Category: Bruce Gregory’s Resource List

American Political Science Association Task Force on U.S. Standing in World Affairs, U.S. Standing in the World: Causes, Consequences, and the Future, October 2009. Led by Peter J. Katzenstein (Cornell University, APSA President, 2008-09) and Jeffrey W. Legro, (University of Virginia, Task Force Chair) twenty leading American political scientists explored three questions: “1. What is standing and how has it varied? 2. What causes standing to rise and fall? 3.What impact does standing have on U.S. foreign policy?” The report is available for download online in a short version and a long version. Hard copies are available for purchase. The report includes a dissent by two task force members: Stephen Krasner (Stanford University) and Henry R. Nau (George Washington University).

For a critique of the report, see Robert J. Lieber (Georgetown University), “A Contested Analysis of America’s Standing Abroad,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 1, 2009.

Amelia Arsenault, “Public Diplomacy 2.0,” Chapter 7 in Philip Seib, ed., Toward a New Public Diplomacy: Redirecting U.S. Foreign Policy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 135-153. Arsenault (University of Pennsylvania and University of Southern California) adds to a growing literature that is examining and evaluating the implications of social media for public diplomacy practice. Her essay looks at current activities and possible new directions in the context of three trends: “(1) the technological convergence of communication networks, (2) related problems of information delivery and visibility, and (3) an incorporation of participatory and collaborative models of interaction.”

John Brown, “What’s Happened to anti-Americanism, and to the State Department? The Obama Administration and Public Diplomacy: March to mid-June 2009,” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Vol. 5, 3, August 2009, 247-252. The author of John Brown’s Press and Public Diplomacy Blog finds that, although President Obama has “won over overseas audiences (at least for now),” public diplomacy at “the State Department is broken and in need of serious fixing.”

Daryl Copeland, “How Obama’s Nobel Can Resurrect Diplomacy,” Embassy Magazine, November 11, 2009, 9. Canadian diplomat Daryl Copeland sees the decision of the Nobel committee as a political signal “of support for diplomacy in general and for American presidential diplomacy in particular.” The author of Guerrilla Diplomacyargues that diplomacy matters more than ever, but its institutions and practices must be “rethought from the ground up” and transformed through “relentless creativity,” “tireless collaboration,” and “engagement of cross cutting networks between government and civil society.”

Nicholas Cull, Public Diplomacy: Lessons from the Past, CPD Perspectives on Public Diplomacy, (Figueroa Press, 2009). Cull, (Center for Public Diplomacy, University of Southern California) has republished with minor edits a report originally prepared for Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2007. Available in hard copy and on line, the CPD’s 61 page publication includes material on definitions of public diplomacy, its evolution as a concept, three taxonomies, cases of successful and unsuccessful public diplomacy, and reflections on “information age” public diplomacy.

Ali Fisher, “An Introduction to Using Network Maps in Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication,” Guest post on Matt Armstrong’s MountainRunner Blog, October, 8, 2009. Fisher (director of Mappa Mundi Consulting and author of the WandrenPD.com blog) provides a brief introduction to social network analysis and the application of mapping methods to public diplomacy. Using several network graphics, he provides a basic introduction to network analysis and suggests these tools “can be used to plan, develop and evaluate engagement” and have significant potential in public diplomacy.

Bruce Gregory, “Mapping Smart Power in Multi-stakeholder Public Diplomacy / Strategic Communication,”Remarks at a forum on U.S. Global Outreach: Smart Power on the Front Lines of Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication, The Institute for the Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, George Washington University, October 5, 2009. Brief comments and questions on concepts, challenges, and implications for scholars and practitioners.

Craig Hayden, “Public Diplomacy Debates Reflect Bigger IR Questions,” Intermap Blog, October 28, 2009. Hayden (American University) reflects on the implications of central issues in international relations for the study and practice of public diplomacy: globalization, today’s ICT infrastructure, erosion of traditional domains of nation-state sovereignty, new kinds of international actors, and the need for more global governance. His blog builds on his earlier assessment (“We Regret to Inform You We Don’t Know What We’re Doing,” October 18, 2009) of issues raised in George Washington University’s forum on “U.S. Global Outreach: The Implications of Smart Power for Public Diplomacy,” Hayden sees a need for a new kind of diplomacy, new venues for communication, greater attention to international opinion, and leadership that “recognizes what kinds of objectives and/or policies are really the domain of public diplomacy.” Includes comments by Oglesby (Eckerd College) and Steven R. Corman (Arizona State University).

Sheldon Himelfarb, Tamara Gould, Eric Martin, and Tara Sonenshine, Media as Global Diplomat, Special Report 226, United States Institute of Peace, June 2009. The USIP team summarizes the views of media professionals, diplomats, scholars, and NGO leaders convened at the Media as Global Diplomat Leadership Summit (February 2009) on how the U.S. can best use media in its public diplomacy. The report calls for a multi-directional media model that “promotes a democratic, global conversation,” a decentralized approach that “builds on local partnerships that go beyond U.S. governmental broadcasting,” and initiatives that “tap the potential of citizen media and citizen networks.”

Ellen Huijgh, The Public Diplomacy of Federated Entities: Excavating the Quebec Model, Clingendael Diplomacy Papers No. 23, October 2009, Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael.’ This paper examines theory and practice issues in the public diplomacy of sub-state entities. Using Quebec as a case study in a tidal wave of “calls for reducing the barriers to entry into public diplomacy,” she examines three tracks: (1) promotion of Quebec’s cultural identity, (2) institutionalized public diplomacy through a division in the Ministry of International Relations of Quebec, and (3) domestic public diplomacy. Her essay discusses ways in which the activities of entities such as Quebec, Flanders, Catalonia, Scotland, and California are changing the study and conduct of public diplomacy. Ms. Huijgh is a Ph.D candidate pursuing research on domestic public diplomacy and a co-editor of the Clingendael Discussion Papers in Diplomacy.

Richard Ned Lebow, A Cultural Theory of International Relations, (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Lebow (Dartmouth College) in this massive study (762 pp.) offers a new paradigm for the study of politics and international relations. Grounded in classical Greek thought on the fundamental drives of spirit, appetite, and reason, Lebow argues these drives give rise to distinctive “ideal type worlds” and different forms of behavior in cooperation, conflict, and risk taking. His research is broadly multicultural and sweeping in its historical focus. His ideas privilege dialogue, interaction, norms that promote human fulfillment, and power transition within and outside the state system. Public diplomacy scholars and practitioners will find Lebow’s project relevant to current thinking on networks, relational models, cultural diplomacy, and a social psychology that links identity, interest, and behavior.

Simon Mark, “A Greater Role for Cultural Diplomacy,” Clingendael Discussion Papers in Diplomacy, Netherlands Institute of International Relations, April 2009. Mark (New Zealand Trade and Enterprise) argues that cultural diplomacy, long treated as a subset of public diplomacy “has the potential to become a much more powerful tool for improving a country’s image and its relations with other countries” and for “domestic nation-building.” His paper explores the “semantic muddle” and core elements of cultural diplomacy, its role in presenting a national image and relationship with nation building, and ways to achieve cultural diplomacy’s full potential. Mark defines cultural diplomacy as “the deployment of a state’s culture in support of its foreign policy goals or diplomacy.”

Donna Marie Oglesby, “Statecraft at the Crossroads: A New Diplomacy,” SAIS Review. Summer/Fall, Vol. 29, No. 2, 2009, 93-106. Oglesby (Eckerd College) argues that new realities and shifting power centers in international politics require a dramatic reassessment of U.S. national security strategy. Using examples (Sri Lanka, Sudan, European Union, Mexico, Afghanistan, Pakistan), she examines challenges at the nexus of foreign policy and politics within and between states. Today’s global landscape calls for greater emphasis on politics and a new diplomacy in which public diplomats focus on “the political ground game” and the cultural and political particularities of human plurality.

Constance Philpot, DIME Blog, U.S. Army War College, October 2009. Constance Philpot is a senior U.S. Foreign Service Officer on detail to the Department of Defense at the U.S. Army War College. She posted five blogs on the Dime Blog relating to public diplomacy as DIME’s October guest blogger. — October 1, 2009: “Public Diplomacy vs. Strategic Communication, Pt. 1” — October 7, 2009: “Public Diplomacy Part II” — October 15, 2009: “Public Diplomacy III: New Media” — October 22, 2009: “Public Diplomacy IV: Twitter Diplomacy” — November 2, 2009: “Concluding Thoughts on Public Diplomacy”

Samantha M. Shapiro, “Can the Muppets Make Friends on the West Bank?” The New York Times Magazine, October 4, 2009, pp. 38-43. Shapiro (a contributing writer for the Magazine) describes the challenges facing New York City-based Sesame Street and its Palestinian partners in creating an international co-production for television viewers in the Palestinian territories. Profiles Palestinian writers and contains insights on the political context, Sesame’s struggle to balance its core values with the production and cultural values of Palestinian co-producers, the benefits for building a Palestinian television capability, and the singular difficulties of creating a Palestinian-Israeli joint production.

“The State of Public Diplomacy: A Decade after USIA’s Demise, What Next?” Foreign Service Journal, October 2009. Current and former public diplomacy practitioners look at the past, present, and future. Includes:

— The Public Diplomacy Front Line Working Group, “Speaking Out, Public Diplomacy: A View from the Front Line,” 14-17. (“We hope to start a conversation about the direction of public diplomacy among current State Department practitioners.”)

— Julie Gianelloni Connor, “PD: A View from the Promotion Panel,” 18-21. (“Here are some tips to help public diplomacy officers become truly competitive with other FS cones.”)

— Joe B. Johnson, “The Next Generation,” 22-28. (“Leaders of the old USIA and State have sought to adapt public diplomacy to new public expectations and the revolution in global media.”)

— William A. Rugh, “PD Practitioners: Still Second-Class Citizens,” 29-34. (“Attitudes within the Foreign Service toward public diplomacy work have not warmed much a decade after State absorbed USIA.”)

— Michael McClellan, “A Holistic Approach,” 35-41. (“Instead of bringing back USIA, we should utilize its best practices to restore America’s PD capabilities.”)

