Category: Bruce Gregory’s Resource List

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Issue #91

“BBG Strategic Plan, 2018-2022,” Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), released February 2018.  In its fifth strategic plan, the BBG seeks to explain the mission, goals, and objectives of its array of US international media networks: Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Al Hurra and Radio Sawa), and Radio and TV Marti.  The BBG frames its projections in the context of external threats, placing emphasis on “weaponization of information and deteriorating media freedom,” its “signature accomplishments,” worldwide weekly audience levels, and a “reorganized agency structure,” which in its view is “capable as never before to implement change.”
Literature on American diplomacy continues to overlook a rich history of diplomatic practice in relations with Native Americans during the colonial era and early years of the United States.  Dartmouth College professor Calloway does much to remedy this in a masterful study of Washington’s long association with the American frontier as land speculator, soldier, diplomat, politician, and president.  (So also does Michael Oberg’s recent book on the Treaty of Canandaigua listed below.)  Fundamentally, Calloway argues, Washington “was instrumental in the dispossession, defeat, exploitation, and marginalization of Indian peoples.”  At the same time, as a young man he received a “crash course in Indian diplomacy” and the diplomatic skills needed to deal with the formidable power of multiple nations on the American continent.  Colonial rivalries and indigenous peoples were of central importance to him throughout his life.  Establishing US sovereignty meant dealing with the sovereignty of Indian nations through force and negotiated treaties, and his “conduct of Indian affairs shaped the authority of the president in war and diplomacy.”  Calloway’s book provides abundant evidence and deeply informed insights into early patterns of practice in the American ways of war, traditional diplomacy, and public diplomacy that cast a long shadow.
Amy Chua, Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations, (Penguin Press, 2018).  While it’s not a book about diplomacy, Yale University Law School professor Chua’s Political Tribes addresses ideas that are fundamental in diplomatic practice.  We belong to groups.  Human beings are tribal, and in-group identities matter most.  We also seek to bridge divides in anticipation our groups will benefit and that there is value in common enterprise.  So far, so good.  She argues the US has often been blind to the power of tribal politics preferring instead to frame differences as nation-states engaged in ideological battles, capitalism vs. communism, democracy vs. authoritarianism, the free world vs. rogue states.  Failure to understand the primacy of ethnic, religious, and sectarian tribes, Chua contends, has been the Achilles’ heel of US foreign policy in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Venezuela, and elsewhere.  Here too her reasoning has merit, as does her critique of identity politics in America today.  She is less persuasive, however, in offering a version of American exceptionalism, in which America alone has transcended tribalism, while simultaneously providing compelling examples to the contrary.
Costas Constantinou, “Reflections on Diplomatic Spectacle and Cinematic Thinking” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 13(2018), 1-23.  In this important article, Constantinou (University of Cyprus) looks imaginatively at “visual diplomacy,” his frame for the ways and means diplomatic actors use images to convey ideas, produce and circulate meanings that serve particular purposes, and seek to shape and transform relations between actors and across publics, both foreign and domestic.  He examines these concepts in a study of diplomacy as spectacle grounded in a case of commissioned cinematography on Cypriot public diplomacy.  He creatively supplements his verbal arguments with a self-produced film, The Blessed Envoy, a montage of official Cypriot documentaries that reveal narratives and hidden transcripts in the visual content, permitting judgments on the use of imagery in mediated diplomacy.  Constantinou draws attention to ideas worth consideration and debate: pluralist, multi-stakeholder diplomacy and asymmetrical representation in new varieties of diplomatic space; the power and emotional impact of “visuality” in mediated diplomacy; how imagery constructs reality and relates to identity, verbal narratives, and the politics of representation by groups; and his provocative idea that “the spectacle has become a form of diplomacy through which the repertoire of images is orchestrated for mass consumption.”  Constantinou’s compilation of short documentaries The Blessed Envoy is linked to the article and available online at https://vimeo.com/215142076 (password: Makarios).
Ronan Farrow, War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence, (W.W. Norton & Company, 2018).  Writing with power and flair unsurprising in a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist for the New Yorker, Farrow tells a story of crisis and decline in the institutions of American diplomacy and the ascending dominance of soldiers and spies in US foreign policy.  Farrow’s central argument is that professional diplomats have been sidelined due to decades of shortsighted choices in both Democratic and Republican administrations.  His point is not that institutions of traditional diplomacy are not in dire need of reform.  America’s foreign ministry is often “slow, ponderous, and turfy,” and its structures and training outdated in the face of modern challenges.  Rather, it’s that “we are witnessing the destruction of those institutions, with little thought to engineering modern replacements.”  His book draws on more than 200 interviews with diplomats and policymakers, including all living former Secretaries of State, and his work in the State Department with Richard Holbooke in Afghanistan and as Secretary Hillary Clinton’s director of youth issues.  Practitioners will find his account worth reading for its insights and as a point of comparison with their own experiences.  Scholars will find ample evidence for claims about the changing role of foreign ministries in a world of complex global issues.  See also, Farrow’s “Inside Rex Tillerson’s Ouster,” The New Yorker, April 19, 2018.
Niall Ferguson, The Square and the Tower: Networks, Hierarchies, and the Struggle for Global Power, (Penguin Books: 2017).  Ferguson’s (Stanford University) thesis is that social networks have been much more important throughout history than understood by most historians fixated on hierarchies in states, empires, tribes, armies, churches, and corporations.  He begins with 60 pages of inquiry, thoroughly accessible to the non-specialist, into network concepts – nodes, degrees of separation, weak ties, viral ideas, vulnerabilities of hierarchies, network structures, hierarchies as special kinds of networks, and networks with hierarchical features.  Ferguson then engages in a sweeping historical study of the interaction between networks and hierarchies.  He pays particular attention to three periods: (1) the “first ‘networked era,’” from the printing press to the late 18th century; (2) followed by a period in which hierarchies regained dominance, reaching their zenith in the mid-20thcentury; and (3) a “second ‘networked era’” beginning with the rise of digital technologies in the 1970s.  Whether or not his history fully supports his macro-theories, his book stimulates thought and asks a provocative question.  Should we expect both continued disruption of hierarchies that fail to reform and some hierarchical restoration when networks alone cannot avert anarchy?
Andrew Graan, “The Nation Brand Regime: Nation Branding and the Semiotic Regimentation of Public Communication in Contemporary Macedonia,” Signs and Society, Vol. 4, No. S1, 2016, S70-S105.  Graan (University of Chicago) examines elements and implications of a state-sponsored nation-branding project, an urban renewal plan to transform Skopje undertaken by the Republic of Macedonia in 2014.  It’s goal: “to (re)launch Macedonia as a premium nation brand” and put the architectural transformation of Skopje at the center of a strategy to make the nation and its capital “recognizable and desirable to foreign investors and tourists.”  Graan uses his case study to support several arguments.  Nation-branding strategies are interventions within and across public spheres.  Macedonia’s strategy targeted external and internal publics, adopting signs and symbols based on their anticipated impact on the nation-branding project.  The nation’s government-produced media sought to motivate Macedonians to “live the brand” as part of coordinated efforts to regulate public communication.  His article offers a thoughtful account of critics and supporters of the Skopje renewal project and concepts of systematic nation branding as a strategy and public good.  (Courtesy of Nick Cull)
Todd C. Helmus, Elizabeth Bodine-Baron, Andrew Radin, Madeline Magnuson, Joshua Mendelsohn, William Marcellino, Andriy Bega, and Zev Winkelman, Russian Social Media Influence: Understanding Russian Propaganda in Eastern Europe, RAND Corporation, 2018.  RAND’s researchers examine the content and impact of Russian social media and government broadcasting in the Baltics, Ukraine, and other nearby states.  The 148-page study is available in print and online versions.
Ries Kamphof and Jan Melissen, “SDGs, Foreign Ministries and the Art of Partnering with the Private Sector,” Global Policy, 2018.  Kamphof and Melissen (Netherlands Institute of International Relations, ‘Clingendael’) examine conceptual and diplomatic practice issues in partnerships between foreign ministries and private stakeholders intended to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  Their article builds on the idea that networking is now the dominant conceptual basis for diplomacy, with consequences for how we think about diplomats in multi-stakeholder deliberations where non-government actors are co-producers of diplomatic outcomes.  Concepts and insights from public relations and public diplomacy, they argue, are relevant to understanding these networked relations.  SDG partnerships pose new challenges to diplomacy practitioners, because “they are universal in scope, more intrusive in terms of their impact on a multi-stakeholder diplomatic process; and they aim at systematic innovation.”  Kamphof and Melissen point to multiple contextual and operational implications for diplomacy practitioners including the need to be aware of the double-hatted role of companies that combine public goals with shareholder goals that may run counter to sustainable development principles.
Pauline Kerr and Geoffrey Wiseman, eds., Diplomacy in a Gobalizing World (Oxford University Press, second edition, 2018).  In this substantially revised second edition of their groundbreaking textbook, Kerr and Wiseman (Australian National University) update their own pioneering analysis of theory and practice in modern “complex diplomacy” and the insights of twenty-three accomplished scholars.  Chapters examine the historical evolution of diplomacy, concepts and theories in contemporary diplomacy, debates on diplomacy’s future, and varieties of structures, processes, and instruments in diplomatic practice.  Three new chapters examine diplomacy and the use of force, women in diplomacy, and the value of “practice theory” in understanding bilateralism and multilateralism.  Kerr and Wiseman blend theory and practice with clarity and cutting edge research.  Scholars will find much that stimulates discourse and theoretical inquiry.  Students will learn from rich content and discussion questions in each chapter.  Practitioners will benefit from scholarship deeply informed by attention to what diplomats think and do.
Charles A. Kupchan, “The Clash of Exceptionalisms: New Fight Over an Old Idea,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2018, 139-148.  Kupchan (Georgetown University) argues President Trump is not abandoning American exceptionalism; he is tapping into an earlier incarnation of it.  His article divides American exceptionalism into three categories.  American Exceptionalism 1.0 set boundaries for public discourse and political and ideological foundations for US grand strategy prior to World War II.  Its attributes: protective oceans, autonomy at home and abroad, aversion to binding commitments, a messianic mission to project the American experiment in political and economic liberty through voice and the “benignant sympathy” of example, unprecedented social equality and economic mobility, and belief that Americans were an exceptional people.  American Exceptionalism 2.0 turned from sharing by example to active projection of the nation’s power and values through a strategy of global engagement.  Trump’s arrival signals a populism that resonates with Walter Russell Mead’s Jacksonian tradition and core elements of American Exceptionalism 1.0.  Kupchan calls for a new American Exceptionalism 3.0 that maintains a commitment to collective action abroad, transitions from crusader back to exemplar, and engages in varieties of domestic social, economic, and political renewal.
Emily T. Metzgar, Seventy Years of the Smith-Mundt Act and U.S. International Broadcasting: Back to the Future? CPD Perspectives on Public Diplomacy, Paper 3, 2018.  Metzgar (Indiana University) selectively examines legislation, public discourse, and changing contextual elements in US international broadcasting during the seven decades since Congress enacted and amended legislative authority for America’s overseas information and exchange activities in the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948.  Her intent is to provide an overview that illuminates current political debate about the management and role of government broadcasting abroad and at home.  She concludes with her views on the relevance of this history to current political debates about “US broadcasting and other messaging efforts directed at foreign publics.”
Michael Leroy Oberg, Peacemakers: The Iroquois, the United States, and the Treaty of Canandaigua, 1794, (Oxford University Press, 2016).  In this history of diplomacy between the US and the Iroquois League following the American Revolution, Oberg (SUNY, Geneseo) focuses on five years of negotiations between George Washington’s appointed commissioner Timothy Pickering and Iroquois chiefs leading to the treaty that settled land issues and brought peace to the New York frontier.  Oberg’s study is a deeply researched case study of the interests and political goals of two sovereign entities, as well as the diplomatic practices each side brought to and developed during the negotiations.  These included efforts to learn cultures and customs, skilled public oratory, rituals and ceremonies, and methods deployed to reconcile the diplomatic languages of written agreements and wampum belts.  The Canandaigua Treaty is among a handful of treaties that demonstrate how, for a time in the early republic, international law and diplomacy played a role in a narrative dominated by conquest and exploitation in US relations with indigenous peoples.
J. Simon Rofe, “‘And the Gold Medal Goes to’: Sport Diplomacy in Action at the Winter Olympics,” RUSI Newsbrief, February 2018, Vol. 38, No. 1.  Rofe (University of London) reflects on the meaning of sport diplomacy, why it matters, and ways the 23rd Winter Olympics in South Korea demonstrate the capacity of sport to facilitate representation, communication, and negotiation between states and other diplomatic actors.
Barry A. Sanders, Organizing Public Diplomacy: A Layered System, CPD Perspectives on Public Diplomacy, Paper 2, 2018.  Sanders (UCLA) begins with the dubious claim that “the definition of public diplomacy is easy enough: the art and science of communicating with foreign publics on behalf of your nation.”  He then argues the real difficulty is the absence of a “theoretical system” that accounts for the wide variety of activities that fit this definition.  His paper undertakes the ambitious task of solving this problem “by creating layers of inquiry and activity that, taken together, constitute the whole field and all its components.”  His layers include inquiry into how people form and change their ideas, a typology of categories of public diplomacy practice, varieties of public diplomacy tools, choices of communication channels, content of messages that will achieve objectives of public diplomacy campaigns, government organizations, and history as an overarching layer.  Numerous threads in this paper raise good questions and prompt thought; arguably they do not achieve a coherent “theoretical system.”
Abigail Tracy, “‘A Different Kind of Propaganda:’ Has America Lost the Information War?” Vanity Fair, April 23, 2018.  Vanity Fair staff writer Tracy profiles political, policy, funding, and leadership problems in the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, an organization the Department’s website describes as “leading the U.S. government’s efforts to counter propaganda and disinformation from international terrorist organizations and foreign countries.”  Her article draws on a wide variety of sources with firsthand knowledge speaking on and off the record.
