Issue #122

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

Bruce Gregory can be reached at BGregory@gwu.edu  

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

Get the eBook text and paperback here.    

Get Kindle and paperback here.

Phillip Arceneaux, “Value Creation Through Organizational Storytelling: Strategic Narratives in Foreign Government Relations,”  Public Relations Review, Vol. 50, Issue 2, June 2024. Arceneaux (Miami University of Ohio) examines ways in which governments use public relations and tell stories to promote their interests and create value in competitive environments. He begins with a brief literature review followed by discussion of conceptual issues in narrative theory, the politics of strategic narratives, and use of value propositions to build brands and convey value through stories. He grounds his analysis in a comparison of Canadian, Irish, and Norwegian campaigns to win a seat on the UN Security Council. Arceneaux argues practitioners need to adopt a storytelling approach that blends identity, system, and issue narratives with a holistic content strategy. His conclusion: “Contextualizing strategic narratives as value propositions expands the interdisciplinarity of government public relations scholarship at the nexus of international relations, public diplomacy, and nation branding.” The article is available for a limited time through open access.

André Barrinha, “Cyber-diplomacy: The Emergence of a Transient Field,”  The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, online publication, February 26, 2024. Barrinha (University of Bath, UK) draws on 40 interviews with diplomats and experts and scholarship on diplomatic practices to make a case for cyberspace as a “diplomatized” governance and policy domain.By this he means it is becoming a “diplomatic field.”  Its diplomatic actors range from states, multiple government departments, the military, and so-called non-diplomatic groups such as NGOs, corporations and “even journalists.” Barrinha usefully examines a variety of institutional, instrumental, and process dynamics in “cyber-diplomacy.” But it is not clear why this term and a separate form of diplomacy are needed. Diplomacy, a robust and capacious term, is adequate to describe communication and representation of interests and policies by diplomatic actors in a variety of governance and issue domains, including cyberspace.

Jon Bateman and Dean Jackson, Countering Disinformation Effectively: An Evidence-Based Policy Guide, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 2024. In this119-page report, Bateman (Carnegie Endowment) and Jackson (Public Circle Research & Consulting) examine conceptual issues, collate insights from empirical research, and use case studies to provide a guide to major proposals on how democratic governments, platforms, and others can counter disinformation. Among the findings. There are no “best” policy options. Adopt a portfolio approach to managing uncertainty. Give more attention to long-term structural reforms. Countering disinformation is not always apolitical. Generative AI will have complex effects but might not be a game changer. Case studies include: Fact checking. Counter-messaging strategies. Statecraft, deterrence, and disruption. Changing recommendation algorithms. And generative AI.

Corneliu Bjola and Ilan Manor, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Digital Diplomacy, (Oxford University Press, 2024). Thismassive volume is sure to be a dominant resource on digitalized diplomacy in coming years. Bjola (Oxford University) and Manor (Ben Gurion University of the Negev) have compiled 34 essays in a multidisciplinary compendium described as an examination of how digital technologies are used in diplomacy “as a practice, as a process, and as a form of disruption.” It divides into four parts: (1) concepts and theories, (2) diplomatic practices, (3) diplomatic institutions, and (4) diplomatic relations. Chapters include a variety of conceptual approaches and globally diverse case studies. The Handbook is institutionally priced. Readers will want to confirm it is available at their universities and in the libraries and training programs of ministries of foreign affairs. 

Contributors include a stunning array of accomplished diplomacy scholars and practitioners. Rebecca Adler-Nissen (University of Copenhagen), Banu Akdenizli (Northwestern University Qatar), Phillip Arceneaux (Miami University of Ohio), Daniel Aguirre (Arizona State University), Victoria Baines (Gresham College, London), Corneliu Bjola, Emma L. Briant (Monash University), Caroline Bouchard (Université du Québec à Montréal), Jennifer Cassidy (University of Oxford), Andrew F. Cooper (University of Waterloo), Nicholas J. Cull (University of Southern California), Rhys Crilley (University of Glasgow), Matthias Ecker-Ehrhardt (Universität Duisburg-Essen), Kristin Anabel Eggeling (University of Copenhagen), Anne Marie Engtoft Larsen (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Denmark), Alisher Faizullaev (University of World Economy and Diplomacy), Alicia Fjällhed (Lund University), Tom Fletcher (University of Oxford), Luciana Alexandra Ghica (University of Bucharest), Natalia Grincheva (LASALLE College of Art, Singapore), Elsa Hedling (Lund University), Jorge Heine (Boston University), Marcus Holmes (William & Mary), Zhao Alexandre Huang (Université Paris Nanterre), Lucas Kello (University of Oxford), Didzis Kļaviņš (University of Latvia), Juan Pablo Prado Lallande (University of Puebla), Jeff Hai-chi Loo (University of Waterloo), Matthias LÜfkens (Founder of Twiplomacy), Alex Manby (University of Oxford), Ilan Manor, Fiona McConnell (Lund University), Alejandro Ramos (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mexico), Gary D. Rawnsley (University of Lincoln), Andreas Sandre (Embassy of Italy, United States), Efe Sevin (Towson University). Damien Spry (University of South Australia), Pawel Surowiec-Capell (University of Sheffield), Geoffrey Wiseman (DePaul University), Katherine A. M. Wright (Newcastle University), Moran Yarchi (Reichman University), and Ruben Zaiotti (Dalhousie University). 

Chapter titles are available at an open access Table of Contents here.

William J. Burns, “Spycraft and Statecraft: Transforming the CIA for an Age of Competition,”  Foreign Affairs, March/April, 2024, 74-85. Retired career Foreign Service officer and now CIA director William Burns provides evidence that intelligence services are more than compartmented espionage instruments. They are also actors in diplomacy’s public dimension. “Strategic declassification,” the selective public disclosure of secrets through “intelligence diplomacy,” can help allies and undercut false narratives of rivals. Well-crafted arguments by a spy chief in a leading journal can inform and persuade in support of policy agendas. Intelligence officers can engage diplomatically with enemies, and be seen as doing so, in circumstances where normal diplomatic contact might signal formal recognition. Burns has long been regarded as one of America’s top diplomats and change agent in diplomacy reform. This article contains lessons for diplomats and intelligence operatives on ways to transform patterns of practice in the face of geopolitical challenges, new technologies, and complex transnational issues.

Thomas Carothers and Frances Z. Brown, Democracy Policy Under Biden: Confronting a Changed World,  Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 2024. Carnegie’s Carothers and Brown assess Biden administration democratization efforts in the context of three challenges: a continuing long-term global democratic recession; the rising assertiveness of China, Russia, and other autocracies; and “the troubled status” of the United States as a democracy model. Their paper examines five main elements of the Biden administration’s democratization policies taken in the absence of a global democracy strategy. Countering autocratic challengers. Engaging multilaterally on democracy. Responding to democratic backsliding. Upgrading democracy aid. Reforming U.S. democracy. Although they find positive potential and a significant change from damage inflicted by Donald Trump, they also find “nagging dilemmas and constraints.” A fuller assessment, they argue, will ultimately depend on answers to three questions. Can thematic democracy initiatives be more fully integrated into bilateral country policies? Can initiatives be integrated to become more than the sum of the parts? Can successful efforts be institutionalized and sustained? 

