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John Brown aggregates all the most recent public diplomacy related news, including current issues in U.S. foreign policy, international broadcasting and media, propaganda, cultural diplomacy, educational exchanges, anti-Americanism, and the reception of American popular culture abroad.

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY PRESS AND BLOG REVIEW, DECEMBER 31, 2007-JANUARY 2, 2008
by John H. Brown

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY PRESS AND BLOG REVIEW, DECEMBER 31, 2007-JANUARY 2, 2008

“Inside the country, in the virtual world, ... an empire is, indeed, being created. This is very good and it is to the credit of the current president. The next goal is to expand this public relations campaign beyond Russia’s borders.”

--Igor Panarin, a Russian expert on information wars; cited in Victor Yasmann, “Russia: Putin’s Plan To Become ‘Father Of A New Country’” (RFE/RL, December 20)

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“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”

--A senior Bush administration official (summer 2002); cited in Ron Suskind, “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush” (New York Times, October 17)
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VIDEOS

a) Stalin/Soviet Propaganda!
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b) 2007: The Year in Videos (Reason Magazine)
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A) PUBLIC DIPLOMACY, 1-13

1. The battle of ideas - Daniel L. Davis (Washington Times, January 1): It is imperative that our national leaders concede the fact that part of the reason we’re not winning the global battle of the mind is our past behavior, our insistence on having things our way and our unwillingness to compromise on non-critical issues to our friends and allies.
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2. A Hunger For America - Moisés Naím (Washington Post, January 2): The demand for a new brand of American global leadership is there. Increasingly, the supply to satisfy this demand will also be there.
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3. Report: Seven Pillars – Adam Elkus (Rethinking Security: Asymetric Analysis, January 1): Information warfare has changed since T. E. Lawrence’s day. Lawrence and his Arabs would blow up telegraph lines in order to throw the Turks’ brittle communications apparatus into a state of disorder. The Iraqi insurgency doesn’t have the ability to destroy Coalition communications, but they’ve made up for it by dominating the information war—not only outgunning us in the public diplomacy struggle for “hearts and minds,” but by evolving a complex and efficient decentralized command and control system.
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4. Kim Andrew Elliott Discussing International Broadcasting and Public Diplomacy, latest edition)
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5. Hip Hop Counter-Publics, or the academic utility of Christmas presents - Marc Lynch (Abu Aardvark, January 1): “A few weeks ago in a New York bar, I had a long, fascinating conversation with the outstanding ‘counter-publics’ theorist Michael Warner about whether there was such a thing as a ‘hip hop counter-public’. (We had just finished a long day’s workshop on whether there were such things as ‘religious counter-publics’, so it’s not as pathetic a bar conversation as it sounds. I think.) It’s something I’ve been chatting with people about ever since that piece I did for the Guardian about hip hop in the Middle East—turns out there are quite a few more people interested in Middle Eastern (Arab, Israeli, Iranian) hip hop and its possible public diplomacy functions than I thought. Warner surprised me a bit by suggesting that there could be a politically and culturally significant hip hop public sphere, but now there mostly isn’t.“
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6. Restrictions on Press freedom continues in New Year in most countries - Ray Hanania (al-Sahafiyeen, January 2): “I can only imagine what Bush calls us Arab Americans. Hey, in seven years, NAAJA [National Arab American Journalists Association] has sent letter after letter asking President Bush or a surrogate to speak at one of our conferences. We couldn’t even get that waste-of-money bureaucrat that Bush created to direct PR in the Middle East to come (the now vacant post of Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy). Why would a President want to lobby the Arab American media, I guess, when he has been arresting some of them? (Two of the defendants in the Sami al-Arian persecution are members of NAAJA). And hey, Bush thinks we Arab Americans are ‘terrorists’ anyway. It’s only fair. He’s arrested enough of us since Sept. 11, 2001, although nearly all of the cases have been defeated. BOO-RAH! YEAH!”
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7. A New Year’s Resolution: Implement Visa Waiver Reform by End of 2008 - James Jay Carafano (Heritage Foundation, WebMemo #1765, December 31): Facilitating travel is a vital part of building a community of free nations. Travel fuels economic, cultural, and social ties. It is also the best form of public diplomacy.