Robert F. Trager, Diplomacy: Communication and the Origins of International Order, (Cambridge University Press, 2017).  This book is primarily, but not exclusively, about what Trager (UCLA) calls “private diplomacy.”  It develops two central themes.  First, private diplomatic conversations between adversarial states very often allow the sides to draw inferences about the other’s plans.  Trager examines conditions and diplomatic processes through which this occurs using large datasets drawn from British diplomatic correspondence in the UK’s Confidential Print archive.  Second, with notable exceptions, historians, political scientists, and international relations scholars have “vastly understudied” diplomacy, and regrettably few have “theorized diplomatic exchange as an important independent influence on world events.”  Trager acknowledges but does not deal with a vast literature on public diplomacy and its relevance particularly to perceptions of state resolve, bargaining reputation, and domestic political costs.  He notes his methodological model applies to both private and public diplomacy.  (Courtesy of Eric Gregory)
Yasushi Watanabe, “Public Diplomacy and the Evolution of U.S.-Japan Relations,” The Wilson Center, March 2018.  Watanabe (Keio University) begins this paper with an overview of Japan’s public diplomacy in three historical phases.  He then looks at areas of recent emphasis – “Cool Japan,” human security and life infrastructure, a liberal international order, and bilateral public diplomacy – followed by discussion of different US and Japanese concerns.  He concludes with a brief discussion of the value of strengthened collaboration between the US and Japan in public diplomacy and common concerns driven by the rise of “sharp power” and populism.  Watanabe closes by posing questions about conceptual distinctions between “diplomacy” and “public diplomacy” in an era of multiple non-state actors, digital technologies, whole of government diplomacy, and blurred distinctions between foreign and domestic.
Bruce Wharton, “Public Diplomacy in an Era of Truth Decay,” 7th Annual Walter R. Roberts Lecture, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, George Washington University, March 5, 2018.  Ambassador (ret.) Bruce Wharton, former Acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, draws on a recent RAND Corporation study, “Truth Decay: Fighting for Facts and Analysis” to frame candid and thoughtful ideas about current challenges in public diplomacy.  Drivers of “truth decay” he argues – cognitive biases, social media, constraints on educational systems, and political and social polarization – make today’s public diplomacy difficult.  US political leadership compounds these challenges.  Meaning, he explains, “If I were an ambassador whose public affairs officer or press officer had the same relationship with the truth that our President has, I’d send him home.”  With insights and examples drawn from a distinguished career, Wharton deals with public diplomacy as a foreign policy tool, the principle that effective public diplomacy, as well as all social media, is local, the challenges of competition for attention and explaining gaps between values and actions, and the need to own and openly discuss all programs in the PD tool kit.  He offers reasons for hope grounded in America’s ability to course correct and an impressive next generation of public diplomacy professionals.
Recent Blogs and Other Items of Interest
Daniel Aguirre, Matthias Erlandson, and Miguel Angel Lopez, Diplomacia Pública Digital: El Contexto Iberoamericano, 2018.
Robin Brown, “Some Implications of the Organizational State,” April 5, 2018; “Looking for Public Diplomacy Effects,” March 23, 2018; “The Nationalized State as an International Actor,” March 22, 2018, Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence Blog.
Nicholas J. Cull, “Public Diplomacy for Losers,” March 26, 2018, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Ken Dilanian and Rich Gardella, “One Tiny Corner of the U.S. Government Pushes Back Against Russian Disinformation,” April 15, 2018, NBC News.
Eliot Engel, “Whistleblowers Warn of Imminent ‘Coup’ at Broadcasting Board of Governors,” March 21, 2018; Press Release; Hadas Gold, “Democrat: Whistleblowers Say White House Trying to Oust Broadcast Board CEO,” March 20, 2018, CNN Politics; Matt Gertz, “A Pro-Trump ‘Coup’ Could Turn a Government Media Agency Into a ‘Propaganda’ Machine,” March 21, 2018, Media Matters; Susan Crabtree, “Royce Urges Trump to Initiate BBG, VOA Reforms By Naming New Director,” March 21, 2018, The Washington Free Beacon; and Robbie Gramer, “Fear of a Coup at Broadcasting Board of Governors,” March 21, 2018, Foreign Policy; Alan Heil, “Visions for U.S. Global Media: Just the Facts, Ma’am,” March 24, 2018, Public Diplomacy Council.
John D. Feeley, “Why I Could No Longer Serve This President,” March 9, 2018, The Washington Post.
Shannon Goudy, “5 Ways to Talk About Trump: Explaining President Trump Through Metaphor Analysis,” April 24, 2018, GWU, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, Take Five Blog.
Graham Lampa, “The Other Firing At State And What That Means,” March 13, 2018, Atlantic Council.
MKLeedle, “The Pyeongchang Narrative Olympics: Win, Lose, or Draw,” April 27, 2018, GWU, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, Take Five Blog.
Ilan Manor, “An Optimistic Research Agenda for Digital Public Diplomacy,” April 12, 2018; “Re-integrating #Digital Into Diplomacy,” March 12, 2018, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Emily Metzgar, “Will U.S. Japan Friendship Survive Uncertainty in Asia,” April 17, 2018, The Conversation.
Robinson Meyer, “The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News,” March 8, 2018, The Atlantic.
James Pamment, “Sweden’s Public Diplomacy Must Adapt to Its New Global Role,” April 24, 2017, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Shaun Riordan, “The Really Dark Side of Facebook,” April 19, 2018, BideDao.
Halley Rogers, “How RT is Exploiting Grievances in Catalonia and Dividing Europe,” April 23, 2018, GWU, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, Take Five Blog.
Philip Seib, “Why Rex Tillerson’s Departure Matters,” March 15, 2018, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Conrad Turner, “Part I: Make Time for PD,” April 5, 2018; “Part II: Make Time for PD,” April 9, 2018, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Vivian Walker, “PD & The Decline of Liberal Democracy,” April 17, 2018, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Stephen M. Walt, “The State Department Needs Rehab,” March 5, 2018, Foreign Policy.
Hilton Yip, “China’s $6 Billion Propaganda Blitz Is a Snooze,” April 23, 2018, Foreign Policy.
Karen Zeitvogel, “Sports Diplomacy: Is It Just ‘War Minus the Shooting’ or More?” April 30, 2018, Washington Diplomat.
Gem From The Past
Andrew F. Cooper, Brian Hocking, and William Maley, eds., Global Governance and Diplomacy: Worlds Apart? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).  Ten years ago, Andrew Cooper (The Centre for International Governance Innovation, Canada), Brian Hocking (Loughborough University, UK), and William Maley (Australian National University) compiled a collection of essays that signaled a paradigm shift in how we think about global governance and diplomatic practice.  Written by scholars and practitioners for parallel conferences in 2006 at Wilton Park and the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy, these essays challenged the traditional “worlds apart” conceptual and operational separation between governance and diplomacy.  Their ideas influenced a discourse that now dominates in study and practice: polylateral diplomacy and governance, whole of government diplomacy, complex diplomacy, integrative diplomacy, networked diplomacy, transnational global issues, power diffusion and porous boundaries between foreign and domestic.
Chapters with particular consequence include:
·      Cooper, Hocking, and Maley, “Introduction: Diplomacy and Global Governance: Locating Patterns of (Dis)Connection.”
·      Iver B. Neuman (Norwegian Institute of International Affairs), “Globalisation and Diplomacy.”
·      Christer Jonsson (Lund University), “Global Governance: Challenges to Diplomatic Communication, Representation, and Recognition.”
·      Jan Aart Scholte (University of Warwick), “From Government to Governance: Transition to a New Diplomacy.”
·      Shaun Riordan (British Diplomatic Service, ret.), “The New International Security Agenda and the Practice of Diplomacy.”
·      Bruce Gregory (George Washington University), “Public Diplomacy and Governance: Challenges for Scholars and Practitioners.”
·      Andrew F. Cooper (The Centre for International Governance Innovation), “Stretching the Model of ‘Coalitions of the Willing.'”
·      Jorge Heine (Former Ambassador of Chile to India and South Africa), “On the Manner of Practicing the New Diplomacy.”
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Issue #90

Melissa Conley Tyler, Rhea Matthews, and Emma Brockhurst, Think Tank Diplomacy, Brill Research Perspectives in Diplomacy and Foreign Policy, Volume 2.3 (2017).  One of the most interesting conversations in diplomacy today turns on new ideas about diplomatic activities and spaces within and beyond states, and whether some civil society actors are independent diplomacy actors.  Pioneers include: Geoffrey Wiseman (“polylateral diplomacy”), Brian Hocking (“catalytic diplomacy”), Hocking, Jan Melissen, Sean Riordan, and Paul Sharp (“integrative diplomacy”), Andrew Cooper (“diplomatic afterlives”), Jorge Heine (“network diplomacy”), and John Robert Kelley (“new diplomacy”).  Conley Tyler, Matthews, and Brockhurst (Australia National University) advance these ideas with this carefully argued exploration of think tank diplomacy.  Their central claim is “that think tanks do have a role in diplomacy, not only in supporting diplomatic activity but playing roles in diplomacy in their own right.”  They engage in at least four diplomatic functions – negotiations, communication, information gathering, and promoting friendly relations and minimizing frictions – when acting in circumstances “reasonably described as diplomatic” and where governments and other stakeholders regard them as legitimate.  Their study begins with a conceptual framework and a working definition of think tanks.  They continue with a discussion of modern diplomacy, evolving roles of non-state actors in diplomacy and international relations, and a matrix enhanced analysis, citing numerous examples of direct and indirect diplomatic roles of think tanks.  Theoretical ideas are grounded in a firm grasp of the literature and eight in-depth multi-regional case studies:  Korea National Diplomatic Academy, Chinese Association for International Understanding, the Netherlands Institute of International Relations (Clingendael), International Crisis Group, Brazil’s Fundacao Getulio Vargas, the UK’s International Institute for Strategic Studies, the South African Institute of International Affairs, and the Australian Institute of International Affairs.  The cases illustrate how think tanks perform diplomatic functions; assess strengths, limitations, and challenges; and foreshadow further research.  A cutting edge book in diplomacy studies that gives true meaning to the term “must read.”
“Cultural Value: Cultural Relations in Societies in Transition: A Literature Review,” Cultural Value Project, British Council and Goethe-Institut, January 2018.  The stated purpose of the cultural value project of the British Council and Goethe-Institut is “to build a better understanding of the impact and value of cultural relations” – the conditions, places, and contexts where they can work (and not work), their relative strengths, and different kinds of value.  This report, written in collaboration with academic partners, contains a review of recent academic literature in English and German on cultural relations concepts and practice.  The authors find “fluidity in definition” and “conceptual confusion” in what is “primarily a practitioners’ term.  This “confusion can enable useful flexibility,” they argue, but it also means cultural relations organizations need to communicate their goals “openly and clearly” if “mutuality – a key aspiration is to be achieved.”
Angus Deaton, “The U.S. Can No Longer Hide From Its Deep Poverty Problem,” The New York Times, January 25, 2018.  Pew Research surveys, soft power rankings, nation branding indices, and other metrics portray a decline in US soft power based on perceptions of US leadership, policies, and various cultural and social indicators.  Princeton University economist Angus Deaton uses United Nations and World Bank studies to suggest some of the reasons.  A recent UN report finds “today’s United States has proved itself to be exceptional in far more problematic ways that are shockingly at odds with its immense wealth and its founding commitment to human rights.  As a result, contrasts between private wealth and public squalor abound.”  For many Americans life expectancy is falling and mortality rates from drugs, alcohol, and suicide are rising.  World Bank poverty line data show that of the 769 million people worldwide who live on less than $1.90 a day, 3.2.million live in the United States (3.3 million live in other high-income countries, mostly Italy, Japan, and Spain).  Deaton argues the World Bank, although it adjusts for price differences, ignores differences in needs.  Some necessities in rich, cold, urban, and individualistic countries, such as the cost of housing, are not required in many poor countries.  Needs based analysis puts the poverty line in India at $1.90 a day and $4.00 a day in the United States, which means 5.3 million Americans are in dire poverty by global standards.  Deaton points to ethical, political, and practical choices in tradeoffs between foreign assistance and the social contract at home.  See “Statement on Visit to the USA, by Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights.”
Jonathan Israel, The Expanding Blaze: How the American Revolution Ignited the World, 1775-1848, (Princeton University Press, 2017).  This is a huge book – a sweeping, deeply researched, well-written, masterfully indexed 755 pages.  Princeton University historian Jonathan Israel transforms the American Revolution from the standard narrative of an isolated drama in the formation of a nation state into an event with “immense social, cultural, and ideological impact” on democratic modernity in Europe and the Americas.  To use today’s vocabulary, it’s about soft power, democratization, public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, propaganda, and human rights.  It’s about gaps between liberty and egalitarian ideals and compromises with slavery, dispossession of native populations, and varieties of idealism’s accommodation with the old order.  Nuggets abound in this global context.  Benjamin Franklin as accomplished court and public diplomat.  Iroquois chief Joseph Brandt’s ceremonial diplomacy in Boston and London.  Thomas Jefferson’s diplomacy in France.  And how the radical ideas of Jefferson, Thomas Paine, James Madison, James Monroe and others influenced democratic movements and new forms of governance in Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Greece, Canada, Haiti, Brazil and Spanish America.  Israel concludes with a meditation on populism and the radical Enlightenment’s demise beginning in the 1850s.  Whether your lens is general satisfaction with America’s vision of democracy and civil rights, or rejection of an exceptionalism convinced that America’s cause is the universal cause of all, Israel’s book has much to offer.
Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich, Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life, RAND, January 2018 (the 301-page report’s pdf version can be downloaded or read online.)  RAND’s Kavanagh and Rich identify “Truth Decay” as related trends in two decades of growing disregard for facts, data, and analysis in political and civil discourse: (1) increasing disagreement about facts and facts-based analysis, (2) a blurring line between opinions and facts, (3) a rise in the volume and influence of opinion and personal experience over fact, and (4) declining trust in respected sources of factual information.  Their report compares differences in three historical eras, the 1890s, 1920s, and 1960s, with what is occurring in the 2000s and 2010s.  They assess four causes of “Truth Decay.”  First, characteristics of cognitive processing that influence how people think and behave – mental shortcuts, personal experiences, and preferences for information that confirms pre-existing beliefs.  These cognitive biases, straight from Walter Lippmann’s century old Public Opinion, are not new, but their impact is heightened by “Truth Decay’s” other causes.  A second cause includes the rise of social media, transformation of media markets, and intentional actions of agents disseminating misleading and biased information.  A third cause derives from complex competing demands on an education system that limits its capacity for civic education, media literacy, and critical thinking.  A fourth cause turns on political, socio-demographic, and economic polarization.  RAND’s report provides a deep dive into these causes and their consequences, and recommends priority areas for further research.  See also George Will, “When the Whole Country Becomes a Campus Safe Space,” The Washington Post, January 24, 2018.  (Courtesy of Tom Miller)
Roger J. Kreuz and Richard M. Roberts, Getting Through: The Pleasures and Perils of Cross-Cultural Communication, (MIT Press, 2017).  Kreuz (University of Memphis) and Roberts (US Foreign Service) combine scholarship (psychology, sociology, linguistics) and diplomatic practice in this study of language, cognition, and culture in cross-cultural communication.  Key concepts include the importance of emotions, distinctions between cognitive and emotional empathy, understanding how language is used, varieties of cultural classification frameworks, and speech act theory.  Their central argument seeks to explain cross-cultural communication through “pragmatics” – understanding “how language is used and not just what words mean.”  Kreuz and Roberts are adept at illuminating complex ideas with an abundance of examples, cartoons, popular culture, and personal experiences in diplomacy.
Barbora Maronkova, From Crawling to Walking: Progress in Evaluating the Effectiveness of Public Diplomacy: Lessons from NATO, Paper 1, February 2018, CPD Perspectives, USC Center for Public Diplomacy.  Maronkova (NATO, Public Diplomacy Division) explores the development of evaluation and measurement in NATO’s public diplomacy – experiments with models and methods and lessons learned – since the launch of a reform process in 2012.  Her study contains a chapter on concepts and practical approaches to public diplomacy evaluation with references to the work of scholars in the field and recent reports on evaluation from the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.  Particular attention is paid to NATO’s OASIS model (a campaign approach to setting objectives, analyzing audiences, and identifying strategies that “allow for focused impact and impact measurement”).  Maronkova concludes with a case study, “NATO Warsaw Summit 2016: Measuring Impact of Its Public Diplomacy.”
“The Meaning of Cities,” The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, Summer 2017.  As cities take on new importance in diplomacy and governance, essays in this edition of THR offer provocative overviews for diplomacy scholars and forward leaning practitioners.  Joshua J. Yates (University of Virginia) in “Saving the Soul of the Smart City” discusses dangers in a highly technocratic urbanism devoted to optimization of convenience, comfort, profit, or pleasure.  In “The New Urban Agenda,” Noah J. Toly (Wheaton College) argues cities are an optimal scale and site for global governance – “the most proficient actor in addressing global challenges, and the true school of civic virtue.”  Marc J. Dunkelman (Brown University) explores challenges to neighborliness from gentrification, ethnic diversity, and digital immersion in “Next-Door Strangers: The Crisis of Urban Anonymity.”  Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein (Louisiana State University) look at gaps between metropolitan areas and rural regions and small towns in “Cosmopolitanism vs. Provincialism: How the Politics of Place Hurts America.”
Jan Melissen, “Fake News and What (Not) To Do About It,” Netherlands Institute of International Relations (Clingendael), February 2018.  Melissen (Clingendael, University of Antwerp) begins this brief paper with an overview, citing examples, of multiple problems: technologies that change the nature, scale, and speed of disinformation; fabricated stories that look real; fake news as a form of 21st century propaganda; destabilizing effects on societies and a potential threat to international stability.  His “what to do” menu includes greater critical awareness of context, consuming news that does not affirm one’s beliefs, transmitting content with journalism norms in mind, legal solutions, taming excessive corporate power, and fact checking.  There is no “quick fix” he concludes.  Understanding problems comes first.  Civil society involvement, greater resilience of individuals, and systematic meta-literacy in education systems are “probably” the best antidotes.
Iver B. Neumann, “A Prehistorical Evolutionary View of Diplomacy,” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, (2018) 14:4-10.  In this original and thought-provoking essay, Neumann (University of Oslo) gives new meaning to high altitude perspective.  His purpose is to frame diplomacy in the context of evolutionary tipping points understood as culminations of long-term trends.  He begins with the advent of big game hunting as a precursor to human cooperation.  He then identifies five tipping points: “classificatory kinship as a template for regular cooperation; regular and ritualized contacts between culturally similar small-scale polities; regular and ritualized contacts between culturally different large-scale polities; permanent bilateral diplomacy and permanent multilateral diplomacy.”  In his conclusion, Neumann speculates that “hybridized diplomacy” is an emerging tipping point in which state and non-state actors are becoming more alike, and non-state actors are taking on diplomatic roles.
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “How Sharp Power Threatens Soft Power,” Foreign Affairs, January 24, 2018.  Nye (Harvard University) warns against overreaction to “sharp power” – a term coined and explained by the National Endowment for Democracy’s Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig in Foreign Affairs and a lengthy Endowment report.  Sharp power, they argue, is used by Russia and China to exploit open political and information environments in democracies.  They contrast sharp power with soft power (attraction and persuasion) and urge more assertive defensive and offensive responses by democracies.  Nye responds by arguing Russian and Chinese “information warfare” is real, but that sharp power is a form of hard power.  What’s new is not the deceptive use of information; what’s new is its speed and low cost.  Democracies, Nye contends, should not imitate these methods.  Overreaction to sharp power undercuts advantages that come from soft power on its own and when coupled with hard power as a force multiplier.  In a response to Nye, Walker points to a paradox:  Russia and China do poorly in soft power surveys, yet they are “projecting more influence . . . without relying principally on military might or even on raw economic coercion.”  “Sound diagnosis” and “more precise terminology” are pre-requisites to an appropriate response.  See Christopher Walker, “The Point of Sharp Power,” Project Syndicate, February 1, 2018.
James Pamment, “Foresight Revisited: Visions of Twenty-First Century Diplomacy,” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, (2018) 14:47-54.  In 1999, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook tasked a group of young “fast stream” British diplomats, known as “Young Turks,” to challenge conventional thinking and provide a radical bottom up view of how the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) should change by 2010.  Pamment (Lund University) examines their Foresight Report, an internal 104-page study never publicly released, which he obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.  The controversial report, widely discussed within British diplomatic and political circles, contained 97 findings and recommendations for transformational FCO changes in an era of digital technologies, newly empowered non-state actors, understanding public diplomacy as a term and category of practice in a British context, and the changing roles of foreign ministries.  The report also voiced a critique of relations between diplomats and elected officials.  Pamment provides an analysis of the report’s key judgments and impact.  He concludes it is a significant document in British diplomacy, in global debates on the future of diplomacy, and in our contemporary understanding of digital diplomacy and the centrality of public diplomacy in diplomatic practice.
[From Pamment’s analysis, the Foresight Report appears similar in purpose and some content to the nearly contemporaneous Reinventing Diplomacy in the Information Age,  Report of the CSIS Advisory Panel on Diplomacy in the Information Age, (Project Director, Barry Fulton; Project Cochairs Richard Burt and Olin Robison), Center for Strategic and International Studies, December, 1998.  In the latter study, a 63-member panel of American diplomats, scholars, journalists, business executives, and NGO representatives recommended moving “public diplomacy from the sidelines to the core of diplomacy” and sweeping changes “in every aspect of the nation’s diplomatic establishment.”]
Giles Scott-Smith, “Special Issue: The Evolution of Diplomacy,” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, (2018) 14, 1-3.  In his introduction to articles in this issue of PB&PD, Scott-Smith (Leiden University) briefly surveys perspectives of diplomacy scholars and practitioners on how diplomacy is changing and should evolve in the context of radical trends in today’s global environment.  He summarizes each article’s point of view and argues that collectively they “provide a useful discussion on the question of evolution as a relevant concept for the study of (public) diplomacy.”  Articles by Iver Neumann and James Pamment are cited elsewhere in this list.  Other articles include Geoffrey Allen Pigman (University of Pretoria), “The Populist Wave and Global Trade Diplomacy Besieged: A European Approach to WTO Reform;”Christina La Cour (European University Institute), “The Evolution of the ‘Public’ in Diplomacy;” Hak Yin and Seanon Wong (The Chinese University of Hong Kong), “The Evolution of Chinese Public Diplomacy and the Rise of Think Tanks;” Katarzyna Jezierska (University West Trollhättan, Sweden), “Taming Feminism? The Place of Gender Equality in the ‘Progressive Sweden’ Brand;” and Noé Cornago (University of the Basque Country), “Beyond the Media Event: Modes of Existence of the Diplomatic Incident.”
Philip Seib, As Terrorism Evolves: Media, Religion, and Governance, (Cambridge University Press, 2017).  Seib (University of Southern California) turns in this slim volume to what he calls a new and durable “terrorism era” in which evolving terrorist organizations are capable of mounting attacks with global reach and acting as state-like entities that take and hold territory.  Five chapters divide into conceptual frameworks: definitions of terrorism and terrorists’ motivations, connections between terrorism and religion, organizational skills of growing sophistication, the role of the media, and responses to terrorism through political, military, and public diplomacy means.  Much of the focus is on Islamic State, but attention is paid also to Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, the Haqqani network, Jamaah Islamiya, and other organizations.  In a brief section on “the value of public diplomacy,” some provocative ideas warrant discussion and further research.  For example: “part of counterterrorism is focused on messaging and countermessaging, with heavy emphasis on social media.  Credibility is crucial to such work, and so governments’ fingerprints on online products should be as invisible as possible” (p. 166).  What priority should be given to messaging?  Where should lines be drawn between attribution, non-attribution, and “attributable” content?  Are government’s voices ipso facto less credible than civil society’s voices, an underlying assumption for many in today’s discourse?  Seib writes for students and general audiences with the organization and clarity readers have come to expect from this professor of journalism, public diplomacy, and international relations.
Scott Shane, “America Meddles in Elections, Too,” The New York Times, February 18, 2018.  National security correspondent Shane compiles examples from decades of US efforts, covert and overt, to interfere in foreign elections – Italy, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Serbia, Russia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere – since the early Cold War.  Quotes from former CIA officers, National Endowment for Democracy activists, and Defense and State Department officials provide kick-starters for many a seminar and think tank discussion.  Russia’s methods in the 2016 US election “were the digital version of methods used both by the United States and Russia for decades” (Dov H. Levin).   Blatant US efforts to prevent Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s re-election in 2009: “our clumsy and failed putsch” (Robert Gates).  America’s democracy promotion and Russia’s democracy disruption are not morally equivalent.  “It’s comparing someone who delivers lifesaving medicine to someone who brings deadly poison” (Kenneth Wollack).  It’s “like saying cops and bad guys are the same because they both have guns – motivation matters.”   Heavy-handed intervention is “not what democracy means” (Thomas Carothers).
Janet Steele, Mediating Islam: Cosmopolitan Journalisms in Muslim Southeast Asia, (University of Washington Press, 2018).  Steele (Director, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, George Washington University) brings the strengths of an accomplished journalism and media scholar and twenty years of field research in Southeast Asia to a book that explores important questions.  (1) Is there an Islamic form of journalism, and if so how does it relate to democratic reform?  (2) How do Muslim journalists think about their work in the context of Islam, and what do they mean by truth, balance, verification, and independence from power?  (3) What are the varieties of practical approaches in their work?  Her book seeks answers to these and other questions in case studies of journalism practices in five diverse publications in Indonesia and Malaysia: Sabili (“scripturalist Islam”), Republika (“Islam as market niche”), Harakah (“political Islam”), Malaysiakini (Islam in a secular context), and Tempo (“cosmopolitan Islam in practice”).  Among many conclusions, Steele argues that Muslim journalists in Southeast Asia and their Western counterparts agree on basic principles of journalism, “but the ways in which they explain these principles to themselves are different.”  Not least among many contributions in this important study is the way the author, a self-described Western, secular, female scholar, has engaged in sustained, productive cross-cultural dialogue with journalists in majority Muslim countries, many of whom are not liberal or secular.
Rodrigo Tavares, Paradiplomacy: Cities and States as Global Players (Oxford University Press, 2016).  Tavares (Granite Partners, United Nations University) has written an informed guide to the rise of cities and other sub-state actors in diplomacy and global affairs.  His book explores debates on the meaning of paradiplomacy and related terms, a brief history with examples (beginning with Greek city states), and analysis of the varieties of goals, methods, and tools of contemporary sub-state diplomacy actors.  Tavares provides a wealth of case studies (Azores, Bavaria, Buenos Aires, California, Catalonia, Flanders, Guangzhou, Massachusetts, Medellin, New South Wales, New York City, Quebec, Tokyo, and more).  He concludes with thoughts on further research on sub-state diplomacy in an era when foreign ministries face changing roles and challenges.