Yana Gorokhovskaia and Cathryn Grothe, Freedom in the World 2024: The Mounting Damage of Flawed Elections and Armed Conflict,  Freedom House, February 2024. “Freedom declined for the 18th year in 2023.” So begins the current Freedom House report on global trends and country scores on political rights, civil liberties, human rights, and democratic processes and institutions. In the aggregate, 52 countries experienced declines; 21 countries improved. The manipulation of elections and armed conflict were leading causes. The 35-page report contains regional profiles, graphics, and policy recommendations. 

Steven L. Herman, Behind the White House Curtain: A Senior Journalist’s Story of Covering the President—And Why It Matters, (The Kent State University Press, 2024). Veteran Voice of America (VOA) journalist Steve Herman’s memoir is a fascinating account of the daily life of a reporter covering the White House during the Trump and early Biden administrations. It is filled with vivid, short, and well-written chapters about what it takes to report from the White House pressroom and Air Force One, technologies needed for just in time reporting in the age of social media, and personalities at the crossroads of journalism and politics during the administrations of two very different presidents. Chapters on the chaos Trump appointee Michael Pack brought to the US Agency for Global Media and VOA during the administration’s last year in office are compelling and instructive. Readers will find broad-brush strokes from his earlier assignments as a VOA foreign correspondent, brief descriptions of VOA’s history and modus operandi, and his views on journalism in a democracy. But this is not a study of VOA as a government-funded media organization. It is the story of a White House reporter for whom good journalism is central, and VOA’s government sponsorship is largely incidental. It is also a finely crafted 21st century successor to Philomena Jurey’s A Basement Seat to History: Tales of Covering Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan for the Voice of America (1995).

Zhao Alexandre Huang and Phillip Arceneaux,  “Ethical Challenges in the Digitalization of Public Diplomacy,”  Chapter 13 in Corneliu Bjola and Ilan Manor, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Digital Diplomacy, (Oxford University Press, 2024). Huang (Université Paris Nanterre) and Arceneaux (Miami University of Ohio) examine three ethical challenges for diplomats in a digital society through the lens of public diplomacy — principles of openness versus secrecy, inclusivity versus exclusivity, and state interests versus public interests in diplomatic practice. Following overviews of definitions of ethics and professionalization of public diplomats, their chapter provides distinctions and assertions that will provoke thought and energize debate. For example: (1) Diplomacy differs from other types of organized communication because diplomats have authority and agency as representatives of political collectives. (2) Diplomatic allegiance has evolved through stages that correspond to principles of dynastic sovereignty, territorial sovereignty, and international norms. (3) Social media create a “hybrid media system” that is weakening gatekeeping power; reshaping global distributions of power; and weaponizing disinformation, computational propaganda, information operations, and fake news. (4) Diplomacy practitioners face challenges brought by a weakened ability to build trust in chaotic information environments. Huang and Arceneaux are cautious in providing answers to important questions in digitalized diplomacy. The value of their chapter lies in framing them for scholars and practitioners to consider and debate. How should tensions between personal morality, professional ethics, and international norms be reconciled? Do cultural differences influence ethics? How should freedom and order be coordinated? What are the ethics of responsibility in spaces where globalization and digitalization are increasingly pervasive?

Dilara Cansın Keçialan, “Webster University, Visiting Prof. Alisher Faizullaev: ‘Social Diplomacy is a Societal Phenomenon and Has Certain Distinct Features,’” February 22, 2024, Ankara Center for Crisis and Policy Studies. Social diplomacy is an ascending topic in diplomacy studies, and Alisher Faizullaev (scholar, teacher and former Ambassador of Uzbekistan to the United Kingdom) is one of its leading proponents. His superb book, Diplomacy for Professionals and Everyone, (Brill Nijhoff, 2022), is a comprehensive statement of his thinking. The value of this interview is its brevity. It is an excellent summation of his views and a great assigned reading for students. He defines social diplomacy and compares it to traditional diplomacy. He discusses social diplomacy’s role in addressing solutions to problems that elude states and other political entities. And he reflects on future developments and opportunities for scholars and practitioners. Proponents of social diplomacy must reckon with concerns that stretching diplomacy too far risks losing its particularity and analytical utility. Faizullaev welcomes such critiques and debate — and defends his views with skill.

Suzanne Nossel, “The Real Culture Wars: How Art Shapes the Contest Between Democracy and Autocracy,”  Foreign Affairs, February 29, 2024.  Nossel (PEN America Center) briefly surveys how autocracies seek to control artistic expression and cultural institutions — and how democracies competing with autocracies have prioritized military, political, economic, and diplomatic instruments. Nossel argues outcomes also will depend significantly on culture. “How people in democracies and autocracies see the world is shaped by the music they listen to, the books they read, the films and television they watch, the art they admire, the museums they visit, and the textbooks they must study.” Nossel summarizes US government support for cultural and educational activities during and after the Cold War. Going forward, however, the US should not seek to replicate these methods or spread American culture to counter autocracies. Rather, the US government should strengthen activities of independent thinkers and creators in their own countries. Her article identifies bilateral and multilateral ways this might be achieved. “The aim of such efforts,” she concludes, “should be to lift and celebrate authentic creative thinkers and works rather than to shape what those thinkers say or produce.”

Brian C. Rathbun and Caleb Pomeroy, “See No Evil, Speak No Evil? Morality, Evolutionary Psychology, and the Nature of International Relations,” International Organization 76, Summer 2022, pp. 656–89. Rathbun (University of Southern California) and Pomeroy (Ohio State University) contest the notion that anarchy in international relations (IR) requires states to set ethical concerns aside to achieve security. Rather, evolutionary and moral psychology demonstrate that morality emerged to succeed in anarchy. “It is not despite anarchy but because of anarchy that humans have an ethical sense.” They advance three arguments. (1) It is “almost impossible” to talk about threats and harm without moral discourse. (2) Leaders and publics routinely use moral judgments in assessing threats. (3) Foreign policies shaped by conceptions of international relations as an amoral domain are rare. The authors provide empirical support for these claims with word embedding surveys of large data sets. Rathbun’s and Pomeroy’s ideas have value for diplomacy scholars debating ethical and engagement practices. Their assessment of literature that distinguishes between individual morality (an ethics of caring and providing) and group morality (an ethics of retaliation and protection) is particularly helpful. Also, their discussion of the evolutionary origins of the human tendency to favor insiders over outsiders. Less persuasive, however, is their claim that a central theme in IR studies holds that anarchy “requires” states to set ethics aside, which makes IR an “autonomous sphere devoid of ethical considerations.” Much of the literature on power and morality in IR (e.g., Hans Morgenthau, Reinhold Niebuhr, Kenneth Waltz, Michael Walzer, and many others) is not grounded in a dismissal of ethics in international society. It is based on implications of a category distinction between morality in the behavior of individuals and morality in the behavior of social groups. (Article suggested by Eric Gregory)

