I am increasingly persuaded that the effectiveness of U.S. official Public Diplomacy depends not just on messages, programs, or technology, but also on the strength and health of the Foreign Service. This article is more about the Foreign Service than about Public Diplomacy per se, but these factors need to be part of the whole…
In his State of the Union Address of January 6, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress for authority to provide Lend-Lease assistance to the United Kingdom. To strengthen his appeal, FDR traced a vision of “a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.” “The Four Freedoms” eventually became shorthand for the war aims of…
Occasionally I co-lead a strategy workshop for State Department practitioners of public diplomacy. Each participant brings a topic and develops it into a public diplomacy campaign over five days; it’s learning by doing. The hardest thing for our students – both Foreign Service Officers and locally-hired staffers – is to define a clear objective and…
Edward G. Lansdale (1908-1987) – whose career included service in the Philippines during the Huk Rebellion and in Vietnam during that war – was a major thinker and practitioner in counterinsurgency. When William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick wrote their influential 1958 novel, The Ugly American, “Colonel Hillendale” was modeled on Lansdale. He is the…
Living and working in other countries, Public Diplomacy practitioners hear a mix of many ideas – political, economic, social, and religious. Among them are patriotism and nationalism. A recent video – and the controversies it sparked – presents a case study that can give viewers some perspective on today’s currents of Russian nationalism. Last year,…
How might the West respond to the explosion of false information in social and traditional media? There have been many prescriptions for inoculating a curious world against that challenge, especially since Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and, lately, several other pivotal leadership polls in Western Europe. Earlier, it was the ISIS mastery…
As a consequence of President Eisenhower’s historic 1953 UN General Assembly speech, “Atomic Power for Peace’” the world-wide promotion of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy became the young U.S. Information Agency’s first major mission. I had been managing a U.S. Mission-sponsored Atoms-for-Peace exhibition at the Berlin Industrial Fair. It included a huge replica of…
Every so often, a topic for commentary comes along that focuses the writer more intently than the average. Of course, if there is a personal backstory or connection with the topic, that surely helps. Today that topic has found its writer — or vice versa. You see, the topic before me today is the state…
Irwin Steven Goldstein told the Foreign Relations Committee, “If confirmed, I look forward to working with the Department’s very talented career officials to ensure that we are speaking with one clear, consistent, and compelling voice.” The veteran public relations executive’s official statement is attached to this blog post. He appeared before the Foreign Relations Committee…
Remarks by Adam Clayton Powell III Broadcasting Board of Governors August 30, 2017 Thank you, Mr. Chairman; Governors, Director Lansing, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Adam Powell, and I am the President of the Public Diplomacy Council and Director of Washington Programs for the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center for Communication…