January 25

"You know the most effective public diplomacy I've seen? It's basketball."

--Deputy Secretary of State during the Bush administration Richard Armitage, who launched a bipartisan Commission on Smart Power for the Centre for Strategic and International Studies with Harvard professor Joseph Nye, Jr.

“And I will be among the 20% who will not have an avatar version. Maintaining the coherence of the actual version of myself will be a sufficient challenge in 2011.”

--International Broadcasting and Public Diplomacy commentator Kim Andrew Elliott, reacting to the comment that “The Gartner Research firm predicted in April 2007 that 80% of all internet users will have an avatar version of themselves by 2011.” On avatars, see

"When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains
And the women come out to cut up what remains
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier."

--Rudyard Kipling, “The Young British Soldier,” 1892

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

The Obama public diplomacy honeymoon - Kim Andrew Elliott Discussing International Broadcasting and Public Diplomacy

Public Diplomacy is not marketing! - Greg Sanders, Better living through empiricism: "This [Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs] will be an easier job under Obama’s Presidency and Clinton’s State Department as we’ve got better ideas and better policy. But really the US Information Agency or something like it should be restored. Public Diplomacy is really the long game, form connections with other people and tell the truth about what we’re doing. If it is [Judith] McHale [rumored to be the new Under Secretary] her best bet to get some good career people under her that she listens to. That should help her figure out how the nature of this job is different than her prior jobs. … [S]he may be great and I hope that’s the case.” ON McHALE SEE. ON USIA, SEE

Think Again: Barack Obama and the War on Terror: - David M. Edelstein, Ronald R. Krebs, Foreign Policy: "Obama Will Wage the ‘Battle of Ideas' Better Than George W. Bush [.]’ Doubtful. Yes, Obama, by his presence and personality, has changed the atmospherics of U.S. foreign relations. America's reputation around the world has for some time been at a nadir, so there is nowhere to go but up. But the United States' poor image abroad has not been the result of a marketing failure, and, thus, better public diplomacy will not lead to victory in the ‘Battle of Ideas.’ Anti-Americanism thrives, not because others misunderstand the United States, but because they perceive its aims and tactics all too well. The Bush administration's greatest perceived foreign-policy failures -- Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo, unimpeded global warming -- could not have been overcome with better public diplomacy, and recent improvements in trans-Atlantic relations cannot be credited to an improved sales pitch. The world is rightly waiting to see if Obama will match his words with actions. Public diplomacy can matter only at the margins. As much as he might wish it, Obama does not enter the Oval Office with a clean slate.”

Will Clinton’s push for ’smart power’ bring networked diplomacy? - Angelo Fernando, Social Media Today: "At the heart of diplomacy, says incoming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (speaking at her visit to the State Department yesterday) is smart power. I trust this is not as something analogous to ’soft power.’ To me smart power would be all about taking diplomacy into a 3.0 world.

We all understand what 2.0 stands for, since this thinking debuted three years ago. Like web 3.0 thinking (see Google’s Eric Schmidt take a crack at it), the folks looking at how to engage in diplomacy 3.0 would do well to understand how information, ideas, even value systems move virally across networks. They would do well to look at a paper that was written by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, titled ‘Network Diplomacy.' Amazingly, it was written in 2001! It’s about networked intelligence, dialogues, listening, sharing and trust.”

Revolution, Facebook-Style - Samantha M. Shapiro, New York Times: “Although there are countless political Facebook groups in Egypt, many of which flare up and fall into disuse in a matter of days, the one with the most dynamic debates is that of the April 6 Youth Movement, a group of 70,000 mostly young and educated Egyptians, most of whom had never been involved with politics before joining the group. … In Washington, there is increasing interest in the April 6 Youth Movement. James Glassman, the outgoing under secretary of state for public diplomacy, told me he followed the group closely. ‘It’s not easy in Egypt, and in other countries in the Middle East, to form robust civil-society organizations,’ he said. ‘And in a way that’s what these groups are doing, although they’re certainly unconventional.‘ … Other State Department officials told me they believe that social-networking software like Facebook’s has the potential to become a powerful pro-democracy tool.” SEE ALSO