Joseph Siegle, Winning the Battle of Ideas: Exposing Global Authoritative Narratives and Revitalizing Democratic Principles,  International Forum for Democratic Studies / National Endowment for Democracy, February 2024. ForSiegle (National Defense University), autocracies use narratives as asymmetric instruments of power to shift relations between society and states and between states and coalitions. His report examines four authoritarian narratives. (1) Non-interference, choice, and threats to sovereignty. (2) Exploiting grievances in the Global South. (3) Democracies failing to deliver. (4) Need for a new world order. Autocracies advance these narratives, he argues, through social media, state broadcasters, partnerships with local media, and foreign media cooptation. Siegle calls on democracies to “play the winning hand they have” with a strategy that elevates democracy as an organizing principle in international relations, articulates a positive vision of a democratic world order, challenges authoritarian claims of “performance legitimacy,” fosters cultures of democratic self-correction, and builds strong information ecosystems to counter manipulation.

US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, “Public Diplomacy and DEIA Promotion: ACPD Official Meeting Minutes,”  December 12, 2023. Minutes and a transcript of the Commission’s meeting at the USC Annenberg Center in Washington, DC focus on the Commission’s special report Public Diplomacy and DEIA Promotion: Telling America’s Story to the World. Executive director Vivian Walker moderated a panel that discussed DEIA challenges and opportunities from a field perspective. Panelists included Nicholas J. Cull (USC Annenberg), Krista Johnson (Howard University), C. Brian Williams (Step Afrika Dance Company), and Yolonda Kerney (US Department of State). The event is accessible also on video (80 minutes).

Sarah Wardwell, “A Look at the New Learning Policy: How, When, and Where Do State Department Employees Learn,”  Foreign Service Journal, March 2024, 47-51. In the 1920s the State Department paid for two years of tuition, textbooks, and living expenses in Germany for George Kennan and other Foreign Service officers (FSOs) to study Russian language, literature, and history before assignment to Moscow. A similar investment a century later is hard to imagine. Unlike the US military, State until recently paid scant attention to a culture of professional education. In this article, Sarah Wardwell, a State FSO assigned as an innovation advisor, examines the department’s “Learning Policy” launched in September 2023 in response to recent reports and recommendations by senior US diplomats (e.g., Nicholas Burns, Marc Grossman, and Marcie Ries, A U.S. Diplomatic Service for the 21st Century, Harvard Kennedy School, 2020.) The new policy, Wardwell writes, “prioritizes learning as a part of the department’s culture by dedicating more time for learning, empowering employee-manager learning partnerships, and expanding learning opportunities.” The policy anticipates a core curriculum for mid-career professionals, expanded Individual Development Plans, and additional professional development and training options. Wardwell defends a policy that is strongly encouraged, but she recognizes “valid” concerns of critics who argue that unless it is mandated, other priorities will “win out.” The policy is a welcome first step, but as the US military recognized long ago, for policies such as professional education and joint force integration to work, they must be well funded and built into the incentives, rewards, and penalties of career advancement systems.

Geoffrey Wiseman, “Digital Diplomatic Cultures,” Chapter 17, 311-329, in Corneliu Bjola and Ilan Manor, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Digital Diplomacy, (Oxford University Press, 2024). In this chapter, typically thoughtful and well-written, Wiseman (DePaul University) achieves several objectives. He correctly suggests the term “digital diplomacy” is problematic in that it does not convey a form of diplomacy (e.g., cultural diplomacy, sports diplomacy). It also implies diplomacy is conducted only through digital means. Terms such as “digitalization of diplomacy” or “diplomacy by digital means” are more apt. Other terms, such as “hybrid diplomacy” and “blended diplomacy,” signify qualitative differences made by digital technologies. He provides useful assessments of definitional challenges presented by the words “digital,” “diplomatic,” and “culture.” The central thrust of the chapter is devoted to assessment of research challenges and ways in which digital practices are changing four diplomatic cultures: bilateral, multilateral, polylateral, and omnilateral. Each culture exhibits blended degrees of analog and digital characteristics on a spectrum that ranges from in-person interactions to online norms and practices. His omnilateral culture, characterized as far from “fully conceptualized,” prompts questions as to whether diplomacy can “begin with the individual” and how far it can be stretched into the domain of cross-cultural internationalism. The chapter’s examination of differing degrees of digitalization in diplomatic cultures is evidence-based, deeply grounded in the literature, and an ideal platform for ongoing debate and research.

Recent Items of Interest

“100 Years of Radio in Africa: From Propaganda to People’s Power,”  February 12, 2024, The Conversation.

Matt Armstrong, “Our Dysfunctional Relationship with Information Warfare Starts With Leadership,”  March 5, 2024, Arming for the War We’re In.

Katie Azelby, “The Diplomatic Reserve Corps: A Bold Vision for American Diplomacy.”  March 12, 2024, RealClear Defense.

Andrea Bodine, “Same Number, Different Story: Takeaways from the President’s FY25 Budget Request,”  March 15, 2024, Alliance for International Exchange.

Hal Brands, “The Age of Amorality: Can America Save the Liberal Order Through Illiberal Means,”  March/April 2024, Foreign Affairs.

Katherine A. Brown, “Global Engagement Matters for U.S. Communities,”  February 16, 2024, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Michael Crowley, “Blinken Warns of Disinformation Threat to Democracies,”  March 18, 2024, The New York Times.

Andrew Dubbins, “The Future of AI in Africa: Designing an Ethical Rollout of AI-powered Tech on the Continent,”  March 4, 2024.

Kristin Eggeling, “Fieldnotes From Brussels: When Diplomacy Meets (Big) Tech,”  February 22, 2024, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Ian Garner, “The West Is Still Oblivious to Russia’s Information War,”  March 9, 2024, Foreign Policy.

Michael Green and Daniel Twining, “The Strategic Case for Democracy Promotion in Asia,”  January 23, 2024, Foreign Affairs.  

Natalia Grincheva, “K11 Alternative Diplomacies: Penetrating the Global Arts Markets,” Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Vol. 10, Issue 3, November 2023.

Jonathan Guyer, “The State Department Is Still Pale, Male, and Yale,”  February 12, 2023, The New Republic.

Edouard Harris, Jeremie Harris, and Mark Beall, “Defense in Depth: An Action Plan to Increase the Safety and Security of Advanced AI,” [Report commissioned by the US Department of State], February 26, 2024, Gladstone AI.

