#SMPA – The Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication

January 7, 2025January 7, 2025

Issue #127

January 7, 2025

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

Bruce Gregory

Affiliate Scholar

Institute for Public Diplomacy

and Global Communication

George Washington University

BGregory@gwu.edu | BGregory1@aol.com

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

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

eBook text and paperback here. Kindle and paperback here.

Emily Conroy-Krutz, Missionary Diplomacy: Religion and Nineteenth-Century America, (Cornell University Press, 2024). Civil society groups have long partnered with government organizations to advance US diplomacy. Catholic clerics in the US war with Mexico. Journalists, clerics, and political operatives during the Civil War. Educators, philanthropists, celebrities, and Peace Corps volunteers in the twentieth century. Protestant missionaries began to bridge evangelism and diplomacy in the 1810s. Over time, it was a relationship grounded in intelligence gathering, interpreting events for publics at home and abroad, building schools, providing medical care, and collaboration and conflict with US diplomats on policy issues.

In this deeply researched book, brimming with insights, personalities, and anecdotes, Conroy-Krutz (Michigan State University) relates the undertold story of how missionary and government interests did, and often did not, align. Missionaries played important diplomatic roles as the United States displaced Indigenous peoples in North America and grew to become an imperial power. Abroad they often worked as consuls. They served as interpreters, helped to spread democracy, expand commerce, and promote colonial reforms. However, as citizens with private agendas that blurred religion and politics, they often created what the State Department called “missionary troubles.” Missionaries, merchants, and diplomats had overlapping and often conflicting priorities, notably in China and the Ottoman empire. Her book concludes with four case studies on relations between missionaries and the Department at the end of the nineteenth century: US imperialism in the Philippines, the Boxer Rebellion, atrocities of the Congo Free State under King Leopold II, and the Armenian Genocide. Missionary Diplomacy fills a significant gap in the study of American diplomacy. Its optic is distinctly an American perspective, however. Ways in which America’s missionaries were perceived by others requires further research.

Magdalena Florek and James Pamment, eds. “Special Issue: Celebrating two decades of the Journal of Place Branding and Public Diplomacy,” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Vol. 20, November 19, 2024. For this PB&PD Special Issue, Florek (International Place Branding Association) and Pamment (Lund University) invited 15 contributors to celebrate the Journal’s 20th anniversary with reflections on the development and future of its related signature domains. Their brief contributions, currently online, provide a range of contrasting and shared perspectives.

Simon Anholt (Anholt & Co.), “Place branding: has it all been a big misunderstanding?”

Bruce Gregory (George Washington University), “Place Branding and Public Diplomacy’s third decade: trends, questions, and opportunities.”

Philip Kotler (Northwestern University), “What’s happening in place branding?”

Nicholas J. Cull (University of Southern California), “The value of a disciplinary platform: Place Branding and Public Diplomacy and the linkage of reputation to security.”

Nicolas Papadopoulos (Carleton University), “Place branding at 20: the history, the challenge, the promise.”

Eytan Gilboa (Bar-Ilan University), “Public diplomacy from global peace to global conflict.”

Mihalis Kavaratzis (Manchester Metropolitan University), “Place branding ‘in colours bold.’”

R.S. Zaharna (American University), “A generational tale of two public diplomacy paths: fierce competition, global collaboration.”

Keith Dinnie (University of Dundee), “Immersive, addictive, and professionalized — emerging trends and future directions in place branding and public diplomacy.”

Kathy R. Fitzpatrick, “Public diplomacy’s social turn: toward a new paradigm.”

Sebastian Zenker (Copenhagen Business School), “Size does matter: city branding versus small city, town, and rural place branding.”

Nancy Snow (California State University, Fullerton), “All women are diplomats.”

Ilan Manor (Ben Gurion University of the Negev), “Whose reality is it anyway? The decline and fall of the common ground in public diplomacy.”

Robert Govers, (Anholt & Co.), “Twenty years of place branding and public diplomacy.”

