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Issue #86

“Adversarial States,” Public Diplomacy Magazine, Issue 17, Winter/Spring 2017, Association of Public Diplomacy Scholars (APDS), University of Southern California.  Articles by scholars and practitioners in PD Magazine’s latest issue examine public diplomacy practices between traditional adversaries – understood as “long-standing mutual tensions created by historical, ideological, or territorial grievances.”  Chapters focus on US relations with China, Cuba, Iran, and Russia.  Other chapters explore relations between other rival states: Armenia/Turkey, Ireland/Northern Ireland, and Israel/Palestine.
Corneliu Bjola, “Adapting Diplomacy to the Digital Age: Managing the Organizational Culture of Ministries of Foreign Affairs,” SWP Berlin, German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Working Paper, No. 9, March 2017.  Bjola (University of Oxford) examines how foreign ministries – facing internal conflicts born of their use of indispensable social media tools – should “reconcile entrenched organizational cultures with the platforms, values and assumptions of digital diplomacy.”  Drawing from Edgar Shein’s model of organizational cultures, he develops a three-dimensional evaluation matrix of digital adaptation: (1) artifacts, meaning visible digital organizational structures, brands, leaders, and networks; (2) a foreign ministry’s espoused values based on reigning cultural beliefs and their congruence with digital norms of communication, engagement, and adaptation; and (3) “taken for granted, non-debatable” assumptions about how members of organizations “perceive, think about, and feel about things.”  Bjola uses this framework to map and assess potential sources of digital clashes within ministries.
“Can Public Diplomacy Survive the Internet? Bots, Echo Chambers, and Disinformation,” Report of the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, May 2017.  In recent years this venerable bipartisan Commission (est. 1948) has been in the vanguard of productive efforts to link diplomacy studies and practice.  Its latest report, managed by the Commission’s executive director Shawn Powers, sets a new high bar.  The report compiles 14 essays written by academic, private sector, and government participants in a workshop convened by the Commission at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution to look at “the emergence of social bots, artificial intelligence, and computational propaganda.”  Their goal: to “raise awareness regarding how technology is transforming the nature of digital communication, offer ideas for competing in this space, and raise a number of important policy and research questions needing immediate attention.”  For practitioners, the report provides insights and cutting edge knowledge with operational relevance.  Teachers will find brief, timely, and accessible readings for students.  Includes:
Francis Fukuyama (Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies), “Foreword: Public Diplomacy in a Post-truth Society.”
Shawn Powers, “Executive Summary.”
Bruce Wharton (Acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs), “Remarks on ‘Public Diplomacy in a Post-truth Society.’”
Samuel C. Woolley (Oxford Internet Institute’s European Research Council), “Computational Propaganda and Political Bots: An Overview.”
Matt Chessen (Foreign Service Science, Technology, and Foreign Policy Fellow, George Washington University), “Understanding the Psychology Behind Computational Propaganda.”
Tim Hwang (Pacific Social), “Rethinking Countermeasures in the Age of Computational Propaganda.”
Sam Ford (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), “Public Diplomacy’s (Mis)understood Digital Platform Problem.”
Matt Chessen, “Understanding the Challenges of Artificial Intelligence and Computational Propaganda to Diplomacy.”
Jeffrey T. Hancock (Stanford University), “Psychological Principles for Public Diplomacy in an Evolving Information Ecosystem.”
Ethan Porter (George Washington University), “Facts Matter and People Care: An Empirical Perspective.”
Amanda Bennett (Director, Voice of America), “VOA: A Weapon of Truth in a War of Words.”
Jonathan Henick (Principal Deputy Coordinator, Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP), US Department of State) and Ryan Walsh (Senior Advisor for Digital Product, IIP), “U.S. 2016 Elections: A Case Study in ‘Inocculating’ Public Opinion Against Disinformation.”
Jason Stanley (Yale University), “In Defense of Truth, and the Threat of Disinformation.”
Laura J. Roselle (Elon University), “Public Diplomacy and Strategic Narratives.”
Vivian S. Walker (National War College), “Crafting Resilient State Narratives in Post Truth Environments: Ukraine and Georgia.”
Markus Kounalakis (Stanford University), “America’s Strategic Narrative and a Path for Public Diplomacy.”
“Digital Diplomacy Conference” State of Israel, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Ministry, March 30-31, 2016.  In this recently released 49-page report, the conveners of this conference, Corneliu Bjola (University of Oxford), Jan Melissen (Clingendael Institute), and Ilan Manor (University of Oxford), summarize issues raised by the impact of digitalization on diplomacy and insights of diplomats and scholars from more than 30 countries.  Key questions and ideas include: (1) the emerging role of foreign affairs ministries as digital service providers, particularly in providing consular services in crises; (2) the value of such services in building domestic constituencies; (3) lessons learned from the Nepal earthquake and Paris terrorist attack case studies; (4) how best to measure effectiveness, (5) whether it is time to abandon influence as a goal in digital diplomacy activities; (6) re-conceptualizing listening and engaging through social media; (7) whether diplomats should relinquish social media accounts when leaving a post; and (8) new models for analyzing digital strengths and limitations of embassy staffs, depicting hierarchies of digital skills in diplomacy, and understanding online foreign policy narration.  Their report contains instructive images and references to practitioner-oriented scholarly literature.
Rudine Emrich, “Report of the Workshop on ‘Diplomacy in the 21st Century,’” SWP Berlin, German Institute for International and Security Affairs, March 27, 2017.  SWP’s Emrich summarizes workshop papers and participant discussions in four categories: digitization, emotion, governance, and exploring the way forward in 21st century diplomacy.  Her overview profiles key themes in the papers (some annotated elsewhere in this list) by leading diplomacy scholars and analysis of their implications in workshop sessions.  Among the advantages of her overview and the papers are their brevity, online accessibility, efforts by participants to skim the conceptual cream, attention to salient issues in research, and their value for reform minded diplomats and change agents in foreign ministries.
Christer Jonsson, “Diplomatic Actors Beyond Foreign Ministries,” SWP Berlin, German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Working Paper, No. 10, March 2017.  Jonsson (Lund University) examines the acceleration of what he calls a “hybrid diplomatic arena” in which supranational, subnational, transgovernmental, and transnational actors are challenging the traditional primacy of foreign ministries and the diplomatic corps.  He anticipates the range of diplomacy actors will broaden and diversify.  In this milieu, the diplomat must be an “orchestrator” of multiple voices and interests.  Diplomats must also be comfortable with “complexity management” and interacting with a vastly larger number of actors.
Jimmy Kolker, “HHS and Health Diplomacy,” The Foreign Service Journal, May 2017, 29-30.  The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has become a leading example of whole of government diplomacy, vanishing boundaries between foreign and domestic, and how complex transnational problems are changing diplomatic practice.  Ambassador (ret.) Jimmy Kolker (HHS assistant secretary for global affairs until January 2017 and a 30 year career diplomat in the US Foreign Service) provides lots of evidence.  HHS, “intensely domestic in its culture, systems, and thinking” is now a major global actor – with nearly 2,000 HHS staff under chief-of-mission authority overseas, supported by 1,500 locally employed staff and 500 Americans.  Kolker demonstrates how HHS’s role has changed, citing such activities as PEPFAR, the Global Health Security Agenda, responses to the Ebola crisis in West Africa and Zika outbreak in Brazil, and partnerships with government and non-government health organizations.  Looking ahead, he questions calls for an “HHS Foreign Service,” preferring strong ties between HHS’s subject-matter experts and the State Department’s Office of International Health and Biosecurity and Global Health Diplomacy.  See also Nancy J. Powell and Gwen Tobert, “Fighting Pandemics: Lessons Learned,” The Foreign Service Journal, May 2017, 37-40.
Ilan Manor, “America’s Selfie – Three Years Later,” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Published online, May 23, 2017, 1-17.  Manor (University of Oxford) explores the way relational approaches that emphasize engagement between organizations and stakeholders link the fields of public diplomacy, place branding, and public relations.  His carefully researched article is based on a case study of US State Department Facebook profiles in 2013 and 2016.  Manor investigates (1) State’s projected image of America as “an economically responsible superpower, guided by moral values and committed to diplomacy and building meaningful relations with the Muslim world,” and (2) the extent to which State offered opportunities for “dialogic engagement.”  He concludes that State maintained a consistent and coherent national image of America.  At the same time, State failed to provide opportunities for two way interactions – “a lack of dialogic engagement that links the fields of public diplomacy, nation branding and public relations.”  His paper includes a thoughtful review of relevant literature.  He is mindful of his study’s methodological limitations.  And he concludes with a variety of questions for further research, including whether a Trump administration will lead to changes in the management of the US national image.  Indeed.
Jan Melissen and Matthew Cesar-Gordon, “The Impact of the Digital Revolution on Foreign Ministries’ Duty of Care,” SWP Berlin, German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Working Paper, No. 8, February 2017.  Melisssen and Cesar-Gordon (Netherlands Institute of International Relations, ‘Clingendael’) examine how the “digital shift” in the ways foreign ministries help people abroad is making them more dependent on citizen participation.  Foreign ministries are learning that digitally proficient citizens will support “government assistance to nationals abroad, and that nationals abroad should assume more responsibility for their own security.”
Jan Melissen and Emillie V. de Keulenaar, “The Case for Critical Digital Diplomacy,” SWP Berlin, German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Working Paper, No. 7, February 2017.  In addition to applying digital tools to existing practices, Melisssen (Netherlands Institute of International Relations, ‘Clingendael’) and de Keulenaar (University of Amsterdam) argue that diplomacy practitioners must also understand the politics and intentions of real life actors behind software, as well as the infrastructures underlying digital diplomacy – i.e., the platforms that mediate capacity in culture, political dialogue, and international relations.  Diplomats and foreign ministries “should embrace conceptions of technology that no longer separate substance from technique, and instruments from language.”  They should understand how “culture, information, and relations are systematized in software, such as with the counteracting of algorithms that do not work in one’s favor.”  They should critically assess real life actors behind software and understand that failure to create software for diplomatic purposes puts them at a disadvantage.