— Monica O’Keefe and Elizabeth Corwin, “The Last Three Feet: PD as a Career,” 42-46. (One reason PD officers don’t get their fair share of senior jobs is that they don’t compete for them. But that’s far from the whole story.”)

— William P. Kiehl, “Addressing the Public Diplomacy Challenge,” 47-51. (“A new agency of the Department of State — the U.S. Public Diplomacy Service — could ensure both creativity and accountability in PD operations.”)

— Robert McMahon, “Channeling the Cold War: U.S. Overseas Broadcasting,” 52-58. (“The need for a clear mission is as applicable today in reaching Muslims around the world as it was with Soviet-bloc audiences.”)

Steffen Bay Rasmussen, “Discourse Analysis of EU Public Diplomacy: Messages and Practices,” Clingendael Discussion Paper in Diplomacy, Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael,’ July 2009. Rasmussen (University of the Basque Country) examines the relevance of discourse theory to the practice of public diplomacy and to the challenges facing the EU’s public diplomacy and broader diplomatic efforts. He argues that the EU’s delegations in third states are its most important actors in EU public diplomacy. Despite problems of coherence, networks are better suited “to current patterns of diplomatic interaction and more effective in the pursuit of EU strategic objectives than a more hierarchical organization able to speak with one voice and act in a more concerted manner.”

“Revitalizing Public Diplomacy” The Journal of International Security Affairs, Number 17, Fall 2009. The Journal’s fall issue contains six articles by scholars and practitioners.

— Robert R. Reilly (American Foreign Policy Council), “No Substitute for Substance,” 9-17. (“When it comes to how America interacts with the Muslim world, ideas matter.”)

— J. Michael Waller (Institute of World Politics), “Getting Serious About Strategic Influence,” 19-27. (“How to move beyond the State Department’s legacy of failure.”)

— Helle C. Dale (The Heritage Foundation), “An Inauspicious Start,” 29-34. (If early signs are any indication, Mr. Obama is as unserious about public diplomacy as his predecessor.”)

— Ilan Berman (Editor, The Journal of International Security Affairs), “Messaging to the (Muslim) Masses,” 35-46. (The Islamic world is our target audience. Here’s how to reach it.”)

— Colleen Graffy (Pepperdine University), “The Rise of Public Diplomacy 2.0,” 47-53. (The global media environment is changing. Public diplomacy needs to keep up.)

— Mark Dubowitz (Foundation for Defense of Democracies), “Wanted: A War on Terrorist Media”, 55-62. (We should be treating the media outlets of terrorist groups as terrorists themselves.”)

Rudolf Rijgersberg, “The U.S. as Keeper of a ‘Free’ Internet,” Clingendael Diplomatic Studies Program, Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael,’ September 10, 2009. Rijgersberg (Clingendael Research Fellow) looks at the advantages and disadvantages of the decision to separate the Internet Corporation on Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from its relationship with the U.S government. He argues that “the current situation [prior to the September 30, 2009 separation decision] with the US as keeper of a relatively free Internet, is to be preferred to a global monopolist created by intergovernmental supervision.”

Walter R. Roberts, “The Voice of America: Origins and Reflections,” American Diplomacy, October 26, 2009. Roberts (a retired U.S. diplomat and scholar) recalls his experiences at the Voice of America during the early days of U.S. international broadcasting. Part memoir and part historical research, he draws on U.S. archival records, BBC documents, and other sources to assess the origins of the U.S. decision to engage in public international broadcasting. His article includes new information on the date of the first VOA broadcast and analysis of the personalities, technologies, and political issues (domestic and international) that shaped America’s approach to shortwave broadcasting prior to World War II.

Mark Rolfe, “Clashing Taboos: Danish Cartoons, the Life of Brian and Public Diplomacy,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Vol. 4, No. 3 2009, 261-281. Rolfe (The University of New South Wales) asserts that the Danish cartoons’ controversy drove reactions similar to those that followed earlier transnational disputes involving satire such as the movie Life of Brian and the Holocaust cartoons. His article looks critically at the war of ideas narrative, a focus by many on an absolute free speech principle that served the purposes of Islamists uninterested in local variations of Islam, and ways in which global media amplify taboos in such disputes and the problematic statements of political elites. Rolfe uses rhetorical analysis to unpack the complexities of the actors, audiences, and strategies in the cartoons’ episode — complexities with a relevance for public diplomacy, he suggests, that go well beyond the “war on terror” model.

Alec Ross, Technology and 21st Century Diplomacy, The Kojo Nnamdi Show, National Public Radio, September 22, 2009. In this 52-minute interview, Ross (Senior Advisor on Innovation, Department of State) discusses diplomatic uses of new media (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook) and traditional media (cell phones, radio). Available for listening online. (Courtesy of Ashley Rainey)

Nancy Snow, “The Death of Public Diplomacy is Greatly Exaggerated,” Layalina Productions, Vol. 1, Issue 7, November 2009. Snow (Syracuse University) finds much to commend in President Obama’s rhetoric and efforts to reshape America’s image. There is a downside, however, in overreliance on the “Public Diplomat in Chief” in the White House. Public diplomacy, she asserts, is “best perceived as a symphony, not a one-man band.”

U.S. Government Accountability Office, Department of State: Comprehensive Plan Needed to Address Persistent Language Shortfalls, GAO-09-955, September 2009. GAO found significant and persistent shortfalls in the assignment of language qualified Foreign Service Officers to language designated positions overseas. Worldwide, as of October 2008, 31% of State’s officers did not meet reading and speaking proficiency requirements. In the Near East and South and Central Asia, the number was 40%. In Arabic and Chinese, the shortfall was 39%. GAO calls for a comprehensive strategy to help State guide its efforts and assess progress in meeting its foreign language requirements.

Gems from the Past

Akira Iriye. Cultural Internationalism and World Order, (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). This book by the former President of the American Historical Association and Charles Warren Professor of American History at Harvard remains one of the best studies of the relationship between culture and power. Iriye examines the rise of cultural internationalism during the 19th and 20th centuries. He distinguishes between government-sponsored cultural diplomacy and cultural internationalism and argues that both can be appreciated only in the context of world politics. “A lasting and stable world order,” he wrote, “cannot rely just on governments and power politics; it also depends upon the open exchange of cultures among peoples in pursuing common intellectual and cultural interests.”

Gordon Adams, “Strategic Planning Comes to the State Department,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July 30, 2009. Adams (American University) looks positively at the implications of State’s decision to undertake aQuadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) analogous to the Defense Department’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). Announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources Jacob Lew and Policy Planning Director Anne-Marie Slaughter at briefings on July 10, the QDDR is a strategic planning mechanism intended to link instruments of diplomacy and development with objectives, priorities, values, and resources. A quadrennial diplomacy review was recommended by the Public Diplomacy Council in 2002 and the Council on Foreign Relations Public Diplomacy Task Force in 2003.

AIA 21st Century Task Force, Design for Diplomacy: New Embassies for the 21st Century, American Institute of Architects, July 2, 2009. Chaired by Barbara A. Nadal, the AIA’s Task Force — a collaborative effort of architects, engineers, diplomats, public art experts, and officials in the State Department’s Bureau of Overseas Building Operations — makes recommendations on the design and construction of new U.S. embassies. As reports on embassy design have done in the past, the Task Force places top priority on the safety and security of embassy employees. The report calls for integrating security and design excellence in “high-performance buildings” that enhance “aesthetics, energy, efficiency, sustainability, flexibility of functions and work spaces, accessibility, historic preservation, and user productivity.” The report does not examine closely tradeoffs between policies that privilege security over access and location, virtual diplomacy alternatives and other public diplomacy issues. The Task Force does recognize “that sites that are considerable distances from downtown areas with limited access to public transportation pose challenges for those seeking visas, diplomatic exchange, and other activities.” For a critique of the AIA’s findings, see Philip Kennicott, “Breaking the Diplomatic Ties That Bind Design,” The Washington Post, July 19, 2009, E3. See also the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy’s 1985 report on these issues in “Gem from the Past” below.

Chris Anderson, Free: The Future of the Radical Price, Hyperion, 2009. The editor of Wired magazine and author of The Long Tail (2006) looks enthusiastically at the economics of digital information and the relentless downward pressure on price of all products “made of ideas.” Although Anderson is primarily concerned with technological, psychological, and commercial implications of free information, his analysis, which includes a chapter on new media models, raises relevant issues for diplomacy and political communication. For a measured critique of Anderson’s logic, see Malcolm Gladwell’s review, “Priced to Sell: Is Free the Future?” in The New Yorker, July 6, 2009.

Coalition for Citizen Diplomacy. The Coalition’s updated website contains information on its mission and broadbased membership, links to publications by CCD members, and information on its community summits and other projects.

“Credible Public Diplomacy: A Lesson for Our Times,” The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Special Edition, Spring 2008, Vol. 32:3. Now online in its entirety, this edition of the Forum contains articles and speeches given at Fletcher School’s 100th Anniversary, Edward R. Murrow Memorial Conference. Includes:

Alan K. Henrikson (The Fletcher School), “‘Credible Public Diplomacy’: Truth and Policy, Persuasion, and People”

Mark McDowell (Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canada), “Public Diplomacy at the Crossroads: Definitions and Challenges in an ‘Open Source” Era”

Bernard L. Simonin (The Fletcher School), “Nation Branding and Public Diplomacy: Challenges and Opportunities”

Leonard J. Baldyga (International Research & Exchanges Board, IREX), “The Practice of Public Diplomacy and Its Perpetual Critics”

Roberta Graham (Bernholz & Graham, Inc.), “Globalization’s Reluctant Shepherd”

Lauren Brodsky (The Fletcher School), “Broadcasting Democracy? Matching Foreign Policy Goals and Messages”

Mark J. Davidson (U.S. Department of State), “Elements of Credible Cultural Diplomacy: ‘Landmarks of New York’ in Tokyo”

Harry Radcliffe (CBS News, Sixty Minutes), “Ed Murrow’s Legacy and the Real World of Broadcasting News”

Erik Iverson (The Fletcher School), “A Revolution in Informational Affairs: Winning the War of Ideas”

Sandy Vogelgesang (U.S. Department of State), “Perspectives on Public Diplomacy: Vietnam to Iraq”

Bruce Etling, John Kelly, Rob Faris, and John Palfrey,Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture and Dissent. Berkman Center for Internet and Society, June 16, 2009 (pdf file online). This case study, one of several in the Internet & Democracy Project at Harvard’s Berkman Center, looks at “the Arabic language blogosphere using link analysis, term frequency analysis, and human coding of individual blogs.” Using a base of 35,000 active blogs, the research team created a network map of the 6,000 most connected blogs and coded 4,000 blogs. The study provides an assessment of the networked public sphere in the Arab Middle East and its relevance to politics, media, religion, culture, and international affairs. Contains findings on country-based networks, political and gender-based clusters, the Arabic media ecosystem, personal life and local issues, regional and global issues, and Palestine/Gaza. (Courtesy of Jeremy Curtin)

Ali Fisher, “Music for the Jilted Generation: Open Source Public Diplomacy,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 3 (2008), 1-24. Fisher (Mappa Mundi Consultants) advocates an approach to public diplomacy based on central ideas in Eric Raymond’s models of the cathedral (hierarchy, messaging) and the bazaar (peer-to-peer, multiple groups and agendas) and the open source software movement associated with Linus Torvald. Fisher argues the bazaar mindset and open source approach — with its emphasis on transparency, collaboration, low entry barriers, communities of concerned actors, and interconnectedness between civil societies — have distinct advantages for public diplomacy over a hierarchical producer/recipient approach based on power. An open source approach “based on common interest and ability” is more likely to influence collective action in the international environment, which for Fisher is what public diplomacy is about.