Jory Heckman, “State Dept Seeks Mid-career Experts to join Foreign Service in ‘Lateral Entry’ Pilot,”  February 5, 2024, Federal News Network; Molly Weisner, “State Dept. Seeks Mid-career Applicants for Foreign Service,”  February 1, 2024, Federal Times; “State Department Announces New Lateral Entry Pilot Program,”  January 24, 2023, US Department of State; “State Department Eyes More Mid-Career Hiring to Address Skills Gaps,”  January 28, 2024, Fedweek.

Jory Heckman, “AI & Data Exchange 2024: State’s Matthew Graviss, NIH’s Susan Gregurick on AI as Force Multiplier,”  February 28, 2024, Federal News Network.

Michael Hirsh, “Did a Young Democratic Activist in 1968 Pave the Way for Donald Trump,” January 13, 2024, Politico Magazine. [Profile of Geoffrey Cowan, former VOA director, founder of USC’s Center on Public Diplomacy, and director of USC’s Annenberg Center on Leadership & Policy.]

Nina Jankowicz, “The Coming Flood of Disinformation: How Washington Gave Up On the Fight Against Falsehoods,”  February 7, 2024, Foreign Affairs.

John Katzka, “Russian Propaganda Efforts: Historical Continuities Accompany Technological Changes,”  February 2024, American Diplomacy.

Todd Leventhal, “Soviet vs. Post-Soviet Russian Disinformation,”  February 2024, American Diplomacy.

“Management Letter Related to the Audit of the U.S. Agency for Global Media,” and ”Audit Report,”   February 2024, Kearney & Company, P.C.

“Management Letter Related to the Audit of the U.S. Department of State” and “Audit Report,” February 2024, Kearney & Company, P.C.

Ilan Manor, “Public Diplomacy in the Era of Post-Reality,”  February 13, 2024, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Steven Lee Meyers, “Spate of Mock News Sites With Russian Ties Pop Up in U.S.,”  March 7, 2024, The New York Times.

Alan Philips, The Red Hotel: Moscow 1941, the Metropol Hotel, and the Untold Story of Stalin’s Propaganda War, (Pegasus, 2024); Reviewed by Jonathan Steele, “The Party Line,” The New York Review, March 21, 2024, 46-48.

Peter Pomerantsev, How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler, (Public Affairs/2024). Reviewed by Martha Bayles, “‘How to Win an Information War,’ Review: Deception on the Airwaves,” The Wall Street Journal, March 8, 2024.

Charles Ray, “From Mars to Venus: My Journey from Soldier to Diplomat,”  February 18, 2024, Washington International Diplomatic Academy.

Brianna Rosen, “Disclosing Secrets: Deterrence, Diplomacy, and Debate — Reflections on Remarks by DNI Avril Haines,”  March 1, 2024, Just Security.

Tom Selinger, “A Century of Service: Firsthand Accounts From U.S. Diplomats,”  March 2024, Foreign Service Journal.     

Dan Spokojny,  “What is Expertise? Let’s Ask the Experts,”  March 13, 2023 “Introducing: Foreign Policy Expertise,”  March 7, 2024, Foreign Policy Expertise Substack. 

Julie Tremaine, “Everything To Know About The Diplomat, Season 2,” February 10, 2024, People.

Eriks Varpahovskis and Anri Chedia, “Türkiye’s Hizmet Schools: Once a Point of Pride, Now a Government-Labelled Threat,”  March 5, 2024, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Vivian Walker, “DEIA and Public Diplomacy: Telling the Real Story,”  January 31, 2024, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Gem from the Past

Deborah Cohn, The Latin American Literary Boom and U.S. Nationalism During the Cold War,(Vanderbilt University Press, 2012). Twelve years ago, Deborah Cohn (Indiana University Bloomington) wrote a perceptive and deeply researched book on literature in the Cold War’s cultural politics and diplomacy in the Americas. It warrants reading today for its enduring insights and conceptual frameworks. Cohn’s study is contrapuntal, a word she uses to describe an approach that moves back and forth between perspectives of Latin American and US-based writers, publishers, and promoters of Spanish American literature during the 1960s and 1970s known as “the boom.” She points to Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude as a primary and pivotal example. 

Her book is contrapuntal in other important ways. It frames the Boom as a transnational and cosmopolitan movement that bridged a hegemonic and anti-hegemonic divide in the America’s following the Cuban revolution. It examines “skewed lines of cause and effect” that allowed writers who participated in operations of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, other CIA front groups, the State Department, and the US Information Agency to pursue their own political and literary agendas apart from US government policies. Her book also addresses their literature in the context of modernism, Marxism, and the fierce literary criticism debates in the second half of the 20th century. A long introduction surveys the book’s multiple agendas. Four chapters cover (1) the impact of the McCarthy era blacklist on Spanish American writers, (2) Latin American writers and the 1966 PEN Congress, (3) Latin America and its literature in US universities after the Cuban Revolution, and (4) the Center for Inter-American Relations. This is an essential book in the literature on cultural diplomacy, cross-cultural internationalism, and complex dynamics at the intersections of art, thought, and the state.

An archive of Diplomacy’s  Public Dimension: Books, Articles, Websites  (2002-present) is maintained at George Washington University’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication.  Current issues are also posted by the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy, and the Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Recognizing excellence in Public Diplomacy studies

Applications open to GW graduate students in international affairs

Walter R. Roberts

The Walter Roberts Endowment (WRE) is happy to announce that the application period is open for the student award for Public Diplomacy Studies. Final-year (spring/ summer 2024 graduation) GW Elliott School graduate student who has shown academic excellence in public diplomacy studies are encouraged to apply.

Since 2011, the Endowment has annually a GW student with this award which is announced at the receives Elliott School’s Commencement ceremony and also come with a cash prize.

Note: Applicants must be enrolled as full-time final year (spring/ summer 2024 graduation) students in graduate programs at the Elliott School of International Affairs.

The deadline for submission for the Student Award is Wednesday, April 6 by 11:59 pm EST

  1. Your resume
  2. A 500-word essay on their goals for pursuing further studies or careers based on their courses in public diplomacy or global communications.
  3. *A one-page letter of support from a professor – to be emailed separately to ipdgc@gwu.edu

Please send questions, to IPDGC@gwu.edu

Issue #121

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

Bruce Gregory can be reached at BGregory@gwu.edu  

Bruce Gregory, American Diplomacy’s Public Dimension: Practitioners as Change Agents in Foreign Relations, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). As many readers of this list know, books, articles, and websites are entered alphabetically by the author’s last name. I’m breaking with tradition to call attention to a book that examines how diplomatic practitioners adopted new ideas, tested tools and methods, and transformed American diplomacy. 

I also want to acknowledge the mountain of intellectual debt I owe to so many who have made this list and book possible. The book is about American diplomacy, but it is enabled by the thinking and publications of a global community of scholars and practitioners who believe analysis of diplomatic practice, past and present, helps scholars theorize about diplomacy and diplomats adapt to change.