“Now Online: 99 Years of Diplomatic History,” American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), The Foreign Service Journal Archive, May 2017.  A complete archive of The Foreign Service Journal (FSJ), AFSA’s flagship publication, is now available online.  The FSJ is also creating a Special Collections page to highlight articles on particular themes.  Published bimonthly, FSJ covers international issues, diplomatic practice, and the US Foreign Service.  As the voice of AFSA, “a labor union and professional association for US diplomats,” the FSJ also contains news relating to AFSA’s activities and positions, together with the often spirited and contrasting views of its members.  This high quality insider’s journal, now easily accessible, is an outstanding resource on a century of US diplomacy for scholars, policy analysts, and practitioners.  It is particularly useful for scholars using practice theory in the study of diplomacy and its public dimension.
James Pamment, rapporteur, New Diplomacy, Wilton Park, WP1531, March 15-17, 2017.  In this brief report, Pamment (University of Lund) summarizes key judgments of 50 practitioners gathered at Wilton Park to examine new approaches to decentralized diplomacy in a networked world.  Key judgments include:  Diplomats cannot do everything alone.  They must balance traditional roles with new skills such as leadership, boldness, innovation, and disruption.  Diplomats will need more education and training, and a greater willingness to listen and learn.  Digital technologies are no longer new in diplomacy; algorithms, bots, and hackers are poorly understood.  “Unusual suspects” are needed in a rethink of approaches to influencers in diplomacy – including “diplomats for hire” at the periphery of diplomatic networks.  Diplomats must be more open to dissent, a plurality of perspectives, and a norm of “optimal distance” while collaborating with a wide variety of diplomatic and non-diplomatic actors to achieve shared outcomes.  Not everything will be new in the “new” diplomacy, but there is an “evolving ‘normal.’”  A useful read for practitioners and students.
Condoleezza Rice, Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom, (Twelve, 2017).  The former US Secretary of State meditates on the meaning of democracy and lessons from struggles to establish and sustain democratic institutions.  Her stories about the United States, Russia, Poland, Kenya, Ukraine, Colombia, and the Middle East draw heavily on her experiences in government and knowledge of democratization discourse.  She makes a continuing case for the National Endowment for Democracy and other US democracy promotion activities.  Her anecdotes and descriptions of conversations with foreign leaders will inform historians and democracy builders.  Rice blends idealism and realism, optimism and pessimism.  In places, she is candid about mistakes.  Her epilogue makes glancing references to “a new president . . . elected with absolutely no experience in government of any kind” and a troubling possibility that a turn to “nationalism and nativism will threaten the global order.”  But here and throughout the book, she is measured and decorous – a voice suited for an excellent seminar but distant from the emotions and raw politics of high stakes democratic struggles.
Amelia Shaw, “Speaking Out – Digital Diplomacy: Will State Ever Take the Plunge,” The Foreign Service Journal,May 2017,  19-22.  In her hard-hitting critique of the State Department’s “public diplomacy efforts in the digital arena,” Foreign Service Officer Shaw (2015 winner of the American Foreign Service Association’s W. Averell Harriman Award for Constructive Dissent) argues the Department is constrained by (1) lack of time, skills, tools and knowledge required to use social media effectively; (2) a concentration of cutting edge tools and expertise in Washington rather than in the field; and (3) an organizational hierarchy that is power-centric, risk averse, and lacks a “train and trust” model for online engagement.  Her recipe for change: compulsory training that leverages private sector expertise, a menu of globally available best practices, restructured PD shops at field posts, and transformed PD hiring practices.  Before joining the Foreign Service in 2014, Shaw was a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, a digital media advisor for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and a Fulbright Scholar in Haiti.
Tamsin Shaw, “Invisible Manipulators of Your Mind,” The New York Review, April 20, 2017, 62-65.  This is an essay length review of The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed our Mind, a book by Michael Lewis on the work of psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.  Shaw (New York University) explores how governments and corporations are using behavioral techniques to change behavior by appealing to non-rational motivations, emotional triggers, and unconscious biases.  Her examples include Amazon’s automated “nudges,” sentiment manipulation in the 2016 US presidential election, SCL CEO Nigel Oakes’ presentation to the US Department of State, and former British Navy commander Steve Tatham’s and Andrew Mackay’s insights on the relevance of prospect theories of human motivations and the “wisdom of crowds” in strategic communication – ideas explored in their Behavior Conflict: Why Understanding People and Their Motivations Will Prove Decisive in Future Conflict.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, The Chessboard & the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Networked World, (Yale University Press, 2017).  Practical guides to the complex problems and drivers of change reshaping diplomacy’s tools and methods are rare. Using the metaphors of chess (games of sovereign state actors seeking to preserve separation and gain strategic advantage) and the web (networks of connection between governance, corporate, civic, and criminal actors), Slaughter (President and CEO, New America) maps a “both/and” way of seeing the world to create a playbook for strategies of connection.  Her book rewards in many ways.  It’s a primer on applied network theory, not too casual, not too abstract.  It provides a rich survey of recent scholarship and practitioner literature.  Her experiences as New America’s CEO and former director of policy planning at the State Department inform her conceptual reasoning.  She combines strategies of connection with useful chapters on leadership and network power.  And her insights into how practitioners are learning to “convene and connect” in multi-issue, multi-actor diplomacy inform both theory and practice.  Recognized as a formidable public intellectual, Slaughter reminds, as she did in A New World Order (2005), that she is also an accomplished scholar.  Her book has one significant limitation.  It is based on her 2015 Stimson Lectures at Yale and was completed before the 2016 US presidential election.  She offers no thoughts on what her web strategies might mean for a Trump presidency enthralled by a chessboard view of the world.
Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach, The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone, (Riverhead Books, 2017).  Cognitive scientists Sloman (Brown University) and Fernbach (University of Colorado) use clear prose, humor, and many telling examples to make three central arguments.  (1) Most of us are largely unaware of how little we know.  (How does glue hold paper together?)  (2) Our knowledge illusion occurs because we confuse finite knowledge in our heads with knowledge we have access to outside the mind.  (3) Understanding the communal nature of knowledge helps explain why we think in groups and why collaboration is more productive in human achievement than individual rationality.  Sloman and Fernbach apply their ideas to a variety of concerns relevant to diplomatic practice: why political opinions and false beliefs are hard to change, why groups use stories to organize collective memory and convey attitudes, echo chambers and self-confirming news streams, “fake news,” the Internet as an extension of thought, problems of intentionality and artificial intelligence, differences in political persuasion between disputes over fundamental values and consequence-based outcomes, and the importance of both expertise and collective intelligence.  Walter Lippmann (Public Opinion) and John Dewey developed ideas about cognition, communication, and complexity nearly a century ago with insights often used to introduce public diplomacy courses.  Sloman and Fernbach in part build on their pioneering work in this 21st century analogue.
Dina Smeltz, Karl Friedhoff, Craig Kafura, Johua W. Busby, Jonathan Monten, and Jordan Tama, The Foreign Policy Establishment or Donald Trump: Which Better Reflects American Opinion? The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, April 20, 2017.  In this report, based on the Council’s surveys conducted in 2016 before the US election, Dina Smeltz and her colleagues find “the general public was more attuned to the broad outlines of foreign policy positions promoted by the foreign policy opinion leaders, or ‘the Foreign Policy Establishment.’”  Among the findings:  (1) bipartisan consensus among US foreign policy opinion leaders in both parties on active global engagement, maintaining alliances, and international trade; (2) foreign policy views of the general public aligned more with those of foreign policy opinion leaders than the stated views of candidate Donald Trump; (3) views of experts in Republican and Democratic parties more often aligned with each other than with publics affiliated with their parties; (4) majorities in both parties supported globalization and trade; and (5) among Republicans a historic high of 67% viewed immigrants and refugees as a critical threat compared with 19% of Republican opinion leaders.
Recent Blogs and Other Items of Interest
Steven Aftergood, “State Department Press Briefings Go Dark,” June 5, 2017, Federation of American Scientists Blog.
Matt Armstrong, “A Strategic Perspective on ‘Information Warfare’ & ‘Counter-Propaganda,’” March 15, 2017, Prepared remarks before the Emerging Threats & Capabilities Subcommittee, House Armed Services Committee.
Alison Bartel, “When Policy Meets Public Diplomacy: U.S. Losing Its Edge in Attracting International Students,” May 30, 2017, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, George Washington University, Take Five Blog.
Martha Bayles, “Don’t Kick Voice of America When It’s Down,” May 17, 2017, American Interest.
Mark Dillen, “Covfefe Happened,” June 2, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center for Public Diplomacy.
Eytan Gilboa, “In the Aftermath of Trump’s Visit to the Middle East,” June 6, 2017, BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 488.
Michael Ignatieff, “Defending Academic Freedom in a Populist Age,” June 2, 2017, Project Syndicate.
Jill Lepore, “The World That Trump and Ailes Built,” June 5 & 12, 2017, The New Yorker.
“Meet the Author: P. J. Crowley,” May 8, 2017, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Information Warfare Versus Soft Power,” May 9, 2017, Project Syndicate; “Q&A with CPD,” April 18, 2017, USC Center for Public Diplomacy.
James Pamment, “Sweden’s Public Diplomacy Must Adapt to Its New Global Role,” April 24, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center for Public Diplomacy.
Jeffrey Robertson, “Korea’s Digital Diplomacy: The Most Technologically Advanced Avoider,” May 31, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center for Public Diplomacy.
Philip Seib, “Military Power and Soft Power,” April 7, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center for Public Diplomacy.
Kelsey Suemnicht, “What’s a Public Diplomat To Do?” May 25, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center for Public Diplomacy.
Gem From The Past
Manuel Castells, Communication Power, (Oxford University Press, 2009). “Where does power lie in the global network society?”  Manuel Castells (University of Southern California) sought answers to this question nearly a decade ago, in this masterful update to his pioneering Information Age trilogy on the network society.  Communication Power is an inquiry into “the connection between communication and political power at the frontier between cognitive science, communication research, political psychology, and political communication.”  Castells’ analysis has enormous continuing value as scholars and diplomats struggle with real world implications of networks and digital technologies.  A short list of its relevant ideas for diplomacy includes: varieties of power in networks, mass self-communication, the politics of beliefs, the importance of biology and emotions, media framing, networked global actors, and the construction and roles of narratives.  The full text of this important book is available online.
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Issue #85