Todd Greentree, “A Letter from Bagram,” The American Interest, July/August, 2009, 17-19. In this brief report from Afghanistan, a U.S. State Department officer reports on his experiences as Brigade Political Advisor — a new position between a division level or higher POLAD and a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT). Greentree provides a candid field perspective on counterinsurgency strategy, interagency coordination where the civilian contribution “will be critical — that is if we can actually find them and ship them over here,” and “The Expeditionary Foreign Service.” In his comments on Foreign Service Officers in the provinces, he discusses the surprising number who volunteer for repeat assignments, the importance of finding the right cultural idiom, and whether State Department officers should carry weapons. Greentree is the author of Crossroads of Intervention: Insurgency and Counterinsurgency Lessons from Central America (2008) and a veteran of four previous assignments in “irregular conflict” — El Salvador (1980-83), Papua New Guinea (1987-88), Nepal (1990-93), and Angola (1999-2002). Full text for subscribers only.

Jeffrey B. Jones, Daniel T. Kuehl, Daniel Burgess, and Russell Rochte, “Strategic Communication and the Combatant Commander,” Joint Force Quarterly, Issue 55, 4th Quarter 2009. Jones (former Senior Director, National Security Council), Kuehl (Information Resources Management College, National Defense University), Burgess (former Intelligence Officer for U.S. Forces Korea), and Rochte (National Defense Intelligence College) examine conceptual, planning, organizational, and operational issues in the central role played by U.S. combatant commanders in strategic communication. Drawing on years of experience as teachers and practitioners, they offer 21 recommendations for “improvement of this national security function.”

John Maxwell Hamilton, Journalism’s Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting, (LSU Press, 2009). In this authoritative 655-page study, the dean of Louisiana State University’s School of Mass Communication, provides a history of American foreign correspondence from Benjamin Franklin’s letters from London to the methods and challenges of today’s foreign news coverage. Hamilton combines scholarship, deep research, biography, rich narratives, and informed judgments on what lies ahead. Hamilton’s focus is on journalism, but his canvass includes relevant insights of scholars in political science and other disciplines. Contains references to U.S. diplomacy and international broadcasting. (Courtesy of John Trattner.

Karin Deutsch Kariekar, Print and Broadcast Freedom: Disparities and Opportunities, A Report to the Center for International Media Assistance, National Endowment for Democracy, September 1, 2009. Kariekar (Freedom House) uses longitudinal Freedom House data to assess contrasting trends in broadcast and print media freedom. She finds broadcast media rank as less free overall than print media, although the latter face higher levels of legal harrasment and attacks on journalists and facilities. Contains case studies on community development radio, Azerbaijan, and Pakistan.

Ali Molenaar, “Diplomacy Literature Lists,” Library and Documentation Center, Clingendael Institute, Netherlands Institute of International Relations, July 16, 2009. Clingendael’s Head Librarian has updated and circulated literature lists in the following subject areas:

Public Diplomacy, 18 pages.

Cultural Diplomacy, 9 pages.

City Diplomacy, 9 pages.

Branding, 5 pages.

European Level Diplomacy and EU Diplomatic Service, 9 pages.

United States Diplomacy, 16 pages.

Clingendael Library’s reading lists.

Michael G. Mullen, “Strategic Communication: Getting Back to Basics,” Joint Force Quarterly, Issue 55, 4th Quarter, 2009. Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, looks at strategic communication as a phrase (“Frankly, I don’t care for the term.”) and as a concept (“To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less abouthow to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate.”). Among his “basics:” credibility, building trust and relationships, right intent up front, knowing the context in which actions are received and understood, delivering on promises, and congruence between words and actions. Admiral Mullen’s themes are consistent with the Defense Science Board’s views on strategic communication as an iterative process that privileges actions, relationships, and deep comprehension of others (Chapter 2, “What is Strategic Communication and Why Does it Matter?” Strategic Communication, 2008, 10-20.)

Dennis M. Murphy, Talking the Talk: Why Warfighters Don’t Understand Information Operations, Issue Paper 4-09, Center for Strategic Leadership, U.S. Army War College, May 2009. Murphy (U.S Army War College) discusses the meaning of information operations and strategic communication and the need to clarify definitions. He calls on the U.S. military to engage in a “clean slate review of the current terminology and definitions,” to consolidate and simplify what is confusing, and provide an “overarching joint doctrinal manual” that is understandable and practical.

Public Diplomacy Front Line Working Group, WHITE PAPER, “Public Diplomacy: A View from the Front Line,” June 8, 2009. In this online statement, ten mid-level U.S. Foreign Service Officers “with no institutional memory of the U.S. Information Agency,” provide recommendations to their senior leadership on ways to empower, integrate, and equip “a new generation of public diplomacy officers.” Their white paper values field cooperation with embassy political and economic officers, networks with partners in other governments and civil society, embedding public diplomacy officers in the State Department’s regional bureaus and policy process, technological and media savvy, restoration of USIA’s Junior Officer training program, mid-level expanded training, and graduate-level education opportunities in public diplomacy and related fields at civilian universities.

Philip Seib, ed., Toward a New Public Diplomacy: Redirecting U.S. Foreign Policy, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Seib (Center on Public Diplomacy, University of Southern California) has compiled 12 essays on U.S. public diplomacy written for policymakers, practitioners, and scholars. The essays are divided into three categories: appraisals of current U.S. public diplomacy and a brief history, views on American practice and motives from voices in Russia, China, and Egypt; and suggestions for making public diplomacy “more imaginative and more effective.” This is the first publication in the new Palgrave Macmillan Series in Global Public Diplomacy co-edited by Seib and Kathy Fitzpatrick (Quinnipiac University). Includes:

William A. Rugh (U.S. Foreign Service Officer, ret.), “The Case for Soft Power”

Nicholas J. Cull (University of Southern California), “How We Got Here”

Shawn Powers (University of Southern California) and Ahmed El Gody (Orebro University), “The Lessons of Al Hurra Television”

Victoria V. Orlova (Channel One Russia), “The View from Russia”

Guolin Shen (Fudan University), “The View from China”

Hussein Amin (American University in Cairo), “The View from Egypt”

Ameila Arsenault (University of Pennsylvania), “Public Diplomacy 2.0”

Kathy R. Fitzpatrick, “Privatized Public Diplomacy”

Neal M. Rosendorf (Long Island University), “A Cultural Diplomacy Strategy”

Jennifer A. Marshall (The Heritage Foundation) and Thomas F. Farr (Georgetown University), “Public Diplomacy in an Age of Faith”

Abiodun Williams (United States Institute of Peace), “The U.S. Military and Public Diplomacy”

Philip Seib, “Conclusion: The Task for Policy Makers”

Robert R. Reilly, Ideas Matter: Restoring the Content of Public Diplomacy, The Heritage Foundation, Special Report 64, July 27, 2009. Reilly argues the “content of ideas” and the principles on which they are based are crucial to effective public diplomacy. He challenges much in recent U.S. practice and contends “the ideas that now animate U.S. public diplomacy lead necessarily to its failure.” Reilly appears to have no doubt as to just which “American principles” and “objective moral order” should form the basis for U.S. public diplomacy. He advances with conviction those political, economic, and theological principles and values that should form the basis for “victory” in a “new war of ideas.” Includes a foreword by U.S. Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) and a preface by Lt. Gen. John R. Vines (Ret.) A former director of the Voice of America, Reilly has also held positions in the Department of Defense and U.S. Information Agency.

Mark Taplin, Global Publicks. Taplin’s blog, branded with iconic portraits of Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine, offers “views on public diplomacy, foreign affairs, and travel writing — where ideas, history, culture, and statecraft meet.” Mark Taplin is a U.S. Foreign Service Officer detailed to George Washington University as its Public Diplomacy Fellow.

A. Trevor Thrall, “Star Power: Celebrity Advocacy and the Evolution of the Public Sphere,” International Journal of Press/Politics, October 2008, 13: 362-385. Thrall (University of Michigan – Dearborn) and seven graduate students assess the celebrity advocacy tactics of 53 environmental organizations. They conclude that, although celebrities increasingly are part of advocacy strategies, their influence on news making and public opinion has been significantly over-estimated.

