June 25

"You knew it was going to happen. It was inevitable. Gen. Stanley McChrystal cancelled his subscription to 'Rolling Stone.'"

--Talk show host Jay Leno, cited in Political Bulletin, Bulletin News, LLC (June 25); image from

VIDEO

"Dear Fellow Citizen Diplomats,

Hi. I’m William Harvey, the founder of Cultures in Harmony. I’m writing you to share a short video that I recently submitted to the U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy (USCCD) as part of their 'share your stories' campaign. I was so excited by the opportunity that USCCD was offering to spread the word about our important work that I jumped at the chance and submitted this video. ... Please take a moment and watch this short video and then please share it with your friends using the form provided. We want as many people as possible to know about the Share Your Stories opportunity." -- from an email from Mr. Harvey

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

What McChrystal Got Right - Ahmad Shuja, Huffington Post: "No matter what you think of Gen. McChrystal after the Rolling Stone article and the fiasco that ensued, he knew how to work in Afghanistan.

Here are a few things he got right. ... He issued strict directives to avoid civilian casualties. McChrystal called it insurgent math, and the Rolling Stone article summed it pretty nicely: 'For every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies.' In addition to significantly altering the rules of combat, he engaged in smooth public diplomacy. He apologized publicly to the Afghan people for confirmed civilian deaths in the hands of his soldiers. Suspected civilian deaths were investigated, perpetrators punished and, on occasion, the rules of engagement accordingly tweaked. As a result, civilian casualties dropped significantly." Image from

McChrystal-izing a Problem: The Militarization of American Statecraft - Gordon Adams, Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network: "The Pentagon has taken increasing responsibility for the American message abroad. Through a variety of accounts ranging from the Joint Staff to the regional COCOMs, to local commanders, the military may now spend more on 'public diplomacy' (sometimes called 'strategic communications') than the entire budget of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, ostensibly responsible for all US international broadcasting. ... [P]utting the military in the vanguard of statecraft sends a confusing message to our friends and potential partners overseas: America is globally engaged, but that engagement wears a uniform."

Keeping America Connected: End the Static at the Broadcasting Board - Sen. Dick Lugar, Huffington Post:

"America's international broadcasting operations are a key element in our diplomatic efforts to communicate our values to the rest of the world and to bring news and information to closed societies. ... Rapid technological change, shifting demographics, new competition and stepped-up jamming all pose fresh challenges to our broadcasting system. Unfortunately, our ability to respond to this fast-moving environment is hampered by chronic functional problems with the organization in charge, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). ... The BBG has not had its full complement of governors since 2004, and has had no chairman since 2008. Today, only half the seats are filled, two Republicans and two Democrats, each of whom has been serving since 2002, well past their official three-year terms. ... In the short term, I urge my colleagues in the Senate to move quickly to approve all the nominees so they can get to work. However, should the chronic dysfunction in the confirmation process persist, Congress may well have to consider a new structure to oversee our international broadcasters so that this important tool of public diplomacy gets the consistent management and oversight it deserves." Image from

Establishment of a Partnership in English with Kabul University, Afghanistan - grants.gov: "Category Explanation: Public Diplomacy program in Afghanistan ... Description[:]The Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul announces an open competition for a cooperative agreement to establish a Partnership between a U.S. four year college or university, or a U.S. non-profit organization in partnership with a U.S. four-year college or university, and Kabul University in the primary field of the teaching and learning of English language and literature."

A final day's mission and a farewell to Iraq - Mary-Denise Tabar, Tampabay.com: "Editor's note: A few weeks ago, Mary-Denise Tabar finished her last tour in Iraq as a State Department public diplomacy adviser. Hired as a civilian contract employee, she was assigned to a Provincial Reconstruction Team, which was embedded with a combat brigade.

The program followed the surge to bring reconstruction efforts to each of Iraq's provinces. Each Provincial Reconstruction Team comprised an interagency mix from federal departments such as Justice, State, Agriculture, military civil affairs and engineers, and Iraqis. ... Since returning to Tampa, Ms. Tabar began 8 to 10 weeks of doctor-ordered rest. She has been re-organizing the closets in her parents' house and visiting the chiropractor to realign her back from carrying 40 pounds of body armor, Kevlar and pouches and backpacks." Image from article: The author checks in on a reading and writing class for women in Sab Al Bor. Proud of her homework, the student is showing her workbook.

