Category: Bruce Gregory’s Resource List

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Issue #120

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

Bruce Gregory can be reached at BGregory@gwu.edu

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

Diplomacy’s Public Dimension Archive, Institute for Public Diplomacy & Global Communication, George Washington University

Matthew K. Asada, An Inter-Event Comparison of Two Historical Global Mega Events: FIFA 2022 and Expo 2020,  CPD Perspectives, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, October 2023. In this innovative study, Matthew Asada, a US Foreign Service officer on detail at CPD, compares the FIFA 2022 World Cup in Doha, Qatar and Expo 2020 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). His analysis compares their bidding narratives, how the events responded to external stimuli, the handling of the mega events, and their innovations. He develops his comparison in the context of geopolitics, the COVID-19 pandemic, cultural differences, and the whole of country focus of Qatar and the UAE on the events “as part of their public diplomacy strategies.” The article also provides a framework for future inter-event comparisons within a region and/or during a given period of time. Asada draws on extensive experience with World’s Fairs as a career diplomat and his access to serving practitioners enhanced by his status as an “insider.” He credits opportunities for reflection and in-depth research to time spent as a visiting senior fellow at USC. Photos and endnotes add to the value of this issue of CPD Perspectives.

Jessica Brandt, Bret Schafer, and Rachael Dean Wilson, A Strategy for US Public Diplomacy in the Age of Disinformation, G | M | F, Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), September 28, 2023. In this 9-page paper, the ASD team at the German Marshall Fund identifies practical ideas for harnessing truthful information to contest Russia, China, and other autocratic regimes in the information domain. They restrict their focus to “US international broadcasting and other strategic communication activities” — leaving recommendations to improve exchanges, cultural diplomacy, and other parts of the whole “public diplomacy puzzle” for another day. Key judgments include: (1) increase US government media efforts in Latin America, a region where Russian and Chinese state media efforts are growing substantially and US investment is a low priority; (2) emphasize narratives that attract younger populations — US innovation and entrepreneurship, technology and science, and support for freedom of choice, movement, and expression; (3) address shortcomings in American government and society directly, honestly and constructively; (4) avoid “whataboutism” responses that create false equivalencies and draw attention to content that would go largely unnoticed; (5) substantially upgrade listening and audience analysis tools, market research, and advanced social media analytics for tailored use in individual countries and regions; (6) improve and expand content sharing mechanisms such as social media content with whole of government inputs and creative engagement with the private sector; and (7) situate public diplomacy in a broader information strategy that leverages advanced cyber capabilities and the strength of financial markets to impose costs on state sponsored information manipulation campaigns. 

Jihad Fakhreddine, “Performance of Congress-Financed Alhurra TV: Do Viewership Numbers and American Taxpayer Money Spent Add Up?”  November 1, 2023, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy. Jihad Fakhreddine is a former research director for Gallup’s opinion research operations in the Middle East and North Africa. In this capacity he directed national media surveys for the Broadcasting Board of Governors, since renamed the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM). Using longitudinal data and informed analysis, he raises important questions. First, how is it that USAGM increased its global weekly reach by an impressive 47%, from a weekly audience of 278 million to 410 million, between 2017 and 2022 when during the same period its annual budget increased only 4.5%, from $794 million to $830 million? Second, why did the audience share for USAGM’s Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN) experience a “freefall” decline compared with USAGM’s other networks? His probing assessment is based in part on comparison of MBN’s weekly audience data, presented by USAGM in its reports as absolute figures, with percentages of the growing total Arab adult population. Third, why despite an expensive overhaul of Alhurra in 2017-2018 did its audiences continue to decline? Congress, he argues, should base funding decisions on the performance of individual networks versus total USAGM performance and “returns to the marginal increases in the budget.”

Allie Funk, Adrian Shahbaz, and Kian Vesteinsson, Freedom on the Net 2023: The Repressive Power of Artificial Intelligence, Freedom House, October 2023. The Freedom House team documents an increase in attacks on free expression and a now 13-year decline in internet freedom. Their report also points to how AI has made online disinformation campaigns more sophisticated and enhanced online censorship. To combat these trends, they call for adaptation of lessons learned from past internet governance experiences to uses of AI technologies and less reliance on self-regulation by private companies. The 45-page report explores these findings in detail, contains graphics, and explains its research methodology.

Robert M. Gates, “The Dysfunctional Superpower,”  Foreign Affairs, November/December, 2023, 30-44. In an essay written before the Israel/Hamas War, Robert Gates (former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director) contends the United States “now confronts graver threats to its security than it has in decades, perhaps ever.” Allied adversaries—Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. Powerful military rivals in both Europe and Asia. China’s rise in all elements of power. Threats that are compounded by political dysfunction at home and lack of concern by many Americans. Gates assesses each threat and offers his agenda for “meeting the moment.” First, address the breakdown of decades-long bipartisan agreement on US global leadership. Second, convey through “a drumbeat of repetition” to American voters and the world the “message” that US military power, US alliances, and international institutions the US designed are essential to deterring aggression. Third, embrace a strategy that incorporates all instruments of national power for “dealing with the entire world.” Fourth, strengthen the US nuclear deterrent, greatly expand the US Navy, and change the way Congress appropriates military funds and the Defense Department’s sclerotic acquisition process. Gates devotes a paragraph, in keeping with his recent writings, to strengthening public diplomacy through adoption of a global strategy, spending more money, and the integration and synchronization of many “disparate communications activities.” His thinking is consistent with an American way of diplomacy that for centuries has been characterized by the prioritization of hard power and episodic attention to public diplomacy when confronted by threats and fear.

Carol A. Hess, Aaron Copland in Latin America: Music and Cultural Politics,  (University of Illinois Press, 2023). This book is a masterpiece. Hess (University of California, Davis) provides a beautifully written and deeply researched account of Aaron Copland’s four State Department-sponsored trips to Latin America between 1943 and 1963. Her narrative explores Copland’s concerts, talks, and media interviews; his spotlight on Latin America’s classical music composers; and his commitment to engaging Latin Americans in rural and urban settings. She also puts Copland’s cultural diplomacy in context. The Good Neighbor Policy. The geopolitics of World War II and the Cold War. The FBI’s investigation and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s interrogation of Copland in Congressional hearings. Historical and cultural perspectives of Latin American composers and critics. The origins and evolution of US cultural diplomacy. Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, Hess mines a broad range of primary sources. She views Copland through the lens of a musicologist and recipient of two Fulbright Fellowships. Her book combines a nuanced scholarship that develops broad themes with vivid portrayals of Copland as a composer and cultural diplomacy practitioner. She also “takes the reader behind the scenes” to examine the hard day-to-day work of cultural diplomacy. Chapters can be read at Oxford Academic, Illinois Scholarship Online. See also Jeffrey Day, “Music Diplomacy: Professor Traces Impact of State Department and Aaron Copland’s Latin American Outreach,”  October 24, 2023, UCDavis. (Suggested by Robert Ogburn).

Lonnie R. Johnson, “Remembering Fulbright: The Senator, The Program, and Public Diplomacy,”Video presentation (1 hour), October 2, 2023, First Monday Forum, Public Diplomacy Council of America. Johnson (former executive director of Austria’s binational Fulbright Commission) uses carefully curated images and evidence from his book research to portray the many sides of Senator J. William Fulbright. In this captivating presentation, Johnson discusses Fulbright’s memories of World War II, his experiences as a Rhodes scholar, his opposition to America’s war in Vietnam, and his establishment of the Fulbright exchange program. Importantly, Johnson addresses hard questions stemming from Fulbright’s opposition to civil rights legislation throughout his career as a Democratic Senator from Arkansas. In his presentation, and in an open letter, Johnson provides a reasoned and detailed critique of the systematic “erasure of Fulbright from the historical record” and adoption of a new Fulbright “brand narrative” by the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Paul Webster Hare, Juan Luis Manfredi-Sánchez, and Kenneth Weisbrode, eds., The Palgrave Handbook of Diplomatic Reform and Innovation,  (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). In this handbook (775 pages), Hare (Boston University), Manfredi-Sánchez (Georgetown University and University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain), and Weisbrode (Bilkent University, Turkey) have compiled 36 chapters written by 40 diplomacy scholars and practitioners from across the globe. Their central premise is that diplomacy today is neglected and often dysfunctional. Many of its methods, key institutions, and conventions established decades ago have not kept pace with technologies and transformational challenges. Their goal is critical examination of ways to change and improve diplomatic practices. Topics are diverse: the limits of diplomatic imagination, knowledge diplomacy, digitalization, artificial intelligence, disinformation, challenges to innovation, regional diplomacy, city diplomacy, health diplomacy, humanitarian diplomacy, science diplomacy, an array of country case studies, and more. This handbook is institutionally priced and beyond reach for most individual purchasers. But online abstracts illuminate chapter contents and constitute a starting point for researchers and interested practitioners. 

Allison M. Prasch, The World Is Our Stage: The Global Rhetorical Presidency and the Cold War, (University of Chicago Press, 2023). Prasch (University of Wisconsin, Madison) looks at how the travel abroad of US presidents contributed to the projection of power and ideas during the Cold War. Her deeply researched book examines “five foundational moments” in the “rhetorical presidency:” Truman at Potsdam, Eisenhower’s “Goodwill Tours,” Kennedy in West Berlin, Nixon in the People’s Republic of China, and Reagan in Normandy. For an informed and positive review, see Nicholas J. Cull, “A Review of the World Is Our Stage: The Rhetorical Presidency and the Cold War,”  November 10, 2023, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy. As Prasch is aware, and as Cull points out, the travel of earlier US presidents also contributed to American diplomacy’s public dimension. Theodore Roosevelt in Panama. Woodrow Wilson at Versailles. And Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 22 foreign trips. 

Prasch’s book prompts the thought that nineteenth century roots of the “rhetorical presidency” can be found in the two-and-a-half-year world tour of President Ulysses S. Grant shortly after he left office in 1877. Accompanied by his wife Julia and New York Herald journalist John Russell Young, the “Hero of Appomattox” was greeted by cheering crowds and feted by world leaders in Europe, the Middle East, Russia, India, China, and Japan. Young wrote detailed accounts of Grant’s meetings with Britain’s Queen Victoria, Germany’s Otto von Bismarck, Belgium’s King Leopold II, Russia’s Czar Peter Alexander, Pope Leo XIII and other luminaries who received him as “President Grant.” He participated in civic gatherings and July 4 festivities at US missions. Young’s articles were read enthusiastically in the US and abroad. Recognizing their political value, President Rutherford B. Hayes authorized the warship USS Vandalia to take Grant’s party to stops in the Mediterranean and Egypt and the USS Richmond to do the same in Asia.  

Dina Smeltz and Craig Kafura, Americans Grow Less Enthusiastic About Active US Engagement Abroad, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, October 2023. The Chicago Council’s Smeltz (a former opinion research analyst for USIA and the State Department) and Kafura report that while six in ten Americans still support an active role in world affairs, this 57% reflects a decline from 70% in 2018. Their study also finds that for the first time a slim majority of Republicans (53%) say the US should stay out of world affairs. Graphics display trends in support for global engagement by Republicans, Democrats, and Independents from 1974 to the present. Despite these findings, the Council’s survey states that a majority (70%) are confident in the US ability “to manage global problems.

Albert Triwibowo, “The Prospect and Limitations of Digital Diplomacy: The Case of Indonesia,” The Hague Journal of Public Diplomacy, online publication September 18, 2023. In this article on the digitalized diplomacy of the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Triwibowo (Parahyangan Catholic University, Bandung, Indonesia) contributes to the literature on diplomacy practitioners in Asia. His qualitative study draws on interviews with diplomats, officials, scholars, and Indonesian citizens. The article develops four themes. It opens with a brief literature-based discussion of digitalized diplomacy and varieties of experiences in other countries. A second section explores Indonesia’s diplomacy between 2020 and 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic. A third section analyzes strengths and limitations of Indonesia’s digital activities, including a tendency to prioritize information sharing, emphasize domestic publics and issues, and avoid using technologies to advance tailored, evidence-based, and narrative-based diplomatic strategies. In his conclusion, Triwibowo suggests ways in which Indonesia and other countries can achieve change in leveraging digital technologies to diplomatic advantage.

US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, Public Diplomacy and DEIA Promotion: Tellling America’s Story to the World (2023), November 21, 2023. In this field-oriented 28-page special report, co-authored by the Commission’s executive director Vivian Walker and senior advisor Deneyse Kirkpatrick, the Commission examines “the integration of principles of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA)” in the US government’s public diplomacy outreach and program activities. Its findings are based on 36 focus group discussions conducted by Walker and Kirkpatrick with 18 US missions in all six of the Department’s geographic regions during February-May, 2023. Their nine recommendations are grouped in three categories: resources and capacity building; program content, process, and evaluation; training and mentoring. The authors identify challenges born of resource-driven choices and social and institutional barriers. They conclude, however, that “Overall, there is a very good story to tell about DEIA in the field.” The report is well written, effectively organized, and contains excellent graphics.  

US Department of State, Enterprise Artificial Intelligence Strategy FY2024-2025: Empowering Diplomacy Through Responsible AI, October 2023. State’s “first-ever” AI strategy is a vision statement that identifies four goals, nine objectives, and an organizational structure. Its goals: (1) integrate AI into a sustainable and secure AI-enabling infrastructure; (2) foster a culture that embraces AI technology and provides AI training and support services; (3) establish an enterprise capacity that ensures AI is applied responsibly, manages algorithmic risk, and assesses data quality; and (4) become an active innovator in applied AI. State’s organizational structure includes an Enterprise Governance Board, an AI steering committee, and a Responsible AI official. See also the Department’s fact sheet. As with most Department (and NSC) strategy documents, it does not provide a roadmap and criteria for making cost/benefit decisions.

Recent Items of Interest

Maria Abi-Habib, Michael Crowley, and Edward Wong, “More Than 500 U.S. Officials Sign Letter Protesting Biden’s Israel Policy,”  November 14, 2023, The New York Times; Michael Birnbaum and John Hudson, “Blinken Confronts State Dept. Dissent Over Biden’s Gaza Policy,”  November 14, 2023, The Washington Post.

Sohaela Amiri, “The Future of Noncoercive Statecraft and International Security,”  October 27, 2023, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Nick Anderson, “With Surge from India, International Students Flock to United States,”  November 13, 2023, The Washington Post.

Matt Armstrong, “The Fulbright Paradox: How the ‘Relic of the Second Zulu War’ Continues to Undermine National Security, Part I,”  November 10, 2023 (see comments and replies in the thread; “Analyzing ‘Information Campaigns’ Through an Anachronistic Lens,”  October 24, 2023, Arming for the War We’re In.

Matthew Asada, “CPD Issue – October 2023,”  LA Monthly: Dispatches from USC’s Public Diplomat in Residence.

Babak Bahador, “Media Tip Sheet: The Role of Media and Images in the Israel-Hamas War,”  October 20, 2023.

David Ellwood, “The Future of UK Soft Power: An Endless Agony in London,”  October 3, 2023, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Paul Farhi, “GOP Senators Blast Voice of America for Hamas ‘Militants’ Terminology,” November 29, 2023, The Washington Post.

Loren Hurst, “Driving Public Diplomacy Innovation With Focused Coordination,” November 30, 2023, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Jeff Jager, “American Foreign Policy Decision-Making at the Agency Level: The Department of State as Exemplar?” November 13, 2023, fp21.

Robert Kagen, “A Trump Dictatorship Is Increasingly Inevitable. We Should Stop Pretending,” November 30, 2023, The Washington Post.

Laura Kelly, “Divisions Over US Support for Israel Deepen at State Department,”  November 9, 2023, The Hill.

Ariella Marsden, “Israel Shuts Down Public Diplomacy Ministry, Budget Heads to South,”  October 22, 2023, The Jerusalem Post; Carrie Keller-Lynn and Amy Spiro, “Cabinet Votes to Shutter Denuded Public Diplomacy Ministry, Send Budget to South,”  October 22, October 2023; Amy Spiro, “Public Diplomacy Minister Quits Post Amid War, Citing ‘Waste of Public Funds,’”  October 13, 2023, The Times of Israel.

Steven Lee Myers, “U.S. Tries New Tack on Russian Disinformation: Pre-Empting It,”  October 26, 2023, The New York Times.

Steven Lee Myers and Sheera Frenkel, “In a Worldwide War of Words, Russia, China and Iran Back Hamas,”  November 3, 2023, The New York Times.

Ivan Nechepurenko, “Russia Detains a U.S. [RFE/RL] Journalist,”  October 19, 2023, The New York Times.

Hans Nichols, “Scoop: Internal State Dept. Memo Blasts Biden, U.S. Policy on Israel-Hamas War,” November 13, 2023, Axios.