Alisher Faizullev, Diplomatic Nexus, YouTube Channel, Launched November 2024. Alisher Faizillev (University of World Economy and Diplomacy, Tashkent; former Uzbekistan ambassador to the UK, Benelux countries, EU, and NATO; and author of Diplomacy for Professionals and Everyone, Brill, 2022) has launched a YouTube channel featuring interviews with leading scholars on the study and practice of diplomacy. View conversations with Iver B. Neumann (The Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Norway), “A Social Evolutionary View of Diplomacy,” November 2024 (58 minutes); Paul Meerts (formerly at Clingendael Institute, The Hague), “Diplomatic Negotiations: The Past Can Overshadow the Present,” December 2024 (67 minutes); Marcus Holmes (William and Mary University), December 2024, “Diplomacy Meets Psychology and Neuroscience,” (80 minutes). Viewers can subscribe through his introductory video at the link.

Paula Lamoso González, “Liberal Intergovernmentalism Under Revision: The EEAS and the Creation of a Supra-State Diplomatic Body.” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 19 (2024), 619-655. Lamoso González (Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Spain) argues the European Union (EU) and its diplomatic service challenge the traditional interstate diplomacy model by “redefining the nature of the international order and diplomacy” – and by embodying the capability to significantly enhance EU public diplomacy. Her article posits answers to two questions. (1) Why did large Member States create a supra-state diplomatic institution, the European External Action Service (EEAS)? (2) Did institutional frameworks affect the negotiated outcome? Put differently, was creation of the EEAS effectively driven by domestic preferences of EU Member States or were outcomes influenced by the institutional framework in which their bargaining occurred? She begins with a survey of the EEAS’s development and gaps in the literature. She then examines theoretical constructs in rational choice institutionalism and liberal intergovernmentalism as a framework for her interviews with sixty negotiation participants and research on official documents. Did the negotiation process, as understood by practitioners, align with the theoretical constructs? Lamoso González concludes that unique institutional settings in which Member States and EU actors negotiated domestic preferences did affect EEAS outcomes. Additionally, she contends that preference formation was “domestic but not liberal” meaning domestic interest groups other than diplomatic corps were not involved. Her practitioner-oriented study offers insights into how an institutionalized negotiating framework influenced diplomacy, tradeoffs, and power struggles in a process that determined how a supra-state diplomatic actor could advance the goals of member states and also be controlled by them. “The bargaining was supra-state rather than intergovernmental.”

Zhao Alexandre Huang, “@China vs. @ASEAN on X: Their Digital Mediated Diplomacy Involving the #SouthChinaSea,” CPD Perspectives, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, September 2024. In this well researched and carefully argued paper, Huang (Université Gustave Eiffel) examines how China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) managed diplomatic relations and used digitalized diplomacy in South China Sea disputes between 2022 and mid-2023. His study employed qualitative and quantitative analysis of the X (formerly Twitter) accounts of four stakeholders: China, ASEAN, one ASEAN country with a pro-China political stance, Malaysia, and one with a more adversarial stance, the Philippines. Three research questions shaped his analysis. (1) How did Beijing and ASEAN use X to establish network structures and disseminate narrative messages about their claims? (2) How did China’s diplomats conceptualize the South China Sea issue and create narrative strategies about ASEAN? (3) What was ASEAN’s narrative strategy and what similarities and differences emerged across the member countries? Huang concludes that stakeholders on both sides in the South China Sea issue displayed caution in using social media to frame geopolitical issues. Both sides were directly critical of the other, but overall “they tended to maintain a positive and friendly stance, albeit with some ambiguity, as they advanced initiatives such as negotiating a code of conduct in the South China Sea.” The value of Huang’s paper turns on its nuanced empirical analysis and illuminating discussion of its research methodology and conceptual issues in digitalized mediated diplomacy.

Sarah J. Jackson, “Book Forum: Jürgen Habermas’s A New Structural Transformation| A New Transformation of the Public Sphere? Questions on Identity, Power, and Affect,” International Journal of Communiction, Vol. 18 (2024). The eminent and still productive Jurgen Habermas (born 1929) published the German edition of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere in 1962. Its English translation by MIT Press in 1991 gave wider distribution to his ideas on the public sphere of civil society, communicative rationality, deliberative democracy, pragmatism, and mediated information and ideas. His book and works of the American philosopher John Dewey advanced theoretical concepts that influenced generations of media and communication scholars and, indirectly, informational and relational approaches in public diplomacy.