David Bosworth, “Knowing Together: The Emergence of the Hive Mind,” The Hedgehog Review, Spring 2017, 18-31.  Bosworth (University of Washington) reflects on the collaborative, interdisciplinary, and multicultural ways our conscious mind seeks “to combine thought with feeling; the familiar with the foreign; this medium, genre, or discipline withthat.”  Accelerating changes in ideas about space and time, and relationships between self and society, exist in all knowledge domains – not least in governance and diplomacy.  Although post-modern life is unlike pre-modern eras in many ways, a central challenge continues: how to adjudicate abiding tensions in the human condition between the collective and the individual – and between varieties of collectives.  Bosworth’s essay examines new patterns of social interaction (“What does it mean in the practical sense to have 338 friends, the average number for an adult Facebook user?”  “What, then, do freedom and responsibility, reward and punishment mean . . . if each of us is ceaselessly influenced at a subconscious level by the choices of those around us?”)  Threats to social order by sociopathic collectives (cyber thieves, digital mobs, post-modern states and corporations) undermine authorities of public governance.  What we can do with new technologies, he argues, must be disciplined by what we should do.  He urges approaches rooted in self-restraint, stoic tolerance, and civil discourse.

Andrew F. Cooper, “The Disintermediation Dilemma and Its Impact on Diplomacy,” German Institute for International and Security Studies, Working Paper, Project “Diplomacy in the 21st Century,” No 04, February 2017, 1-3.  In this short paper, Cooper (University of Waterloo, Canada) asks us to consider that challenges to diplomacy derive increasingly from the ascendant populism of domestic publics averse to insiders, experts, and traditional institutions.  Growth in the external relations of “domestic” government departments has long challenged the primacy of diplomats and foreign ministries.  Now diplomacy’s “disintermediation dilemma” is driven also by opportunistic leaders and aroused citizens who stigmatize and seek to “go around” diplomacy’s institutions.  This is occurring in states at the core of the global system, not just on the periphery.  Options for diplomats, Cooper argues, included faster reactions to the surprises of leaders, increased public diplomacy directed domestically, and use of diplomacy’s institutions in the delivery of services to domestic publics.
Geoffrey Cowan, Why the Voice of America Remains a Vital Force in the World, CPD Perspectives, USC Center for Public Diplomacy, March 2017.  Cowan (former dean of USC’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism and director of the Voice of America) reflects on his family’s association with VOA, its historical and continuing importance, his role in creating USC’s Center for Public Diplomacy and MA degree in public diplomacy, and key questions facing US international broadcasting and public diplomacy in the Trump administration.  His paper is adapted from a speech delivered at the World Affairs Council of the Desert in Indian Wells, CA, on December 15, 2016.
Mai’a K. Davis Cross and Teresa La Porte, “The European Union and Image Resilience During Times of Crisis: The Role of Public Diplomacy,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 12 (2016), 1-26.  Davis Cross (Northeastern University) and La Porte (University of Navarra) make two central claims.  First, actors who experience setbacks often face consequences beyond those generated by root sources of their problems due to negative media effects, particularly those multiplied by social media.  These effects on an actor’s external image, which may be long lasting, require image resilience.  Second, “the ability to cultivate image resilience rests significantly on the power of public diplomacy.”  A strong image over time enables greater resilience after initial organizational responses to the shocks and stress of a crisis.  The authors examine the meaning of resilience in organization theory and in overcoming objective realities to ensure survival.  They contrast and link these ideas with public diplomacy theory and the role of image resilience in “correcting subjective perceptions to restore reputation.”  Three “conditions (protective tools)” contribute to an actor’s image resilience: policies, cultures, and identity that are attractive prior to a crisis; adaptive capacity; and “a strong sense of pro-social identity.”  Using in-depth interviews, practitioners’ public statements, and scholarly literature, they explore these ideas in a case study of the EU’s public diplomacy in the United States intended to influence American perceptions of Europe’s eurozone crisis.
P. J. Crowley, Red Line: American Foreign Policy in a Time of Fractured Politics and Failing States, (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). Crowley (George Washington University; former assistant secretary for public affairs and spokesman for the US Department of State) achieves two objectives in this informed and well-written book.  First, he examines the broad and changing strategic narratives of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations in the context of important national security issues: responses to the attacks of 9/11, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, US relations with Russia and China, the Iran nuclear negotiations.  Woven throughout his analysis is a second objective: an assessment of tensions between these narratives and the accelerating constraints of domestic polities.  Looking ahead, he concludes that people will remain “the center of gravity” in foreign policy and “global public opinion will matter more.”  America will need to alter its national security narratives to restore its credibility, which is “seriously challenged.”  Credibility, transparency, and sustainability “depend on politics” and will be required in greater abundance.  Crowley’s insights are those of a scholar-practitioner who has dealt with the hard work of framing credible public argument at the crossroads of politics and policy.
“University Deans Discuss ‘Trends in International Relations Curricula: Implications for Public Diplomacy,’” First Monday Forum, University of Southern California/Public Diplomacy Council, April 3, 2017.  In a panel discussion moderated by Sherry Mueller (American University) Deans James Goldgeier (American University, School of International Service), Joel Hellman (Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service,) Reuben Brigety II (George Washington University, Elliott School of International Affairs), and Adam Clayton Powell III representing Ernest Wilson (USC, Annenberg School of Communication) discuss issues relating to research, curricula, teachers, students practitioner oriented courses, future directions in the study of diplomacy and public diplomacy.  The approximately one-hour program, covered by C-SPAN and not yet aired, is scheduled to appear on the website at the link.  Chec for updates also on the Public Diplomacy Council’s website.
“EU Strategic Communications With a View to Countering Propaganda,” Directorate General for External Policies, European Parliament, 2016.  In this 33-page report, the EU Parliament’s Policy Division seeks to define “strategic communications” (in the plural form), which in its view, “includes elements of public diplomacy, and ‘spin’, media relations, advertising, recruitment and training and, most notably, high levels of situational awareness (detect and deter).”  The report begins by focusing on Russia and the Islamic State: their respective narratives, destabilizing messages, media outlets, tools and methods.  It then discusses the EU’s strategic communications efforts (defensive and offensive) and evaluates actions needed to increase their effectiveness.
Alexey Fominykh, “Russia’s Public Diplomacy in Central Asia and the Caucasus: The Role of the Universities,”The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2017, 56-85.  Fominykh (Volga State University of Technology) argues that, while Russia’s public diplomacy directed at Ukraine and the Baltic states relies mostly on “manipulative methods,” its public diplomacy in Central Asia and the Caucasus uses a range of “softer” tools: educational exchanges, government scholarships, language instruction, and student recruitment.  Fominykh’s research is based on international statistics on student flows collected by the Russian Federation and UNESCO’s country reports.  His article includes views on soft power, distinctions between public diplomacy and international education, challenges of defining public diplomacy, and varieties of meaning in interpretations of public diplomacy by Russia’s practitioners and IR scholars.
Richard Haass, A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order, (Penguin Press, 2017).  Haass (Council on Foreign Relations) reflects on implications of a world in which the rules and institutions that worked until the end of the Cold War (World Order 1.0) are increasingly powerless.  New forces, challenges, and actors mean something fundamentally different is afoot.  The world needs an updated operating system (World Order 2.0).  Haass’s analysis contains a number of ideas on diplomacy in a world order in crisis.  Diplomats matter, but their impact is diminished when order breaks down.  Annual US-China Strategic and Economic dialogues have become increasingly bureaucratic and incremental; more creative and frequent diplomacy is required.  Increased commitment to diplomatic process as well as policy is needed to deal with transnational issues, particularly cyber.
Mario Loyola and James K. Glassman, “Promoting American Values and Countering Authoritarianism in Cyberspace,” American Enterprise Institute (AEI), February 2017.  Loyola (New York University School of Law) and Glassman (Visiting Fellow, AEI) follow the well-worn path of linking a case for public diplomacy to perceptions of powerful external threats and weakness at home.  Authoritarian regimes have become adept at using the Internet for internal political control, propaganda, and political disruption abroad.  The US has failed to respond effectively, they argue, due to the Obama administration’s inability to develop a coherent public diplomacy strategy and effective operational capabilities.  They offer a range of debatable and problematic recommendations: abolish the firewall between US international broadcasting and America’s elected political leaders; place broadcasting within the oversight of the Department of State; make US public diplomacy “a more systematic element of the National Security staff system” with specific missions to counter hostile ideologies; adopt new strategies to strengthen freedom and expose disinformation online.  Offering few details, they close with the oblique suggestion that “Whether or not the USIA is revived in some form, certainly there should be a USG entity charged with the mission of the old USIA.”
Christopher Paul, Assessing and Evaluating Department of Defense Efforts to Inform, Influence, and Persuade: Worked Example, Rand, 2017.  The Department of Defense spends more than $250 million annually on information operations (IO) and related capabilities.  Paul (RAND Senior Social Scientist) builds on earlier research to analyze IO in the context of a fictitious example that uses realistic planning and operational details – a method that avoids distractions and debates that surround actual operations.  His conclusions are broadly applicable to military and civilian efforts to inform, influence, and persuade.  Effective assessment starts with planning and must support decision-making.  Evaluation requires clear, realistic, specific, measurable, achievable, time-bound goals.  Assessment requires a theory of change and effective target audience analysis.  Use cost/effective metrics and avoid “metric bloat.”  Choose logic models that identify possible constraints, flawed assumptions, indicators of failure and success, and unintended consequences of planned behavior.  Earlier RAND studies on which this report is based include Assessing and Evaluating Department of Defense Efforts to Inform, Influence, and Persuade: Handbook for Practitioners, RAND Corporation, RR-809/2-OSD, 2014; and Assessing and Evaluating Department of Defense Efforts to Inform, Influence, and Persuade: Desk Reference, RAND Corporation, RR-809/1-OSD, 2014;
