishbowlDC; Zeke J. Miller, “The Obama Campaign Goes Global,” March 31, 2014, Time.com.

Jay Wang, “China’s First Lady,” March 19, 2014, CPD Blog, USC Center for Public Diplomacy.

Rhonda Zaharna, “CULTURE POST: Basketball Diplomacy in CNN’s Court,” CPD Blog, USC Center for Public Diplomacy.

Vera Zakern, “Effective Persistent Engagement Must Be Whole-of-Government,” March 13, 2014, War on the Rocksweb magazine.

Gem From the Past

Charles Tilly, Stories, Identities, and Political Change, (Roman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002).  In this book, renowned sociologist Charles Tilly (Columbia University) examined central issues in the role stories play in political explanations and the construction of personal and national identities.  His chapter, “The Trouble with Stories,” argued that stories – understood as narratives, not as the artful use of political rhetoric – have limited explanatory power because they place undue emphasis on actors making reasoned choices among well-defined alternatives.  The logical structure of story telling, he wrote, misses causal connections in most socially significant processes in which at least some crucial causes are “indirect, incremental, unintended, collective, and/or mediated by the nonhuman environment.”  Tilly fully appreciates the value and centrality of storytelling in human life.  Tilly’s cautionary views on “the incompatibility in causal structure between most standard stories and most social processes” can be helpful to diplomacy scholars who rely on constructivist theories and engagement models.

Martha Bayles, Through A Screen Darkly: Popular Culture, Public Diplomacy, and America’s Image Abroad, (Yale University Press, 2014).  Bayles (Boston College) pursues two overarching goals: (1) an inquiry into post-Cold War changes in the tone and content of American popular culture, the technologies that convey it to the world, and audiences that interact with it; and (2) a critique of what she calls “the slow death of public diplomacy” grounded in lack of a suitable “coordinating organization” (following the US Information Agency), lack of a domestic constituency, security concerns in US overseas facilities, and “intellectual paralysis caused by thirty years of culture war.”  The mistake of cutting back on government sponsored public diplomacy was compounded, Bayles argues that by “letting the entertainment industry take over the job of communicating America’s policies, ideals, and culture to a distrustful world,” making commercial entertainment “America’s de facto ambassador.”  She concludes with recommendations, many drawn from the thinking of former public diplomacy practitioners, for reviving US public diplomacy, international broadcasting, and cultural diplomacy.  How, she asks, can public diplomacy deal with the massive export of US entertainment that offends and distorts?  Her answer:  “Export the American debate over popular culture” and create forums for discussion of cultural content, theirs and ours. 

Susan A. Brewer, Andrew Johnstone, Michael L. Krenn, Scott Lucas, Allen M. Winkler, and Justin Hart, “H-Diplo Roundtable on Justin Hart, Empire of Ideas: The Origins of Public Diplomacy and the Transformation of U.S. Foreign Policy,” Vol. XV, No. 10, November 4, 2013.  Five historians – Brewer (University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point), Johnstone (University of Leicester), Krenn (Appalachian State University), Lucas (University of Birmingham), and Winkler (Miami University in Ohio) — discuss central issues raised in and by Justin Hart’s (Texas Tech University)Empire of Ideas, a carefully researched study of US public diplomacy from 1936 to 1953.  What is public diplomacy in US practice and as a field of research?  How does it differ from foreign policy and foreign relations? What distinctions are worth making with respect to the porous border between foreign and domestic?  What is the role of public diplomacy in a democratic society?  Who is a public diplomacy actor?  What dilemmas do practitioners face in projecting image and supporting policies and strategies?  Includes Hart’s response.

“Compliance Followup Review of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs,”Office of Inspector General, US Department of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors, ISP-C-13-51, September 2013.  The Inspectors find the Bureau has complied with most recommendations in its 2012 inspection, improved internal communication, and adopted a strategic planning process.  However, the report recommends a number of ways the Bureau could do more to implement the plan and improve work flow efficiencies, including adopting a uniform data collection standard “to quantify the foreign policy relevance of its work.”

Mai’a K. Davis Cross and Jan Melissen, eds., European Public Diplomacy: Soft Power at Work, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).  This excellent collection of case studies, compiled by Cross (ARENA Center for European Studies, Oslo) and Melissen (Netherlands Institute of International Relations, ‘Clingendael’), provides reflections on public diplomacy theory and Europe’s rich variety of public diplomacy practices.  Their work extends discourse in the multi-disciplinary study of public diplomacy and helps to fill a gap in international relations literature through their assessment of soft power concepts and cases.  European public diplomacy is treated at multiple state and non-state levels beyond the EU framework.  They examine a range of public diplomacy experiences and experiments that can be improved and that have much to offer other countries and regions.  Includes a forward by Nicholas J. Cull (University of Southern California), an introduction by Cross and Melissen, and the following chapters:

— Mai’a K. Davis Cross, “Conceptualizing European Public Diplomacy” (Available online)

— James Pamment (University of Texas at Austin), “West European Public Diplomacy”

— Beata Ociepka (University Wroclaw), “New Members’ Public Diplomacy”

— Ellen Huijgh (Netherlands Institute of International Relations, ‘Clingendael’), “Public Diplomacy’s Domestic Dimension in the European Union”

— Teresa La Porte (University of Navarra), “City Public Diplomacy in the European Union”

— Simon Duke (European Institute of Public Administration), “The European External Action Service and Public Diplomacy”

