"Eleven Bolivian engineers were brought in to show how a U.S.-backed program there to build cobblestone roads could be repeated in Afghanistan. A short demonstration stretch was built. But the Afghans objected. They wanted gravel and asphalt. The cobblestones, they claimed, hurt their camels’ hooves."
--Peter Van Buren, "More State Department Fun in Afghanistan," We Meant Well; image from
PUBLIC DIPLOMACY
US, Pakistan eye a new cold war - MK Bhadrakumar, Asia Times, posted at spearheadresearch.org: "The growing US-India understanding on regional security unnerves Pakistan and in turn strengthens the US’ negotiating hand vis-a-vis generals in Rawalpindi. On the other hand, the US lavishes much rhetoric on India, and encourages it to keep its eyes riveted on the horizons beyond the South China Sea in the east, while at the same time striking lucrative arms deals with New Delhi. During a visit to New Delhi recently, Defence Secretary Leon Panetta openly described India as the 'lynchpin' of the US’ Asia-Pacific strategy.
Meanwhile, to add to the sense of insecurity of the Pakistani generals, a prominent Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, just brought out a 72-page report exhorting New Delhi to press the pedal to accelerate 'defense trade'. All this is great 'public diplomacy'. But are Indians such duffers as not to begin to seriously wonder what is the meaning of the deep rumblings at their side facing the West where the US-Pakistan security and military tie-up is getting restored? The unkindest cut of all for the Indians will be that Washington also has been instigating New Delhi on the quiet in recent weeks to raise the ante on Pakistan’s support for terrorism as part of a 'psy-war' to herd the generals in Rawalpindi toward the negotiating table."
Where are they today? [July 23] - Allison Good, Foreign Affairs: "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will speak at the 2012 International AIDS Conference in Washington. USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Political Affairs Tara Sonenshine, and Ambassador-At-Large and U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Eric Goosby will also attend the conference of 20,000 delegates from nearly 200 countries. With the theme of 'Turning the Tide Together,' AIDS 2012 aims to increase global awareness through convening a group of scientific experts, community leaders, and policy leaders."
Secretary Clinton To Host Global Diaspora Forum - Notice to the Press, U.S. Department of State: "Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will host the second annual Global Diaspora Forum at the U.S. Department of State on July 25 and at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on July 26 in Washington, DC. More than 500 U.S.-based diaspora community leaders from the private sector, academia, media, civil society, and U.S. Government including Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Tara Sonenshine, Special Representative for Global Partnerships Kris Balderston, USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah, USAID Deputy Administrator Donald Steinberg, USAID Chief Innovation Officer Dr. Maura O’Neill, OPIC Executive Vice President Mimi Alemayehou, and Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor to the President, will participate in the Forum. The Secretary’s Global Diaspora Forum recognizes and celebrates the work of American diaspora communities with roots across the globe and encourages them to contribute to the development of, and diplomatic relations with, their countries of origin. The theme of this year’s Forum is 'Moving Forward by Giving Back,' and will focus on how the U.S. Government and diaspora communities are partnering to further investment and trade, philanthropy, volunteerism, social innovation, and entrepreneurship in developing and emerging communities around the world."
Public Schedule for July 24, 2012 - U.S. Department of State: "UNDER SECRETARY FOR PUBLIC DIPLOMACY AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS TARA SONENSHINE 4:00 p.m. Under Secretary Sonenshine attends a swearing-in ceremony for Anne Richard, Assistant Secretary for Population, Refugees and Migration, at the Department of State. (CLOSED PRESS COVERAGE) 5:00 p.m. Under Secretary Sonenshine hosts a reception for new Public Diplomacy Officers of the 168th Foreign Service class, at the Department of State. (CLOSED PRESS COVERAGE)"
Soft Power Versus Negative Public Diplomacy - venitism.blogspot.com: "Driving international affairs in the 21st century will rest on shaping narratives, setting international norms, mobilizing transnational networks, and winning the battle for global public opinion.
This is not to say that soft power alone will always win the day, but its relative strategic importance compared to hard power will continue to grow at a time when the world's established powers are chipping away at their own capacity to operate under the changing conditions of international politics."
