November 1

"Their solution was to stress their fervor for a different war."

--According to commentator Matt Bai, Democrats, on how to oppose the war in Iraq without being fatally caricatured, yet again, as feckless heirs to the McGovernite left; image from

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

Interview With Jim Sciutto of ABC - Hillary Rodham Clinton, U.S. Department of State: "SECRETARY CLINTON: I think that we haven’t done as good a job as I wish we had in the past, having the kind of public diplomacy, people-to-people connection, and the sensitivity that comes with listening and consulting with people as opposed to just stating our opinion and kind of saying take it or leave it. I don’t think that’s always the best way to communicate. But in the 21st century, it’s a losing proposition. We’re not living in a time where you just talk government to government and expect everything to be taken care of. We’re living in a time where people have access to mountains of information, and if we don’t take that into account in our diplomacy and in our interactions with other countries and people, we’re not going to be as effective in communicating as I would like to see us.

So inheriting what we inherited, which you know very well was a lot of unfortunate feelings and attitudes that had been built up in people toward our country, we’re going at it sort of one by one. And part of the way I define my job is not just being confined to the government offices, but getting out into countries, listening to people. Again, I’m not going to satisfy every question that they have right off the bat; there’s just too much baggage that we’re carrying. But I’m going to keep trying, and I want, at least, people to go away saying, 'Well, no American official has ever come and listened to us like this. They haven’t been willing to entertain that we had some concerns.'” Image from

Hillary's Public Diplomacy Failed in Pakistan - Pakistan Defence: An independent defence organization for the research and analysis of the Pakistani security and strategic affairs: "The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's botched attempts at public diplomacy have drawn sharp rebuke from an American in Pakistan. Todd Shea, the head of Comprehensive Disaster Response Services in Pakistan, has criticized Clinton's statements during her recent visit as 'insensitive, corrosive, arrogant and flat out wrong'. The CDRS is an NGO on the ground in Kashmir and it has been working to provide a field medical center and healthcare services to the earthquake victims in Azad Kashmir since 2005. Like Greg Mortenson's work on building schools, the work done by Todd Shea's relief efforts have engendered positive feelings among Pakistanis toward the Americans. In effect, Greg and Todd have been attempting to fill the vacuum left by the US State Department in practical public diplomacy on the ground in Pakistan."

Clinton minces no words with Pakistan - Agence France-Presse, ABS CBN News: "Clinton's message was that Barack Obama administration stands shoulder to shoulder

with Pakistan in its fight against Islamist militancy and wants a long-term relationship, moving beyond the mistakes of the past. Interestingly the local media -- generally critical of the United States and a key target for Clinton's public diplomacy -- indulged in quiet praise." Image from

Listen up, Muslims – the West fought for you - Dominic Lawson - Times Online: "The Cambridge historian Brendan Simms, who has made a particular study of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, wrote some years ago that 'many in the European establishment have never forgiven the Americans for being right about Bosnia. Most Muslims, in Britain and worldwide, have forgotten it, if they ever knew it in the first place. For a long time I saw the inability of the US to parlay its efforts on behalf of European Muslims into credit ... as a failure of American public diplomacy. But in the course of my own modest efforts at public meetings, and the odd appearance on Muslim channels, I quickly realised that I was hitting a brick wall'. I had a similar experience when I spoke at a public meeting near the east London mosque, organised by the Muslim group Dialogue with Islam. When I argued that the Nato attack on Serbia in defence of the Muslims of Kosovo hardly suggested a fundamentalist Christian hatred of Islam on the part of the British and American governments, I could see that I might as well have been speaking in Welsh for all the impact it had on that audience of Muslim men and women."

From the bomb-them-if-necessary school of public diplomacy - Kim Andrew Elliott discussing International Broadcasting and Public Diplomacy: “Articles from the Revitalizing Public Diplomacy special section of The Journal of International Security Affairs, Fall 2009... ‘Despite the damage that has been done from the embrace of pop culture and the promotion of anemic themes, the restoration of substance in U.S. government broadcasting can once again attract serious audiences in the countries that America most needs to reach.’ Former VOA dierctor Robert R. Reilly, Journal of International Security Affairs, Fall 2009. ‘What would seasoned political strategists do? First, they would map the world country by country and take an inventory of existing friends, allies, neutrals, opponents and enemies. Then they would map the world by transnational issues, as one would with trans-state or trans-regional issues at home: ethnic, racial, linguistic, cultural, religious, business, labor, women, family, generational, environmental, and so forth. This would be followed by a strategic message for each and a constellation of surrogate spokespersons, both overt and covert; and the political ground troops of activists, donors, protesters, letter-writers, and arm-twisters. By running strategic communication and its elements—public diplomacy, public affairs, international broadcasting, information operations, psychological operations and the like—in the same fashion as a perpetual global campaign on behalf of American strategic interests worldwide, the United States would be permanently conducting the 'engagement' that so many advocate but so few actually practice.’ J. Michael Waller, Journal of International Security Affairs, Fall 2009. ‘As one veteran government official has succinctly summarized, 'the most fundamental problem' with U.S. public diplomacy 'is that no one in the U.S. is in charge. Each U.S. government agency currently has [its] own informational program, but the bureaucracy as a whole lacks a senior official with the authority to integrate these efforts.'