— Ali Fisher (Intermedia), “A Network Perspective on Public Diplomacy in Europe: EUNIC”

— Peter van Ham (Netherlands Institute of International Relations, ‘Clingendael’), “The European Union’s Social Power in International Politics”

— Ian Manners (University of Copenhagen) and Richard Whitman (University of Kent), “Normative Power and the Future of EU Diplomacy”

— Jan Melissen, ” Conclusions and Recommendations on Public Diplomacy in Europe” 

Walter Douglas with Jeanne Neal, “Engaging the Muslim World: Public Diplomacy after 9/11 in the Arab Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan,” Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), November 2013.  Douglas (US Department of State) and Neal (CSIS) contend the post-9/11 literature on US public diplomacy looks “overwhelmingly” on what could be done in Washington. Although they may underestimate the amount of attention given to field activities in the literature, their report usefully focuses on what practitioners should do in a region defined as that “most affected by America’s response to 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”  Their six areas of concern: Define the goals.  Listen.  Measure success.  Reach the target audience.  Exchange people and ideas.  Get outside the bubble.

Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History, (Oxford University Press, 2013).  Massive, compelling, and easy to read, Freedman’s (Kings College London) history explores strategic thinking from its “prehistory” origins to the present.  The book’s main sections explore military, political, and business strategies.  A concluding chapter portrays Freedman’s ideas on “strategic scripts” as “a way of thinking about strategy as a story told in the future tense.”  Concise profiles of strategic thinkers give life to clearly developed concepts.  Particularly useful are closely reasoned assessments of Gustave Le Bon, Antonio Gramsci, Walter Lippmann, John Dewey, Edward Bernays, Harold Lasswell, Isaiah Berlin, Paul Lazersfeld, Todd Gitlin, Herbert Simon, Charles Tilly, and Daniel Kahneman.  Although Freedman does not treat diplomacy as a separate analytical category, diplomacy scholars and practitioners will benefit from his central themes: the growing importance and ambiguity of words and stories in thinking about and communicating strategies, the uses and framing of narratives, the value of context in understanding old ideas and new meanings, the limitations of rational choice theory, the roles of chance and intuitive judgments, and strategy as iterative undertakings in situations that are complex, contested, and constantly changing.  Freedman’s rich discussion of scripts and combinations of two contrasting processes of strategic reasoning — (1) intuitive, quick, and largely unconscious processes and (2) deliberative, slower, and conscious processes — are grounded in recent cognitive psychology research and Daniel Khaneman’sThinking Fast, Thinking Slow.  Freedman assumes strategies are less about plans and asserting control over situations and much more about planning and ways of coping with situations where nobody has total control.  There is much on offer for those concerned with transformation of 21st century diplomacy.

Edmund Gullion, Recorded Address at the Overseas Press Club, October 14, 1964, New York City Municipal Archives, WNYC Collection.  In this audio recording of a prepared speech delivered shortly after becoming Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (and shortly before he coined the term “public diplomacy”), former US Ambassador to Congo Edmund Gullion discusses a range of issues at the crossroads of diplomacy and the press.  The speech is well worth listening to for its humor and graceful use of language and his nuanced views on the public roles of ambassadors, the importance of relationships between diplomats and journalists and the professional skills need by both, the role and value of foreign correspondents, a considered list of the strengths that considerably outweigh the limitations of the American press, and press coverage in Africa.  In Q&A, he expressed concern that the then pending integration of USIA’s officers into the US Foreign Service not undermine their creativity.  On balance, however, he believed the advantages of the career principle outweighed the disadvantages.  He does not use the words “public diplomacy,” a term he is widely credited with originating in 1965. (Courtesy of Alan Henrikson and Tom Tuch). 
     
Ellen Huijgh, Bruce Gregory, and Jan Melissen, “Public Diplomacy,” in Oxford Bibliographies in International Relations,David Armstrong, ed., (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).  Huijgh and Melissen (Netherlands Institute of International Affairs, ‘Clingendael’) and Gregory (George Washington University) have compiled a literature review of scholarly publications relating to public diplomacy as a field of study and practice.  Intended for students, scholars, and practitioners, their article selectively lists and annotates more than 100 publications and includes brief introductions to fifteen subject categories:  general overview; journals; a multi-disciplinary field of study (subsections on communication, diplomacy studies, and soft power); 20th century public diplomacy; 21st century: the “new public diplomacy;” beyond the “new public diplomacy”: the future; social media; public diplomacy in the Americas; US public diplomacy; public diplomacy in Europe; public diplomacy in Asia-Pacific; and Chinese public diplomacy.  Currently the article is institutionally priced and available by subscription.  Oxford University Press will consider an E-Book version (typically priced at about $9.00) if there is sufficient interest.  Those interested should contact onlinemarketing@oup.com.

Inspection of US International Broadcasting to Russia, Office of Inspector General, US Department of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors, ISP-IB-13-50, September 2013.  In this mixed report, the Inspectors find effective shifts in US broadcasting’s strategy to maintain connections with Russian audiences by moving from radio and television to digital platforms.  They also find significant managerial deficiencies in its implementation.  Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America continue their parallel operations, with only small steps toward greater collaboration and efficiencies as envisioned in US broadcasting’s 2012-2016 strategic plan. 