Office of Inspector General, US Department of State,  US Agency for Global Media’s Major Management and Performance Challenges Fiscal Year 2023, November 2023.

Farah Pandith, “The U.S. Faces a Public Relations Crisis in the Arab and Muslim World,”  October 27, 2023, Council on Foreign Relations.

Pamela Paul, “A Chill Has Been Cast Over the Book World,”  October 18, 2023, The New York Times.

Anna Popkova, “The Public Diplomacy of Political Dissent,”  October 30, 2023, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Zach Przystrup, “How 75 Years of the Fulbright Program Bolsters the ‘Special Relationship’ Between the US and the UK,” November 27, 2023, The Baltimore Sun.

Tara D.Sonenshine, “Media Is Meant To Inform, But Is It Stoking the Flames of War in the Middle East?”  November 9, 2023, The Hill.

Zed Tarar, “Analysis| What the Tech Industry Gets Wrong About the Risks of AI,”  October 25, 2023, The Diplomatic Pouch

Matias Tarnopolsky, “Cultural Diplomacy May Seem Pointless. That Won’t Stop Me,”  November 16, 2023, The New York Times.

Chris Teal, Interview With Visiting Professor and IPDGC Public Diplomacy Fellow, 2022-2024 [9-minute video], Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, George Washington University.

Bill Wanlund, “Fixing a Communications Deficit,” November 25, 2023, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Dan Whitman, “Training Ukrainians To Manage International Conflict,” November 3, 2023, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Gem from the Past

George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language” first published in Horizon, London, 1946. Word choices are hard in diplomacy, because intent and context create meaning and because words both evaluate and describe. They do “propaganda;” we do “public diplomacy.” “Disinformation” is used to describe intentional lies and misused to describe selective rhetoric intended to persuade. “Systemic” can be a misleading synonym for “persistent.” “Collateral damage” is an abstraction. Word choices have political consequences. Lawmakers attack government media for avoiding and using the label “terrorists.” Exaggerations gain attention in a world of information abundance. Euphemisms are favored by the risk averse. The mission of exchanges is “mutual understanding.” The mission of government journalists is to “support freedom and democracy.” 

Orwell’s powerful essay, cited previously on this list in 2012, continues to provide helpful guidance. Language, he argued, is not a “natural growth.” It is an instrument we shape for purposes. English is full of bad habits which “spread by imitation.” Bad habits “can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.” Orwell’s concerns included particularly the reflexive use of words that have “no agreed definition” and that have evolved to become general framing terms for a positive good or an object of disagreement (e.g., “terrorist,” “communist,” “fascist”). “The invasion of one’s mind by ready-made phrases,” he wrote, “can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them.”

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

Posted on

Issue #119

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

Bruce Gregory can be reached at BGregory@gwu.edu

Isaac Antwi-Boasiako, “African Governments’ Foreign Publics Engagement: Public Diplomacy in African Perspective,”  South African Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 1, December 2022. In this article, Antwi-Boasiako (Technological University Dublin) looks at Africa’s public diplomacy through a continental lens. He discusses ways in which African governments use public diplomacy to attract foreign aid, tourism, and investments in nation-building and development. He examines diaspora engagement, the roles of public relations consultants, and tools such as nation branding, cultural diplomacy, media relations, and digital communication. And he assesses challenges facing African countries: insufficient opinion research, lack of human and financial resources, the absence of government media platforms, and social media accounts that exist as “noticeboards” rather than means for dialogic communication. Antwi-Boasiako sets the stage for additional scholarship and evidence-based research on the public diplomacy of individual African actors and public diplomacy’s relevance to nation building and development. By implication his thinking is foundational also to Africa’s understudied diplomatic engagement with foreign publics in the context of conflict mitigation and climate, health, migration, and other transnational challenges. His article is a welcome contribution to a western dominant and rising Asian public diplomacy literature.  

Federica Bicchi and Marianna Lovato, “Diplomats as Skillful Bricoleurs of the Digital Age: EU Foreign Policy Communications from the COREU to WhatsApp,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Online publication, August 21, 2023. Bicchi (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Lovato (University College Dublin) rely on practice theory to assess the effects of digitalization on time, space, and confidentiality in blended diplomacy (physical, digital, and analog; simultaneous online and offline). They set their analysis in the context of face-to-face communication and digital technologies in EU diplomacy: the rise and decline of COREU, (CORrespondence EUropéenne, a secure cyphered communications node in each member state’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs), email, and texting. They argue that EU diplomats tend to operate as skilled bricoleurs who interact creatively with digital tools. That is, they embrace the medium most appropriate to a particular function and their socio-cognitive needs. They tolerate limited losses in security in order to embrace advances in speed. Diplomacy in the digital age, the authors argue, is shaped primarily by the agency and innovation of practitioners rather than technological determinism or institutional reluctance to change. Digitalization is constructively changing the center/periphery divide. But it also has adverse effects stemming from wealth divides (digital tools are expensive) and gender divides (expectations that female diplomats with home care responsibilities should be “logged in” most of the time). Bicchi and Lovato conclude that increasing reliance on technologies means face to face communication is no longer the primary way diplomacy is carried out. The next stage of digitalization (big data, AI, ChatGPT) will surely influence diplomatic practices, they contend, but it will not mean the end of written diplomacy. The full article is accessible online.

Nicole Dungca and Claire Healy, “Revealing the Smithsonian’s ‘Racial Brain Collection,’”  and Claire Healy, Nicole Dungca, and Ren Galeno, “Searching for Maura,” August 14, 2023, The Washington Post.These articles are primarily concerned with the racist practices and body parts trade of the Smithsonian’s physical anthropology division in the late 19th and early 20th century. An important sub-theme is the US government’s decision to bring Indigenous Filipinos to be displayed for educational and entertainment purposes at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. Smithsonian curator Aleš Hrdlička used this as an opportunity to collect brains from those who died while being transported from the newly acquired US territory. “Searching for Maura” is an illustrated story of an Igorot woman brought to the US for display in the fair’s “Philippine Exposition.” The harsh conditions of her transport. Her death a few days before the fair began. The popularity of the 47-acre Philippine Exposition and the Igorot Village.  News coverage stereotypes. Their exploitation for visiting crowds. And Hrdlička’s use of the remains of those who died for research purposes. The literature on international exhibitions focuses largely on their public diplomacy value, their strengths and limitations, funding challenges, and their regulation under international treaties. Issues raised by the St. Louis World’s Fair are an under-researched part of the literature. See also “1.1-1904-Worlds-Fair-Exhibition-of-the-Igorot-Filipino-People,” Asian American Education Project.

Philip S. Kosnett, ed., Boots and Suits: Historical Cases and Contemporary Lessons in Military Diplomacy,  (Marine Corps University, 2023). This compendium, edited by retired Foreign Service officer and former US ambassador to Kosovo Philip Kosnett, consists of fourteen case studies on the US military’s role as a diplomatic actor. Topics include military diplomacy in the 19th and 20th centuries, conflict and collaboration between soldiers and diplomats, activities of political-military advisors and military attachés, and civil-military operations. Twenty-first century cases focus on hybrid warfare, counterterrorism, provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the role of military diplomacy in US relations with Turkey and China. Boots and Suits does not provide a systematic conceptual analysis of military diplomacy. Rather its value derives from an abundance of evidence-based insights on the practice of military diplomacy. The 440-page book is accessible online. See also the excellent review by Robin Holzhauer in The Foreign Service Journal, September 2023, 82-84.

Andrew Little and Anne Meng, “Measuring Democratic Backsliding,” revised August 13, 2023, available at SSRN, and forthcoming in PS: Political Science and Politics. Little (University of California, Berkeley) and Meng (University of Virginia) challenge reliance on democracy decline indicators based on the “subjective” judgment of expert coders. They point to annual reports by think tanks such as Freedom House and Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), numerous academic papers, and a conventional media narrative that democracy is in recession worldwide. Little and Meng call for empirical studies that examine “objective” indicators such as whether incumbents who lose accept defeats in an election and whether ruling parties violate term limits. Their study examines the role of coder bias and leaders engaged in “subtle undemocratic action.” They recognize the difficulties in defining and measuring democracy, and they cautiously conclude they “cannot rule out that the world is experiencing major democratic backsliding.” However, they argue that empirical evidence does not support the claim that it is.

Ilan Manor, “Domestic Digital Diplomacy: Digital Disruption at the Macro and Micro Levels,”  The Hague Journal of Public Diplomacy, Online publication, August 3, 2023. For Manor (Ben Gurion University of the Negev), the phrase domestic digital diplomacy describes how diplomats use social media and other digital technologies to communicate with their own nation’s citizens. He focuses in this article on domestic digital disruption as a dynamic technology-induced turbulence at and between two levels: a macro level in societal and national domains and a micro level in diplomats’ working routines. Because research has emphasized the micro level, he turns his attention to how disruption at the macro level influences working routines and how it can have societal level consequences. He argues persuasively that digital disruption exists not just in the diplomacy of ministries of foreign affairs but in how government ministries as a whole conduct external and domestic facing diplomatic activities to domestic audiences. The article is grounded in a case study of how the UK’s foreign office (FCO) used Twitter to circulate images to the British people with intent to illuminate an uncertain post-Brexit future. It divides into four parts: a literature review of the semiotic approach to image analysis and how images can serve as “memory carriers,” a statement of his research question and hypothesis, analysis of images used by the FCO, and discussion of the importance of domestic digital diplomacy to an understanding of digital disruption.

Ilan Manor and Elad Segev, “Follow To Be Followed: The Centrality of MFAs in Twitter Networks,”  Policy & Internet, 2023: 1-26. Manor (Ben Gurion University of the Negev) and Segev (Tel Aviv University) address three research questions based on network analyses conducted between 2014 and 2016. Why do some ministries of foreign affairs (MFAs) attract more peers to Twitter than others? Why do some MFAs follow more of their peers compared to others?  And what factors relate to increases in the number of peers an MFA attracts?  They conclude digital reciprocity is a key factor — followed by regional proximity, technological proficiency, and national media environments — in explaining why some MFAs do better than others in gaining scarce attention in a world of information abundance. What Joseph Nye calls the “paradox of plenty.”  

Office of the Director of National Intelligence, National Intelligence Strategy 2023, August 2023. The US Intelligence Community (IC) outlines six goals in its 2023 strategy document. (1) Position the IC for intense strategic competition. (2) Recruit, develop, and retain a talented and diverse workforce that operates as a united community. (3) Deliver interoperable and innovative solutions at scale. (4) Diversify, expand, and strengthen alliances and partnerships. (5) Expand IC capabilities and expertise on transnational and transboundary challenges. (6) Enhance the resilience of the United States, its allies, and its partners. The document leads as usual with geopolitics, but it gives ample space to transnational issues, the rising power of non-state entities, and open-source intelligence. See also “The Lawfare Podcast: The National Intelligence Strategy with Michael Collins of the National Intelligence Council,” September 1, 2023.

Sanjana Patel, “Does UNGA Matter? Examining the Research for Face-to-Face Diplomacy,” September 21, 2023, fp21. Diplomats have long maintained that face-to-face dialogue — what Edward R. Murrow called “the last three feet” bridged by personal conversation — has unique value in diplomatic practice. Patel (University of Pennsylvania and an fp21 researcher) examines evidence for this proposition in social psychology, political science, and other disciplines. Her brief article discusses the impact of face-to-face meetings on individuals, face-to-face diplomacy and public opinion, the economic impacts of face-to-face diplomacy, and whether digital formats are more or less effective. She concludes that academic literature provides a neurobiological foundation for face-to-face diplomacy and demonstrates a variety of benefits. The literature is less supportive of alternative propositions: for example, that personal relationships are merely symbolic or that they represent underlying power structures. Her research also indicates, however, that effects of face-to-face diplomacy are not huge, and they cannot overcome flawed policies or intractable differences — views long held by most public diplomacy practitioners.

Christopher Paul, Willam Marcellino, Michael Skerker, Jeremy Davis, and Bradley J. Strawser, Planning Ethical Influence Operations: A Framework for Defense Information Professionals, RAND, 2023. Military scholars and practitioners in information operations often develop concepts with relevance for diplomacy. A principles-based framework for determining whether influence operations are ethically permissible, developed by Christopher Paul and his colleagues at RAND, is a prime example. They argue their framework is needed for three reasons: concerns about manipulation, disinformation, and propaganda as threats to individual autonomy; insufficient attention to ethical concerns in planning military influence operations; and a need to separate ethics of influence from ethics of force. Based on their review of relevant scholarship and research on ethics in war, they argue practitioners should follow principals of necessity, effectiveness, and proportionality. They discuss these principles in a framework with five criteria. “Military influence efforts should (1) seek legitimate military outcomes, (2) be necessary to attain those outcomes, (3) employ means that are not harmful (or harm only those liable to harm), (4) have high likelihoods of success, and (5) should not generate second-order effects beyond what is intended.” Their study develops the meaning of these criteria and recommends ways for military practitioners to implement them in planning and operations. A pdf file of the report can be downloaded.  

Rosemary Salomone, The Rise of English: Global Politics and the Power of Language, (Oxford University Press, 2021). Salomone (St. John’s University School of Law) travels in many instructive directions in this exploration of the advantages and downsides of English as today’s global common language. Benefits include communication advantages for tourists, political leaders, diplomats, and academic researchers; commodification for economic value; and its use as a source of soft power. Downsides include (1) its generation of intense legal and political conflicts as value-added dynamics compete with pride in national languages; (2) societal stratification as English language proficiency competes with traditional languages in India, South Africa, Morocco, Rwanda, and other countries; (3) control of language in colonialism, and (4) deprivation for citizens in anglophone countries of the economic, cultural, and political benefits of multilingual proficiency. Her book is populated by an abundance of historical trends, evidence-based claims, and diverse narratives (e.g., controversies over China’s Confucius Institutes, the rise of English as the language of protesters for international audiences, and contrasting official language policies of the UN and EU). See also David Priess, “Chatter: Geopolitics and the Rise of the English Language with Rosemary Salomone,” Lawfare podcast, August 31, 2023.

Giles Scott-Smith, “Beyond the ‘Tissue of Clichés’?: The Purposes of the Fulbright Program and New Pathways of Analysis,” All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace, 11(2), 2022: 177-192.  Scott-Smith (Leiden University) brings years of deeply researched scholarship to this insightful article on how evaluative perspectives and social science concepts advance critical thinking on the functions of exchange programs. He surveys the Fulbright literature to assess how its purposes have been framed in the context of US global influence, the production and dissemination of knowledge, and liberal internationalism. He then discusses analytical approaches in the social sciences that offer innovative ways to conceptualize exchanges in international interactions: “geographies of exchange” (management scholar Chay Brooks), “brain circulation” (geography professor Heike Jöns), “centers of calculation” (philosopher and anthropologist Bruno Latour), “enlightened nationalism” (political scientist Calvert Jones), and “parapublics” (international relations scholar Ulrich Krotz). Scott-Smith concludes that interpersonal relations are at the core of the Fulbright program’s method, but moving beyond the “tissue of clichés” requires “situating these relations within economies of exchange that reveal the wider power relations at work.” Beyond the “soaring rhetoric of the Fulbright-Hays Act and Fulbright ideology as a whole,” he argues, there is a field of research that needs to be pursued. 

Efe Sevin, “The Humanistic Turn in Public Diplomacy,” in Robert E. Brown, Burton St. John III, and Jenny Zhengye Hou, eds., The Global Foundations of Public Relations: Humanism, China, and the West, (Routledge, 2022), pp. 162-181. Sevin (Towson University) explores the “turbulent history” of public diplomacy as a term and category of practice and academic study. His objective is to evaluate whether “the humanistic turn in public relations and public relations of everything (PRe) idea” might provide an intellectual home. Sevin’s inquiry is grounded in a deeply researched literature review. He examines debates on whether public diplomacy is a bounded field with multidisciplinary characteristics. Importantly, he demonstrates how practitioners have shaped its evolution. He explains Robert E. Brown’s idea that public relations is ubiquitous — an activity engaged in by everyone as an act of self-creation, self-expression, and self-protection. And he explores “parallels between public relations and public diplomacy.” Sevin concludes that public diplomacy is too “multi-faceted” to be situated in a single discipline or institution. He finds both promise and difficulty in “the humanistic turn” in public relations. Its promise lies in a holistic framework that emphasizes emotional, aesthetic, performative, and social aspects of public relations, and is not limited by singular methods and circumstances. At the same time, he is sensitive to conceptual overreach. “If public relations is in everything, including public diplomacy, then nothing really is public diplomacy.” His analysis is an imaginative contribution to debates on boundaries in diplomacy’s public dimension and the problem of limits in diplomacy’s ascending societization. 