Economy's future lies in a global education - Jeremy Levitt, Orlando Sentinel: "How many universities are training linguists and regionalists with expertise in Africa, Asia and the Middle East? How do you prepare American students to compete in a world where success necessitates global insight and collaboration if globalism is not a part of the curriculum? These are the questions that we must begin to grapple with from primary school through college. At Florida A&M University College of Law, we, too, wrestle with these issues. ... In the past two years, our students have immersed themselves in the study of international law, studied abroad on every continent and served as interns at the most prominent institutions in the world. They include ... the U.S. intelligence and public-diplomacy communities and not-for-profit sectors."

Football, Soft Power and the Decline of Europe - Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence: "A couple of weeks ago John Brown posted on the waning influence of American popular culture in part because of the failure to export American sports. (Of course the US has the UFC but I’m not sure that’s the image the State Department wants to promote*) Over this side of the Atlantic we’re now wondering about the the decline in European football.

I’m particularly fascinated by the fact that President Sarko is personally investigating the state of the French team. The last time the Italians were knocked out of the Mondiale at this stage they were pelted with rotten fruit on their return home. What’s Silvio going to do? I’m rambling: the reason I started this post was simply to point out that Nation Branding has an interesting analysis of the impact of the world cup on national brands." Image from

Moscow Rallies Countries to Fight International Drug Trade - Nikolai Surkov, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Russia, posted at watchingamerica.com: "Dmitri Rogozin, Russian permanent representative to NATO, stated that solving a question of cooperation between Russia and the North Atlantic Alliance has two levels. 'First level is the Russia-NATO relationship. Second level is purely political'. ... Speaking about Russia-NATO relations, Rogozin suggested actively employing public diplomacy in order to convince public opinion in Western countries that the money from selling drugs, particularly in Russia, is used for training and equipping the militants who are fighting against international forces in Afghanistan. 'We have to explain how dangerous it is to ignore the issue of Afghan heroin and influence the politicians in the West through public opinion,' stated Rogozin."

A new broom - The News International: "The new British foreign secretary, William Hague, has been paying us a visit for the last three days. There were the usual photocalls and press conferences and meetings with senior figures in our government, and a nod to modernity with a Facebook posting of pictures of the visit. ... He succeeds David Milliband, who was a frequent visitor and appears no less able than his predecessor at turning out a well-honed platitude.

Platitudes are the bread and butter of public diplomacy and designed to yield few clues as to what went on out of sight of the cameras and reporters, but we may be able to decode some of them. Perhaps the first thing to note is that Mr Hague does not appear to be slavishly following an American line." Image from

PCIJ's Ed Lingao is 2010 McLuhan Fellow for Journalism - ABS CBN News: "The Marshall McLuhan Prize, named after the world-renowned Canadian communication scholar, is the Embassy of Canada’s flagship public diplomacy initiative. Launched in 1997 to encourage investigative journalism in the Philippines, the Prize underlines Canada’s belief that a strong media is essential to a free democratic society."

Thinking About Relationships - Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence:

"Ok so we are convinced that PD needs to take a relational turn. That is we ought to stop obsessing about messages and communication and think about how we can build relationships." Image from

What Academics Say About PD (Revisited) - Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence: "At the moment I’m working though a huge stack of PD reading and it keeps getting bigger because I keep finding interesting references to follow up. So today via a citation in Kathy Fitzpatrick’s piece in the Hague Journal of Diplomacy it’s Kristin Lord’s 2005 conference paper ‘What Academics (Should Have to) Say About Public Diplomacy‘ that that got to the top of the reading pile. The starting point is that most of the post 9/11 writing on PD was by practitioners, policy types and think tankers not the academy. In the paper she examines the resources that the research literature can provide. In particular she focuses on work in constructivist international relations and social psychology."

RELATED ITEMS

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The General Who Played with Fire – McChrystal and the Media - Patricia H. Kushlis, Whirled View:

Strategic communications is often about the dark side of information dissemination – the propaganda, lies, disinformation and deceit that is part of the battlefield and conducted in secret beneath the surface. Genghis Khan was a master at it. But that’s not what public affairs is all about. Credibility and putting the government’s best foot forward is the name of that game.

The PR school of foreign affairs - David Warren, The Ottawa Citizen: Countries are like companies in some limited sense, trying to preserve the polish on a brand name. There is a whole school of thought, in contemporary Israel for instance, that holds by the classic PR strategy: no news is good news. And indeed, it is hard to argue that a day without Israel on the world's front pages is like a day of sunshine, whatever the weather happens to be in Tel Aviv.