Keren Yarhi-Milo, “After Credibility: Foreign Policy in the Trump Era,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2018, 68-77.  Yarhi-Milo (Princeton University) begins with a survey of credibility (signaling reputation as it affects threats and promises; general reputation for whether an actor is trustworthy, sincere, and cooperative), the relevance of contexts, and the skepticism of some that reputations matter.  After a nod to effects of President Obama’s “redline” on Syria’s chemical weapons, her article turns to a discussion of President Trump’s inconsistencies, lies, bizarre outbursts, exaggerated threats, and lack of concern for reputational consequences; discussion of whether some strategic “rational irrationality” exists; and whether Trump should be taken literally.  Yarhi-Milo concludes with observations on the adverse impact of damaged reputation on diplomacy, US security guarantees, emboldened adversaries, and the presidency as the ultimate voice in US foreign policy.  Foreign actors, she argues, will pay more attention to whether and how other US institutions and American civil society respond with bipartisan and univocal signaling.
Recent Blogs and Other Items of Interest
Mark L. Asquino, “A Lost Opportunity for Diplomacy,” February 14, 2018, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, George Washington University, Take Five Blog.
Corneliu Bjola and Ilan Manor, “From Digital Tactics to Digital Strategies: Practicing Digital PD,” February 14, 2018, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Vasily Gatov, “How To Talk With Russia,” February 26, 2018, The American Interest.
Albert R. Hunt, “Trump Erodes the Global Power of American Values,” January 21, 2018, Bloomberg View.
David Ignatius, “China’s Fingerprints Are Everywhere,” January 9, 2018, The Washington Post.
John A. Lindburg, “Soft Power and the Lessons of History,” December 2017, Letter to the Editor, Foreign Service Journal.
Ilan Manor, “Using the Logic of Networks in Public Diplomacy,” January 31, 2018. USC Center on Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Amy Mitchell, Katie Simmons, Katerina Eva Matsa, and Laura Silver, “Publics Globally Want Unbiased News Coverage, But are Divided on Whether Their News Media Deliver,” January 11, 2018, Pew Research Center.
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “China Turns Soft Power Into a Sharp Tool,” January 10, 2018, The Globe and Mail.
Princeton University, “Birkelund Gift Funds New Certificate Program in History and Diplomacy,” Stephen Kotkin and Admiral Mike Mullen to Co-direct, February 2018.
Paul J. Saunders and Kristin M. Lord, “As U.S.-Russia Tensions Rise, Rekindle People-to-People Relations,” January 10, 2018, The National Interest.
Ray Smith, “The Dissent Channel,” November 2017, Letter to the Editor, Foreign Service Journal.
Ian Thomas, “British Council on Evaluating Arts & Soft Power Programming,” January 19, 2018, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, CPD Blog.
Hans J. Tuch, “The Voice of America and Public Diplomacy,” December 2017, American Diplomacy.
Matt Wallin, “Reductions To Exchanges In The FY2019 Budget Are Shortsighted,” February 12, 2018, American Security Project.
Gem From The Past
Walter Lippmann, Liberty and the News, (Harcourt, Brace, and Howe, 1920, republished by Princeton University Press with a foreward by Ronald Steel in 2007).  Shortly before he wrote Public Opinion nearly a century ago, now a classic in media, journalism, and public diplomacy courses, Lippmann published a small less remembered volume on the role of the press in a democracy.  His core argument in Liberty and the News is that the press threatens democracy and abdicates its basic responsibility to report facts and seek truth whenever journalism is “confused with the work of preachers, revivalists, prophets, and agitators.”  The goal, Lippmann wrote, without illusion it could be fully achieved, is “disinterested reporting” in which journalists “serve no cause, no matter how good.”
In an era of “fake news” and merged news and entertainment, Lippmann’s views are getting a fresh look.  See Roy Peter Clark, “Walter Lippmann on Liberty and the News: A Century-Old Mirror For Our Troubled Times,” Poynter Institute, March 1, 2018.  (Courtesy of Donna Oglesby)  Clark’s assessments of Lippmann’s book point to rich insights with contemporary relevance:  “Public confusion from the helter-skelter flow of news.”  “Escape from the responsibility of misinformation.”  “The problem of fixing truth when the new is complex and subtle.”  “How the habits of news gatherers can limit access to truth.”  “Propaganda and its consequences defined.”  “Danger of the demagogue.”  “Birth of the echo chamber.”  “Why words matter to journalism and democracy.”  “What it means to fight for truth.”
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Issue #89

Caitlin Byrne, “Introduction for the Special Issue: Recasting Soft Power for the Indo-Pacific,” Politics & Policy, Vol. 45, No. 5, October 2017, 684-705.  Byrne (Griffith University), guest editor of this P&P issue, examines enduring features, themes, and complexities that shape soft power and “its associated public diplomacy practice” in the Indian Ocean-Asia Pacific (Indo-Pacific) region.  Her essay calls for better understanding of the region as a geographic concept and urges increased attention to how its soft power and public diplomacy can contribute to a discourse dominated by European and American concepts and experiences.  Byrne profiles analytical issues and contrasting approaches of contributing scholars.
— Kejin Zhao (Tsinghua University), “China’s Public Diplomacy for International Public Goods”
— Amit Singh (University of Delhi) and Amit Sarwal (Deakin University), “Paraspara, Encounters, and Confluences: India’s Soft Power Objective in the Indo-Pacific Region”
— Ellen Huijgh (University of Antwerp), “Indonesia’s ‘Intermestic’ Public Diplomacy: Features and Future”
— César Villanueva Rivas (Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City), “Mexico’s Public Diplomacy Approach to the Indo-Pacific: A Thin Soft Power”
— Natalie Laifer and Nicholas Kitchen (London School of Economics and Political Science), “Making Soft Power Work: Theory and Practice in Australia’s International Education Policy”
— Stuart Murray (Bond University), “Sport’s Diplomacy in the Australian Context: Theory Into Strategy”
— Robert G. Patman and Lloyd S. Davis (University of Otago), “Science Diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific Region: A Mixed but Promising Experience”
— Efe Sevin (Reinhardt University, Georgia), “A Multilayered Approach to Public Diplomacy Evaluation: Pathways of Connection”
Juan Pablo Cardenal, Jacek Kucharczyk, Grigorij Mesežnikov, and Gabriela Pleschová, “Sharp Power: Rising Authoritarian Influence,” National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Washington, DC, December 2017.  In this report, NED (a nonprofit foundation funded by Congress) calls for a change in our thinking and vocabulary to take into account subversive “sharp power” instruments used by authoritarian countries to do real damage to democracies.  It defines sharp power as the asymmetrical ability of a country to penetrate and manipulate information environments in targeted democracies abroad while raising barriers to external political and cultural influences at home. (See also The Economist’s article on China annotated below.)  Sharp power is not openly coercive (hard power); nor is it the ability to attract and co-opt (soft power).  The case studies in this 156-page report examine efforts by China and Russia to wield sharp power, in addition to soft power and public diplomacy, in attempts to influence political outcomes and public opinion in four countries: Argentina, Peru, Poland, and Slovakia.  The authors are members of the Network of Democracy Research Institute.  NED Vice President Christopher Walker and senior staffer Jessica Ludwig provide a conceptual overview in their introduction, “From ‘Soft Power’ to ‘Sharp Power.’”  See also, Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig, “The Meaning of Sharp Power: How Authoritarian States Project Influence,” Foreign Affairs, Snapshot, November 16, 2017.
“How China’s ‘Sharp Power’ Is Muting Criticism Abroad And Stealthily Trying To Shape Public Opinion In Its Favor,” The Economist, December 16, 2017, 20-22.  This Economist cover story assesses China’s “sharp power” in the context of the National Endowment for Democracy’s meaning of the term.  Sharp power “works by manipulation and pressure.”  As described by Anne-Marie Brady (University of Canterbury, New Zealand) it is a “new global battle” to “guide, buy or coerce political influence.”  (Sharp power differs from Joseph Nye’s (Harvard University) term “smart power,” which he uses to describe the combined uses of hard and soft power.)  In the Economist’s essay, China’s sharp power has three characteristics.  It is pervasive, meaning it is targeted at foreign societies, not just China’s diaspora.  It breeds self-censorship, e.g., academic publishers that censor databases of academic articles and film festivals that avoid screenings critical of China.  It masks Chinese government ties through third parties.  Countries targeted by China’s sharp power face a dilemma, the essay concludes, over-reaction or under-estimating the threat.
Robert Hutchings and Jeremi Suri, “The Making of an Effective Diplomat: A Global View,” The Foreign Service Journal, December 2017, 22-29.  Hutchings and Suri (University of Texas, Austin) summarize key judgments in their comparative study of the recruitment, training, organization, and promotion of diplomats in eight countries: Brazil, China, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, India, Russia, and Turkey.  Their FSJ article profiles case studies, discusses similarities and differences, and identifies “best practices” relevant to reform in the US Foreign Service.  The article is based on the project they directed, in collaboration with 15 graduate student research teams organized by country, at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.  The detailed 194-page report is available online.  See Robert Hutchings and Jeremi Suri, eds., “Developing Diplomats: Comparing Form and Culture Across Diplomatic Services,” University of Texas, Austin, Policy Project Research Report 194, May 2017.
Michael Ignatieff, The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World, (Harvard University Press, 2017).  Ignatieff (Central European University, Budapest) enhances our understanding of diplomacy’s global context with reflections on “moral globalization,” not as convergence into a single modernity, but as a “site of struggle.”  Can multinational corporations and NGO advocates serve as the new entrepreneurs of moral globalization?  Will a particular civilizational model (American, Chinese, or some rival’s) define political and moral order in the 21st century?  Ignatieff is less concerned here with these questions as often framed in universal terms by global elites.  He also devotes minimal attention to generalities of moral reasoning in secular vocabularies (human rights, international humanitarian law, and environmentalism) and in religious vocabularies of global solidarity.  Rather he seeks to understand how ordinary virtues – trust, tolerance, forgiveness, reconciliation, and resilience – emerge as unthinking guides to practice in the daily lives of individuals.  How can ordinary virtues and good institutions work in difficult local circumstances?  He explores this reasoning in case studies: diverse communities in Jackson Heights, New York; moral operating systems of Los Angeles as a global city; order, corruption, and public trust in Rio de Janeiro; war and reconciliation in Bosnia; the politics of moral narrative in Myanmar; resilience and the unimaginable in Fukushima; and whether virtue after apartheid will end in tyranny’s return in South Africa.
Marvin Kalb, The Year I Was Peter the Great: 1956 Khrushchev, Stalin’s Ghost, and a Young American in Russia, (Brookings Institution Press, 2017).  Acclaimed journalist Marvin Kalb in his first professional memoir tells stories of his experiences as a young man in the Soviet Union in 1956.  Fluent in Russian, he went to Moscow to finish research for his Harvard PhD and serve as a diplomatic attaché assigned to translator / interpreter duties in the US embassy.  In page after page of compelling writing, Kalb tells of occasional encounters with Khrushchev (who nicknamed him Peter the Great after a conversation on the relative merits of American and Lithuanian basketball players; you’ll have to read the book), travels throughout the country listening to Soviet citizens during the thaw of 1956, US Ambassador Charles Bohlen’s diplomacy, Edward R. Murrow’s role in his decision to become a journalist, and much more.  It’s a great read at many levels, particularly its lessons for diplomats on listening, cross-cultural communication, spending time with ordinary people outside embassies, and learning to take political risks.
National Security Strategy of the United States of America, The White House, Washington, DC, December 2017.  President Trump’s national security strategy, like its predecessors, is a list of threats and capabilities wrapped in generalities.  It is not an analysis of costs, risks, and benefits or a guide to spending and action priorities.  Global warming is not mentioned as a threat.  Military, intelligence, and economic tools of statecraft dominate.  It makes brief reference to diplomats as a “forward deployed political capability” that builds “positive networks of relationships with partners,” “sustains dialogue,” “fosters areas of cooperation with competitors,” and “implements solutions to conflicts.”  In vivid contrast to the Trump administration’s actual treatment of the State Department’s budget and people, it states, “We must upgrade our diplomatic capabilities to compete in the current environment and to embrace a competitive mindset.”  Diplomats must “facilitate the cultural, educational, and people-to-people exchanges that create the networks of current and future political, civil society, and educational leaders who will extend a free and prosperous world.”  Otherwise no mention is made of public affairs, democratization, international broadcasting, or other tools in diplomacy’s public dimension.  The strategy does not use the terms “public diplomacy” or “strategic communication.”
Office of the Historian, US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1917–1972, Volume VI, Public Diplomacy, 1961–1963, released online, December 5, 2017.  In this volume, State Department historians Kristin L. Ahlberg and Charles V. Hawley have compiled 153 documents that illuminate US public diplomacy during the John F. Kennedy administration.  As described in the preface, they set public diplomacy in the context of “the Bay of Pigs invasion, the construction of the Berlin Wall, Laos, Vietnam, and the Cuban Missile Crisis” as well as “attempts to develop a national cultural policy, the importance of overseas polling, and the Department of State’s educational exchange activities.”  The easily searched website contains lists of published and unpublished sources, abbreviations and terms, and names of persons and their institutional affiliations.  By making its historical records available worldwide in this and earlier online volumes on public diplomacy, State making is making a significant contribution to the research of scholars and practitioners.
Brian Southwell, Emily A. Thorson, and Laura Sheble, eds., Misinformation and Mass Audiences, (University of Texas Press, 2018).  Southwell (University of North Carolina), Thorson (Syracuse University) and Sheble (University of North Carolina) have compiled sixteen scholarly essays on the phenomenon of “deliberately promoted and accidentally shared” misinformation.  Drawing on “evidence and ideas from communication research, public health, psychology, political science, environmental studies, information science and other literatures,” they “explore what constitutes misinformation, how it spreads, and how best to counter it.”