U.S. Army War College, DIME:Information as Power. This website provides an electronic library of current and historical articles and documents on information as an element of power and on broad dimensions of today’s information environment. The site’s blog focuses on strategic communication, information operations, cyberspace operations, robotics, knowledge management, and public diplomacy and related topics. A guest blog by Army War College Professor Dennis Murphy, “Obfuscation: Information Related Terminology” posted August 29, 2009, calls for greater clarity in definitions, concepts, and terms. (Courtesy of Kasie Hunt)

Watanabe Yasushi and David L. McConnell, eds., Soft Power Superpowers: Cultural and National Assets of Japan and the United States, M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2008. In this collection of essays, Yasushi (Keio University) and McConnell (The College of Wooster) offer a penetrating analysis of Joseph Nye’s concept of soft power and case studies on the uses of cultural and educational engagement in public diplomacy strategies of Japan and the United States. Includes a Foreword by Nye (Harvard University), an Introduction by Yasushi and McConnell and the following essays:

— Watanabe Yasushi, “Anti-Americanism in Japan”

— David L. McConnell, “Japan’s Image Problem and the Soft Power Solution: The JET Program as Cultural Diplomacy”

— Philip G. Altbach (Boston College) and Patti McGill Peterson (Institute for Higher Education Policy), “Higher Education as Projection of America’s Soft Power”

— Yonezawa Akiyoshi (Tohoku University), “Facing Crisis: Soft Power and Japanese Education in a Global Context”

— Ellen Mashiko (Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership) and Horie Miki (Nagoya University), “Nuturing Soft Power: The Impact of Japanese-University Exchanges”

— Anne Allison (Duke University), “The Attractions of the J-Wave for American Youth”

— Nakano Yoshiko (University of Hong Kong), “Shared Memories: Japanese Pop Culture in China”

— Sugiura Tsutomu (Marubeni Research Institute), “Japan’s Creative Industries: Culture as a Source of Soft Power in the Industrial Sector”

— Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu (Michigan State University), “Baseball in U.S.-Japan Relations: A Vehicle of Soft Power in Historical Perspective”

— Matthew Fraser (INSEAD Business School), “American Pop Culture as Soft Power: Movies and Broadcasting”

— Kondo Seiichi (Ambassador to UNESCO), “Wielding Soft Power: The Key Stages of Transmission and Reception”

— William G. Crowell (U.S. Foreign Service, ret.), “Official Soft Power in Practice: U.S. Public Diplomacy in Japan”

— Agawa Naoyuki (Keio University), “Japan Does Soft Power: Strategy and Effectiveness of Its Public Diplomacy in the United States”

— Lawrence Repeta (Omiya Law School), “Mr. Madison in the Twenty-First Century: Global Diffusion of the People’s Right to Know”

— Imata Katsuji (CSO Network Japan) and Kuroda Kaori (CSO Network Japan) “Soft Power of NGOs: Growing Influence Beyond National Boundaries”

Gem from the Past

U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy (ACPD), Terrorism and Security: The Challenge for Public Diplomacy, December 1985. In the early 1980s, car bombings in Beirut and Kuwait and an increase in kidnappings, hijackings, and murders of U.S. citizens abroad led the Secretary of State to establish the Advisory Panel on Overseas Security chaired by Admiral Bobby R. Inman. USN (Ret.). The “Inman report” on enhanced security for U.S. embassies and overseas personnel led the ACPD to issue a separate report on the public diplomacy and legislative implications of Inman’s recommendations. The ACPD advanced ten recommendations grounded in the judgment that diplomatic security policies should take fully into account the U.S. government’s public diplomacy mission, the need for relatively free access to U.S. libraries and cultural centers, and the need for visible evidence of America as a free and open society.

For previous compilations of Public Diplomacy: Books, Articles, Websites, visit the wiki kindly maintained by the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy.

The Ambassador William C. Battle Symposium on American Diplomacy: U.S. Standing in the World: Causes, Consequences, and Obama, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, March 6, 2009. A ninety-minute video of a panel discussion with leading American scholars on America’s global standing, the meaning of standing, how it is measured, and its causes and consequences. The title of the symposium notwithstanding, the panel’s examination focuses only in passing on the relevance of American diplomacy to U.S. standing in the world. Panelists include Martha Finnemore (George Washington University), Jack Snyder (Columbia University), and Peter Trubowitz (University of Texas at Austin), moderator Jeffrey Legro (University of Virginia), and discussants Melvyn Leffler (University of Virginia) and Moises Naim (Editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy). The panel discusses interim findings of the American Political Science Association’s Task Force on U.S. Standing in World Affairs initiated by APSA President Peter J. Katzenstein (Cornell University). Publication of the Task Force’s report is expected in Summer 2009. (Courtesy of Donna Oglesby)

Alexandr G. Asmolov and Gregory A. Asmolov, “From We-Media to I-Media: Identity Transformations in the Virtual World,” Voprosy Psychologii, Number 3, 2009, 101-123. Alexandr Asmolov (Lomonosov Moscow State University) and Gregory Asmolov (George Washington University), a father and son who combine the insights of a psychologist and a journalist, draw on constructivism, theories of mass communication, motivational analysis, Lev S. Vygotsky’s “internal speech” concept, and Teilhard de Chardin’s idea of Noosphere to examine identity transformations in virtual worlds. The authors look at practices of Internet journalism, motives for creating blogs, the emergence of “diary journalism,” and blogs as platforms for constructing a virtual personality and transforming that personality from self-representation into social interaction. They argue that journalistic practices are an appropriate and effective means of self-representation and that establishment of a stable I-representation on the Internet is a condition for changes in the dynamics of social networks. Copies of the article in English may be obtained from Gregory Asmolov at gregory.asmolov@gmail.com.

Gary J. Bass. Freedom’s Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention, (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008). Bass (Princeton University) explores two hundred years of humanitarian interventionism finding today’s debates deeply rooted in the 19th century: undermining sovereignty vs. supporting human rights, altruism vs. imperial motives, the dangers of taking sides in civil wars, the role of the media and public opinion in shaping democratic foreign policy, multilateral and unilateral uses of force, and the moral responsibilities of political leaders. His book develops three overarching themes: (1) the history of humanitarian intervention is worth understanding for the light it sheds on today’s global politics and mediated diplomacy; (2) the links between freedom at home and freedom abroad and the role of the mass media well before the so-called CNN effect; and (3) the lessons taught by 19th century diplomats on managing humanitarian intervention. Case studies include Greece in the 1820s, Bulgaria in the 1870s, and the American campaign to stop the Armenian genocide in 1915.

James Boyle. The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind, (Yale University Press, 2008). Boyle (Duke University) examines issues relating to intellectual property and the public domain in a book that is accessible to scholars and non-scholars. He discusses intellectual property in the context of digital creativity, communication networks, Internet file sharing, free speech, scientific innovation, and emerging concepts of information and expression in “the commons” beyond property. Boyle writes as a proponent of intellectual property but also with deep concern that current policies reflect a misunderstanding of the public domain’s vital importance to innovation. He calls for a movement similar to the environmental movement to preserve the Internet’s promise in the production of knowledge and culture.

Andrew F. Cooper and Timothy M. Shaw, eds., The Diplomacies of Small States: Between Vulnerability and Resistance, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Cooper (University of Waterloo and Center for International Governance Innovation) and Shaw (University of the West Indies) have compiled a collection of essays by experts on small state diplomacy. Analytical issues include the vulnerabilities and resilience of small states, asymmetric relations between small states and larger entities, how space limitations affect policies, and the ability of small states to leverage new communication technologies to advantage. Contains case studies on the diplomacy of Singapore, Iceland, Venezuela, Antigua, Caribbean Community states, and Africa’s Cotton 4 states (Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Mali).

Defense Science Board Task Force Report on Understanding Human Dynamics, March 2009, 126 pages. This report’s central finding is that the Department of Defense and military services must improve their understanding of human dynamics and develop institutions, tools, and programs to enhance this capability across the full spectrum of military operations. Recommendations are made in the following areas: coordination and leadership; interagency and civil interactions; communication, education, training, and career development; human dynamics advisors; science and technology investments; and data, tools, and products. The report calls on the Defense Department to increase its “cultural bench” and “fund and launch the Center for Global Engagement” recommended in the 2008 Defense Science Board report on Strategic Communication. (Courtesy of Mark Maybury)

Edward P. Djerejian, Danger and Opportunity: An American Ambassador’s Journey Through the Middle East, (Threshold Editions, Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2008). In this narrative of his diplomatic career, the director of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy looks at the evolution of U.S. policies in the Middle East and challenges facing the U.S. in the region. Chapter 10, “Public Diplomacy – The Voice of America,” summarizes and updates Changing Minds, Winning Peace, the 2003 Congressionally mandated advisory panel report he chaired on public diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Djerejian states his reasons why it “was an error to dismantle the USIA in 1999,” discusses his strategy for strengthening the instruments of public diplomacy and the role of the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, and continues his support for bringing U.S. international broadcasting (other than the news function) “under the strategic direction of the public diplomacy policies and goals of the United States government as defined by the president, the secretary of state and the under secretary for public diplomacy.”

Brian Hocking and Jozef Batora, “Diplomacy and the European Union,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Volume 4, Number 2, 2009, 113-120. In their lead article, Hocking (Loughborough University) and Batora (Austrian Academy for Sciences) — editors of this special issue of HJD — discuss the changing nature of diplomacy in the context of the processes and structures of EU diplomacy. The articles address three interrelated sets of issues: (1) how diplomacy is responding to 21st century challenges, (2) transformational change in the traditional diplomatic structures of EU member states, and (3) the future of the EU as a diplomatic actor. Includes articles by:

Rebecca Adler-Nissen (University of Copenhagen), “Late Sovereign Diplomacy,” 121-141.

Stephan Keukeleire, Robin Thiers and Arnout Justaert (Catholic University of Leuven), “Reappraising Diplomacy: Structural Diplomacy and the Case of the European Union,” 143-165.

Alan Hardacre (European Institute of Public Administration, the Netherlands) and Michael Smith (Loughborough University), “The EU and the Diplomacy of Complex Interregionalism,” 167-188.

Knud Erik Jorgensen (Aarhus University), “The European Union in Multilateral Diplomacy,” 189-209.

Simon Duke (European Institute of Public Administration, the Netherlands), “Providing for European Level Diplomacy after Lisbon: The Case of the European External Action Service,” 189-209.

David Spence (European Commission Delegation to the United Nations and other International Organizations in Geneva), “Taking Stock: 50 Years of European Diplomacy,” 235-259.

Evgeny Morozov, The Future of “Public Diplomacy 2.0,” Foreign Policy, Net Effect Blog, Posted June 9, 2009. FP’s Net Effect blogger looks at the debate on the future of internet-based public diplomacy initiatives. He questions the overemphasis on using new media “for growing the supply side without giving almost any consideration to its possible impact on the demand side.” Morozov is skeptical of the value of the State Department’s Digital Outreach Team and calls for greater imagination in public diplomacy’s use of technology and putting web-based educational and cultural resources at the forefront of American strategy.