Paradox of Progress: Global Trends 2030, National Intelligence Council (NIC), January 9, 2017.  The NIC’s latest five-year global trends update continues to provide valuable insights into forces and choices in diplomacy’s changing environment. Both practitioners (thinking beyond the inbox) and teachers (an excellent reading to tee up courses) will find it useful.  The 2030 report identifies key trends; discusses how they are changing power, governance, and cooperation; explores how they might play out in near-term rising tensions; and reflects on scenarios for the long-term on three levels:  national (islands), regional (orbits), and sub-state and transnational (communities).  The NIC’s key trends include: the rich are aging, the poor are not; weak economic growth will persist in the near term; technology is accelerating progress but causing discontinuities; ideas and identities are driving a wave of exclusion; governing and managing global issues (and therefore diplomacy) is getting harder; the nature of conflict is changing due to long-range precision weapons, cyber, and robotic systems; and climate, environmental, and health issues pose imminent threats as the necessary cooperation to address them becomes increasingly difficult.
Efe Sevin, Public Diplomacy and the Implementation of Foreign Policy in the US, Sweden and Turkey, (Palgrave Macmillan Series in Global Public Diplomacy, 2017).  Sevin (University of Fribourg, Switzerland) combines critical insights into public diplomacy scholarship with a systematic comparison of selected projects linking public diplomacy and foreign policy in three countries.  His book is a thoughtful inquiry into an ambitious research question: “Public diplomacy works, but how?”  Sevin’s analytical framework, grounded in IR, diplomacy, and communication studies literature, consists of six pathways of connection and explanation: attraction, benefit of the doubt, socialization, direct influence, agenda setting, and framing.  Empirical evidence in the cases is drawn from views of public diplomacy practitioners on how their projects helped to achieve foreign policy goals.  He uses his theoretical pathways to analyze their views.  The case projects are the “Education, Culture, Sports, and Media Working Group” of the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission (2009), Sweden’s “Facing the Climate” project, and Turkey’s support for the international organization “Turksoy.Turksoy.”  An impressive convergence of study and practice by an informed scholar.
Joel Whitney, Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World’s Best Writers, (OR Books, 2016).  It has been exactly 50 years since Ramparts magazine launched an open debate on the CIA’s role in funding writers, artists, and groups such as the National Student Association during the Cold War.  Access to archives is energizing the debate and adding to an extensive literature.  Whitney’s (co-founder of Guernica) account “of the blurred line between propaganda and literature” focuses on the partnership between the CIA’s Congress for Cultural Freedom and The Paris Review.  His fresh research on the Review has drawn acclaim.  But critics question his speculation about the degree to which the Review “tricked” or made complicit such prominent authors as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Boris Pasternak, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  For a critical review, see: Greg Barnhisel (author of Cold War Modernists), “Finks, Fronts, and Puppets: Revisiting the Cultural Cold War,” Los Angeles Review of Books, January, 8 2017; Whitney’s reply: “On Finks, Who Paid the Piper, and the CIA’s Literary Legacy,” Guernica, January 19, 2017; and Barnhisel’s rejoinder: “Outlandish Assertions: Response to Joel Whitney,” Los Angeles Review of Books, January 19, 2017.
Mathew C. Weed, “U.S. International Broadcasting: Background and Issues for Reform,” Congressional Research Service, CRS Report R43521, December 15, 2016. CRS foreign policy specialist Weed’s report provides a brief history of US international broadcasting and summarizes current issues facing the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency responsible for US international broadcasting operations.  In December 2016, Congress passed sections in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 (S. 2943) that abolished the BBG’s Board of Governors and significantly expanded the authorities of the BBG’s Chief Executive Officer to direct international broadcasting activities and restructure U.S. international broadcasting.  Weed’s report was issued after the Act was passed and just before President Obama signed it into law.  His analysis takes the Act into account, but its considerable value lies not in the implications of the new law, rather in its assessment of recent approaches to broadcasting reform legislation prior to enactment and issues facing international broadcasting:  strategic direction and allocation of resources, changes in communication technologies, desired efficiencies and consolidation of duplicative broadcasting services, disputes over the role of broadcasting in advancing US foreign policy goals and democracy promotion, and evaluation of international broadcasting’s effectiveness.  The report updates Weed’s previous CRS report “U.S. International Broadcasting: Background and Issues for Reform,” published May 2, 2014.
Bruce Wharton, “Remarks at Workshop on ‘Public Diplomacy in a Post Truth Society,’” U.S. Department of State, March 20, 2017.  At a conference co-hosted by Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, Wharton (Acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs) contested the view that we live in a “post-truth” society and addressed implications for public diplomacy.  His key judgments:  Facts exist, and we cannot operate without them. Rebutting every false story is a losing proposition, because there are too many, they spread too quickly, and there are too few to chase them.  “The way to counter pseudo-facts and misinformation is to present a compelling narrative of our own, one that is true, defensible and based on the enduring values and goals that people share.”  Listening to fears, grievances, and beliefs of others is essential to credibility, and the narrative must be tied to action.  Wharton also strongly endorsed Voice of America broadcasts.  He voiced a critique of previous State Department approaches to countering extremist ideology, and discussed what he viewed to be strengths of State’s new Global Engagement Center – recently established as the interagency lead “in developing a whole-of-government approach to countering malign actors in the information space.”
Recent Blogs and Other Items of Interest
Martha Bayles and Jeffrey Gedmin, “Protecting America’s Voice Abroad,” March 2, 2017, The American Interest.
“Broadcasting Board of Governors’ Chief on the Future of VOA,” February 10, 2017, Morning Edition, National Public Radio.
Robin Brown, “Octopus Intelligence and the Tentacle State,” March 31, 2017; “Public Diplomacies and the Pathologies of Liberal Statecraft,” March 29, 2017, Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence Blog.
Steve Coll, “Rex Tillerson Is Still Acting Like a C.E.O.,” March 20, 2017, The New Yorker.
Mark Dillen, “Public Diplomacy Dies in Darkness,” March 3, 2017, USC Center for Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Steven Erlanger, “Russia’s RT Network: Is It More BBC or K.G.B.?” March 8, 2017, The New York Times.
Melissa Holzberg, “Event Recap [with Michael McFaul]: Explaining Our New Cold War With Russia: Can Trump End It,”March 10, 2017, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication,  GW University, Take Five Blog;
Michael Hotchkiss, “Winning ‘Hearts and Minds’ in Afghanistan Carries Risks For Civilians,” March 10, 2017, News at Princeton.
Andrew O’Hagen, “The Joys of Propaganda,” February 22, 2017, The New York Times.
David S. Jackson, “What’s in VOA’s Charter – And What Isn’t,” February 21, 2017, USC Center for Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Anne Gearan and Carol Morello, “Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Spends His First Weeks Isolated from an Anxious Bureaucracy,” March 30, 2017, The Washington Post; Editorial, “Ignoring Diplomacy’s Past and Its Future Promise,” March 29, 2017, The New York Times.
Julia Ioffe, “The State of Trump’s State Department,” March 1, 2017, The Atlantic.
Mark P. Lagon and Brian P. McKeon, “Donald Trump Is Tarnishing America’s Brand,” March 1, 2013, Foreign Policy Blog.
Michael McFaul, “U.S.-Russia Relations,” Walter R. Roberts annual lecture, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, George Washington University, March 3, 2017, 2-hour C-SPAN, video.
Thomas Miller, “Hidden Successes in Public Diplomacy,” January 13, 2017, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, GW University, Take Five Blog.
Donna Oglesby, “Teaching Model Diplomacy at Eckerd College,” Spring 2017, Council on Foreign Relations Model Diplomacy Project.
Jian (Jay) Wang, “Seeking Emotional Truth in Public Diplomacy,” March 28, 2017, USC Center for Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Erick Wemple, “Voice of America Jumps Through Tech Hoops to Report on WikiLeaks Docs,” March 8, 2017, The Washington Post.
Gem From The Past
Paul Sharp and Geoffrey Wiseman, eds., American Diplomacy, (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2012).  Essays in this volume, compiled by Sharp (University of Minnesota, Duluth) and Wiseman (Australian National University), address “America’s long-running difficult relationship with diplomacy.”  As Wiseman summarizes in his lead essay, characteristics of American diplomacy include distrust and negative views of diplomats and diplomacy, an unusually high degree of domestic influence over foreign policy, a tendency to privilege hard power over soft power, a preference for bilateral over multilateral diplomacy, and a strong cultural disposition for a direct, low-context negotiating style.  In other essays, David Clinton (Baylor University) discusses a US tendency to conflate diplomacy and foreign policy, Bruce Gregory (George Washington University) explores enduring characteristics and elusive transformation in US public diplomacy, and Paul Sharp asks whether America’s society and politics will permit the diplomacy it needs to cope with an evolving global diffusion of power.  As Americans are seized yet again with changes in diplomacy’s direction, priorities, and resources relative to hard power instruments, this collection warrants a second look.  American Diplomacy first appeared as a special issue of The Hague Journal of Diplomacy in 2011.
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2017 WR Annual Lecture: Michael McFaul

Explaining Our New Cold War with Russia: Can Trump End It?

Three people standing in front of George Washington University step-repeat backdrop
David Ensor, Amb. Michael McFaul and IPDGC Director Janet Steele

(excerpt from GW Today, March 6, 2017)

By Kristen Mitchell

Former U. S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul on Friday called the current state of affairs between the United States and Russia one of the most confrontational moments between the two world powers since some periods during the Cold War.

“You have to go deep into the Cold War to remember a time like where we’re at today,” he said at Jack Morton Auditorium.