Bruce Stokes, “US Adults Worry About Global Disregard For Their Nation,” December 12, 2017, YaleGlobal Online.  Stokes (Pew Research Center) examines reasons for a growing belief by Americans that the United States is less respected abroad since the election of President Trump.  He finds substantial increases in concern about the US image among both Republicans and Democrats.  His article draws on Pew’s 37-nation survey in 2017, “U.S. Image Suffers as Publics Around World Question Trump’s Leadership,” which found a global median of 49% had a favorable opinion of the United States, a decline from 64% at the end of the Obama administration.  Resurgent doubts, Stokes argues, can be attributed in part to lack of confidence in Trump and opposition to his policies on such issues as climate change, free trade and immigration.
Atushi Tago, “Public Diplomacy and Foreign Policy,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, Online publication, July 2017.  Tago (Kobe University) provides a cruising altitude overview of approaches to the study and practice of public diplomacy.  His essay begins with a look at old and new definitions.  He continues with discussions of nation branding, so-called public diplomacy 2.0, and computerized qualitative text analysis studies.  Tago briefly summarizes research on policies and issues (Israel’s military operations against Hamas in Gaza, the US HIV/AIDs campaign PEPFAR, and Chinese and Japanese aircraft deployed in the East China Sea).  He concludes with support for a “new public diplomacy” framework that illuminates roles for civil society actors and the promise of empirical research methods.
Daya Kishan Thussu, Hugo de Burgh and Anbin Shi, China’s Media Go Global (Routledge, 2017).  Thussu, de Burgh (University of Westminster, UK), and Shi (Tsinghua University, China) have compiled a diverse collection of essays by leading Chinese and Western journalism and communications scholars on China’s media globalization.  Areas of analytical focus include the global expansion of CCTV and China Radio International, soft power and the strategic context for China’s media policies, the effectiveness of China’s cultural centers in China’s public diplomacy, foreign correspondents in China, China’s financial media, its social media, and Chinese media in Africa and Southeast Asia.
US Department of State, Office of Inspector General, “Inspection of Embassy Beijing and Constituent Posts, China,” ISP-1-18-04, December 2017.  In the public diplomacy section of their report, State’s Inspectors found overall that embassy officers use a full range of tools and programs, and manage resources effectively, despite Chinese-government barriers to public engagement.  Inspectors issued positive findings on strategic planning, financial management, alumni outreach, English language programs, and social media engagement, and five America Spaces in China.  On the downside, Inspectors found the American Cultural Center to be “largely ineffective” and called for a suspension of new funding pending a formal evaluation of its programs.
US Government Accountability Office, Democracy Assistance, GAO-18-136, December 2017.  Combined annual expenditures for US democracy promotion activities total about $2 billion per year.  GAO’s report evaluates and makes recommendations to improve funding accountability for democracy assistance activities conducted by the US Agency for International Development, Department of State, and National Endowment for Democracy.  The report is useful for its detailed information on funding for “activities related to rule of law and human rights, good governance, political competition and consensus-building, and civil society” through for-profit and nonprofit partner organizations.
Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A World History, (Basic Books, 2017).  Westad (Harvard University) offers a view of the Cold War that is radically different from traditional accounts of conflict between two superpowers after World War II.  For Westad, the Cold War “as an ideological conflict and as an international system” is a century long phenomenon that began with “the global transformations of the late nineteenth century and was buried as a result of tremendously rapid changes a hundred years later.”  Its significance can be understood in profound changes in post-colonial Africa, Asia, and Latin America; the rise of US global hegemony; defeat of the Leninist Left; the political and social revolutions of the Chinese Communist party; a democratic consensus that became institutionalized in the European Union; the threat of nuclear destruction; and the rivalries in two world wars and global conflicts of the 1970s and 1980s.  Westad’s world history is sweeping, different, and provocative.  His Cold War did not influence everything, but it “did influence most things because of the centrality of its ideologies and the intensity of its adherents.”
William Lafi Youmans, An Unlikely Audience: Al Jazeera’s Struggle in America, (Oxford University Press, 2017).  Youmans (George Washington University) has written a definitive account of successes and failures in Al Jazeera’s attempt to compete in US media markets.  More than a narrative of what happened, his book explores imaginative arguments relating to the central role of cities as “media ports of entry” for global media – drawing on his case studies of Al Jazeera’s strategies in Washington DC, New York, and San Francisco.  Youmans’ argument challenges “methodological nationalism” in cross cultural communication.  His book is a strong contribution to the literature on the interaction of “universalizing and particularizing” tendencies of global and local.  And he adds considerably to our understanding of the growing importance of cities as interdependent actors and interdependent systems in politics, economics, and diplomacy.  His research draws extensively on numerous interviews with Al Jazeera’s employees and his command of theoretical literature in media and communications studies.
Recent Blogs and Other Items of Interest
Nick Anderson, “Report Finds Fewer New International Students on US College Campuses,” November 13, 2017, The Washington Post.
Mark L. Asquino, “Two Tragedies: Benghazi and Niger,” January 2, 2018, Take Five Blog, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, George Washington University.
Devlin Barrett and David Filipov, “RT Agrees to Register as an Agent of the Russian Government,” November 9, 2017, The Washington Post; Andrew Roth, “Russian Legislators Pass Law Targeting International Media as ‘Foreign Agents,’” November 15, 2017, The Washington Post.
Michael Birnbaum and Greg Jaffe, “Frustrated Foreign Leaders Bypass Washington In Search of Blue State Allies,” November 18, 2017, The Washington Post.
Richard Boucher, “Diplomacy: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Just Doesn’t Get It,” November 22, 2017, The Cipher Brief.
Nicholas Burns and Ryan C. Crocker, “Dismantling the Foreign Service,” November 27, 2017, The New York Times.
“Inspector General Statement on Broadcasting Board of Governors’ Major Management and Performance Challenges,” November 2017, Office of Inspector General, US Department of State & Broadcasting Board of Governors.
Joe Johnson, “A New Challenge for Public Diplomacy,” December 26, 2017, Public Diplomacy Council.
Alan Heil, “Straight Facts: A World of Many Voices,” December 30, 2017, Public Diplomacy Council.
Nicholas Kralev, “The State Department’s Loss is Corporate America’s Gain,” January 2, 2018, Huffington Post.
Billy Perrigo, “How the U.S. Used Jazz as a Cold War Secret Weapon,” December 22, 2017, TIME.com.
Adam Powell, “Media Blackout of U.S. Public Diplomacy – and Much of Diplomatic Work,” (Adapted from remarks at Broadcasting Board of Governors meeting, November 15, 2017), USC Annenberg Center on Leadership and Public Policy.
Dan Robinson, “Part I: Trump’s Big Fail (So Far) at the BBG/VOA,” November 17, 2017; “Part II: Trump’s Big Fail (So Far) at the BBG/VOA,” November 20, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center for Public Diplomacy.
Josh Rogin, “China’s Foreign Influence Operations Are Causing Alarm in Washington,” December 10, 2017, The Washington Post.
Stephanie Saul, “As Flow of Foreign Students Wanes, U.S. Universities Feel the Sting,” January 2, 2018, The New York Times.
Rick Stengel, “What Hillary Knew About Putin’s Propaganda Machine,” November 15, 2017, Politico.
Vivian Walker, “Strategic Communication: Influencing Public Perception,” December 5, 2017, Interview by the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies.
Matthew Wallin, “US Public Diplomacy Strategy for 2018,” December 18, 2017, American Security Project.
Gem From The Past
Thomas Sorenson, The Word War: The Story of American Propaganda, with a forward by Robert F. Kennedy, (Harper and Row Publishers, 1968).  The 2018 New Year signals another historical benchmark in US public diplomacy.  Fifty years ago, Congress passed PL 90-494 (the Pell-Hays Bill).  It established a Foreign Service Information Officer (FSIO) corps in USIA with the same rights, salary scale and retirement benefits as State Department Foreign Service Officers (FSOs), albeit the “I” in FSIO signaled functional and pecking order differences.  1968 was also the year veteran USIA field officer Tom Sorenson published his vivid coming of age description of the Agency’s field officers as a community of practice.  Since 1951, Sorenson had served in Beirut, Baghdad, Cairo, and Washington.  A former journalist and well-connected brother of John F. Kennedy’s speechwriter Ted Sorenson, he was appointed by Edward R. Murrow as the Agency’s Deputy Director (Policy and Plans).  The Word War, unusually in the secondary literature of the day, captured what public diplomacy professionals did overseas.
“Modern diplomacy is no longer conducted exclusively in hushed, high-ceilinged chanceries.  It also takes place in the press, in the marketplace, and in the street, in a daily, unremitting war of words.  This makes the overseas propagandist as much a diplomat, and sometimes as important a diplomat, as the embassy’s Political or Economic Officer.
“The first-rate American propagandist usually speaks the language of those he is seeking to persuade, and has a reasonable grasp of their history, aspirations, prejudices, motivations, and thought processes.  He also is knowledgeable about the United States and its people, history, culture and policies.  He understands the media of communication which are the tools of his trade, and can skillfully engage in one or more of the following: writing a news story, laying out a pamphlet, administering an exchange of persons program, making a speech, preparing a radio or film script, operating a public library, or designing an exhibit.  He is willing to put up with monsoons, insects, and inadequate schooling for his children.  He is willing to live on a government salary and away from the familiarity and security of his own country, amidst a different people of a different culture – and sometimes amidst hostility.
“The successful PAO is equally effective as an administrator, counselor, and communicator.  He must plan a program, persuade his ambassador and Washington of its validity, and then direct his staff in carrying it out.  He must counsel the senior embassy staff on the propaganda implications of what they were doing.  He must be able to entertain gracefully and purposefully, for persuasion is as often effected over a drink as over a desk (pp. 56-57).”
Sorenson wrote with the flair of the journalist he had set out to be.  His prose reflected the gender habits of his day.  He was comfortable with the rhetoric of “propaganda” and “war of ideas.”  His book is a remarkable early story of the rise of “an integral part of modern diplomacy.”
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Issue #88

Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie, “The Future of Truth and Misinformation Online,” Pew Research Center, Internet & Technology, October 19, 2017. Anderson (Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center) and Rainie (Pew) posed the following question to 1,116 internet and technology experts.  Will trusted methods emerge to block false narratives and allow accurate information to prevail in the online information environment during the next 10 years?  Or will the quality and truth of online information continue to deteriorate?  The study finds consensus that “the current environment allows ‘fake news’ and weaponized narratives to flourish.”  But respondents are evenly divided on the future.  51% believe the situation will not improve; 49% forecast improvement.  The report summarizes their wide diversity of views on strategies, the impact of new technologies, and the influence of social divisions and human nature.  See also “Tech Experts Split on Whether People and Technology Can Conquer Misinformation Online,” October 19, 2017.
Corneliu Bjola, “Trends and Counter-trends in Digital Diplomacy,” Working Paper, Project ‘Diplomacy in the 21st Century,’ No. 18, September 2017.  Bjola (University of Oxford) considers a fundamental challenge facing foreign ministries.  Will they continue to see trends in technological acceleration as an opportunity for adaptation and “getting it right?”  Or will counter-trends that technologies unleash (emotional contagion, algorithmic determinism, and strategic entropy) cause foreign ministries to put the brakes on integration of digital technologies in diplomacy?  His paper identifies key issues for diplomacy: (1) a cognitive shift away from following current trends to anticipating new trends; (2) an operational change that replaces a privileged role for foreign ministries with emphasis on a “digital diplomatic system” that features multiple actor (governance and civil society) “networks of networks” in national diplomatic systems; (3) using the concept of “digital emotional intelligence” in navigating fact-based reasoning and amplification of emotional content online; (4) understanding and dealing with negative consequences of artificial intelligence; and (5) understanding and managing “how to balance and prioritize digital outputs vs. policy outcomes.”
“City Diplomacy,” Public Diplomacy Magazine, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, Issue 18, Summer/Fall, 2017.  Scholars and practitioners in this timely edition of PD Magazine examine city diplomacy, an increasingly important category of diplomatic study and practice attributed to urbanization, the rise of populism, the growth and power of megacities, and their capacity to wield diplomacy on critical global issues more effectively than state-based actors. Their articles address a variety of topics: city networks, countering violent extremism, culture, sports, climate, immigration, city branding, and governance.  Particularly useful is the overview essay on “City Diplomacy in the Age of Brexit and Trump” by Benjamin Leffel (University of California Irvine) and diplomacy and urban theory scholar Michele Acuto (University College London) who has written extensively on the subject.  Also included is Nicholas Cull’s thoughtful memorial tribute to the late Ben Barber, his life, scholarship, and contributions to the work of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Atlantic Council, “State Department Reform Report,” August 2017.  Think tank and advisory panel reports on structures and process have been a standard approach to improving performance in US diplomacy for decades.  This 50-page report, signed by ten longtime State Department professionals, led by Ambassadors Chester A. Crocker, David C. Miller, and Thomas Pickering, continues the tradition.  This is an “insiders” report.  It’s about trying to make the State Department more efficient as a hierarchical organization while preserving its control, and that of the Foreign Service, as the primary actor in US diplomacy and foreign affairs.  One key recommendation: make foreign assistance and public diplomacy “stand-alone” agencies with separate budgets, personnel, and responsibilities reporting to the Secretary of State.  One looks in vain in this report for the implications for foreign ministries of power diffusion, powerful sub-state and non-state actors, networks, digital technologies, city diplomacy, globalization, the huge complexity of today’s “strategic buffet,” and any serious approach to whole of government diplomacy.  See Karen DeYoung, “Report Recommends Consolidating State Dept. Foreign Aid Programs under US State Dept.,” September 7, 2017, The Washington Post; Jared Serbu, “Report Calls for Flatter State Department with Fewer Bureaus,” September 7, 2017, Federal News Radio; “Bipartisan Experts Call for Strengthening US State Department,” September 7, 2017, Voice of America.