The book frames US public diplomacy in the broad sweep of American diplomatic practice from the early colonial period to the present. It explores how change agents in rival practitioner communities—foreign service officers, cultural diplomats, broadcasters, citizens, soldiers, covert operatives, democratizers, and presidential aides—revolutionized traditional government-to-government diplomacy and moved diplomacy with publics into the mainstream. It challenges a common narrative that US public diplomacy is a Cold War creation that was folded into the State Department in 1999 and briefly found new life after 9/11. It examines historical turning points, evolving patterns of practice, and societal drivers of an American way of diplomacy: a preference for hard power over soft power, episodic commitment to public diplomacy correlated with war and ambition, an information dominant communication style, and an outsized regard for American exceptionalism. It is an account of American diplomacy’s public dimension, the people who shaped it, and the societization and digitalization that today extends diplomacy well beyond the confines of embassies and foreign ministries.

I am pleased American Diplomacy’s Public Dimension is in the Palgrave Macmillan Series in Global Public Diplomacy, founded by co-editors Kathy Fitzpatrick (University of South Florida) and Philip Seib (University of Southern California), who was succeeded by Caitlyn Byrne (Griffith University, Australia), and is now helmed by Kathy Fitzpatrick and Vivian Walker (Georgetown University and the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy). The book is available in eBook and print versions here and here.

*   *   *

Karin Aggestam and Constance Duncombe, eds., “Special Issue: Advancing a New Research Agenda on Digital Disruption in Diplomacy,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Vol. 19, (2024), Issue 1, Online publication, December 18, 2023. In their introduction to this HJD Special Issue, Aggestam (Lund University) and Duncombe (Copenhagen University) explore concepts and empirical evidence relating to ways information communication technologies manifest “digital disruption” at the micro-level of individual actors and macro-level of diplomacy’s processes and institutions. They begin with a literature review on the digitalization of diplomacy and current research in three areas: technology and diplomatic transformation, diplomatic signaling, and digital transformation. Then they frame a multi-disciplinary research agenda for the study of digital disruptions in diplomacy. Elements include the interplay between actors and systemic factors, how digital disruption reinforces and challenges practices and power structures, varieties of methodologies, and ramifications of big data analysis. They conclude with an overview of the seven articles in this Special Issue that were published online throughout 2023. Four are available through open access. Several were reviewed in earlier editions of this list. These articles are an important resource for scholars and practitioners concerned with the transformative impact of technologies on diplomacy.

“Assistant or Associate Professor (Tenure Track), Grace School of Applied Diplomacy, (24-25),” DePaul University, Chicago, IL. Open date, December 2023. Applications from diplomacy scholars will be accepted until the position is filled. This is a great opportunity for qualified candidates.

Dmitry Chernobrov, Strategic Humor and Post-Truth Public Diplomacy, November 2023, CPD Perspectives, USC Center on Public Diplomacy. Building on research relating to the uses of humor in electoral campaigns and as a tool used in resistance to authoritarian regimes, Chernobrov (University of St. Andrews) makes two arguments. First, he develops “strategic humor” as a concept described as “the use of humor by state and proxy actors to promote narratives that . . . advance state interests, deflect criticism, legitimate policy, and challenge the narratives of others.” Second, he argues an increase in the use of humorous content contributes to a “post-truth public diplomacy, reliant on outreach and popularity mechanisms, fictitious representations, emotive messaging, and exploitation of uncertainty.” His essay analyzes characteristics and advantages of strategic humor through multiple examples of its use by state and non-state actors. He devotes considerable attention to uses of humor by and in response to broadcasts by Russia’s state-funded broadcaster RT. He concludes with a brief discussion of strategic communication as an “appealing” tool of post-truth public diplomacy. Scholars and practitioners will find Chernobrov’s claims instructive, provocative, and well worth reflection and assessment.  

Deborah Cohn, “Crafting the ‘Image of America’: The USIA/University of Pennsylvania Certificate in American Studies (1960-1968,” Diplomatica 3 (2021), 95-115. In this cultural diplomacy case study, Cohn (Indiana University) assesses the history and limitations of a government-sponsored academic certificate in American studies, an initiative developed for use with foreign nationals by the US Information Agency in the 1960s by professor Robert Spiller at the University of Pennsylvania. She discusses collaborative efforts by scholars and practitioners to promote a field of academic study in a cultural diplomacy domain that included the Salzburg Seminar in American Civilization and other activities. Her nuanced analysis places the program in the larger and often problematic context of ways Americans in government and civil society leveraged academic fields in support of the nation’s interests during World War II and the Cold War. She also discusses the program’s shortcomings: its inability to attract candidates; insufficient evaluation of its impact, especially on individuals who failed its exams; tensions between “academic cold warriors” and officials responsible for awarding the certificate; and “key discrepancies between the ‘image of America’ as distinctive, static, and a global leader that scholars and officials alike wanted to project, on the one hand, and what was likely to be most interesting to international audiences during a period of racial strife within the US, the Vietnam War, and decolonization movements.” This excellent, deeply researched article provides insights into US cultural diplomacy’s past with important implications for current practice.

Nicholas J. Cull, Reputational Security: Refocusing Public Diplomacy for a Dangerous World, (Polity, 2024). Nick Cull (University of Southern California), one of public diplomacy’s leading historians and conceptualizers, has added a new book to his impressive shelf of publications. It develops his idea that “Reputational Security” is more suitable than soft power as a framing term for today’s era of renewed great power conflict and transformational global challenges. He offers a variety of reasons. It overcomes what he perceives is a mismatch between soft power as understood by public diplomacy practitioners and his understanding of the world, past and present, as a historian. Whereas “soft power” has come to be seen by many as an “optional extra” for the statecraft of top tier countries, “Reputational Security” has value in linking the realms of image and foreign public engagement to statecraft’s highest priority, national defense. It “more explicitly reflects the damage that could come to states whose image has slipped.” Soft power, he argues, has focused on the reputation of single actors. “Reputational Security” is a better fit for an age where the biggest challenges are “fought collectively.” Cull does not intend his concept as a replacement for soft power. Instead, he contends, it is “an alternative way to think” about communication and collective reputation in very different circumstances. His book explores these themes in chapters that discuss why “Reputational Security” is a special concern for diplomatic actors in the 2020s; the reputational challenges of new technologies, disinformation, and counter propaganda; the emergence of diaspora diplomacy; cultural diplomacy and cultural relations; and the war in Ukraine. His book should spark energetic and illuminating debates in academic and practitioner settings on both the practical applications of his concepts and the extent to which “Reputational Security” constitutes a more suitable frame than soft power. See also Cull’s presentation on Reputational Security followed by comments and Q&A moderated by Vivian Walker on the Public Diplomacy Council of America’s First Monday webinar (57 minutes), January 8, 2024.  