Craig Nelson, Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations, (Penguin Books, 2006). Historian Craig Nelson brings new research and a compelling narrative style to this biography of the activist and Enlightenment intellectual whose Common Sense and other writings shaped the politics and armed conflict of the American Revolution. Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams have their storied place in the history of American public diplomacy. Nelson gives Paine his due with this account of his influence on American diplomacy and the 18th century public sphere. (Courtesy of Mark Taplin)

Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Get Smart: Combining Hard and Soft Power,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2009, 160-163. In his response to Leslie Gelb’s “otherwise estimable new book,” Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy, Harvard’s Joseph Nye argues that Gelb “defines power too narrowly” and confuses the actions of states seeking desired outcomes with the resources used to achieve those outcomes. In defending his views against Gelb’s critique of soft power, Nye rehearses his central arguments on the nature of hard power, soft power, and smart power. Gelb, he contends, “ignores a long literature on the other facets of power that are used to persuade others to do what is in fact in their own interests.” The now fashionable term “smart power” — referring to strategies that combine the tools of hard and soft power — is a term Nye “developed in 2003 to counter the misperception that soft power alone can produce effective foreign policy.”

PD magazine, Issue 2, Summer 2009. The second issue of PD, an online publication of the Association of Public Diplomacy Scholars at the University of Southern California, examines the theme “Middle Powers: Who They Are What They Want.” Includes perspectives on public diplomacy in Australia, Chile, Finland, Mexico, South Korea, and Sweden; views of practitioners Jeremy Curtin (U.S. Department of State), Richard Lugar (U.S. Senate), and James Snyder (NATO Information Officer); and articles by:

Etyan Gilboa (University of Southern California), “The Public Diplomacy of Middle Powers”

Andrew Cooper (University of Waterloo), “Middle Powers: Squeezed Out or Adaptive”

Evan Potter (University of Ottawa) “A New Architecture for Canadian Public Diplomacy”

Jorge Heine (Balsillie School of International Affairs) “Middle Powers and Conceptual Leadership”

Joseph J. Popiolkowski and Nicholas J. Cull, eds., Public Diplomacy, Cultural Interventions & the Peace Process in Northern Ireland: Track Two to Peace? (USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School, Figueroa Press, 2009). Popiolkowski and Cull (USC Center on Public Diplomacy) have collected presentations by scholars, practitioners, and witnesses to the peace process at a conference hosted by the USC Center on Public Diplomacy in 2007. The essays fall in one or more of three categories: public diplomacy, Track Two diplomacy, and conflict resolution. Contributors include: Neil Jarman (Institute for Conflict Research, Belfast), Paul Arthur (University of Ulster), Bob Peirce (British Consul General, Los Angeles), Greg McLaughlin (University of Ulster Coleraine), Niall O Dochartaigh (National University of Ireland), Timothy Lynch (University of London), Sharon Harroun (Children’s Friendship Project for Northern Ireland), and Mike Fealty (Slugger O’Toole blog).

David G. Post, In Search of Jefferson’s Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace, (Oxford University Press, 2009). In this innovative, imaginative, and very well written book, Post (Temple University) uses Thomas Jefferson’s ideas about governing and the American frontier as a lens for examining Internet governance. Drawing extensively on Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia and his differences with Alexander Hamilton, Post examines central technological, legal, and social issues in cyberspace. For Post, the Jeffersonian model holds promise for thinking about law, free speech, intellectual property, online dissemination of information, and exploration of what we don’t know about the Internet’s vast frontier. (Courtesy of Paula Causey)

Evan H. Potter, Branding Canada: Projecting Canada’s Soft Power Through Public Diplomacy, (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009). Potter (University of Ottawa) provides an overview of the “origins, development, and implementation” of Canada’s public diplomacy. He argues that “protecting and nurturing a distinct national identity are essential to Canada’s sovereignty and prosperity,” offers policy recommendations on Canada’s public diplomacy, and examines Canada’s use of the instruments of public diplomacy — cultural programs, international education, international broadcasting, trade, and investment promotion.

Shaun Riordan, “Reforming Foreign Services for the Twenty-First Century,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Volume 2, Number 2, 2007, 161-173. Riordan, a retired British diplomat, calls for radical reform of foreign services to meet the challenges of new technologies, new actors, new issues, and the breakdown of distinctions between foreign and domestic policy. An effective foreign service remains essential to a country’s security and economic and social welfare, he argues, but today’s global environment requires radical overhaul of diplomatic structures, culture, recruitment, and training. Riordan’s reforms include: engaging foreign civil societies with non-governmental agents rather than diplomats, overseas analysis and strategy departments above departmental ministries, semi-autonomous cultural relations organizations, thorough integration of foreign services in global information and communication networks, expectation that “life-long diplomatic careers may be a thing of the past,” employment of more experts on a contract basis in ministries and embassies to fill specialized knowledge gaps, and effective public diplomacy at home “as an essential precursor to successful public diplomacy abroad.”

Clay Shirky, How Cell Phones, Twitter, Facebook Can Make History, TEDTalks Video Recorded at the U.S. Department of State, June 16 2009. In this 17-minute video, the author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (2008) discusses the development of social media and ways it is changing news and politics. A useful classroom supplement to Shirky’s book. (Cour tesy of Ian Cunningham)

U.S. Government Accountability Office. U.S. Public Diplomacy: Key Issues for Congressional Oversight, GAO-09-679SP, May 2009. GAO draws on its ten studies of U.S. public diplomacy since 2003 to frame issues for Congress’s oversight agenda and the requirement that the President issue a new national communication strategy by December 2009. GAO provides its assessment of the extent to which the June 2007 National Strategy for Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication addresses GAO’s 27 desirable characteristics of such a strategy. GAO’s six key issues include strategic and operational planning, performance measurement, coordination of U.S. communication, State’s public diplomacy workforce, outreach efforts in high threat posts, and interagency efforts to use social networks and technologies referred to by some as Public Diplomacy 2.0.

U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Report on Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 2010 and 2011, (H.R. 2410), June 4, 2009. The Committee’s Report summarizes legislation, passed by the House on June 11, 2009, to authorize State Department and Peace Corps appropriations. Title 2, Subtitle B includes the following public diplomacy provisions: (1) gives “the Secretary of State the lead role in coordinating the inter-agency process in public diplomacy (PD)/strategic communications” and establishes a coordination mechanism, (2) establishes a PD reserve corps, (3) enhances PD outreach outside embassies, (4) authorizes grants for international documentary films to promote better understanding of the U.S. abroad “and to improve Americans’ understanding of other countries’ perspectives,” (5) reauthorizes the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy and requires that at least four members “have substantial experience in public diplomacy or comparable activities in the private sector,” and (6) authorizes earmarked funding for a variety of exchange and scholarship programs. Title III, Subtitle A provides for a quadrennial review of diplomacy and development and the establishment of a “Lessons Learned Center.” Title V authorizes funding for U.S. international broadcasting and establishes permanent authority for Radio Free Asia. Title VII provides for the establishment, management, and funding of the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation.

Gems from the Past

Ithiel de Sola Pool. Technologies Without Boundaries: On Telecommunications in a Global Age, (Harvard University Press, 1990). At his death in 1984, a decade before web browsers and well before YouTube became ordinary, MIT political science Professor Ithiel de Sola Pool had nearly completed a manuscript synthesizing his views on the social and political implications of communication technologies. Eli Noam (Columbia University) edited the manuscript for publication in 1990. In the book, Pool considers and forecasts complex changes in spatial patterns of human connections, the consequences of low-cost individual and group communication, convergence of print and electronic media, implications for politics and national sovereignty, and government policies on the restriction, dissemination, and free flow of information.

CB3Blog, “Public Diplomacy as an Academic Discipline,” Posted May 15, 2009. CB3 Communications (a UK consulting firm with ties to Cambridge University) surveys the small number of degree programs and courses on public diplomacy in the United States. The blog entry finds there are even fewer institutions outside the U.S. providing academic courses on public diplomacy. CB3 calls on the UK and other countries to look at academic approaches to preparing “its young people for 21st century diplomacy and communication environments.” Contains a six-minute YouTube video featuring Syracuse University students discussing public diplomacy.

Jared Cohen, “Diverting the Radicalization Track,” Policy Review, April & May, 2009, No. 154, 51-63.Cohen (an appointee to the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff in 2006) begins with the dubious proposition that “The struggle against violent extremism is the most significant national security challenge of the 21st century.” Drawing on the thinking of former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs James Glassman, Cohen argues that “America’s target audience for public diplomacy needs to be disaffected youths and those who influence them.” His strategy focuses on social media, networking with civil society partners, and providing alternatives for population segments vulnerable to extremist influence rather than winning hearts and minds.

Daryl Copeland, Guerilla Diplomacy: Rethinking International Relations,(Lynne Reinner, 2009). Retired diplomat Daryl Copeland draws on academic research, literature, film, interviews, and years as a practitioner in Canada’s foreign service to make an imaginative case for reinventing diplomacy. Calling for stronger linkages between development and security as an alternative to force, he explores the meaning of development, the importance of science and technology to diplomacy, public diplomacy, and needed reforms in foreign ministries and the foreign service. Today’s diplomat, he argues, must be able to manage a wide range of new issues, engage multiple new actors, and be “happier mixing with the population than mingling with colleagues inside embassy walls.” Copeland’s new Guerilla Diplomacy blog can be visited at the link.

Leslie H. Gelb, Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy, (HarperCollins Publishers, 2009). Gelb brings the insights of a former senior official in the State and Defense Departments, journalist for The New York Times, and President of the Council on Foreign Relations to an analysis of how power should be wielded in today’s world and recommendations on what America needs to to relearn the effective use its power. Gelb challenges ideas of leading thinkers: Thomas Friedman (“the world is flat”), Joseph Nye (“soft power”), Richard Haass (the world is “nonpolar”), and Charles Krauthammer (the exercise of will and military power). Contains chapters on the nature of power, strategy, policies, intelligence, domestic politics, military power, economic power, and public diplomacy (aka “stage-setting power”).