Zed Tarar, “Analysis | Harnessing AI for Diplomacy: Five Tools to Make Your Work Easier”  August 28, 2023, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University.  US diplomat Zed Tarar, currently on assignment in London, continues his thoughtful series at the intersection of technology and diplomacy with this first of three articles on AI. After extensive personal testing, he offers five tools that have significant potential for diplomacy practitioners. (1) UpWord.ai enables research by helping users summarize large texts. (2) Translations powered by GPT-4 do not replace skilled linguists, but it frequently outperforms Google Translate. (3) Transcriptions by OpenAI’s Whisper of large quantities of audio and video at machine speed and “acceptable levels of accuracy.” (4) Personal AI, meaning tools such as chatbot, PI that give constructive feedback to ideas and arguments through voice interaction. (5) Grammerly does a “fair job” of improving written text.

US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, “The Use of Artificial Intelligence in Public Diplomacy,”Transcript of Panel Discussion, June 2023. In this Commission meeting, executive director Vivian Walker and Commission members hosted a virtual panel of experts to discuss AI and the future of public diplomacy: Alexander Hunt (Public Affairs Officer, US Embassy Guinea), Jessica Brandt (Brookings Institution), and Ilan Manor (Ben Gurion University of the Negev). They agreed, with qualifications, that AI can be “a force for good” in public diplomacy despite the risks, and they explored its potential for a broad range of planning, operational, and assessment activities. Among their conclusions: machine tools can perform work that expands time for practitioners to engage publics; AI can amplify not replace human activity; and practitioners must be vigilant about AI’s capacity to generate biased, inaccurate, and inappropriate content. See also Vivian S. Walker, “AI and the Future of Public Diplomacy,”  August 22, 2023, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Recent Items of Interest

Matthew Algeo, “The Diplomat Who Started a (Culture) War,”  September 2023, The Foreign Service Journal.

Matt Armstrong, “What’s Up With the Advisory Commission, and Personal Stuff,”  September, 7, 2020, Arming for the War We’re In.

Julian E. Barnes, “Russia Pushes Long-term Influence Operations Aimed at the U.S. and Europe,”  August, 25, 2023, The New York Times.

Martha Bayles, “The Spirits I have Summoned, I Cannot Banish Now! The Future of A.I. in Hollywood—and Beyond,”  Summer 2023, Claremont Review of Books.

Antony J. Blinken, “The Power and Purpose of American Diplomacy in a New Era,” September 13, 2023, Remarks to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Max Boot, “In Vietnam, Biden Discovers the Limits of Democracy Promotion,”  September 10, 2023, The Washington Post.

William J. Burns, “American Diplomacy with William J. Burns,” Podcast with James M. Lindsay (30 minutes), Council on Foreign Relations.

FP Contributors, “Is Soft Power Making a Comeback?”  September 24, 2023, Foreign Policy.

Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware, “American Hatred Goes Global: How the United States Became a Leading Exporter of White Supremacist Terrorism,”  September 19, 2023, Foreign Affairs.

Ash Jain, “The Scrambled Spectrum of U.S. Foreign-Policy Thinking,”  September 27, 2023, Foreign Policy.

David J. Kramer, “Presidential Centers Affirm That ‘Democracy Holds Us Together,’”  September 7, 2023, George W. Bush Institute.

Philip Kosnett and Michael Keating, “A Corps of Battlefield Diplomats for the Next Hot War,”  September 8, 2023, Center for European Policy Analysis.

Raja Krishnamoorthi, “The U.S. Cannot Afford to Lose the Soft-Power Race With China,”  September 29, 2023, Foreign Policy.

Carol Lee, Courtney Kube, and Peter Nicholas, “White House Told U.S. Ambassador to Japan to Stop Taunting China on Social Media,”  September 20, 2023, NBC News.

Christina Lu and Clara Gutman-Argemi, “Biden Puts U.S.-China Science Partnership on Life Support,”  August 24, 2023, Foreign Policy.

Jason Miller, “New Top-secret Cloud Strategy Underpins State Dept. Bureau’s Modernization Efforts,”  August 28, 2023, Federal News Network.

Suzanne Nossel, “Cultural Decoupling From China Is Not the Answer,”  September 26, 2023, Foreign Policy.

Ben O’Loughlin, “On Strategic Ontologies,” July 2023, PDx Podcast with Will Youmans (21 minutes), GWU, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication.

Jimmy Quinn, “House GOP Bill Seeks Targeted Cuts to Voice of America over Mismanagement Allegations,”  September 18, 2023, National Review.

“Reassessing Obama’s Biggest Mistake: How Much Was His Red Line in Syria to Blame for America’s Lost Credibility,”  August 22, 2023, The Economist.

Liam Scott, “Indonesian Officials Harass White House Pool Reporter [VOA’s White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara] After Harris-Widodo Meeting,” September 6, 2023. VOA News.

Maria Sherman, “Quincy Jones is State Department’s First Peace Through Music Award As Part of New Diplomacy Push,”  September 27, 2023, ABC News.

Tara D. Sonenshine, “The Battle Over Borders and Why They Remain Important Today,”  September 28, 2023; “Despite Threat of Shutdown, Congress Cannot Afford to Give Up On Ukraine,”  September 21, 2023, The Hill.

Ian Thomas and Nikki Locke, “Taking a Cultural Relations Approach to Sustainable Development: British Council Case Study,”  September 7, 2023, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

W. Robert Pearson, “Secret Baseball in China,”  August 2023, American Diplomacy.

Shearon Roberts, “Black Women Elected Officials: Advancing Equity Through City and Nation-State Public Diplomacy,”  May 2023, CPD Perspectives, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

David Satterfield, ”The Role of US Diplomacy in a Changing World,”  August 2023, American Diplomacy.

Joseph Stieb, “Two Cheers for the Cold War Liberals,”  September 15, 2023, War on the Rocks.

Tracy Wilkinson, “State Department Visits L.A., Other Cities to Drum Up Biden’s Efforts Abroad,”  September 26, 2023, Los Angeles Times.

Zachary Woolfe, “John Cage Shock: When Japan Fell for Cage and Vice Versa,”  September 23, 2023, The New York Times.

Gem from the Past

Brian Hocking, “(Mis)Leading Propositions About 21st Century Diplomacy,” Crossroads: The Macedonian Foreign Policy Journal, April-October, 2012, 73-86. As scholars and practitioners wrestle with diplomacy’s ambiguous boundaries and an explosion of diplomatic actors and “adjectival diplomacies,” this 2012 article by the distinguished British diplomacy scholar Brian Hocking has enduring value. His argument is grounded in concerns that debates about diplomacy in an era of profound change obscure its “fundamental character” and that some propositions about diplomacy mislead. 

First, much of the discourse on modalities of diplomacy in an era of rapid change confuses ongoing essential functions of diplomacy process with structures and methods adopted in a given period of time. 

Second, preoccupation with “newness” in diplomacy’s actors, hybrid forms, and post-modern characteristics emphasizes discontinuities at the expense of continuities. 

Third, unclear boundaries and an “expansive” approach to diplomatic agency risk “emptying diplomacy of much of its meaning and employing it as a synonym for broad patterns of global interaction.” 

Fourth, emphasis on decentered networks obscures their reality as multidimensional phenomena with varieties of organizational designs that are context-contingent and that blend hierarchical and network forms.

Fifth, we must move from a perspective that privileges the role of foreign ministries to one that focuses on their value added in national diplomatic systems.

Sixth, there is a compelling case for the continuing importance of traditional “generalist” diplomatic skills in shifting patterns of global, regional, and local power; increasingly complex policy networks; and radical changes in diplomacy’s practices and institutions. 

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

Posted on

Issue #118

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

Bruce Gregory can be reached at BGregory@gwu.edu

Marguerite Cooper, “Through the Rearview Mirror: The 1970s Reform of Women’s Role in Diplomacy,” The Foreign Service Journal, 100, No. 6, (July/August, 2023), 44-47. In this informed and instructive article, retired Foreign Service Officer (FSO) Marguerite Cooper narrates “what near ground zero looked like 50 years ago for women” in US diplomacy. After summarizing varieties of inequities, she describes reform initiatives that over time led to change: FSO Alison Palmer’s successful Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaint in 1971, her sex discrimination class action lawsuit against the State Department in 1976 (Cooper was a co-plaintiff), the important role of the Women’s Action Organization, and initiatives of State’s Open Forum Panel. Cooper cites FSJ articles and Alison Palmer’s book, Diplomat and Priest: One Woman’s Challenge to State and Church (2015), as useful supplements to her account. Palmer’s account provides essential additional information. She and other FSOs were activists in State’s American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union in the 1970s. Palmer is generous in her praise for AFGE’s EEO specialist Judith Hirst and FSO Harrison Sherwood “who devoted hundreds of hours to working” on her EEO complaint and for the Foreign Service women who were named plaintiffs in her class action lawsuit.  

Mai’a K. Davis Cross and Saadia M. Pekkanen, eds., “Space Diplomacy: The Final Frontier of Theory and Practice,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 18, Issue 2-3 (May 2023). In this timely and innovative special issue, Cross (Northeastern University) and Pekkanen (University of Washington, Seattle) compile essays that analyze theories and practices of an eclectic array of diplomacy practitioners. They include scientists, astronauts, space enthusiasts, professional diplomats, space agencies, private companies, start-ups, think tanks, and empowered individuals. The essays illuminate ways “persuasion, communication, and bargaining” are shaping interactions, conflicts, and outcomes in the burgeoning global space economy. In their introduction Cross and Pekkanen discuss varieties of space diplomacy, science space diplomacy as a distinct category, their framework of analysis, and an overview of the articles. This HJD special issue is instructive for many reasons, particularly its focus on the range of practitioners, their uses of methods in diplomacy’s public dimension, and ways diplomatic practice informs both theory and political, economic, and military policies and outcomes. Their introduction is especially valuable for its insights at the crossroads of theory and practice in an understudied domain in societized diplomacy. All articles are open-access. 

Research Articles

William Stewart and Jason Dittmer (University College, London), “More-than-Human Space Diplomacy: Assembling Internationalism in Orbit.”

Kunhan Li (University of Nottingham) and Maximilian Mayer (Bonn University), “China’s Bifurcated Space Diplomacy and Institutional Destiny.”

Saadia M. Pekkanen, “Japan’s Space Diplomacy in a World of Great Power Competition.”

Marianne Riddervold, (Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences) “The European Union’s Space Diplomacy: Contributing to Peaceful Co-operation?”

Nikita Chiu (University of Exeter), “Orbis non sufficit—Co-operation and Discord in Global Space and Disarmament Governance.”

Nancy Riordan (University of Massachusetts, Boston), Miloslav Machoň, and Lucia Csajková (Prague University of Economics and Business), “Space Diplomacy and the Artemis Accords.”

Mariel Borowitz (Georgia Institute of Technology), “Let’s Just Talk About the Weather: Weather Satellites and Space Diplomacy.”

Practitioners’ Perspectives

Jan Wörner (German Academy of Science and Engineering), “Space Diplomacy.”

Rick W. Sturdevant (United States Space Force), “Deterrence and Defense: The US Military and International Partnering for Peace in Outer Space.”

Naoko Yamazaki (Space Port Japan Association), “Space Diplomacy from an Astronaut’s Viewpoint.”

Frank White (The Human Space Program, Inc.), “Space Diplomacy and the ‘Overview Effect.’”

Timothy Garton Ash, Homelands: A Personal History of Europe,(Yale University Press, 2023). In his latest book, Garton Ash, celebrated journalist, intellectual, author of Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World, The Magic Lantern, and many other works, turns to a panoramic view of Europe’s journey over the past half century. Part memoir, part history, and part critical reflection, his account narrates events as seen by an observer and participant: the postwar destruction, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 2008 financial crisis, Brexit, the war in Ukraine, and more. Garton Ash’s vignettes, authoritative analysis, and beautiful prose will captivate both those who have lived Europe’s odyssey and those who have not. (Courtesy of Dick Virden)

Eytan Gilboa, ed. A Research Agenda for Public Diplomacy, (Edward Elgar, 2023). The contributors in this important new compendium are a globally and academically diverse mix of senior scholars at the top of their game, scholar/practitioners, and younger scholars with considerable promise. Gilboa (Bar-Ilan University) grounds the volume on several assumptions. Public diplomacy is an emerging field of study and practice. It is “the most multidisciplinary field in the social sciences.” It is a field struggling with critical questions relating to concepts, boundaries, methods, and practice. His Research Agenda examines many of these questions and research priorities. Gilboa’s overview essay and the attention knowledgeable scholars and practitioners give to under-researched issues are what make this book valuable.  

A still unresolved predicate question going forward, however, is whether public diplomacy should be considered an independent field of study and practice. Gilboa believes it should be, but he is attentive to an alternative, which he frames as the claim by some that public diplomacy is a “subfield of international relations or public relations (PR).” This alternative and his argument for an independent field of study are challenged by a key consideration. If public diplomacy is now central to the practice of diplomacy, as compelling evidence increasingly shows, should it be framed as an important and integrated dimension of diplomacy studies and diplomatic practice? Regardless of how this “field of study” issue is resolved, the chapters in the book constitute a significant contribution to critical questions in scholarship and practice.

Following Gilboa’s opening chapter, “Moving to a new phase in public diplomacy research,” A Research Agenda divides into three parts: actors, disciplines, and instruments.

Part I

·      Caitlyn Bryne (Griffith Asia Institute), “States: public diplomacy contests in Asia”

·      Phillip Arceneaux (Miami University), “International organizations”

·      Candace L. White (University of Tennessee) and Wilfried Bolewski (Freie Universität Berlin), “Corporate diplomacy”

·      Efe Sevin (Towson University) and Soheala Amiri (University of Southern California), “City diplomacy”

·      Paul Lachelier (Learning Life) and Sherry L. Mueller (American University), “Citizen diplomacy”

Part II

·      Nicholas J. Cull (University of Southern California), “History”

·      Craig Hayden (Marine Corps University Command and Staff College), “International relations”

·      Kathy R. Fitzpatrick (University of South Florida), “Public relations”

·      R.S. Zaharna (American University) and Amelia Arsenault (US Department of State), “Relational and collaborative approaches” 

·      Alicia Fjällhed (Lund University) and James Pamment (Lund University), “Disinformation”

·      Steven L. Pike (Syracuse University), “Management”

Part III

·      Natalia Grincheva (University of Melbourne), “Cultural diplomacy”          

·      Simon Anholt (Anholt-Ipsos Nation Brands Index), “Nation as brand”

·      Shawn Powers (US Department of State), “International broadcasting”

·      Giles Scott-Smith (Leiden University) “International exchanges”  

·      Ilan Manor (Ben Gurion University), “Digital public diplomacy” 

·      Jian Wang (University of Southern California) and Jack Lipei Tang (University of Southern California), “Hybrid communication”

Alan K. Henrikson, “The Role of Diplomacy in the Modern World,” chapter 11 in Reimagining the International Legal Order​, ed. Vesselin Popovski and Ankit Malhotra (Routledge, 2024),145-168. Henrikson (Lee E. Dirks Professor of Diplomatic History Emeritus and founding Director of Diplomatic Studies at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy) explores an important and under-researched question. “What, if any, is the international legal framework within which public diplomacy is, and should be, conducted?” He frames his analysis in a discussion of five interrelated steps: (1) the origins and “historically evolved” meaning of the term public diplomacy, (2) the range of public diplomacy activities and how they can vary with country size, (3) his central legal-normative question, (4) challenges to public diplomacy in the international political system and global communications space, and (5) a critique of responses to these challenges and suggestions of ways public diplomacy could strengthen the international legal order and contribute to global comity and human enlightenment. Scholars and students will benefit from Henrikson’s analysis and the considerable supporting evidence he provides. His chapter is especially valuable for its interrogation of legal, normative, and organizational foundations for public diplomacy—and for the questions generated by his concluding discussion of norms, narratives, power, and diplomacy in the context of cyber security and the war in Ukraine. 

Journal of Public Diplomacy, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Summer 2023). JPD’s current issue contains the following articles.  All are open access.

Kadir Jun Ayhan (Ewha Womans University), “Rethinking Soft Power from the Power Recipient’s Perspective: Voluntary Compliance is Key.” In his lead essay, JPD’s Editor-in-Chief explores three ideal types of compliance with soft power wielders’ desires: fear, appetite, and spirit-based compliance. He examines their meaning in a historical case study of regional actors’ compliance with a China-centric hierarchical order in East Asia.

Thomas A. Hollihan and Patricia Riley (University of Southern California), “Public Diplomacy Arguments and Taiwan.” Hollihan and Riley examine public statements, military actions, and media narratives in relations between the US, Taiwan, and China; Taiwan’s use of soft power, and evidence drawn from the cases of the COVID pandemic, silicon chips competition, war in Ukraine, and heightened tensions between the US and China.