Place branding: Is it marketing, or isn't it? -Simon Anholt, Place Branding and Public Diplomacy: “As one ploughs through the ever-increasing quantity of blogs, articles, interviews and academic papers where place branding or public diplomacy are discussed — and interestingly enough, more and more of them mention both in the same context — one gets a reassuring sense that one important message is finally beginning to permeate the general consciousness: that communications are no substitute for policies, and that altering the image of a country or city may require something a little more substantial than graphic design, advertising or PR campaigns.” SEE ALSO. PHOTO: Simon Anholt

Guantanamaybe - Iris and David, We’re Just Sayin: “Jimmy Carter passed an executive order that CIA agents could no longer be undercover at USIA (Public affairs, press, and cultural exhanges officers). He felt they undermined the credibility of the US Public Diplomacy effort. And although it was a bit inconvenient for the CIA, sometimes you weigh and measure what makes sense in terms of the credibility of the nation. Whew!”

The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games: Public Diplomacy Triumph or Public Relations Spectacle? - CPD Spring Symposium, US Center on Public Diplomacy: “The USC Center on Public Diplomacy, the USC Center for International Studies and the USC US-China Institute are proud to announce a symposium on the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games: ‘Public Diplomacy Triumph or Public Relations Spectacle?’ The symposium will bring together scholars and practitioners to share research insights on China's public diplomacy strategies and the impact of these games on perceptions of China's soft power resources and global attitudes towards a rising China.” SEE ALSO

The International Message of National Identity – LK Advani's Blog: “I understand that in April 2006 the Ministry [of External Affairs of India] created a special Public Diplomacy Division because government felt that 'in today’s world, successful foreign policy practitioners need to have an open and regular dialogue with civil society, NGOs, academia, think tanks and the media.'”

Saakashvili described the care of their ex-comrades in the opposition as proof of democracy and freedom in Georgia - Boris Valerman, Look twice!: “Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili on Friday said in a live television broadcast to the citizens. He painted a very rosy picture. Georgia is a true democratic state, as evidenced by even the transition of many of his former allies in the opposition. From the economic crisis, Georgia has suffered less than other countries, although the fight against unemployment crisis and the president named a priority for his government at the moment. Russia, Saakashvili [said,] is still not trusted and welcomed contact with it only at the level of ‘public diplomacy.’"

RELATED ITEMS

Foreign voices on Washington's performance, past and future: How did the Bush administration affect them and their countries? And what are their hopes for the new administration? - Los Angeles Times

To Combat Obama, Al-Qaeda Hurls Insults: Effort Hints at Group's Consternation - Joby Warrick, Washington Post

The terrorist group has unleashed a stream of verbal tirades against Barack Obama, each more venomous than the last. Regardless of how Obama is viewed now by the Muslim world -- savior, menace or something in between -- the opinions will almost certainly change in the coming months. For Muslim countries, as for the United States, perceptions based on rhetoric and image will soon collide with reality as the policies of the new administration take form

Poll shows 63% in U.S. backed Israeli attack on Gaza – Deseret News. SEE ALSO

What is Web 2.0? – Nitesh, Nitesh's Technical Blog: Web 2.0 initiatives have been employed in public diplomacy for the Israeli government. The country is believed to be the first to have its own official blog, MySpace page, YouTube channel, Facebook page and a political blog. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs started the country's video blog as well as its political blog.

The UN's Orwellian Language on Israel - Richard L. Cravatts, American Thinker: “In the chorus of denunciation from much of the world community of Israel's defensive incursion into Gaza, nowhere was the feverish bleating more evident than from the UN's Human Rights Council, the perennially biased 47-member group of panjandrums that replaced the Israel-loathing UN Commission on Human Rights in 2005. … In few places where public diplomacy and negotiations are conducted is there such visible moral incoherence and hypocrisy as regularly occurs in Human Rights Council sessions.”