In A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Deliberative Politics, trans. Ciaran Cronin (Polity, 2023), Habermas reexamines his ideas in the context of digitalized communication, social media, transformation of legacy media, the rise of big tech companies, challenges of right wing populism, growing social inequality, and needed conditions for deliberative democracies to function well. He argues algorithmic control of communication flows, self-enclosed echo chambers, and the market power of large corporations necessitate appropriate regulation of digital media. For Habermas, “the deliberative character of public opinion and will formation is not a matter of political preference but a constitutional imperative” (p. 59).

In this book forum, Sarah J. Jackson assembles brief online essays (each four pages) that take the measure of Habermas’s current thinking and responses to his critics. Together they are a gateway for scholars, students, and practitioners to revisit the thinking of one the most important social and communication theorists of our time.

Sarah J. Jackson (University of Pennsylvania), “A New Transformation of the Public Sphere? Questions on Identity, Power, and Affect.”

Ya-Wen Lei, (Harvard University), “The Decay of the Public Sphere and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy.”

Barbara Pfetsch, (Freie Universitat Berlin). “The Decline of Deliberative Democracy in the Age of Digital Capitalism: Revisiting Habermas’s New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.”

Andrea D. Wenzel (Temple University) and Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach (University of Southern California), “Can We Revitalize the Public Sphere From the Ground Up?”

Marvin Kalb, A Different Russia: Khrushchev and Kennedy on a Collision Course, (Brookings Institution Press, 2024). Veteran journalist, writer, and fluent Russian speaker, Marvin Kalb (former NBC and CBS diplomatic correspondent) looks back on tensions between the US and USSR in the early 1960s through his perspectives as lifelong observer of Russia and recollections of his days as a young CBS correspondent in Moscow. In a personal narrative that covers the Bay of Pigs, the Vienna summit, the building of the Berlin Wall, and the Cuban missile crisis, Kalb’s insights make for interesting history that invites comparison of how a Russia led by Khrushchev differs from a Russia led by Putin.

Anna Popkova, “Indigenous Dissent and Public Diplomacy during Russia’s War in Ukraine: The Case of Free Buryatia Foundation,” CPD Perspectives, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, November 2024. Popkova (Western Michigan University) develops two claims in this study. First, she advances the theoretical claim that indigenous non-state actors engaged in political dissent and disruption of state-sponsored public diplomacy can be considered public diplomacy actors by virtue of their reliance on “diplomatic capabilities in the absence of diplomatic status.” Second, she defends the empirical claim that the Free Buryatia Foundation (FBF), institutionally located in the United States, is a non-state public diplomacy actor. The FBF engages in “dissenting public diplomacy” through its construction and dissemination of strategic narratives that challenge (1) Russia’s hegemonic narratives about the war in Ukraine and (2) the vilification of “savage Buryat warriors” disseminated by international media. Her article provides an instructive overview of recent discussion of diplomacy’s boundaries and the rationale for treating some non-state actors as diplomatic actors. Through her focus on actors attentive to conflict and dissent, she broadens a discourse dominated by finding collaborative solutions to problems. Her article usefully contributes to a fundamental question in diplomacy’s boundaries agenda. How should we distinguish between diplomacy and the interactions of large numbers of activists, political factions, and other groups engaged in domestic politics and forms of cross-cultural communication apart from diplomacy?

Daniel F. Runde and Phillip Arceneaux, “Refocusing U.S. Public Diplomacy for a Multipolar World,”CSIS Brief, Center for Strategic and International Studies, November 2024. Runde (CSIS Senior Vice President) and Arceneaux (Miami University, Ohio) call on the US to reframe its approach to public diplomacy for a future “likely to be dominated by superpower competition between the United States, China, and Russia.” Two decades of democratic backsliding and the rise of authoritarian regimes, they argue, make advancing interests, not values, a better cost-benefit strategy for dialogue and cooperation in multipolar world. Their report makes a variety of strategic and structural recommendations. (1) Adopt the “marketplace of loyalties” as a strategic choice, because “the philosophical applicability of the ‘marketplace of ideas’” is failing. (2) Leverage technologies to enhance public diplomacy’s storytelling context, elicit emotional responses, achieve persuasive outcomes, and counter disinformation and influence operations. (3) Broaden the range of foreign audiences and rethink restrictions on engagement with domestic audiences. (4) Position the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) as the central hub in whole of government public diplomacy. (5) Prioritize spending and audience research on countries and regions not aligned exclusively with China or Russia. (6) Keep US government media at arm’s length from “operational interference” by the White House and Congress. (7) Achieve advanced State Department training and professional development through partnerships with academic partners.