Terrorism and the Media: A Dangerous Symbiosis - Arda Bilgen, e-ir.info: "Selective use of soft power – Even though some advocate the use of media tools for propaganda against terrorists, specifically in the narrative warfare in radical extremism, this is generally fruitless, given that the media has certain limits and legal and moral obligations, while terrorists do not. It is also counterproductive, as media propoganda [sic] amplifies the perceived power of a terrorist organization. Instead, media can be employed as a public affairs and public diplomacy tool instead of a propaganda tool to influence foreign publics and potential recruits. To this end, without propaganda, through the 'new' and 'traditional' media tools, the extremist narrative can be countered with an equally clear and appealing narrative to deny access to the public terrorists draw their support from."
How Power Really Works in the 21st Century: Beyond Soft, Hard and Smart - Amy Zalman, The Globalist: "As long as defense and economic diplomacy remain in a box labeled 'hard power,' we fail to see how much their success relies on their symbolic effects as well as their material ones. As long as diplomatic and cultural efforts are stored in a box marked 'soft power,' we fail to see the ways in which they can be used coercively or produce effects that are like those produced by violence. To address the hard problems that confront us globally, we should resist the temptation to put exercises of power into any pre-labeled boxes. Before asking what to call them, we should figure out what they can achieve — and under what circumstances. Our continued failure to do so is likely to result in an increasing number of events that, like the Arab uprisings the spring of 2011, surprise outsiders with their intense intermingling of the material and symbolic aspects of power to produce unforeseen political change."
Cultural Diplomacy’s Constituencies - Philip Seib, PD News – CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy: "[C]ultural diplomacy
Fofficials ... [should] seek ways to broaden the audience to which they appeal, going beyond the 'easy' support that can be found for the arts throughout the world and reaching out as well to those who at first may be only mildly or reluctantly interested but who, if convinced, can vastly expand the constituency and impact of global cultural outreach." Image from
Bricks; Vanilla Ramadan Sky - Paul Rockower, Levantine: "We arrived back to the chaos of Erbil. The city is torn up with construction, and is a maze of deadends. We finally arrived to the Ministry and Spent the morning counting and accounting. Accounting so rigorous you would have thought we were in Switzerland not K-stan. Ari and I pulled out all the pd charm. I wowed some veiled ladies with my Arabic, and they were shocked that an American could speak arabia. We piled on so much pd charm, that the accountants even stayed some 45 minutes after the office was officially closed- a rare feat in K-stan. They didn't want to give us all the money, but something close to half.I showed the accountant a letter authorizing me to handle the business, and told him I was authorized to fix whatever matters but not authorized to leave without the full sum."
On RT, VOA reporter offers advice on improving Russia's global image - Kim Andrew Elliott reporting on International Broadcasting
China gives Norway the cold shoulder - dailyserps.com: "[J]ust because Norway is small and peace-loving doesn’t mean it can’t get into an icy confrontation with a country 273 times its size. Two years after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, China continues to quietly punish the oil-rich Scandinavian nation with soft sanctions and diplomatic snubs. Last week, the freeze hit a new high mark as Chinese officials denied Norway’s former prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik a visa.
Bondevik, a Lutheran pastor, was planning to attend a meeting of the World Council of Churches held in Nanjing. ... [E]perts say the quiet conflict with Norway has already damaged Beijing’s reputation in Europe. [A]gainst the backdrop of the Bo Xilai scandal and Chen Guangcheng’s flight to the U.S., playing hardball with a small Scandinavian country sends the wrong message to China’s would-be partners. 'It’s a wake-up call for Europe,' says Parello-Plesner [Jonas Parello-Plesner, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations]. '[F]or China’s public diplomacy, it’s not something that goes in the right direction. it comes across as an old school authoritarian system that does not tolerate opposite opinions.'” Image from
Government-linked radio: The fine line between cultural diplomacy and propaganda - Ally Foster, Embassy [suscription]: One Ottawa-Gatineau radio station runs 12 hours of Chinese government-linked content a day, six days a week. The CBC plays overnight shows from Western government broadcasters. As multicultural media in Canada grows, so is its use by emerging countries 'as a way of influencing foreign public opinion, and as a part of their formal foreign policy apparatus,' says one academic."
Rabat hosts the First Meeting on Non-Governmental Diplomacy - Morocco World News: The Moroccan Association for Development and Parallel Diplomacy (AMADIP) is hosting on the 27th and 28th of July 2012 at the Higher Institute of Information and Communication in Rabat (ISIC) the first meeting on non-governmental diplomacy, under the theme: 'Towards a new vision of Public diplomacy.' The meeting aims to define the status of Moroccan diplomacy in the current context; reinforce the role and initiatives of civil society to promote Morocco’s image, values and causes via public diplomacy; and to strengthen partnership between civil society and public authorities.