Nicholas J. Cull (University of Southern California), “From Propaganda to Reputational Security: An Intellectual Journey Around the Role of Media in International Relations.”  In this invited article, acclaimed historian Nick Cull reflects on his career and intellectual journey from his student years to the present. 

Roger Croix Webb (US Department of State), “Behavior Change Through Public Diplomacy: Incorporating Behavioral Science Into Program Design.” Webb explores how behavioral science principles can provide better ways to evaluate public diplomacy activities. He discusses limitations of traditional evaluation methods, a case study on the evaluation of US-sponsored educational advising in Central Africa using behavioral studies of two scholars, Angela Duckworth and Patricia Devine, and whether the case was scalable or a one-off success. A thought-provoking article—well worth an academic seminar and focused conversations in think tanks and foreign ministries.

Natalya Steane (Coventry University, UK, and Aarhus University Denmark), [Book review essay], Jane Knight, Knowledge Diplomacy in International Relations and Higher Education, (Springer Nature, 2022).

Lindsay M. McCluskey, John Maxwell Hamilton, and Amy Reynolds, “When Propaganda Became a Dirty Word,”  Journalism History 49, no. 2 (2023): 149-157. McCluskey (State University of New York, Oswego), Hamilton (Louisiana State University) and Reynolds (Kent State University) examine how the words “propaganda” and “publicity” were used during the years prior to, during, and after World War I. Their article combines a narrative of how the words were used in public discourse, in a military/war context, and in mass communication scholarship with a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of their usage in The New York Times. Their research documents the evolution of propaganda from narrow and benign meaning prior to World War I to a term that after the war achieved a pejorative meaning that rendered it useless except as a label for adversaries. “Publicity” did not “come out of the war unscathed.” But, although it sometimes had “an unwholesome side,” it did not experience a negative usage anywhere near that of “propaganda,” and it continued to be used in a variety of promotional and public relations contexts.

Philip Taubman, In the Nation’s Service: The Life and Times of George P. Shultz, (Stanford University Press, 2023). It takes a writer with unusual talent to render a compelling biography of a protean figure whose years in the private sector included appointment as dean of the University of Chicago’s School of Business, stints at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study and Hoover Institution, and president of the global construction and engineering company Bechtel. And whose public service included combat as a US Marine in World War II, Dwight Eisenhower’s Council of Economic Advisors, Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Labor, Office of Management and Budget Director, and Treasury Secretary, and seven years as Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State. Former New York Times national security reporter Philip Taubman meets the challenge and then some. His insider account of Shultz’s tenure as Secretary of State, a substantial part of the book, fascinates for its focus on his relations with Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze, his role in the Geneva and Reykjavik summits, his complicated view of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), and his tensions with Reagan administration hardliners. Of particular interest are Shultz’s quiet conversations with Soviet leaders about how science and technology “are creating new ways of working, new ways of making decisions.” They listened intently, Taubman writes, even if their actions did not always accord with their intellectual enthusiasm. In his diplomacy and speeches, Shultz was an information age pioneer. “Closed and compartmented societies,” he argued, “cannot take advantage of the information age.” He would not be a good fit with today’s Republican Party. But he was a very good fit with the diplomacy that ended the Cold War.

Spring 2023 Snapshot on International Educational Exchange,  Institute of International Education (IIE), June 2023. IIE’s Snapshot, written by Julie Baer and Mirka Martel,contains data on trends in international students studying in the US in spring 2023 and US study abroad in summer 2023 and academic year 2023-2024. Key findings: most international students are studying in person on US campuses, international student applications continue to increase, and US institutions are supporting refugees and displaced international students, 

Richard Wike, et al., International Views of Biden and U.S. Largely Positive,  Pew Research Center, June 27, 2023. Pew lists two top line findings in this survey of global attitudes in 23 countries, many of which it identifies as US allies. (1) Views of President Biden and the United States overall are largely positive (Biden’s median favorable rating is 53%; the US has a median favorable rating of 59%). (2) Overwhelmingly, most (a median rating of 83%), believe the US intervenes in the affairs of other countries, “but most also believe the US contributes to peace and stability around the world.” Opinion is “essentially divided” on whether the US considers the interests of others when it is making foreign policy decisions.” On a range of questions relating to what Pew calls “American soft power,” the US gets above average marks for its technology, entertainment, universities, and military. It receives lower marks for its standard of living, and many think the US “is lesstolerant and a more dangerous place to live compared with other wealthy countries.”

US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, The Role of Public Diplomacy in Democracy Promotion, ACPD Official Meeting Minutes, April 13, 2023. The Commission’s meeting, held at Stanford University, focused on ways US public diplomacy programs can more “effectively promote and defend democratic values in an increasingly authoritarian and illiberal global context.” Issues discussed by panelists included attention to multilateral approaches, more listening, avoiding the term “US democratic values,” a massive increase in exchanges, treating all US broadcasting networks as grantees, and making democracy promotion a higher State Department priority. The panel, moderated by executive director Vivian Walker, included Larry Diamond (Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution), Kathryn Stoner (Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law), and Michael McFaul (former US Ambassador to Russia and Director, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies).

Recent Items of Interest

Gordon Adams, “Diplomatic Disaster: The State Department Is Its Own Worst Enemy,”  July 9,2023, Sheathed Sword.

Ravi Agrawal, “Why America Has a New Tech Ambassador [Nathaniel Fick],”  August 14, 2023, Foreign Policy.

“America’s States Are Pursuing Their Own Foreign Policies,”  June 1, 2023, The Economist.

Peter Baker, “To Foreign Policy Veteran, the Real Danger Is at Home,”  July 1, 2023, The New York Times.

Martha Bayles, “Propaganda in Paradise?”  Spring 2023, 79-80. Claremont Review of Books; “Remembering Henry Pleasants: The Career of a Critic Who Found the Meaning of Jazz,”  Summer 2023, The Hedgehog Review.

Peter Beinart, “This Reagan-era Villain Has No Place in the Biden Administration,”  July 12, 2023, MSNBC. 

“Britain Has Blown Its Reputation as a World Leader in Aid: Blame a Botched Merger of Its Aid and Diplomatic Corps, Lower Spending, and More Secrecy,”  July 27, 2023, The Economist.

Paul Farhi, “Voice of America Drops Host Accused of Spreading Russian Propaganda,”  June 17, 2023, The Washington Post.

Jack Forrest, “Biden Nominates Controversial Former Trump-appointee to Public Diplomacy Commission,”July 3, 2023, CNN

Ellie Geranmayeh, Jason Pack, Barbara Stephenson, and Garvan Walshe, “Is Netlix’s ‘The Diplomat’ Factual or Farcicial?”  June 4, 2023, Foreign Policy.

Elaijah Gibbs-Jones, “U.N. Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield’s Secret Weapon? ‘Red Beans and Rice Diplomacy,’”  June 20, 2023, MSNBC.

Stephen Golub, “The U.S. Has a Mixed Record of Promoting American-style Democracy Abroad,”  July 4, 2023, The Washington Post.

Marc Grossman, Marcie Ries, and Ronald Neumann, “The State Department Needs a Reserve Corps,”  July 9, 2023, TheMessinger.

Elizabeth A. Harris and Alexandra Alter, “A.I.’s Inroads in Publishing Touch Off Fear, and Creativity,”  August 2, 2023, The New York Times.

Fred P. Hochberg, “Cultural Diplomacy is an Essential US Strategy,”  July 19, 2023, The Hill.

The IC Data-Driven Future: Unlocking Mission Value and Insight, August 2023,The IC Data Strategy, 2023-2025, United States Intelligence Community.

Joseph Lieberman and Gordon Humphrey, “To Save Putin’s Victims, Launch an Information War Against the Kremlin,”  August 1, 2023, The Hill.

Thomas Kent, “Demoting the D-Word,”  June 14, 2023, Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA)

Rachel Oswald, “Cardin, Hagerty Aim to Fund Modernization Panel for US Diplomacy,” June 5, 2023, Roll Call.

Michael Rubin, “Voice of America Mismanagement Is a National Security Issue,”  June 7, 2023, Washington Examiner.

James Ryerson, “Harry G. Frankfurt, Philosopher With a Surprise Best Seller, Dies at 94”  July 17, 2023, The New York Times.

Nadia Schadlow, “The Forgotten Element of Strategy,”  June 22, 2023, The Atlantic.

“SFRC Chairman Menendez Delivers Floor Remarks Prior to Cloture Vote for Elizabeth Allen,”  June 13, 2023, Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Tara Sonenshine, “Hiroshima Attack Marks Its 78th Anniversary—Its Lessons of Unnecessary Mass Destruction Could Help Guide Future Nuclear Arms Talks,”  August 1, 2023, The Conversation.

Tara D. Sonenshine, “See the World, Know the World: The Case for Study Abroad,”  June 30, 2023; “Blinken’s Beijing Trip Puts US Diplomacy Back on Track,”  June 20, 2023, The Hill.

“The US Needs a Better Publicist,” June 2023, Talking Points, 19-20, Foreign Service Journal.

Mary Yang, “Biden to Nominate Elliott Abrams, Who Lied Over Iran-Contra, to Key Panel,”  July 8, 2023, The Guardian.

Fareed Zakariah, “The United States Can No Longer Assume That the Rest of the World is on its Side,”  June 2, 2023, The Washington Post.

Gem From the Past  

Raphaël Ricaud, John L. Brown’s Epistolary Wit—The Difficult Art of Practicing Public Diplomacy, Angles: New Perspectives on the Anglophone World, published online November 1, 2015. John L. Brown, PhD in Romance languages, Paris correspondent for the New York Times, poet, and contributor to numerous European and American literary journals became a highly regarded Foreign Service Officer and cultural attaché with the US Information Agency in Brussels, Rome and Mexico City during the early Cold War. His voluminous papers are archived in Georgetown University’s Lauinger Library. In this online essay, Ricaud (Paul Valery University, Montpellier, France) mines his papers to show how Brown used wit for diplomacy purposes. Humor strengthened cross-cultural ties. Quips relieved tensions. It was a way to communicate “what could not otherwise be said.” 

As Ricaud summarizes: Brown “was not the epitome of the cultural attaché because he used wit and diplomacy. He stood out because he used wit as diplomacy. His examination of Brown’s correspondence with friends, colleagues, and host country citizens is an illuminating window into cultural diplomacy as practiced by a legendary master of the profession. Scholars and practitioners will find this paper a useful supplement to John L. Brown, “But What Do You Do?” Foreign Service Journal 41, no. 6 (June 1964): 23-25. His son, diplomat John H. Brown, served in the US Foreign Service from 1981-2003 and is known for his highly regarded Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review. 

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

Posted on

Issue #117

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

Bruce Gregory can be reached at BGregory@gwu.edu


“America’s New Embassy in Beirut is Vast: But for Its Diplomats the Most Important Thing May Be To Leave It,” The Economist, May 20, 2023, 39. The new US embassy in Beirut covers more than 43 acres (second only to US embassy Baghdad). Surrounded by high concrete walls and barbed wire, it is projected to cost $1 billion. “Is it an embassy or a military base?” asks a Twitter observer. The Economist’s brief article provides a bit of history going back to the 1983 embassy bombing in Beirut and the fortress embassy logic of a report for the State Department by retired admiral Bobby Ray Inman. The new embassy’s size may signify America’s commitment to the Middle East, The Economist notes, “But the diplomats who work there will need to find a way to sally beyond its walls.” A longer narrative might have expressed the views of many US diplomats, including Ambassadors Ronald Neumann, Barbara Bodine, and Ryan Crocker, who question the risk aversion of political leaders “that has driven us into the bunker” and the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy’s 1985 report responding to Inman.

Phillip Arceneaux, “Popes as Public Diplomats: A Longitudinal Analysis of the Vatican’s Foreign Engagement and Storytelling,” International Journal of Communication  17 (2023), 3514-3536. Arceneaux (Miami University) covers a lot of ground in this analytically impressive and well-written article. His conceptual framework and literature review positions public diplomacy in the context of political uses of public relations, strategic narratives, and image and reputation management. He provides informative details on the unique political and religious identity of the Catholic Church, the dual role of the papacy, and the ascending role of the Pope as “the religious state’s primary public diplomat” beginning in the mid-twentieth century. The heart of the article is a qualitative textual and longitudinal analysis of strategic narratives in Vatican diplomacy between 1964 and 2021. Research questions include how papal foreign engagement (1) evolved in audience selection, (2) ranged geographically, and (3) was manifest in papal rhetoric. His answers are given in charts, tables, and clearly presented conclusions with careful attention to limitations and areas for further research. Attention to the travel, rhetoric, and personal public diplomacy of recent popes is a key strength of the article. Arceneaux’s study adds to a much longer history of connections between the Catholic Church, political power, and public diplomacy: the non-derogatory roots of the word propaganda in the Church’s “congregatio de propaganda fied” established in 1622 to propagate the Catholic faith, the language-competent and cross-culturally skilled Catholic missionaries who helped to advance French and Spanish imperial reach in the Americas, and the launch of Vatican Radio in 1931.  

Mark L. Asquino, Spanish Connections: My Diplomatic Journey from Venezuela to Equitorial Guinea, (Xlibris US, 2023). US diplomat Mark Asquino’s memoir is a welcome addition to the rapidly growing collection of oral histories and memoirs now illuminating diplomatic study and practice. His account takes him from his childhood in Providence RI, a PhD at Brown University, time in Spain as a Fulbright lecturer on American literature to the US Foreign Service. A career that began in USIA, spanned public diplomacy assignments in Venezuela, Spain, Romania, Chile, and Uzbekistan, and appointments as deputy chief of mission in Kazakhstan and US ambassador in Equatorial Guinea. Asquino has a knack for telling a good story. Foreign Service heroes are identified; others are profiled obliquely. Lessons are drawn from encounters with each. His book is filled with experiences and strategies for coping with sharp and unexpected career turns—as well as good advice for junior officers navigating new terrain and rising professionals considering a career in the Foreign Service.

Martin Baron, “We Want Objective Judges and Doctors. Why Not Journalists, Too?” The Washington Post, March 26, 2023. Objectivity in journalism, government media, politics, diplomacy, and how we think about reality is a topic that is never settled. Two former executive editors of The Washington Post frame current debate. Leonard Downie, Jr. surveyed a growing belief in news rooms that “journalistic objectivity is a distortion of reality”—a concept that prevents reporting grounded in diverse experiences and points of view. The “news media must move beyond whatever ‘objectivity’ once meant to produce more trustworthy news” he argues. (“Newrooms That Move Beyond ‘Objectivity’ Can Build Trust.” The Washington Post, January 30, 2023). Martin Baron responds with a vigorous defense of an objectivity standard that is not neutrality, false balance, or the work of journalists without conscious and unconscious bias. Drawing on Walter Lippmann (Liberty and the News) and Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach (The Elements of Journalism), Baron argues, “objectivity” lies in methods, standards, principles, not the individual. Failure to meet standards “does not render them outmoded. Rather it makes them more necessary.” Louis Menand covers similar ground in a historical assessment ranging from Walter Lippmann’s Public Opinion, to Cold War partnerships of some media organizations with the CIA, to the issues raised by Baron (“Making the Press, the State, and the State of the News,” The New Yorker, February 6, 2023, 59-65). The New York Times’ A.G. Sulzberger continues the debate in “Journalism’s Essential Value,” Columbia Journalism Review, May 15, 2023.

Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History, (Yale University Press, 2023). When diplomacy scholars consider the origins of US public diplomacy before the Cold War they typically look to Benjamin Franklin and other founders. As if it began with the turn of a switch in 1776. Yale historian Ned Blackhawk has written a powerful new book that traces five centuries of interactions—first between Native peoples and European settlers and then with the United States. This was a “mutually constitutive” relationship in which Natives had agency in diplomacy, trade, and warfare. Blackhawk builds on a generation of scholarship that treats American history as one of encounter and relationships rather than discovery. His book contains numerous examples of preferences for diplomacy and treaty-making on both sides that must be taken into account in addition to narratives of violence and dispossession. Missing in the literature on US diplomacy’s public dimension is the foundational importance of the cross-cultural blend of diplomatic practices that emerged in the Americas during the century and a half before US statehood.

Anthony M. Eames, A Voice in Their Own Destiny: Reagan, Thatcher, and Public Diplomacy in the Nuclear 1980s, (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023).  Anthony Eames is director of scholarly initiatives at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute. He also teaches at George Washington University. In this carefully researched book, he explores how President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher used public diplomacy to build support for nuclear deterrence policies in the face of countervailing pressures of antinuclear movements in Europe. It is an informative account that drills deep, not wide. It places public diplomacy in the context of a single important issue, in the events of a single decade, and in the way it was understood and used by national leaders and their advisors. Eames shows how public diplomacy mattered in achieving policy outcomes. His book also demonstrates how the sustained attention of national leaders can make a positive difference in support for public diplomacy’s organizations, budgets, and technologies. His focus is state-centric, but he is open to broader perspectives. Of particular interest, is Eames’s attention to differences between what he calls “private science diplomacy” between scientists, officials, and military leaders and “public science diplomacy” in which communication strategies are used to leverage the expertise of scientists to shape attitudes among foreign and domestic publics.