Journal of Public Diplomacy, Vol. 3, No. 2, December 2023. Congratulations toJPD, on completing its third year as a peer-reviewed journal devoted to publishing theoretical and empirical research and providing a venue for dialogue and debate on public diplomacy. Launched by founding editor-in-chief Kadir Jun Ayhan and published by the Korean Association of Public Diplomacy, its new co-editors-in-chief are Kyung Sun Lee, Zayed University, United Arab Emirates and Zhao Alexandre Huang, Université Paris Nanterre, France. Articles in the current issue, all open access, include:

Weronika Rucka, Rozane De Cock, and Tim Smits (Institute for Media Studies, KU Leuven), “Nation Branding in Times of Refugee Crisis: Digital Media Practices of Belgian and Swedish Governmental Institutions.”

Lisa Gibson (Washington and Jefferson College), “The Impact of Citizen-led Facebook Public Diplomacy: A Case Study of Libyans’ Views of the US.”

Jami Fullerton (Oklahoma State University), John P. Schoeneman, Jr. (Southern Methodist University), and Alice Kendrick (Oklahoma State University), “Nation Branding and International Media Coverage of Domestic Conflict: An Agenda-setting Study.”  

Dongnu Guo, (Griffith University & Center for Australian Studies, China University of Mining and Technology), “How China Constructs Cultural Self-Confidence.”

Alfredo Zeli (Beijing Foreign Studies University), “Book Review Essay.” Paweł Surowiec and Ilan Manor, eds. Public Diplomacy and the Politics of Uncertainty, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. 

Pablo Sebastian Morales (London School of Economics and Political Science), “Book Review Essay.” Vanessa Bravo and Maria De Moya, eds., Latin American Diasporas in Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.

Antonio Alejo (University of Granada), “Book Review Essay.” Alisher Faizullaev, Diplomacy for Professionals and Everyone, Brill, 2022. 

Natalie Grincheva and Elizabeth Stainforth, Geopolitics of Digital Heritage, (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Grincheva (University of the Arts Singapore and University of Melbourne) and Stainforth (University of Leeds) analyze how large-scale data aggregators are transforming the ways cultural heritage is stored and shared by galleries, libraries, archives, museums, and other providers. They explore the geopolitical motives and agendas of digital heritage aggregators at different levels of governance in four case studies: the city-state Singapore Memory Project, the National Library of Australia’s Trove, and the regional and global digital platforms of the European Commission’s Europeana and Google Arts & Culture. Their multidisciplinary approach offers thoughtful ideas on digital geopolitics, soft power, cultural diplomacy, public diplomacy, and the reciprocal effects of what actors do and how production of digital heritage shapes their political agendas. Their book is a critical assessment of the benefits of digital aggregation and the challenges of politically and economically driven projects: politicization, commodification, and sustainability issues resulting from dependence on benefactors’ and stakeholders’ political interests and ambitions.

Kyle A. Long, Global American Higher Education: International Campuses for Competition or Cooperation?  December 2023, CPD Perspectives, USC Center on Public Diplomacy. Long (George Washington University) examines the under-studied role of international campuses of US universities—some branch campuses, some independent, and some micro-campuses in partner institutions. They enroll approximately 720,000 students; a large majority are in China. His study provides historical context and addresses several research questions. What is the scope of America’s higher education institutions outside the United States? How have they evolved, and what are their characteristics? What is their significance for American public diplomacy and soft power? And how can they be strengthened? Long provides an excellent literature review and empirical data set. He addresses interesting conceptual issues, such as whether and how “soft power” should be distinguished from “knowledge diplomacy.” Long concludes that his research provides a baseline for understanding the global landscape of America’s institutions of higher education with a number of important issues still to be addressed.

Francisco Rodríguez-Jiménez, Lorenzo Delgado Gómez-Escalonilla, and Benedetta Calandra, eds., U.S. Public Diplomacy Strategies in Latin America During the Sixties: Time for Persuasion, (Routledge, 2024). Rodríguez-Jiménez (Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Lisbon), Gómez-Escalonilla (National Research Council of Spain), and Calandra (University of Bergamo) have compiled an excellent and needed compendium by accomplished scholars on the “cultural Cold War” in the Western Hemisphere. As Gilbert A. Joseph (Yale University) notes in his Preface, the under-recognized activities of “‘diplomats,’ broadly construed” — government agencies, foundations, scholars and scientists, writers, artists, musicians, and athletes — are a welcome supplement to accounts that focus on military juntas, leftist guerrillas, and CIA-backed coups. Contributors examine varieties of public diplomacy strategies, methods, and initiatives. Some place them in the context of “‘hard’ imperial power and an unbroken, complacent attitude of U.S. exceptionalism.” Chapters include:

Rodríguez-Jiménez, Calandra, and Gómez-Escalonilla, “US Public Diplomacy Strategies in Latin America in Recent Historiographical Debates.”

Gómez-Escalonilla, “Modernizing Latin America! Cuban Revolution, Alliance for Progress, and Development Decade.”

Alan McPherson (Temple University), “US Public Diplomacy Responses to Anti-Americanism in 1960s Latin America.”

Nicholas J. Cull (University of Southern California), “US Public Diplomacy in Latin America: The Regional Quest for Reputational Security, 1917-1968.”

Patrick Iber (University of Wisconsin, Madison), “The Cost of Freedom: The Congress for Cultural Freedom in Latin America.”

Andrés Sánchez-Padilla (Saint Louis University, Madrid), “Development by the Book: US Book Diplomacy and the Latin American Cultural Cold War.”

Fernando Quesada (Universidad Nacional de Cuyo) and Calandra, “Exploring the Liberal Transformation: The Rockefeller Foundation and the Green Revolution in Chile.”

André Gounot (University of Strasbourg), “Sports in the Anti-Cuban Diplomacy of the US: The Example of the Regional Games of San Juan, 1966.”

Victoria Phillips (Wilson Center), “Political Partnering: The Dance of US Diplomacy in Latin America.”

Elizabeth Schwall (University of California Berkeley), “Dancing Across the Sugar Curtain: Choreographing Critiques of the United States in Cuba.”

Símele Soares Rodrigues (University Jean Moulin, Lyon), “American Leads Materially. Why Not Culturally?’: US Fine Arts in Brazil, 1948-78.”

Rodríguez-Jiménez, “Perceptions and Misperceptions in Inter-American Relations.”

A companion book in Spanish is El americano imposible. Estados Unidos y América Latina, entre Modernización y Contrainsurgencia (Sílex Ultramar 2023).