Nicholas J. Cull, “A New Beginning? The Obama Administration and U.S. Public Diplomacy,” in Maud Quessard et Maya Kandel, Les États-Unis et la fin de la grande stratégie ? Un bilan de la politique étrangère d’Obama, Études de l’IRSEM, September 2017, 149-169.  Cull (University of Southern California) deploys his historical knowledge, contacts with practitioners, and five core categories of public diplomacy analysis (listening, advocacy, cultural diplomacy, exchange diplomacy, and international broadcasting) in this critique of US public diplomacy during the Obama administration.  His central theme: despite initial promise, the administration “slipped into bad habits which would severely limit its ability to deliver a new beginning.”  Key elements in this trajectory were leadership deficiencies in the White House, State Department, and Broadcasting Board of Governors.  Within this narrative, Cull’s essay identifies some achievements and one area of “impressive success” – partnerships with private sector and civil society actors.  He credits “the professional strength and individual resourcefulness of public diplomats in the field.”  He also notes that US international standing “remained remarkably stable” during Obama’s eight years.  Scholars and practitioners will find plenty to agree with and to debate in Cull’s arguments.  His discussion of “partnership” as an emerging sixth “area of work” is particularly useful in that it raises innovative questions about how contextual drivers of change are reshaping concepts and practice in diplomacy’s public dimension.  (The article, in English, can be found by downloading the full report at the link and scrolling down to page 149.)
Nicholas J. Cull, “Soft Power’s Next Steppe: National Projection at the Astana Expo,” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 2017, 13:269-272.  Cull (University of Southern California) evaluates national pavilions and spaces at Kazakhstan’s recent international expo.  Its theme: “future energy.”  He offers brief descriptions and judgments on their strengths and limitations and usefully frames his essay in the context of “world” and “specialized” expos of the past.  Expos, for Cull, reflect the competitive use of soft power, place branding, and public diplomacy by states.  He awards high marks to Austria, the UK, Japan, and France.  He gives kudos to Kazakhstan for hosting the event and planning for long-term use of the site (reserving judgment on its return on investment).  And credit to the US for its excellent deployment of engaging Russian-language qualified student guides (shades of the Cold War), a film portraying American vitality and diversity as the source of its energy (avoiding the issue of US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord), a popular cardboard Hollywood sign for selfies (in the social media competition), and the “miracle” that the US found resources to “deliver a solid contribution.”
Cory R. Gill and Susan B. Epstein, State Department Special Envoy, Representative and Coordinator Positions: Background and Congressional Actions, Congressional Reference Service (CRS), R44946, September 15, 2017. CRS analysts Gill and Epstein have written a timely study of the State Department’s special, temporary positions.  With gem-like precision, they identify purposes and authorities for a wide variety of special envoys and related positions, arguments for and against their use, issues for lawmakers (and practitioners), and their use in US diplomacy since 1789.  The report contains information on specific positions, current occupants, reporting requirements, compensation, and proposed changes.  Most temporary positions have a bearing on US diplomacy’s public dimension.  One, the “Special Envoy and Coordinator of the Global Engagement Center,” created by legislation in 2016, reports to the Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.  Concerns about the growth and use of special positions expressed by the American Foreign Service Association, some lawmakers, and many current and former practitioners raise questions.  Which positions should be continued and discontinued?  What is their impact on public policy?  To what extent do they adversely affect the career Foreign Service?  Are some special positions (e.g., the “Coordinator for Cyber Issues” and the “Special Envoy for Climate Change”) essential for dealing with complex “whole of government” issues that exceed the expertise of most career diplomats and capacities of the Department’s bureaus?  The CRS report is an indispensable resource on these issues.
Niall Ferguson, “The False Prophecy of Hyperconnection: How to Survive the Networked Age,” Foreign Affairs, September/October, 68-79.  Ferguson (Hoover Institution, author of the forthcoming The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, From the Freemasons to Facebook) challenges utopian visions of a networked world, as being “at odds with everything we know about how networks work.”  Today’s networks are bigger and faster.  But in other respects they have properties in common with smaller and slower networks that have been ubiquitous in the natural world and social life of humanity.  Using historical examples, Ferguson offers arguments that explore past dominance of hierarchies as networks, the strength of weak ties, network structures as causes of “virality,” networks as complex adaptive systems, innovation and conflict as consequences of networks interacting, and networks as profoundly inegalitarian.
H-Diplo Article Review Forum 721 on ‘Diplomacy and Sport’ in Diplomacy & Statecraft 27:2 (2016): 207-378, published online November 2, 2017.  H-Diplo’s forum begins with “Prologue: Diplomacy and Sport,” the introduction by J. Simon Rofe (University of London) and Heather L. Dichter (Western Michigan University) to their compilation of articles on sport and diplomacy published by Diplomacy & Statecraft in 2016.  The authors, scholars from different disciplines, examine sport and diplomacy as a field of study; its relevance to public diplomacy, soft power, and participatory diplomacy; and a variety of case studies.
In her generally positive review, Jessica M. Chapman (Williams College) highlights efforts to frame conceptual boundaries, multi-directional relations between state actors and sports federations, and issues calling for further research.  Limitations of the collection, she notes, include apparent restrictions of actors to states and sports federations and its relative inattention to the significant role of sport and diplomacy in the decolonizing and post-colonial world.
Paul Sharp’s (University of Minnesota Duluth) close reading of these “original, stimulating” articles is valuable both for his constructive critique of their arguments and his discussion of how they reflect larger issues in diplomacy as “also a relatively new field of inquiry.”  The articles provide ample confirmation that sports diplomacy is increasingly important, he argues; they also demonstrate numerous challenges in analyzing sport and diplomacy separately and in the way they fit together.
Harry W. Kopp, “The State of Dissent in the Foreign Service,” Foreign Service Journal, September 2017, 41-45. Kopp (retired diplomat and author of The Voice of the Foreign Service: A History of the American Foreign Service Association) profiles historical lessons and examines dilemmas (professional and moral) that career diplomats face in making difficult choices at the crossroads of dissent and Foreign Service discipline.  His article opens with a brief survey of the contrasting responses of career diplomats during the McCarthy era, Vietnam, and the Iraq War.  He discusses the State Department’s Dissent Channel, created in 1971, its purpose, frequency of use, and minimal effect on policy.  Two recent dissents, on Syria and the Trump administration’s travel ban, became public through leaks to the press and social media.  Kopp warns that dissent should remain private.  Public dissent erodes trust, undermines the Foreign Service as an institution, and puts professional diplomats in the political arena where they are “ill-equipped to play, and where they will almost surely lose.”
Harry W. Kopp and John K. Naland, Career Diplomacy: Life and Work in the U.S. Foreign Service, (Georgetown University Press, 2017, 3rd edition).  Retired US diplomats Kopp and Naland provide a guide to the Foreign Service as an institution and a profession in this updated and revised third edition.  Drawing on their experiences and numerous interviews, they offer insights into what to expect in a Foreign Service career, from the entrance exam to senior assignments.  They discuss work in its five career tracks: political, economic, public diplomacy, consular, and management.  This edition includes new information on relations with other agencies and the US military’s combatant commands, more in-depth analysis of hiring procedures, an examination of the changing nature and demographics of the Foreign Service, and views on the proliferation of political appointments in the Department of State.
Richard LeBaron, “A New Citizen of London Shines on the Other Side of the Thames,” The Foreign Service Journal, September 2017, 57-61.  Ambassador (ret.) LeBaron draws on his experience as former deputy chief of mission in London to discusses challenges in achieving the new US embassy: (1) a fraught site selection process that turned out well (in center city, not out near Heathrow), (2) an architectural design that met strict Bureau of Diplomatic Security guidelines and also created “a welcoming and impressive structure – not Fortress America,” and (3) a building that sets “new standards of sustainability” with systems that conserve power and have the capacity to sell surplus energy to neighbors.  LeBaron anticipates the new space will not satisfy some critics.  He cautions that people who manage security and energy systems will matter as much as the structure.  His role in its construction gives him a vested interest.  Nevertheless, the new US Embassy London is an instructive chapter in the ongoing story of space, access, security, and efficiency in diplomacy’s public dimension.
Stuart Murray and Patrick Blannin, “Diplomacy and the War on Terror,” September 18, 2017, Small Wars Journal.  Murray and Blannin (Bond University, Australia) contend that, although diplomacy has played a vital role in the “war on terror” since the attacks of 9/11, it is now a marginalized instrument and analytical perspective in US national security and foreign policy.  Their paper begins by examining the spread of extremist groups and efforts to counteract them in what promises to be a decades long conflict.  It then constructs a framework that describes and maps diplomatic methods and practices used by state, non-state, and radical actors to achieve political ends.  Their goal is to increase attention to diplomacy in the fight against terrorism, address deficiencies in the academic study of diplomacy, and guide future scholarship.  In discussing traditional state diplomacy, the authors give attention to summit diplomacy, defense diplomacy, secret diplomacy, public diplomacy, and digital diplomacy.  They argue the diplomacy of large numbers of non-governmental organizations is just as dynamic as the diplomacy of states, and they link the two with a deep dive analysis of the study and practice of networked diplomacy.  They also address in persuasive detail the concept that radical actors engage in diplomacy.  Murray and Blannin conclude their thoughtful and challenging analysis with recommendations for theorists and practitioners.  A lengthy series of endnotes provides references to the practitioner literature and recent work of leading diplomacy scholars.
Dina Smeltz, Ivo Daalder, Karl Friedhoff, and Craig Kafura, What Americans Think About America First, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 2017.  The Chicago Council’s survey, led by experienced public opinion analyst Dina Smeltz, tested the appeal of President Trump’s slogans and ideas among the American public.  They found that, aside from his core supporters, most Americans continue to endorse an active role in world affairs and maintaining alliances.  A record number say international trade is good for consumers, the economy, and job creation.  The perceived threat from immigration has gone down, and support for citizenship opportunities has gone up.  A majority supports the Paris Climate Agreement.  Overall, they conclude, most Americans favor sustaining policies of engagement typical of US administrations of both political parties since World War II.
U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, 2017 Comprehensive Annual Report on Public Diplomacy & International Broadcasting, Washington, DC, September 2017.  As is now customary for this bipartisan, Presidential Commission, its 2017 annual report divides into two parts.  A sizeable majority of its 350-pages constitutes a reference guide to objectives, funding levels, and management of public diplomacy activities conducted by the Department of State, US missions abroad, and international broadcasting activities of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG).  In rich detail, and with useful cautions on interpreting the data collected by State and the BBG, the Commission provides context, historical comparisons, and analysis of costs per program, country, exchange participants, and other indicators.  Policy analysts, lawmakers, scholars, and practitioners will find it an indispensable resource.
The second part of the report contains the Commission’s recommendations.  Key recommendations call for (1) new “clean slate” legislative authority to consolidate and replace “labyrinthine and antiquated” 20th century legal mandates and reform a sclerotic bureaucracy that inhibits “coordinated, synchronous” State Department responses to new public diplomacy challenges; (2) leadership and training for all practitioners that will enhance strategic planning, calculated risk-taking, continuous learning, and appreciation of learning by mistake; (3) a variety of legal and management changes intended to increase State’s capacity to “conduct industry-standard research and evaluation;” (4) a full strategic review of the scope and organization of more than 75 educational and cultural affairs programs leading to consolidation of similar programs, greater efficiencies, and improved public understanding of their value; and (5) a “blue-sky conversation” on reform of the BBG and ideal structures and functions of US-funded international media.  Overall the Commission seeks sweeping changes in authorities, structures, and practice.  It is uniquely positioned in future reports to illuminate in greater depth reasons, desirable outcomes, and politically viable roadmaps leading to the transformations it seeks.
Vivian S. Walker, The Floating Tree: Crafting Resilient State Narratives in Post-Truth Environments: The Case of Georgia, CPD Perspectives, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, Paper 3, October 2017.  Walker (Faculty Fellow, USC Center on Public Diplomacy) continues to provide informed, teachable, and well-written case studies.  Here she examines Russia’s efforts “to shape a narrative about Georgia as a security and economic partner that at the same time serves as a counterpoint to Euro-Atlantic interests.”  Her paper weaves together insights on Russia’s use of disinformation, national identity, memories, aspirations, and external threats in narrative construction.  She discusses problematic elements – strategic ambivalence and structural dysfunction — in Georgia’s strategic communication and efforts to create its own narrative.  She also analyzes broader implications for creation of resilient state narratives and offers recommendations for official responses to disinformation.  As usual, citations in her endnotes and her trademark distribution of discussion questions throughout the text make her study ideal for classroom use.
R. S. Zaharna, “Diversity in Publics and Diplomacy,” Working Paper, Project ‘Diplomacy in the 21st Century, No. 15, September 2017.  Zaharna (American University) argues “Western diplomacy needs an expansive vision of communication to match the global reach of its communication tools.”  Diplomatic actors need to give the same intensive attention to what makes communication meaningful as they do to digital communication tools.  She urges greater attention in particular to mediating identity and emotion in relations with diverse publics and political actors.  Her 5-page paper is a menu for further research.
Recent Blogs and Other Items of Interest
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, “Top U.S. Diplomat Blasts Trump Administration for ‘Decapitation’ of State Department Leadership,” November 8, 2017, Foreign Policy; Barbara Stevenson, “Time to Ask Why,” Letter to American Foreign Service Members, forthcoming December 2017, The Foreign Service Journal.
Matthew Armstrong, “Don’t Do It: Why the Foreign Agent Designation Is Welcomed by RT and Sputnik,” September 21, 2017, MountainRunner.US
Kathy Artus, “Cultural Exchange: The Intangible Benefits,” October 2, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Mark L. Asquino, “Uzbekistan,” November 2, 2017; “Senate Committee on Appropriations Slams Proposed Cuts to State/USAID Budgets,” September 14, 2017, Take Five Blog, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, George Washington University.
Andrew Beaujon, “Can This DC TV Show Win the Messaging War Against Russia?” November 1, 2017, Washingtonian.