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8. Taxing Visitors Is the Wrong Way to Promote the United States - James Jay Carafano (Heritage Foundation, WebMemo #1764, December 31): Tourism is an important part of the American economy and the most important part of America’s public diplomacy. Nothing showcases America better than seeing the nation and its people. That said, the Travel Promotion Act of 2007, which would create a government-run advertising campaign funded by taxes on visitors, is the wrong way to improve America’s economy and image. Instead, Congress should improve procedures and opportunities for visitors while leaving travel promotion to the private sector.
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9. Old Habits: How the Giuliani method may defeat him - Elizabeth Kolbert (New Yorker, January 7): What Republican presidential candidate Guiliani calls his Twelve Commitments include “I will expand America’s involvement in the global economy and strengthen our reputation around the world” (No. 12). Giuliani carries the list on a laminated card the size of a driver’s license; he says that he will keep the card on his desk in the Oval Office.
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10. Valerie Plame Wilson’s Fair Game – Book Review Essay – Patricia Kushlis (Whirled View, January 1): “[Valerie)] Plame [in her book, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House] began by providing me with a far better understanding of the kind of training CIA gave its operatives in the 1980s when she entered the Agency, how she and her colleagues viewed State Department colleagues (not favorably but then State and USIA Foreign Service Officers didn’t particularly regard CIA operatives in a positive light either) ... . I can only compare Plame’s entry level training with mine as a US Information Agency officer trainee in 1970. But I can assure you that Plame’s paramilitary classes did not even cross the minds of those in charge of teaching us the public diplomacy ropes—or, at the time, should they have. Besides, my USIA class largely trained with State Department colleagues so we, and the State crowd, learned the ins-and-outs of Foggy Bottom, how Embassies functioned and most importantly for the State officers amongst us the nitty-gritty of issuing—and not issuing—passports and visas. We in USIA were thankfully exempted from first tours in visa mills by our separate Agency status until after the1999 merger in the State Department. While our State colleagues spent three weeks in Consul General Roslyn learning the consular game, we had three far more pleasant weeks learning the basics of international media, education and cultural relations.“
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11. Turkey’s friend Slovenia to take over EU presidency – Today’s Zaman (December 31): In 2007 the Turkish government has had to devote much time to a constitutional crisis and domestic debates surrounding escalated terrorist attacks by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) based in northern Iraq. While handling the domestic debates and pressure over the timing of a military action against the PKK, having talks with world leaders abroad and at home on the foreign policy front in the name of public diplomacy in preparation for a justifiable military action inside Iraq has also been a heavy weight on the government’s shoulders.
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12. Turkey hits terrorist targets in Iraq—what now? - O. Faruk Loğoğlu (Journal of Turkish Weekly, January 2): One task is to engage in sustained public diplomacy to ensure that international public opinion remains favorable—or at least not opposed—to Turkey as it continues to attack terrorist targets in Iraq. This requires sharing with the international community information about Turkey’s actions, intentions and its reasons for fighting PKK terrorism.
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13. Seminar on Indian Foreign Policy and Strategic Issues – Press Release (Press Information Bureau, Ministry of External Affairs, January 2): Public Diplomacy Division of the Ministry of External Affairs, in association with Utkal University, Bhubneswar, is organizing a seminar on Indian Foreign Policy and Strategic Issues at Bhubneswar on 5-6 January 2008. The Public Diplomacy Division of MEA has been in contact with researchers, think tanks, academia, civil society and industry, both within India and abroad, to highlight the contours of Indian foreign policy, as well as initiate debate and discussion within the wider public about the key foreign policy issues confronting India. It is in furtherance of these objectives that the Public Diplomacy Division is organising this seminar to get an Orissa centric view on the opportunities and challenges confronting India with regard to the issues being discussed in the seminar.
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B) RELATED ITEMS (NY Philharmonic in North Korea, 14-15; French warship delivers books to disadvantaged US children, 16; dissident Saudi blogger arrested, 17; Pakistan, 18-28; Iraq 29-32; Libya, 33; Middle East, 34-36; Afghanistan, 37; China, 38; Kosovo, 39; Kenya, 40; Guantanamo, 41; U.S. in world, 42; Rice, 43; passports, 44)