Media, Propaganda and the Gaza Conflict - Nancy Snow, Huffington Post: “From my vantage point, which is to say from my perch as a watcher/listener/viewer of mostly American media, it appeared that Israel's use of force in Gaza was excessive from the start.”

Gaza and Jenin: The same propaganda? - Carl in Jerusalem, Israel Matzav: The world media is already crying about a "massacre" that took place in Gaza using "white phosphorus" and other weapons that are "illegal" under "international law." In 2002, after more than 20 suicide attacks inside Israel in which about 100 civilians were massacred, Israel went after the terror infrastructure in Jenin and other Palestinian towns. Palestinians staged a "massacre" in which the world believed. Like today, in Gaza?

A Bold New Move – An Investment for the Future - Ari Bussel, Canada Free Press, Canada: "If one asks oneself about the current situation in Gaza, the answer would probably include these buzzwords: ‘Siege,’ ‘humanitarian crisis,’ ‘refugees.’ Even the more informed individuals, including many in the pro-Israel crowd, would succumb to the same. This is probably Israel’s greatest failure in this Operation. The Operation was not fought only on the ‘round and from the air. People the world over took active part in the Public Diplomacy Front. The ‘Siege’ from before the Operation still continues a month later. The idea of a ‘Humanitarian Crisis’ is so embedded in our mind’s eye that we look at ways to help, to force the Siege to break. And so billions of fresh money are committed to the betterment of the Gazans, no lessons learned from the past.“

Some thoughts on the situation – Forecast Highs: “Holocaust Memorial Day is on Tuesday, and there has been so much Gaza-Holocaust parallels going on during and after Operation Cast Lead, that I wonder how this year’s event will go down. … With so many examples lately of … people calling for boycotts of Israel, I feel as if there is a steady deligitimization of Israel going on. How did we become the bad guys? Haven’t we been hit by rockets for the past eight years? All the talk of Israel’s public diplomacy working well this time, as compared to the Second Lebanon War, seem very hollow to me now.“

This Is Not a Test - Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times: Iran as a key player in Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy. The Clinton team tried to woo Syria while isolating Iran. President Bush tried to isolate both Iran and Syria. The Obama team, as Martin Indyk argues in “Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East,” “needs to try both to bring in Syria, which would weaken Hamas and Hezbollah, while also engaging Iran.”

Even Ordinary Iranians Took Up This Banner - Azadeh Moaveni, Washington Post: The government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad marshaled its own resources to incite rage over Israel's offensive in Gaza to distract attention from its own myriad failures. And it worked.

Closing Gitmo Just the Beginning - Eric Margolis, The Atoronto Sun/Common Dreams: Now is an excellent time for Obama also to close the U.S. base at Guantanamo and return it to Cuba. Gitmo is a military white elephant. Returning it to Cuba would be a good start to thawing relations between Havana and Washington.

When Gitmo Was (Relatively) Good - Karen J. Greenberg, Washington Post: Had the United States been willing to trust in the professionalism of its superb military regarding the detainees, it could have avoided one of the most shameful passages in its history.

Obama's Vietnam? - Jeffrey T. Kuhner, Washington Times: Afghanistan threatens to destroy Barack Obama's presidency. Lost in the Inauguration euphoria this week is that our celebrity-in-chief is poised to commit a massive strategic military blunder -- one that will squander American blood and treasure, and perhaps mark the end of our superpower status. The United States is sleepwalking toward disaster. Mr. Obama is now following Kennedy's footsteps. Afghanistan will be his Vietnam.

Remembering Germany - Roger Cohen, International Herald Tribune: Germany is important to the United States right now. It's time to rekindle a dormant relationship.

Bush: The Great Liberator - Matt Patterson, Baltimore Sun: “[A]s someone whose family resides on the Eastern Seaboard, I will be eternally grateful to him for taking the fight to al-Qaida overseas, which it would be foolish to argue has had no impact on the subsequent tranquillity of American cities.

And as a lover of liberty and a believer that all people everywhere deserve to be free, I see him as the great liberator of our time - and one of the great leaders of all time.”