This report, like many others over the years, is filled with excellent ideas. Like others, it also will spark debate and rejoinders. Consider two. First, a hard binary between interests and values does not deal with the fact that Americans since 1776 have treated their values as interests to be advanced through example and actions. Second, since 1947 presidents and the National Security Council have repeatedly tried and failed to put a durable interagency coordination hub for large government departments and military services in a State Department bureau. The GEC was terminated in December 2024, the victim of right-wing partisan attacks. Had it survived, it could have coordinated some counter propaganda and disinformation efforts. However, it could not have coordinated diplomacy’s whole of government public dimension more broadly.

US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, “2024 Comprehensive Annual Report on Public Diplomacy & International Broadcasting,” December 16, 2024. The bipartisan Commission’s latest report is the work of new executive director Sarah Arkin, senior advisor Daniel Langenkamp, former senior advisor Jeff Ridenour, and program assistant Kristina Zamary. Arkin, an experienced foreign affairs professional, is a former staff member and Deputy Staff Director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She also held staff positions in the House of Representatives and the Department of State. Most of the 223-page report consists of in-depth budget and program information provided by the State Department’s bureaus and overseas missions and the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM). Particularly useful are the report’s graphics and clear presentation of public diplomacy’s complex funding categories, supplemental funding enhancements, and budget history. Kudos to Commission Chair Sim Farar and Vice Chair Bill Hybl who have served long past their expired terms as the Senate continues to dither on confirmation of their successors and other long pending presidential appointees.

The report’s six pages of recommendations (pp. 13-19) — directed to the White House, Congress, the Secretary of State and Department bureaus, and USAGM — are central to the Commission’s statutory mandate to evaluate and improve US public diplomacy’s capabilities and activities. Many are consistent with recommendations made often throughout its 76-year existence. Key recommendations include:

(1) Increase resources over time to reach peak budget levels just after the Cold War.

(2) Create and resource a “true strategic communications and information space directorate within the National Security Council (NSC)” and ensure greater public diplomacy participation in its PCC and sub-PCC processes.

(3) Update Congressional authorization and appropriations laws to facilitate foreign and domestic audience engagement.

(4) Change USAGM’s legislation to give the International Broadcasting Advisory Board authority to name an acting USAGM CEO during vacancies, exercise “meaningful oversight” to strengthen the journalistic independence of USAGM’s networks, and require that the Board approve the appointment and removal of VOA directors.

(5) Urge the Secretary of State to require greater public diplomacy engagement by senior officials and delegate more responsibility to bureau and mission spokespersons.

(6) If Congressional Republicans end statutory authority for the Global Engagement Center (GEC), State’s Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy (R) should divide the Center’s functions among the Under Secretariat and State’s regional bureaus. The Commission offers a detailed plan for how this should be done. [Congress terminated the GEC in December 2024.]

(7) Explore ways in which AI can reduce time consuming administration burdens and enable practitioners to prioritize high-value work.

(8) Consolidate information sharing among R’s four separate monitoring and evaluation and audience research entities and make their work more accessible to the public, practitioners, and stakeholders.

(9) Streamline management of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ programs at US missions and utilize new AI tools to reduce administrative burdens.

(10) Prioritize use of experienced Foreign Service Officers, marketing and advertising experts, and subject matter experts in public diplomacy training.

(11) Use USAGM’s move to a new building in Washington, DC to update its headquarters technology and evaluate its own and third-party infrastructure.

