The role of public diplomacy in statecraft; professional ethics; organizational principles; arguments for using public diplomacy
The following essay commented on President Obama’s September 29, 2015, speech at the Leaders Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism, held at the United Nations. It appeared on the former Public Diplomacy Council website as a “Commentary,” but it is no longer available on the web. It is here re-published for reference. Foreign policy…
It was perhaps the largest gathering of public diplomacy advocates and international broadcasters and media scholars ever held in America. The U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) organized a day-long conference May 7 at the U.S. Institute of Peace in an atrium within sight of the Lincoln Memorial. Highlight of the day: an address by…
America has five taxpayer-funded multimedia overseas broadcasters. Practically unknown, however, is fact that 18 field reporters of those networks have been killed or missing in the last seven decades because of their service in covering events in war-torn or totalitarian countries across four continents. On May 3, the chief executive of the five networks, John…
First published as a Public Diplomacy Council Commentary on March 18, 2014, this essay was addressed the new Secretary of State, John Kerry. Five years later, the threat of al-Qaeda has diminished, and other foreign policy problems compete with the war on terrorism. From the third paragraph, however, the essay reviewed issues that continue to…
Last week offered two glimpses of U.S. public diplomacy’s gradual evolution. The State Department received confirmation that a merger between two of its three public diplomacy bureaus will move ahead. International Information Programs and the Public Affairs bureau will become the Bureau of Global Public Affairs. A less visible but deeper change went public Thursday,…
As a VOA foreign correspondent reporting from Sudan back in 1969, I recall distinctly a tiny mud hut within a mile or so from the confluence of the Blue and White Niles. Its rough mud bricks were splashed with crude white lettering, a makeshift campaign poster back in the relatively brief period when Sudan had…
Oil rich Saudi Arabia, despite its great wealth, seems oblivious to the potential damage to its global public diplomacy because of its sustained continuing violation of human rights of its own citizens. Young Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS) is considered the supreme ruler of the kingdom with his elderly father, King Salman, playing a secondary…
The Public Diplomacy Council has taken on some outstanding new members over the last few months. As the national organization dedicated to the advancement of the public diplomacy profession, we believe that effective public diplomacy is indispensable to successful national security. For that reason, the Council promotes improved professional practice, academic study of the field,…
What is U.S. “soft power” in a digital world? A key facet is the ability to form international friendships, person-to-person and organization-to-organization, in the 21st century. This enhances, in a very human way, “hard power,” the ability to affect militarily the fate of societies and nations around the globe. Here in Washington, soft power advocates…
Air Force Colonel John Boyd (1927-1999), “the fighter pilot who changed the art of war,” was a key military thinker in the last decades of the 20th century. His energy-maneuverability theory revolutionized fighter tactics, and his famous “Patterns of Conflict” briefing has deeply influenced two generations of military strategists. Public Diplomacy is an instrument of…