14. Classical Music: A Patience To Listen, Alive And Well - Anthony Tommasini (New York Times, December 30): Just this month classical music emerged as pivotal to international relations. With the blessing of the State Department, the New York Philharmonic announced that it would present a concert in North Korea during its Asian tour in February. Some consider this plan an outrage that will allow a totalitarian regime to use the Philharmonic musicians as puppets for propaganda. Others see it as at least a chance to pry open a door and share Western culture with a closed society, which is pretty much my view. Either way, implicit in this plan is the idea that classical music matters.
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15. North Korea stalls – Editorial (San Francisco Chronicle, January 1): The New York Philharmonic is due to play in Pyongyang in late February. North Korea remains a fragile diplomatic game.
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16. French Warship to Deliver 10,000 Books to Disadvantaged U.S. Children: Jeanne dArc brings french-language books to new york and new orleans students – (Embassy of France in the United States, December 7)
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Via
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See also
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17. Dissident Saudi Blogger Is Arrested: Popular Internet Commentator Had Called for Political Reform - Faiza Saleh Ambah (Washington Post, January 1, 2008). Saudi Arabia’s most popular blogger, Fouad al-Farhan, has been detained for questioning, an Interior Ministry spokesman confirmed Monday.Farhan’s is the first arrest of a blogger in Saudi Arabia. Two Egyptian bloggers and one Tunisian are currently behind bars, according to Sami ben Gharbia, advocacy director for Global Voices, an international research group focused on the Internet and founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
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18. What Bhutto Was Worried About - Robert D. Novak (Washington Post, December 31): The assassination of Benazir Bhutto followed two months of urgent pleas to the State Department by her representatives for better protection. The U.S. reaction was that she was worried over nothing, expressing assurance that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf would not let anything happen to her.
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19. Benazir Bhutto’s Political Future: The murdered former leader may help Pakistani democracy more in death than in life - Shikha Dalmia (Reason, December 31): The great hope both in Pakistan and the U.S. was that Bhutto, as the leader of the closest thing to a genuinely liberal party in the country, the Pakistani People’s Party (PPP), would unify Pakistan’s secular forces ahead of the January elections and then win a voter mandate to beat back religious fundamentalists not just in mosques but in the nation’s intelligence and armed services. This was not a baseless hope. But articulating the case for a secular democracy is not sufficient for actually producing one. Indeed, the biggest obstacles to the creation of functioning democratic institutions in Pakistan, as in other emerging nations, are corruption and ambition. Bhutto had both, in abundance.
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20. Two Benazir Bhuttos - Anne Applebaum (Washington Post, January 1): “Given the choice, of course I would have preferred to see Bhutto leading Pakistan instead of Pervez Musharraf, let alone Mohammad Omar. Nevertheless, it was a mistake for Western governments to expect too much from her return to Pakistan.”
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21. What’s Next for Pakistan - Laura Rozen (Mother Jones, December 27): A former Intelligence official says that the death of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, while tragic, won’t necessarily plunge the country into the depths.
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Entry from:
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22. After Bhutto: The White House’s Pakistan plan is wrecked, but it now has a chance to get on the right side of history – Editorial (Los Angeles Times, January 2): Washington should insist as a condition of future aid that Musharraf allow genuinely free and fair elections.
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23. On America’s Watch - Roger Cohen (New York Times, December 31): President Pervez Musharraf, in power since a 1999 coup, has received about $10 billion in U.S. aid, much of it to reinforce the Pakistani military in fighting Al Qaeda, the Taliban and global jihadism in South Waziristan and other tribal areas. If a U.S. policy was ever broken, this is it.
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24. Pakistan in a vortex - Arnaud de Borchgrave (Washington Times, December 31): Like it or not, the United States is now stuck with Mr. Musharraf again.
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25. Long-term instability? - Christine Fair (Washington Times, December 31): It seems many Pakistanis believe their country’s slip into violence has been caused by Mr. Musharraf’s alliance with Washington. Under these circumstances, it will be difficult for Mr. Musharraf to convince his polity that Pakistan is fighting for its future—not his.
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26. False Messiah of Pakistan - William M. Arkin (Washingtonpost.com, December 31): Now, though Pakistan is seemingly on the verge of chaos, the U.S. should fight the urge to support the strongman. We need to forge a different future in Pakistan and stop looking to Musharraf as a savior.
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27. Demagoging Pakistan’s crisis – Editorial (Washington Times, December 31): The matter of most interest for the United States and Pakistan’s neighbors India and Afghanistan continues to be this unstable government’s nuclear-weapons arsenal in the context of the ugly flowering of radical Islamist groups, including al Qaeda and the Taliban.
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28. Rethinking our Pakistan policy - Ahmad Faruqui (San Francisco Chronicle, January 1): The United States should continue to support the democratic process in Pakistan but should avoid picking favorites, overtly or covertly. If last week’s tragedy forces Washington to reinvent its Pakistan policy, some good may yet come of it.
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29. 2007 is America’s deadliest year in Iraq - Allegra Stratton and agencies (Guardian, December 31)
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30. Lessons from the surge - Michael Barone (Washington Times, January 1): Some of George W. Bush’s critics seem to have relished the prospect of American defeat and some refuse to acknowledge the success that has been achieved. But it appears they have “misunderestimated” him once again, and have “misunderestimated” the competence of the American military and of free peoples working from the bottom up to transform their societies for the better.
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31. Make-or-Break Time in Iraq? What the U.S. Decides About Post-Surge Troop Levels Could Prove Decisive - Jackson Diehl (Washington Post, December 31): The next six to 12 months are not crucial because of what will happen in Iraq—where, at best, violence will continue to decline incrementally, while Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds make painful and partial progress toward political settlements. The test will come in the United States—where first the Pentagon and the White House, and then the country, will decide whether to invest enough resources in Iraq to keep the hope of eventual success alive.