Jakub Grygiel, “The Power of Statelessness,” Policy Review, April & May, 2009, 35-50. Grygiel (Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies) looks at political groups who seek their objectives through forms of social cohesion other than control of the state. Grygiel examines four trends underlying the rise of stateless groups: (1) new technologies that foster virtual networks, (2) proliferation of weapons and dual use technologies that challenge the state’s monopoly of violence, (3) the desirability of a low profile as a strategy of survival in the face of traditional state power, and (4) goals grounded in religious or ideological extremism better served by means other than the political compromise required of traditional nation-states. Grygiel argues the appeal of statelessness will continue to increase.

John Maxwell Hamilton, “In the Foothills of Change: Foreign Coverage Seems Doomed, But It’s Only Just Begun,” Columbia Journalism Review, March/April, 2009, 51-57. In this essay, Hamilton (Louisiana State University) briefly outlines changes in the history of foreign reporting from Ben Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette to his forecast of a new era with a “clear, defining feature: many types of foreign correspondents operating at once.” In addition to traditional foreign correspondents, he identifies foreign nationals who work for American news organizations, local foreign correspondents who cover the world from their hometowns, parachute foreign correspondents, premium foreign correspondents who charge fees for specialized in-depth reporting, in-house foreign correspondents who gather news for corporate employers, citizen foreign corespondents, and foreign local correspondents whose reporting for indigenous media are read globally on the Internet. Hamilton assesses the strengths, limitations, and implications of this experimentation with new forms of foreign coverage. Abstract available online.

Gilles Kepel, Beyond Terror and Martyrdom: The Future of the Middle East, (Harvard University Press, 2008). Kepel (Institute of Political Studies, Paris, and author of Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam and The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West) challenges the “exhausted narratives” of George W. Bush’s war on terror and Osama bin Laden’s call for an uprising against apostate regimes. Kepel offers an alternative vision grounded in “the human capital of the Mediterranean, the expertise and economic stability of Europe, and the entrepreneurial ambitions of the energy-producing nations in a concerted move away from violence and toward sustainable prosperity.”

David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of the Big One, (Oxford University Press, 2009). Kilcullen (anthropologist, former Australian Army officer, and counterinsurgency advisor to the Department of State and to General David Petraeus in Iraq) summarizes insights from his years of experience in Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He distinguishes between two classes of non-state adversary: deliberate, postmodern neo-Salafi extremists and traditionalist local fighters who are often “accidental guerrillas” and fight “because we are in his space, not because he wishes to invade ours.” He examines four overlapping models of today’s armed conflict environment: a backlash against globalization, globalized insurgency, the Islamic civil war theory, and the asymmetric warfare model. Kilcullen offers many recommendations for “this new era of hybrid warfare.” A national level, whole of government “strategic information” capability, he argues, “is perhaps the most important.”

Rita J. King and Joshua S. Fouts, Understanding Islam Through Virtual Worlds, Dancing Ink Productions, January 29, 2009. King and Fouts, senior fellows at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs and principals of Dancing Ink Productions, released the findings of this Carnegie Council project in three digital formats: (1) “Digital Diplomacy,” an assessment with recommendations on the potential value of virtual worlds for digital diplomacy (PDF print version); (2) “Collaboration, Community and Culture,” a documentary video highlighting some of the findings and available on YouTube and in broadcast quality form; and (3) a project narrative in the form of a graphic novel. Their goal: “to see what we could learn about Islam — not by inviting particular people with particular perspectives into Second Life, but rather to follow the trail of what was already happening culturally in the space that might yield new insight about Islam.”

James R. Locher III, “Forging a New Shield,” The American Interest, January/February 2009, 15-26. The executive director of the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR) summarizes the PNSR’s November 2008 reportcalling for transformation of national security mindsets and structures rooted in the National Security Act of 1947. Recommendations include: creation of a President’s Security Council that would replace the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council, a shift from interagency committees to empowered interagency teams capable of implementing a “whole of government” approach to issues, an integrated national security budget and mandated six-year budget projections by departments and agencies, creation of a National Security Professional Corps trained for interagency assignments, and a quadrennial national security review. Locher’s article (available in full to subscribers) gists PNSR’s massive 702-page report (available by download at the second link).

Judith McHale, “Opening Statement as Nominee for Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee, May 13, 2009. State’s Under Secretary-designate voices her belief that public diplomacy is “integral to our foreign policy and essential for our national security” and outlines six core principles that will guide her approach to U.S. public diplomacy.

Gustavo S. Mesch, “The Internet and Youth Culture,” The Hedgehog Review, Vol. 11, No. 1, Spring 2009, 50-60. In an issue of the Review devoted to youth culture, Mesch (University of Haifa) discusses technology’s influence on values, attitudes, and behavior in the context of perspectives on technological determinism and the social construction of technologies in literature on the Internet and youth culture. He concludes that the Internet plays important roles in adolescence “as a cultural artifact and a culture in itself.” It is important to recognize, however, that “Rather than thinking of the internet in dichotomous terms, either reflecting social values and norms or generating a Net-generation, it is useful to think of constant interrelations that are being created, bridging and mutually affecting online and offline youth lives.”

PD, Public Diplomacy Magazine, Issue 1, Winter 2009, a publication of the Association of Public Diplomacy Scholars (APDS) at the University of Southern California. The editors of this new publication — Anoush Rima Tatevossian, Desa Philadelphia, and Lorena M. Sanchez — describe its mission as providing “a common forum for the views of both scholars and practitioners from around the globe.” PD is labeled a magazine “because of the accessibility it suggests” rather than an academic journal. Its goal, however, is to address public diplomacy’s hybrid identity as an area of study and body of practice and to “tackle everything from conceptualizing public diplomacy, debating its relevance, and discussing the roles of various actors, to developing evaluation methods, sharing best practices and even a little proselytizing.”

This issue, “New President. New Public Diplomacy?” contains “Memos to Obama,” “Perspectives” from scholars and practitioners (current and former), and a “Case Study: Beijing Olympics.” Contributors include Nicholas J. Cull, Kristin Lord, Helle Dale, David Hoffman, James Glassman, Edward Djerejian, Walid Maalouf, Stacy Hope, Tom Edwards, Andy Pryce, Qui Huafei, Jian Wang, Meg Young, Noah Chestnut, Paul Rockower, Iskra Kirova, and Nancy Snow.

Public Diplomacy Collaborative, Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Instituted for Democratic Governance and Innovation. Harvard’s PD Collaborative is an independent, non-government-sponsored program that seeks to “promote discussion, mentoring, training, scholarship, and publication in the field of public diplomacy with the aims of expanding and improving public diplomacy practice and ultimately promoting democratic governance.” The Collaborative draws “experts from the academic, corporate, diplomatic, developmental, cultural, military, religious, and media sectors” and fosters “the exchange of public-opinion analyses, regional expertise, measurement tools, and case studies on the strategy and tactics of public diplomacy.” Current initiatives include conferences, publications and research, an academic journal, and working groups on international education and professional interests. The PD Collaborative is directed by Jed Willard. Its affiliated faculty includes Matthew Baum (Faculty Chair), Joseph Nye, Todd Pittinsky, William Rugh, and Ramus Bertelsen. A Board of Advisors is chaired by Mark McDowell (Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada).

“Special Issue of Media Psychology and Public Diplomacy,”American Journal of Media Psychology,Volume 1, Nos. 1/2, Winter/Spring 2008. Edited by Michael G. Elasmar (Boston University) the founding issue of this new peer-reviewed journal looks at the role of the media in public diplomacy. The articles examine how “individuals’ perceptions of countries and of international events are influenced by their exposure to related media content.” The following articles in this issue may be downloaded in pdf format and viewed online.

Erik Nisbet (Ohio State University) and James Shanahan (Fairfield University), Anti-Americanism as a Communication Problem? Foreign Media and Public Opinion toward the United States in Europe and the Middle East.

Xiuli Wang (Peking University), Pamela Shoemaker (Syracuse University), Gang (Kevin) Han (State University of New York at Fredonia), and E. Jordan Storm (Syracuse University), Images of Nations in the Eyes of American Educational Elites

Adrienne McFaul (Rutgers University), Paul Boxer (Rutgers University), and Andrew M. Terranova, (Stephen F. Austin State University), Investigating Effects of Identification with Real-World Aggressors and Victims on the Link between Exposure to Political Violence in the News Media and Aggressive Worldviews

Caroline Walters (Foreign Service Officer, U.S. Department of State) and Sheila Murphy (Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California), Framing the Olympic Games: The Impact of American Television Coverage on Attitudes toward International Cooperation and Foreign Policy in the United States

Gabriele Melischek (Austrian Academy of Sciences) and Josef Seethaler (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Media and International Relations: An Attributional Analysis of In-group and Out-group Perceptions in European Press Coverage of the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election

Joshua Cooper Ramo, The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us and What We Can Do About It, (Little, Brown and Company, 2009). Ramo (Managing Director of Kissinger Associates) looks at a world where unpredictability and relentless change have exceeded the capacity of traditional ideas and institutions to provide for security and prosperity. His book is filled with insights from history, literature, the arts, economics, psychology, complexity theory, human immunology, network theory and from actors as diverse as Hizb’allah and Google. In the first part of the book, Ramo seeks “to destroy, politely, the idea that our current thinking about international affairs is of much use.” He then develops an alternative model, which he calls “deep security,” grounded in resilience; institutional experimentation; new ways of seeing, thinking, and acting; and a spirit that “chafes against the classic instinct to hoard power and tightly con trol policy.”

Reviews of Nicholas J. Cull’s The Cold War and the United States Information Agency, (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 533 pages. Martha Bayles, “The Art of Global Public Relations,”The Wall Street Journal / Books, July 24, 2008. Bruce Gregory, Naval War College Review, Spring 2009, Vol. 62, No. 2, 122-123. Walter Roberts,Mediterranean Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 4, Fall 2008, 126-130, Allan M. Winkler, Journal of American History, Vol. 96, No. 1, June 2009 (forthcoming).