“Focus on Public Diplomacy—The Cold War and Beyond,” The Foreign Service Journal, May 2023. The lead article in this month’s FSJ features “Up Close with American Exhibit Guides to the Soviet Union, 1959-1991,” an overview by FSJ editor Shawn Dorman that includes numerous photos and interviews with nine former guides: Jane M. Picker, Tom Robertson, John Herbst, Rose Gottemoeller, Mike Hurley, Kathleen Rose, Allan Mustard, Laura Kennedy, and John Beyrle. Mark G. Pomar’s ( ) “Broadcasting Behind the (Opening) Iron Curtain” builds on his recently published Cold War Radio: The Russian Broadcasts of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Matthew Asada (a US Foreign Service Officer assigned to USC’s Center on Public Diplomacy) writes about “The Journey to Expo 2020 Dubai and Its Legacy.”

“The Global Information Wars: Is the U.S. Winning or Losing,” Hearing before the US Senate Subcommittee on State Department and USAID Management, May 3, 2023. In a Senate Foreign Relation Subcommittee hearing chaired by Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) with ranking member Bill Hagerty (R-TN).  A 2-hour video is available at the link. Witnesses and statements include:

·      Statement of Amanda Bennett, (CEO, US Agency for Global Media)

·      David Stillwell, (Air Force Academy Institute for Future Conflict)

·      Statement of Christopher Walker, (National Endowment for Democracy)  

·      Statement of Jessica Brandt, (Brookings Institution)

Natalia Grincheva, “The Past and Future of Cultural Diplomacy,”  International Journal of Cultural Policy, published online March 6, 2023. Is “cultural diplomacy” a sub-field within public diplomacy, a strategic tool of governmental practice in the conduct of foreign affairs, or perhaps a synonym for soft power? Or is it, as Natalia Grincheva (University of Melbourne) maintains in this thought-provoking article, “an independent academic discipline” with maturing research and growing acceptance? Her claim, intended as a conversation opener, is grounded in a review of the literature since the 1960s using the single search term “cultural diplomacy” in the Scopus database. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, her article discusses the geographic distribution of the literature based on authors’ academic affiliations, varieties of themes, old and new research topics, and the roles, functions, and tools of cultural diplomacy actors. Grincheva’s research provides further evidence of growing interest in the societization of diplomacy and its hybrid domains. It also generates worthwhile questions, stated and implied, about cultural diplomacy as an epistemic field and how it and diplomacy more broadly are circumscribed in human relationships. 

Yana Gorokhovskaia, Adrian Shahbaz, and Amy Slipowitz, Freedom in the World 2023: Marking 50 Years in the Struggle for Democracy, Freedom House, March 2023. Two key findings stand out in Freedom House’s latest report on political rights and civil liberties. Global freedom declined for the 17thstraight year. The struggle for democracy may be reaching a turning point. The gap between countries that showed a decline and those that improved was the smallest since the deterioration began. The report contains its usual discussion of significant developments, illuminating graphics, statement of methods, and policy recommendations. Particular attention is given to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (categorized as “partly free”). Other highlighted findings point to opportunities for democratization in the mistakes and corruption of authoritarian leaders, and continued infringement on freedom of expression and attacks on journalists as drivers of democratic decline. Detailed policy recommendations are discussed on Freedom House’s website.

Geoff Heriot, International Broadcasting and Its Contested Role in Australian Statecraft: Middle Power, Smart Power,  (Anthem Press, 2023).  Geoff Heriot’s career spanned work as a journalist, foreign correspondent, and head of news and current affairs for Radio Australia, an advisor to the South African Broadcasting Corporation, and a capstone role as chief of planning and governance for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). His book, based on post-career doctoral research, is a much-needed assessment of international broadcasting by a “middle power” in a literature dominated by books on global broadcasting by the UK, US, Russia, and China. Heriot’s first six chapters construct an analytical framework for understanding international broadcasting as an instrument of statecraft, which he situates in discourse on “soft-hard-smart power.” The second six chapters apply his framework to Radio Australia’s experience during the 1980s and the end of the Cold War. An insightful Foreword by Geoffrey Wiseman (DePaul University) discusses the strengths of Heriot’s narrative in the context of Australian politics, middle power statecraft, and discourse on soft power and public diplomacy. The book demonstrates “ex post facto participant observation at its best,” he observes, by a practitioner’s “critical reflection, synthesis and evaluation that spare[s] no institution or actor from criticism, including himself.” Wiseman calls this “retrospective ethnography.” A revised version of the Foreword, “The Relevance of Soft Power Thinking in Democratic Statecraft,” April 28, 2023, is on the USC Center on Public Diplomacy’s CPD Blog.

“The Lawfare Podcast: Cybersecurity and AI,”  April 3, 2023. In this hour-long podcast, Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes talks with Alex Stamos (Stanford Internet Observatory), Nicole Perlroth (formerly with The New York Times), and Dave Willner (OpenAI) about issues in cybersecurity and AI. In discourse intended for non-specialists, the panel discusses threats to and from AI algorithms, the meaning of large language models, threats from their misuse by humans, threats from the use of AI in disinformation campaigns, and the roles of government and the private sector. For an optimist’s view on AI, see Orly Lobel, The Equality Machine: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future (2022). For a contrasting view from a deeply concerned technology enthusiast, see Thomas L. Friedman, “Our New Promethean Moment,” The New York Times, March 21, 2023. And for a thought-provoking discussion of AI by Stanford humanities professors Robert Harrison and Ana Lievska—described as “teachers of the hard-earned old wisdom of books” who are “humbled” and “scared” “users of AI in the classroom”—listen to the “Failing Intelligence” podcast on Christopher Lydon’s Radio Open Source.  

James Pamment, Alicia Fjällhed, and Martina Smedberg, “The ‘Logics’ of Public Diplomacy: In Search of What Unites a Multidisciplinary Research Field,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, online publication, April 13, 2023. In this imaginative and deeply researched article, the authors (University of Lund) explore the ongoing challenge of theorizing “the fuzzy concept of public diplomacy.” They construct “a new approach to conceptualizing PD” grounded in a “theory of PD logics” and a capacious literature review. By logics, they mean constructs that help to show how and why themes from different disciplines are expressed in studies of PD rather than imported as standard characteristics from those disciplines. They identify seven. (1) A “diplomacy logic” at the nexus between political science and communication studies. (2) A “media logic” that focuses on “advocacy, strategic communication, media production, public affairs, news management, international broadcasting and campaigns—including use of social media—as part of objective-driven PD.” (3) A “relational logic” centered on formal and informal networks of people and ideas. (4) A “promotional logic” connected to brand promotion, trade, tourism, and national image. (5) A “security logic” tied to warfare, geopolitics, counter-extremism, defense and security policies. (6) An “organizational logic” looks at structures, management, coordination, objectives, and evaluation in foreign and domestic networks. (7) A “legitimization logic” encompasses definitions, norms, values, and boundaries of PD as a research field. There is much to consider in this article, which could serve as a conversational starting point for many a seminar or panel discussion. Consider just two. Should PD be viewed as a separate category of study and practice or a central element in diplomacy and the daily lives of diplomatic actors? What are the relative merits of theorizing PD “at a step removed from practice” and using practice as a means to theorize diplomacy?

“Review of the U.S. Agency for Global Media Response to Russia’s 2022 Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine,” Office of Inspector General (OIG), Department of State, May 2023. The OIG’s generally positive review found “early and continuous planning” by USAGM’s networks ensured and, in some cases, expanded content availability to Ukrainian and Russian speaking audiences. USAGM also adequately executed relocation of staff at the war’s onset. The OIG made four recommendations relating to inadequate tracking and review of hiring processes by USAGM, VOA, and RFE/RL; lack of compliance with VOA’s editorial review standards by its Russian language staff; and improvement of guidance for grantee organizations on distribution of supplemental Ukraine related appropriations.

Nahal Toosi and Rosa Prince, “‘Preposterous’ But ‘Loved’ It: A Guide to Netflix’s ‘The Diplomat,’”  May 3, 2023, Politico. Entertainment products that reflect collaboration with US military services are ubiquitous and don’t make the cut for this list. But a Netflix series on career diplomats in US Embassy London starring Keri Russell and Rufus Sewel is too good to pass up. Careerists will find lots of details to critique. Nevertheless, “There’s a lot of detail in there that’s really, really smart,” observes London embassy spokesperson Aaron Snipe. It’s a view that seems to be widely shared. After all it’s not a documentary; its entertainment. See also Natalie Prieb, “US Embassy in UK Fact-checks “The Diplomat,” May 2, 2023, The Hill; Mike Hale, “‘The Diplomat’ Review: Save the Marriage, Save the World,” The New York Times, April 19, 2023; Alexis Soloki, “In the ‘Diplomat’ Keri Russell Shows Her Good Side,” April 18, 2023, The New York Times, and “‘The Diplomat’ Realistically Portrays Practices Dating Back Centuries,” The Washington Post, May 24, 2023.For US Ambassador to the UK Jane D. Hartley’s critique, see Mark Landler, “At the Real Embassy, Netflix’s ‘Diplomat’ Draws a Diplomatic Response,” The New York Times, May 15, 2023.

US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, “Future(s) of USG Public Diplomacy,” ACPD Official Meeting Minutes, January 25, 2023. At its first quarterly meeting in 2023, the Commission presented its 2022 Comprehensive Annual Report on Public Diplomacy and International Broadcasting and convened a panel of State Department practitioners to look at future directions of US public diplomacy. Moderated by the Commission’s executive director Vivian Walker, the panel looked at challenges driven by the rise of authoritarianism, an increase in extremist and foreign government information campaigns, and ways to compete in today’s media ecosystem. Panelists included: Rodney Ford, Senior Advisor and Executive Assistant, Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs; Elizabeth Trudeau, Acting Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Global Public Affairs; Scott Weinhold, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs; Karl Stoltz, Deputy Coordinator for Policy, Programs, and Operations, Global Engagement Center; and Paul Kruchoski, Director, Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources.

US Agency for Global Media, 2022 Annual Report, April 2023. USAGM’s 48-page annual report provides descriptive information on the purposes and activities of its five networks:  Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), Radio Free Asia (RFA), and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN). USAGM’s annual reports, filled with photos, graphics, and statistics, provide useful basic information on its current activities through the public relations lens of its CEO and senior managers. Perspectives on USAGM’s strategic planning, strengths and limitations, and areas for improvement can be found elsewhere—in USAGM’s five year strategic plans and in reviews by the State Department’s Inspector General, the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, and independent observers.

US Office of Special Counsel (OSC), “Review of Management Actions June 2020-January 2021, February 2023” [Independent report on activities of former US Agency for Global Media CEO Michael Pack]. This 145-page report, transmitted with a letter from OSC Special Counsel Henry J. Kerner to President Biden on May 10, 2023, documents “major findings of wrongdoing” during the eight-month tenure of Trump-appointed, Senate-confirmed CEO Michael Pack. Major findings include: abuse of authority, whistleblower retaliation against career USAGM executives, violation of federal recordkeeping regulations, violations of the Privacy Act, contracting irregularities, wasteful expenditure of public funds, abusive disbarment of the Open Technology Fund, abusive changes to grantee network governance, and actions inconsistent with USAGM’s “firewall.” The report was written by Dan G. Blair, former Deputy Director, Office of Personnel Management, Michael Cushing, former senior executive, Export-Import Bank and Office of Personnel Management, and investigative journalist Nick Schwellenbach. A lengthy letter from Pack, printed in the report, rejects its findings, questions the OSC’s constitutionality and political bias, and argues the “firewall” at USAGM “is a “myth.” See also David Folkenflik, “Federal Inquiry Details Abuses of Power by Trump’s CEO over Voice of America,” NPR, May 21, 2023; Jessica Jerreat, “Government Report Finds Former USAGM CEO Abused Authority, Wasted $1.6 Million in Funds,” VOA News, May 10, 2023.

Recent Items of Interest

Matt Armstrong, “Time to Resurrect the Global Engagement Caucus in the House,” May 3, 2023; “A Look at the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: A Historical Look at the Politics of US Information Warfare,” April 14, 2023, MountainRunner.

Andrea Bodine, “Biden Administration’s FY24 Budget Request: Proposed Exchanges Funding Explained,”  March 15, 2023, Alliance for International Exchange.

Simon Hankinson, “‘Woke’ Public Diplomacy Undermines the State Department’s Core Mission and Weakens U.S. Foreign Policy,”  December 12, 2023, The Heritage Foundation.

Andrew Hyde and Evan Cooper, “Proposing a US Diplomatic Posture Review,”  March 9, 2023, Stimson Policy Memo.

Robert Gates, “The U.S. Needs to Relearn How to Tell Its Story to the World,”  April 16, 2023; Letters to the Editor [John S. Williams, Mark A. Green, Kim Andrew Elliott], April 21, 2023, The Washington Post; Matt Armstrong, “Knowing Why Is Far More Important [Than] Learning How,” MountainRunner.

Josh A. Goldstein and Girish Sastry, “The Coming of Age of AI-Powered Propaganda,”  April 7, 2023, Foreign Affairs.

“It Is Getting Even Harder for Western Scholars To Do Research in China,” April 5, 2023, The Economist.

César Jiménez‑Martínez, “Foreign Correspondents and Public Diplomacy: An Understudied Relationship,”  May 4, 2023, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.

Gabe Kaminsky, “Biden State Department Spending Ten of Thousands to Thwart ‘Disinformation’ in Uganda,”  March 7 2023, The Washington Examiner.

Ian Klaus, “How Mayors and City Leaders Are Reshaping Foreign Policy,”  April 20, 2023, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Joshua Kurlantzick, ”Beijing’s Campus Offensive,”  April 6, 2023, Quillette.

“Lessons from ‘Cold War Radio’: A Conversation with Mark Pomar,”  March 21, 2023, Russia File Podcast, Wilson Center.

Joe Lieberman and Gordon Humphrey, “How America Can Win the Information War,”  March 17, 2023, The Wall Street Journal.

Sayyara Mammadova and Nika Aleksejeva, “Networks of pro-Kremlin Telegram Channels Spread Disinformation at a Global Scale,” March 1, 2023, DFRLab.

Peter Mandaville and Julia Schiwal, “The U.S. Strategy for International Religious Engagement: 10 Years On,”May 23, 2023, US Institute of Peace.

Ilan Manor, “The AI Moves In: ChatGPT’s Impact on Digital Diplomacy,” March 10, 2023, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

“Many of China’s Top Politicians Were Educated in the West: It Did Not Endear Them To It.”  March 11, 2023, The Economist.

Andrew Moore, “How AI Could Revolutionize Diplomacy,”  March 21, 2023, Foreign Policy.

“Moscow Ramps Up Pressure on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty,” March 14, 2023, VOA News.

W. Robert Pearson, “The New Age of Diplomacy Requires Heightened Expertise and Foresight,”  April 24, 2023, The Hill.

J. Peter Pham, “US Power Abroad: Development, ‘Soft’ Power, and Washington Conservatives,”  March 29, 2023, The Hill.

Caitlyn Phung, “‘Youth Ambassador’ Got a Taste of Diplomacy at Dubai Expo,”  March 5, 2023, Diplomatic Diary.

Jimmy Quinn, “House GOP Suspects Biden Admin ‘Censorship’ of Voice of America Over Favoritism Scandal,”  March 6, 2023, National Review.

Carmen Sesin and Orlando Matos, “Between the U.S. and Cuba, More Cultural Exchanges and Engagement Signal a Modest Shift in Policy,”  March 7, 2023, NBC News.

Mihir Sharma, “The West is Losing the Messaging War Over Ukraine,”  March 6, 2023, The Washington Post.

Tara Sonenshine, “The World is Watching America’s Battle Over Gun Rights,”  May 15, 2023, The Hill.

“Suspected North Korean Spies Impersonating VOA, Other Reporters Online,”  March 30, 2023, VOA News.

Zed Tarar, “Analysis | Could AI Change the Business of Diplomacy?” February 23, 2023; “Analysis | Which AI Tools Should Diplomats Use Today?” February 27, 2023, ISD, The Diplomatic Pouch.

Jon Temin, “The U.S. Doesn’t Need Another Democracy Summit,”  March 27, 2023, Foreign Affairs.

Earl Anthony Wayne, “Mexico’s Democracy Matters—To Mexico and America,”  March 12, 2023, The Hill.