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32. The Five Iraqs - Scott Ritter (Truthdig, December 30): Nothing the surge has accomplished so far remotely approaches a solution to these enormously destabilizing realities: a largely disaffected Sunni population which finds the current Shiite-dominated government of Iraq fundamentally unacceptable; a decisively fractured Shiite population torn between an Iranian-dominated government on the one hand (controlled by the political proxies of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, SCIRI, itself an Iranian proxy) or an indigenous firebrand, Muqtada al-Sadr; and a false paradise in Kurdistan, where the dream of an independent Kurdish homeland corrupts a viable Kurdish autonomy and threatens regional instability by provoking Turkish military intervention.
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33. Libya’s Inconvenient Truth - Mohamed Eljahmi (Washington Post, January 2): It is ironic and heartbreaking that the Bush administration says it cares for freedom, yet the State Department quietly suggests that courageous reformers should stage apologies to dictators. With Washington offering wholesale concessions to Tripoli, Gaddafi has little incentive to improve human rights.
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34. Top 10 Challenges Facing the US in the Middle East, 2008 – Juan Cole (Informed Comment: Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion, December 31)
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35. Why We’re in the Gulf: The world would be a much more dangerous place without America as a policeman - Walter Russell Mead (Opinion Journal from The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page, January 1): America’s Persian Gulf policy is one of the chief ways through which the U.S. is trying to build a peaceful world and where the exercise of American power, while driven ultimately by domestic concerns and by the American national interest, provides vital public goods to the global community. The next American president, regardless of party and regardless of his or her views about the wisdom of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, will necessarily make the security of the Persian Gulf states one of America’s very highest international priorities.
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36. About That Peace Process – Editorial (New York Times, December 31): Next week President Bush will make his first trip since taking office to Israel and the Palestinian territories. His aides should use the time before then to press both sides to set up those working groups and lay out a calendar for negotiations. Annapolis was photo-op enough. Mr. Bush should use this visit to get real work started.
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37. US Casualties in Afghanistan Hit Record - Jason Straziuso, Associated Press (Truthout, December 31): US military deaths, suicide bombings and opium production hit record highs in 2007. Taliban militants killed more than 925 Afghan police, and large swaths of the country remain outside government control.  But US officials here insist things are looking up: The Afghan army is assuming a larger combat role, and militants appear unlikely to mount a major spring offensive, as had been feared a year ago. Training for Afghan police is increasing.
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38. Overall Sino-U.S. ties stable in 2007 – Wang Wenfeng (People’s Daily, Beijing, January 1): In outgoing 2007, Sino-US relations have remained stable and steady on the whole and scored new, fresh advances in varied fields to extend the sound situation over the last few years. This situation has been attained in the wake of promoting communication and enhancing mutual understanding and on the basis of reaching continuous consensuses and boosting cooperation of both parties on vital global subjects.
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39. Kosovo train-wreck warnings - James Lyons (Washington Times, January 2): The U.S. seems intent on letting the Serbian province of Kosovo break away and apparently sees the issue of no great importance. Russia on the other hand, sees the situation very differently. Moscow has warned it will not accept independence for Kosovo. Mr. Putin has put his prestige on the line. He cannot afford to back down as Boris Yeltsin did. And therein lies the crisis.
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40. Crisis in Kenya: The government’s apparent manipulation of election results prompts a violent backlash – Editorial (Washington Post, January 1): Kenya appeared close over the weekend to successfully completing a groundbreaking democratic election that would have, for the first time, forced an incumbent president to leave office. Instead, eleventh-hour manipulations by President Mwai Kibaki and his ruling party have robbed the vote of credibility and plunged the country into near-chaos. What’s really needed is a quick and credible recount of the votes, with the participation of international monitors. The Bush administration and other Western governments should be pressing Mr. Kibaki to accept that solution.
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41. A Chance to Defend Themselves - Thomas B. Wilner (Washington Post, December 30): As they approach the end of their sixth year of imprisonment, the Guantanamo detainees have been denied even one fair hearing. If we observed this conduct by any other country, we would be appalled.
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42. A Happy New Year! 2007 was hardly an annus horribilus for Americans - Irwin M. Stelzer (Weekly Standard, January 1): The world got what it wished for: a decline in the U.S. trade deficit. So BMW is laying off thousands of workers as the dollars it gets for the cars it sells in America no longer buy enough euros to meet its payroll; Italian designers are reduced to using cotton where once they would consider only silk; and European hotels and restaurants are pining for a return of the gauche but high-spending Americans who have switched vacation plans to American resorts, where the dollar is still king.
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43. 2007: Awkwardest Condiyear EVER – Peter Huestis (Wonkette, December 31): “It’s been such a peculiar year for the Condibot that it would be totally criminal not to look back and reflect on its thrilling awkwardness. Join me on an epic journey through my personal (hey, get your own column!) favorite special moments in Dr. Ferragamo’s 2007, and my picks for AP’s Condirazzi photos of the year, after the jump...”
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44. Electronic Passports Raise Privacy Issues - Ellen Nakashima (Washington Post, January 1): The federal government will soon offer passport cards equipped with electronic data chips to U.S. citizens who travel frequently between the United States and Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean. The cards can be read wirelessly from 20 feet, offering convenience to travelers but raising security and privacy concerns about the possibility of data being intercepted.
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C) TSA