Corneliu Bjola, “Satellite Remote Sensing and Diplomatic Crisis Management,” October 11, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Mieczyslaw Boduszynski and Philip Breeden, “Russian Disinformation and U.S. Public Diplomacy,” November 1, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Tom Fletcher, “How to Become a Soft Power Superpower,” October 13, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Yoichi Funabashi, “Japanese Strength in Soft Power Foreign Policy,” November 6, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Irwin Steven Goldstein, Nominee for Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Written Statement for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, November 1, 2017.
Joe Johnson, “New Public Diplomacy Chief Named for US State Department,” September 26, 2017, Public Diplomacy Council.
Markos Kounalakis, “Donald Trump Is Decimating America’s Tourist Economy,” October 16, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Olga Krasnyak, “Evolution of Korea’s Public Diplomacy,” October 9, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Tomás Kroyer, “Soft Power and Public Diplomacy in Latin America: A View From Argentina,” September 15, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Laura Kyrke Smith, “Digital Power and the Power of Citizen Networks & Advocacy Organizations,” October 25, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Mel Levine, Rockwell Schnabel, and Jay Wang, “American Public Diplomacy Is Our Country’s Best Foreign Policy Tool,” September 9, 2017, The Hill.
Pippa Norris, “Trump’s Global Democracy Retreat,” September 7, The New York Times.
Michael Pelletier, “Owning Leadership,” November 2017, The Foreign Service Journal.
Shawn Powers, “Valuing Public Diplomacy,” November 3, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Sean Riordan, “The Real New Diplomacies,” September 11, 2017; “What is a Diplomat,” September 4, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Sayed Salahuddin and Pamela Constable, “U.S. Commander in Afghanistan Apologizes for ‘Highly Offensive’ Leaflets,” September 7, 2017, The Washington Post.
Jason Zengerle, “Rex Tillerson and the Unraveling of the State Department,” October 17, 2017, The New York Times Magazine.
Gem From The Past
Geoffrey Cowan and Nicholas J. Cull, eds., “Public Diplomacy in a Changing World,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Volume 616, March 2008.  It soon will be ten years since Cowan and Cull (University of Southern California) compiled what has become a truly seminal collection of articles intended “to explain the concept of public diplomacy, to put it into an academic framework, and to examine it as an international phenomenon and an important component of statecraft.”  Innovative articles by scholars and practitioners writing from academic perspectives in this special edition of The Annals have influenced subsequent scholarship, and they are still widely assigned as course readings in college classrooms and foreign ministry training programs.  The table of contents and inexpensive used copies are available online.
Articles especially useful for students over many years, in this writer’s experience, include:
— Geoffrey Cowan (University of Southern California) and Amelia Arsenault (Georgia State University, US Department of State), “Moving from Monologue to Dialogue to Collaboration: The Three Layers of Public Diplomacy.”
— Nicholas J. Cull, “Public Diplomacy: Taxonomies and Histories.”
— Joseph S. Nye, Jr., (Harvard University), “Public Diplomacy and Soft Power.”
— Monroe E. Price, Susan Haas, and Drew Margolin, (Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania), “New Technologies and International Broadcasting: Reflection on Adaptations and Transformations.”
— Giles Scott-Smith (University of Leiden), “Mapping the Undefinable: Some Thoughts on the Relevance of Exchange Programs within International Relations Theory.”
— Michael J Bustamante (Florida International University) and Julia E Sweig (University of Texas, Austin), “Buena Vista Solidarity and the Axis of Aid: Cuban and Venezuelan Public Diplomacy.”
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Issue #87

Eleanor Albert, “China’s Big Bet on Soft Power,” Backgrounder, Council on Foreign Relations, May 11, 2017.  CFR’s Albert writes that China is seeking a leadership role in globalization and economic integration by increasing its investment in international media networks, cultural centers, its “One Belt, One Road” infrastructure initiative, unconditional development assistance with South-South partners, and other soft power programs.  China ranks third among the world’s international education destinations.  It supports five hundred Confucius Institutes.  Chinese firms are expanding investments in US entertainment companies.  Despite this, opinion polls show static levels of support for China in some countries and steady decline in others. Albert argues China has yet to realize significant gains in influence due to inconsistencies between the image it seeks to convey and its actions on multiple issues: environmental pollution, food safety, overcapacity of state-enterprises, rising nationalism, territorial disputes, repression of NGOs, censorship of domestic and foreign media, and its rigid authoritarian system.  If China’s actions and narratives don’t credibly address these inconsistencies, it will remain challenging to win friends and influence nations through its culture and ideas.
Alyssa Ayres, “Creating a State Department Office for American State and Local Diplomacy,” Policy Innovation Memorandum, Council on Foreign Relations, June 7, 2017.  Ayres (CFR Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia) argues “a new strand in diplomacy” is occurring due to the rise of sub-national global actors (cities, states, local legislators) in domains such as investment, trade, tourism, education, climate change, and counter terrorism.  She calls on the State Department to create an office to facilitate ongoing activities, clarify and deconflict messages, “prevent policy confusion,” and enhance coordination of the sub-national global activities of multiple US government agencies.  Only two Department employees currently focus on sub-national diplomacy through informal networks.  Ayres recommends an appropriately staffed office to manage an information bank, provide support to local leaders, and enable strategic planning to leverage American state and city diplomacy in support of national diplomacy priorities.  (Courtesy of Ellen Frost)
Hamilton Bean and Edward Comor, “Data-Driven Public Diplomacy: A Critical and Reflexive Assessment,”All Azimuth, (2017): 1-16, published online, June 15, 2017.  Bean (University of Colorado, Denver) and Comor (University of Western Ontario) assess efforts to measure and evaluate public diplomacy in this critique of the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy’s 2014 report, “Data-Driven Public Diplomacy: Progress Towards Measuring the Impact of Public Diplomacy and International Broadcasting Activities.”  The authors make two strong claims worth close attention – and that summon equally strong debate.  First, they argue the technology framed goals of the Commission’s report, and public diplomacy’s attention to digital technologies more broadly, are in part an ideological legacy of Cold War thinking, with “violent extremism” replacing the Soviet Union as the dominant threat.  Here they draw on information technology scholar Paul Edwards’ concept of “closed world” discourse – meaning material and symbolic conditions that supported Cold War uses of technology.  Second, they argue the report lacks clarity as to what measurable impacts public diplomacy officials seek to achieve.  Bean and Comor base this claim on what they call “technological fetishism” – an adaptation of Karl Marx’s “commodity fetishism” (his argument that social relations are mediated through economic objects such as commodities and money).  In developing these claims, they bring a Gramscian perspective to the work of scholars generally and those who contributed to the Commission’s report.  They point to the “pragmatic complexity model” of strategic communication, advanced by Stephen R. Corman, Angela Trethewey, and Bud Goodall, as a place from which to reassess foundational premises of public diplomacy.  And they warn the data-driven approach steers too close to quantitative assessment and to government interests and ambitions at the expense of mutual understanding, peace, and public diplomacy’s humanistic capabilities.  For a measured critique, see Ilan Manor, “Why is Public Diplomacy Data Driven? A Response to Bean & Comor,” Exploring Digital Diplomacy Blog. August 13, 2017.
Broadcasting Board of Governors, 2016 Annual Report, available online in 2017.  As with previous reports, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) provides an abundance of descriptive information on the missions, challenges, activities, audience levels, and strategic priorities of its five networks: Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Office of Cuba Broadcasting, and Middle East Broadcasting.  The report provides teachers and others with an unparalleled overview of US broadcasting’s people, programs, reporting, content curation, accountability and research methods, transition to digital distribution platforms, efforts to improve inter-network cooperation, and relevance to foreign policy priorities.  The BBG’s annual reports frame organizational perspectives of broadcasting’s managers, a rhetorical approach that contrasts with the journalism norms of its broadcasters.  For arms length critiques of the BBG’s strengths and limitations, observers should look at Congressional hearings and committee reports; numerous reports by the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, Congressional Reference Service, and General Accountability Office; and a host of wide-ranging views in blogs and opinion columns.
Costas M. Constantinou, Noe Cornago, and Fiona McConnell, Transprofessional Diplomacy, (Brill Research Perspectives, 2017).  In this clearly argued paper, Constantinou (University of Cyprus), Cornago (University of the Basque Country), and McConnell (University of Oxford) contribute to important trends in diplomacy studies – recognition that diplomatic “professionals” exist beyond the state; an expanding “diplomatic realm” that includes multiple actors with new skills and methods in spaces that are not state-based; and increased use of diplomatic practice to illuminate academic study.  They frame three areas of inquiry: (1) the genealogy of diplomacy as a profession from its origins as a civic duty to its status as a vocation that, although lacking a “strict professional canon,” requires training, specific knowledge, and skills; (2) diplomacy’s functional differences from other professional categories with global reach; and (3) the proliferation of “new” diplomatic actors “working in parallel to, in partnership with, or in competition with state diplomats.”  Building on Geoffrey Wiseman’s “polylateral diplomacy”and related concepts, they suggest “transprofessionalization” (not “deprofessionalization”) offers a promising approach to understanding “the expansion of diplomatic actors and spaces” and “new modes of being a diplomat.”  Their arguments are compelling, but they also raise questions.  How should we differentiate between diplomacy and other relationships between groups?  If we rightly broaden what we mean by diplomatic actors and diplomatic professionalism, how do we avoid excessively expansive claims for both?  This is an important paper that opens doors to needed further research.
Mai’a K. Davis Cross, The Politics of Crisis in Europe, (Cambridge University Press, 2017).  Cross (Northeastern University) brings her well-regarded scholarship and EU optimism to this study of why EU integration continues despite successive crises.  She analyzes the politics of the 2003 Iraq crisis, the 2005 constitutional crisis, and the 2010 eurozone crisis in the context of a deep dive into the media narratives they generated.  These crises “to some extent are socially constructed,” she argues. They brought underlying social tensions to the surface that might otherwise have weakened integration.  Cross’s innovative research and views on the effects of media, public opinion, and collective emotions on the European project have drawn positive comments and questions.  For a thoughtful review, see Asle Toje, “The Politics of Crisis in Europe,” International Affairs, July 1, 2017.  It will be interesting to see how her logic holds as Europeans continue to work out the consequences of Brexit and populist impulses in EU member states.
Kathy R. Fitzpatrick, “Public Diplomacy in the Public Interest,” Journal of Public Interest Communications, Vol. 1, 2017, 78-93, published online April 28, 2017.  Fitzpatrick (American University) examines public diplomacy’s expanding role in supporting common social interests (problem solving, shared goals, global issues) that transcend the interests of particular countries and other diplomatic actors.  Her article profiles how this evolution is reflected in study and practice.  She looks at ways traditional public diplomacy tools and methods contribute to supporting the public interest in global society, the advent of varieties of diplomatic actors, and how future research can contribute to traditional public diplomacy debates and to understanding conceptual challenges to its role in global society.  Her research agenda focuses on four domains: models, publics, ethics, and measurement.  Fitzpatrick assumes “more relational – and more collaborative – forms of public diplomacy will define the field in the 21st century,” but not diminish its “critical importance” in advancing the goals of states and non-state actors.  Her thoughtful paper is a helpful guide to future research.  It also provides useful references to recent literature on diplomacy’s public dimension.
Suzy Hansen, Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017).  Hansen, an American journalist based in Istanbul (attracted first by knowing her favorite writer James Baldwin lived there in the 1960s) is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.  She has given us a compelling, intelligent, and stunningly well-written book.  Part memoir of a post-9/11 Ivy League educated writer from a small New Jersey town on a voyage of discovery.  Part long form reporting based on years living in Turkey and traveling in the Middle East.  Part meditation on foreign perceptions of America’s place in the world and their meaning for her own identity and self-understanding.  Hansen’s reflections are thoughtful and critical.  On American hubris.  On pretensions of virtue and power.  On “American exceptionalism.”  On differences between how Americans think of themselves and the United States, and the America that projects itself abroad.  In trying to understand “the strange weight we [Americans] carry with us” in the world, Hansen relies mostly on foreign voices.  Many provided insights into a shared history of which she was unaware.  We are living in a time when “Americans abroad now do not have the same swagger, the easy, enormous smiles,” she writes. “You no longer want to speak so loud. There is always the vague risk of breaking something.”  See also Hansen’s adaptation, “Unlearning the Myth of American Innocence,” The Guardian, August 8, 2017.  Ali Wyne’s review, “An Eye-Opening Exploration of How Other Countries Perceive America,” The Washington Post, August 18, 2017.  And Hisham Matar’s review, “The Empire in the Mirror,” New York Times Book Review, September 3, 2017.
Ilan Manor, “The Digitalization of Diplomacy: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Terminology,” Working Paper #1, Exploring Digital Diplomacy, August, 2017.  Manor (University of Oxford), seeks clarity in the variety of terms and concepts scholars and diplomats use to find meaning in the ways digital technologies influence diplomacy.  His candidate term going forward is “the digitalization of diplomacy” – a phrase he uses to focus on normative and temporal influences of digital technologies and to construct a taxonomy with four dimensions and four fields.  His dimensions are diplomacy’s audiences, institutions, practitioners, and practices.  His fields are (1) norms, values, and beliefs; (2) behavioral changes consequent to adoption of norms and beliefs; (3) patterns of use and standard operating procedures; and (4) concepts, metaphors, and mental schemata used to imagine the world.  His paper explores characteristics of his dimensions and how they influence each other.  Particularly helpful are his links to the research of leading diplomacy and communications scholars.  Reactions and discourse on his definition and taxonomy will be of interest – as will case studies that illuminate and give meaning to his concepts.