Mathew C. Weed, “Termination of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center,” CRS Insight, Congressional Reference Center, December 26, 2024. Because Congress failed to extend the Global Engagement Center’s (GEC) mandate to counter foreign disinformation and propaganda and coordinate related interagency activities, the GEC terminated on December 23, 2024. Veteran CRS foreign policy analyst Weed’s brief paper examines the GEC’s authority and mandate, its operations and activities, and State Department Office of Inspector General assessments of its “generally effective” performance. He also summarizes issues that led groups and Members of Congress to seek to defund the GEC based on its connections with partner organizations accused of restricting free speech on digital platforms in the United States. He concludes with a summary of efforts to extend GEC’s authorization and State Department plans to distribute its activities to other State Department bureaus. See also US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, “A Historical Overview of the Global Engagement Center [GEC]: ACPD Official Meeting Minutes,”May 15, 2024.

Issue #125

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

Bruce Gregory can be reached at BGregory@gwu.edu and BGregory1@aol.com

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

Get the eBook text and paperback here.

Get Kindle and paperback here.

Sherwood Demitz, “Memories From a Cold War Summit,” American Diplomacy, August 2024. In this vivid personal recollection, retired US Foreign Service officer Sherwood “Woody” Demitz discusses his memories of the historic 1972 Nixon-Brezhnev presidential summit in Moscow. It led to détente and signings of the SALT I Treaty, the ABM Treaty, and the US-USSR Incidents at Sea Treaty. Surrounding the substance were pressures on diplomats of a possible last-minute cancellation (the US had dropped aerial mines in North Vietnam’s Haiphong harbor trapping Soviet cargo ships), massive international media coverage, and a dinner for Brezhnev and the Politburo at Spaso House, the residence of the US ambassador. Demitz’s public diplomacy career combined foreign service postings, audience and media research, and international broadcasting.

Mervyn Frost, “The Global Diplomatic Practice: Constituting an Ethical World Order,” in J.E. Spence, Claire Yorke, and Alister Masser, eds., A New Theory and Practice of Diplomacy: New Perspectives on Diplomacy, (I.B. Taurus, 2021), 15-36 [see book review below]. Frost (Kings College London) makes interesting and debatable claims pertinent to discourse on practice theory, ethics and diplomacy, and public diplomacy. First, in contrast to many scholars who treat practice theory as what practitioners do instrumentally and situationally, Frost analyzes diplomatic practices as constitutive components of “the global society of sovereign states” and “global civil society.” Second, it follows, he argues, that in a world of diverse ethical codes, ethical standards for diplomats cannot be drawn from beyond diplomacy. Rather, they “can only be understood from within the social practices in which they are constituted as actors.” He divides everyday global diplomatic practices into “administration” (e.g., issuing passports, facilitating trade, and managing exchanges) and “politics” resolving disputes between states “about the rules of association within the global practice of states” (e.g., about claims to territory, reparations after wars, and constitutional issues in international organizations). Third, Frost contends these practices have become more complex due to media and communication forms open to publics and the “extensive strategic communications” of government leaders, which he states is sometimes “misleadingly referred to as ‘public diplomacy.’” A more accurate term, he argues, is simply “international politics” or the struggle for power and material advantage.

Frost’s chapter is useful because it prompts reflection on salient issues in practice theory and ethics in diplomacy. However, it is problematic in its assumption of a hard binary between the society of sovereign states and a “macro practice” of anarchy in the absence of central government — a category distinction that overlooks a vast domain of governance rules, norms, and institutions in the space between anarchy and government. His offhand dismissal of public diplomacy fails to consider that in essence it is a political instrument central to diplomatic practice and relationships between government and governance actors and their publics. For an insightful review of the book and Frost’s chapter, see Kristin Anabel Eggling, “Review Feature: New Perspectives on Diplomacy,” E-International Relations, July 9, 2022.

Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, (Random House, 2024). In this sweeping new book, Harari (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind) challenges what he calls the “naive view” of information. By this he means the idea that information’s primary role in history is to represent a preexisting reality, that sufficient information can lead to truth, which in turn can lead to power and wisdom, and that good information will drive out bad information in the marketplace of ideas. For Harari, most information does not represent reality, although sometimes it does. Rather, because information always connects different points in a network, our starting point should be how information connects people and new networks over time. Part one of the book discusses ways humans invented information technologies that improved connectivity — shared stories, clay tablets, print, mass media. Chapters explore how information networks have been used to create myths and bureaucracies, authoritarian and democratic power structures, resurgent populism, fantasies of infallibility, and self-correcting mechanisms.