Without it, the various agencies responsible for communicating America’s message to the world have succumbed to bureaucratic infighting, funding battles and conflicting mandates. What is needed, therefore, is a real strategic communications 'czar,' a single individual with primary responsibility for truly harnessing the tools of American strategic influence over the length and breadth of the governmental bureaucracy.’ Ilan Berman, Journal of International Security Affairs, Fall 2009. ‘Public diplomacy cannot be a core element of foreign policy if they are seperated [sic]. Power at the State Department lies in the geographic bureaus where policy is formulated. PD officers gain from decentralization, not centralization. ... The esprit de corps that existed under USIA exists again, but this time with PD officers who feel valued and empowered at the policy table, and connected to their PD colleagues. ... Public Diplomacy 2.0 should mark the end of the separation of policy and public diplomacy.’ Colleen Graffy, Journal of International Security Affairs, Fall 2009. ‘Obama has abolished another important tool of U.S. public diplomacy: the Department of Defense’s Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Support to Public Diplomacy. The office, originally established in 2006, was disbanded in early 2009, accused by senior administration officials of conducting propaganda.6 The move constitutes a stunning reversal; following September 11, 2001, the Pentagon under then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld took charge of a number of public diplomacy efforts because very little was effectively being done out of Foggy Bottom, where the job of Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy was left unfilled for long periods of time.’ Helle Dale, Journal of International Security Affairs, Fall 2009. ‘The Treasury Department can and should increase its designation portfolio beyond Hezbollah’s al-Manar and the Iraqi-Syrian al-Zawraa channel to include Hamas’s al-Aqsa television station, the radio assets of Maulana Fazlullah, and the online properties of al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and any other terrorist groups which use media to incite to violence and provide operational support for terrorist attacks. ... If such legal, diplomatic and political efforts fail, however, terrorist media represents a viable military target. The precedent exists: during the war in Kosovo, NATO planes bombed the Belgrade-based headquarters of Radio Television of Serbia—an attack that was justified by the Alliance as a legitimate way to end the broadcasting of Slobodan Milosevic’s violent call to arms.’ Mark Dubowitz, Journal of International Security Affairs, Fall 2009. [Elliott comment:] All recommended reading, even though I disagree with most of it.” Image from

Halloween Ruminations on Public Diplomacy, Propaganda, and working in the PD Field – John Brown, Notes and Essays

America’s Dialogue with the World - Marketingbookshop.co.cc, In Associates with Amazon: "Product Description A collection of a dozen essays by accomplished scholars and practitioners of Public Diplomacy which strives

to answer two key questions confronting America: What should be the content of America’s Dialogue with the World? What are the best means to achieve this dialogue? The editor presents concrete proposals to achieve a dialogue." Image from

Future of the U.S. Public Diplomacy: An Uncertain Fate (Hardcover)~ K. Fitzpatrick Author - Amazon: This title has not yet been released.

Shalom: Bostrom's invitation 'shameful' - Jerusalem Post: "[Dimona Mayor Meir] Cohen stressed that in Europe, 'the street is controlled by negative Palestinian propaganda,' suggesting that Israel was damaging its own public diplomacy by ignoring hostile publications instead of confronting them."

Saturday, October 31, 2009 - supportisraelnow.blogspot: "6. Scary Thing #6 - Lousy Hasbara - Hasbara can be translated a variety of ways - I believe that its exact translation

is "explanation", but it refers to propaganda, public relations, public diplomacy, advocacy - you get the idea. For a variety of reasons, Israel has always lagged behind its enemies in this area of combat. Though efforts are being made to narrow the hasbara gap, it is still a problem - American Thinker: Losing Israel." Image from

More memories of 1989, when news moved at "better-than Twitter efficiency” - Kim Andrew Elliott discussing International Broadcasting and Public Diplomacy

CULTURAL DIPLOMACY

Artists: resist this propagandist agenda: In a speech for the Battle of Ideas, Tiffany Jenkins argued that cultural diplomacy leads to bad art and bad politics - Tiffany Jenkins, Spiked:

"Cultural diplomacy encourages art to be aligned with government and politics, when the relationship is always more complicated. The danger is that art is used as propaganda, which both dictates the message and reduces the complexity of artists’ work, minimising the more interesting ambiguities and limiting creativity. Even when art is political, it is usually at its most powerful when it is nuanced. ... Contemporary cultural diplomacy reifies difference, and leads to a depoliticised understanding of conflict. In turn, while the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance, cannot be solved or understood through a display of historical artefacts in museums and galleries, cultural institutions are burdened with the responsibility of cultural diplomacy." Jenkins image from

Hemingway’s papers come to JFK Library – David Abel, Boston Globe:

"Despite the strained relations between the countries, the curators of the Kennedy library and the Castro regime have over the years found common ground, enough that the library announced this week that Cuba has shared copies of 3,000 letters and documents from the Hemingway archives at the country’s Ministry of Culture."

RELATED ITEMS

The real Afghan strategy: Will Obama give it a chance?- David Ignatius, Washington Post: The Washington debate about the Afghanistan war -- pitting advocates of a broad counterinsurgency strategy against those who favor a narrower counterterrorism approach -- has sometimes been misleading, at least in terms of what actually goes on here. The fact is that U.S. forces are doing both missions every day and night -- and indeed are becoming increasingly effective at each one. Below image from


It's Pakistan's war too: As a car-bomb attack in Peshawar tragically demonstrates, Pakistanis and the U.S. have a common enemy in Islamist extremists – Editorial, latimes.com: While it's true that the Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, is shoring up the nuclear-armed Pakistani government to protect U.S. interests and those of its allies, it's also time for Pakistanis to acknowledge that it's in their interest as well to keep extremists at bay. This is Pakistan's conflict too.