International Broadcasting in the Social Media Era, A CPD Conference Report, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, November 2013.  This summary of the proceedings of a conference held at the University of Southern California on March 1, 2013 looks at issues discussed in two panels:  “Striking a Balance Between Broadcasting and Social Media” and “Proving Ground: Influencing and Being Influenced by Asia.”  Speakers included a team of USC scholars – Philip Seib, Ernest J. Wilson, Jay Wang, Adam Clayton Powell III, and Nicholas Cull – and outside experts: Robert Wheelock, former executive director of Al Jazeera English; Jim Laurie, senior consultant for China Central Television (CCTV-America); Robert Boorstin, director of public policy, Google Inc.; Rajesh Mirchandani, BBC journalist; Nicholas Wrenn, vice president of digital services for CNN international; and Libby Liu, president of Radio Free Asia.

David Kilcullen, Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla, (Oxford University Press, 2013).  Kilcullen (anthropologist, author, and policy advisor to soldiers and diplomats in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Washington) provides a deeply researched look at future conflicts, which he argues are increasingly likely to occur in large highly connected coastal cities.  Four megatrends – population dynamics, urbanization, coastal settlement, and unprecedented connectedness – are driving change.  Cities, not countries, will be the primary analytical focus.  Resiliency, not stability, will be the primary goal.  Kilcullen’s arguments are based on fieldwork and close examination of “nonstate armed groups” in such cities as Mumbai, Modadishu, Karachi, Nairobi, Kingston, Lagos, Kandahar, Misurata, Dhaka, and Monrovia.  His central conclusions include conceptualizing cities as constantly changing complex systems, a theory of competitive control in irregular conflicts, adopting strategies that emphasize civilian knowledge domains rather than military solutions, and maintaining armed forces less enamored of a garrison mindset and more focused on “a mobile, improvisational, expeditionary mentality.”  See alsoKilcullen’s “Morning Edition” interview with National Public Radio’s Steve Inskeep, December 27, 2013.

Robert Koenig, “Using ‘Social Diplomacy’ to Reach Russians,” The Foreign Service Journal, January/February 2014, 21-26.  Koenig (a retired USIA Foreign Service Officer and currently an Eligible Family Member working as an assistant information officer in Moscow) discusses strengths and challenges in US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul’s uses of Twitter, blogs, and other social media platforms.  For McFaul, social media provide “a fast way to get out information, correct the record, and engage Russians” in Russian on political issues – “apparent political motivations” in the embezzlement conviction of activist Alexei Navalny, Edward Snowden, harsh sentences for the Pussy Riot rock group – and an alternative to government controlled broadcast media for discussing a range of US-Russia policy issues.  In McFaul’s view the toughest challenges are not aggressive counter Twitter offensives from Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or occasional grammatical errors which enhance authenticity, but “finding the correct balance between personal and professional matters.”

Marc Lynch, Deen Freelon, and Sean Aday, Syria’s Socially Mediated Civil War, Blogs and Bullets III, US Institute of Peace, Peaceworks, No. 91, January 2014.  In this third report in USIP’s PeaceTech Initiative, Lynch (George Washington University), Freelon (American University) and Aday (George Washington University) assess group dynamics, uses of online social media by activist organizations, and relationships between new and traditional media in Syria’s civil war – “the most socially mediated civil conflict in history.” Key findings discuss “a dangerous illusion of unmediated information flows,” the powerful roles of curation hubs, implications for policymakers, insular clusters of like-minded communities, and the need to better understand structural bias in social media and connections between online trends and real world developments.  As with previous reports, the authors make a strong case that more rigorous research and better tools are needed for reliable analysis of behavior, attitudes, and political outcomes.

Joseph Margulies, What Changed When Everything Changed: 9/11 and the Making of National Identity, (Yale University Press, 2013).  Margulies (Northwestern University) argues that timeless symbols and values in an American Creed (liberty, equality, limited government, rule of law, and dignity of the individual) are contested and redefined in a continuous struggle over national identity in the public square.  “National identity is what we make of it.”  Margulies first looks broadly at contrasting historical interpretations of identity in matters of race and religion.  He then concentrates on the making of identity after 9/11 in the context of counterterrorism policies and attitudes toward Muslims and Islam.  His conclusion: repressive attitudes have taken hold as terrorist threats have decreased.  “When Americans come upon a social arrangement they want to preserve, they do not alter their behavior to fit their values, they alter their values to fit their behavior.”     

Michael Meyer, “Evgeny vs. the Internet,” Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 2014, 24-29.  CJR staff writer Michael Meyer profiles the intellectual odyssey of digital technology guru Evgeny Morozov as part angry “intellectual hit man” and part serious writer with growing global influence, dozens of blogs and essays in prestigious publications, a monthly column in Slate and leading newspapers in Europe and Asia, and two New York Times Notable Books of the year (The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, 2012 and To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism, 2013).  

Rajesh Mirchandani and Abdullahi Tasiu Abubakar, Britain’s International Broadcasting, CPD Perspectives, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, January 2014.  In this two part study, BBC journalist Mirchandani and Abubakar (University of London) assess the history, role, successes, failures, and future of the BBC World Service.  In “The BBC and British Diplomacy: Past, Present, and Future,” Mirchandani argues that “paying for the BBC World Service represents the most public way the British Government carries out public diplomacy.”  He concludes from his assessment that the BBC’s “much-vaunted and jealously-guarded editorial independence plays an important public diplomacy role in generating soft power.”  This is likely to continue despite the current rise of the BBC’s international commercial services.  In “British Public Diplomacy: A Case Study of the BBC Hausa Service,” Abubaka looks at the impact of the BBC’s broadcasting in Nigeria on British public diplomacy.