45. Artifact: TSA-Inspired Art - Nick Gillespie (Reason, January): In the last year, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the widely reviled agency responsible for snagging verboten lotion bottles and other contraband from air travelers, confiscated some 8 million items, including guns, knives, soda cans, nonbutane lighters (and many butane models too), and much more.
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46. TSA to punish fliers for facecrime – (Boing Boing, January 1): TSA screeners are learning to recognize set of secret, forbidden facial expressions. If your face slips into one of these during a TSA inspection, you will be taken off and given a thorough, secondary screening
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D) ONLY IN AMERICA?

47. ‘House Lust’ Hits Home - Robert J. Samuelson (Washington Post, January 2): In Sweden, Britain and Italy, new homes average under 1,000 square feet. By 2005, the average newly built U.S. home measured 2,434 square feet, and there were many that were double, triple or quadruple that.
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48. A look back at year’s winners, losers, highs and lows - John Diaz (San Francisco Chronicle, December 3): There are second acts in American life.
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E) ONLY IN LUXEMBOURG?

49. Holiday Cheer: The world’s most bibulous countries - Nathan Littlefield (Atlantic Monthly, December 2004): According to World Drink Trends 2004, published by Britain’s World Advertising Research Center, Luxembourg ranks first among forty-five countries in per capita alcohol consumption.
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F) ONLY IN RUSSIA?

50. Booze Like a Muzhik - Michael Bohm (Moscow Times, December 28): “The large role that alcohol plays in the Russian мировоззрение (world outlook, mindset) is also reflected in the dozens of sayings on the topic. One example: Красное вино полезно для здоровья, а здоровье нужно, чтобы пить водку (Red wine is good for your health, and good health is needed to drink vodka.) But my all-time favorite is the Soviet частушка (couplet): О деньгах мечтают янки, Ну а русские—о пьянке (The Yankees dream of money, but Russians dream of a drinking bout.)”
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G) ONLY ON RUSSIAN SPACE STATIONS?

Beer Pipe, Cave Cult, Bookend Odd Year - Kevin O’Flynn (Moscow Times, January 1): Yes, the first tarakanavty, as they have been dubbed, combining the Russian words for cockroach and cosmonaut, were launched into space in September. The cockroaches copulated while hovering above the Earth, and the lucky mother, Nadezhda, gave birth after Voronezh scientists brought the pests home.
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