Amb. McFaul, a Stanford University professor who served as ambassador under President Barack Obama from January 2012 to February 2014, presented a lecture titled “Explaining Our New Cold War with Russia: Can Trump End It?” The talk was part of George Washington University’s annual Walter Roberts Lecture series.

Read the full article of the event HERE.

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Issue #84

Robert Albro, “Diplomacy and the Efficacy of Transnational Applied Cultural Networks,” Chapter 6, 121-143, in Deborah L. Trent, ed., Nontraditional U.S. Public Diplomacy: Past, Present, and Future, (Public Diplomacy Council, 2016).  Albro (American University) examines effects and potential benefits for public diplomacy of recent varieties of collaborative diplomacy – understood as policy-focused cultural networks that give attention to cultural content in achieving humanitarian goals.  He argues this collaborative diplomacy turn, driven increasingly by interconnected geopolitical problems, tends to emphasize trust building, cooperation on shared objectives and values, interagency partnerships, association with cultural networks, collaborative story telling, and co-creation of cultural knowledge.  Abro’s ideas and examples update a series of posts available on his Public Policy Anthropologist blog site.  His posts are a source of instructive readings for students on cultural diplomacy topics.

Jieun Baek, “The Opening of the North Korean Mind: Pyongyang Versus the Digital Underground,” Foreign Affairs, January/February, 2017, 104-113.  Baek (Belfer Center, Harvard University) profiles media smuggling operations in North Korea’s gray and black markets that, despite threats of harsh punishment, have created “a surprisingly robust network that links ordinary citizens to the outside world through contraband cell phones, laptops, tablet computers, and data drives.”  She argues growing citizen awareness, especially among young people, is not a danger to Kim Jong Un in the short-term, but this “digital underground might represent a long-term existential threat.”  Support by governments and NGOs for the flow of digital technologies, outside media, and cultural products, Baek concludes, may be the most sustainable and cost-effective way to encourage change from within.  The essay is adapted from her book, North Korea’s Hidden Revolution: How the Information Underground is Transforming a Closed Society (Yale University Press, 2016).
Katherine A. Brown, Shannon N. Green, and Jian “Jay” Wang, Public Diplomacy and National Security in 2017: Building Alliances, Fighting Extremism, and Dispelling Disinformation, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington, DC, January 2017.  In this well-organized 17-page paper, Brown (Council on Foreign Relations), Green (CSIS), and Wang (USC Center on Public Diplomacy) seek to map a public diplomacy course for the Trump administration grounded on their understanding of PD and lessons learned “in applying PD tools” – primarily those used by “a sound public diplomacy apparatus at the U.S. Department of State” during the Obama administration.  The authors summarize successes, challenges, and recommendations in three broad areas: strengthening networks with citizens abroad, weakening violent extremism, and dispelling disinformation by state actors.  Their paper knowledgeably discusses important developments within the State Department, but its narrow focus does not include the roles of the Obama White House and numerous other government and non-government actors in the public dimension of US diplomacy.  The paper emphasizes two categories of threat and provides an informed assessment of PD in each, but it leaves unaddressed a broad array of other critically important transnational issues of diplomatic concern.
Robin Brown, “Public Diplomacy, Networks, and the Limits of Strategic Narratives,” Chapter 7, pp. 164-189, in Alister Miskimmon, Ben O’Loughlin, and Laura Roselle, eds., Forging the World: Strategic Narratives and International Relations, (University of Michigan Press, 2017).  Brown (Archetti Brown Associates) uses conceptual arguments and cases from public diplomacy practice to examine claims made by strategic narrative theorists (see Miskimmon et al., Forging the World below).  He begins by discussing the problem of including public diplomacy in theoretical frameworks of international relations – a discourse in the chapter that has considerable value on its own.  He then turns to the relevance of relational sociology in understanding the intersection of narratives and networks.  Brown applies his reasoning to three cases: attempts to influence a neutral United States to enter World War I, Russia’s efforts to influence Western policies on Ukraine, and information activities of the Islamic State.  He concludes that narratives must be understood in the context of the networks that carry them, external events, and competing narratives; that successful narrative projection is difficult to achieve; and that new communication technologies are unlikely to change this.
Conference Report to Accompany S. 2943, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, US House of Representatives, November 2016, (scroll down to pp. 1396-1421).  The Conference Report summarizes purposes and functions of a Global Engagement Center in the Department of State as authorized by Section 1287, pp. 1396-1404, of the Defense Authorization Act enacted in December 2016.  The Secretary of State in coordination with the Secretary of Defense and the heads of other relevant departments and agencies shall establish the Center “to lead, synchronize, and coordinate efforts of the Federal Government to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests.”
In Section 1288, pp. 1404-1421, the Conference Report summarizes structural reforms of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which will continue to exist as the federal agency that operates US international broadcasting.  The Defense Authorization Act authorizes a Chief Executive Officer to head the BBG – thereby assuming management responsibilities previously carried out by the BBG’s Board of Governors – and establishes an International Broadcasting Advisory Board to advise the BBG’s CEO.
“Statement by the President on Signing the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 2017,” December 23, 2016.  In his signing statement, President Obama expressed strong support for the Act’s structural reforms of the BBG and its retention of the longstanding firewall intended to protect the credibility and professional independence of the BBG’s broadcasters.  The President also voiced support for elevating the current CEO to head the BBG, but he observed that the manner of transition raises constitutional concerns related to his “appointments and removal authority.”  He promised a plan to mitigate constitutional concerns while “adhering closely to the Congress’s intent.”
Keir Giles, “Handbook of Russian Information Warfare,” Research Division, NATO Defense College, November 2016.  In this 77-page monograph, Giles (Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House) “provides an introductory guide to the Russian concept of information warfare, including elements of cyber warfare” for NATO soldiers and officials.  Its sections cover concepts and terminology, Russia’s goals and objectives, lessons from the history of Russia’s approach, and possible future challenges.  As Giles explains, “Two themes occur throughout the handbook: the waging of information warfare during notional peacetime; and the holistic, all-encompassing nature of the ‘information’ that is both the subject and the medium of the conflict.”
Katherine Grandjean, American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England, (Harvard University Press, 2015).  At a time when mapping boundaries (foreign/domestic, diplomacy/governance/civil society, public/private) increasingly challenges scholars and practitioners, new historical research offers insights that link modern perspectives with past eras of disordered communication and inter-cultural connections between groups.  Grandjean (Wellesley College) examines a tangle of news, rumor, and diplomacy among scattered actors in 17th century New England – English, French, and Dutch colonists, Mohawk, Iroquois, Pequot, Narragansett, and other indigenous peoples.  Her well-researched story is about a “communications frontier” during the century before a postal service and the first regular newspapers (1704).  Colonial travelers, native messengers, couriers, soldiers, and sailors created webs of connections that bridged early encounters and subsequent diplomatic negotiations that structured the power relations that led to eventual English control of the region.  Borrowing from Harvard historian Jill Lepore, Grandjean focuses on the question, “Does the walking trail, perhaps, tell as much as the fence?”
Craig Hayden, “International Education and Public Diplomacy: Technology, MOOCS, and Transforming Engagement, Chapter 10, 219-246, in Deborah L. Trent, ed., Nontraditional U.S. Public Diplomacy: Past, Present, and Future, (Public Diplomacy Council, 2016).  Hayden (Department of State, American University) brings a scholar’s insights to ways in which the State Department’s use of technology platforms for educational and cultural diplomacy lead to new forms of public diplomacy practice and strategy.  His chapter briefly examines concepts of public diplomacy and soft power, ways in which media studies and communication theory are changing institutional norms and practices surrounding public diplomacy, and aspects of US educational exchange programs (e.g., the State Department “Collaboratory” unit’s MOOC Camp Initiative and Google Hangout pilot programs) that provide opportunities and challenges for practitioners.  Hayden demonstrates “how some logics of public diplomacy are transformed by the material context of technology, while others endure.”
Alister Miskimmon, Ben O’Loughlin, and Laura Roselle, eds., Forging the World: Strategic Narratives and International Relations, (University of Michigan Press, 2017).  Essays by prominent IR and communications scholars in this important new book, edited by Miskimmon and O’Loughlin (both University of London) and Roselle (Duke University), examine cutting edge issues in the use of strategic narratives by political actors.  Strategic narratives, they explain, are means by which a wide variety of state and non-state actors seek to construct shared meanings of the past, present, and future that “promote their interests, values, and expectations” and “shape the behavior of domestic and international actors.”  Early chapters provide a theoretical framework and give particular attention to methods, ethics, and identity.  The following chapters contain empirical case studies.  The book bridges scholarship and practice and builds on the editors’ earlier volume, Strategic Narratives: Communication Power and the New World Order (2013).
— Alister Miskimmon, Ben O’Loughlin, and Laura Roselle, “Introduction”
— Ben O’Loughlin with Alister Miskimmon and Laura Roselle, “Strategic Narratives: Methods and Ethics”
— Laura Roselle, “Strategic Narratives and Great Power Identity”
— Alister Miskimmon, “Finding a Unified Voice? The European Union Through a Strategic Narrative Lens”
— Ning Liao (New Jersey City University), “The Power of Strategic Narratives: The Communicative Dynamics of Strategic Nationalism and Foreign Relations”
— J. P. Singh (University of Edinburgh), “Beyond Neoliberalism: Contested Narratives of International Development”
— Robin Brown (Archetti Brown Associates), “Public Diplomacy, Networks, and the Limits of Strategic Narratives”
— Amelia Arsenault (Georgia State University), Sun-ha Hong (University of Pennsylvania), and Monroe Price (University of Pennsylvania), “Strategic Narratives of the Arab Spring and After”
— Christina Archetti (University of Oslo), “Narrative Wars: Understanding Terrorism in the Era of Global Connectedness”
— Ben O’Loughlin, “Filling the Narrative Vacuum in a Global Crisis: Japan’s Triple Disaster”
— Alister Miskimmon and Ben O’Loughlin, “Understanding International Order and Power Transition: A Strategic Narrative Approach”
— Alister Miskimmon, Ben O’Loughlin, and Laura Roselle, “Conclusions”
Donna Marie Oglesby, “Sowing the Seeds of Diplomacy on Hard American Ground,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, available online December 2016.
