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,…
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…
Exchange of persons programs “are a lot like dark matter.” That was Dr. Allan Goodman’s assertion at the “Hard Case for Soft Power” panel discussion at American University. They’re hard to see, but critical to U.S. “soft power.” Goodman and four other speakers filled a large conference room at the SIS on Monday, February 25…
“Metrics,” “data,” “evaluation,” and “results, not outputs” have proven to be real challenges for Public Diplomacy and strategic communication. So has demonstrating that a program, activity, or campaign “moves the needle.” Yesteryear Foreign Service Officers at U.S. Information Service posts religiously tallied “placements.” From time to time, USIA’s research office commissioned surveys. At the dawn…
Former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia James B. Smith – he served in Riyadh from 2009 to 2013 — was interviewed by Checkpoints, the alumni magazine of the U.S. Air Force Academy, his alma mater. The interview was conducted long before the current debate – occasioned by the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi — over…
Two years ago this week, Mexican-U.S. relations took a deep dive, when Mexico’s former President Enrique Pena Nieto cancelled a meeting in Washington with incoming President Donald Trump during Mr. Trump’s first week in office. The dispute centered on Mr. Trump’s insistence that Mexico pay for construction of a planned wall along unfinished sections of…
It was October 15. 2015. The Broadcasting Board of Governors, recently renamed the U.S. Agency for Global Media, heard some sound advice about the power of the five taxpayer-funded multimedia networks it leads. “To state the obvious,” guest speaker Adam Clayton Powell III told the Board, “not everything is true, some things are provably false.…
Sometimes old speeches help shine light on current issues. From twenty years ago, here are some words for today’s Public Diplomacy. On October 4, 1999, a few days after the U.S. Information Agency became part of the Department of State, Representative Christopher H. Smith of New Jersey entered remarks on Public Diplomacy in the Congressional…
Public Diplomacy officers in the Foreign Service meet many educators – from Ministers of Education and Presidents or Vice-Chancellors of major universities, down to deans, principals, professors teaching courses relating to the U.S., and English teachers. During my career, I had countless telephone calls like this one: Educator: “Mr. Bishop, it was wonderful meeting you…
Joe B. Johnson consults on government communication and technology after a career in the United States Foreign Service. He is an instructor for the National Foreign Affairs Training Center, where he teaches strategic planning for public diplomacy. Read More