With part one as an essential historical perspective, part two interrogates AI — a fundamentally different technology that does not rely on human mythmakers and human bureaucracies to function. What happens when computers with autonomous agency run bureaucracies and invent new myths? How should we distinguish between consciousness and independent decision-making capabilities? What are the implications of computer-to-computer information chains without humans, relentless networks that are always “on,” and computer-generated narratives that a computer’s algorithms alone curate and interpret? What do these inorganic information capabilities mean for democracy, economic models, cultural norms, and instruments of governance and political power? Harari is not a technology determinist; we have choices. In part three he explores the implications of unfathomable AI algorithms for democracy, populism, and authoritarianism, possible “digital empires,” and the heavy responsibility of making good choices and building strong self-correcting capabilities. Harari earned his global reputation by making powerful arguments through impressive storytelling, humor, and conceptual clarity. Some reviewers, including technology experts and scholars bent on writing for other specialists, are critical of Harari’s account. But there is broad reader and reviewer enthusiasm for his creative bridging of scholarship and public discussion of one of the most important issues of our time. His book is a compelling read for teachers and students of diplomacy’s public dimension.

Stuart MacDonald and Andrew Murray, Soft Power at a Turning Point: A Comparative Analysis, 2024, British Council. In this 50-page report, commissioned from ICR Research Ltd, London, the authors compare the “cultural diplomacy and public diplomacy” activities of the British Council and counterpart organizations. Key findings include the following. (1) Countries are focusing soft power assets more on national interests and their foreign and economic policies than shared global challenges. (2) More programs are designed for domestic audiences. (3) Soft power is increasingly mobilized to promote national identities “sometimes assertively or controversially.” (4) More control is “exerted by governments over arm’s length bodies like the British Council.” The report, filled with instructive graphics, compares resources, “digital maturity,” and global reach. The authors recognize a variety of challenges in their comparative analysis: dissimilar connections between governments and civil society, differences in definitions of soft power, complexities in operationalizing digital and analog tools and methods, and structural contrasts between foreign affairs ministries and organizations comparable to the British Council. Despite these analytical concerns, the report is an instructive global overview and online resource for teachers and practitioners.

Jessica T. Mathews, “What Was the Biden Doctrine?” Foreign Affairs, September/October, 2024. The Carnegie Endowment’s Distinguished Fellow Jessica Mathews argues four years is insufficient time to establish a foreign policy doctrine. Nevertheless, Biden’s commitment to diplomacy backed by strength is an approach well-suited to today’s world if it is not overturned by a successor. Her article is a report card on Biden’s achievements and strategic mistakes. High grades: winning the trust of allies, institutionalizing a deep American presence in Asia, restoration of a US presence in multilateral organizations and agreements, ending the longest “forever war” in Afghanistan, and an innovative response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Low grades: undermining an ambiguous “one China” policy and escalating tensions over Taiwan, a stubborn unwillingness to use US leverage with Israel to reduce staggering levels of death and suffering in Gaza, trade protectionism, lack of sustained nuclear arms control and nonproliferation diplomacy, a Manichean division between autocracies and democracies, and an unproductive “Summit for Democracies.” Mathews makes no predictions in the face of historical uncertainties, but overall Biden has used diplomacy to bring about profound changes in foreign policy “not to accommodate American decline but to reflect the country’s inherent strength.”

Ahmed Nabil, “Contact Groups as Diplomatic Intervention Tools in Civil Wars: US Diplomacy,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Online publication July 25, 2024. Nabil (Wayne State University and a former diplomat) examines contact groups as a distinct mode of diplomatic intervention and engagement in conflicts. Contact groups are different from track one and track two negotiations, he argues, and they do not include parties to civil wars. Using qualitative methods, consisting primarily of unstructured and anonymous interviews with mid-career, senior, and former US officials who participated in conflict group meetings, his article examines case studies of contact groups in civil conflicts in Libya’s P3+3, the Syria Small Group, and the Yemen Quartet. His interview questions explored each groups’ formation, meeting dynamics, relations with UN processes, and effectiveness from the US perspective. Nabil concludes the three groups failed to achieve success in achieving a final settlement. Nevertheless, they served US interests. They were a forum for dialogue and advancing US policies. They were a means to build support for UN envoys in these conflicts. And they helped to achieve US interests such as guaranteeing Libyan oil exports and financial support to territories liberated from ISIL in Syria. Nabil also argues this mode of diplomacy can support engagement between stakeholders with different views of conflict and provide a useful supplement to other modes of multilateral diplomacy. His article is a good example of how analysis of practice can illuminate conceptual issues in diplomacy.

