Uzbekistan
Ambassador Mark L. Asquino (ret.) Senior Public Diplomacy Fellow, SMPA (2010-11) The Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan is in the news, but unfortunately, not in a positive way. Media coverage of the horrific, vehicular attack in New York City, which took...
“The Eve of Destruction”
Ambassador Mark L. Asquino (ret.), Senior Public Diplomacy Fellow (2010-11), SMPA In his September 19 address to the United Nations General Assembly, President Trump chillingly threatened to “totally destroy North Korea,” a country of twenty-five million...
Senate Committee On Appropriations Slams Proposed Cuts to State/USAID Budgets
By Ambassador Mark L. Asquino (ret.), Senior Public Diplomacy Fellow(2010-11) SMPA In its September 13 lead editorial (“Senators in Search of a Foreign Policy”), The New York Times called attention to a bipartisan report issued a week earlier by the Senate’s...
“This is a ‘hard power’ budget…”
Ambassador Mark L. Asquino (ret.) Senior Public Diplomacy Fellow (SMPA 2010-11) In his 2004 book, “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Power,” Joseph Nye defined “soft power” as follows: “A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other...
“I Am Heather”
Ambassador Mark L. Asquino (ret.), SMPA Senior Public Diplomacy Fellow (2010-11) In Phoenix on September 22, President Trump once again bitterly complained about his alleged ill-treatment by journalists. He disputed criticism of his reaction to white supremacist...
When Policy Meets Public Diplomacy: U.S. losing its edge in attracting international students
U.S. public diplomacy efforts are about attraction, rather than coercion. A major variable in measuring “attractiveness” of the U.S. is through attitudes of potential foreign exchange students. The ability of the U.S. to attract bright minds from around the...
Life After Learning to Love the Tweet: Twitter Diplomacy in the Age of Trump
In April 2013, Foreign Affairs published “Social Diplomacy: Or, How Diplomats Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tweet,” written by digital communications expert and Columbia SIPA professor Alexis Wichowski. Four years later, we live in an era where the...
Event Recap The Jihadi Threat in Europe: Insights from Belgium
Nearly a year after the Brussels attacks, the GW Program on Extremism, coordinated an event analyzing The Jihadi Threat in Europe: Insights from Belgium. The goal of the discussion was to promote thoughtful commentary from multiple perspectives on the Belgian...
The Future of MOOCs in Public Diplomacy
The classroom’s matriculation to the web, where larger audiences can be reached and wider breadths of information are available, is a natural course. Such transformation has already taken place from casual discussion of academic material on blogs and forums like this...
Combating ISIS Influence in the West Through Entrepreneurship
No country is safe from the Islamic radicalization process. On November 13, 2015, three coordinated teams of gunman and suicide bombers attacked the busy streets of Paris, France. 130 innocent people were left dead, hundreds others were injured, and the Western world...
