May 11

"The guerrilla diplomat is cross-culturally literate and capable, swimming with ease in the sea of the people rather than flopping around like a fish out of water when outside the embassy walls."

--Wikipedia, entry on "Guerilla Diplomacy"; image from

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

Winning the Information War in Afghanistan and Pakistan - Greg Bruno, Council on Foreign Relations: "As part of its new strategy for the Afghan war, the White House has called for an overhaul of 'strategic communications' in Afghanistan 'to improve the image of the United States and its allies' and 'to counter the propaganda that is key to the enemy's terror campaign.' But U.S. officials have acknowledged an institutional weakness in coordinating strategic communications across agencies, as well as broader disagreements on definitions and tactics. 'A coordinated effort must be made to improve the joint planning and implementation of strategic communications,' says the Pentagon's 2008 National Defense Strategy (PDF). ... Civilian agencies, meanwhile, continue to grapple with message crafting and delivery. Analysts are looking for signals on how the Obama administration will use public diplomacy tools beyond the president's widely attended overseas speeches." Image from

GE Makes Large Donation To US Shanghai Expo Efforts -- AFP, CNNMoney.com: "General Electric Co. (GE) has given U.S. efforts to raise the $60 million needed to ensure a national pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo a massive boost, organizers said Monday. ... The event is expected to draw 70 million visitors - 95% of them Chinese - and despite the financial crisis, most major countries have seized it as one of the biggest public diplomacy opportunities in decades. But U.S. law prohibits using taxpayer dollars to pay for such events and private fundraising got off to a shaky start last year."

Expo Errors - levinehank, Behind the Curtain: An Insider’s Guide to US-China Relations: "I know a lot about the process of approval and fundraising for a US pavilion based on my time in the US government and contacts I have had with a couple of groups vying to get State Dept. approval for the US Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo over the past two years. ... The real problem lies in the bowels of the State Dept. where working level lawyers and some public diplomacy officers over the last couple of years have thrown up obstacle after obstacle to the US Pavilion effort. It is as if some involved at the working level were pursuing their own foreign policy." Image from

Shanghai Scrap Rules! - Charlie McElwee, China Environmental Law: "One doesn’t have to be an 'insider' in Shanghai’s US corporate expat community to have heard tales of the alienating actions of some members of the Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc. team."

Place marketing - working notes - stefan.geens, Ogle Earth: "I'm in China to manage Sweden's web-based public diplomacy effort aimed at the Chinese. The catalyst is Shanghai Expo 2010, a world fair whose sheer ambition will blow all previous efforts out of the water — as is the custom here in China. Sweden will have a pavilion at the Expo, and the groundbreaking for it took place a few weeks ago. Now all that is left is to build it, and then to market it. How to go about this online? One thing we'll be doing is 'place marketing', to make sure the pavilion and its associated website has a presence wherever the geographic web manifests itself."

NCTC has integrated daily intelligence reports from all federal and some local agencies - Edward H. Campbell, Al-Masakin News Agency, Independent Media: "The National Counterterrorism Center’s (NCTC) Director Michael E. Leiters ... spoke about the National Implementation Plan which seeks to consolidate the elements of national power: diplomacy, intelligence, covert action, law enforcement, economic policy, foreign aid, public diplomacy and homeland defense." Leiters image from; on Leiters, see

New Media Tools and Public Diplomacy – Council on Foreign Relations: "Interviewee: Elliot Schrage, VP of Global Communications, Marketing, and Public Policy, Facebook; Interviewer: Lee Hudson Teslik, Associate Editor, CFR.org: Just as advertisers have experimented in their uses of new media and social networking, so too have governments. The U.S. State Department now posts on Twitter, has a Facebook account, and has launched a social networking site on its own web server. Experts remain divided on the extent to which these tools will prove a useful means of public diplomacy. Elliott Schrage, Facebook's vice president of global communications, discusses in this interview how governments should think about new media. Schrage places an emphasis on authenticity, saying the medium provides a unique platform for users to reject what they deem to be spin."

Interview with Iran's PressTV - Joshua S. Fouts, DIP's Dispatches from the Imagination Age: "Rita J. King and I are featured guests on The Autograph, a program on Iran's PressTVPressTV, hosted by Susan Modaress.

We discuss the potential of virtual worlds for cultural dialog, better communication between the West and Islamic communities worldwide, public diplomacy, digital diplomacy, our recent project on Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds and more." King and Fouts image from

US-Saudi Culture & Commerce Fair Wraps Up - John Burgess, Crossroads Arabia: "Arab News carries a wrap-up report on the Saudi-US Culture & Commerce Fair held in Taif last week. This is public diplomacy—’soft diplomacy’—that works to highlight shared values and interests rather than ‘hard diplomacy’ focused on political matters. The ‘payoff’ for this kind of work is not a treaty or some international agreement; rather, it is intended to change attitudes over time. Changed attitudes in the US-Saudi relationship are something to be desired, from both sides."