David Ronfeldt and Danielle Varda, The Prospects for Cyberocracy (Revisited),Working Paper,Social Science Research Network, Posted January 15, 2009, 70 pages. Ronfeldt (formerly with RAND) and Varda (University of Colorado at Denver), update Ronfeldt’s 1992 paper on cyberocracy, which advanced the view that information and its control is becoming a key organizing principle in governance — (1) “narrowly, as a form of organization that advances traditional forms of bureaucracy and technocracy” and (2) “broadly, as a form of government that may redefine relations between the state and society, and between the public sector and the private sector.” Their paper speculates that information is transforming the nature of the state in ways that will result in new kinds of democratic, totalitarian, and hybrid governments and new kinds of state-society relations. They see reasons for optimism and pessimism and suggest that information age societies will “develop new sensory apparatuses, a network-based social sector, new modes of networked governance, and ultimately the cybercratic nexus-state as a successor to the nation-state.”

For a five-page online summary of Ronfeldt and Varda’s paper that links it to the current writings of Clay Shirky, Yochal Benkler and others, see Patrick Philippe Meier, About ‘The Prospects for Cyberocracy (revisited)’ a paper of David Ronfeldt and Danielle Varda, posted on iRevolution, February 19, 2009.

Teachers and students of public diplomacy will find their work useful in thinking about the changing nature of diplomacy and political communication. For David Ronfeldt’s thinking on public diplomacy, see David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla, “Noopolitik: A New Paradigm for Public Diplomacy,” in Nancy Snow and Philip M. Taylor, eds,Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy, (2009), 352-365. Also available online in FirstMonday, Vol. 12, No. 8, August 6, 2007.

Gyorgy Szondi, Public Diplomacy and Nation Branding:nbsp Conceptual Similarities and Differences,Clingendael Discussion Paper in Diplomacy, No. 112, November 2008, 42 pages. Szondi (Leeds University) examines origins and definitions of public diplomacy and nation branding and five conceptual models of their potential relationships. His models range from no common ground, to varying levels of integration, to a model in which they are synonyms for the same concept. Szondi discusses whether they can be considered “legitimate professions” with “bodies of knowledge, training and education, professional organizations, and professional norms.”

U.S. Government Accountability Office, Higher Education:nbsp Approaches to Attract and Fund International Students in the United States and Abroad, [1]GAO-09-379, April 2009. In a report that contains findings, but no recommendations, GAO collected information from the United States, Australia, China, the European Commission, Germany, and the United Kingdom “to provide insight on how higher education is used to advance public diplomacy and development assistance goals.” GAO’s purpose: to examine “(1) the objectives the United States and selected peer governments seek to advance through higher education for international students and the approaches they employ to attract international students, and (2) the characteristics of major U.S. and peer government programs that fund higher education for international students to support public diplomacy and development goals.”

Gems from the Past

U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), Virtual Diplomacy Conference,Washington DC, 1997. More than a decade ago, USIP launched a pathbreaking Virtual Diplomacy Initiative focused on the transforming impact of information technologies on diplomacy and international conflict management. USIP’s opening conference featured keynote speeches by USIP President Richard Solomon, “The Information Revolution and Conflict Management;” Walter B Wriston (Citicorp), “Bits, Bytes, and Diplomacy;” and former Secretary of State George Shultz, “Diplomacy in the Information Age.” Other significant publications in USIP’s project include: papers by Canadian diplomat Gordon S. Smith, “Reinventing Diplomacy:nbsp A Virtual Necessity” (2000); European diplomat Jean Marie Guehenno, “The Topology of Sovereignty”(2000); and James N. Rosenau (George Washington University,“States, Sovereignty, and Diplomacy in the Information Age”(2000)

Tom Boellstorff, Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human, (Princeton University Press, 2008). In this academic inquiry into online virtual worlds, Boellstorff (Princeton University) uses anthropological methods and extensive fieldwork as the avatar “Tom Bukowski” in Linden Labs’ Second Life to study ideas about identity, society, culture, and the meaning of “virtual.” His study looks at such issues as gender, race, sex, conflict, collaboration, political economy, governance, the construction of place and time, relationships between individuals and groups, and fundamental questions about connections between actual and virtual. Boellstorff writes clearly for scholars and students, for those with extensive experience in online worlds, and for those who are curious.

Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA), The Role of Cell Phones in Carrying News and Information, National Endowment for Democracy, November 12, 2008. CIMA’s report summarizes findings of a conference of 75 representatives of international organizations, media development implementers, journalists and telecommunications companies hosted by the National Endowment for Democracy. Presenting organizations included MobileActive.org, InterMedia, Webbmedia Group LLC, Kiwanja.net, Appropriate IT, J-Lab, the Institute for Interactive Journalism, and Global Voices. Participants reached broad agreement on the following: cell phones have revolutionized global communication systems; rapid penetration makes good statistical evidence of impact difficult to achieve; new cell phone technologies are demand driven and the best ideas come from the bottom up; cell phone technology is two-way; cell phones highlight immediacy, but content still matters.

Johan Erikksson and Giampiero Giacomello, eds., “The Forum: Who Controls the Internet: Beyond the Obstinacy or Obsolescence of the State,” International Studies Review, Vol. 2, Issue 1, March 2009, 205-230. Erikksson (Sodertorn University College) and Giacomello (University of Bologna) reexamine and seek to move beyond both U.S. centered perspectives and a problematic debate on whether the global diffusion of the Internet signifies the demise of the state’s control of society or strengthens the state’s hold on society. The Forum discusses “what actors are controlling what aspects of Internet usage, and under what conditions. Includes contributions from Hamoud Salhi (California State University, Dominguez Hills) Myriam Dunn Cavelty (Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich), J. P. Singh (Georgetown University), and M. I. Franklin (Goldsmiths, University of London).

Nathaniel C. Flick and John A Nagl, “Counterinsurgency Field Manual: Afghanistan Edition,” and “The FP Interview with Gen. David H. Petraeus,” Foreign Policy, January/February, 2009, 42-50. Flick and Nagle (retired military officers and fellows at the Center for a New American Security) summarize the central elements of the U.S. military’s counterinsurgency doctrine in the context of Afghanistan: “Focus on protecting civilians over killing the enemy. Assume greater risk. Use minimum, not maximum force.” In this doctrine, “some of the best weapons do not shoot,” and actions are the best messages.

Craig Hayden and Shawn Powers, Intermap, Blog on International Media Argument Project: Political Communication, Rhetoric and Public Diplomacy. Hayden (American University, School of International Service) and Powers (University of Southern California, Annenberg School of Communication and Center on Public Diplomacy) describe Intermap as a website and blog that “presents news, opinions, and research on issues related to communication-centric foreign policy, public diplomacy, global media and news flows. More broadly, this site aims to investigate the intersections between communication, media studies and international relations scholarship that deal directly with how global controversies and politics are carried and sustained through media. We call this media argument: where media outlets, technologies, and tactics represent the symbolic and visual space for the contest of ideas between nations, citizens, non-state actors.”

H.R. 363, A Bill to Amend the United States International Broadcasting Act of 1994 to Reorganize United States International Broadcasting, and For Other Purposes, U.S. House of Representatives, January 9, 2009. Introduced by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and co-sponsored by Reps. Dan Burton (R-IN), Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), and Edward Royce (R-CA). H.R. 363 would abolish the existing Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and establish an independent United States International Broadcasting Agency. The new agency would be headed by a Presidentially appointed Board of Governors (structured in the same manner as the BBG). Broadcasting activities would be carried out by a Director appointed by majority vote of the Board under authorities delegated by the Board.

Roger L. Janelli and Dawnhee Yim, “Soft Power, Korea, and the Politics of Culture,” In Catching the Wave: Connecting East Asia Through Soft Power, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, October 5-6, 2007. Janelli (Indiana University) and Yim (Dongkuk University) briefly describe conceptual elements of soft power and assess China’s projection of soft power in South Korea before discussing South Korea’s pursuit of soft power through government and non-government organizations. They find a mixed record and argue that the greatest success in South Korea’s use of soft power is in its relations with North Korea. They conclude that nations can increase their influence by exporting culture primarily in cases where there is also mutual agreement and dependence on the benefits of political, economic, and military relationships.

Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation on Digital Media and Learning, November 2008. This white paper (by researchers associated with the Institute for Multimedia Literacy and the Annenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California and The Institute for the Study of Social Change and the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley) summarizes findings of a three-year study of new media ecology. The study was motivated by two questions: “How are new media being integrated into youth practices and agendas? How do these practices change the dynamics of youth-adult negotiations over literacy, learning, and authoritative knowledge?”

The study examines the use of new media in extending friendships and interests, self-directed, peer-based learning, genres of participation (hanging out, messing around, geeking out), and implications for educators, parents, and policymakers. The authors are skeptical of claims that “a digital generation is overthrowing culture and knowledge as we know it.” But they also believe “this generation is at a unique historical moment tied to longer-term and systemic changes in sociability and culture.” Public diplomacy scholars and practitioners will find this study useful in considering the implications of new media for understanding communication, identity, and new forms of civic engagement among youth cultures and networked publics. (Courtesy of Donna Oglesby)

Marc Lynch, “Abu Aardvark’s Middle East Blog,” The New ForeignPolicy.com. In January 2009, Lynch (George Washington University, co-director Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communications) moved his Abu Aardvark blog to Foreign Policy’s new blog team. Lynch’s blogging topics include Arab media and public opinion, Islamist movements, public diplomacy, Iraq, and Arab democratization. Other new bloggers on FP’s Passport website include Daniel Drezner (Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy), Stephen Walt (Harvard University), Tom Ricks (former military correspondent, The Washington Post ), and David Rothkopf (Carnegie Endowment). FP Passport blog will also partner with Small Wars Journal and the Eurasia Group.

Bree Nordenson, “Overload! Journalism’s Battle for Relevance in an Age of Too Much Information,”Columbia Journalism Review, November/December 2008, 30-32, 35-37, 40. Freelance writer Nordenson examines recent literature on information overload and the short supply of “our most precious resource” — attention. Excessive multi-tasking, relentless bits of stimulation that overload “brain labor,” and the negligible costs of distributing and storing information cause it to lose value. The solution, Nordenson argues, is not “more, faster, better,” but “depth, context, and coherence.” Journalists, scholars, and other analysts in the new information environment are needed, not as gatekeepers who control information, but as guides who assimilate useful knowledge and provide credible frameworks for understanding.