Jack Spence, Alastair Masser, and Claire Yorke, eds., New Perspectives on Diplomacy, A New Theory and Practice of Diplomacy, Volume 1, Contemporary Diplomacy in Action, Volume 2, (I.B. Tauris, 2021). Spence (Kings College London), Masser (Legatum Institute), and Yorke (Yale University) argue a seismic shift in world order and complex emerging challenges pose fundamental questions for the nature, practice, and study of diplomacy — fading American hegemony; rising multipolarity; geopolitical, technological, and demographic changes; and diminished distinctions between war and peace, state and non-state actors, formal and informal dialogue, and values and interests. Chapters in two volumes explore what these trends mean for continuity and change in the study and practice of diplomacy. Volume 1 includes chapters on diplomacy and ethics, identity, and empathy; relations between diplomacy and conflict resolution, small state politics, summitry, and intelligence; and the theoretical value of practice theory. Volume 2 includes chapters on diplomacy and social media, the environment, information war, domestic populations, emotions, and social movements. Diplomacy remains indispensable, the editors contend, and its “widening aperture” embraces more actors and more sub-disciplines. Central questions going forward: what skills and experiences will next generation diplomats need; how should we study and teach diplomacy; and how should we bridge the academic / practice divide? (Suggested by Kathy Fitzpatrick, University of South Florida)

Daya Kishan Thussu, Changing Geopolitics of Global Communication, (Routlege, 2024). Thussu (Hong Kong Baptist University and previously University of Westminster in London) examines issues at the intersection of geopolitics — shaped by decline in a US-led West, the rise of China, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and global communication — shaped by transformative digital technologies and the role of artificial intelligence in weaponizing information. Chapters explore the historical origins of the 21st century’s global information infrastructure, “digital democracy vs. digital imperialism,” how military conflict has been framed by Western media to advance geopolitical interests, weaponization of information in the Russia-Ukraine war, cyberwarfare, and emerging characteristics of a new global information order.

Kate Wright, Martin Scott, and Mel Bunce, Capturing News, Capturing Democracy: Trump and the Voice of America, (Oxford University Press, 2024). Efforts by government officials to politicize news coverage by the Voice of America (VOA) have been present from its creation. Senior VOA broadcasters were fired for their coverage of Italy’s King Victor Emanuel III in 1943. Senator Joseph McCarthy mounted vile attacks on VOA in the 1950s. The White House and senior USIA officials deleted content in VOA’s coverage of the US evacuation from Vietnam in 1975. The State Department tried to prevent VOA from airing an interview with Taliban leader Mullah Omar in 2001. Examples from a very long list. In this timely book, Wright (University of Edinburgh), Scott (University of East Anglia), and Bunce (University of London) take a deep dive into VOA’s politicization by US Agency for Global Media CEO Michael Pack during the last seven months of the Trump administration. Adopting the theoretical framework of “government capture” — understood as ways governments and civil society allies directly and indirectly politicize journalism in public service media — the authors discuss Pack’s actions in detail, their cumulative effect in undermining democratic checks and balances, and VOA’s vulnerabilities to future politicization.

The book brings needed scholarship to examination of historical, conceptual, and practitioner issues in government media. It is distinguished by its evidence-based research, much of it derived from Freedom of Information Act requests. It also serves as a needed reform primer for those seeking to strengthen VOA’s journalism firewall and address continuing risks of politicization. There is one significant weakness in their research. The authors did not seek to interview Pack, his appointees, and others on the questionable grounds that doing so risked disrupting the “delicate processes” of investigations that might result in criminal and civil lawsuits.