Will Holbrooke be next to exit? Obama has hinted that other members of his Afghanistan war team may go the way of McChrystal. That may imperil his special envoy to the region, but Richard Holbrooke has shown a knack for perseverance - Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times. See also John Brown, "Richard Holbrooke: Able and Insufferable," Huffington Post (May 13, 2009)

Nation building in Afghanistan? That's Afghans' job - Eugene Robinson, Washington Post:

The good news? Nobody has to pretend anymore that Gen. Stanley McChrystal knew how to fix Afghanistan within a year. The bad news? Now we're supposed to pretend that Gen. David Petraeus does.

Afghanistan: The 7/11 problem - Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post: What the Afghans hear from the current American president is a surge with an expiration date. An Afghan facing the life-or-death choice of which side to support can be forgiven for thinking that what Obama says is what Obama intends. That may be wrong, but if so, why doesn't Obama dispel that false impression? He doesn't even have to repudiate the July 2011 date, he simply but explicitly has to say: July 2011 is the target date, but only if conditions on the ground permit.

The realism of seeking democracy in Iran - Leon Wieseltier, Washington Post: Real realism consists of the recognition that nuclear peace and social peace in Iran will be reliably achieved only with the advent of democracy, and that since June 12, 2009, the advent of Iranian democracy is not an idle wish.

The Jones Act ship law has outlived its usefulness – Editorial, Washington Post:

The Jones Act is a vestige of the post-World War I years, when the vulnerability of U.S. shipping to German U-boats was still fresh in the public's mind. To maintain a "dependable" merchant fleet for the next "national emergency," Congress restricted coastal shipping between U.S. ports to U.S.-built vessels owned by U.S. citizens; related laws require U.S. crews. If FedEx can move cargo across the country in European-made Airbuses, why can't a boat built in, say, Canada, ship wheat from Los Angeles to Honolulu? The Jones Act lobby crushed the last attempt at reform back in the 1990s. May the next one meet with more success.

Indian propaganda war: Manufacturing 'terrorists' the Indian way - Pakistan Defence Forum: Almost every other day, newspapers are agog with stories about 'dreaded Muslim terrorists' being nabbed across the country. At the same time, savage violence unleashed by Hindutva groups continues unabated without any effective steps being taken against them. In the ongoing 'war on terror', globally as well as within India, Muslims have come to be framed collectively as 'terrorists', while terrorism engaged in by people belonging to other communities is generally condoned or ignored altogether or, at least, is not described in the same terms.

N.Korea Boosts Propaganda for Kim Jong-il's Son - The Chosun Ilbo: North Korea's ailing leader Kim Jong-il is speeding up the transfer of power to his son Jong-un, intelligence suggests.

Basic Principles of Propaganda: War, Propaganda and the Media - Anup Shah, bearmarketnews.wordpress.com/:


As the various examples below will show, common tactics in propaganda often used by either side include:
1. Decontextualizing violence: focusing on the irrational without looking at the reasons for unresolved conflicts and polarization.
2. Dualism: reducing the number of parties in a conflict to two, when often more are involved. Stories that just focus on internal developments often ignore such outside or “external” forces as foreign governments and transnational companies.
3. Manicheanism: portraying one side as good and demonizing the other as “evil.”
4. Armageddon: presenting violence as inevitable, omitting alternatives.
5. Focusing on individual acts of violence while avoiding structural causes, like poverty, government neglect and military or police repression.
6. Confusion: focusing only on the conflict arena (i.e., the battlefield or location of violent incidents) but not on the forces and factors that influence the violence.
7. Excluding and omitting the bereaved, thus never explaining why there are acts of revenge and spirals of violence.
8. Failure to explore the causes of escalation and the impact of media coverage itself.
9. Failure to explore the goals of outside interventionists, especially big powers.
10. Failure to explore peace proposals and offer images of peaceful outcomes.
11. Confusing cease-fires and negotiations with actual peace.
12. Omitting reconciliation: conflicts tend to reemerge if attention is not paid to efforts to heal fractured societies. When news about attempts to resolve conflicts are absent, fatalism is reinforced. That can help engender even more violence, when people have no images or information about possible peaceful outcomes and the promise of healing.
— Danny Schechter, Covering Violence: How Should Media Handle Conflict?,

ONE MORE QUOTATION FOR THE DAY

"confession, celebrity and cynicism"

--Historian Jonathan Zimmerman, identifying what he considers the "three broad and mutually reinforcing trends in contemporary American life"