Stuart Murray and Geoffrey Pigman, “Mapping the Relationship Between International Sport and Diplomacy,” Sport in Society, November 18, 2013.  Murray (Bond University) and Pigman (University of Pretoria) argue for a bright line analytical distinction between international sport as an instrument of government diplomacy and the “diplomatic representation, communication and negotiation” between non-state actors in international sporting competition.  Their article urges promotion of best practices in each category, stronger theory in the study of diplomacy and sport, and debate between scholars and 
practitioners.

John Norris, “How to Balance Safety and Openness for America’s Diplomats,” The Atlantic, November 4,2011.  Norris (Center for American Progress) looks at how US diplomats have “faced disease, disaster, war, and terrorism over the last 234 years.”  His historical narrative concludes “the greatest challenge is a Congress that whipsaws between ignoring the Foreign Service and scapegoating it after disasters, effectively pushing the State Department toward a zero risk approach that will trap American diplomacy in a hermetic bubble.”  Norris summarizes steps taken and under discussion since Benghazi: reviewing the role of Marines at embassies; calls to re-examine the design of accountability review boards; efforts to get away from a cookie-cutter approach to embassy security; and the need for more highly contextualized discussions of threats at senior levels, additional force protection in some cases, and smaller and more flexible diplomatic teams in others.

Martha C. Nussbaum, Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice, (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013).  Nussbaum (University of Chicago) continues her examination of emotions in social justice in this book on “public emotions rooted in love – in intense attachments to things outside our control.”  She discusses the cultivation of emotions in the narratives of American and Indian political leaders (Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru) and concepts in Western and Asian political theory.  Her examples are drawn from literature, songs, political rhetoric, festivals, memorials, and the design of public spaces. A recurrent theme, valuable for diplomacy scholars, relates to circles of concern and the implications of group preferences by people of the same ethnicity, religion, education, and social class.  “Most people tend toward narrowness of sympathy,” Nussbaum observes, which means they “are inclined to prefer a narrower group to a broader one” and “forget about the needs of those outside their inner circle.”

Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange 2013, Institute of International Education (IIE), November 11, 2013.  IIE’s news release launching its annual survey reports “the number of international students at colleges and universities in the United States increased by seven percent to a record high of 819,644 students in the 2012-2013 academic year, while U.S. students studying abroad increased by three percent to an all-time high of more than 283,000.”  China, India, and South Korea lead with a combined total of nearly 50% of the international students.  Iran now ranks 15th with an increase to 8,744 students this year, a percentage increase of 25.2% from the previous year.

Laurence Pope, The Demilitarization of American Diplomacy: Two Cheers for the Striped Pants, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).  In this short book, Pope (US Ambassador, ret.) writes with passion about needed reforms in a “dysfunctional” Department of State, weakened civilian services and agencies, and a “militarized foreign policy process.”  He pays particular attention to centralization of foreign affairs capacity in the White House staff; a critique of State’s Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development (QDDR) process; intrusion of a “military-intelligence complex” into political roles through extraterritorial ambitions (offensive operations in cyberspace, drones, Special Forces, and “militarization of the World Wide Web”); and the need for diplomats “to move out of fortress embassies and incur a degree of risk, with governments held accountable for their protection.” 

Jesse Smith, “Success and Growing Pains: Official Use of Social Media at State,” The Foreign Service Journal,January/February 2014, 27-33.  Smith (University of Pittsburgh) profiles the US Department of State’s use of social media and mobile applications for public diplomacy and other purposes.  His brief overview discusses funding challenges, difficulties in developing workable guidelines, and in greater detail issues raised in the Inspector General’s critical report on the Bureau of International Information Programs.

US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, “Minutes and Transcript for December 2013 Meeting,” Washington, DC, December 2, 2013.  At its first meeting subsequent to its reauthorization in January 2013, the Commission announced plans to produce white papers and convene forums in 2014 that address issues related to three themes:  (1) public diplomacy research methods, (2) public diplomacy in high threat environments, and (3) the future public diplomat.  The following documents were released In addition to the transcript of the Commission’s meeting. 

— Commission Members and Executive Director Katherine Brown, “US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy 2014 Plan“

— Jason Blair (Government Accountability Office) and Michael Hurley (Office of Inspector General, US Department of State), “State of Public Diplomacy Practice“

— Craig Hayden (American University) and Emily Metzgar (Indiana University), “The State of Public Diplomacy Research“

— Seth Center (Office of the Historian, US Department of State), “The Evolution of American Public Diplomacy: Four Historical Insights“

 

Recent Blogs and Other Items of Interest    

Robin Brown, “Reviewing the FCO Communication Capability Review,” January 30, 2014; “The EU Communication Gap? It’s a Feature Not a Bug,” January 27, 2014; “Foreign Affairs Committee on FCO, Doing Too Much with Too Little,” January 10, 2014; “The State of Evaluation,” January 9, 2014, Public Diplomacy Networks and Influence Blog.

Brian Carlson, “On Being Inconsequential,” November 13, 2013, Public Diplomacy Council; Laurence Pope, “Demilitarizing American Diplomacy,” The Leeke-Shaw Lecture on International Affairs, University of Maine, October 18, 2013.

Anja Eifert, “Indonesia as an Example of 21st Century Economic Statecraft,” January 29, 2014, USC Center for Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.