Oglesby (Eckerd College) examines how diplomacy in US higher education is taught, shaped, and constrained by the social context of those who teach.  She makes several key arguments.  Because the main institutions of American society do not support diplomacy as a profession or field of study, demand for diplomacy teachers and courses is weak in American higher education.  Scholars and practitioners who teach have different life experiences and social contexts that make circulation of ideas between the two communities rare.  Teachers make very different choices in course content and teaching methods.  Oglesby draws on in-depth interviews, a comparative survey of 75 course syllabi, and a literature review that includes IR, security studies, political philosophy, social psychology, teaching and learning.  Her trademark gardening metaphors illuminate her reasoning.  The article raises challenging questions that ought to inform discourse within universities, between foreign ministries and universities seeking mutually advantageous connections, in the International Studies Association and other scholarly communities — and in the thinking of all who support the growth of diplomacy studies as an academic field.
James Pamment, British Public Diplomacy & Soft Power: Diplomatic Influence & Digital Disruption, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).  Pamment (Lund University) explores ways in which numerous reform studies and the work of practitioners during the past twenty years have shaped changes in British diplomatic practice.  His central argument is that digital technologies and broader public participation in foreign affairs have led to profound changes in the work of the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), British Council, and BBC World Service – a “re-imagining of British diplomacy.”  Chapters include assessments of the reform studies and their impact, case studies of strategic campaigns, and analysis of ways in which changes in practice reflect varied and changing conceptual understandings of public diplomacy, soft power, engagement, strategic campaigns, image, identity, and cultural relations.  Pamment’s important book has value for scholars and practitioners, not only for its knowledgeable investigation of the British case, but also for his thinking on broader implications for understanding ways in which public diplomacy is now at “the very core of diplomatic practice.”  His research also calls to mind that for many years in the 20th century the UK and the US held biannual meetings between senior practitioners, alternately in London and Washington, on public diplomacy’s tools and methods – a practice that would have value if reinstated today.  For an online interview with Pamment on the book’s themes, see The Place Brand Observer, October 27, 2016.
“Public Diplomacy and National Security Lessons Learned for the Next Administration,” Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), January 17, 2017, video, approximately 90 minutes.  CSIS’s Human Rights Initiative and USC’s Center on Public Diplomacy hosted a conversation with Benjamin K. Rhodes,  Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speech Writing and James K. Glassman, former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, moderated by Michael Crowley, Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent for Politico.  Before the conversation, Katherine Brown and Jay Wang summarized recommendations in their CSIS/USC report Public Diplomacy and National Security in 2017: Building Alliances, Fighting Extremism, and Dispelling Disinformation (see annotation above).  Ambassador D. Bruce Wharton, Acting Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, delivered closing remarks.
William Rugh, “American Soft Power and Public Diplomacy in the Arab World,” Palgrave Communications, published online January 10, 2017.  Rugh (Northeastern University) draws on his interpretations of US public diplomacy practice and Joseph Nye’s concept of soft power in this assessment of the impact of both in the Arab world.  Issues discussed include the impact of the digital revolution, private dissemination of American cultural products, whether others still view the US political system as a model, underfunded exchange of persons activities, and a Defense Department “mission creep” that competes with the State Department’s public diplomacy.  The strength of the essay lies primarily in his understanding of the Arab world based on decades of service as a career diplomat in the region.
Deborah L. Trent, ed., Nontraditional U.S. Public Diplomacy: Past, Present, and Future, (Public Diplomacy Council, 2016).  This is a diverse compilation of case studies of US public diplomacy by scholars, policy analysts, and former diplomacy practitioners.  Their collective intent, as framed by editor Deborah Trent (Public Diplomacy Council) is to analyze “innovations that either effectively bucked traditional practices or should have” and examine “other scenarios where new approaches are worth trying.”  The Council is a nonprofit organization committed to the importance of the academic study, professional practice, and responsible advocacy of public diplomacy.  Abstracts of the essays are on the Council’s website. 
— Deborah L. Trent, “Introduction”
— Anthony C. E. Quainton (American University), “Public Diplomacy: Can It Be Defined?”
— John Brown (Senior Foreign Service Officer, retired), “Janus-Faced Public Diplomacy: Creel and Lippmann During the Great War”
— Dick Virden (Senior Foreign Service Officer, retired), “The Uses and Abuses of Public Diplomacy: Winning and Losing Hearts and Minds”
— Carol Balassa (Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy, Vanderbilt University), “America’s Image Abroad: The UNESCO Cultural Diversity Convention and U.S. Motion Picture Exports”
— Robert Albro (American University), “Diplomacy and the Efficacy of Transnational Applied Cultural Networks”
— Peter Kovach (Senior Foreign Service Officer, retired), “Public Diplomacy Engages Religious Communities, Actors, and Organizations: A Belated and Transformative Marriage”
— Helle Dale (The Heritage Foundation), “Nontraditional Public Diplomacy in the Iraq-Afghan Wars or the Ups and Downs of Strategic Communicators”
— Deborah L. Trent, “Cultural Diplomacy Partnerships: Cracking the Credibility Nut with Inclusive Participation”
— Craig Hayden (Department of State, American University), “International Education and Public Diplomacy: Technology, MOOCS, and Transforming Engagement”
— Jong-on Hahm (George Washington University), “Funding International Scientific Research Activities as Opportunities for Public Diplomacy”
Brian E. Carlson (Senior Foreign Service Officer, retired), “Turning Point”
Abdul Basir Yosufi, “The Rise and Consolidation of Islamic State: External Intervention and Sectarian Conflict,” Connections QJ, 14, no. 4 (2016), 91-110.  Yosufi (General Director for International Cooperation, Afghanistan Ministry of Interior, Fulbright scholarship recipient and graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service) explores ways in which the US intervention in Iraq created a “strategic cause” for mobilization of the Islamic State’s (IS) insurgency, the contributing factors of sectarian conflict in Iraq and the region, and how deficiencies in counterinsurgency resources and doctrine allowed IS to consolidate.  He supports these claims with reasoning and examples, and also briefly draws contrasts between experiences with IS in Iraq and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.  His paper concludes with lessons learned and policy implications of his analysis that include elements of a political solution, a population-centric counterinsurgency strategy, and a negotiated agreement that addresses security concerns of countries in the region.
R. S. Zaharna, “Emotion, Identity, and Social Media: Developing a New Awareness, Lens, and Vocabulary for Diplomacy 21,” Working Paper, Project “Diplomacy in the 21st Century,” No. 2, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), German Institute for International and Security Affairs, January 2017.  In this working paper, Zaharna (American University) offers several ideas intended for further research and discussion.  (1) Primary challenges presented by digital technologies and social media are in their impact on the public arena in which diplomacy practitioners operate, not on their diplomacy or the technologies themselves.  (2) Increasingly emotion and identity are becoming defining features of publics and the public arena.  (3) These trends challenge “rational” state actor models, “pragmatic rationalism,” and state-centric assumptions about diplomacy.  Her paper explores ways in which scholars and practitioners should move from “new communication tools” to “new communication dynamics” and from “digital diplomacy” to “diplomacy in the public domain.”
Recent Blogs and Other Items of Interest
Nick Anderson, “Surge in Foreign Students May Be Crowding Americans Out of Elite Colleges,” December 21, 2016, The Washington Post.
Matthew Armstrong, “The Past, Present, and Future of the War for Public Information,” January 19, 2017, War on the Rocks Blog.
Max Boot, “Losing the Information War,” January 10, 2017, Commentary.
Robin Brown, “Analyzing Public Diplomacies: Four Dimensions,” January 26, 2017; “Is Digital Diplomacy the Old Radio,” January 13, 2017; “First World Propaganda: Thoughts and Lessons,” January 8, 2017, Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence Blog.
Nicholas J. Cull, “What the U.S. Can Learn from Its Cold War Fight Against Kremlin Propaganda,” January 13, 2017, Monkey Cage, The Washington Post.
Editorial Board, “A Big Change to U.S. Broadcasting is Coming – And It’s One Putin Might Admire,” December 9, 2016, The Washington Post.
 “FY17 State Authorization Passes the Congress,” December 2016, American Foreign Service Association.
Jeffrey Gedmin, “Don’t Gut America’s Voice and Turn It Into Propaganda,” December 15, 2016, FP Blog.
Jeffrey Gedmin and Gary Schmitt, “How Trump Can Beat Putin at His Media Game,” December 13, 2016, The Washington Post.
Jeffrey Gettleman, “State Department Dissent Channel on Trump’s Ban Draws 1,000 Signatures,” January 31, 2017, The New York Times; Mark Landler and David E Sanger, “White House to Dissenting U.S. Diplomats: ‘Get With the Program or Leave,” January 30, 2017,The New York Times; “Dissent Channel: Alternatives to Closing Doors in Order to Secure Our Borders,” [Draft] Memorandum to Edward J. Lacey, Acting Director of Policy Planning, US Department of State, January 2017, The Washington Post.
Ilan Manor, “On Post-Reality Digital Diplomacy,” January 25, 2017, USC Center for Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Emily Metzgar, “Settle Down: New Legislation Didn’t Create Trump TV,” January 19, 2017, USC Center for Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Rob Portman, “President Signs Portman-Murphy Counter-Propaganda Bill Into Law,” December 23, 2016, Portman press release.
Gary Rawnsley, “Twitter Diplomacy: Preliminary Thoughts on the Trump-Tsai Phone Call,” December 12, 2016 Public Diplomacy and International Communications blog.
David E. Sanger, “In a Week, Trump Reshapes Decades of Perceptions About America,” January 29, 2017, The New York Times.
Jian (Jay) Wang, “Does Brand Nationality Still Matter,” January 30, 2017, USC Center for Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Doug Wilson, “My Three Maddening, Futile Years Inside the Senate Confirmation Process,” January 6, 2017, The Washington Post.
R. S. Zaharna, “Trumping Traditional Public Diplomacy,” January 17, 2017, USC Center for Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Gem From The Past 
Amartya Sen. Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny, (W.W. Norton & Company, 2006).  In his influential Identity and Violence, Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen (Harvard University) argued against responses to violent extremism grounded in illusions of single religious, national, ethnic, or other identities.  Categorizing human beings in “sharply carpentered” boxes, he reasoned, diminishes us morally and makes violent extremism more likely.  Individuals have many affiliations that include class, gender, profession, language, literature, science, music, morals, and politics.  Sen vigorously challenged Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” and those who foment global conflict by stoking fear and ideological polarization.  His views on reason, human freedom, and the complexity of identity, coupled with pragmatic policy relevant strategies for diplomats and political leaders, remain highly relevant.
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Issue #83