Harilaos Stecopoulos, Telling America’s Story to the World: Literature, Internationalism, Cultural Diplomacy, (Oxford University Press, 2023). In this imaginative and deeply-researched volume, Stecopoulos (University of Iowa) bridges the domains of Cold War studies, American literature, and US cultural diplomacy. His book examines activities of leading writers in state-sponsored overseas visits in the decades after World War II with the primary intent of showing how their cultural diplomacy contributed to the making of US postwar literature. Chapters focus on Archibald MacLeish, Ralph Ellison, Robert Lowell, William Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Arthur Miller, Maxine Hong Kingston, and many others. These “cultural ambassadors,” sent abroad by the US government to tell “America’s story,” Stecopoulos observes, were often critical of the United States, a consequence seemingly at odds with the interest-based intent of their sponsors. As Louis Menand and others point out, however, critiques of US policies by America’s writers in Cold War cultural diplomacy advanced the goals of discerning US government sponsors who wanted to project the pluralism of American society and show the Soviet Union that dissent was tolerated in the United States. Stecopoulos’s book merits attention for its scholarship and insights into the ways power and culture are intertwined. It also points to the considerable diversity in the multidisciplinary study of diplomacy’s public dimension. (Suggested by Deborah Cohn)

US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, Comprehensive Annual Report on Public Diplomacy and International Broadcasting: Focus on FY 2022 Budget Data, December 19, 2023. The Commission’s 75th anniversary report, prepared by executive director Vivian Walker and her colleagues with support from staffs at the Department of State and US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), is the premier resource for recommendations and granular budget and program information on US public diplomacy. Readers looking to prioritize the value of this 217-page report should look first to its 25 recommendations to the White House, Congress, State Department, and USAGM at pp.13-16. These brief policy, program, and structural recommendations are at the heart of the Commission’s mandate. They warrant elaboration and follow up by the Commission, assessment by government officials, lawmakers, public diplomacy practitioners, and knowledgeable analysts in civil society. The Commission’s report is a gold mine of current and historical empirical data on US public diplomacy activities carried out by the State Department, USAGM, and US missions abroad. Excellent graphics and formatting enhance the report as a research tool. To celebrate its 75 years as a bipartisan, presidentially appointed advisory panel—with a statutory responsibility to advise the president and State Department and report to Congress and the American people—the Commission invited current and former commissioners, executive directors, practitioners, and partners to reflect on the panel’s past and future. Their comments can be found at pp. iii-xv.

US Government Accountability Office, “Cyber Diplomacy: State’s Efforts Aim to Support U.S. Interests and Elevate Priorities,” GAO-24-105563, January 11, 2024.   In contrast to earlier GAO reports on cyber issues—“Cyber Diplomacy,” GAO-20-607R, September 2020, and “Cyber Diplomacy,” GAO-21-266R, January 2021—this report is more descriptive than prescriptive. It examines activities the State Department is undertaking to advance US interests in cyberspace and the Department’s reports of their impact. It also discusses State’s creation of a new Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy in April 2022 and the extent to which this organizational change helped or created challenges in achieving its cyber diplomacy goals. The report is a useful overview of objectives, projects, organizational responsibilities, and operational challenges. It makes a brief reference to a Strategic Planning and Communications Unit responsible for an array of planning, public diplomacy, media, and legislative affairs activities. Challenges include clarification of roles and hiring staff, communication within State on issues relevant to almost all aspects of diplomacy, lack of an agreed definition of cyber diplomacy, and the diverse ways governments, multilateral actors, civil society, and the private sector organize to deal with cyber issues.   

Recent Items of Interest

Matt Armstrong, “Fulbright’s ‘Knee-capping’ of US Global Engagement, Part 2,”  December 13, 2023, Arming for the War We’re In.

J. Brian Atwood, “Military Technology Is Outpacing Our Diplomatic Capacity.”  January 2, 2024, The Hill.

“Professor Robert Banks on the USC Master of Public Diplomacy Program,”  November 7, 2023, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

“Chair Cardin Applauds Passage of State Department Authorization Act and Other Priorities [including US public diplomacy initiatives] in Annual Defense Bill,”  December 13, 2023, Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Deborah Cohn, “Transcending Borders With American Studies,”  December 11, 2023, Salzburg Global Seminar; “Fewer U.S. College Students Are Studying a Foreign Language—and That Spells Trouble For National Security,” November 16, 2023, The Conversation.

Robert Darnton, “The Dream of a Universal Library,” December 21, 2023, The New York Review.

Kim Andrew Elliott, “‘Radio Free Everywhere’ Defeats the Purpose of the Voice of America,” January 5, 2024, The Hill.

“The Framework to Counter Foreign State Information Manipulation: Fact Sheet,”  January 18, 2024, US Department of State.

Fred P. Hochberg, “America’s Global ‘Soft Power’ Strategy is Aging Poorly—Especially Compared to China’s,”  January 13, 2024, The Hill.

Gordon Humphrey, “Promoting Democracy to a Global Public,” December 27, 2023, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Fred Kaplan, “Nostalgia for Cold War Diplomacy is a Trap,”  January 5, 2024; “Jazz Played a Unique Role in Cold War Diplomacy. What Can the U.S. Learn From That in 2024,”  December 28, 2023, Slate.

Matthew Lee, “US to Spend $700M on New Embassy in Ireland, Breaks Ground on New Embassy in Saudi Arabia,”  December 12, 2023, AP.

Jim Malone, “A Eulogy for Andre De Nesnera,”  January 2024, Public Diplomacy Council of America; 

C. Raja Mohan, “Is There Such a Thing as a Global South?”  December 9, 2023, Foreign Policy.

Jan-Werner Muller, “The Myth of Social Media and Populism: Why the Moral Panic is Misplaced,”  January 3, 2024, Foreign Policy.

Steven Lee Myers, “State Dept.’s Fight Against Disinformation Comes Under Attack,”  December 14, 2023, The New York Times.

“Senate Approves USAGM Board,”  December 7, 2023, VOA News.

P. W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, “Gaza and the Future of Information Warfare,”  December 5, 2023, Foreign Affairs.

Tara Sonenshine, “More Than 100 Days Later, Where Does the War in Gaza Stand?”  January 18, 2024, The Hill.

Bill Wanlund, “Hearts vs. Minds: Asymmetric Public Diplomacy in Gaza,”  January 4, 2024, Public Diplomacy Council of America; 

Earl Anthony Wayne, “2023: Shaping an Inflection Point or Struggling to Hang On,”  December 14, 2023, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

R. S. Zaharna, “Recognizing 2023 ISA Distinguished Scholars: Eytan Gilboa and Nicholas J. Cull,” CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Philip Zelikow, “The Atrophy of American Statecraft,”  Foreign Affairs, January/February 2024, 56-72.

Gem from the Past

Joseph S. Nye, Jr., The Future of Power, (Public Affairs, 2011). As academics in an emerging discourse look for ways to refashion Joseph Nye’s (Harvard University) ideas about soft power in the context of today’s challenges—while acknowledging their debt to his pioneering scholarship—it is well to keep in mind how relevant his body of work remains. Fourteen years ago, Nye synthesized his thinking in numerous earlier publications on the meaning, types, and uses of power. Hard power and soft power. Their direct and inverse relationships. Resource power and behavioral outcomes. Categories of relational power. Military and economic power. Cyber power. Smart power. And twenty-first century power shifts among states and from states to nonstate actors. The Future of Power was written for the general reader, as were most of his earlier works, but in its extensive, and essential, endnotes he provided “a careful analytical structure” for his theoretical claims and responses to his critics. 