Kathy Fitzpatrick, “The Challenge of AIDS Diplomacy: South Africa Short-Changed,” November 22, 2013, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.

Global Ties U.S., “NCIV Announces Name Change to Global Ties U.S.,” January 22, 2014; “What’s Behind the New Communications Strategy? An Interview with NCIV President Jennifer Clinton,” December 2013.

Stephanie Helm, “Strategic Communication Considerations for the Joint Force Maritime Component Commander,” MOC Warfighter, Issue #2, November 2013.

Jonathan Henick, “What Public Diplomacy Can Learn from Netflix?”  December 19, 2013, Take Five Blog,; Reply from Robin Brown, “What’s VOA For?” January 7, 2014, Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence Blog,

Carolyn Jaine, “Paintbrush Diplomacy,” November 2013, Diplomat Magazine.

Kathy Lally, “U.S. Ambassador in Moscow Uses Social Media to Bypass Official Line,” The Washington Post, January 11, 2013.

Denis MacShane, “Soft Power Doesn’t Exist” and “The Need for Hard Diplomacy,” theGlobalist, December 11, 2013.

Donna Marie Oglesby, “Remarks as Prepared for Panel 1, USIA and the Foundations of Public Diplomacy Conference,” and “Recognition of Public Diplomacy Alumni,” November 12, 2013, Winnowing Fan Blog.

Andreas Sandre, “Diplomacy 3.0 Starts in Stockholm,” Huffington Post, January 15, 2014.

Philip Seib, “Avoiding the Branding Trap in Public Diplomacy,” USC Center for Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog, January 17, 2014.

Rhonda Zaharna, “Culture Posts: Public Diplomacy in the Ancient World,” November 26, 2013, USC Center for Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.

Gem from the Past

Alexander L. George, Bridging the Gap: Theory and Practice in Foreign Policy, (United States Institute of Peace Press, 1993).  Twenty years ago, George (Stanford University) explored theory and practice in the context of six US strategies toward Iraq in 1988-1991.  He used this case study to examine the strengths and limitations of scholarly research for the diagnostic and prescriptive work of policymakers.  George sought to bridge, not eliminate, the gap between the two cultures with thoughtful insights on what policymakers gain from “policy-relevant knowledge” and the need for scholars to make their work more relevant to practitioners.  Today, as more practitioners and scholars focus on ways to bridge a similar gap in the public dimension of diplomacy, George’s nuanced arguments are well worth a fresh loo

Christopher Anzalone, “The Nairobi Attack and Al-Shabab’s Media Strategy,” CTC Sentinel, October 2013, Vol. 6, Issue 10.  Anzalone (McGill University) looks at al-Shabab’s media strategy using micro-blogging on Twitter and audio statements by the group’s leaders during and after the Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi, Kenya.  His article compares al-Shabab’s recent campaign with past campaigns, evaluates technologies and message content, and discusses both in the context of ongoing conflict in Somalia.

Daryl Copeland, Diplomacy, Globalization and Heteropolarity: The Challenge of Adaptation, Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute (CDFAI), August 2013.  Copeland (CDFAI Senior Fellow and author of Guerrilla Diplomacy) continues his call for radical reform in “key elements of the diplomatic ecosystem” – foreign ministries, the Foreign Service, and the “diplomatic business model.”  His paper, a case study with findings and recommendations for Canada’s diplomacy, is grounded in his views on globalization as “the defining historical process of our times” and an emerging “heteropolar world” (by which he means “more differences than similarities among competing sources of power”).  Copeland’s conclusion:  “Canada’s diplomatic ecosystem is in a perilous state and Canadian interests are suffering.”

Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore, “The End of Hypocrisy: American Foreign Policy in the Age of Leaks,” Foreign Affairs,November/December 2013, 22-26.  In this concise, sharply argued article, Farrell and Finnemore (George Washington University) defend their claim that hypocrisy has been “central to Washington’s soft power” but getting much harder to ignore in the context of WikiLeaks and disclosures of Edward Snowden.  Greater transparency means it’s harder for allies to overlook US double standards when its deeds clash with the government’s public rhetoric — and easier for adversaries to justify their own double standards.  Cases include:  US cyberattacks against China, monitored global Internet communications, bugged European institutions and leaders, tacit acceptance of Israel’s nuclearization, acceptance of India’s non-participation in the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, refusing to call Egypt’s coup a coup, sweeping exceptions to human rights standards when US safety is threatened.  “The collapse of hypocrisy,” they argue, presents the US with hard choices.  “The era of easy hypocrisy is over.”

Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht and Mark C. Donfried, eds., Searching for a Cultural Diplomacy (Berghahn Books, 2010, 2013). These historical case studies, compiled by Gienow-Hecht (University of Cologne) and Donfried (Institute for Cultural Diplomacy, a non-profit organization based in New York City) examine approaches to cultural diplomacy in regions other than the United States and “western” countries.  The editors conceptual framework is grounded in three assumptions:  (1) The more distance between the agent of cultural diplomacy and a government’s political and economic agendas, the more likely it is to succeed.  (2) The more interactive the cultural diplomacy program, the more likely it is to succeed.  (3) States should employ diverse means for short and long-term strategic goals and a variety of bilateral and multilateral relations.  Chapters offer a wide range of cultural diplomacy definitions and a variety of structural and conceptual approaches.  Includes:

— Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, “What Are We Searching For? Culture, Diplomacy, Agents and the State”

— Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht and Mark C. Donfried, “The Model of Cultural Diplomacy: Power, Distance, and the Promise of Civil Society”

— Jean-Francois Fayet (University of Geneva), “VOKS: The Third Dimension of Soviet Foreign Policy”

— Rosa Magnusdottir (University of Aarhus), “Mission Impossible? Selling Soviet Socialism to Americans, 1955-1958”

— Aniko Macher (Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris), “Hungarian Cultural Diplomacy 1957-1963: Echoes of Western Cultural Activity in a Communist Country”

— Annika Frieberg (Colorado State University), “Catholics in Ostpolitik: Networking and Nonstate Diplomacy in the Bensberger Memorandum, 1966-1970”

— Jennifer Dueck (University of Oxford), “International Rivalry and Culture in Syria and Lebanon Under the French Mandate”

— James R. Vaughn (Aberystwyth University), “The United States and the Limits of Cultural Diplomacy in the Arab Middle East, 1945-1957”

— Yuzo Ota (McGill University), “Difficulties Faced by Native Japan Interpreters: Nitobe Inazo (1962-1933) and His Generation”

— Maki Aoki-Okabi (Japan External Trade Organization), Yoko Kawamura (Seikei University), and Toichi Makita (Oberlin University),
“‘Germany in Europe,’ ‘Japan and Asia’: National Commitments to Cultural Relations Within Regional Frameworks”

Alan K. Henrikson, “Sovereignty, Diplomacy, and Democracy: The Changing Character of ‘International’ Representation – From State to Self?” The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Vol. 37:3, Special Edition 2013, 111-140.  In this article, based on a lecture honoring Fletcher’s former Dean, Stephen W. Bosworth, Henrikson (Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy) explores central questions in diplomacy’s study and practice.  What does representation mean in a digital world of “mass self-communication?”  How should we think about diplomatic authority and agency when empowered individuals significantly change the meaning of sovereignty and democracy?  Can diplomacy be carried out by all government agencies other than foreign ministries and by citizens outside government?  Can public diplomacy be understood to mean “the diplomacy of the public” – not government diplomacy?  Henrikson looks at these questions in an imaginative tour d’horizon that includes the thinking of Niccolo Machiavelli, Cardinal Richelieu, Harold Nicolson, Henry Kissinger, Jorge Heine, Paul Sharp, and Manual Castells.

Sue Jansen, “Review – Public Diplomacy in the 21st Century,” e-International Relations, August 26, 2013.  Jansen (Muhlenberg College) provides a measured summary and critique of James Pamment’s book New Public Diplomacy in the 21st Century: A Comparative Study of Policy and Practice (Routledge, 2013).  Jansen, a skeptic on new public diplomacy theory, concludes Pamment “is a meticulous scholar who provides a methodically rigorous assessment of current PD practices.”  Her review combines an assessment of strengths and limitations in his analysis of new public diplomacy with her own reservations about “non-instrumental ‘listening’ campaigns,” which are “agenda driven undertakings” by definition.  “Occasionally instrumental listening may produce improvements in the lives of individuals,” she concludes, “but under the discipline of neoliberalism, listening is deployed within a hegemonic framework of discourse surveillance and management.

Sue Curry Jansen, Walter Lippmann: A Critical Introduction to Media and Communication Theory, (Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2012).  Diplomacy scholars and practitioners who value Walter Lippmann’s many contributions to understanding publics, cognitive framing, media, communication theory, and much more – and who use his indispensable Public Opinion (1922) in public diplomacy courses – will welcome this informed re-assessment of one of the 20th century’s most important thinkers.  In her well-written and closely reasoned book, Jansen (Muhlenberg College) urges a full-scale reconsideration of Lippmann’s contributions to media and communication studies.  Issues discussed include:  why Lippmann matters today, the legacy of problematic assessments of Lippmann by Wilbur Schramm and James Carey, Lippmann’s involvement in World War I propaganda and subsequent turn from Wilsonian idealism to realism, the continued relevance of Lippmann’s views on reason, emotion, identity, news, knowledge as social construct, and “the world outside and pictures in our heads.”  Especially useful is her argument that Lippmann and John Dewey were much closer in their ideas about publics, expertise, and dialogue than suggested by conventional thinking about their “debate.”

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011).  In this highly readable book, filled with instructive examples, Kahneman (Nobel laureate, Princeton University) summarizes his groundbreaking work on two systems that shape the way we think and make decisions.  “System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional.  System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical.”  Kahneman’s lifelong work on the pervasive influence our emotions and intuitive impressions have on thought and behavior – their strengths and limitations – constitutes a major challenge to the rational models of strategy and decision-making that have long been dominant in many fields including diplomacy.  Scholars and practitioners will find his ideas relevant to understanding the roles of emotion and reason in all phases of diplomatic practice:  the effects of cognitive biases, opinion and media research, framing costs and risks, advising policymakers on communication strategies, planning and implementing advocacy campaigns, and evaluating methods of collaboration and deliberative engagement.

Steven Livingston, Africa’s Information Revolution: Implications for Crime, Policing, and Citizen Security, Research Paper No. 5, Africa Center for Strategic Studies, November 2013.  Livingston (George Washington University) looks at ways in which rapid expansion of information and communication technologies (e.g., Twitter, SMS, event mapping, and crowd sourcing capabilities) are creating opportunities to combat Africa’s disproportionately high rates of violent crime.  His study examines implications for improved security through more accessible information and empowered civil society organizations – as well as nefarious uses of information technologies by criminal organizations and unaccountable police forces – in Africa’s rural and rapidly urbanizing societies.

Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, (Random House, 2013).  Pulitzer prize winning biographer Meacham adds to the exhaustive shelf on Jefferson with this compelling profile of his genius in wielding political and diplomatic power.  Meacham provides numerous insights into Jefferson’s mastery of “emotional and political manipulation” and skills in reaching “the hearts as well as the minds” of publics at home and abroad:  listening as a political art, his understanding of public opinion in the context of multiple audiences, use of political “disinformation” against the British when US envoy in France, the politics of personal relationships, his deft projection of power, and his profound grasp of the drivers of reason and persuasion on the one hand and emotion and fear on the other.  Particularly useful is Meacham’s discussion of the correlation of perceived threats during a “Fifty Years War” war against the British (from the Stamp Act in 1764 to the Treaty of Ghent in 1815) and America’s development of persuasive and coercive instruments of statecraft.

Stuart Murray, guest editor, “Sports Diplomacy,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Vol. 8, Nos. 3-4, 2013.  Articles in this special issue of HJD explore recent interest in theoretical and practical issues in sports diplomacy.  As framed by Murray (Bond University), the articles “aim to add theoretical and empirical muscle to the term” and foster discussion between theorists and practitioners.  Contributions focus on sports diplomacy as (1) a means governments employ to achieve foreign policy objectives and (2) the diplomacy that occurs when governments and non-state actors engage in international sport.  Includes:

— Stuart Murray, “Introduction”

— Andreia Soares e Castro (School of Social and Political Sciences, Lisbon), “South Africa’s Engagement in Sports Diplomacy: The Successful Hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup”

— Zang Qingmin (Peking University), “Sports Diplomacy: The Chinese Experience and Perspective”

— Julie M. Bunck (University of Louisville), “Cuban Sports Diplomacy in the Cold War Period: International Identity versus Domestic Realities”

— Prashant Kidambi (University of Leicester), “Sport and the Imperial Bond: The 1911 ‘All India’ Cricket Tour of Great Britain”

— Michele Acuto (University of Oxford), “World Politics by Other Means? London, City Diplomacy, and the Olympics”

— Christopher McMichael (University of the Witwatersrand), “Sporting Mega Events and South-to-South Security: A Comparative Study of South Africa and Brazil”

— William Gaillard (Union of European Football Associations), “Football, Politics and Europe”

Philip Seib, Public Diplomacy and the Media in the Middle East, Paper 6, 2013, CPD Perspectives on Public Diplomacy, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.  Seib (University of Southern California) looks at the region’s increasingly sophisticated media environment and “changes in how the Arab world receives and dispenses public diplomacy” since the uprisings in 2011.  Informed by recent data on traditional and social media trends and judgments of regional experts, his paper assesses implications for public diplomacy’s principles and methods and US policies and public diplomacy strategies.

James Thomas Snyder, The United States and the Challenge of Public Diplomacy, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).  Snyder, formerly with the staff of NATO’s Public Diplomacy Division, provides an assessment of US public diplomacy in the 21st century.  Self-described as a “book about how the United States can communicate better with the world,” his chapters focus on the work of public diplomats, Presidential rhetoric, US international broadcasting, new information technologies, language education, organizational issues, and the role of the military and public affairs and information operations in adversarial environments.

“Soft Power and the UK’s Influence,” Transcripts of Evidence Sessions, The Select Committee on Soft Power and the UK’s Influence, House of Lords, UK Parliament.  The Select Committee’s “Call for Evidence,” issued July 23, 2013, invited representatives of the UK Government, (British Council, BBC World Service,) companies, individuals, and non-state actors to consider how the UK might “develop and employ better the country’s soft power resources to strengthen the UK’s influence abroad” and also how the UK’s soft power is “used by organizations in the private and civil society spheres, as well as the public sector, and how it inter-relates with the role of the armed forces.”  Transcripts of seven evidence sessions (with more scheduled for fall 2013) are available online.  (Courtesy of Robin Brown)

For comments, see Robin Brown, “What Even (sic) Happened to UK Public Diplomacy Strategy?” July 12, 2013, and “More From the House of Lords on UK Soft Power,”September 5, 2013, Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence Blog.

“Strategic Public Diplomacy and Communications” and “Broadcasting Board of Governors,” US Senate Subcommittee on State/Foreign Operations, Senate Report 113-081, Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Bill, 2014.  The Subcommittee’s report states concern “with the absence of a coherent and unified strategic public diplomacy and communications effort by the Department of State, USAID, and the BBG.”  Because US interests abroad are “adversely impacted,” the Committee calls for the Secretary of State to ensure that the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs reviews activities and programs, and makes recommendations in a number of identified areas of concern.  The Committee also states its concern “with the dysfunction and poor management of the BBG” and provides legislative authority to the BBG to hire a CEO with “management and oversight responsibilities for all BBG entities.”

Daya Kishan Thussu, Communicating India’s Soft Power: Buddha to Bollywood, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).  Academic studies of soft power (and public diplomacy) have paid relatively little attention to India.  Thussu (University of Westminster, London) does much to remedy this with his informed analysis of India’s rising soft power – its historical context, strengths and limitations, and growing potential.  Chapters include: “De-Americanizing Soft Power,” “Historical Context of India’s Soft Power,” “India Abroad: the Diasporic Dividend,” “Software for Soft Power,” “Culture as Soft Power – Bollywood and Beyond,” and “Branding India – a Public-Private Partnership.”