The meeting is organized in close collaboration with the Higher Institute of Information and Communication, the SNRT TV forum, the Washington Moroccan American Club, Friends of the Moroccan Sahara in Spain, and Morocco World News. The meeting will be attended by the Directorate of Public Diplomacy and Non-State Actors of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, the Ministry of Communication, the Ministry in Charge of Relations with Parliament and Civil Society, as well as researchers, journalists and civil society leaders. ... The AMADIP, created in February 2012, aims to help promote national causes and values through a public diplomacy that strengthens friendship ties, promotes the values of tolerance and peace among peoples of the world, and promotes exchange and intercultural dialogue, thereby reinforcing and expanding development partnerships at the national and international levels." Image from article
Foreign Minister Urmas Paet: European Union Eastern Partners Need Attention Even When EU’s Southern Neighbourhood is Experiencing Rapid Changes - estemb.ru: "Foreign Minister Urmas Paet stated that the European Union should be working with its Eastern Partnership countries, even at a time when the events going on in the European Union’s southern neighbourhood are demanding a lot of attention. ... Urmas Paet feels that the Eastern Partners and their integration process also require more public attention. 'Greater visibility and the interest of the public are encouraging, so the European Union could think about how to make Eastern Partnership more visible through public diplomacy,' he stated."
RELATED ITEMS
Journalism v. propaganda: The US and Israel blame Iran for the suicide attack in Bulgaria, but offer no evidence for the accusation - Glenn Greenwald, Salon: Almost immediately after a suicide bomber killed five Israeli tourists in Bulgaria on Wednesday, Israeli officials, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, blamed Iran, an accusation uncritically repeated by most Western media outlets even as Bulgarian investigators warned it would be a “mistake” to assign blame before the attack could be investigated.
Now,
“I Was a Propaganda Intern in Iraq”– Fmr. Lincoln Group Intern Describes Paying Iraqi Press to Plant Pro-American Articles Secretly Written by U.S. Military - Democracy Now, posted at freedetainees.org [undated]: "We speak with Willem Marx, a former intern with the Washington-based government contractor, the Lincoln Group. He spent a summer in Baghdad paying to plant pro-American articles secretly written by the U.S. military in the Iraqi press. [includes rush transcript] He held a loaded submachine gun while being driven through Baghdad by two Kurdish security men. He had three million dollars in cash locked inside his bedroom in the Green Zone. Armed with a gun, he interrogated Iraqi employees about whether they were doing their job. He spent a summer in Baghdad paying to plant pro-American articles in the Iraqi press that were secretly written by the US military. He was just 22 years old and he was an intern at the Lincoln Group, the Washington-based government contractor. The company gained notoriety last November after the Los Angeles Times first revealed it was being paid by the Pentagon to plant stories in the Iraqi press as part of a secret military propaganda campaign. A subsequent Pentagon investigation in March cleared the Lincoln Group of any wrongdoing. Today, we speak with that former intern of the Lincoln Group. Willem Marx is a freelance writer and a graduate student in journalism at New York University. His article detailing his experience is published in the latest issue of Harpers Magazine. It’s titled “Misinformation Intern: My summer as a military propagandist in Iraq.” He joins us on the line from Uzbekistan. Willem Marx, former intern with the Lincoln Group in Iraq."
Paranoia in the House - Editorial, Los Angeles Times: The notion of an Islamic Fifth Column in this country is poisonous not only to domestic tranquillity but also to effective diplomacy. Leaders of both parties should repudiate it.
The Moral Hazard of Drones - John Kaag and Sarah Kreps, New York Times: Precision guided munitions and drones give you a society with perpetual asymmetric wars. The use of impressive technologies does not grant one impressive moral insight. The relatively low number of troop casualties for a military that has turned to drones means that there is relatively little domestic blowback against these wars. The expediency and accuracy in drone targeting may also allow policymakers and strategists to become lax in their moral decision-making about who exactly should be targeted. The American government has implied that all military aged males in a strike area are legitimate targets: a “guilt by association” designation. As the strategic repertoires of modern militaries expand to include drones and precision guided munitions, it is not at all clear that having more choices leads strategists to make better and more informed ones.