William Marcellino, Meagan Smith, Christopher Paul, and Lauren Skrabala, “Monitoring Social Media: Lessons for Future Department of Defense Social Media Analysis in Support of Information Operations,”RAND Corporation, 2017.  In this 92-page study, RAND’s policy analysts take a deep dive into legal, technology, and national security issues in building social media analysis capabilities while navigating US laws and norms under conditions of uncertainty.  Although they focus on requirements of the Department of Defense, they provide an informed assessment of the literature on social media technologies, concepts and methods in social media analysis, best practices, legal and ethical constraints, and the accelerating pace and reach of communication networks.  Diplomacy scholars and practitioners will find their insights and recommendations useful.
Caitlin E. Schindler, The Origins of Public Diplomacy in US Statecraft: Uncovering a Forgotten Tradition,(Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).  Missing in the abundant literature on US public diplomacy are careful studies of its pre-institutional origins in the nation’s history and culture.  Schindler (Institute of World Politics) has made a significant contribution to filling this void.  Her deeply researched book, filled with insights and rich detail, illuminates ways the US engaged and sought to influence foreign publics from the American Revolution through the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries.  She reveals patterns in the nation’s diplomatic and civil society traditions and provides informed assessments of how the nation’s past enables and constrains US diplomacy today.
Giles Scott-Smith, guest editor, “The Evolving Embassy: Changes and Challenges to Diplomatic Representation and Practice in the Global Era,” New Global Studies, Volume 11, Issue 2, July 2017. Are embassies still necessary?  How should they adapt to changes in global and domestic contexts?  New governance structures.  City diplomacy.  New non-state actors.  Changing norms and practices.  In his balanced and well-reasoned introduction, Scott-Smith (University of Leiden) discusses contrasting views of those who argue embassies remain essential and critics who see them as increasingly irrelevant.  Case studies examine these issues from historical and social science perspectives.  Small-state diplomacy.  Diplomatic practice in extreme situations.  Insights from specific diplomatic practices, i.e., labor attaches, honorary consuls.  Scott-Smith finds consensus on the growing importance of city diplomacy.  Going forward, he argues, “embassies will survive,” debate will continue, and their numbers will decline reflecting a “shift to more flexible forms of ‘presence.’”  Contains a useful list of resources.
Giles Scott-Smith, “Introduction.”
Pascal Lottaz (Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo), “Violent Conflicts and Neutral Legations: A Case Study of the Spanish and Swiss Legations in Wartime Japan.”
Louis Clerc (University of Turku), “Global Trends in Local Contexts: The Finnish Embassy in Paris, 1956-1990.”
Geert Van Goethem (Ghent University), “Bevin’s Boys Abroad: British Labor Diplomacy in the Cold War Era.”
Giles Scott-Smith, “Edges of Diplomacy: Literary Representations of the (Honorary) Consul and the Public-Private Divide in Diplomatic Studies.”
Kenneth Weisbrode (Bilkent University, Ankara), “Coda: Ten Questions for a Diplomat.”
The Soft Power 30: A Global Ranking of Soft Power 2017, Portland and USC Center on Public Diplomacy, July 18, 2017.  Of particular interest in this 152-page third annual report on the soft power of 30 countries (a collaboration between Portland, a strategic communication consulting company, and USC’s Center on Public Diplomacy) are its essays by prominent scholars and practitioners.  Topics include selected national perspectives on soft power, practical advice from USC’s CPD, and insights on varieties of tools, methods, and actors (public diplomacy, city diplomacy, digital technologies, cultural relations, and activities of non-state actors).  Contributors:  Moira Whelan (formerly State Department and USAID), Martin Davidson (Great Britain-China Center), Yoichi Funabashi (Asia Pacific Initiative), Tomas Kroyer (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Argentina), Victoria Dean (Portland), Laura Kyrke-Smith (International Rescue Committee), Philip Hall (Portland), Jordan Bach-Lombardo (Portland), Erin Helland (Youth for Understanding), Gail Lord (Lord Cultural Resources), Nicholas J. Cull (University of Southern California), Joel Day (Human Resources Commission, San Diego), Katherine Brown (Council on Foreign Relations), Tom Fletcher (British Diplomat, author of Naked Diplomacy: Power and Statecraft in the Digital Age), Jay Wang (University of Southern California), and Corneliu Bjola (University of Oxford).  The report’s rankings, analyzed by Portland’s Jonathan McClory, compare six categories of soft power resources.  Key 2017 findings:  France ranks first, an advance of three places from 2016.  The UK remains in second place.  The US ranks third, a drop from first place in 2016 attributed to the Trump Administration’s “zero sum nationalist rhetoric” and “mercurial approach to foreign policy.”
Ioannis D. Stefanidis, “American Projection and Promotion of Democracy: The Voice of America, The Greek Dictatorship, and Ceausescu’s Romania,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook, University of Minnesota, Volume 32/33, 2016/2017, pp. 166-238 (publication online forthcoming).  In this study, deeply researched in US archives and literature on the Voice of America (VOA) and US Information Agency (USIA), Stefanidis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) examines VOA’s broadcasts to Greece during its seven-year military dictatorship (1967-1974) and to Romania under the Ceauşescu government.  His concerns are to assess VOA’s role in promoting democratic change, illuminate the interplay between principle and expediency in US policies toward different types of authoritarian regimes, and test the extent to which US broadcasts may have contributed to the demise of these regimes.  He provides insights into VOA’s broadcasting priorities and programs of its Greek and Romanian services.  He explores listening habits of their audiences and the policies of their governments.  Tensions arising from VOA’s commitment to journalism norms and US foreign policy guidance from USIA and the State Department are an underlying theme.  Stefanidis shows how democracy promotion was subordinated to other policies (encouraging Greece’s cooperation in NATO and Romania’s association with the West) and how this played out in VOA’s broadcasts.  He concludes that VOA, despite its strong commitment to the norms of its Charter, “was widely regarded as the mouthpiece of the US government,” unlike the BBC, Radio Free Europe, and Deutsche Welle.  VOA’s influence was limited because it could not “offset the damage of what was perceived as a policy of double standards: tolerating dictatorship in some cases, castigating it in others.”  An offprint can be purchased for $5.00 from the Modern Greek Studies Program, 325 Social Sciences Building, University of Minnesota 267–19th Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55455.  Also available at www.academia.edu.
Catherine Tsalikis, “A Foreign Service Worth Fighting For,” OpenCanada.org. July 26, 2017.  Tsalikis (Senior Editor, OpenCanada.org, Centre for International Governance Innovation) interviewed current and former Canadian foreign service officers to explore “a battle for the soul” of a diplomatic corps seized with “fundamental questions about the role of a diplomat and the future of the service.”  Issues include: the benefits of personal diplomacy and nurturing relationships, flawed public perceptions of glamour and the gritty reality of 24/7 diplomatic practice, damage to the foreign service under the former government of Stephen Harper, and gaps between promise and delivery under the current government of Justin Trudeau.  She also explores downsides of “golden ageism” and a “culture of complaint” when career diplomats reflect on the past.  Among these are different comparative advantages of a career officer corps and non-career diplomats with different skills and experiences in a world where distinctions between foreign service officers and others doing foreign work are blurring.  The knowledge and methods of Canada’s diplomats continue to give scholars and reform-minded practitioners much to work with.
Vivian Walker, “From Pylos to Pyongyang: What Thucydides Can Teach Us About Contemporary Diplomacy,” Small Wars Journal, August 28, 2017.  Walker (USC Center for Public Diplomacy Faculty Fellow) continues to provide illuminating and teachable case studies (e.g., Benghazi: Managing the Message).  This time she draws on Thucydides account of Sparta’s negotiations with Athens following Sparta’s defeat at Pylos.  Walker sets the scene and discusses implications for understanding others, diplomatic persuasion and compromise, credible communication with publics and negotiators, and the importance of public opinion at home and abroad.  She concludes with brief comments on the case’s relevance to challenges of diplomacy with North Korea.
Richard Wilke, Bruce Stokes, Jacob Poushter, and Janell Getterolf, “U.S. Image Suffers as Publics Around the World Question Trump’s Leadership,” Pew Research Center, June 2017.  In a study of 37 countries, Pew’s researchers find a steep and rapid decline in US favorability ratings and trust in the US president and his policies.  A “median of just 22% has trust in Trump to do the right thing when it comes to international affairs” in contrast to a median of 64% in the final years of the Obama presidency.  In other findings, Trump gets higher ratings than Obama in Russia and Israel.  Germany’s Angela Merkel gets higher ratings globally than Trump, China’s Xi Jinping, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.  Overall, Americans are viewed more positively than the US as a country, with a median of 58% holding positive views of Americans.  Although a median of 64% like American popular culture, lower marks are given to the US government’s respect for personal freedoms, American ideas about democracy, and American ideas and customs spreading in their country.
U.S. Department of State, “Official Communication Using Social Media,” 10 FAM 180, August 24, 2017.  State’s Office of Policy Planning and Resources for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs (R/RPPR) has updated regulations in the Foreign Affairs Manual (FAM) on official use of social media for public diplomacy purposes.  Covered issues include required approvals for creating and using social media accounts for official purposes, social media advertising, content restrictions on personal social media accounts, social media site management, impersonations on social media, terms of use and terms of service, and protecting government social media accounts.  The new regulations link to earlier FAM requirements that still apply.  (Courtesy of Greta Morris)
US Government Accountability Office (GAO), “Department of State: Foreign Language Proficiency Has Improved, But Efforts to Reduce Gaps Need Evaluation,” GAO 17-318, March 2017.  GAO, which periodically examines the State Department’s “persistent foreign language shortfalls,” finds that Foreign Service officers who did not meet language proficiency requirements fill 23 percent of overseas language-designated positions.  Although this is an 8 percent improvement from 2008, significant gaps remain that affect “State’s ability to properly adjudicate visa applications, effectively communicate with foreign audiences, address security concerns, and perform other critical diplomatic functions.”  GAO’s report provides a detailed critique and examples showing how language proficiency strengthened and constrained effective public diplomacy.
Recent Blogs and Other Items of Interest
Anne Applebaum, “If This Were the Cold War, America Would Be Poised to Lose,” August 4, 2017, The Washington Post.
Martha Bayles, “A Teachable Moment,” August 7, 2017, The American Interest.
Roger Cohen, “The Desperation of Our Diplomats,” July 28, 2017, The New York Times.
Noah Daponte-Smith, “The State Department in Crisis,” July 6, 2017, National Review.
Max Fisher, “Canada’s Trump Strategy: Go Around Him,” June 22, 2017, The New York Times.
Tom Fletcher, “If Diplomacy Did Not Exist, We Would Need To Invent It,” June 26, 2017, Oxford University Press Blog.
Chris Hensmen and Shawn Powers, “Can Public Diplomacy Survive the Internet?” July 19, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center for Public Diplomacy.
Katherine E. Hone, “Would the Real Diplomacy Please Stand Up?” July 5, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center for Public Diplomacy.
Mariami Khatiashvili, “George Balanchine: The Public Diplomat Beyond the Ballet Master,” August 30, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center for Public Diplomacy.
Colum Lynch and Robbie Gramer, “State Department Reorganization Eliminates Climate, Muslim and Syria Special Envoys,” August 29, 2017, Foreign Policy Blog.
Tom Malinowski, “Did the United States Interfere in Russian Elections?” July 21, 2017, The Washington Post.
Ilan Manor, “Can National Leaders Influence National Brands?” August 1, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center for Public Diplomacy.
Andrew Natsios, “Tillerson Wants to Merge the State Dept. and USAID. That’s a Bad Idea,” June 28, 2017, The Washington Post.
Dana Priest and Michael Birnbaum, “Europe Has Been Working to Expose Russian Meddling for Years,” June 25, 2017, The Washington Post.
David Rank, “Why I Resigned From the Foreign Service After 27 Years,” June 23, 2017, The Washington Post.
Shaun Riordan, “Stop Inventing ‘New Diplomacies,’” June 21, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center for Public Diplomacy.
Jeffrey Robertson, “Embassy Websites: First Impressions Count,” August 11, 2017, CPD Blog, USC Center for Public Diplomacy.
Jennifer Rubin, “What is Going On at the State Department,” August 16, 2017; “State Department Dysfunction Reaches New Highs,” August 2, 2017, The Washington Post.
Cindy Saine and Marissa Melton, “Changes at State Department Lead to Questions About Its Mission,” August 6, 2017, US Politics News, Voice of America.
Nick Wadhams, “Tillerson Tightens Limits on Filling State Department Jobs,” June 28, 2017, Bloomberg Politics.
Ilir Zherka, “International Exchange Programs Receive Unprecedented Support,” July 20, 2017, Huffington Post.
Gem From The Past
Richard T. Arndt and David Lee Rubin, eds., The Fulbright Difference, 1948-1992, (Transaction Publishers, 1993).  As diplomacy scholars and historians turn increasingly to “practice theory” and insights of field practitioners to supplement top down perspectives in foreign ministry archives, presidential papers, and blue ribbon commission reports, two resources in US diplomacy are making a significant difference: the extensive oral interviews compiled by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (searchable by last name, countries, and subjects) and the recently published online archive of all past issues of The Foreign Service Journal (1919-present).  In this context, forty-one essays compiled by retired diplomat and former Fulbrighter Richard Arndt (author, The First Resort of Kings) and professor David Lee Rubin (University of Virginia) in The Fulbright Difference deserve a fresh look.  These essays, written by former Fulbright scholars and former diplomats, some also former Fulbright grantees, are arranged by decade.  They include stories and reflections on personal and national identity, ethnicity, political implications of academic exchanges, the goals and character of the Fulbright program, and perennial issues of administration and structure.  These are primary source insights of passionate participants – a rich collection that deserves interrogation by scholars and others interested in dispassionate assessment of academic exchanges and cultural diplomacy.  Includes a foreword by Stanley Katz (Princeton University) and an afterword by Robin W. Winks (Yale University).
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Issue #86

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