Kazuo Ogoura, “The Limits of Soft Power,” Japan Echo, Vol. 33, No. 5 (October, 2006), translated from “Sofuto pawa ron no shikaku,” Wochi Kochi (a quarterly journal of the Japan Foundation), June/July 2006, 60-65. Ogoura (President, Japan Foundation) finds fundamental problems in Joseph Nye’s views on soft power and “conceptual confusion” in its application to the power of Japanese culture overseas (“Japanese cool”) and to public diplomacy more broadly. Ogoura examines sources of soft power, indices for measuring it, and contrasting perspectives of those wielding soft power and those who are its “targets.” He concludes that “soft power as an actual political theory is loaded with ideology and riddled with contradictions and hypocrisy.” In Ogoura’s view, a self-evident link between culture and the state is “fatally flawed.” Accordingly, the term soft power should not be used as an element of state-based power, which “is gradually losing its meaning,” but as “the power of people engaged in cultural, religious, or educational activities to cultivate a common global awareness.” (Courtesy of Craig Hayden)

Mariya Y. Omelicheva, “Global Civil Society and Democratization of World Politics: A Bona Fide Relationship or Illusory Liaison?” International Studies Review, Vol. 2, Issue 1, March 2009 109-132. Omelicheva (University of Kansas) provides a literature review of studies on the role and influence of non-state actors in democratizing global politics. Her article looks at definitional dilemmas, proposes a new analytical framework, and makes recommendations for further research and development of empirical theory, methodologies, and conceptual elaboration.

Christopher Paul, Whither Strategic Communication: A Survey of Current Proposals and Recommendations, Occasional Paper, RAND Corporation, 2009. Paul (RAND’s International Security and Defense Policy Center) provides a useful and brief (19 pages) summary of key recommendations in the large collection of studies and opinion pieces on strategic communication and public diplomacy. Based on a review of 36 documents and more than a dozen structured interviews, Paul’s survey groups core themes and presents the frequency of key recommendations in 22 categories. He discusses consensus recommendations and others that made frequent appearances in the literature. Paul favors the term strategic communication, defined “broadly and inclusively.” He discusses alternative definitions and contrasting perspectives on strategic communication and public diplomacy.

Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), “The New Washington Press Corps: As Mainstream Media Decline, Niche and Foreign Outlets Grow,” Special Report, Pew Research Center, February 11, 2009. The Pew Center’s PEJ concludes that a significant decline in the reporting power of mainstream media has been nearly matched by a sharp growth in special interest media and a marked jump in foreign media represented in Washington. The report’s section on foreign media discusses the role of the State Department’s Foreign Press Center. The PEJ finds a large increase in foreign journalists has broadened rather than deepened coverage, because they “tend to fare poorly in the fight for access to key federal government decision-makers.” However, their numbers have “changed the way the world gets its news from Washington, and the implications of their presence for America’s image in the world are considerable.” (Courtesy of Belinda Yong)

William A. Rugh, “Repairing American Public Diplomacy,” Arab Media & Society, Issue 7, Winter 2009. Ambassador Rugh (The Fletcher School, Middle East Institute) looks at challenges facing U.S. public diplomacy with an emphasis on broadcasting to the Arab world. He calls for basic reforms in Radio Sawa, the al-Hurra television network, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Other recommendations include adjusting the “military-civilian imbalance” in public diplomacy media programs (giving primary responsibility to the Department of State); strengthening public diplomacy’s leadership and policy advisory role; and State Department reforms to include concentrated assignment of public diplomacy career track officers rather than distributing them throughout the organization.

Thomas Sanderson, David Gordon, and Guy Ben-Ari, International Collaborative Online Networks: Lessons Identified from the Public, Private, and Nonprofit Sectors, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), December 2008. This report summarizes findings of a workshop on international collaborative online networks (ICONs) led by CSIS and the CIA’s Global Futures Partnership in March 2008. Participants concluded that more ICONs fail due to an inability to engage people rather than inferior technology or lack of funds. Key challenges to ICONs include: building and maintaining trust, crafting incentives to attract and sustain members, effectively moderating networks to achieve intended goals, finding “the right partner(s),” and measuring network utility.

David Sanger, The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power, (Harmony Books, 2009). The New York Times’ chief Washington correspondent surveys the range of foreign policy legacies other than Iraq that face the Obama administration. Sanger’s informed and exceedingly well written insider narrative looks at a broad range of missed opportunities, unresolved problems, and future possibilities: Iran, Israel, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea, China, homeland security, cyber attack, and an opportunity to creatively address the rules and institutions of global finance.

Michael Schudson, Why Democracies Need an Unlovable Press, (Polity Press, 2008). In this collection of his recent essays, Schudson (University of California, San Diego and Columbia University) assesses “journalism’s special place in democracy,” the requirements of specialized knowledge (expertise), and the necessity of concentrated power (politicians and judges). His essays cover such issues as the functions of journalism, whether elements of American journalism are “detachable for export,” the “anarchy of events and the anxiety of story telling,” the meaning of conversation in the public sphere, and a fresh look at the always rewarding exchange between Walter Lippmann and John Dewey. (Courtesy of Donna Oglesby)

Micah L. Sifry, “A See-Through Society,” Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 2009, 43-47. Sifry (Sunlight Foundation and co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum) looks at how new media are creating greater political transparency and “changing the ecology of how people consume and create political information.”

Roger Silverstone, Media and Morality: On the Rise of the Mediapolis, (Polity Press, 2007). The late Roger Silverstone (London School of Economics) in his last book examines the “role of the media in the formation of social, civic, and moral space.” For Silverstone, global, regional, and local media in all their forms have become environmental, not as a separate sphere, but “as tightly and dialectically intertwined with the everyday” — as a “mediapolis” or space for social and political communication in which relations between neighbors and strangers are constructed or destroyed. This “mediapolis” is also a moral space in which questions of media justice, obligation, and responsibility can be examined. Silverstone’s inquiry looks at moral issues in a broad range of areas in mediated life: war, order, empire, minorities, terrorism, celebrity, and the natural environment.

P. W. Singer, “Robots at War: The New Battlefield,” Wilson Quarterly, Autumn 2008, 30-48. Singer (Brookings Institution and author of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, 2009) discusses how a coming generation of sophisticated “war bots” will change the nature of armed conflict and create new questions. Can they reliably separate friend from foe? What laws and ethical codes apply? What do others perceive when “we send out unmanned machines to fight for us?” Will tomorrow’s weapons with adjustable levels of autonomy be “too fast, too small, too numerous” for humans to direct? Will robot technologies diminish the connection between publics and war? Also available at this LINK.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, “America’s Edge: Power in the Networked Century,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2009, 94-113. The Dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and newly appointed director of the State Department’s Office of Policy Planning asserts that we live in a networked world in which “the measure of power is connectedness.” The U.S. “has a clear and sustainable edge,” she contends, in a world where states with the most connections will be central players through their ability to set the global agenda, drive innovation, and leverage sustainable growth. Networked power is based on “the ability to make the maximum number of valuable connections” and on the knowledge and skills needed “to harness that power to achieve a common purpose.” America’s comparative advantage rests on its relatively small population, a multi-cultural mosaic that has replaced the melting pot, insulation from massive migration flows, and a “culture of creation” that is open to global networks that can produce collaborative innovations. Slaughter states that America’s “edge is more potential than actual.” To actualize this potential, she calls for comprehensive immigration reform, increased overseas study, greater economic and social equality, more effort in engaging Latin America, and recognition of the need to orchestrate networks of public, private, and civic actors to address global problems.

Don Tapscott, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World, (McGraw Hill, 2009). Tapscott (Chairman, nGenera Innovation Network; University of Toronto; and author of Growing Up Digital, 1998) looks at a generation of young people (ages 11-31) that has come of age surrounded by digital media. With $4 million in research funds provided by large corporations, Tapscott’s investigators surveyed thousands of “Net Geners.” They conclude that this generation is engaging politically and “beginning to transform every institution of modern life” with a culture that values freedom of choice, customized things, collaboration, conversation, speed, innovation, and interactive learning. Tapscott also raises concerns: the “grown up digital” generation is giving away personal information that will undermine future privacy, and many hierarchical institutions are facing a generational clash if they refuse to adapt to changes that can topple established orders.

U.S. Government Accountability Office, Broadcasting to Cuba: Actions are Needed to Improve Strategy and Operations, GAO-09-127, January 22, 2009. GAO’s latest report on U.S. government international broadcasting finds the best available research shows Radio and TV Marti’s audience is small with less than 2 percent of respondents to telephone surveys since 2003 reporting tuning in to the stations during the week surveyed. GAO recommends the Broadcasting Board of Governors “conduct an analysis of the relative success and return on investment of broadcasting to Cuba,” promote greater sharing of audience research information among U.S. agencies, additional training for program reviews and journalistic standards, and steps to ensure that “political and other inappropriate advertisements are not shown” during broadcasts.

U.S. Public DIplomacy — Time to Get Back in the Game, Report from Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), Ranking Member, to Members of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, February 13, 2009. This report urges greater direct U.S. engagement with “average citizens overseas who have virtually no contact with Americans” through a program to re-establish “stand-alone” American Centers in secure facilities outside U.S. embassy compounds that would use English teaching to offset operating costs. The report argues that Information Resource Centers within embassies are “ill suited to encouraging the casual visitor;” that re-creation of USIA “is not realistic;” that the U.S. commitment to cultural centers should be comparable to that of Britain, France, Germany, and Iran; and that “increased accessibility need not come at the cost of security.” The report was written by Paul Foldi, a member of the Committee’s minority staff, and is based on his travel to Egypt, Jordan, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic in December 2008.

Gem From the Past

Glen H. Fisher, Public Diplomacy and the Behavioral Sciences, (Indiana University Press, 1972). Glen Fisher was a career foreign service officer, a sociologist, and a cultural anthropologist. He served also as Dean of the Center for Area and Country Studies at the Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute. In this book, published nearly four decades ago, Fisher used insights from psychology, sociology, and anthropology to shed light on why people in social groups think and act differently. In this pioneering book, Fisher draws on his work as a diplomat and as an academic to discuss the relevance of scholarship to public diplomacy and the importance comprehending publics to effective diplomacy.