Fast forward to today. Professor Nye has just published A Life in the American Century (Polity, 2024), an account of his journey as a Harvard professor, public intellectual, and practitioner in the State Department, Defense Department and intelligence community. It is the memoir of one of the most influential and accomplished scholars of our generation.  

An archive of Diplomacy’s  Public Dimension: Books, Articles, Websites  (2002-present) is maintained at George Washington University’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication.  Current issues are also posted by the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy, and the Public Diplomacy Council of America.

World Expos: Grand scale public diplomacy effort

By Alexis Posel, IPDGC Communications Assistant

At last year’s December First Monday Forum, a panel of Senior Foreign Service Officers discussed the importance of expos in the 21st century. The First Monday Forums are a recurring partnership between IPDGC and the Public Diplomacy Council of America.

The panel comprised of Matthew Asada, U.S. Public Diplomat in Residence 2022–24, Nini Forino, the Director of Alumni Affairs in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and Beatrice Camp, Senior Advisor at the Department of State on the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) shared their experiences and knowledge of these mega-events.

Chairing the panel was Mark Ritchie, former Minnesota Secretary of State and co-founder of Expo USA.

The panelists underscored the significance of expos when it comes to cultural exchange and public diplomacy. Asada had been the Deputy Commissioner of General of the USA Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai. “It is important to have an eye for metrics,” he said, outlining the partnership and planning strategies he kept in mind during Expo 2020 Dubai.

Asada broke down expos through four lenses: the governing body, the organizer, the participant, and the spectator. According to him, each of these elements contributed to the advantages and challenges of participating and hosting mega-events that have a large reach.

All the panelists supported the argument that expos do have a place in the 21st century, despite the alternative views in the broader public diplomacy community about their efficiency given the high costs of organizing, building, staffing, and running world expos. To the panelists, expos are platforms that connect people and businesses, and build networks that can have a positive impact.

The main takeaway for the FMF audience was that the opportunities for introducing foreign perspectives and ideas to a country’s national economy and inspiring innovation are – as the saying goes – priceless!

Climate Diplomacy

Iceland’s Ambassador talks about the urgency to take on the challenges of climate change

By Alexis Posel, IPDGC Communications Assistant

At the 2023 Walter Roberts Annual Lecture, Iceland’s Ambassador to the U.S., Bergdís Ellertsdóttir, spoke on Iceland’s position on climate change, especially in the Arctic region.

She discussed the challenges that her country has faced advocating for climate change as the most pressing global issue. The Lecture was attended by an in-person audience at GW’s Lehman Auditorium at the Science and Engineering Hall, and live-streamed.

Photo (L-R): William and Patricia Roberts (representing the Walter Roberts Endowment), Ambassador Bergdís Ellertsdóttir, Frank Sesno, Executive Director of Planet Forward, and William Youmans, Director of IPDGC.


Titled “Climate Diplomacy: Communicating with Urgency”, the Lecture featured Ambassador Ellertsdóttir talking about Iceland’s energy development. Being one of the poorest countries in Europe, Iceland began with fossil fuels but started searching for more sustainable energy sources after World War 2. As the world’s largest green energy and electricity producer per capita, Iceland has been using renewable energy for over a century.

“We are powered by 100%. By renewable energy – geothermal and hydro. (It) made perfect economic sense, and…changed our (Icelanders) life drastically,” she said.

Ellertsdóttir noted: “But still, global warming is felt in Iceland, and we can see our glaciers melting. I can see it with my own eyes, I remember the way the glaciers looked when I first traveled. And what they are looking like now is a great difference. (Some) of them have vanished completely.”

The challenge for Iceland is to encourage these efforts on a global scale. Ellertsdóttir explained that the Icelandic government has been working to fulfill the goals of the Paris Agreement, … focusing on local municipalities, private companies, and rallying individuals in a collective effort to reduce emissions. The Icelandic Climate Action Plan calls for the country to be independent from fossil fuels by 2050, and carbon neutral before 2040. Currently, efforts are being made to cut greenhouse gases by 55% by 2030.

While she had hopes that research, innovation, and technology will help along the way, she said that governments must lead by example. In fact, current global conflicts show how important it is to focus on energy security.

In taking questions from the audience, Ellertsdóttir answered an undergraduate student, studying International Climate Policy at GW, who asked about public transportation and reducing private car use. “I’m a public transport person,” Ellertsdóttir admitted but noted “For me, it would have been a no-brainer to have like electric cars, electric buses from many, many years ago. (But) people are so attached to their cars… I mean, people get so angry if someone wants to take away the car.”

At the close of the Lecture, Ambassador Ellertsdóttir reminded all that climate action is a human rights and justice issue and needed to be inclusive – women and girls, indigenous groups, rural and urban communities all need to have a seat at the table. “We need champions for our planet”.

This Walter Roberts Endowment, event is organized by the GW Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication with support from Planet Forward, an initiative to teach environmental storytelling to GW students.

Additional information by Yvonne Oh, Program Coordinator.

Supporting Public Diplomacy

December 2023

Dear Friend,
The Walter Roberts Endowment was established by Dr. Walter R. Roberts and his family with the
goal to educate students, recognize leadership, disseminate best practices and to promote appreciation
of the importance of public diplomacy.

Thanks to the generous support of donors like you, the Endowment has supported dozens of students
seeking careers in public diplomacy and has assisted in funding related activities and outreach of the
Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication (IPDGC) at the George Washington
University (GW).

Every year, we host the Walter Roberts Annual Lecture featuring renowned leaders in public
diplomacy, global media and communications, and international affairs. Last year, our speaker was
Jodie Ginsberg of the Committee to Protect Journalists speaking on the challenges faced by
international media.

On December 12, 2023, we will have H.E. Ambassador Bergdis Ellertsdottir, Iceland’s Ambassador to the United States who will give this year’s Walter Roberts Annual
Lecture on Climate Diplomacy: Communicating with Urgency
.

The Endowment also funds IPDGC’s Award for Congressional Leadership in Public Diplomacy, which
honors members of Congress who have been consistently supportive of public diplomacy in their careers. Last year’s recipient was Sen. James Risch of Idaho, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In addition to the award, a grant is given to a public diplomacy nonprofit in the recipient’s constituency. Global Ties Idaho was able to create a public diplomacy program to further mutual understanding between Idahoans and international visitors from Latin American countries.

Some new initiatives such as the IPDGC Graduate Fellow and a recent Cultural Diplomacy Workshop, teaching GW students the mechanics of cultural programming, have also received support from the Endowment.

As the year ends, we hope to count on your assistance so that the Endowment and IPDGC can continue with our events, programs and support of undergraduate and graduate students pursuing public diplomacy studies at GW. This was especially important during the pandemic, but moving forward, these funds have also benefited students from diverse socio-economic and international backgrounds.

The success of our work continues with Your Donation Now to the Endowment.

Patricia Kabra
Walter R. Roberts Endowment
Advisory Committee Chair

Dr. William Youmans
Director of IPDGC and Associate Professor, School of Media and Public Affairs