Gem From The Past  

Colin G. Calloway, Pen and Ink Witchcraft: Treaties and Treaty Making in American Indian History (Oxford University Press, 2013); James H. Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (W. W. Norton, 1999).  Beginning about fifty years ago, academics began with increasing force to challenge the traditional American story of a nation born of European discovery and expansion. The shift by scholars to the optic of Native-newcomer interrelations is largely the work of historians, not IR and diplomacy scholars. The extent to which a similar change is occurring in elementary and secondary school education is unclear. Two books in the historical literature standout. Colin Calloway’s Pen and Ink Witchcraft shows how the state-based diplomacy methods of Europeans problematically differed from rituals and ceremonial diplomatic practices developed over many centuries by Native tribes. Eventually, he argues, “European and Native American traditions and practices melded to produce a new, uniquely American form of cross-cultural diplomacy.” James Merrell’s Into the American Woods is a compelling deep dive into the roles of “go-betweens” in forest diplomacy on the Pennsylvania frontier from the 1680s to the 1750s. Publics were objects of their diplomacy and essential participants in the ceremonies, rituals, speech making, and gift exchanges required to maintain alliances and trade agreements.

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

Posted on

Issue #116

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

Bruce Gregory can be reached at BGregory@gwu.edu

Rebecca Adler-Nissen and Kristin Anabel Eggeling, “Blended Diplomacy: The Entanglement and Contestation of Digital Technologies in Everyday Diplomatic Practice,”  European Journal of International Relations 28, no. 3(2022): 640-666.  In this powerful article, Adler-Nissen and Eggeling (University of Copenhagen) question a hard distinction between “traditional diplomacy” and “digital diplomacy.” Drawing on fieldwork with EU diplomats, they first provide ten vignettes that combine demonstrations of lived experiences and the authors’ interpretations of how diplomats experience digitalization. The remainder of the article structures a theory of blended diplomacy. It stretches a traditional focus on intentional and strategic uses of digital and media technologies to an exploration of how they are “deeply intertwined in everyday diplomatic life.” Blended diplomacy, in their account, first involves entanglement, meaning that analog and digital ways of doing things have become deeply integrated in ordinary diplomatic practice. Second, blended diplomacy manifests contestation, understood as “new tensions in diplomatic identities and relations” that affect diplomatic life. Building on these characteristics, the authors examine two boundary distinctions within diplomacy: horizontal boundaries between what diplomats “see as ‘real’ diplomatic work and other types of activities,” and vertical boundaries “between themselves and other diplomatic actors, ranking people around status and skills.” Adler-Nissen and Eggeling demonstrate the growing value of practice theory and provide a generative roadmap for further research on use patterns of digital technologies, normative disagreements, and external boundaries that circumscribe diplomacy and diplomatic practice. The entire article is available online with useful links to the literature throughout. (Courtesy of Geoffrey Wiseman)

Elif Batuman, “Rereading Russian Classics in the Shadow of the Ukraine War,”  The New Yorker, January 30, 2023, 42-51. PEN Ukraine: “[we need] a total boycott of Russian books from Russia in the world.” PEN Germany: “The enemy is Putin not Pushkin.” New Yorker staff writer Batuman, who in 2019 was a cultural emissary in Ukraine sponsored by PEN America and the State Department, explores the complex literary and political issues at play in this binary. Her article discusses classic Russian novels in historical and geographical contexts. It is written as a “Letter from Tblisi” where she recently gave a lecture on “why we don’t need to stop reading Russian literature” at a Russian-language-study-abroad program relocated from St. Petersburg.

Corneliu Bjola and Ilan Manor, “The Rise of Hybrid Diplomacy: From Digital Adaptation to Digital Adoption,” International Affairs, 98, no. 2(2022): 471-491. Building on a survey of 105 diplomats serving during the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, Bjola (Oxford University) and Manor (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) argue diplomacy is entering a new phase of digital transformation. Hybrid diplomacy, which they describe as a successor to waves of social media and strategic communication, is framed as integration of the physical and the virtual in a “more deliberative, strategic, and systematic manner.” Their article divides into four parts. A review of earlier studies of digital technologies and diplomacy. Discussion of concepts of digital adaptation and adoption—and their evolution in ministries of foreign affairs. Their methodology and survey findings. And analysis of technological and social dimensions of digital adoption that could facilitate or hinder hybrid diplomacy. The authors contend foreign ministries embrace digital technologies unevenly and have yet to “tame” disruption through “adoption” of new routines, skills, and structures. Their scholarship remains a primary source of knowledge on these issues and further evidence of the value of practice-based theory.

Alex Bollfrass, Ellice Huang, and Dan Spokojny, “The Bayes Brief: Designing a Modern Policy Memo Process,” Fp21, January 23, 2022. The folks at the think tank Fp21 continue to generate some of today’s most interesting ideas in diplomacy and State Department reform. In this thought piece, they take aim at State’s well known “clearance hell” with a reimagined policy memo. Traditional policy memos, they argue, are “designed for one-off decisions.” They cannot retrieve past decisions and knowledge, and they lack the capacity to track the impact of decisions over time. The Bayes Brief uses information technology tools to overcome these deficiencies. The template systematically incorporates qualitative and quantitative evidence from multiple sources, stores components of the memo in a knowledge database, displays relationships in the policy process over time and space, and provides a pathway for evaluating policy impacts. The Bayes Brief is a prototype intended to encourage feedback from scholars and practitioners. A 16-minute video is embedded.

Shaun A. Casey, Chasing the Devil at Foggy Bottom: The Future of Religion in American Diplomacy,  (Eerdmans, 2023). Religion and ethics scholar Shaun Casey was asked by Secretary of State John Kerry to create and lead the State Department’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs (2013-2017). This book, part analysis, part history, part memoir, is an account of his experiences—and his well-argued threefold brief for why understanding religion matters in diplomatic practice. Religion is powerful and multivalent globally. Lack of understanding can be costly. Expertise, not amateurism or personal experience, is required, because religion is complex. Overall, he makes a strong case for an office in State designed to (1) advise the Secretary when religion affects policy agendas, (2) increase the capacity of US missions to engage with religious actors, and (3) provide a Department portal for external groups, individuals, and governments on issues of mutual concern. Chapters analyze the role of religion in a broad range of substantive issues ranging from climate to refugees to global conflicts. He presents detailed critiques of how religion has been misused in countering violent extremism, pressures on State to distinguish between approved and nefarious religions, and the religious freedom agendas of conservative Christian groups. He also draws a sharp distinction between the mission of his office and the largely partisan driven, Congressionally mandated State Department Office of International Religious Freedom. Casey’s insights as an outsider on State’s unique folkways and Foreign Service reticence about the role of religion in diplomacy are penetrating. Also useful are his comments on relations between regional bureaus and functional offices and examples of the value of public diplomacy. He concludes by lamenting the demise of his Office in the Trump administration and the “virtually nonexistent” capability “to understand the complex dynamics of religion” in the Biden administration. (Courtesy of Eric Gregory)

Beverli DeWalt, Rachel George, and Dan Spokojny, Lifting the Fog of Foggy Bottom: What NASA Can Teach the State Department About Managing Knowledge,  January 18, 2023, Fp21. The authors, Fp21 researchers, in collaboration with current and former State Department practitioners, offer recommendations to overcome State’s dysfunctional communication, policy clearance, and knowledge sharing processes. State needs to jettison its “reliance on tacit knowledge,” they argue, and develop knowledge management (KM) systems that accumulate “explicit knowledge.” The KM system that NASA built following the Challenger space shuttle disaster is used as a case study. Their brief paper outlines a KM model for state and poses critical questions. Although the model is presented as holding promise for managing knowledge at State, it could also enable State to leverage its comparative advantages (institutional memory, language skills, and cross-cultural communication capabilities) in whole of government and increasingly societized diplomacy.

“Focus on FS Reform: Outlook and Considerations,” The Foreign Service Journal, March, 2023. The latest edition of FSJ features worthwhile articles on Foreign Service and State Department reform. They include:

·      Mark Grossman and Marcie Ries, “Toward a More Modern Foreign Service: Next Steps,” 23-26. Retired US ambassadors Grossman and Ries summarize their report, Blueprints for a More Modern Diplomatic Service(September 2022), which contains detailed plans and draft language for regulations and legislation written by experienced diplomats to implement reform recommendations in A US Diplomatic Service for the 21stCentury (November 2020).

·      Dan Spokojny, “From Instinct to Evidence in Foreign Policy Decision-Making,” 27-30. Spokojny, a retired US Foreign Service officer (FSO) and CEO of the think tank Fp21, calls for diplomatic practice to be “more science and less art.” His reform proposals focus on knowledge management, analysis and decision-making, tools for learning, and a curriculum for vital skills.

·      Beatrice Camp, “Learning the Ropes Through Rotations,” 31-33. Retired FSO Camp writes about the “proven benefits” of the US Information Agency’s practice of assigning entry level officers to one-year of rotational duties in sections of US missions. She draws on her experience in Beijing, Association of Diplomatic Studies and Training oral interviews with Don Bishop and Brian Carlson, and the views of Martin Quinn, Mary Ellen Gilroy, and Susan Clyde. Much depended on whether support was forthcoming from State’s DCMs and section heads.

·      Marshall Sherrell, “Meritocracy at State: Who Deserves What,” 34-36. First tour FSO Sherrell discusses testing, recruitment, vetting, and diversity issues in response to the question, “How do we know who ‘deserves to be admitted into the U.S. Foreign Service?”

·      John Fer, “Why Senior Leaders Cannot Reform the State Department,” 37-40. FSO Fer, serving in US Embassy Tbilisi, argues that needed changes in State’s culture cannot start at the top, but must come “by empowering a group of leadership change agents,” who will be given S-level cover to “recommend sweeping changes that the Secretary can approve and fast track.”

Shingo Hanada, International Higher Education in Citizen Diplomacy: Examining Student Learning Outcomes From Mobility Programs,  (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). The aim of this monograph is to examine the impacts of international higher education on “citizen diplomacy” understood by Hanada (Toyo University) as the right and responsibility of citizens to create shared understanding through people-to-people relationships across cultures. Hanada begins with a literature review and arguments that categorize citizen diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, and public diplomacy—and explain international higher education’s contribution to each. Ensuing chapters explore outbound and inbound study abroad programs, international service-learning, international internships, and online study abroad programs. He concludes that all mobility programs cultivate intercultural competence, but student participation does “not necessarily cultivate empathy and goodwill toward the host country.”

“Heritage Diplomacy: Policy, Praxis, and Power,” International Journal of Cultural Policy, 29, No. 1(2023). The articles in this compilation examine the potential and limitations of heritage diplomacy as an object of theory, policy, and practice. The editors, Viktorija L. A. Čeginskas and Tuuli Lähdesmäki (University of Jyväskylä, Finland), effectively explain two concepts that provide context: culture in the context of diplomacy and cultural heritage in international cultural relations. Their constructivist approach treats heritage as a process that emerges when it is narrated, defined, and treated in a specific context. Incidentally and by design, the articles  contribute to current debates on diplomacy’s societization, relevance to governance, conceptual boundaries. Full texts of the editors’ “Introduction,” and “An Afterword”by Tim Winter (University of Singapore) are available online.

·      Katja Mäkinen, Tuuli Lähdesmäki, Sigrid Kaasik-Krogerus, Viktorija L. A. Čeginskas & Johanna Turunen, “EU Heritage Diplomacy: Entangled External and Internal Cultural Relations.”

·      Stefan Groth, “Mainstreaming Heritages: Abstract Heritage Values as Strategic Resources in EU external relations.”

·      Viktorija L. A. Čeginskas & Tuuli Lähdesmäki, “Dialogic Approach in the EU’s International Cultural relations: Joint EUNIC-EU Delegation Projects as Heritage Diplomacy.”

·      Johanna Turunen & Sigrid Kaasik-Krogerus, “Debating Structural Violence in European Heritage Diplomacy.”

·      Cristina Clopot, “Heritage Diplomacy Through the Lens of the European Capitals of Culture Programme.”

·      Natalia Grincheva, “‘Contact zones’ of Heritage Diplomacy: Transformations of Museums in the (Post)Pandemic Reality.”

·      Giulia Sciorati, “‘Constructing’ Heritage Diplomacy in Central Asia: China’s Sinocentric Historicisation of Transnational World Heritage Sites.”

·      Hanna Schreiber & Bartosz Pieliński, “Inviting All Humanity to an Elite Club? Understanding Tensions in UNESCO’s Global Heritage Regimes Through the Lens of a Typology of Goods.”

·      Tim Winter, “Heritage Diplomacy; An Afterword.”

Michał Marcin Kobierecki, Sports Diplomacy: Sports in the Diplomatic Activities of States and Non-State Actors,  (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020).  Kobierecki (University of Łodz) contributes to the growing literature on sports diplomacy with this inquiry into its study and practice. His book explores definitional gaps in sports diplomacy, conceptual connections between sports diplomacy and public diplomacy, whether sport can be useful in shaping interstate relations, ways in which sport is instrumentalized by varieties of states, uses of sport in image building, and the roles of nongovernmental organizations. Kobierecki devotes considerable attention to sports federations and their interactions with states, including particularly the International Olympic Committee, as he makes a case for their roles as diplomatic actors. The book contains comparative case studies and an excellent survey of the literature on sports diplomacy. (Courtesy of Geoffrey Pigman)

Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer, eds., Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Lessons and Lies About Our Past, (Basic Books, 2022). Don’t be put off by this book’s overstated subtitle. The concise, well-written and carefully researched essays in this compilation, edited by Princeton historians Kruse and Zelizer, have considerable value, not least as readings for American diplomats. The authors explore how narratives about the past have evolved and been used to distort, celebrate, inspire, and serve current purposes. Some “myths” are partisan, others are rooted in enduring and widely accepted beliefs. Chapters with particular value for discourse with foreign interlocutors include: David Bell (Princeton University), “American Exceptionalism;” Ari Kelman (University of California, Davis), “Vanishing Indians;” Erika Lee (University of Minnesota), “Immigration;” Daniel Immerwahr, (Northwestern University), “The United States as an Empire;” Geraldo Cadava (Northwestern University), “The Border;” and Kathryn Belew (Northwestern University), “Insurrection.” These essays seek to counter intentional disregard for accuracy in historical narratives and give voice to constructions of the past based on the best available evidence. They also bear witness to the late Richard Rorty’s views on interpretations as degrees of consensus and truth as “made rather than found.” “There is no intrinsic character of reality, no one way the world is . . . Interpretation goes all the way down” (What We Can Hope For? 68).  

Stuart MacDonald and Andrew Murray, “Soft Power and Cultural Relations: A Comparative Analysis,”  British Council, 2022. MacDonald and Murray (ICR Research Ltd, London)argue that key global trends (digitalization, new actors, values in illiberal regimes, audiences in domestic populations, and activities linked to identity politics) are blurring distinctions between soft power and cultural relations. They define soft power as “pursuit of influence through attraction in the national interest” and cultural relations as “creating the conditions for collaboration between like-minded people and countries in pursuit of the common good.” The authors compare activities of multiple counties in three overlapping operational models (public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, cultural relations, and a unique Chinese model). The 73-page paper also contains a summary of findings (including considerable confusion as to the meaning of soft power and cultural relations), comparative profiles for 13 countries and the EU, a literature review, a statement of methodology, data tables and sources, and a bibliography. (Courtesy of Brian Carlson)

Ilan Manor and Moran Yrachi, “From the Global to the Local and Back Again: MFA’s Digital Communications During Covid-19,”  International Journal of Communication, 17(2023), 860-881. Manor (Ben Gurion University of the Negev) and Yarchi (Reichman University) examine how eight ministries of foreign affairs (MFAs) used Facebook to communicate with citizens at home early in the Covid-19 pandemic (March – July 2020). Their “domestic digital diplomacy,” the authors contend, was intended to “demonstrate the MFA’s contribution to national efforts” to slow the spread of the virus, repatriate citizens, provide travel information, and assure citizens that diplomatic efforts to manage crises were ongoing. Their analysis shows that as the pandemic continued the MFA’s returned to more globally oriented Facebook content. One limitation of the study, they state, is an inability to identify national users due to Facebook’s privacy rules. The article also contains more general discussion of relevant scholarly literature, the digitalization of diplomacy, digitalization’s effects on state diasporas, diplomacy’s societization, domestic public diplomacy, MFA’s evolving roles in whole of government diplomacy, and the limits of digitalization. 

Jan Melissen, Shangbie Du, and Abhiraj Goswami, Public Diplomacy,  Oxford Bibliographies, February 2023. The compilers (Leiden University) of this latest edition of Oxford Bibliographies’ online collection of public diplomacy literature concentrate on resources published since 2010. It contains more than 100 works annotated and divided into categories. They include a general overview, soft power, new century/new public diplomacy, beyond the new public diplomacy, diplomacy’s public dimension, science diplomacy, digital diplomacy, consular diplomacy, corporate diplomacy, city diplomacy, celebrity diplomacy, public diplomacy worldwide, sections that focus on North America, China, India, and European Union, and leading book series and journals. Particularly useful is the way the compilers position these resources in the arc of rapidly changing multidisciplinary approaches in diplomatic studies. This indispensable resource can be accessed online at many universities worldwide. The compilers welcome suggestions for additional categories that would make this periodically updated bibliography more comprehensive.