Jon Lee Anderson, “The Cuba Play: President Obama’s Plan Normalized Relations. Can it Also Transform the Nation?” The New Yorker, October 3, 2016, 42-53.  New Yorker staff writer Anderson looks at turning points in negotiations leading to the US opening to Cuba in 2015, views of US and Cuban officials, and thoughts of citizens in both countries as to where it might lead.  His article draws heavily on interviews with President Barack Obama and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes in which they seek to shape a legacy narrative on US Cuba policy.  Obama’s comments include reflections on the importance of public opinion, national memories and culture, and practical foreign policy advantages of examining where Americans have been right and wrong.  “One of the things that you can’t always measure but I’m absolutely confident is true,” Anderson quotes Obama as saying, “is that world opinion matters.  It is a force multiplier.”
Timothy Garten Ash, Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World, (Yale University Press, 2016).  Ash (University of Oxford) makes a case for free speech norms that enable and restrict global freedom of expression in a connected world he calls “cosmopolis.”  In Part I, he paints a vivid picture of how digital technologies enable large and small actors to both amplify expressions of hate with fatal effect and enable reasoned discourse.  He follows this with reflections on ideals that can further meaningful trans-cultural conversations about why, how, and in what contexts speech should be free.  In Part II, Ash uses examples and nuanced argument in support of ten principles that distill liberal ideas informed by Isaiah Berlin’s value pluralism: there are multiple, genuine values that are not all reconcilable.  Chapters focus on free speech in the context of violence, the spread of knowledge, journalism, diversity, religion, privacy, secrecy, and illegitimate uses of the Internet.  Cases include the “Innocence of Muslims” video, the Charlie Hebdo attacks, religion and free speech, group polarization on social media, speech norms in Internet governance, guidelines for understanding hate speech, propaganda for war, tolerance, and the relevance of John Rawls and Jurgen Habermas to thinking about international exchanges.  The book draws on Oxford University’s thirteen-language online project http://freespeechdebate.com.  This interactive website summarizes Ash’s ten principles and provides informed comment on trending free speech issues.
Jennifer Cassidy and Ilan Manor, “Crafting Strategic MFA Communication Policies During Times of Political Crisis: A Note to MFA Policy Makers,” Global Affairs, DOI: 10, published online November 3, 2016.  Cassidy and Manor (Oxford University) devote much of their thoughtful, well-researched article to a critique of what they call hyperbolic discourse – by which they mean “myths” about what ministries of foreign affairs (MFAs) and other diplomatic actors are doing with digital technologies in crisis situations.  (1) News organizations and foreign ministries do not typically follow diplomats and other foreign ministries online if they have not built relationships with them before or during a crisis.  (2) Belief that social media create increasingly direct dialogue between official actors and publics is offset by the reality that online embassies do not engage regularly in government to peer dialogue.  (3) Crisis driven foreign ministry social media campaigns that create unique images, logos, and hashtags are constrained by the hard work needed to attract users and the possibility they will draw attention away from the ministry’s established social media platforms.  (4) Assumptions that MFAs “should have total real-time communicative control over all digital platforms” are offset by strategic advantages of a division of labor.  MFAs should remain primary actors in intelligence gathering, policy analysis, and whole of government coordination. Embassies and diplomats on the ground should take primary control of disseminating crisis communication online.  Cassidy and Manor assess the implications of these arguments and offer recommendations for ways to improve embassy and MFA communication in crisis situations.
Narren Chitty, Li Ji, Gary Rawnsley, and Craig Hayden, eds., The Routledge Handbook  of Soft Power, (Routledge, 2016).  Chitty and Li Ji (Macquarie University, Australia), Rawnsley (Aberystwyth University, UK) and Hayden (US Department of State) have compiled a comprehensive (487 pages) collection of essays by leading scholars in what will be a “go to” reference work on soft power for many years.
In his introduction, Chitty summarizes four theoretical sections in Part I.
(1) Chapters by Chitty, Robin Brown (Archetti Brown Associates Limited), Fei Jiang (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing), and Efe Sevin (Kadir Has University, Istanbul) discuss soft and hard power in the context of world politics.
(2) Chapters by Li Ji, Elif Kahraman (Istanbul Arel University), Richard Davis (University of Sydney) and Li Ji, and Ying Jiang (University of Adelaide, Australia) relate hard and soft power to positive and post-positive approaches to international relations.
(3) Chapters by Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob (American University of Nigeria), Peichi Chung (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Saba Bebawi (University of Technology Sydney), Zhipeng He (Jilin University, China), and John Simons (Macquarie University) examine moral constructions of soft power, whether soft power and public diplomacy overlap or are interchangeable, and definitions of public diplomacy and subsets of cultural and civil diplomacy.
(4) Chapters by Craig Hayden, Marie Gillespie (The Open University, UK) and Eva Nieto Mcwoy (University of London), and Matthew O. Adeiza and Philip N. Howard (University of Washington) analyze soft power’s passive and active forms.
Part II compiles 20 case studies with unusual geographic breadth arranged by geographic region.
Europe and the Americas:  Katarzyna Piarska (European Academy of Diplomacy), Yuji Gushiken, Quise Goncalves Brito and Tais Marie Ueta (Federal University of Mato Grosso, Brazil), Xavier Ginesta, Mireia Canals, and Jordi de San Eugenio (La Universitat de Vic – Universitat Central de Catalunya, Spain), Falk Hartig (Goethe Universitat, Frankfurt), Madgalena Bielenia-Grajewska (University of Gdansk, Poland), and Esmaeil Esfandiary (Georgia State University).
Africa and the Middle East: Aziz Douai (University of Ontario), P. Eric Louw (University of Queensland, Australia), Tokumbo Ojo (York University, Toronto), and Laced Zaghami (Algiers University).
Central and South Asia: Dalbir Ahlawat (Macquarie University), Yelena Osipova (American University), C. S. H. N. Murthy (Tezpur University, India), Bunty Avieson (University of Sydney) and Kinley Tshering (University of Canberra), and Kishan S. Rana (DiploFoundation, Malta and Geneva).
North and South-east Asia: Damien Spry (Hanyang University, South Korea), Yasushi Watanabe (Keio University, Japan), Hun Shik Kim (University of Colorado, Boulder),  Gary Rawnsley and Chi Ngac (Hagar International, Vietnam Office), and Murray Green (Macquarie University).
The Routledge Handbook of Soft Power is an impressive resource.  It is expensive.  Discounted copies are available through Amazon.  Some pages are viewable online.
Nigel Cliff, Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story – How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War, (HarperCollins Publishers, 2016).  This is British historian and biographer Nigel Cliff’s account of how Van Cliburn, a 23-year old Texas prodigy, improbably won the Soviet Union’s first International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958.  In contrast to earlier works, which focused more on his music, Cliff explores what his achievement meant in the context of diplomacy during the early Cold War – years in which the US and Soviets were competing in the arts as well as in space, armaments, and geopolitics.  Cliff’s subtitle may overstate, but his narrative is a well-written case study of American soft power.
Thomas L. Friedman, Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016).  New York Times columnist Tom Friedman’s seventh book is really three effectively integrated books.  In the first, he explores simultaneous and interconnected accelerations in technology, globalization, and climate change.  His argument: it is the accelerated rate of change, not just the speed of change, that is exceeding our capacity to learn, train, manage, govern, and make ethical choices in ways that gain from these forces and cushion their adverse impacts.  In the second, he offers a variety of imaginative ideas about how we must adapt in the workplace, geopolitics, politics, ethics, and community building.  In the third, we find a reflective and introspective Friedman.  “Being late” is about taking time to think about possibilities and dangers.  His closing chapters take him to his roots in Minnesota, thoughts about values, and concerns about how communities can create the trust needed to anchor diverse populations in the eye of the hurricane.  Friedman combines his characteristic wit, optimism, and rhetorical skills with penetrating analysis.
Jessica Gienow-Hecht and Carolin Viktorin, “Gienow-Hecht and Viktorin on Jimenez and Gomez-Escalonilla and Cull, ‘US Public Diplomacy and Democratization in Spain: Selling Democracy?”H-Diplo, December 2016.  Gienow-Hecht and Viktorin (Freie Universitat Berlin) have written a thoughtful and positive review of US Public Diplomacy and Democratization in Spain: Selling Democracy?(Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), a collection of essays compiled by Francisco Javier Rodriguez Jimenez (University of Salamanca), Lorenzo Delgado Gomez-Escalonilla (Center for Human and Social Sciences, Madrid), and Nicholas J. Cull (University of Southern California).  The reviewers place the book in the context of Spain’s “slippery status” in Cold War historiography and frame its focus on a central question: did US public diplomacy in Spain serve democratization or simply mask US military strategy?  Their review discusses a lead conceptual chapter by Giles Scott-Smith (University of Leiden) on US public diplomacy and democratization after World War II.  Other chapters examine aspects of US-Spanish cultural relations.  A chapter by Mark Asquino, a retired US Foreign Service Officer and former Fulbright lecturer, argues that US public diplomacy enhanced democracy.  Gomez-Escalonilla’s closing chapter summarizes the volume’s variety of perspectives and concludes that US diplomacy in the region was ambiguous leaving open the question whether states can “collaborate with dictatorships and sell democracy at the same time.”  (Courtesy of Donna Oglesby)
