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ENGAGEMENT: PUBLIC DIPLOMACY IN A GLOBALISED WORLD
By Jolyon Welsh and Daniel Fearn, Supervising editors


Reviewed by Paul Sharp
SEP 22, 2008

For a PDF of the full FCO Publication, click here

This is an excellent volume of essays on aspects of public diplomacy commissioned by Jim Murphy MP, the Minister for Europe at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), and made freely available online at the address above. Mr. Murphy and the FCO are to be commended for this effort. The breadth of the subjects covered, together with the manner of their treatment and the format in which they appear are all testament to the central thesis of the collection, namely that the way many international relations are handled is changing and changing fast in response to globalization. These changes are no more in evidence than in the (re)emergence of public diplomacy as both an instrument of foreign policy exploiting new techniques of communication made possible by the revolutions in information and communications technologies, and as a way of conducting international relations in general with the potential to subsume, not only more traditional relations, but also the very actors between whom they are undertaken.

The collection consists of two parts, the first with ten essays on aspects of public diplomacy in general; the second of two essays with case studies. It begins with a look back at the lessons learned from past experience provided by the University of Southern California’s Nicholas J. Cull and Simon Anholt, a consultant who serves as an independent member of the FCO’s Public Diplomacy Board. Effective public diplomacy begins with listening, for example, and it... FULL TEXT

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY IN A CHANGING WORLD
By Geoffrey Cowan and Nicholas J. Cull (Eds.)


Reviewed by Alan K. Henrikson
JUL 10, 2008

This volume of The Annals follows four previous volumes, reviewed in this issue in a reflective essay by Nancy Snow, which the American Academy of Political and Social Science has published on various aspects of the subject now widely called public diplomacy or, for short, PD.  The topics of the earlier Annals issues were the U.S. image abroad (1954), international education (1961), the exchange of persons (1976), and the Fulbright experience (1987).  The present volume edited by Geoffrey Cowan and Nicholas J. Cull of the University of Southern California, with its active Center for the study of the subject, is more comprehensive.  It includes essays on international broadcasting, place branding, and the distinctive PD initiatives of Cuba and Venezuela as well as the People’s Republic of China and, principally, the United States.  Several essays engage in “theorizing public diplomacy,” by attempting to fit it into larger conceptual frameworks.  The volume is rich in historical and institutional information, with ample scholarly references.  With its broad range of coverage, and its scope of ambition, the Cowan-Cull Annals volume on “Public Diplomacy in a Changing World” may well become a landmark, as a valuable reference work and a current assessment of an expanding field.

The “field” of public diplomacy is not one that is easy to circumscribe, or to define.  Many attempts have been made to say exactly what “public diplomacy” is ever since Ambassador Edmund A. Gullion, as Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, institutionalized the... FULL TEXT

PRACTICING PUBLIC DIPLOMACY: A COLD WAR ODYSSEY
By Yale Richmond


Reviewed by Anne Chermak
MAY 12, 2008

Yale Richmond’s self-described odyssey as a U.S. diplomat through countries on the frontlines of the Cold War parallels in many ways my own, some 30 years later, as a public diplomacy officer serving in Europe, the USSR, and then Russia.

Seeing the cover photo of Poles eagerly perusing the latest issue of “Ameryka” magazine, USIA’s premier publication for the Soviet bloc, brought back memories of my monthly rounds of kiosks in Moscow back in 1980 to check on the number of copies of “Amerika” (America Illustrated) delivered to each, as this was an important gauge of U.S.-Soviet relations.  Good relations equaled more copies for sale to Soviet citizens; bad relations meant more copies returned to the Embassy as unsold due to “lack of interest.” Relations were very tense back then, in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics that summer, so the number of copies of “Amerika” returned to the Embassy reached the tens of thousands.  We eventually got them distributed in subsequent years as relations improved, and they took pride of place in cramped communal apartments across the vast Soviet empire, each well-thumbed copy pored over by multiple readers hungry for information about life in the United States.

Likewise, Richmond’s account of the USIA touring exhibitions program, which over a 32 year period beginning in 1959 brought 23 major exhibitions to the USSR that were visited by 20 million Soviet citizens, sparked personal memories.  It was as a Russian and... FULL TEXT

IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY: INSIDE BAGHDAD’S GREEN ZONE
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran


Reviewed by Gerald J. Loftus
APR 24, 2008

As we mark the fifth anniversary of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it is worth revisiting that first year of the U.S. occupation.  The Green Zone of Chandrasekaran’s title has come to symbolize the entire Iraq venture, the enclave where America tried to graft its national narrative and institutions onto a Middle Eastern society, and then was surprised at the transplant’s rejection.  In the immediate aftermath of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue, it is a time of striking images and—in some corners of the neoconservative world—heady dreams of remaking the Middle East in America’s mold.  It’s the world of the Coalition Provisional Authority or CPA, under “viceroy,” “proconsul,” “presidential envoy,” or simply, as his official title said, Administrator L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer.

Enter this world with Rajiv Chandrasekaran and prepare to… laugh.  You know you shouldn’t, but some of his vignettes on the heights of hubris on the Tigris are so outrageously funny that you might weep.  As you should, for the absurd tragicomedy of life in the Green Zone is rendered here as nowhere else.  Funny but never flippant, Chandrasekaran was The Washington Post Baghdad Bureau Chief before, during, and after the invasion.

Though there is shooting, this is not a “war story,” and most of the fireworks are from policy conflicts within the blast-proof walls of the American bunker.  “Green Zone Scenes” provide illuminating introductions to each chapter’s theme.  There are good guys and gals who earnestly try to contribute to rebuilding war-torn Iraq, though many are... FULL TEXT

CELEBRITY DIPLOMACY
By Andrew F. Cooper


Reviewed by Neal M. Rosendorf
APR 9, 2008

Can Bono, Brangelina and Becks Save the World?

As I read Andrew F. Cooper’s Celebrity Diplomacy, a first-rate meditation on the role of media stars as international relations players, my mind went back to 2000 and a visit by Bono, lead singer of the mega-group U2, to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.  I heard a commotion outside my office on the third floor of the Littauer Center and peered out into the hallway just in time to see a diminutive figure with longish hair disappear around the corner.  Several young women staffers were standing about in a gaga state.  “Did you see?” one breathlessly declared.  “That was BONO!” I had recently heard that Professor Jeffrey Sachs, who headed the Kennedy School’s Center for International Development, had struck up an acquaintanceship with the Irish vocalist; the two shared an interest in the issue of Third World poverty and debt forgiveness as an antidote.  Bono was in fact on his way over to the CID office for a meeting with Sachs.  (For Bono’s June 2001 Harvard Class Day speech, click here .) At the time, the budding relationship between the buttoned-down academic and the flamboyant rock star seemed to many observers, myself included, little more than an bemusing, ephemeral oddity.

Those of us who at the time minimized Bono’s social-political commitment as a well-meaning pop musician’s passing fancy were of course proven wrong.  The cover of Celebrity Diplomacy features a photograph taken years later of Bono walking confidently beside President George Bush,... FULL TEXT

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