Seong-Hun Yun, “Against the Current: Back to Public Diplomacy as Government Communication,” International Journal of Communication 16(2022): 3047-3064. Yun (Dongguk University, South Korea) takes a thoughtful and carefully researched look at the societization turn in diplomacy studies. Her article begins with a survey of the shift from public diplomacy, viewed in the 20th century as primarily a state-based instrument, to acceptance of transnational non-state actors as diplomacy practitioners. This led to scholarship on boundaries that distinguish non-state diplomatic actors from other non-state actors. Yun then undertakes a critique of two boundaries criteria: (1) “public interests” differentiated from private interests, and (2) “national interests” defined by governments, which change over time and are shaped by a constructivist rather than realist state-centric model. She questions the “public interests” criterion as having a normative bias inclined to “progressive values,” which “by implication” rule out “reactionary values.” She questions “national interests,” because it is indeterminate and creates confusion as to which non-state actors are public diplomacy actors. Yun argues for a return to government as the sole public diplomacy actor responsible for “communicating with foreign publics to achieve foreign policy goals.” She recognizes her “against the current” proposal may be “too absolute.” But it could be a “solution” to the confusion in boundary debates on who is a public diplomacy actor. Her “solution” seems unlikely to persuade many, but she deserves credit for raising important questions, her knowledge of the literature, and her analysis of issues in diplomacy’s boundaries discourse. Her article draws on Kadir Jun Ayhan’s taxonomy of perspectives on boundaries of public diplomacy and nonstate actors (see Gem from the Past below).

Recent Items of Interest

Matt Abbott, “Local and State Diplomacy is Critical to US Foreign Policy,”  January 24, 2023, The Hill.

Matt Armstrong, “No, the Smith-Mundt Act Doesn’t Apply to the Defense Department,” February 22, 2023; “R Changes Coming,”  January 30, 2023; “Sometimes the Commonly Accepted Fact Is Not a Fact,”  January 12, 2023; “Discussing ‘Leadership’ Around ‘Information Warfare’ With Asha Rangappa, Plus Other Stuff,”  January 11, 2023, MountainRunner.

Andrew Bacevich, “The Reckoning That Wasn’t: Why America Remains Trapped by False Dreams of Hegemony,” March/April 2023, Foreign Affairs.

Corneliu Bjola, “Exploring the Metaverse and Its Implications for Digital Diplomacy,”  February 27, 2023, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Beatrice Camp, “Reagan in China: Don’t Say Anything About the Turkeys,”  February 2023, American Diplomacy.

Vera Bergengruen, “Inside the Kremlin’s Year of Ukraine Propaganda,”  February 22, 2023, Time.

FP Contributors, “New and Unusual Forms of Diplomacy: From Gastrodiplomacy to Xiplomacy,”  January 8, 2023, Foreign Policy.

Nick Cull and Simon Anholt, “The Verdict? The Nation Brands Index 2022 and Russia’s Fall From Grace,”  Episode 48, January 2023, People, Places, and Power Podcast; “Season 2, Episode 48,” January 8, 2023, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Rod Dreher, “State Department Disinformation?”  February 14, 2023, The American Conservative.

Paul Farhi, “Voice of America Journalists Put on Leave After ‘Russian Propaganda’ Accusations,” February 24, 2023, The Washington Post; “VOA Puts Two Russian Journalists on Leave Following Complaints,” February 25,2023, VOA News; Jason Jay Smart, “Employees Rebel at US News Outlet Voice of America for Hiring Journalists With Pro-Kremlin Records,”  February 21, 2023, Kyiv Post; “Media Movement Calls on ‘Voice of America’ to Fire Russian Propagandist Harry Knyagnitsky—Statement,” February 23, 2023, Media Movement.

Robbie Graemer, “Wanted: U.S. Ambassadors for Countries That Need TLC,”  January 11, 2023, Foreign Policy.

Joe Gould, “Pentagon Launches Management Reform Institute to Address Challenges,”  January 31, 2023, DefenseNews.

Alexandra Kelley, “State Department Creates First Office Devoted to Emerging Technology Diplomacy,”  January 4, 2023, Nextgov; Ellie Sennett, “US State Department Looks to Bolster ‘Tech’ Diplomacy,”  January 2, 2023, The National.

Tani Levitt, “How a Group of Brooklyn Beatboxers Became Ambassadors to the World,”  January 21, 2023, The New York Times.

Kyle Long, “Introducing Global American Higher Education: A New Public Diplomacy Resource,”  January 31, 2023, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Sherry Mueller and Claudia Del Pozo, “The Power of Partnerships,”  February 25, 2023, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Christian Perez and Anjana Nair, “Information Warfare in Russia’s War in Ukraine,”  February 2023, Foreign Policy.

Mark G. Pomar, “Public Diplomacy Challenges in Reaching Russian Audiences,”  February 2023, American Diplomacy.

Chris Riotta, “U.S. Cyberspace Ambassador Lays Out Technology’s Role in Geopolitical Contests,”  February 2, 2023, FCW; Ines Kagubare, “Russia-Ukraine War Has Improved US Cyber Cooperation, Says Key Official,”  February 2, 2023, The Hill.

Volodymyr Sheiko, “Ukraine’s Culture at War: One Year Later,”  February 20, 2023, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Tara D. Sonenshine, “Disinformation Amid the Rubble in Syria,”  February 13, 2023, The Hill.

Dan Spokojny, “Forecasting in Policymaking: Beyond Cassandra,”  January 26, 2022; “Congress Orders Changes for State Department in New Authorization,”  January 3, 2023,  Fp21.

Matina Stevis-Gridneff, “Russia’s War Breathes New Life Into a Cold War Symbol,”  January 24, 2023, The New York Times.

Zed Tarar, “Analysis | Could AI Change the Business of Diplomacy,”  February 23, 2023, ISD The Diplomatic Pouch.

“USAGM CEO Announces New Senior Advisor on External Affairs,”  February 27. 2023, US Agency for Global Media.

Kerry Velez, “Diplomats, It’s Time to BeReal,”  February 24, 2023, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Bill Whitaker, “Radio Free Europe: Cold War-era Broadcaster’s Mission Still Relevant in 2023,”  (13-minute video), CBS News 60 Minutes. 

R. S. Zaharna, “Public Diplomacy and Wicked Problems,”  February 3, 2023, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Gem From The Past  

Kadir Jun Ayhan. “The Boundaries of Public Diplomacy and Nonstate Actors: A Taxonomy of Perspectives,” International Studies Perspectives 20, no. 1(2018): 63-83. Five years ago, Journal of Public Diplomacy editor Ayhan conducted an extensive survey of the literature on public diplomacy’s definitions, boundaries, and actors. His taxonomy has five categories. (1) State-centric perspectives that restrict diplomacy to state entities only. (2) Neo-statist perspectives that reserve the term public diplomacy for states and use alternative terms (social diplomacy, grassroots diplomacy) for nonstate actors. (3) Nontraditional perspectives that define diplomacy on capabilities rather than status but accept some nonstate actor activities as public diplomacy. (4) Society-centric perspectives that share most nontraditional perspectives but define “public as people in the global public sphere.” (5) Accommodative perspectives that include nonstate actors in public diplomacy if their activities meet explicit criteria such as legitimacy, effectiveness, constituents’ support, and serve governance objectives. Ayhan’s nuanced analysis is a foundational text in the growing debate on these issues.

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

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Issue #115

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

Bruce Gregory can be reached at BGregory@gwu.edu

G. R. Berridge, Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, 6th ed., (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). There are many reasons Berridge’s (University of Leicester) substantially revised and expanded diplomacy textbook draws high praise from scholars and practitioners. (1) New material on health diplomacy, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, diplomatic implications of the Trump presidency, and innovative uses of embassies. (2) Clear prose and concepts illuminated by numerous examples. (3) Discussion questions in each chapter. (4) Recommendations for additional reading. Updates on the chapters, ideas for thesis topics, and advice on essay and dissertation writing can be found on Berridge’s website hosted by the DiploFoundation. Berridge devotes a chapter to “public diplomacy,” a term he views as propaganda rebranded — a fashionable “modern name for white propaganda directed chiefly at foreign publics.” He questions the idea that public diplomacy differs from propaganda because “at its best” it invites influence and engagement from foreign publics. “[L]istening to foreigners is one thing, giving equal weight to what they say is quite another.” His chapter looks at why the term was adopted, activities it embraces, and roles of embassies and diplomats. Public diplomacy is more important, he argues, because the reasons for it and the means available to practitioners have multiplied. The leading role in state-sponsored public diplomacy is frequently given to foreign ministries. It is one of many responsibilities of embassy staffs. And it “is probably now the most important duty of ambassadors.”

Yoav Dubinsky, Sport-tech Diplomacy at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games,  CPD Perspectives, USC Center on Public Diplomacy. Dubinsky (University of Oregon) explores the emerging concept of “sport-tech diplomacy” understood as “the use of sports-related technologies for nation branding and public diplomacy purposes.” His paper distinguishes intersections between sports, technology, and public diplomacy at Tokyo 2020 in four domains: public safety, games operations, cultural diplomacy, and backlash. Dubinsky provides an overview of the relevant literature, an explanation of his methodology, his assessment of sport-tech issues in the Tokyo Games, a discussion of functional strengths and limitations of sport-tech diplomacy, and five lessons for scholars and practitioners in using nation branding and country image frameworks. 

Fundamental AI Research Diplomacy Team (FAIR), “Human-level Play in the Game of Diplomacy by Combining Language Models with Strategic Reasoning,”  Science, November 22, 2022. Facebook owner Meta’s FAIR team (17 authors) is intent on creating artificial intelligence systems capable of using language to communicate intentionally with humans. Its AI agent Cicero routinely beats humans in the board game Diplomacy. Unlike adversarial zero-sum games for two-players such as chess, Diplomacy is a strategy game set in pre-World War I Europe that requires seven players to communicate, negotiate, convince, compete, and coordinate their actions. Meta’s AI Cicero, entered anonymously in 40 games played by humans (August 19 – October 13, 2022), doubled the average score of human players and ranked in the top 10% of players who played more than one game. See also “Another Game Falls to an AI Player,” The Economist, November 23, 2022; and Pranshu Verma, “Meta’s New AI Is Skilled at a Ruthless Power-seeking Game,”  December 1, 2022, The Washington Post.

Marc Grossman and Marcie Ries, Blueprints for a More Modern U.S. Diplomatic Service, ASU Leadership, Diplomacy, and National Security Lab, Arizona State University.  Most US diplomacy reform reports state problems in need of solutions and desired goals, leaving ways and means to be sorted out later. In this exceptional 212-page report, US Ambs. (ret.) Grossman, Ries, and executive director Charles Ray compile roadmaps that operationalize reform recommendations. Building on the Harvard Kennedy School’s A U.S. Diplomatic Service for the 21st Century, (2020) and other reports, their blueprints include the informed reasoning of experienced practitioners, draft legislation to amend the 1980 Foreign Service Act, draft text to amend executive branch regulations, and a substantially revised Presidential Letter of Authority, Accountability, and Responsibility to Chiefs of Mission (COM). There is much to applaud and critique in these detailed blueprints. They warrant close attention by practitioners, scholars, policy analysts, lawmakers, White House and Congressional staffs, and students looking for thesis topics. Partial summaries follow.

Blueprint 1, Mission and Mandate: Clarity, Strength, and Professionalism, (Principal Author, Amb. (ret.) Michael C. Polt). Proposals include (1) new professional standards for career and “occasional non-career” diplomats; (2) measures to reform the Foreign Service culture, deepen its capabilities, strengthen career-long professional education and training, and create a robust Engage America program; (3) enhanced COM risk management, diversity, and whole of government authorities; and (4) an amended NSC Memorandum-2 designating the State Department as chair of the NSC’s Interagency Policy Committees.

Blueprint 2, Professional Education and Training, (Principal Authors, Ambs. (ret.) Joyce Barr and Daniel Smith). Proposals include (1) substitution of the term “training complement” for the military’s “training float,” (2) creation of a training complement for the Civil Service, a mandatory 8 percent training compliment for the Foreign Service, and legislative language to protect both from outyear operational demands; (3) opportunities for early career rotational assignments and expansion of mid-career education and training; (4) expanded professional education at US military colleges rather than duplicate educational programs at the Foreign Service Institute; and (5) a mandatory professional development tour for entry into the Senior Foreign Service and mandatory capstone course for new senior officers.

Blueprint 3, A More Modern, Flexible, Transparent, Diverse, and Strategically Focused Personnel System,(Principal Author, Amb (ret.) Jo Ellen Powell). Proposals include (1) a global analysis of domestic and overseas Foreign Service positions; (2) a $2.5 million budget for advertising and a firm to develop a public service Foreign Service recruitment campaign; (3) funding for in-house recruiters and expedited background investigations; (4) retention of political, economic, public diplomacy, management, and consular career tracks (despite multiple reports calling for abolishing “cones”); (5) competition for promotion within cones at entry and middle levels and a shift to class wide competition for promotion in senior ranks; and (6) ways to achieve cross cutting skills at mid-level ranks and language skills beyond current competency levels.

Blueprint 4, Diplomatic Reserve Corps, (Principal Author, Amb. (ret.) Patrick Kennedy). Proposals include (1) an extraordinarily detailed plan and proposed legislation to create a 1,000-member State Department ready reserve and surge capacity with four components (a senior diplomatic retiree reserve, a reserve of retired professionals at lower ranks, and a senior reserve and lower rank reserve drawn from experts in civil society, the private sector, and local government agencies); (2) a five-year plan to allocate positions, train, and fully implement the Reserve; and (3) an information campaign conducted by State’s Global Public Affairs Bureau to inform Americans about the Reserve.

HwaJung Kim and Jan Melissen, “Engaging Home in International Diplomacy,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Volume 17, Issue 4, 2022. In the late 2000s, Ellen Huijgh and a small handful of scholars began pathbreaking work on the domestic dimension of public diplomacy. (See Huijgh’s collected essays in Public Diplomacy at Home, Brill, 2019 and HJD’s 2012 special issue listed in Gem from the Past below.) Today, diplomacy’s public dimension is central to diplomatic practice, and diplomacy at home is emerging as a matter of importance for foreign ministries and diplomatic services. In this HJD special issue, Kim (Ewha Womans University, South Korea) and Melissen (Leiden University) compile essays intended to advance trending research on diplomacy’s domestic engagement and “enhanced state-society dialogue on foreign affairs.” Their motivating assumption is an understanding of the home dimension of diplomatic practice informs contemporary “shifts in professional culture and what is commonly assumed to be the hard core of diplomacy.” Articles include:

HwaJung Kim and Jan Melissen, “Introduction.” (open access).

Anna Geis (Helmut Schmidt University), Christian Opitz (Helmut Schmidt University), and Hanna Pfeifer (Goethe University Frankfurt), “Recasting the Role of Citizens in Diplomacy and Foreign Policy: Preliminary Insights and a New Research Agenda.”  

Minseon Ku (Ohio State University), “Summit Diplomacy as Theatre of Sovereignty Contestation.”

Yun Zhang (Niigata University, Japan), “The Disintegration of State-Society Relations and its Moderating Effects on Japanese Diplomacy Towards China,”

Scott Michael Harrison and Quinton Huang (Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada), “Citizen or City Diplomacy? Diplomatic Co-Production and the Middle Ground in Municipal Twinning Relationships.”

Anna Popkova (Western Michigan University) and Jodi Hope Michaels (Global Ties Kalamazoo), “Who Represents the Domestic Voice? Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Citizen Diplomacy.”

Štěpánka Zemanová, (Prague University of Economics and Business), “Grassroots Student Diplomacy: The Junior Diplomat Initiative (JDI) in Prague, Geneva, Paris and Tbilisi.”

Alisher Faizullaev (University of World Economy and Diplomacy, Tashkent), “On Social Diplomacy.”