Rethinking World Order - Part III - Daryl Copeland, Guerilla Diplomacy:

"Unlike traditional diplomacy, and even more so than public diplomacy, guerrilla diplomacy, and indeed guerrilla diplomats, are designed to perform effectively within and across the full spectrum of conditions encapsulated within the ACTE world order model." On ACTE, see

Iran ‘to release’ reporter Saberi - Keegancalligar, Media International: "Iranian officials have announced they have cut reporter Roxana Saberi’s jail sentence following an appeal by the journalist. Saberi will be released Monday. Originally charged with spying and sent[e]nced to 8 years in jail, Saberi’s father said 'Her sentence was cut down to two years with five years suspense, so after five years if there is nothing happened those two years will be forgiven.' What is interesting about this is that her appeal was heard after a lot of international outcry. I wonder if Iranian officials realized the backlash this created throughout the world, and are reducing her sentence as a form of public diplomacy."

Human Rights - Marianne Bevan, Salient: "The [Bush] administration quickly found a Yakuza to write an eloquent legal defence of expansive executive powers and aggressive interrogation techniques. Legal advice was sought, asses were covered … . Even the Pentagon got in on the party; under the direction of Donald Rumsfeld, they schmoozed and charmed public figures. This year’s Pulitzer Prize winner documents the systematic domestic propaganda campaign run by the Pentagon—managing the public perception of the war through a public diplomacy of disinformation." Image from

Ramallah television station looks for additional US funding - Kim Andrew Elliott Discussing International Broadcasting and Public Diplomacy

Muslim Heroes of the Holocaust - Robert Satloff, Islam Way: "Robert Satloff is executive director of The Washington Institute, a post he [as]umed in January 1993. An expert on Arab and Islamic politics as well as U.S. Middle East policy, Dr. Satloff has written and spoken widely on the Arab-Israeli peace process, the Islamist challenge to the growth of democracy in the region, and the need for bold and innovative public diplomacy to Arabs and muslims."

Where Is the Accountability in Guatemala? - Jennifer Trowbridge, letters to the editor, Washington Post: "The writer is a Fulbright fellow conducting research in Guatemala."

RELATED TIMES

'Smart power' stumped: Obama approach isn't making the grade - Donald Lambro, Washington Times: In an ever-more-dangerous world, the Obama administration says it is practicing "smart power" instead of "hard power." "With smart power, diplomacy will be the vanguard of foreign policy," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told senators at her confirmation hearings. That's the message Mr. Obama has sent since his swearing-in, but so far, it doesn't seem to be working. Image from

Dangerous Work in Moscow - Fred Hiatt, Washington Post: As the Obama administration prepares for a July summit at the Kremlin, the nature of the Russian regime and the possibility of constructive cooperation with it are very much up for debate.

Propaganda Victory! - Jules Crittenden Blog: Engineering the deaths of civilians is not what gives the Taliban its propaganda victories. It’s everyone else’s insistence that the United States is responsible for Taliban war crimes. Scratch up another for the Taliban!

Protest against this Eurovision propaganda stunt by Israel - Gaza Solidarity:

If the Israeli government thinks that having an Israeli and an Arab duet at the Eurovision song contest is going to help to repair their image in the world they are surely more deluded than we thought. Noa and [Mira] Awad, the two singers, were selected in the middle of the Gaza war to do the propaganda stunt for Israel. Image from

The propaganda of hate - Samson blinded: Israeli propaganda should be structured from general to particular: Islam sanctions treacherousness in regard to infidels, thus we cannot rely on Palestinian promises of peace; Hamas broke ceasefire in Gaza, and the PLO reneged on many agreements to curb terrorism. Islamic terrorists from Al Qaeda attacked the West, and similar Islamic terrorists perpetrate daily attacks against Israel. Jews must show the common Americans and Europeans that we have the same Muslim enemy.

Description - Nazi Propaganda and the Second World War - Aristotle A. Kallis, Palgrave Macmillan: Nazi propaganda during World War II has been portrayed as the most extreme example of a 'totalitarian' assault on modern society. Its psychological grip and efficacy, however, as well as the commanding influence of Joseph Goebbels in its conduct and output, have been exaggerated. The book examines the organization, agency, strategy and output of Nazi propaganda during 1939-45, showing that neither a 'totalitarian' centralization of resources remained elusive because of the overall 'polycratic' operation of the National Socialist system. It re-defines the benchmarks for assessing the effectiveness of propaganda and underlines the gap between 'totalitarian' intentions and the far more complex reality in which Nazi propaganda was conducted during the war. Through an analysis of the strategies employed across the board of propaganda devices (press, radio, cinema) the book shows that Nazi wartime propaganda succeeded in integrating the 'national community' against its enemies; but failed in becoming a 'totalitarian' mechanism of information and perception-shaping. It also had limited impact on those factors that decided the outcome of the war. Image from

The Extraordinary Anti-Nazi Photomontages of John Heartfield:


How the photomontage art of John Heartfield, a contemporary and friend of Brecht, warned the world of the rise of Hitler and Nazism. In the fight against sophisticated Nazi propaganda, Heartfield showed the Nazi regime in its true light - R J Evans, Quazen; via

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