Susan J. Henders and Mary M. Young, guest editors, “‘Other Diplomacies’ of Non-State Actors: The Case of Canadian-Asian Relations,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Vol. 11, No. 4, 2016, 331-350.  In this special HJD issue, Henders and Young (York University, Toronto) explore concepts and practice in the diplomacy of non-state actors.  Their lead article discusses the concept of “other diplomacies” and recent literature on diplomacy and the diplomatic activities of non-state actors.  Their goal is to analyze practices that give diplomatic character to activities of non-state actors that create tension with states, that are collaborative with states, or that simply co-exist with state diplomacy.  The authors give particular attention to the ways “other diplomacies” can deepen understanding of public diplomacy and track II diplomacy, provide insights on diplomacy outside the Euro-American world, and extend discussion on what gives non-state actors diplomatic agency.  Articles include:
— Young and Henders, “‘Other Diplomacies’ and World Order: Historical Insights from Canadian-Asian Relations”
— Serge Granger (Sherbrook University, Canada), “‘Other Diplomacy’ in Paradiplomacy: Quebec’s Cinema and China”
— Jean Michael Montsion (York University), “Diplomacy as Self-Representation: British Columbia’s First Nations and China”
— Randolph Mank (Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Singapore), “Reflections on the Role of Non-state Actors in Canadian-Asian Relations”
Intercultural Dialogue and Innovations in Diplomacy and Diplomatic Training, Diplomatic Academy Proceedings, Dubrovnik Diplomatic Forum, Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, Republic of Croatia, ISSN 1334-7659, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2016.  Edited by Mladen Andrlić, Tihana Bohač, and Stjepan Špoljarić, the papers in this collection were presented by scholars and practitioners at three international conferences, held under sponsorship of the Central European Initiative: “EU and Its Neighbours: Prospects and Challenges” (June 2-4, 2011); “Diplomacy and Intercultural Dialogue” (May 24-26, 2012); and “Innovations and Changing Roles of Diplomacy and Diplomatic Training” (May 23-25, 2013).
Mark Lilla, The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction, (New York Review Books, 2016).  This is not a book about diplomacy.  It provides insights into diplomacy’s modern context.  Lilla (Columbia University) begins by asking, “What is reaction?”  He answers in this slim volume of essays with the argument that reactionaries are not conservatives.  “They are, in their own way, just as radical as revolutionaries and just as firmly in the grip of historical imaginings.”  He supports his assertion with meditations on examples of nostalgia in thought (Eric Vogelin, Leo Strauss), contemporary intellectual movements (“theocons” on the American right, Europe’s rightwing cultural pessimists, apocalyptic ecologists and anti-globalists on the left), and political nostalgia (the terrorism of French born jihadists in Paris in 2015, intellectuals who viewed the attacks as evidence of French decline and Europe’s inability to respond to “magical thinking” about history).  In the reactionary mind, Lilla finds belief in the betrayal of elites, an idealized past, an apocalyptic fear of historic catastrophe, and a militant sense of mission.
Jan Melissen and Matthew Caesar-Gordon, “‘Digital Diplomacy’ and the Securing of Nationals in a Citizen-Centric World,” Global Affairs, DOI 10: published online October 21, 2016.  Melissen (Netherlands Institute of International Relations, Clingendael, University of Antwerp) and independent scholar Caesar-Gordon explore central issues in how ministries of foreign affairs (MFAs) are adapting to the “digital shift” in what has become a dominant priority in their contact with publics — consular assistance to their nationals abroad.  Their thought provoking assessment divides into four areas of inquiry: (1) how MFAs, resistant to technological innovation, are coping with rising citizen demand for assistance in an online world; (2) ways in which lack of capacity, insufficient reliable data, and a more networked “duty of care” foster collaboration with the non-governmental sector; (3) how growing MFA uses of social media and digital tools, driven by citizens, make consular services more dependent on citizen participation; and (4) general observations that citizens abroad should take greater responsibility for their security and on how digitization is changing relations between MFAs and domestic society in the context of broader societal trends.  Although their article focuses on MFA’s and their own nationals abroad, its implications are broader: to what extent do MFAs have an appropriate networked “duty of care” for neighbors and strangers in a world where the UN Refugee Agency records some 65.3 million people are displaced by conflict and persecution?
Walter R. Roberts, The Compleat Public Diplomat, (Kindle Edition, 2016).  This collection of articles and reflections by a leading scholar and practitioner of US public diplomacy was edited by Barry Fulton, Chair of the Walter Roberts Endowment at George Washington University’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication.  It was published on the 100th anniversary of Roberts’ birth.  The collection includes articles by Roberts on the evolution of diplomacy, his perceptive 1994 speech on public diplomacy entering the Internet age at the UK’s Royal Academy of International Affairs, essays on US international broadcasting, articles on Roberts’ roots and emigration from Austria, and his recollections on Yugoslavia’s Tito.  The collection also includes a forward by General Brent Scowcroft, reflections by US Ambassador Jock Shirley, and an afterword by Barry Fulton.
Jerome Sherman and James Lawrence, “Fulbright Program at 70: The Foreign Service Connection,” The Foreign Service Journal, November 2016, 20-27.  Career State Department diplomats Sherman and Lawrence celebrate the achievements of the US government’s best-known educational exchange program and profile how it has adapted to change.  Today, for example, 30 percent of its awards are in scientific fields.  Fulbright’s largest programs are in Pakistan, China, India, and Mexico.  New program models focus on transnational issues (migration, climate change).  Their article concludes with personal stories by five Fulbright alumni who became US Foreign Service Officers.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, “How to Succeed in the Networked World: A Grand Strategy for the Digital Age,” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2016, 76-89.   Recent presidential elections have been occasions for Anne-Marie Slaughter (President and CEO of the think tank New America) to offer thoughts on what the world looks like and what the next US president should do.  (See “A Grand Strategy of Network Centrality,” CNAS, 2012; “America’s Edge: Power in the Networked Century,” Foreign Affairs, January/February, 2009.)  In this article Slaughter outlines a grand strategy that integrates “statecraft with webcraft” for a new world of web actors – a strategy for leaders and diplomats to pursue “American interests and values” by creating and managing networks, not for competing with states on a geopolitical chessboard.  “The next U.S. president,” Slaughter argues, “should adopt a grand strategy of building and maintaining an open international order based on three pillars: open societies, open governments, and an open international system.”  Her thinking makes an interesting case for a new strategic fault line “between open and closed.”  But in arguing that states remain “principal actors” on a range of issues and that Americans must “also pursue the universal values that define the United States,” she prompts a host of questions.  What are the operational implications and cost/risk tradeoffs of her “grand strategy?”  Which US values are “universal” and what does pursuing them mean for diplomacy?  Are “micro-strategies” preferable in environments defined by unexpected contingencies, greater complexity, and what multiple networked actors unexpectedly do?  Perhaps she will address these and other issues in her forthcoming book, The Chessboard and the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Networked World (Yale University Press, 2017).
Recent Blogs and Other Items of Interest
Matthew Armstrong, “A Revealing Fight with Russia’s RT at the State Department,” November 21, 2016, War on the Rocks blog.
Robin Brown, “The Nicolson Gap,” October 25, 2016; “NATO Strategic Communications in Afghanistan,” October 24, 2016, Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence Blog.
Emily Bowman, “When Public Diplomacy is a Bad Joke: The Importance of In-groups and Out-groups to the Successful Use of Humor By Diplomats,” December 1, 2016, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, GWU, Take Five Blog.
Jill Dougherty, “The Reality Behind Russia’s Fake News,” December 2, 2016, CNN Politics.
Elizabeth Gerke, “Public Diplomacy Social Media Techniques and Audience Targeting,” December 5, 2016, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, GWU, Take Five Blog.
David Ignatius, “The Truth is Losing,” November 29, 2016, The Washington Post.
Mark Leonard, “Europe, Alone in Trump’s World,” November 9, 2016, Project Syndicate.
Ilan Manor, “Digital Rights: A New Diplomatic Agenda,” USC Center for Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
James McAuley and Andrew Roth, “Russia Deploys ‘Cultural Diplomacy’ in France,” October 22, 2016, The Washington Post.
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Challenges,” November 9, 2016, Project Syndicate.
Adam Powell, “Explaining Donald Trump to the World,” Remarks at the Broadcasting Board of Governors Public Board Meeting, November 30, 2016;  “BBG Oversight of U.S. International Broadcasting Would End Under New Legislation,” November 30, 2016, Public Diplomacy Council.
Philip Seib, “Public Diplomacy in the Trump Era,” November 13, 2016, The World Post; “The Public Diplomacy Challenge Ahead,” November 14, 2016, USC Center for Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Shashi Tharoor, “The End of US Soft Power,” November 11, 2016, Project Syndicate.
Craig Timberg, “Effort to Combat Foreign Propaganda Advances in Congress,” November 30, 2016, The Washington Post.
“What’s Next? With ASP Fellow for Public Diplomacy Mathew Wallin,” Podcast interview by Maggie Feldman-Pilch, November 29, 2016, American Security Project.
Gems From The Past 
Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit (Princeton University Press, 2005) and On Truth (Alfred A. Knopf, 2006).  These famous small books by Princeton philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt take on new salience in current debates about “post-truth politics” and “fake-news.”  In his On Bullshit, Frankfurt distinguishes between lies, which seek intentionally to deceive with knowledge of what is true, and bullshit, which “is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false.”  Bullshitters, Frankfurt argues, are more or less indifferent to facts and what is true or false.  “Instead, and most essentially, they are fakers and phonies who are attempting by what they say to manipulate the opinions and the attitudes of those to whom they speak.”  Their threat is more insidious than lying.  In On Truth, Frankfurt worries about complacency and the dangers of indifference to the importance of truth.  His concern is not about our efforts and experiences in finding truth, but on why it is worth caring about.
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Issue #82

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