William Inboden, The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink, (Dutton, 2022). Inboden (University of Texas, Austin) has written a sweeping and deeply researched narrative of the Reagan presidency’s engagement with the world during the last decade of the Cold War. For many former practitioners, the 1980s were the high-water mark of 20th century US public diplomacy. In making the “battle of ideas” one of his book’s central themes, Inboden takes this into account. “Every previous American president saw the Cold War primarily as a great power conflict undergirded by a contest of ideas,” he writes. “Reagan reversed this. He saw the Cold War primarily as a battle of ideas, overlaid on a great power competition.” Although his book focuses on “high politics” with more breadth than depth on most issues, readers will find carefully researched references to U.S. Information Agency director Charles Z. Wick’s “Project Truth;” Reagan’s Westminster speech on democracy and human freedom; his support for a quasi-governmental organization to promote democracy through grants to labor unions, business groups, and political parties; Walt Raymond’s “Project Democracy; democratization initiatives of the National Endowment for Democracy and its long-time president Carl Gershman; and US international broadcasting’s Voice of America and RFE/RL.


Journal of Public Diplomacy, Volume 2, Issue 2, Winter 2022. This welcome fourth issue of JPD is now available online with contents that include research articles, practitioners’ essays, and book review essays.

Nicholas J. Cull (University of Southern California) and Juan Luis Manfredi Sánchez (Georgetown University), “Virus Diplomacy: Leadership and Reputational Security in the Era of COVID 19.”

Carla Cabrera Cuadrado (University of Valencia), “Purpose and Cultural Awareness in PD: Toward a Golden Circle of Public Diplomacy,”

Isabelle Karlsson (Lund University), “Debating Feminist Foreign Policy: The Formation of (Unintended) Publics in Sweden’s Public Diplomacy.”

Rodrigo Márquez Lartigue (Panamerican University), “Beyond Traditional Boundaries: The Origins and Features of the Public-Consular Diplomacy of Mexico.”

Wilfried Bolewski (former German Ambassador, Paris), “Effective City Diplomacy Inspired by Corporate Diplomacy: A European Perspective.”

Carla Dirlikov Canales (US State Department), “Notes from the Field: An Arts Envoy’s Account of US Cultural Diplomacy in the 21st Century.”

Luiza Brodt (Novosibirsk State University), “[Book Review Essay] Inventing a Shared Science Diplomacy for Europe: Interdisciplinary Case Studies to Think With History.” Léonard Laborie, & Pascal Griset, Zenodo, 2022, 274 pp., open access (eBook), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6590097. 

Nancy Snow (Tsinghua University), “[Book Review Essay] U.S. Public Diplomacy Toward China: Exercising Discretion in Educational and Exchange Programs.” Edited by Di Wu, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.

Sonali Singh (Jai Prakash Mahila College, India), “[Book Review Essay] Connecting Through Cultures: An Overview of India’s Soft Power Strength.” Edited by Vinay Sahasrabuddhe and Sachchidanand Joshi, Wisdom Tree, 2022.

Jane Knight, Knowledge Diplomacy in International Relations and Higher Education, (Springer, 2022). In this deeply researched study (available in e-book and hard cover versions), Knight (University of Toronto) addresses three questions. (1) How is international higher education changing and strengthening relations between countries? (2) Can cultural, scientific, public diplomacy, and soft power frameworks illuminate “international higher education, research, and innovation” (IHERI)? (3) Can “knowledge diplomacy,” a term she defines and describes, be used to clarify the role of IHERI in international relations and how it differs from related concepts. Scholars and practitioners will find much to agree with and debate in this book’s contributions to the literature on diplomacy, higher education, and international relations. Two examples stand out. First, Knight helpfully takes the meaning of higher education in diplomacy beyond such traditional methods as scholar/student exchanges, student recruitment, and bilateral higher education agreements. Her IHERI domain includes a complex web of new initiatives — “education cities, knowledge hubs, regional centers of excellence, international joint universities, multilateral thematic and disciplinary research networks, international private-public partnerships, regional-based universities, international satellite campuses,” and much more. Second, she drills down on conceptual meanings and distinctions in what she rightly calls “terminology chaos” in the diplomacy and higher education literature: cultural diplomacy, cultural relations, public diplomacy, science diplomacy, science cooperation, education diplomacy, education relations, innovation diplomacy, exchange diplomacy, academic diplomacy, citizen diplomacy, knowledge diplomacy, science and technology diplomacy and soft power. Her arguments reward close reading. They advance the dialogue on the societization of diplomacy. And they open the door to contrasting views and further research. 

Ilan Manor and Ronit Kampf, “Digital Nativity and Digital Diplomacy: Exploring Conceptual Differences Between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants,” Global Policy, 2022: 13: 442-457. In this perceptive open access paper, Manor (Tel Aviv University) and Kampf (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) examine differences in the use of social networking sites (SNS) by younger diplomats (digital natives) and senior diplomats (digital immigrants). Can these differences, they ask, limit the ability of foreign ministries (MFAs) to leverage digital technologies for public diplomacy purposes? Their findings are based on a literature review and a survey of 133 diplomats from six MFAs. The authors found little support for a hard expertise binary between generations. Operational proficiency varies within native and immigrant cohorts. They did find, however, key conceptual gaps. Digital natives are more likely to perceive the Web as networks in which individuals generate content through dialogue, as a space for sharing life and work information with clusters of friends, and as a space for listening. The reverse is true for digital immigrants. These gaps, they argue, have three broad policy implications. First, provide digital training that focuses not only on operational skills but also on integrating SNS into policy formulation and implementation. Second, explore implications of generational gaps for the use of other technologies (e.g., virtual reality, big data analysis). Third, encourage digital immigrants to employ technologies in innovative ways. The authors point to areas for further research: a larger sample size, personal interviews as opposed to questionnaires, and practices in languages other than English. To these they might consider implications of generational differences in stakeholders beyond MFAs (e.g., native/immigrant gaps among lawmakers who provide diplomacy funding).

Elaine McCusker, Defense Budget Transparency and the Cost of Military Capability, American Enterprise Institute, November 2022.  AEI Senior Fellow and former acting undersecretary of defense (comptroller) McCusker argues the US defense budget of close to $800 billion per year is not an accurate indicator of America’s military spending. Her reasons: defense spending bills are “loaded with programs, policies, and even entire pieces of legislation that have nothing to do with defense,” and must-pass defense bills are targets for congressional special interests. Her evidence includes spending on medical research not needed for battlefield medicine, environmental restoration, US-based schools and education, climate programs, security assistance, and humanitarian aid. McCusker contends the Defense Department spends millions on humanitarian and development assistance properly in the domains of the State Department and USAID – work for which defense military and civilian personnel may lack expertise and education. “Should the Pentagon continue to take on new and expanded missions?” “What are the implications of doing so?” Questions diplomats and scholars have been raising for decades.

Open Doors 2022 Report on International Educational Exchange, Institute of International Education (IIE) in Partnership with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Exchange (ECA), U.S. Department of State, November 2022. IIE’s web portal provides access to newly released key findings, data highlights, and data sets on international students studying in the United States. Key findings include the following. During the 2021/22 academic year, 948,519 international students studied in the US, a 4 percent increase over the previous year. New enrollments are comparable to pre-pandemic levels. Ninety percent returned to in-person classes. China and India represent a majority (52%). Graduate students increased by 17 percent and were higher than the pre-pandemic total. More than half of all international students studied in stem fields (54%). 

Christopher Paul, Michael Schwille, Michael Vasseur, Elizabeth M. Bartels, and Ryan Baur, The Role of Information in U.S. Strategic Competition, RAND Corporation, 2022. Christopher Paul and his RAND colleagues assess key concepts, contrasting views, and challenges to the conduct of information operations in strategic competition – their framing term for a category of “gray zone” conflict on a spectrum between cooperation and open hostilities. Although strategic competition draws on all elements of national power (the authors provide lengthy lists of activities in diplomatic, information, economic, and military domains), the focus of the report, written for the US European Command’s Information Directorate (J39), is on operations in the information environment. Key challenges to practitioners include: legacy commitment by senior officials to a peace/war dichotomy rather than a competition continuum, ambiguities in gray zone aggression, difficulty in assigning attribution especially in cyberspace, difficulty in deterring gradualism in strategic competition, the threat of escalation to nuclear conflict, episodic mindsets in what is an enduring category of competition, and problems in interagency coordination and assigning government responsibilities. Possible solutions lie in restructuring and reauthorizing for the competition continuum, whole of government involvement, invoking a campaigning mindset, strengthening relations with partners and allies, proactive and transparent means, increased risk tolerance, and empowering civil society in partner countries. Reports by RAND and other federally funded research organizations, enabled by massive US defense budgets, have long benefitted military operations and training. Calls for a federally funded research center to assess comparable challenges, new technologies, and operational solutions in US diplomacy go unheeded.

Reputational Security: The Imperative to Reinvest in America’s Strategic Communications Capabilities, Gates Global Policy Center and College of William and Mary Global Research Institute, November 11, 2022. In this recent addition to the abundance of advisory reports on US public diplomacy and strategic communication, the Gates Forum at W&M summarizes lessons learned from American practice, blind spots and opportunities provided by an ally (Japan) and competitors (Russia and China), and the merits of policy options going forward. The report consists of eight research papers: a synthesis report and seven background papers by W&M and outside contributors. The synthesis report identifies six so-called “pain points” that undermine America’s reputational security and a variety of generative recommendations divided into structural and operational categories. Some are innovative. Most are grounded in changes to White House, State Department, and US international broadcasting arrangements. Many are rooted in the long history of America’s episodic commitment to diplomacy’s public dimension. All require bipartisan political support and roadmaps to achieve success. See also Joe B. Johnson, “New Report on U.S. Strategic Communication Moots a Czar or New Agency,” Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Samantha Custer (W&M) with inputs from background paper authors, “Reputational Security: The Imperative to Reinvest in America’s Strategic Communications Capabilities.” 

Samantha Custer, Bryan Burgess, Austin Baehr, Emily Dumont, (W&M), “Assessing U.S. Historical Strategic Communications: Priorities, Practices, and Lessons from the Cold War through the Present Day.” 

Nicholas J. Cull (University of Southern California), “Public Diplomacy and the Road to Reputational Security: Analogue Lessons from US History for a Digital Age.” 

Samantha Custer, Austin Baehr, Bryan Burgess, Emily Dumont, Divya Mathew, and Amber Hutchinson (W&M), “Winning the Narrative: How China and Russia Wield Strategic Communications to Advance Their Goals.” 

Maria Repnikova (Georgia State University), “China-Russia Strategic Communications: Evolving Visions and Practices.” 

Jessica Brandt, (The Brookings Institution), “Autocratic Approaches to Information Manipulation: A Comparative Case Study.” 

Nancy Snow (Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University), “A Reliable Friend and Strategic Partner in the Indo-Pacific Region: Japan’s Strategic Communications and Public Diplomacy.” 

Samantha Custer with PEPFAR Case Study by Eric Brown (W&M), “(Re)investing in Our Reputational Security: Alternative Models and Options Strengthen U.S. Strategic Communications.” 

Recent Items of Interest

“Appointment of James P. Rubin as Special Envoy and Coordinator of the Global Engagement Center,”  December 16, 2022, US Department of State; Morgan Vina and Gabriel Noronha, “Are Special Envoys Getting Special Treatment From Congress?”  December 30, 2022, The Hill.

Matt Armstrong, “Arming for the War We’re In: The Propaganda of ‘Propaganda,’” December 13, 2022; “The Freedom Academy: An Old Idea Resurfacing,”  November 22, 2022, MountainRunner.

Jennifer Bachus, “New [State Department] Bureau, New Cyber Priorities in Foreign Affairs,”  November 2022, The Foreign Service Journal.

Lili Bayer, “Orbán’s New Public Enemy: A Twitter-savvy US Ambassador Calling Out Conspiracies,”  November 15, 2022, Politico.

“Broadcasting to the USSR: History and Precedent,”  (One hour video with Mark Pomar, Gene Parta, Michelle S. Daniel, and Vasily Gatov – moderated by Nick Cull), December 5, 2022, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Bruce K. Byers, “Language and Cultural Immersion Build Effective Communication,”  November 2022, American Diplomacy.

“The City Diplomacy List,” November 10, 2022, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Nicholas Coghlan, “The Anti-Diplomat: Working in a Garage-Turned-Embassy Office,”  October 23, 2022, Diplomatic Diary.

Robert Domaingue, “Why the State Department Needs an Office of Diplomatic Gaming,”  November 2022, The Foreign Service Journal.

Renee Earle, “Remembering Mikhail Gorbachev and the 1991 Coup,”  November 2022, American Diplomacy.

Editorial Board, “Where Are All the U.S. Ambassadors?”  December 5, 2022, The Washington Post.

Paul Farhi, “Voice of America Removes Story That Embarrassed Vietnam’s Prime Minister,”  November 15, 2022, The Washington Post.

“HSToday Q&A: First U.S. Cyber Ambassador Nathaniel Fick on His Mission for Cyber Diplomacy,”  December 14, 2022, Homeland Security Today.

G. John Ikenberry, “Why American Power Endures,” November/December 2022, Foreign Affairs.

Philip Kennicott, “Ukraine Wants a Boycott of Russian Culture. It’s Already Happening,”  December, 14, 2022, The Washington Post.

Olga Krasnyak, “Russian Science Diplomacy and Global Nuclear Security in a Time of Conflict,”  December 2, 2022, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Daniel Larison, “Underfunded Dipomacy is Feature (Not a Bug) of US Foreign Policy,”  October 31, 2022, Responsible Statecraft.

Derek Leebaert, “How Foreign Policy Amateurs Endanger the World,” October 26, 2022, Politico Magazine.

Fredrik Logevall, “[Review Essay] The Ghosts of Kennan: Lessons From the Start of the Cold War,”January/February 2023, Foreign Affairs. Frank Costigliola, Kennan: A Life Between Two Worlds, (Princeton University Press, 2023).  

Douglas London, “The High Cost of American Heavy-Handedness: Great-Power Competition Demands Persuasion, Not Coercion,”  December 20, 2022, Foreign Affairs.

Douglas Martin, “Frank Shakespeare, TV Executive Behind a New Nixon, Dies at 97,”  December 16, 2022, The New York Times; Brian Murphy, “Frank Shakespeare, Nixon’s TV Guru Who Redefined Political Ads, Dies at 97,”  December 17, 2022, The Washington Post.

Jan Melissen and HwaJung Kim, “The Diplomatic Elite, the People at Home and Democratic Renewal,”  November 4, 2022, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Maurice Mitchell, “Building Resilient Organizations,”  November 29, 2022, The Forge.

Loveday Morris and Will Oremus, “Russian Disinformation is Demonizing Ukrainian Refugees,”  December 8, 2022, The Washington Post.

Sudarshan Ramabadran, “G20: How Values, Religions & Civil Societies Can Reinvent PD in Today’s Times,”  November 15, 2022, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Brendan Rivage-Seul, “‘Winning the Competition for Talent’ – The Case for Expanding the Diplomat in Residence Program,”  December 2022, The Foreign Service Journal.

Nancy Snow, “On Being a Woman in Public Diplomacy: Some Personal Reflections,”  December 2022 (first published November 24, 2021), Place Branding and Public Diplomacy.

Dick Virden, “Ukrainians to Putin’s Empire: Hell No!”  November 2022, American Diplomacy. 

Richard Wagoner, “Remembering Syndicated Radio Pioneer Norm Pattiz of Westwood One,”  December 4, 2022, Los Angeles Daily News.

Bill Wanlund, “Promoting Democracy in Tumultuous Times,” December 2022, The Foreign Service Journal.  

Gem From The Past  

Ellen Huijgh, ed., “The Domestic Dimension of Public Diplomacy,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy,Volume 7, Issue 4, 2012. This decade old issue of HJD anticipated today’s increased attention to diplomacy’s domestic dimension, not as a fad, but as a reflection of fundamental changes in society that are influencing diplomatic practice. The editor was the late Ellen Huijgh (University of Antwerp). An article by Steven Curtis and Caroline Jaine (London Metropolitan University) examined the domestic dimension of the UK’s public diplomacy. Ellen Huijgh and Caitlin Byrne (Griffith University) compared the experiences of Canadian and Australian diplomats in engaging domestic constituencies. Kathy Fitzpatrick (University of South Florida) used theories of stakeholders and publics in business and public relations to illuminate concepts of strategic publics at home and abroad. The late Teresa LaPorte (University of Navarra) developed the concept of “intermestic” public diplomacy and the criteria of legitimacy and effectiveness to validate non-state actors as independent diplomatic actors. And Yiwei Wang (Tongji University, Shanghai) explored the impact of China’s domestic dimension on its public diplomacy abroad.

In addition to current scholarly interest in diplomacy at home, evident in the current issue of HJD (listed above), practitioners are demonstrating growing interest in diplomacy’s domestic dimension. The American ambassadors in Blueprints for a More Modern U.S. Diplomatic Service (listed above) call for a “robust domestic speaking element . . . linked to diplomats home leave.” Their recommendations to strengthen diplomat-in-residence and professional education, expand senior officer travel in the US, and create a Diplomatic Reserve Corps are all justified in part by their potential to “strengthen the bond between American citizens and their diplomats.” 

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

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