Shocking Taliban propaganda video captures the moments leading up to massive suicide bombing at U.S. base that killed two Americans - dailymail.co.uk
Remember Bashar Assad, 'Reformer'? The dictator's American apologists owe Syria's people an apology - Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal: Maybe it's time Assad's apologists apologize to the people of Syria.
Syria's sectarian divide: Ending the bloodshed may require finding a way to protect President Bashar Assad's minority Alawite sect - Editorial, latimes.com: Syria is in a state of civil war that is in part a struggle by a disenfranchised majority against a brutal and autocratic regime, and in part a sectarian conflict between Sunni Muslims and the minority Alawite population that runs the country. Perhaps this sectarian issue gets less attention than it deserves because, in a black-and-white sense, the Alawites are the bad guys. Why should the international community focus on protecting them? The answer involves a combination of justice and practicality: Violent reprisals are seldom a just response to past oppression, and without further guarantees, it's hard to envision a peaceful end to this conflict.
Poll: Most Israelis trust U.S. as an ally - Michele Chabin, USA Today: The June poll commissioned by the Begin Sadat Center at Bar Ilan University and the Anti-Defamation League found that nearly 70% of Israelis have a positive attitude toward the United States. More than 90% believe that in an existential crisis or "moment of truth," the United States would come to Israel's aid. Obama is not viewed as favorably. In 2009, 54% of Israelis viewed him positively, compared with 32% in June.
Mossad ‘Olympic Attack’ Propaganda - exohuman.com: “Defense officials here in Jerusalem are denying a British report that the Mossad has increased security in London following the recent terrorist attack in Bulgaria that left 5 Israelis dead. Quoting unnamed sources in Tel Aviv, The Sunday Times says Israel has put more undercover intelligence agents on the ground before the Olympic Games open out of fear that Hezbollah and Iran may carry out another attack, this time on Israeli athletes… 'By way of deception thou shall do war..'—Mossad motto"
America's refusal to dip the flag has complicated Olympic history: Most teams briefly lower colors as they pass host nation's leaders at opening ceremony. But despite what some see as blatant nationalism, the U.S. does not, and the century-old saga is a curious one - David Wharton, articles.latimes.com: Most Olympic teams briefly lower their colors as a sign of respect when they march past the box where the host nation's leaders are seated. The U.S. does not. When the Americans pick a flag bearer for the 2012 London Olympics this week, he or she almost certainly will be advised to uphold a tradition that dates back more than a century.
The Troubled State of State Update # 4 – Joan and the Office of Special Counsel Investigation - Patricia H. Kushlis, Whirled View: How many outside investigations have been derailed by State Department officials to cover-up HR (Human Resources) abuses?
Huffpost Hires Kremlin Propagandist - HuffPost Live, a new online-only video service being launched next month by the left-wing Huffington Post, has announced the hiring of Alyona Minkovski as a “host/producer.” Minkovski currently works as the host of “The Alyona Show” on RT, the Kremlin owned and operated English-language news channel that was previously known as Russia Today. Minkovski’s show is known for its steady stream of anti-American propaganda, and a total blackout of news relating to crackdowns on democracy activists and opposition movements within
Politico has described the network as “raw propaganda,” and even the liberal
Mexico’s Peña Nieto hires US propaganda firm: CLSA is same media-spin company used by Honduran coup regime - Bill Conroy, narcosphere.narconews.com: The de facto president-elect of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto has hired Washington, DC-based public relations firm Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter and Associates to help him spread positive propaganda during the transition period prior to his official swearing-in as the majordomo of Mexico on Dec. 1 of this year.
Intensify fight against separatism in Tibet: China’s propaganda chief - phayul.com: China's propaganda chief, on a visit to Tibet last week, underlined the importance of maintaining stability and ordered officials to intensify the fight against separatism in the restive region.
Li Changchun, ranked fifth in the hierarchy of the ruling Communist Party, was on a five-day visit to Tibet's Nyingtri and Lhasa, places where Beijing plans to undertake multi-billion dollar tourism projects. "The lifeblood of Tibet rests in ethnic unity, social harmony and stability," the Party’s mouthpiece People’s Daily paper quoted Li as saying. "We must guide officials and the people to continually strengthen their understanding of the great (Chinese) motherland and people and deepen and expand the fight against separatism." Image from article
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