Uptal Vyas, Soft Power in Japan-China Relations: State, Sub-state and Non-state Relations, (Routledge, 2013).  Vyas (Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Japan) offers empirical support for soft power as a theoretical concept in three case studies that focus on Japan’s soft power in China.  One case looks at activities of the Japan Foundation (a state actor).  A second case examines the sister cities relationship between Kobe and Tianjin (sub-state actors).  His third case assesses the work of the Japan-China Friendship Association (a non-state actor).

Recent Blogs And Other Short Items of Interest

Don Bishop, “U.S. Public Diplomacy: Three ‘Challenges,'” September 30, 2013, Public Diplomacy Council. “Tara Sonenshine Responds to the ‘Three Challenges’ of U.S. Public Diplomacy,” October 21, 2013, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, Take Five Blog.  Response also from P.J. Crowley, “The U.S. Public Diplomacy Deficit: Look at What We Do,” October 22, 2013, Take Five Blog.

Rosa Brooks, “Wounded Giant,” August 30, 2013, Foreign Policy Blog.

Robin Brown, “From Bruno Latour to British Foreign Policy via Tony Blair, Part1,” October 8, 2013; Part 2, October 8, 2013, Part 3,October 11, 2013, Part 4, October 15, 2013, Part 5, October 28, 2013; “German Democracy Support in Middle East,” October 2, 2013;”Japan, China and Soft Power,” October 1, 2013; “Reading the 2013 Survey on UK Attitudes to International Priorities,” September 30, 2013; “UK International Education Strategy,” September 26, 2013; “UK Govts Head of Communications Doesn’t Like Press Releases or Strategic Communication,” September 24, 2013; “Nadia von Maltzan on Syrian-Iranian Cultural Diplomacy,” September 23, 2013; “American Hypernationalism and Foreign Influence: A Last Word on Putin,” September 19, 2013; “Five Points on Putin and His New York Times Piece,” September 13, 2013; “Digital Diplomacy: Forget the Hype and Just Get on With It,” September 10, 2013, Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence Blog.

Frank Bruni, “College’s Identity Crisis,” October 12, 2013, The New York Times.

Damien Cave, “Viewing the US in Fear and Dismay,” October 15, 2013, The New York Times.

Ingrid d’Hooge, “China’s Public Diplomacy Shifts Focus: From Building Hardware to Improving Software,” October 24, 2013, University of Nottingham, China Policy Institute Blog.

Nicholas Dynan, “Chinese Public Diplomacy: Winning Hearts And Minds Abroad Or At Home,” October 16, 2013, USC Center for Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.

Craig Hayden, “Does Technology Persuade? Questioning Assumptions in US Public Diplomacy (Part I),” October 9, 2012; “Does Technology Persuade? (Part II): Looking to Media Practices for Insight,” October 14, 2013, Intermap Blog.

Jonathan Henick, “Public Diplomacy on the Front Lines of U.S. Foreign Policy,” October 27, 2013, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, Take Five Blog.

Christopher R. Hill, “The Limits of Twitter Diplomacy,” August 20, 2013, Project Syndicate Blog.

Parag Khanna, “The End of the Nation-State?” October 12, 2013, The New York Times.

Naomi Leight, “Can an Ancient Artifact Promote Contemporary Dialogue?” October 31, 2013, USC Center for Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.

James Pamment, “Public Diplomacy and the Third Metric,” August 28, 2013, USC Center for Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.

Cynthia Schneider, “Missing in Action: What Happened to Washington’s Policy in Egypt?” August 15, 2013, Foreign Policy Blog.

Michael Schneider, Guy Golan, and Michael Ardaiolo, Interview with Michael Schneider on Challenges Facing Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs-designate Richard Stengel, September 23, 2013, Podcast, The Public Diplomat, Syracuse University.

Philip Seib, “The Case for Blowing Things Up,” August 26, 2013, USC Center for Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.

Jay Wang, “Branding the Cyrus Cylinder,” October 28, 2013, USC Center for Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.

 

Gem From the Past

John W. Henderson, The United States Information Agency, (Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, 1969). Before Nick Cull’s (University of Southern California) path breaking academic studies of USIA (The Cold War and the United States Information Agency, 2008; The Decline and Fall of the United States Information Agency, 2012), most histories of USIA were written by former public diplomacy practitioners.  Good accounts, written not as memoirs but with varying degrees of analytical distance, include: Wilson P. Dizard, Jr., Inventing Public Diplomacy: The Story of the U.S. Information Agency, 2004; Gifford D. Malone, Organizing the Nation’s Public Diplomacy, 1988; Hans N. Tuch,Communicating with the World: U.S. Public Diplomacy Overseas,1990; and Thomas C. Sorensen, The Word War: The Story of American Propaganda, 1968.

John Henderson’s The United States Information Agency is one of the best.  An AP reporter who joined the Foreign Service, Henderson served as a public affairs officer in China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan and the Philippines. His book, available in used copies, provides a still useful history of USIA’s goals, methods, issues, challenges, organizational changes, and field operations during the Agency’s  first twenty-five years.  As public diplomacy practitioners commemorate USIA’s 60th anniversary in 2013, honoring the past as they look ahead, this literature is worth remembering.