Irene Wu, Measuring Soft Power in International Relations, (Lynne Reiner Publishers, 2024). Irene Wu (Georgetown University, US Federal Communications Commission) takes a deep dive into the meaning and measurement of soft power. She argues soft power can be quantified in ways that make possible comparisons across societies and political entities and analyses across time. Her soft power rubric has three people-to-people interactions — emigration, studying abroad, and traveling abroad — and a fourth mediated interaction, watching foreign movies. These indicators are arranged on a spectrum spanning short- and long-term attraction. Part one of the book explores recent conceptual developments in soft power research and how ideas from related fields of study can provide tools to study soft power. Part two applies her conceptual framework to case studies: US movies and popular culture, international education hubs, India’s emigrants, Russia’s and China’s soft power compared, soft power in Southeast Asia, and the strengths and limitations of global soft power rankings.

A warm welcome to our Visiting Scholar from New Zealand

By Yvonne Oh, IPDGC Program Coordinator

IPDGC welcomes Professor Natalia Chaban, professor in the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Professor Chaban is a leading expert in image and perceptions studies within the EU and IR contexts, and in public diplomacy and political communication.

As a Visiting Scholar with our Institute, she will be researching “Public diplomacy at times of conflict and crises”, which will allow her to apply and extend her expertise in image and perceptions studies, international political communication and media ecology studies, while considering the three cases informed by her original theorization of the perceptual approach to foreign policy studies.

Professor Chaban has led multiple transnational research projects externally supported by the Erasmus+ of the European Commission, Foreign Policy Instrument Division of the European Commission/European External Action Service, EU member states’ embassies and NATO.

She is also widely published in high impact foreign policy journals such as Journal of Common Market Studies, Cooperation and Conflict, Journal of European Integration and Foreign Policy Analysis.

Our Institute and the wider GW scholarly community look forward to collaborating with Professor Chaban on this very topical and timely research.

September 15, 2023April 23, 2024

Considering opportunities at the State Department

IPDGC Career talk with senior U.S. diplomats

By Alexis Posel, IPDGC communications assistant.

At the recent career talk held on September 13th, GW students had many questions to ask: “Does having a graduate degree improve employment prospects at the Department of State?”

“What are your recommendations for making yourself a good candidate for an FSO position in undergrad?”

“How did you end up specializing in economics?”

“What is it like working for different presidential administrations?”

Senior Foreign Service Officers Chris Teal (left) and Michael Newbill spoke to over 50 undergraduate and graduate students about a variety of career opportunities available to them at the US Department of State.

The two senior diplomats are currently on detail at the George Washington University. Chris is the Public Diplomacy Fellow at IPDGC and teaches public diplomacy, and Michael teaches classes in communication and global strategies.

Apart from giving information about programs available for students wanting short-term involvement with the State Department – internships, fellowships, study abroad – both also shared their experiences in overseas postings and how they prepared for the professional and personal challenges. Michael and Chris spoke about having the mindset to advance national interests abroad and handling the challenge of being questioned about everything that happens in the U.S.

“When you are representing the US, you have to be ‘on’ 24-7. This is not a 9-5 job,” Chris added.

Some takeaways from yesterday were: State jobs don’t always require a graduate degree; YES to studying languages; and explore both the diplomatic and civil service positions to better understand what works for you. The Department publishes information on paid internships and fellowships, and those students who want to get on the career path to a State Department role, they can learn more about the Pickering, Rangel, and Clarke fellowships.

August 21, 2023August 22, 2023

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).

IPDGC welcomes Visiting Scholar Seung-Keun Lee of Keimyung University

Dr. Seung-Keun Lee is a professor in the Political Science Department at Keimyung University in Daegu, South Korea.

By Yvonne Oh, IPDGC Program Coordinator

At GW, Lee will be conducting research into “Public Diplomacy and Northeast Asian Peace Building”.

Though the Cold War has long ended, there is much effort to curtail tensions in the region. Some potential areas of conflict are: the Korean Peninsula, the China-Taiwan issue, the China-U.S. trade conflict, and territorial issues between Japan-Russia and Japan-China.

Lee will look at how the United States, Japan, China and Russia implement their diplomatic strategies and policies in the region. He notes that public diplomacy in the practice of foreign policies – amid the changes in global diplomatic paradigms – will be an answer to building peace in the region.

IPDGC looks forward to having Lee join our other prestigious Visiting Scholars at IPDGC this spring semester.